Alright, first of all, let me preface this by saying that, about 48 hours ago, I went from not playing STO at all for months to jumping right back into an exciting 10 level hike on my main character. In summary, I am overall very pleased with Delta Rising, especially from a trekkie perspective.
The gamer in me is still pleased, but to a lesser degree. While the new content is massively promising (WHAT?! UPGRADES?! WHERE HAS THIS BEEN?!) it seems that a lot of the older max-level content did not see improvement in the transition - specifically, Reputation-related FA's and STF missions. To be completely honest, not even the newly tweaked difficulty slider and modified queue difficulties bother me. If anything, I nearly peed myself when I worked out that the "Advanced" difficulty basically meant we were getting an "Elite" difficulty later. A fully, legitimately /hard/ aspect of this game is exciting despite how horrible I am compared to the best players, but you can't disrespect it. Its what the people want.
I digress, so I'll get back on track. I'll say it flat out: The new Advanced-difficulty is too hard, and a lot of people agree with me. Now, before you rage, support, or walk away, listen to the rest of this, because I'm not just going to drop that statement and stop talking.
Here's my opinion: The game should never step backward with the release of new content - only forward. "Advanced" is a step backward because it heavily likens itself to what level 50 ~8K DPS trek-fan-collector-enthusiast folk like me are familiar with. Despite the fact that its level 60 content now, I'm a level 52 using ultra-rare mark 12 gear off of 4 maxxed reputations, I did not struggle with elite and, at worst, I should /struggle/ with an organized team on this new difficulty. I have yet to stand a chance in one. I feel like a normal with Mk X common gear trying to take on one of the old elites, and that just doesn't feel right for where I thought I was in this game before. Make me aspire to new heights, don't chop off the middle of the mountain and pile it on the former crest.
Right, so, that concludes the opinionated speech. Now I'm gonna move on to opinionated suggestions on how to rectify a lot of pain people in my position are currently feeling. First of all, I don't think they should simply nerf "Advanced" across the board. A challenge is what this game needs, but the scaling of it is too great to cover everyone - Its kind of like trying to measure an insect with a yardstick. What I mean is that the scale now basically runs from "I just hit level 50 with white gear" to 50K DPS slaughter machines, and the devs are trying to fit them and everyone else in-between into 2 difficulties. Here is what I propose, and I know its probably impossible, but the game theory behind it is what, in my opinion, would best rectify the preceding predicament:
The Difficulty Slider acts as a sub-modifier in addition to generalized queue difficulty.
And when I say modifier, I mean modifier. At least, reward-wise. Forgive me if my memory fails me for actual numbers. Let's just say, for the new Borg Space STFs:
Advanced__________Advanced (x1.25)__________1200 dilithium, 75 marks
Advanced__________Elite (x1.5)__________1440 dilithium, 90 marks
Elite***__________Normal (x1)__________1920 dilithium, 120 marks
Elite***__________Advanced (x1.25)__________2400 dilithium, 150 marks
Elite***__________Elite (x1.5)__________2880 dilithium, 180 marks
***If continued along the same speculative reasoning
I bolded the difficulty pairs that would hypothetically match up to the current difficulties. But see, modifying individual player rewards is easy - each individual has their own slider, but they all play the same instance of a mission. How can this be helped?
Anyways, this is really long, so I'm gonna end it hear. To sum up:
- The new advanced is too difficult (IMO)
- 2 Difficulties alone cannot compensate for such a diverse endgame player base
- I propose that the difficulty slider act as a risk/reward modifier in addition to the new difficulties, ideally on a per-player basis
So, how do you all feel about proposed rewards/changes to difficulty?
So it seems to me alot of people want advanced hp toned down but a small part wants it to stay the same.
How about instead we increase rewards in normal by adding implant type items so new players can buy the rep gear. Then add the old elites back in as a intermediate level play that is slightly harder the normal and gives slightly better rewards. Advanced and elites stay the same.
So a new player would get to level 60 with their mk xi mission blues and start on normal stf's to learn how to complete the stf's and start grinding rep/gear. Next when they have a good grasp of how to do each stf and maybe some better gear they would move upto intermediate level. Advanced level would be after the player has most of the rep gear and has a very good grasp of each stf this should be pugable if everyone is geared but recommend for organized groups.
Much like the tutorial is now a new player should have to complete each stf so many times at each level before moving onto the next unless of course they have completed it on another character.
Doing this will keep everyone happy the people that want the old estf back will get them and the people who want a challenging advanced/elite modes would still have them.
There is a mechanism... join a good fleet or make friends with like-minded people who share a similar play style as you. Form private queues and profit. You're absolutely right that "community policing" won't work. You can most certainly police yourself though and play with friends.
Your suggestion to fix public queues is to not do public queues. That's like me telling a doctor "it hurts when I do this" and the doctor responding "don't do that then".
I have been playing the content on Elite and loving it. However you have really unbalanced the STF's. It would only take scaling back the HP of the NPC's about 25% - 30%. Also the reward is not commensurate with the difficulty. Many other have said that the 480, 960, 1440 scaling would be appropriate and I agree.
Also considering adding the Neural Processors etc... to the normal queue rewards. It is all about getting player up to the point that they can play advance level at least. If they can only get rep. gear by playing advanced level, but can't play advanced level competitively without rep. gear what is the point of playing.
One other thought is that player will be able to play advanced level by crafting higher end gear, without rep gear. then they will need more Crafting material and Dil. to get their equipment. So if you don't want to add in the Neural processors etc.. to the normal difficulty then consider add in more crafting material drops in the normal queues.
