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    littlesarbonnlittlesarbonn Member Posts: 486 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    My suggestion is pretty simple and probably already suggested in the long thread, but as someone who likes the higher difficulty and loves the challenge, I'd like to see that part left alone, but just have the STO missions add more time to be completed. As it was, in numerous attempts, we were doing well, but we were just so far away from completing it because the additional hitpoints and the added number of ships is making it very difficult to complete the mission in the allotted time.
    Fleet Admiral Duane Gundrum, U.S.S. Merrimack
    Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
    Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
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    kiloacekiloace Member Posts: 488 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    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:

    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?
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    darkdog13darkdog13 Member Posts: 209 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    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.
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    rygelx16rygelx16 Member Posts: 161 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    valoreah wrote: »
    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".
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    senseikriegersenseikrieger Member Posts: 11 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Fist let me say the DR is awesome.

    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
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    raebotrekkyraebotrekky Member Posts: 6 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    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
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    darkdog13darkdog13 Member Posts: 209 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    valoreah wrote: »
    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.
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    mouertemouerte Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    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
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    darkdog13darkdog13 Member Posts: 209 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    valoreah wrote: »
    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.
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    johnstewardjohnsteward Member Posts: 1,073 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    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
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    leethorogoodleethorogood Member Posts: 302 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Cryptic please do one of the following:

    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:
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    rygelx16rygelx16 Member Posts: 161 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    valoreah wrote: »
    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.
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    jellico1jellico1 Member Posts: 2,719
    edited October 2014
    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
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    rygelx16rygelx16 Member Posts: 161 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    valoreah wrote: »
    No one is forcing you to run the queues.

    No one is forcing me to play this game either, what is your point?
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    darkdog13darkdog13 Member Posts: 209 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    valoreah wrote: »
    No one is forcing you to run the queues.

    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.
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    darkdog13darkdog13 Member Posts: 209 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    valoreah wrote: »
    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.

    No one would be forcing you to run the old estf.
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    spireryspirery Member Posts: 17 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    I dont mind doing elites but give us just rewards u nerf the ec now the dith dont kill the stfs too.
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    gavinrunebladegavinruneblade Member Posts: 3,894 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    rygelx16 wrote: »
    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.
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    futurepastnowfuturepastnow Member Posts: 3,660 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    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.

    Geko, you guys just don't seem to get it.
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    rygelx16rygelx16 Member Posts: 161 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    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.
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