This. You can't possibly know if Advanced is harder than Old Elite was a week ago because you've not done it at level 60, with all your Spec passives, five new Starship Traits, a Mastered T5U/T6 and MkXIV UR/Gold gear on four out of five players in the PUG. Which is exactly how you were doing it a week ago, relatively speaking.
This isn't to say it will all be fine, but that it simply can't be properly assessed right now. I'm also discounting the apparent scaling bug at lvl 60. Go into an Advanced, fight a sphere and a cube - note how much harder the sphere is than the cube suddenly? Cube is 59, sphere is 60. Likewise doing the final storyline mission at bumps the npcs up to ~1M hp each from ~400k (IIRC) at 59.
That ain't 'scaling'.
No! The same means the same. Advanced STFs were to be identical to what was previously Elite. Elite was supposed to be for the T6 min-maxers. Advanced was supposed to be playable as always, Period!
They destroyed my crafting characters and replaced it with nothing. They have now destroyed the only means I had for working on my character development and fleet development is at a dead stop because no one can obtain what the fleet needs unless they buy it with real world money.
I have purchased a number of ships over the years, both Fed and Klingon. I am on a lifetime account. I bought the Romulan pkg when it came out. I have purchased clothing and even a few keys. I have even purchased ships they later gave away for free. If Cryptic and PW are having trouble making money then maybe they should look at the lack of friendliness and poor customer service orientation. Maybe also they should consider their audience capability. Eighty-four percent of my entire city is in the low income bracket for our area - which starts at 15k for a family of one. Many families here make even less than that and have 3-4 members. I find it typical of Coasters, (East, West, and Gulf) to make pricing decisions based on the incomes they have locally and forget that the entire world doesn't have the same economy as their neighborhood.
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. ~ Cecil Beaton
I'm glad to see someone else point out how silly it is for those DPS channel kids going around talking about how they're such great pilots shooting things that don't move (Gates Transformers) or things that don't have a brain (NPC)
And yet, none of the "DPS channel kids" have any complaints about the content. :rolleyes:
This sort of "it doesn't count!" excuse is the domain of the "blinded by ego" mentioned before. If you can't even fly well against brainless immobile targets, don't pretend you're any good in a PvP dogfight against mobile human targets.
The former may not imply the latter, but the latter does imply the former.
Again I understand how to people at the top you may no longer be able to see the difference between old elite and new advanced because you're just that strong, but I can and for now I'm not sure where to look next for fun.
I assure you that everybody can see the difference. :P
The funny thing is that, contrary to the "OMG it's all about the DPS!" reactions from those who don't do good DPS, the new attrition actually requires the high DPS builds to switch away from DPS.
The high end DPS builds tend to be rather fragile. If you ever run with them in a strong +20k team, everything dies before they get hurt. Run with them in a slightly weaker +10k team, and there's a decent chance they'll blow up at least once (while still parsing the most damage). Run with them in a sub-10k team, and watch them blow up a lot.
They need enemies to die in X amount of time, in order to not die themselves. Now that enemies have a considerably larger health pool, if those glass cannons want to stay at the top they need to adjust their builds for more durability, otherwise their fragility will cost them DPS.
The implication that somebody with a 5K DPS ship has no place in these excruciating advanced missions misses the point about needing an accessible level of play that will grant the rewards necessary to buy the equipment that can take them to the next level.
Hang on there, I asked this before - did they take out the component rewards for the ground and space battlezones?
Off the top of my head, there's only 3 reputations that require additional components for their rep gear.
Nukara and Romulan only need marks for their rep gear, the former having a shield/engine set that's optimal if you're not running attack patterns, and the latter having one of the best energy-type and item set combinations in the game, as well as the best engine if you're using attack patterns.
Dyson and Counter-Command components drop from the ground and space battlezones - you can claim not to like doing ground or space (I personally am not a fan of ground) but you can't deny that they're extremely easy ways to get the components. I hate/suck at ground, but there's usually (at least pre-DR) so many people in the BZ that it's trivial to get credit for smacking a space dinosaur. The latter reputation has the best deflector for almost all purposes here.
The only reputation gear we have to go into Advanced queues for is Omega, and from that reputation the only "must have" gear are the Assimilated console and Kinetic Cutting Beam.
So it's hardly like we have to go into queues to gear up.
Oh wait, there's also the Omega ground gear, which is best (unless you have a TR-116B) for ground Borg content.
Not that I'm saying the difficulty jump isn't ridiculous, I hear it's even worse in ground and I haven't felt inclined to see.
I tried this just now in my only real tac ship. It's a cannon ship and each hit is close to 5000 so it's doing a reasonable dps - 15k? We would be needing more than twice that to make any progress in this mission.
When we say DPS we're not just referring to the times we're on-target and dealing damage, but throughout the entire duration of a match. So regardless of how much each hit does, we can't say how much DPS you're doing because it depends on how well you fly.
My thoughts are that BFAW is no longer a valid tactic anymore. Cannon builds are going to make a comeback and my fleet and i were talking about the fact that a crowd control sci and a tank are needed. I love it!!!!!!
I believe their point is that if you've never done it before... you shouldn't be on Advanced.
The only reputation gear we have to go into Advanced queues for is Omega, and from that reputation the only "must have" gear are the Assimilated console and Kinetic Cutting Beam.
So it's hardly like we have to go into queues to gear up.
Oh wait, there's also the Omega ground gear, which is best (unless you have a TR-116B) for ground Borg content.
Not that I'm saying the difficulty jump isn't ridiculous, I hear it's even worse in ground and I haven't felt inclined to see.
That's why we parse.
Yes, i agree with you on that part, but to people that build stuff like me, we need advanced for the very rare particles.. i have no problem on my own... but the PUGs has...
Anyway, the thing that must be changed back to how it was before are the Fleet Alerts, as it's meant for low level fleet members.. they cannot compete or obtain fleet credits without it
Yes, i agree with you on that part, but to people that build stuff like me, we need advanced for the very rare particles.. i have no problem on my own... but the PUGs has...
:eek: Oh jeez, I entirely forgot about crafting components.
I've only been doing 20 hour to level my crafting, entirely forgot the queues are R&D component sources. :P
Regardless, I think everybody agrees that the difficultly jump from Normal to Advanced is way too much, in light of the smaller gap between Advanced and Elite, and especially if they decreased rewards.