With all of that being said. You have taken a step in the right direction. Players in my fleet are getting frustrated with the changes you have made. So consider doing something soon. It only takes putting people off one time to lose them as player and STO has put player off way more than once with the changes that have been made, over the years. It seam that with every expansion we as player deal with getting less and grinding more. At some point you will need to give something back to us. I easily spend over $1000 dollars a year on STO. You can check my account to verify. Back in the day we could get up to 300 dil per zen spent, now we are down in the 160's. Before season 8 I think it was, we could earn 600K ec by doing Tau Dewa Patrol, now we are down to 300k. When is enough. Give us loyal players a bone.
I love Star Trek and STO. IT is still the best MMO out there in my opinion, but if you keep taking things away and making the game harder to play people are going to stop playing. I am not going anywhere. I have to much invested in STO to stop playing, but others do not have too much and will stop.
Thank you for listening to my rant. I hope that I have given you some valuable feedback.
Welcome to Delta Rising. A lot has changed in the game difficulty, and we are looking for your feedback.
Delta Rising was a massive addition, and we anticipate that we will need to make adjustments. So over the next few weeks expect changes in the baseline difficulty, advanced difficulty, and elite difficulty - and also expect rewards to change as we gather more metrics on play-times and success rates.
Our goal was to make basic difficulty and the story content something everyone can play - even with a standard T5 ship. Levels 1-50 are generally pretty easy at basic difficulty, so we felt 51-60 should step things up a bit. Although we expect 51-60 accessible everyone, those in T5 ships and non-upgraded gear should to start to feel a definite challenge as they approach level 60. We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players and those who have invested in the game (ships and gear). And we expect Elite to be for the best of the best. We don't expect most players to succeed on elite difficulty.
If I were to guess, I would expect basic to get some minor tuning, Advanced to get a little easier and Elite to get a lot harder - and rewards, like dilithium rewards, could potentially go up across queues once we are sure we are hitting the right mark. But this is just my guess at this time.
Until then, let us know your thoughts here, and we will take your feedback into consideration.
Thanks, and we hope you enjoy Delta Rising.
LLAP
The Space queue games for Elite PVE are now WAY WAY too difficult!! I have tried several times and had to quit after 45 minutes off play and not being able to defeat the enemy!! Please put it back to how it was!!
Other than that I love what I have got so far, but I haven't started the Delta rising missions so I don't know how they are
This doesn't work. There were people soloing the old Elite STFs, and that was with T5 ships and MK XII gear. Now you have T5-U and T6 ships, MK XIII and MK XIV gear. The old Elite would be completely brainless. And you'd want to increase the rewards for it? LOL no.
Who cares if some uber elite geared player is soloing stuff there is a 1 hour cooldown on stf's anyway (and it is a shared cooldown with all levels of play)
Normal would give a moderate amount of marks and a chance at implants aka less then the old elites gave. 480 dilithium reward
Intermediate would be the same as the old elites but with a new 720 dilithium reward.
Advanced would be 960 dilithium and elite 1440 dilithium.
The only gripe I have with advanced/elite queues are the low rewords.
Difficulty levels are mostly back to were they were S5 "adv lvl", and I have no real problem with that but it was more fun back then better loot/drops and sometimes something extra.
Only one I tried so far that's was a bit over the top is HSA, not sure if anyone will get past the first part A LOT of HP to pew pew :P
Obviously the Devs do, hence the increase in difficulty.
So cater to the 0.1% and tell everyone else to deal with it....
If you found the old estf too easy now you have the choice to play 2 higher difficulties.
I can't see how anyone would actully play this game and stf's for the "challenge" considering all they have done is make the npc enemies bigger hp punching bags.
i love the harder queues, couldnt try elite yet cause no char on 60 yet.
BUT
what did you guys do with big dig? its nerfed to ultra easy or something
while before it was a nice queue, not to hard, not to easy, only problem was getting to the flower things when you are alone and the mobs had respawned but otherwise really nice mission difficulty setup.
now playing it its like god mode switched on or something. I took my fed eng and I didnt even slot ground traits cause i just hate the constant switching between those just for playing one mission on ground then going back to space.
but thats another matter, as I said its just way to easy now, i killed everything with 2-3 shots max no skills needed, i didnt even take dmg only one time when i had like 15 or so firing on my i felt I had to use a shield potion and put up some shield ress but that was enough and 30 seconds later those 15 guys were all dead and some others too
pls change back or make 3 selttings also
btw while I'm at it, cant you just make 3 clickable things on top no menue no dropdown no nothing and REMEMBER my setup ? cause its really but designed ui there
1. Add Borg Neural Processors as a reward for Normal Difficulty Borg STF queues and increase the Dilithium rewards for those (Normal) queues back to their pre-Delta Rising levels.
2. Reduce the difficulty / NPC HP of Advanced Difficulty Borg STF queues to just above their pre-Delta Rising levels. I don't mind a bit of a challenge/difficulty increase but not an epic one like what we currently have.
3. Revise and improve the level matching mechanism (Level 50-59 playing as Level 60) for Advanced queues to improve player stats/damage/capabilities to enable non level 60 characters to better handle the content of these missions while levelling from 50 to 60 and beyond.
Thank you for taking the time to listen/read! :cool:
No, I'm not suggesting fixing the public queues. I'm offering a suggestion to a post complaining that they're auto-teamed with people who don't play they way they do.
If you want to run PUGs, then you're going to get what you get.
It's not a complaint about people not playing the way I do. It has nothing to do with play style. People are able to queue for content they don't have the level or gear for. If the content is for a 60 and a 50 can queue then the system is broken plain and simple. If the content is for people in MK12 gear and people can queue with MK1 gear the system is broken, plain and simple. Pugs are fine as long as they meet the minimum requirements for the content we are doing.
Welcome to Delta Rising. A lot has changed in the game difficulty, and we are looking for your feedback.
Delta Rising was a massive addition, and we anticipate that we will need to make adjustments. So over the next few weeks expect changes in the baseline difficulty, advanced difficulty, and elite difficulty - and also expect rewards to change as we gather more metrics on play-times and success rates.
