Soon the weekend warriors will arrive. They have read about the new expansion and are going to patch up to the current version. They will travel to the delta quadrant, complete a mission or two, and then be forced to find a way to level up to unlock the next story mission.
Not exactly the best time to be ironing out the balance of your public queue event difficulty. With them as the testers. It is unlikely most will bother taking to the forum to complain and with any luck they will avoid the queues or hopefully have already spent money on the game. Not the outcome I expect though.
Make advanced queues level 55+ before that crowd hits. Allow the story content on normal reward enough exp to advance you without resorting to admittedly unpolished queues.
Or not.
On another note I have hit up a few more advanced queues with my Fed Engineer in his Galor beam boat. Nothing special crazy tanky, mk xiii gear, 8 beams, 2x APB, faw, bo, eptw3, dem x2, the usual. He doesn't die but man his DPS is lacking for the new content. Previously he could solo a side of ISE for comparison.
My level 50 Rom Sci in her Recluse for giggles hit up CE A. While it took too long for my taste likely exasperated by me not bothering to get a 3rd tac console yet or upgrading any gear I still took 2nd place without doing any real healing or having gimmick heal passives (V console/2pc Borg) and only when I had the CE targeted did it's health go down. Then again four copies of APB3, one copy of APB2, and 130 AUX SS does effectively gut NPC resists. I can say with confidence she will be able to nearly solo the CE A by the end of the month.
The events are not unbalanced that badly. Boff abilities, consoles, ships, and so on are terribly balanced. No matter what I throw at it the poor Fed Eng Galor will never be half as effective as the Rom Sci Recluse.
Because he's not playing to be "part of the community".
He's playing to wave his e-peen and shout "I'm better than you cause I can buy power clear to top level right now!" and whatever else.
Which is about what the case is. Someone said 8000 dil to zen isn't enough. Correct. It's INTENDED to be not enough, the new difficulties seem to me to be a blatant attempt to extort zen money from the playerbase by making the new content unplayable without pouring money into zen and dil to get things upgraded fully fast.
Not all of us are the "super elite 50k dpsers". Yeah, the supposed 'minority' closes their wallets totally, and the e-peeners will be going somewhere else, there aren't enough of them to support all of STO if others are discouraged enough to stop paying money to Cryptic/PWE.
Lower the difficulties. Right now they are effectively extortion to force upgrades. And the vast MAJORITY of the players, who don't want to have to slog and supergrind, will leave.
I played a daily DR mission on elite today and it was pretty tough. I died in space once but the ground one was doable. It really kept me on my toes. I have pretty nice gear and I imagine at 60 these will be much easier. But right now I'm getting my butt kicked, so I dropped it down to advanced for the PVE missions.
For the PVE queues - I got *owned* in CCE with some others but it was because people were taking shards right to the face. The dynamic had changed and they didn't adapt. Then throw in more enemies, everything being harder, and you have a disaster. Maybe when more people, including myself, hit 60 I'll be more inclined to try the elite PVE queues.
I actually like how it's harder but I do wish the rewards were sweeter right from the beginning. More r&d loot and more loot in general please.
I tried to run some queues at 50, it was super tough. Failed Fleet Alert, missed the timer on CE Advanced but still completed.
Tried then again at 55, hard but doable. Fleet Alert fine, was close-ish on the timers, a minute or so to spare.
Colony Invasion seems much as before the expansion.
I'm guessing at 60 things will feel much more like they did before the patch, so I'll play normal queues while I gear up and then move on to trying the Advanced stuff.
Running queues that used to be simple, at 50 post patch, was a shock. But I think we'll level in to it.
I can get that the content is supposed to be harder with entry level 50 characters and gear.
What frustrates me is I have a level 60 char on tribble with a T5U, all mk XIV Elite gear, and a chunk of the specialization tree filled out, and its still takes forever to kill anything.