I believe their point is that if you've never done it before... you shouldn't be on Advanced.
And yet, none of the "DPS channel kids" have any complaints about the content. :rolleyes:
This sort of "it doesn't count!" excuse is the domain of the "blinded by ego" mentioned before. If you can't even fly well against brainless immobile targets, don't pretend you're any good in a PvP dogfight against mobile human targets.
The former may not imply the latter, but the latter does imply the former.
I assure you that everybody can see the difference. :P
The funny thing is that, contrary to the "OMG it's all about the DPS!" reactions from those who don't do good DPS, the new attrition actually requires the high DPS builds to switch away from DPS.
The high end DPS builds tend to be rather fragile. If you ever run with them in a strong +20k team, everything dies before they get hurt. Run with them in a slightly weaker +10k team, and there's a decent chance they'll blow up at least once (while still parsing the most damage). Run with them in a sub-10k team, and watch them blow up a lot.
They need enemies to die in X amount of time, in order to not die themselves. Now that enemies have a considerably larger health pool, if those glass cannons want to stay at the top they need to adjust their builds for more durability, otherwise their fragility will cost them DPS.
Hang on there, I asked this before - did they take out the component rewards for the ground and space battlezones?
Off the top of my head, there's only 3 reputations that require additional components for their rep gear.
Nukara and Romulan only need marks for their rep gear, the former having a shield/engine set that's optimal if you're not running attack patterns, and the latter having one of the best energy-type and item set combinations in the game, as well as the best engine if you're using attack patterns.
Dyson and Counter-Command components drop from the ground and space battlezones - you can claim not to like doing ground or space (I personally am not a fan of ground) but you can't deny that they're extremely easy ways to get the components. I hate/suck at ground, but there's usually (at least pre-DR) so many people in the BZ that it's trivial to get credit for smacking a space dinosaur. The latter reputation has the best deflector for almost all purposes here.
The only reputation gear we have to go into Advanced queues for is Omega, and from that reputation the only "must have" gear are the Assimilated console and Kinetic Cutting Beam.
So it's hardly like we have to go into queues to gear up.
Oh wait, there's also the Omega ground gear, which is best (unless you have a TR-116B) for ground Borg content.
Not that I'm saying the difficulty jump isn't ridiculous, I hear it's even worse in ground and I haven't felt inclined to see.
When we say DPS we're not just referring to the times we're on-target and dealing damage, but throughout the entire duration of a match. So regardless of how much each hit does, we can't say how much DPS you're doing because it depends on how well you fly.
That's why we parse.
Yes, you're right: advanced is old Elite....at the cap.
Are you 60 yet? MkXIV gear? Maxed mastery T5-U or T6 ship? Maxed specializations?
No? Then guess WHAT, you're not gonna be face-rolling Advanced. You're currently that under geared newb that clicked on advanced so he can get better rewards but have the team carry him cuz he does 100 damage to something with no shields.
Gear up, spec up, and in the meantime: do Normal. You're not a badass solo instancing, enemy-destroying juggernaut of killing force anymore.
Yes, you're right: advanced is old Elite....at the cap.
Are you 60 yet? MkXIV gear? Maxed mastery T5-U or T6 ship? Maxed specializations?
No? Then guess WHAT, you're not gonna be face-rolling Advanced. You're currently that under geared newb that clicked on advanced so he can get better rewards but have the team carry him cuz he does 100 damage to something with no shields.
Gear up, spec up, and in the meantime: do Normal. You're not a badass solo instancing, enemy-destroying juggernaut of killing force anymore.
The power delta from 50-60/Mk XII-Mk XIV and that of former elite to current advanced are nowhere near the same, so please find another excuse.
Also, you're defending the idea that in order to play this game with any hope of progression you MUST have a T5U or T6 ship with Mastery filled out, Mk XIV gear, etc. Hmm, I wonder where the prerequisites for a lot of those hurdles are found...
Finally, your condescending tone is another perfect example of why we need to fix this issue.
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
I like the fact that the advanced que's are a bit more challenging, HOWEVER, the only thing that pisses me off is Dilith cut, the gear drop cut, and the new objectives which require you to prevent ships from healing the generator.....
Everything else, I can handle
Fun but those f*cking objectives and time limit is killing me (or am I just always unlucky and end up with a bad team?)
Cryptic needs to improve its AI bots to at max pvp player level for Elite and not add these stupid higher hulls and spike damage
Yes, you're right: advanced is old Elite....at the cap.
Are you 60 yet? MkXIV gear? Maxed mastery T5-U or T6 ship? Maxed specializations?
No? Then guess WHAT, you're not gonna be face-rolling Advanced. You're currently that under geared newb that clicked on advanced so he can get better rewards but have the team carry him cuz he does 100 damage to something with no shields.
Gear up, spec up, and in the meantime: do Normal. You're not a badass solo instancing, enemy-destroying juggernaut of killing force anymore.
How do you know he isn't level 60 yet with MkXIV and maxed ship mastery? It only takes a few hours in a group to get all that. People in my fleet are already level 60 after hours. Took me 3mins after my first log in to gain 2 levels.
Not that I'm saying the difficulty jump isn't ridiculous, I hear it's even worse in ground and I haven't felt inclined to see.
It's not... at all.
The ground missions aren't that much harder at all. Yeah, there are a lot more Elite Drones, but being upscaled to lvl 60 makes them much easier to deal with.
Ground content got an appropriate uptick in difficulty, IMO... still very doable. Space content was made pretty much impossible for the casual-elite player.