Our goal was to make basic difficulty and the story content something everyone can play - even with a standard T5 ship. Levels 1-50 are generally pretty easy at basic difficulty, so we felt 51-60 should step things up a bit. Although we expect 51-60 accessible everyone, those in T5 ships and non-upgraded gear should to start to feel a definite challenge as they approach level 60. We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players and those who have invested in the game (ships and gear). And we expect Elite to be for the best of the best. We don't expect most players to succeed on elite difficulty.
If I were to guess, I would expect basic to get some minor tuning, Advanced to get a little easier and Elite to get a lot harder - and rewards, like dilithium rewards, could potentially go up across queues once we are sure we are hitting the right mark. But this is just my guess at this time.
Until then, let us know your thoughts here, and we will take your feedback into consideration.
Thanks, and we hope you enjoy Delta Rising.
LLAP
First off the fleets band together to enjoy the content together and gather resources to build their Starbases.....The STfs are the most enjoyable to do for this goal
The primary source has been the STFs which you have nerfed to nothing in rewards thus crippling the fleets...your other content is NOT enjoyable to run as a fleet the content is simply not fun to do in a fleet group except Defari and fleet alert /.colony invasion
The Dil cut is unacceptable on advanced it should remain at 960 and the purple mk-12 loot as well
otherwise it will be too hard to keep the fleet something to do together as a fleet
The boosts to flanking damage will really put our KDF fleet up in DPS but sadly it will leave our Fed fleet in dead last place in DPS regulating our Fed players to support ships only in advanced and elite content
DPS should not be only Romulan and KDF only jobs...Our Romulan an KDF players will be doing 100% more DPS than our Feds will be doing.
You still don't need a tank in the new content just science and DPS..see the problem with most feds in cruisers
As is the normal STFs should drop BNPs so new players can get omega rep gear
you should keep your word an leave the advanced as the Elites used to be in difficulty and reward
or apologize for not telling the truth
Our fleets will fall apart without something fun to do as a fleet and the pre DR STFs were our fun but not anymore
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Actully they are you cannot get BNP's running normal queues meaning you can't buy the rep gear you unlock making normal queues completely useless.
Adding back in the old estf's and keeping the advanced/elites as they are benefits everyone how you could argue with that is beyond me.
If they stick to their gun and keep advanced/elites queues as they are and not add in the old elites players will quit and take their money elsewhere and in a month or 2 advanced and elites queues will be nerfed back to the old estf's.
But in alot of ways this is probably cryptic's plan get the hardcore players that want it now to pay massive amount to upgrade their gear and buy the new tier 6 ships and then in a couple months nerf the content so everyone can do it.
Not sure they would do this as they were already too easy before with T5 ships and MK XII gear. Now with T6 and MK XIII+, they'd be much, much too easy.
Your suggestion to fix public queues is to not do public queues. That's like me telling a doctor "it hurts when I do this" and the doctor responding "don't do that then".
If what you are doing is opening and closing your hand, you are right. If you are stabbing yourself with a fork, the doctor is right. Context > Content.
Right now people are curb stomping elite while we debate if advanced is too hard. Re-read geckos post and think about this for a moment.
I'm going to try to explain this from a different perspective. My previous posts were my own personal issues with the changes, but I actually have another hat to put on.
I am an officer (rank 7) for a group of very large, very active fleets. We maintain a public chat channel that is likewise very large and very active, and open to many who aren't in our fleets. If you've ever been to http://www.reddit.com/r/sto/ you know who we are.
We're a group of thousands of people who cover the entire range of skill and gear and we want all of them to be able to play together, have fun, and get rewards far more reliably than pugs. In terms of DPS, I'm no record-holder but probably above average for STO. I just looked myself up on that old DPS-League table and I was apparently 443 at ~24k, not that I ever cared.
We used to run many, many STFs every day. Perhaps we were running them faster than Cryptic intended, but we're not a DPS channel, and our teams often mixed players with the full range of skill. The better players could carry the weaker players and it was all good because everyone had fun and got a reward that allowed them to advance and improve.
We can't do that anymore. Good players can beat it together, but they can't carry the weaker players now. This is extremely bad for communities like ours. It forces the good players to retreat behind the walls of the DPS channels while the weak players go to pug hell, with its demeaning rewards.
If what you are doing is opening and closing your hand, you are right. If you are stabbing yourself with a fork, the doctor is right. Context > Content.
Right now people are curb stomping elite while we debate if advanced is too hard. Re-read geckos post and think about this for a moment.
Your right, the joke works better with a visual aid
Actually my problem isn't with the difficulty itself. My issue is with how the queues deal with the difficulty.
We can't do that anymore. Good players can beat it together, but they can't carry the weaker players now. This is extremely bad for communities like ours. It forces the good players to retreat behind the walls of the DPS channels while the weak players go to pug hell, with its demeaning rewards.
Geko, you guys just don't seem to get it.
*echoes above statement*
Advance STFs are now being used by experienced and inexperienced players. As a result of the slightly higher rewards, while also the abandoned norm stfs, new players currently have no choice in playing advanced. Experienced players are having a hard time teaching and progressing, for the advanced stfs do not anticipate the influx of new players.
So, when veteran players are confronted with low rewards, due to the failure of advanced stfs, the end result creates a sense of frustration. Do we play for the low rewards? Do we abandon new players entirely? Do we abandon STFs entirely? Its a conundrum.
Second, the reward system is not equal to the time invested into stfs.
How I would have handled the rewards:
Normal = 650 dilithium + 150 Marks
Advanced = 1,200 dilithium + 250 Marks + 1-5 Processors
Elite = 1,800 dilithium + 400 Marks + 3-6 Processors
If the reward system is boosted, while the difficulty settings are slightly lowered, players will feel a sense of accomplishment and achievement. New and veteran players will be enticed by the normal and advanced queues.