How can I justify spending a million dilithium, (or waiting the next 2 months upgrading my crafting and then spending almost as much on the materials since I can't take advanced mode with my current gear), on upgrading my ship when the end result is only marginally better than what I'm using now?
scale it back a bit - or scale the gear up a bit. Maybe then we'd have more incentive to buy/grind for it.
The pug groups stink, have yet to see one that could take infected advanced, much less elite.
The dificulty to reward ratio is way out of whack.
They feel more like the original STFs that Cryptic pulled the plug on because such a low percentage of the game population found them fun. I doubt the population has changed that much guys, but that is just an opinion.
I really hope you guys have a T6 or T5u (with a mastery) ship in your plans for the holiday event, or the f2p population will start to fall off, as the p2p players won't want them in groups given their total lack of starship mastery boons.
I really dislike the content progression. I never thought I would find myself prefering to play alts that hadn't already completed all the episode content, but there I am now.
I love the look and feel of the new content, get some of the content balance issues sorted and this will be a great expansion.
Not all of us are rich to buy the T-6 ships etc. This game was suppose to be fun and enjoyable not pay to win junk. Though i enjoy STO i do not enjoy that you need to be rich to buy everything to make the game more fun. Things should of been thought out more to make it enjoyable for everyone even reducing prices of t-6 ships though some have said t-6 ships are not worth it, I will never know until i get 3000 zen to try one out, just not sure how much longer i can play this game and try to enjoy it.
The pug groups stink, have yet to see one that could take infected advanced, much less elite.
I have also stopped queuing up, as an insignificant form of protest, and heck, I have access to far better teammates than pugs.
I have also stopped using my alt characters for any purpose other than turning in contraband or marauding. Not because I don't want to play those characters. But I simply cannot afford to upgrade another ship worth of weapons and equipment. I got my main up to Mk XIV and it broke me.
In time, I'll raise the dil to repeat that horrific process, and I am able to craft almost all of the superior upgrades I need myself (though I won't be getting VR materials, will I?). So I have some small hope of being able to use my sci captain again, or of using my KDF for something other than murdering doffs.
Just to repeat myself yet again: new elite difficulty is fine. Should be harder, even. The people who wanted it should feel challenged. But we were straight-up lied to about advanced and normal.
Easy - old normal
Normal - old elite
Advanced
Elite
keep the old rewards for the first 2. make Advanced 1440 Dil and elite 1920 Dil . plus obvious increases in vr mat drops and BNPs/VCIs/IIs
this would result in all the people complaining having their old modes back, and everyone who likes the new system would still have it. and the rewards i specified should make everyone happy.
that way you get easy to learn the ropes at 45, Normal to get you your rep gear, advanced help with upgrades and to get you ready for elite.
if cryptic really wants people to buy zen. scrap the dilithium exchange. it's far less insulting to do that then to start reducing dilithium so we can't buy it(or anything else for that matter)
btw, the undine BZ had marks and Dilithium slashed also. dilithium was down 30% last night( 800Dil instead of 1200 for helping with 2 PKs), and the marks were about 40% lower(150 instaed of 250 pre-DR including daily).
I assume Voth ground BZ has seen similar slashing, but i have not confirmed this. so it's just a hunch atm.
in the new advanced STFs and other PvEs my tank cruiser(mostly UR XII weapons and consoles, 7K DPS) is essentially useless. i tank just like a did before, but since I'm not an uber-dps player , i have become a liability, since i can't really keep up with the HP mounds that have been added. it's a mirror assault cruiser. so i literally CAN'T level it up and get specializations.
I have also stopped queuing up, as an insignificant form of protest, and heck, I have access to far better teammates than pugs.
I have also stopped using my alt characters for any purpose other than turning in contraband or marauding. Not because I don't want to play those characters. But I simply cannot afford to upgrade another ship worth of weapons and equipment. I got my main up to Mk XIV and it broke me.
In time, I'll raise the dil to repeat that horrific process, and I am able to craft almost all of the superior upgrades I need myself (though I won't be getting VR materials, will I?). So I have some small hope of being able to use my sci captain again, or of using my KDF for something other than murdering doffs.