Posted this Comment on Facebook to but of Course they Deleted it 5 Mins later, you dont like the Reality / Facts do you Cryptic / PW? You can Delete my and others Posts, but that will not make ALL the Hords of ENRAGED Players (many of them Rage Quited your Game now anyway) Silent, they WILL Continue Complaining, the Forums will also be filled more and more with Complains and hate towars the Ridicilous Changed that you made, Taking away the Purple Mk XI / XII Rewards from the STFs, Cutting their Dill Reward by Half?! (While at the same time bringing more Dill Sinks into the Game) rising up the Dificulty to a ABSURD Level? Many People asked for more Challenging STFs......so the best thing to do would be LEAVE Normale as it is, Rename the old Elite to the new Advanced and other than that also LEAVE IT as it was, and add the new Elite with much higher Difficulty, THERE YOU GO, Everyone is happy! But NO you totaly Smashed everything left right and Center and Changed a Running System for People ( the Majority) who Liked it, just to Satisfy a Small to Mid Sized Group of total Elitist wo want that Extreme Challenge! With Season 7 You Nerfed the Game Heavily, than People where OUTRAGING, so you changed things Partialy back, so why do you assume that they (me included) will like those Changes now?! Why are you always try to Anger your Playerbase?????I Thought this Game is for US your Players, than why those Moves????? WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DESTROY THE GAME THAT WE LOVE BIT BY BIT?!!!!!! I started the Game a little before Season 7, and Since than, Spend a Tremendous Amount of Time Playing it (around 16 Hours per day, 32 LEVEL50 Chars) and some good Money (Just Spend 50 a few weeks agoo for the Bortasque 3 Pack and iam a Lifer) Star Trek Online is my Favourite Game and the Favourite Game of many of my Contacts ( Including my Fiancee that i meet in this Game from Canada i Live in Germany!) DAMN i build up a Second Live in Star Trek Online, now i have to Watch how you Guys DESTROY my Second Home / Life / Experience, WHATS WRONG WITH YOU???? Yea with Delta Rising (also Called Dilithium Rising by many People) you gave us some nice new Story Missions, and other Nice Goodys = GOOD, but on the other Hand you NERF the Game and take away things from us = BAD, i ask you again WHY?! Dou you hate your Player Base that Much that you have to do this whenever you Bring some new Content (like Expensions) to the Game??? Dont you Realize that you Drive more and more Players away from the Game? and not just Casual Gamers, no ELITE Players who like me Spend Huge Time and also Money over the Years Rage Quited the Game in Sheer Numbers because of your NEGATIVE Changes over and over again, is that your Goal? Trying to get rid of as much Players as Possible? DIE Hard Fanboys will stay much longer (iam a HUGE Star Trek fan.....would explain why iam still here even with all your Torture Changes) but even they will sooner or Later, turn their Backs on you and look for another Place to Spend their Money and Time, will you than Realize the ERROR of your Actions? Yea? FYI That will be TOO Late! WAKE UP CRYPTIC AND PW, the Path you Choose is the WRONG ONE, you are out of TRACK better make an U TURN before its to late, at least if you have the slightest Love for the Game and care at least a little Bit for the Playerbase!
undine viscous cycle elite (the old one) was perfect; i mean difficult but not impossible. this stf should have been an example for the rewamp of the difficulty for all the other stfs.
Yes, you're right: advanced is old Elite....at the cap.
Are you 60 yet? MkXIV gear? Maxed mastery T5-U or T6 ship? Maxed specializations?
No? Then guess WHAT, you're not gonna be face-rolling Advanced. You're currently that under geared newb that clicked on advanced so he can get better rewards but have the team carry him cuz he does 100 damage to something with no shields.
Gear up, spec up, and in the meantime: do Normal. You're not a badass solo instancing, enemy-destroying juggernaut of killing force anymore.
Being level 60 will not make a big DPS difference. Neither will all epic mk xiv gear. The advanced queues aren't failing because people aren't able to "Faceroll" them. They are failing because of enormous hp scaling differences and the fact that they are on the same timers as before. If you don't have a full team of monster DPS, you lose.
This. You can't possibly know if Advanced is harder than Old Elite was a week ago because you've not done it at level 60, with all your Spec passives, five new Starship Traits, a Mastered T5U/T6 and MkXIV UR/Gold gear on four out of five players in the PUG. Which is exactly how you were doing it a week ago, relatively speaking.
This isn't to say it will all be fine, but that it simply can't be properly assessed right now. I'm also discounting the apparent scaling bug at lvl 60. Go into an Advanced, fight a sphere and a cube - note how much harder the sphere is than the cube suddenly? Cube is 59, sphere is 60. Likewise doing the final storyline mission at bumps the npcs up to ~1M hp each from ~400k (IIRC) at 59.
That ain't 'scaling'.
But the Advanced wasn't supposed to scale. It was to be the exact same as the old Elites.... the EXACT SAME... just with the optionals made not optional.... which first isn't the EXACT SAME.
So basically they took the old Elites... gave them more HPs, put in more objectives, and scaled the level of the mobs and placed it on the same time limit.. and yet they're supposed to be the exact same. So as usual Cryptic lies to us. "Advanced will be the old Elite"... except it's not. It's a new harder version which is what the new Elite was supposed to be. The new Elite was supposed to be for the elitist DPS monkeys so they could TRIBBLE their e-peens. The Advanced was there to get the gear necessary and learn how to do them in order to get to the Elites.
The other issue is, you gated a lot of the stuff needed to get your precious Gold gear behind a difficulty cap that requires you to do the more difficulty level to obtain.
Being level 60 will not make a big DPS difference. Neither will all epic mk xiv gear. The advanced queues aren't failing because people aren't able to "Faceroll" them. They are failing because of enormous hp scaling differences and the fact that they are on the same timers as before. If you don't have a full team of monster DPS, you lose.
Actually, they're failing because they don't have the right team composition. You need at least one, and preferably two, solid crowd control players to keep the mobs at bay. You can't just ignore the NPCs and power through like you could before. Even a group of super high DPS channel jockeys will fail ISA if they try to race the nanite spheres and pop the transformer directly.
I've now saved at least a half dozen ISA missions by providing the CC support none of the "kirks" thought to bring - specifically, towing the spheres away and sidelining them through a combination of TBR (reversed) and EWP. It's unglamorous work, and I rarely get thanked for it, but it is literally the lynchpin of the mission. Without someone like me, the mission would fail every time.
Actually, they're failing because they don't have the right team composition. You need at least one, and preferably two, solid crowd control players to keep the mobs at bay. You can't just ignore the NPCs and power through like you could before. Even a group of super high DPS channel jockeys will fail ISA if they try to race the nanite spheres and pop the transformer directly.RCK
Right. Exactly. Which means now that everyone who wants to do this needs to be in a big fleet or part of an elistist circle jerk fraternity channel. Not everyone wants to be in a big fleet and not everyone wants to be part of that channel.
So no more pugs for Advanced is what you're saying. Fine. But then how is the casual 2 hour player in a small fleet supposed to get their BNPs and R&D mats?