Now, Advanced and Norm queues should not have time limits for completing the main mission. While I can understand why they may be used in Elite stfs, the presence of the overall mission timers can cause new players to get anxious. Frustration builds when things instant fail.
Another note... When people play through missions, they do so to reach the end battle. If a mission fails to reach the end, due to a timer hitting zero, players will end up moving onto other missions. People want to feel a sense of accomplishment.
Low rewards + Not being able to completing a mission = Not playing the mission.
I knew this new difficulty was coming but it's very poorly done and without properly balanced endgames queues to do, STO will die fast as players just leave. Normal should be a basic, low reward mode that helps teach new players how to do the mission and test out/starting on new endgame builds.
Advanced should be what the old Elite was. For proven players who have got solid builds, understand the game dynamics but aren't DPS monsters. Elite should be what it is now - nightmare mode for true highend players.
All this has done is make the queues unplayable. New players will never get anywhere with such intense difficulty and even the decent players have hit a total brickwall. Disasterous balancing. Cryptic want this fixed within the next two weeks or DR will be flopping hard once players are done with the new story content.
We used to run many, many STFs every day. Perhaps we were running them faster than Cryptic intended, but we're not a DPS channel, and our teams often mixed players with the full range of skill. The better players could carry the weaker players and it was all good because everyone had fun and got a reward that allowed them to advance and improve.
We can't do that anymore. Good players can beat it together, but they can't carry the weaker players now. This is extremely bad for communities like ours. It forces the good players to retreat behind the walls of the DPS channels while the weak players go to pug hell, with its demeaning rewards.
Actually my problem isn't with the difficulty itself. My issue is with how the queues deal with the difficulty.
This is all exactly true. And very important.
Now, look outside the queue for the worst case scenario. Check this screenshot. Notice what mission, what enemy, and how many HP. How is this supposed to be winnable?
Normal is fine, but Advanced is truly insane - nothing close to the old Elite! Advanced should be a challenge for good T5 ship builds but do-able.
I don't mind a challenge, but please take Advanced down close to what the old Elite was.
Make the new Elite mode be the Nightmare mode.
Star Trek Battles Channel - Play Star Trek like they did in the series!Avatar: pinterest-com/pin/14003448816884219Are you sure it isn't time for a "colorful metaphor"? --Spock in 'The Voyage Home' SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
Can't earn dilithium with STF's in any reasonable quantites so i'd better be in battlezone all day long and they're boring and low on DPM (dilithium per minute) because of camper overload
Can't advance reputation because marks given on basic level are what you'd give to a beggar
Can't earn materials for R&D (because even if i could have a chance to finish an advanced STF, so many players quit half-way through that it becomes impossible)
Can't craft to earn EC
So what exactly is left here? Why not just terminate free to play and be done with it because that is the goal from what we get after this expansion.
I call shenanigans on everything here.
Do one ONE Borg disconnected normal, boom 85 marks. Before you hit tier 5 you'll have 700 extra unless you waste them on the hourly rep project. Then you claim tier 5 and get 500 more. If you're casual why are you grinding? Get 5 daily bonus boxes instead of running the same thing 5 times. Use unwanted ones for dilithium. Which leads to the next item.
There are many ways to earn dil, see the vast number of threads asking for the refining cap to be increased to get some ideas how. Of all the methods, exactly one has been nerfed, all the rest are unchanged.
R&d materials can be earned in missions, doffing, via the academy mission, and via normal queues. For doffing, try the sphere for the double reward missions, and especially focus on the "artifact" explore and marauding missions, these give components and purples far more often and you use three doffs for higher crit rates. All of these but the normal queue boxes have a chance for purple mats, but even without that, you can also sell or use the greens and blues and buy the purples you need. Which gets to my next point.
Get crafting to 2. Make engineering and science rank 2 consoles. Sell the lucky ones with opposite mods (sci console with engineering mod, etc). Get crafting to rank 5, make the components people need for crafting upgrade kits. Get crafting to rank 10, make blue upgrade kits. Get crafting to rank 15 make aegis sets and that tr###b gun. Profit.
Or skip to the profit and just sell crafting mats without using them.
Then you'd just have empty queues and people who want to do elite waiting for hours for enough people to join. This game is about resources and what you can do with them and i've already seen Radiogenic particle price quadruple in two days because new Crystaline Catastrophe Advanced is unwinable even with 6 DPS buster T5-U ships, i don't know what kind of ship or new skills would be necessary for the Elite version.
The new difficulty for STFs is pure evil. Ending Rh'ihho station and Infected: The conduit because optional goals haven't been met is a thing for Elite not Advanced. Now it's impossible to finish half of the "Advanced" STF's and many people, including myself, won't play along.
...
I have spent certain amount of real money and a lot of play time to obtain the TR-116B rifle that has been made completly useless by this expansion.
I'm going to disagree with you on this one; the TR-116B is not made useless by DR. Just the opposite - the TR-116B is now MANDATORY for Borg ground elites and DRSA. I took a team through DRSA last night and we got all six engineers with only a few seconds to spare. Every member of the team had a 116B. I couldn't imagine getting it without a full TR-116B team.
Now, Advanced and Norm queues should not have time limits for completing the main mission. While I can understand why they may be used in Elite stfs, the presence of the overall mission timers can cause new players to get anxious. Frustration builds when things instant fail.
And this is what my issue with DRSA and BDA is: the "optionals"/"timers". They are entirely too low. A pug that knows what its doing; even if not properly geared, should have a strong chance to beat the mission and obtain the Advanced VR R&D material, the APC/BNP/VCI/II token, and a token amount of marks. Right now, the timers and automatic failures are too unforgiving. I don't think that's a good system for advanced.