Just to repeat myself yet again: new elite difficulty is fine. Should be harder, even. The people who wanted it should feel challenged. But we were straight-up lied to about advanced and normal.
Ya feeling pretty misled too on normal and Advanced. The reward shift too is crazy, guess its more battle zones for me, Undine and Voth drops at least can be acquired in their battle zone. Could care less about elite, give the hard core wing nuts something meaningless to brag about fine (maybe a shiny outfit to show off their giant heroic epeens with).
I have 9 characters (yes I am Steve and I am an altaholic). The new content level curve matrix has really punished already having done all the episodes. My KDF alts (who mostly leveled before all the shiney KDF content was added) have been able to rip up the levels, while my main who had done all the content really feels like a grind now.
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?
I went back and read the thread to find this gem. I love this idea.
Reward scaling for the sub-difficulties actually isn't too hard in this instance. All they would have to do even for sake of simplicity is implement an Elder Scrolls Skyrim'esque sort of thing.
You want to get that 2880 by playing on 1.5 Elite? Well that will just do a client-side change of your HP/Shield HP and your Damage divided by 1.5 for the duration of the mission. Make the sub-bar difficulty unchangeable once you get into the match, and if by the end the game detects a certain sub-bar setting, you get the Elite reward multiplied by some factor. Pretty simple.
I like new difficulty. But for casual and new players in inexpensive ships it's not possible to earn marks easily outside of daily bonus package + 1-17 marks are somewhat underwhelming (if not depressing) reward for 10-20 minutes of intense fight.
Could be nice to see lower amount of NPCs in normal space instances + a bit less health for bosses.
However what bother me much more than difficulty - it's extreme price of upgrades. Up to the point where I didn't even start to upgrade anything - and I'm not game-poor.
From what I have played, I would say simply lower the cubes and spheres hp by 10-20% in ISE and increase rewards to something like the old elite or close to it. I do like how it feels like a challenge again.
I am just level 50 and i love the new advanced difficulty It finally gives a meaning to playing.
I failed 10 times in crystaline advanced but when finally won it felt nice.
For walking in parks and watching content there is Normal difficulty.
For good gear there are 2 ways at least for new players:
1. fleet gear + upgrades to 14
2. regular exchange gear + upgrades.
Beside i guess the new advanced is tuned for level 60 with lev14 gear and ships upgraded etc.
I want that advanced STILL present a CHALLENGE at lev 60 and pug success rate to be around 50%.
I very specifically named the box in which the cat was.
If you dont see that cat i can not be held responsible, i am sorry.
We arent thinking "outside the box" to beat current STFs, thats pretty much standart PvE... some thinking required on beating No win with 2 players though.
Its so funny how every guy on these forums sees a sentence here and there where he thinks he can pick upon you, while its so much out of context, that you can just see how he didnt understand what has been presented. Almost like watching people play Advanced Queues.
Oh and by the way of Boxthinking. I just pulled 29k DPS against hull (top dps in that regard) out of an ISA, ahead of two Fire at Will Scimitars on a Vesta, with one omnidirectional beam array equipped as the only energy Weapon...
Can i get that boxed please?
best regards still ;D
RyanSTO
The box is still waiting over --->here, when you accomplish this in a PUG by yourself!
For good gear there are 2 ways at least for new players:
1. fleet gear + upgrades to 14
2. regular exchange gear + upgrades.
1) They wouldn't be able to get fleet gear (or at least not for a few years), because at the rate that normals give rewards it would take years to get fleet equipment.
2) How would they be able to get exchange gear without any EC? They took reward drops out. The best you could hope for is the occasional Mk XI blue in a normal queue, which don't sell well at all.
3) How are they going to upgrade without any of the upgrade materials that are trapped behind an advanced and elite difficulty wall?
Support 90 degree arc limitation on BFaW! Save our ships from looking like flying disco balls of dumb!