But the Advanced wasn't supposed to scale. It was to be the exact same as the old Elites.... the EXACT SAME... just with the optionals made not optional.... which first isn't the EXACT SAME.
So basically they took the old Elites... gave them more HPs, put in more objectives, and scaled the level of the mobs and placed it on the same time limit.. and yet they're supposed to be the exact same. So as usual Cryptic lies to us. "Advanced will be the old Elite"... except it's not. It's a new harder version which is what the new Elite was supposed to be. The new Elite was supposed to be for the elitist DPS monkeys so they could TRIBBLE their e-peens. The Advanced was there to get the gear necessary and learn how to do them in order to get to the Elites.
The other issue is, you gated a lot of the stuff needed to get your precious Gold gear behind a difficulty cap that requires you to do the more difficulty level to obtain.
No it was supposed to be similar difficulty, and given the people beating elite difficulty too easily, it is. Similar difficulty does not mean being ten levels to low and scaled up = win in five minutes.
Do a few searches for the threads requesting banning tier three ships from elite or forcing a test before new 50s could get in. Trying current advanced as a 52 is "similar" to being that guy in the tier three ship. Its not " similar" to being the guy in a fleet ship with maxed out gear two weeks ago.
That said, I do feel the HP scaling is too high, and I think stoleviathan had an awesome post about optionals vs challenges, and I have added my voice to the request for a change.
But it was never supposed to be exactly the same. Edit: hyperbole just gives gecko more reasons to go back to ignoring the forum now that we finally have him here and not just on twitter.
Right. Exactly. Which means now that everyone who wants to do this needs to be in a big fleet or part of an elistist circle jerk fraternity channel. Not everyone wants to be in a big fleet and not everyone wants to be part of that channel.
So no more pugs for Advanced is what you're saying. Fine. But then how is the casual 2 hour player in a small fleet supposed to get their BNPs and R&D mats?
#1 there's five other reps with their sets, omega isn't the best for everyone, but it is the hardest to earn.
#2 there's BNP's in the daily/hourly boxes, but I admit the drop rate sucks. It is higher than pre reputation mark 12 drops, which many people preferred to the current rep system. I do not know if defera ground hard gives BNP's or not, I haven't been able to complete one that place confuses me.
For r&d, first don't bother, earn ec and buy the kits. Second, marauding, explore, science doff missions, the academy r&d help, missions, and a purple astromectrics scientist.
Also, be patient. People are/getting higher level every hour of every day, more and more stuff if being upgraded, more and more lockbox stuff is entering circulation, and soon you'll be able to reliably have all max level people in a pug every time. Plus, safe money is on a Nerf coming. Patience is the key.
I've consulted with him twice, changing my keybinds and timing, and my DPS literally jumped up an average of over 4k.
I don't think it's doing him a disservice at all to note the gap in our piloting ability is what makes the difference. Builds are knowledge, easily attained (unless your ego blinds you to your shortcomings). Resources are just time or money spent. Piloting ability though is player skill - not so easily acquired.
See, this is one reason why I have called for lessening the gap between skilled and unskilled players. The gap is too large in terms of performance. That killed PvP as much or more than any lack of updates on Cryptic's part.
I don't think skilled players need a HUGE nerf (a slight one at the upper extremes, sure) but unskilled players need a buff and I've been trying to sort out ways of providing feedback for how to do that.
One possibility I hadn't broached before ties into your post about piloting and that would be widely available [Arc] modifier gear. We have a few unique equip examples of it but [Arc] seems like a way to legitimately compensate for bad piloting, albeit a small way. It also seems fair to me since skilled players would avoid it because they can do better with another modifier.
The big thing I focused on before was a major buff to the [Dmg] mod.
Basically, here's how my argument goes:
If [Dmg] became weapon haste (ie. a rate of fire increase, regardless of whether the higher rate of fire is actually rendered) then this is a fairly democratic buff. It improves what MMOers have called "white damage" (auto attack damage) but doesn't scale with abilities in any way. If you rely more on abilities, you'd probably prefer mods that improve your abilities. If need be for balance, you could actually have [Dmg] increase ability cooldowns while also increaing weapon rate of fire to shoo skilled players away from taking it.
My take is this: I think a ship decked out in [Dmg]x4 mods should do AUTOATTACK DAMAGE of around 90% what the average skilled DPSer is capable of. Full [Dmg]x4 might then hinder the effectiveness of BOs and keybinds but would compensate with major gains to auto attack, making the worst player viable.
Then, a player "in the middle" might prefer something like a Balance of [Acc]/[Dmg]/[CritH].
And a skilled player would avoid [Dmg] in order to get that 10% more DPS.
But then you would effectively "narrow the gap". And the gap needs to be narrowed. You can't effectively have skill increase a player's damage 1000%. I mean, sure, maybe given equivalent gear that can happen. But then I think you need to offer the lesser guy "training wheels" in the form of skill compensating gear, enough so that they may never catch up fully but also enough so that they won't be a hindrance.
Heck, then you could even sell a "starter set" of [Dmg]x3 gear. Let 'em upgrade if they want the extra mod. But even then, someone in a full [Dmg]x3 set could start out at 75% what a competent keybind DPSer can do, which is a fairer starting point.
If you really wanted to balance skill out through stats while also balancing stat desirability, here's my "modest" proposal:
Decrease the refresh rate (ie. increase the cooldown) on ALL bridge officer abilities by 20%.
CritH and Rapid now also increases the refresh rate/reduces the cooldown on bridge officer abilities by 0.5% per mod, partially compensating for the nerf.
CritD and Snare now also increase the refresh rate/reduces the cooldown on bridge officer abilities by 1% per mod, more than fully compensating for the nerf.
Acc and Dmg/Acc have NO INFLUENCE on the refresh rate/cooldown on bridge officer abilities. Meaning a straight Acc build would take a nerf to BO functionality. Bleedover CritD from Acc doesn't provide the BO cooldown reduction.
Dmg would increase weapon rate of fire/decrease weapon recharge time by around 6% per mod, with some diminishing returns built in. (Could be more or less. There's a target in place here) It also NERFS bridge officer ability cooldown by 0.5%.
Net result being that an unskilled player in all Dmgx4 can do around 90% of the damage that a skilled player with keybinds can do but the skilled player gets that 10% edge by gearing and playing differently. And since most people won't be perfectly geared for high skill or no skill itemization, they will fall in the middle.