I want all these failure conditions and tight timelines in Elite. I love the feeling of winning by a second or two. That's fun! The issue I have with it being in Advanced is that in Advanced; I want a challenge that can be reliably farmed for materials so I can have a chance in Elite. Right now, that doesn't exist. And thus when an advanced queue fails, I and other experienced players get frustrated and it tends to leave an overall worse player experience.
,,Low rewards + Not being able to completing a mission = Not playing the mission."
How about... good rewards + not being able to complete? I wonder what happened if we had the best rewards reserved for those missions. Im pretty sure, people still would be complaining about how they cant get the top-end gear, because their current gear doesnt allow it.
Tbh, you dont need that much gear to do most of the missions, especially advanced clearly can be done.
People just dont adept because they never were forced into a mindset of... "Oh my gawd, we are getting obliterated... how can we possibly beat this?!"
instead of "oh, i want to fly this and that and equip torpedos all over the place coZ them shiny"
It might not be the "mah playstyle approach" but thats what we need to establish real "endgame". Unless somehow everything would become balanced
I want to fly the mission, and do whats required to get the job done. Do i like the Scimitar? No. Is it the best ship currently? Yes.
Get your stuff together and go beat the STFs, they are a challenge, not a place to farm dilithium at.
We might need more incentive though to make the average player think about their builds outside the box of:,, i feel like this build should work! And if it doesnt... I ... I will go to the forums and tell everyone what an horrible job they did balancing!"
Thats just what I know what works, there might be another system though.
best regards
RyanSTO
No Win Scenario 2 Men - DPS Prime
Oh please, do share how to earn 15x Argonite gas needed for ONE cannon weapon with the methods described above, i'd really like to know what am i not doing right.
The fast way is to sell other stuff and buy them.
The casual way is to get a pair of rom-kdf alts and run 3 or 4 marauding "plunder artifact" missions the one explore ruins/artifact mission that nearly always up on the new Romulus command, two assist with r&d materials (ROM command & qonos), plus as many explore artifact and spire sci and explore dual mat missions as you can find (one sector north of qonos and Regulus are good, my favorite area is near ds9 and in the three explore clusters there).
I had been pulling between 3 and 12 purple mats a day of random types from two characters combined. Not counting advanced queue boxes which I've stopped opening and am now just selling from my stockpile. That's fast enough for me. Currently I spend more time in the tailor than playing so most of my earning is floored but I did get 3 plekton yesterday.
Edit: be sure to have a purple astrometric doff on active duty with the bonus r&d mat special. That helps more with blues than purps, but it adds up.
Edit the edit: I never looked how many were needed to craft, I just saw prices and sold my mats as I earned them while stockpiling a few for later. Wow 15 is nuts o.o; no wonder I'm earning a ton of ec... Imma start undercutting more, that rough on peeps using them.
A normal frigate has 30k hp
An advanced frigate has 66k hp
An elite frigate has 76k hp
I see this as a problem
The jump from I'm a casual, for fun fluffy bunny difficulty to average is an extra 120%. The difference between average and best of the best is an extra 13%?!? Really? Whoever thought this scaling made sense needs to be fire...right now because they obviously doesn't have a brain. For this player base, if you reversed it, it could possibly make sense...but yeah...this scaling is silly stupid. This is irrespective of the 51-60 scaling issue.
Its worse than that. Go replay an early mission. I posted a screenshot from the federation mission shariens swords of a ddridex with 303,000 HP.
Comments
The gamer in me is still pleased, but to a lesser degree. While the new content is massively promising (WHAT?! UPGRADES?! WHERE HAS THIS BEEN?!) it seems that a lot of the older max-level content did not see improvement in the transition - specifically, Reputation-related FA's and STF missions. To be completely honest, not even the newly tweaked difficulty slider and modified queue difficulties bother me. If anything, I nearly peed myself when I worked out that the "Advanced" difficulty basically meant we were getting an "Elite" difficulty later. A fully, legitimately /hard/ aspect of this game is exciting despite how horrible I am compared to the best players, but you can't disrespect it. Its what the people want.
I digress, so I'll get back on track. I'll say it flat out: The new Advanced-difficulty is too hard, and a lot of people agree with me. Now, before you rage, support, or walk away, listen to the rest of this, because I'm not just going to drop that statement and stop talking.
Here's my opinion: The game should never step backward with the release of new content - only forward. "Advanced" is a step backward because it heavily likens itself to what level 50 ~8K DPS trek-fan-collector-enthusiast folk like me are familiar with. Despite the fact that its level 60 content now, I'm a level 52 using ultra-rare mark 12 gear off of 4 maxxed reputations, I did not struggle with elite and, at worst, I should /struggle/ with an organized team on this new difficulty. I have yet to stand a chance in one. I feel like a normal with Mk X common gear trying to take on one of the old elites, and that just doesn't feel right for where I thought I was in this game before. Make me aspire to new heights, don't chop off the middle of the mountain and pile it on the former crest.
Right, so, that concludes the opinionated speech. Now I'm gonna move on to opinionated suggestions on how to rectify a lot of pain people in my position are currently feeling. First of all, I don't think they should simply nerf "Advanced" across the board. A challenge is what this game needs, but the scaling of it is too great to cover everyone - Its kind of like trying to measure an insect with a yardstick. What I mean is that the scale now basically runs from "I just hit level 50 with white gear" to 50K DPS slaughter machines, and the devs are trying to fit them and everyone else in-between into 2 difficulties. Here is what I propose, and I know its probably impossible, but the game theory behind it is what, in my opinion, would best rectify the preceding predicament:
The Difficulty Slider acts as a sub-modifier in addition to generalized queue difficulty.
And when I say modifier, I mean modifier. At least, reward-wise. Forgive me if my memory fails me for actual numbers. Let's just say, for the new Borg Space STFs:
Difficulty:__________Mod. Setting:__________Base Reward:
New Normal__________Normal (x1)__________Old Normal (480 dil, 20 marks I believe)
New Normal__________Advanced (x1.25)__________600 dilithium, 25 marks
New Normal__________Elite (x1.5)__________720 dilithium, 30 marks
Advanced__________Normal (x1)__________Old Elite (960 dilithium, 60 marks, right?)
Advanced__________Advanced (x1.25)__________1200 dilithium, 75 marks
Advanced__________Elite (x1.5)__________1440 dilithium, 90 marks
Elite***__________Normal (x1)__________1920 dilithium, 120 marks
Elite***__________Advanced (x1.25)__________2400 dilithium, 150 marks
Elite***__________Elite (x1.5)__________2880 dilithium, 180 marks
***If continued along the same speculative reasoning
I bolded the difficulty pairs that would hypothetically match up to the current difficulties. But see, modifying individual player rewards is easy - each individual has their own slider, but they all play the same instance of a mission. How can this be helped?
Anyways, this is really long, so I'm gonna end it hear. To sum up:
- The new advanced is too difficult (IMO)
- 2 Difficulties alone cannot compensate for such a diverse endgame player base
- I propose that the difficulty slider act as a risk/reward modifier in addition to the new difficulties, ideally on a per-player basis
So, how do you all feel about proposed rewards/changes to difficulty?
How about instead we increase rewards in normal by adding implant type items so new players can buy the rep gear. Then add the old elites back in as a intermediate level play that is slightly harder the normal and gives slightly better rewards. Advanced and elites stay the same.
So a new player would get to level 60 with their mk xi mission blues and start on normal stf's to learn how to complete the stf's and start grinding rep/gear. Next when they have a good grasp of how to do each stf and maybe some better gear they would move upto intermediate level. Advanced level would be after the player has most of the rep gear and has a very good grasp of each stf this should be pugable if everyone is geared but recommend for organized groups.
Much like the tutorial is now a new player should have to complete each stf so many times at each level before moving onto the next unless of course they have completed it on another character.
Doing this will keep everyone happy the people that want the old estf back will get them and the people who want a challenging advanced/elite modes would still have them.
Your suggestion to fix public queues is to not do public queues. That's like me telling a doctor "it hurts when I do this" and the doctor responding "don't do that then".
I have been playing the content on Elite and loving it. However you have really unbalanced the STF's. It would only take scaling back the HP of the NPC's about 25% - 30%. Also the reward is not commensurate with the difficulty. Many other have said that the 480, 960, 1440 scaling would be appropriate and I agree.
Also considering adding the Neural Processors etc... to the normal queue rewards. It is all about getting player up to the point that they can play advance level at least. If they can only get rep. gear by playing advanced level, but can't play advanced level competitively without rep. gear what is the point of playing.
One other thought is that player will be able to play advanced level by crafting higher end gear, without rep gear. then they will need more Crafting material and Dil. to get their equipment. So if you don't want to add in the Neural processors etc.. to the normal difficulty then consider add in more crafting material drops in the normal queues.
With all of that being said. You have taken a step in the right direction. Players in my fleet are getting frustrated with the changes you have made. So consider doing something soon. It only takes putting people off one time to lose them as player and STO has put player off way more than once with the changes that have been made, over the years. It seam that with every expansion we as player deal with getting less and grinding more. At some point you will need to give something back to us. I easily spend over $1000 dollars a year on STO. You can check my account to verify. Back in the day we could get up to 300 dil per zen spent, now we are down in the 160's. Before season 8 I think it was, we could earn 600K ec by doing Tau Dewa Patrol, now we are down to 300k. When is enough. Give us loyal players a bone.
I love Star Trek and STO. IT is still the best MMO out there in my opinion, but if you keep taking things away and making the game harder to play people are going to stop playing. I am not going anywhere. I have to much invested in STO to stop playing, but others do not have too much and will stop.
Thank you for listening to my rant. I hope that I have given you some valuable feedback.
Yours in STO,
Dwayne T. Krieger
The Space queue games for Elite PVE are now WAY WAY too difficult!! I have tried several times and had to quit after 45 minutes off play and not being able to defeat the enemy!! Please put it back to how it was!!
Other than that I love what I have got so far, but I haven't started the Delta rising missions so I don't know how they are
Who cares if some uber elite geared player is soloing stuff there is a 1 hour cooldown on stf's anyway (and it is a shared cooldown with all levels of play)
Normal would give a moderate amount of marks and a chance at implants aka less then the old elites gave. 480 dilithium reward
Intermediate would be the same as the old elites but with a new 720 dilithium reward.
Advanced would be 960 dilithium and elite 1440 dilithium.
Difficulty levels are mostly back to were they were S5 "adv lvl", and I have no real problem with that but it was more fun back then better loot/drops and sometimes something extra.
Only one I tried so far that's was a bit over the top is HSA, not sure if anyone will get past the first part A LOT of HP to pew pew :P
So cater to the 0.1% and tell everyone else to deal with it....
If you found the old estf too easy now you have the choice to play 2 higher difficulties.
I can't see how anyone would actully play this game and stf's for the "challenge" considering all they have done is make the npc enemies bigger hp punching bags.
BUT
what did you guys do with big dig? its nerfed to ultra easy or something
while before it was a nice queue, not to hard, not to easy, only problem was getting to the flower things when you are alone and the mobs had respawned but otherwise really nice mission difficulty setup.
now playing it its like god mode switched on or something. I took my fed eng and I didnt even slot ground traits cause i just hate the constant switching between those just for playing one mission on ground then going back to space.
but thats another matter, as I said its just way to easy now, i killed everything with 2-3 shots max no skills needed, i didnt even take dmg only one time when i had like 15 or so firing on my i felt I had to use a shield potion and put up some shield ress but that was enough and 30 seconds later those 15 guys were all dead and some others too
pls change back or make 3 selttings also
btw while I'm at it, cant you just make 3 clickable things on top no menue no dropdown no nothing and REMEMBER my setup ? cause its really but designed ui there
1. Add Borg Neural Processors as a reward for Normal Difficulty Borg STF queues and increase the Dilithium rewards for those (Normal) queues back to their pre-Delta Rising levels.