Sounds like they overdid it then (can't be sure till I can log on and actually play later). Difficulties should be
Normal: Wheeeeeeeee what does this button do?
Advanced: Puggable so long as everyone knows what they're doing
Elite: Coordinated team of lockbox ships and top end gear tuned specifically to that mission so you can go brag afterwards.
If Advanced is messing up people with ships over 8k or so, then Cryptic overdid it. Leave Elite to the epeen DPSers, but there needs to be a middle ground.
if you are average or poor at the game, play normal mode. this was balanced for you.
if you have gear and you have advanced your skill to a level beyond the average, play advanced. this was balanced for you
if you are an elitist jerkwad who wants to wave his or her epeen at everyone, play elite. There is no hope for you, you are a terrible human being (did I get the right amount of vitriol there?)
play the one that matches your skill level. you have the choice. Can't beat advanced? play normal. It's so simple it hurts my brain trying to figure out what the problem is here.
if you are average or poor at the game, play normal mode. this was balanced for you.
if you have gear and you have advanced your skill to a level beyond the average, play advanced. this was balanced for you
if you are an elitist jerkwad who wants to wave his or her epeen at everyone, play elite. There is no hope for you, you are a terrible human being (did I get the right amount of vitriol there?)
play the one that matches your skill level. you have the choice. Can't beat advanced? play normal. It's so simple it hurts my brain trying to figure out what the problem is here.
You seriously can't figure out the problem? Here's a hint: go back to Monday.
In my opinion this is a good thing. 60-75% of people that were doing elite stfs before had no purpose there. They either lacked the gear or the skill ir both. They should of been doing normal.
Practically speaking, they (we) couldn't. The queues were empty. My experience, repeatedly, was joining the queue, waiting 15-20 minutes as the number of queued players bounced between 1 and 3, and eventually giving up.
You're right that normals SHOULD be the go-to difficulty for most players, and should provide them with reasonable challenge. But they also need to provide a reasonable path to gearing up to the point where one CAN run advanced. Without rewarding, e.g., neuroprocessors, they don't do that.
Trek is a universe people have strong feelings about. There are going to be a lot of players who will place thematic limits on the way they outfit ships that interfere with min/maxing (e.g., I know from reading the forums that I'm not the only one who insists on including at least a couple of beam weapons on a Fed ship even if it would perform better with only cannons and turrets). If advanced mode is tuned around the assumption that people are min/maxing, a big chunk of the player base is effectively excluded. And if those players are just expected to play normal, and normal doesn't offer character advancement, they won't keep playing.
My perspective is as a tanky cruiser flyer who have only tried Advanced:
The decision to make things more "difficult" by radically increasing enemy durability is a mistake. Coupled with time-sensitive objectives, this only places more emphasis on the DPS side. I have not noticed enemies hitting particularly harder (i.e. actually being more dangerous), which I suspect has only driven the need for time-sensitive objectives; since foes are still incapable of killing players, it's the only way to inject some "urgency" into a boring situation summed up as "is it dead yet?"
What needed to be done was to complement a modest increase in enemy durability with a noticeable increase to enemy lethality. The ideal measurement should have been something like: take a big ticket enemy ("battleship" or whatever), make enemy durability such that a player with modest DPS can kill it in a reasonable time if the player is unmolested, and then make the enemy's own damage output sufficient (or even more than sufficient) to kill the player in the same time.
Then it's no longer "is it dead yet?" but "how can I survive long enough to kill it?"
Then a bunch of the timed objectives in Advanced could be done away with, but I guess you could keep them for Elite.
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I must have been the only one who enjoyed that brief (and "bugged") period when the Voth heavy turrets in the old Breach Elite hit really hard. The turrets weren't any more durable, but they were more dangerous. My modest-DPS cruiser could still kill them, but now they could also kill me. And it really gave added value to the Voth battleship, since if you sought to disengage from the turrets to repair, the ship might follow you and still kill you in your weakened state. I actually had to do something to survive; pure DPS was not enough. It was great.
I did manage to beat Infected Space Advanced once. It took having two players with 12K+ DPS and a 30K guy and we still barely beat the clock, but we also didn't have a sci with crowd control. The lowest guys we had were doing 6K and 8K.
There seem to be two problems here:
a) Players had so heavily out-geared the old Elite queues that we stopped needing strategy to win - we didn't have to use the 10% rule because our ships were such instakill buttons, we could just vape the entire screen anyway. The fact that we might have to use strategy now is a good thing.
b) The solution to problem a seems to have been more mobs, insane HP and mandatory timers. Toughening up the mobs is not, in my mind, a bad thing, but it seems to have been taken to excess here. My experience with ISA so far is that most PUGs can blow a node, but we end up getting tied up for the next several minutes trying to grind twice as many nanite spheres to death. This creates situations where we execute the proper strategy but are not rewarded because there are just too many 5x HP mobs on the screen running all over the place. In fact, cleaning up the spheres at the end of each transformer is more difficult now than killing the gateway or the tactical cube. The fact that even successfully executing the strategy is not rewarded because we get held up by floods of invincible mobs no longer pertinent to the objective is a bad thing.
It seems to me like toughening up the mobs on Advanced went a little overboard. We all understand they should be more of a challenge. But the level they are at is, perhaps, too much for most players. And with neural processors only available in Advanced queues and above, this puts newer players in the position of having to try the Advanced queues to get the gear they need to beat the Advanced queues they can't beat without it.
Also, an observation:
c) Spheres now seem much harder to kill than Cubes. Every time we enter a queue, the Cube goes down relatively quickly, then the mission grinds to a halt while we laboriously try to vape a cloud of Spheres that each seem to go down much more slowly than the Cube.
The artist formerly known as PlanetofHats.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
Practically speaking, they (we) couldn't. The queues were empty. My experience, repeatedly, was joining the queue, waiting 15-20 minutes as the number of queued players bounced between 1 and 3, and eventually giving up.
You're right that normals SHOULD be the go-to difficulty for most players, and should provide them with reasonable challenge. But they also need to provide a reasonable path to gearing up to the point where one CAN run advanced. Without rewarding, e.g., neuroprocessors, they don't do that.