2. Reduce the difficulty / NPC HP of Advanced Difficulty Borg STF queues to just above their pre-Delta Rising levels. I don't mind a bit of a challenge/difficulty increase but not an epic one like what we currently have.
3. Revise and improve the level matching mechanism (Level 50-59 playing as Level 60) for Advanced queues to improve player stats/damage/capabilities to enable non level 60 characters to better handle the content of these missions while levelling from 50 to 60 and beyond.
Thank you for taking the time to listen/read! :cool:
It's not a complaint about people not playing the way I do. It has nothing to do with play style. People are able to queue for content they don't have the level or gear for. If the content is for a 60 and a 50 can queue then the system is broken plain and simple. If the content is for people in MK12 gear and people can queue with MK1 gear the system is broken, plain and simple. Pugs are fine as long as they meet the minimum requirements for the content we are doing.
First off the fleets band together to enjoy the content together and gather resources to build their Starbases.....The STfs are the most enjoyable to do for this goal
The primary source has been the STFs which you have nerfed to nothing in rewards thus crippling the fleets...your other content is NOT enjoyable to run as a fleet the content is simply not fun to do in a fleet group except Defari and fleet alert /.colony invasion
The Dil cut is unacceptable on advanced it should remain at 960 and the purple mk-12 loot as well
otherwise it will be too hard to keep the fleet something to do together as a fleet
The boosts to flanking damage will really put our KDF fleet up in DPS but sadly it will leave our Fed fleet in dead last place in DPS regulating our Fed players to support ships only in advanced and elite content
DPS should not be only Romulan and KDF only jobs...Our Romulan an KDF players will be doing 100% more DPS than our Feds will be doing.
You still don't need a tank in the new content just science and DPS..see the problem with most feds in cruisers
As is the normal STFs should drop BNPs so new players can get omega rep gear
you should keep your word an leave the advanced as the Elites used to be in difficulty and reward
or apologize for not telling the truth
Our fleets will fall apart without something fun to do as a fleet and the pre DR STFs were our fun but not anymore
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
No one is forcing me to play this game either, what is your point?
Actully they are you cannot get BNP's running normal queues meaning you can't buy the rep gear you unlock making normal queues completely useless.
Adding back in the old estf's and keeping the advanced/elites as they are benefits everyone how you could argue with that is beyond me.
If they stick to their gun and keep advanced/elites queues as they are and not add in the old elites players will quit and take their money elsewhere and in a month or 2 advanced and elites queues will be nerfed back to the old estf's.
But in alot of ways this is probably cryptic's plan get the hardcore players that want it now to pay massive amount to upgrade their gear and buy the new tier 6 ships and then in a couple months nerf the content so everyone can do it.
No one would be forcing you to run the old estf.
If what you are doing is opening and closing your hand, you are right. If you are stabbing yourself with a fork, the doctor is right. Context > Content.
Right now people are curb stomping elite while we debate if advanced is too hard. Re-read geckos post and think about this for a moment.
I am an officer (rank 7) for a group of very large, very active fleets. We maintain a public chat channel that is likewise very large and very active, and open to many who aren't in our fleets. If you've ever been to http://www.reddit.com/r/sto/ you know who we are.
We're a group of thousands of people who cover the entire range of skill and gear and we want all of them to be able to play together, have fun, and get rewards far more reliably than pugs. In terms of DPS, I'm no record-holder but probably above average for STO. I just looked myself up on that old DPS-League table and I was apparently 443 at ~24k, not that I ever cared.
We used to run many, many STFs every day. Perhaps we were running them faster than Cryptic intended, but we're not a DPS channel, and our teams often mixed players with the full range of skill. The better players could carry the weaker players and it was all good because everyone had fun and got a reward that allowed them to advance and improve.
We can't do that anymore. Good players can beat it together, but they can't carry the weaker players now. This is extremely bad for communities like ours. It forces the good players to retreat behind the walls of the DPS channels while the weak players go to pug hell, with its demeaning rewards.
Geko, you guys just don't seem to get it.
Your right, the joke works better with a visual aid
Actually my problem isn't with the difficulty itself. My issue is with how the queues deal with the difficulty.
Advance STFs are now being used by experienced and inexperienced players. As a result of the slightly higher rewards, while also the abandoned norm stfs, new players currently have no choice in playing advanced. Experienced players are having a hard time teaching and progressing, for the advanced stfs do not anticipate the influx of new players.
So, when veteran players are confronted with low rewards, due to the failure of advanced stfs, the end result creates a sense of frustration. Do we play for the low rewards? Do we abandon new players entirely? Do we abandon STFs entirely? Its a conundrum.
Second, the reward system is not equal to the time invested into stfs.
How I would have handled the rewards:
Normal = 650 dilithium + 150 Marks
Advanced = 1,200 dilithium + 250 Marks + 1-5 Processors
Elite = 1,800 dilithium + 400 Marks + 3-6 Processors
If the reward system is boosted, while the difficulty settings are slightly lowered, players will feel a sense of accomplishment and achievement. New and veteran players will be enticed by the normal and advanced queues.
Now, Advanced and Norm queues should not have time limits for completing the main mission. While I can understand why they may be used in Elite stfs, the presence of the overall mission timers can cause new players to get anxious. Frustration builds when things instant fail.
Another note... When people play through missions, they do so to reach the end battle. If a mission fails to reach the end, due to a timer hitting zero, players will end up moving onto other missions. People want to feel a sense of accomplishment.
Low rewards + Not being able to completing a mission = Not playing the mission.
Advanced should be what the old Elite was. For proven players who have got solid builds, understand the game dynamics but aren't DPS monsters. Elite should be what it is now - nightmare mode for true highend players.
All this has done is make the queues unplayable. New players will never get anywhere with such intense difficulty and even the decent players have hit a total brickwall. Disasterous balancing. Cryptic want this fixed within the next two weeks or DR will be flopping hard once players are done with the new story content.
Now, look outside the queue for the worst case scenario. Check this screenshot. Notice what mission, what enemy, and how many HP. How is this supposed to be winnable?
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=19925741&postcount=19
I don't mind a challenge, but please take Advanced down close to what the old Elite was.
Make the new Elite mode be the Nightmare mode.
SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
I was thinking:
Norm = T4-T5 Ships & MK X - MK XI Ground Gear
Advance = T5-T5.5 Ships & MK XI - MK XII Ground Gear
Elite = T6 Ships & MK XIII - MKXIV Ground Gear
I call shenanigans on everything here.
Do one ONE Borg disconnected normal, boom 85 marks. Before you hit tier 5 you'll have 700 extra unless you waste them on the hourly rep project. Then you claim tier 5 and get 500 more. If you're casual why are you grinding? Get 5 daily bonus boxes instead of running the same thing 5 times. Use unwanted ones for dilithium. Which leads to the next item.
There are many ways to earn dil, see the vast number of threads asking for the refining cap to be increased to get some ideas how. Of all the methods, exactly one has been nerfed, all the rest are unchanged.
R&d materials can be earned in missions, doffing, via the academy mission, and via normal queues. For doffing, try the sphere for the double reward missions, and especially focus on the "artifact" explore and marauding missions, these give components and purples far more often and you use three doffs for higher crit rates. All of these but the normal queue boxes have a chance for purple mats, but even without that, you can also sell or use the greens and blues and buy the purples you need. Which gets to my next point.
Get crafting to 2. Make engineering and science rank 2 consoles. Sell the lucky ones with opposite mods (sci console with engineering mod, etc). Get crafting to rank 5, make the components people need for crafting upgrade kits. Get crafting to rank 10, make blue upgrade kits. Get crafting to rank 15 make aegis sets and that tr###b gun. Profit.
Or skip to the profit and just sell crafting mats without using them.
Your answer was posted two weeks ago here:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1229421
Here's a couple specific posts from the thread:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=19417311&postcount=48
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=19418131&postcount=52
Hint: beams/cannons CAN do it, but they are the hard way. Get some sci ships with 300+ particle gen.
I'm going to disagree with you on this one; the TR-116B is not made useless by DR. Just the opposite - the TR-116B is now MANDATORY for Borg ground elites and DRSA. I took a team through DRSA last night and we got all six engineers with only a few seconds to spare. Every member of the team had a 116B. I couldn't imagine getting it without a full TR-116B team.
And this is what my issue with DRSA and BDA is: the "optionals"/"timers". They are entirely too low. A pug that knows what its doing; even if not properly geared, should have a strong chance to beat the mission and obtain the Advanced VR R&D material, the APC/BNP/VCI/II token, and a token amount of marks. Right now, the timers and automatic failures are too unforgiving. I don't think that's a good system for advanced.
I want all these failure conditions and tight timelines in Elite. I love the feeling of winning by a second or two. That's fun! The issue I have with it being in Advanced is that in Advanced; I want a challenge that can be reliably farmed for materials so I can have a chance in Elite. Right now, that doesn't exist. And thus when an advanced queue fails, I and other experienced players get frustrated and it tends to leave an overall worse player experience.
thats what most ppl in this game need
,,Low rewards + Not being able to completing a mission = Not playing the mission."
How about... good rewards + not being able to complete? I wonder what happened if we had the best rewards reserved for those missions. Im pretty sure, people still would be complaining about how they cant get the top-end gear, because their current gear doesnt allow it.
Tbh, you dont need that much gear to do most of the missions, especially advanced clearly can be done.
People just dont adept because they never were forced into a mindset of... "Oh my gawd, we are getting obliterated... how can we possibly beat this?!"
instead of "oh, i want to fly this and that and equip torpedos all over the place coZ them shiny"
It might not be the "mah playstyle approach" but thats what we need to establish real "endgame". Unless somehow everything would become balanced
I want to fly the mission, and do whats required to get the job done. Do i like the Scimitar? No. Is it the best ship currently? Yes.
Get your stuff together and go beat the STFs, they are a challenge, not a place to farm dilithium at.
We might need more incentive though to make the average player think about their builds outside the box of:,, i feel like this build should work! And if it doesnt... I ... I will go to the forums and tell everyone what an horrible job they did balancing!"
Thats just what I know what works, there might be another system though.
best regards
RyanSTO
No Win Scenario 2 Men - DPS Prime
The casual way is to get a pair of rom-kdf alts and run 3 or 4 marauding "plunder artifact" missions the one explore ruins/artifact mission that nearly always up on the new Romulus command, two assist with r&d materials (ROM command & qonos), plus as many explore artifact and spire sci and explore dual mat missions as you can find (one sector north of qonos and Regulus are good, my favorite area is near ds9 and in the three explore clusters there).
I had been pulling between 3 and 12 purple mats a day of random types from two characters combined. Not counting advanced queue boxes which I've stopped opening and am now just selling from my stockpile. That's fast enough for me. Currently I spend more time in the tailor than playing so most of my earning is floored but I did get 3 plekton yesterday.
Edit: be sure to have a purple astrometric doff on active duty with the bonus r&d mat special. That helps more with blues than purps, but it adds up.
Edit the edit: I never looked how many were needed to craft, I just saw prices and sold my mats as I earned them while stockpiling a few for later. Wow 15 is nuts o.o; no wonder I'm earning a ton of ec... Imma start undercutting more, that rough on peeps using them.
Its worse than that. Go replay an early mission. I posted a screenshot from the federation mission shariens swords of a ddridex with 303,000 HP.