Trek is a universe people have strong feelings about. There are going to be a lot of players who will place thematic limits on the way they outfit ships that interfere with min/maxing (e.g., I know from reading the forums that I'm not the only one who insists on including at least a couple of beam weapons on a Fed ship even if it would perform better with only cannons and turrets). If advanced mode is tuned around the assumption that people are min/maxing, a big chunk of the player base is effectively excluded. And if those players are just expected to play normal, and normal doesn't offer character advancement, they won't keep playing.
Well, let's get into the currency angle:
8k a day dilithium is kind of an obvious and natural goal for a player.
That can be done very quickly on Elite. That may take 4-6 hours on Normal.
This is fairly counterintuitive if you want casual players to play Normal and hardcore players to play Elite because you're asking for almost no time investment from hardcore players (who want to invest time and energy) and a rather large time investment from casuals.
I personally don't think different difficulties should award different levels of dilithium unless you actually intend for all players to play on the same difficulty level together and "normal" is just a tutorial for a single mode of play.
I'm not saying elite players shouldn't get more or different rewards. I just think dilithium rate of earning ought to be fairly democratic across skill levels. Reward elite players with better R&D, Lobi, unique accolades.
It just doesn't make sense to encourage your hardcore players to play very little and walk away done in 30-45 minutes and for your casual players to be expected to play for 6 hours.
Comments
No! The same means the same. Advanced STFs were to be identical to what was previously Elite. Elite was supposed to be for the T6 min-maxers. Advanced was supposed to be playable as always, Period!
They destroyed my crafting characters and replaced it with nothing. They have now destroyed the only means I had for working on my character development and fleet development is at a dead stop because no one can obtain what the fleet needs unless they buy it with real world money.
I have purchased a number of ships over the years, both Fed and Klingon. I am on a lifetime account. I bought the Romulan pkg when it came out. I have purchased clothing and even a few keys. I have even purchased ships they later gave away for free. If Cryptic and PW are having trouble making money then maybe they should look at the lack of friendliness and poor customer service orientation. Maybe also they should consider their audience capability. Eighty-four percent of my entire city is in the low income bracket for our area - which starts at 15k for a family of one. Many families here make even less than that and have 3-4 members. I find it typical of Coasters, (East, West, and Gulf) to make pricing decisions based on the incomes they have locally and forget that the entire world doesn't have the same economy as their neighborhood.
I believe their point is that if you've never done it before... you shouldn't be on Advanced.
And yet, none of the "DPS channel kids" have any complaints about the content. :rolleyes:
This sort of "it doesn't count!" excuse is the domain of the "blinded by ego" mentioned before. If you can't even fly well against brainless immobile targets, don't pretend you're any good in a PvP dogfight against mobile human targets.
The former may not imply the latter, but the latter does imply the former.
I assure you that everybody can see the difference. :P
The funny thing is that, contrary to the "OMG it's all about the DPS!" reactions from those who don't do good DPS, the new attrition actually requires the high DPS builds to switch away from DPS.
The high end DPS builds tend to be rather fragile. If you ever run with them in a strong +20k team, everything dies before they get hurt. Run with them in a slightly weaker +10k team, and there's a decent chance they'll blow up at least once (while still parsing the most damage). Run with them in a sub-10k team, and watch them blow up a lot.
They need enemies to die in X amount of time, in order to not die themselves. Now that enemies have a considerably larger health pool, if those glass cannons want to stay at the top they need to adjust their builds for more durability, otherwise their fragility will cost them DPS.
Hang on there, I asked this before - did they take out the component rewards for the ground and space battlezones?
Off the top of my head, there's only 3 reputations that require additional components for their rep gear.
Nukara and Romulan only need marks for their rep gear, the former having a shield/engine set that's optimal if you're not running attack patterns, and the latter having one of the best energy-type and item set combinations in the game, as well as the best engine if you're using attack patterns.
Dyson and Counter-Command components drop from the ground and space battlezones - you can claim not to like doing ground or space (I personally am not a fan of ground) but you can't deny that they're extremely easy ways to get the components. I hate/suck at ground, but there's usually (at least pre-DR) so many people in the BZ that it's trivial to get credit for smacking a space dinosaur. The latter reputation has the best deflector for almost all purposes here.
The only reputation gear we have to go into Advanced queues for is Omega, and from that reputation the only "must have" gear are the Assimilated console and Kinetic Cutting Beam.
So it's hardly like we have to go into queues to gear up.
Oh wait, there's also the Omega ground gear, which is best (unless you have a TR-116B) for ground Borg content.
Not that I'm saying the difficulty jump isn't ridiculous, I hear it's even worse in ground and I haven't felt inclined to see.
When we say DPS we're not just referring to the times we're on-target and dealing damage, but throughout the entire duration of a match. So regardless of how much each hit does, we can't say how much DPS you're doing because it depends on how well you fly.
That's why we parse.
Yes, i agree with you on that part, but to people that build stuff like me, we need advanced for the very rare particles.. i have no problem on my own... but the PUGs has...
Anyway, the thing that must be changed back to how it was before are the Fleet Alerts, as it's meant for low level fleet members.. they cannot compete or obtain fleet credits without it
:eek: Oh jeez, I entirely forgot about crafting components.
I've only been doing 20 hour to level my crafting, entirely forgot the queues are R&D component sources. :P
Regardless, I think everybody agrees that the difficultly jump from Normal to Advanced is way too much, in light of the smaller gap between Advanced and Elite, and especially if they decreased rewards.
Yes, you're right: advanced is old Elite....at the cap.
Are you 60 yet? MkXIV gear? Maxed mastery T5-U or T6 ship? Maxed specializations?
No? Then guess WHAT, you're not gonna be face-rolling Advanced. You're currently that under geared newb that clicked on advanced so he can get better rewards but have the team carry him cuz he does 100 damage to something with no shields.
Gear up, spec up, and in the meantime: do Normal. You're not a badass solo instancing, enemy-destroying juggernaut of killing force anymore.
The power delta from 50-60/Mk XII-Mk XIV and that of former elite to current advanced are nowhere near the same, so please find another excuse.
Also, you're defending the idea that in order to play this game with any hope of progression you MUST have a T5U or T6 ship with Mastery filled out, Mk XIV gear, etc. Hmm, I wonder where the prerequisites for a lot of those hurdles are found...
Finally, your condescending tone is another perfect example of why we need to fix this issue.
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
Everything else, I can handle
Fun but those f*cking objectives and time limit is killing me (or am I just always unlucky and end up with a bad team?)
Cryptic needs to improve its AI bots to at max pvp player level for Elite and not add these stupid higher hulls and spike damage
How do you know he isn't level 60 yet with MkXIV and maxed ship mastery? It only takes a few hours in a group to get all that. People in my fleet are already level 60 after hours. Took me 3mins after my first log in to gain 2 levels.
It's not... at all.
The ground missions aren't that much harder at all. Yeah, there are a lot more Elite Drones, but being upscaled to lvl 60 makes them much easier to deal with.
Ground content got an appropriate uptick in difficulty, IMO... still very doable. Space content was made pretty much impossible for the casual-elite player.
Being level 60 will not make a big DPS difference. Neither will all epic mk xiv gear. The advanced queues aren't failing because people aren't able to "Faceroll" them. They are failing because of enormous hp scaling differences and the fact that they are on the same timers as before. If you don't have a full team of monster DPS, you lose.
But the Advanced wasn't supposed to scale. It was to be the exact same as the old Elites.... the EXACT SAME... just with the optionals made not optional.... which first isn't the EXACT SAME.
So basically they took the old Elites... gave them more HPs, put in more objectives, and scaled the level of the mobs and placed it on the same time limit.. and yet they're supposed to be the exact same. So as usual Cryptic lies to us. "Advanced will be the old Elite"... except it's not. It's a new harder version which is what the new Elite was supposed to be. The new Elite was supposed to be for the elitist DPS monkeys so they could TRIBBLE their e-peens. The Advanced was there to get the gear necessary and learn how to do them in order to get to the Elites.
The other issue is, you gated a lot of the stuff needed to get your precious Gold gear behind a difficulty cap that requires you to do the more difficulty level to obtain.
Actually, they're failing because they don't have the right team composition. You need at least one, and preferably two, solid crowd control players to keep the mobs at bay. You can't just ignore the NPCs and power through like you could before. Even a group of super high DPS channel jockeys will fail ISA if they try to race the nanite spheres and pop the transformer directly.
I've now saved at least a half dozen ISA missions by providing the CC support none of the "kirks" thought to bring - specifically, towing the spheres away and sidelining them through a combination of TBR (reversed) and EWP. It's unglamorous work, and I rarely get thanked for it, but it is literally the lynchpin of the mission. Without someone like me, the mission would fail every time.
RCK
Right. Exactly. Which means now that everyone who wants to do this needs to be in a big fleet or part of an elistist circle jerk fraternity channel. Not everyone wants to be in a big fleet and not everyone wants to be part of that channel.
So no more pugs for Advanced is what you're saying. Fine. But then how is the casual 2 hour player in a small fleet supposed to get their BNPs and R&D mats?
No it was supposed to be similar difficulty, and given the people beating elite difficulty too easily, it is. Similar difficulty does not mean being ten levels to low and scaled up = win in five minutes.
Do a few searches for the threads requesting banning tier three ships from elite or forcing a test before new 50s could get in. Trying current advanced as a 52 is "similar" to being that guy in the tier three ship. Its not " similar" to being the guy in a fleet ship with maxed out gear two weeks ago.
That said, I do feel the HP scaling is too high, and I think stoleviathan had an awesome post about optionals vs challenges, and I have added my voice to the request for a change.
But it was never supposed to be exactly the same. Edit: hyperbole just gives gecko more reasons to go back to ignoring the forum now that we finally have him here and not just on twitter.
#1 there's five other reps with their sets, omega isn't the best for everyone, but it is the hardest to earn.
#2 there's BNP's in the daily/hourly boxes, but I admit the drop rate sucks. It is higher than pre reputation mark 12 drops, which many people preferred to the current rep system. I do not know if defera ground hard gives BNP's or not, I haven't been able to complete one that place confuses me.
For r&d, first don't bother, earn ec and buy the kits. Second, marauding, explore, science doff missions, the academy r&d help, missions, and a purple astromectrics scientist.
Also, be patient. People are/getting higher level every hour of every day, more and more stuff if being upgraded, more and more lockbox stuff is entering circulation, and soon you'll be able to reliably have all max level people in a pug every time. Plus, safe money is on a Nerf coming. Patience is the key.
See, this is one reason why I have called for lessening the gap between skilled and unskilled players. The gap is too large in terms of performance. That killed PvP as much or more than any lack of updates on Cryptic's part.
I don't think skilled players need a HUGE nerf (a slight one at the upper extremes, sure) but unskilled players need a buff and I've been trying to sort out ways of providing feedback for how to do that.
One possibility I hadn't broached before ties into your post about piloting and that would be widely available [Arc] modifier gear. We have a few unique equip examples of it but [Arc] seems like a way to legitimately compensate for bad piloting, albeit a small way. It also seems fair to me since skilled players would avoid it because they can do better with another modifier.
The big thing I focused on before was a major buff to the [Dmg] mod.
Basically, here's how my argument goes:
If [Dmg] became weapon haste (ie. a rate of fire increase, regardless of whether the higher rate of fire is actually rendered) then this is a fairly democratic buff. It improves what MMOers have called "white damage" (auto attack damage) but doesn't scale with abilities in any way. If you rely more on abilities, you'd probably prefer mods that improve your abilities. If need be for balance, you could actually have [Dmg] increase ability cooldowns while also increaing weapon rate of fire to shoo skilled players away from taking it.
My take is this: I think a ship decked out in [Dmg]x4 mods should do AUTOATTACK DAMAGE of around 90% what the average skilled DPSer is capable of. Full [Dmg]x4 might then hinder the effectiveness of BOs and keybinds but would compensate with major gains to auto attack, making the worst player viable.
Then, a player "in the middle" might prefer something like a Balance of [Acc]/[Dmg]/[CritH].
And a skilled player would avoid [Dmg] in order to get that 10% more DPS.
But then you would effectively "narrow the gap". And the gap needs to be narrowed. You can't effectively have skill increase a player's damage 1000%. I mean, sure, maybe given equivalent gear that can happen. But then I think you need to offer the lesser guy "training wheels" in the form of skill compensating gear, enough so that they may never catch up fully but also enough so that they won't be a hindrance.
Heck, then you could even sell a "starter set" of [Dmg]x3 gear. Let 'em upgrade if they want the extra mod. But even then, someone in a full [Dmg]x3 set could start out at 75% what a competent keybind DPSer can do, which is a fairer starting point.
Decrease the refresh rate (ie. increase the cooldown) on ALL bridge officer abilities by 20%.
CritH and Rapid now also increases the refresh rate/reduces the cooldown on bridge officer abilities by 0.5% per mod, partially compensating for the nerf.
CritD and Snare now also increase the refresh rate/reduces the cooldown on bridge officer abilities by 1% per mod, more than fully compensating for the nerf.
Acc and Dmg/Acc have NO INFLUENCE on the refresh rate/cooldown on bridge officer abilities. Meaning a straight Acc build would take a nerf to BO functionality. Bleedover CritD from Acc doesn't provide the BO cooldown reduction.
Dmg would increase weapon rate of fire/decrease weapon recharge time by around 6% per mod, with some diminishing returns built in. (Could be more or less. There's a target in place here) It also NERFS bridge officer ability cooldown by 0.5%.
Net result being that an unskilled player in all Dmgx4 can do around 90% of the damage that a skilled player with keybinds can do but the skilled player gets that 10% edge by gearing and playing differently. And since most people won't be perfectly geared for high skill or no skill itemization, they will fall in the middle.
I totally agree with this.
if you are average or poor at the game, play normal mode. this was balanced for you.
if you have gear and you have advanced your skill to a level beyond the average, play advanced. this was balanced for you
if you are an elitist jerkwad who wants to wave his or her epeen at everyone, play elite. There is no hope for you, you are a terrible human being (did I get the right amount of vitriol there?)
play the one that matches your skill level. you have the choice. Can't beat advanced? play normal. It's so simple it hurts my brain trying to figure out what the problem is here.
You seriously can't figure out the problem? Here's a hint: go back to Monday.
Practically speaking, they (we) couldn't. The queues were empty. My experience, repeatedly, was joining the queue, waiting 15-20 minutes as the number of queued players bounced between 1 and 3, and eventually giving up.
You're right that normals SHOULD be the go-to difficulty for most players, and should provide them with reasonable challenge. But they also need to provide a reasonable path to gearing up to the point where one CAN run advanced. Without rewarding, e.g., neuroprocessors, they don't do that.
Trek is a universe people have strong feelings about. There are going to be a lot of players who will place thematic limits on the way they outfit ships that interfere with min/maxing (e.g., I know from reading the forums that I'm not the only one who insists on including at least a couple of beam weapons on a Fed ship even if it would perform better with only cannons and turrets). If advanced mode is tuned around the assumption that people are min/maxing, a big chunk of the player base is effectively excluded. And if those players are just expected to play normal, and normal doesn't offer character advancement, they won't keep playing.
The decision to make things more "difficult" by radically increasing enemy durability is a mistake. Coupled with time-sensitive objectives, this only places more emphasis on the DPS side. I have not noticed enemies hitting particularly harder (i.e. actually being more dangerous), which I suspect has only driven the need for time-sensitive objectives; since foes are still incapable of killing players, it's the only way to inject some "urgency" into a boring situation summed up as "is it dead yet?"
What needed to be done was to complement a modest increase in enemy durability with a noticeable increase to enemy lethality. The ideal measurement should have been something like: take a big ticket enemy ("battleship" or whatever), make enemy durability such that a player with modest DPS can kill it in a reasonable time if the player is unmolested, and then make the enemy's own damage output sufficient (or even more than sufficient) to kill the player in the same time.
Then it's no longer "is it dead yet?" but "how can I survive long enough to kill it?"
Then a bunch of the timed objectives in Advanced could be done away with, but I guess you could keep them for Elite.
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I must have been the only one who enjoyed that brief (and "bugged") period when the Voth heavy turrets in the old Breach Elite hit really hard. The turrets weren't any more durable, but they were more dangerous. My modest-DPS cruiser could still kill them, but now they could also kill me. And it really gave added value to the Voth battleship, since if you sought to disengage from the turrets to repair, the ship might follow you and still kill you in your weakened state. I actually had to do something to survive; pure DPS was not enough. It was great.
That's the sort of difficulty Advanced needs.
There seem to be two problems here:
a) Players had so heavily out-geared the old Elite queues that we stopped needing strategy to win - we didn't have to use the 10% rule because our ships were such instakill buttons, we could just vape the entire screen anyway. The fact that we might have to use strategy now is a good thing.
b) The solution to problem a seems to have been more mobs, insane HP and mandatory timers. Toughening up the mobs is not, in my mind, a bad thing, but it seems to have been taken to excess here. My experience with ISA so far is that most PUGs can blow a node, but we end up getting tied up for the next several minutes trying to grind twice as many nanite spheres to death. This creates situations where we execute the proper strategy but are not rewarded because there are just too many 5x HP mobs on the screen running all over the place. In fact, cleaning up the spheres at the end of each transformer is more difficult now than killing the gateway or the tactical cube. The fact that even successfully executing the strategy is not rewarded because we get held up by floods of invincible mobs no longer pertinent to the objective is a bad thing.
It seems to me like toughening up the mobs on Advanced went a little overboard. We all understand they should be more of a challenge. But the level they are at is, perhaps, too much for most players. And with neural processors only available in Advanced queues and above, this puts newer players in the position of having to try the Advanced queues to get the gear they need to beat the Advanced queues they can't beat without it.
Also, an observation:
c) Spheres now seem much harder to kill than Cubes. Every time we enter a queue, the Cube goes down relatively quickly, then the mission grinds to a halt while we laboriously try to vape a cloud of Spheres that each seem to go down much more slowly than the Cube.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
Well, let's get into the currency angle:
8k a day dilithium is kind of an obvious and natural goal for a player.
That can be done very quickly on Elite. That may take 4-6 hours on Normal.
This is fairly counterintuitive if you want casual players to play Normal and hardcore players to play Elite because you're asking for almost no time investment from hardcore players (who want to invest time and energy) and a rather large time investment from casuals.
I personally don't think different difficulties should award different levels of dilithium unless you actually intend for all players to play on the same difficulty level together and "normal" is just a tutorial for a single mode of play.
I'm not saying elite players shouldn't get more or different rewards. I just think dilithium rate of earning ought to be fairly democratic across skill levels. Reward elite players with better R&D, Lobi, unique accolades.
It just doesn't make sense to encourage your hardcore players to play very little and walk away done in 30-45 minutes and for your casual players to be expected to play for 6 hours.