The difficulty is clearly out of whack with the majority of the playerbase.
There are players out there who take pride in squeezing every decimal point out of their ship to get DPS up to and over 50K but they are in a minority.
But the average player i'd wager is shooting a lot, lot lower, probably in the 10K or less range. They are not doing it because they are rubbish players, they are doing it because they are casual players and chasing some mythical DPS number is not of interest to then in a game like STO.
I mean i've got a fair bit of fleet and rep gear and some top-end fleet ships to run with. Plus i've learnt enough about the game to know how to run the old ESTFs without being too much of an embarrassment to the team. I'm not a DPS monster, probably only up to 15K at the absolute best.
The only players who now stand a chance at the high-end content are those either grinding non-stop for hours every day or those throwing 100's of $'s at the game to buy kit or whiz through the crafting.
I'm at a loss as to how a fresh Lvl. 50 player is meant to get competitive now that to even get the higher rep gear they need things like BNP's and the like that are effectively locked behind content they can't hope to compete in. And even if they do get some rep gear it's all Mk XII and outdated too.
Who is seriously going to queue to join a PVE where the rewards are tiny and outdated and the whole affair is just another grind?
At the end of the day they've effectively turned PVE into the new PVP.
I'm not really willing to go into an advanced STF on a character who isn't reasonably well-geared -- especially if it's my first time (I've only ever really done Conduit) or I'm trying it out in a different type of ship. I don't want to be responsible for wasting the time of other people who came better-prepared than I did.
I can't get reasonably well-geared without Borg neuroprocessors.
So I'm stuck in a kind of chicken-and-egg problem.
I'm not much of a min/maxer. I understand how to do it, I just don't like to do it. I prefer to build characters and ships thematically. That wasn't a problem under the old difficulty; I felt that if I got a couple pieces of gear (which I could with the ten processors I got for reaching rep level 5) and put some time into upgrading weapons via the exchange, I could hold my own and make myself useful in Conduit. Occasionally we'd miss the bonus objective but it usually wasn't my fault, and we all came away with something. Now, I don't feel I can risk that.
Give me another way to acquire processors, and I'll be fine with the new difficulty. I don't know if I'll participate in Advanced queues (if it's necessary to min/max to be successful, I know I won't be successful), but at least I'll be able to progress in my own way at my own pace.
The difficulty is clearly out of whack with the majority of the playerbase.
There are players out there who take pride in squeezing every decimal point out of their ship to get DPS up to and over 50K but they are in a minority.
But the average player i'd wager is shooting a lot, lot lower, probably in the 10K or less range. They are not doing it because they are rubbish players, they are doing it because they are casual players and chasing some mythical DPS number is not of interest to then in a game like STO.
I mean i've got a fair bit of fleet and rep gear and some top-end fleet ships to run with. Plus i've learnt enough about the game to know how to run the old ESTFs without being too much of an embarrassment to the team. I'm not a DPS monster, probably only up to 15K at the absolute best.
The only players who now stand a chance at the high-end content are those either grinding non-stop for hours every day or those throwing 100's of $'s at the game to buy kit or whiz through the crafting.
I'm at a loss as to how a fresh Lvl. 50 player is meant to get competitive now that to even get the higher rep gear they need things like BNP's and the like that are effectively locked behind content they can't hope to compete in. And even if they do get some rep gear it's all Mk XII and outdated too.
Who is seriously going to queue to join a PVE where the rewards are tiny and outdated and the whole affair is just another grind?
At the end of the day they've effectively turned PVE into the new PVP.
I agree. A hardcore minority of players have now be satisfied, those whose are top end players with amazing builds and DPS monsters. At the cost of the vast majority of the playerbase who just can't do these new queues. Don't even get me started on new or novice skilled players. They are totally locked out of progressing to high end builds and becoming better. Cryptic have effectively killed endgame for everyone except the highest class of player.
Ironically, I think even the top end players will see the mistake of all this as time goes on. They won't be able to complete the queues without others players, those players will be a lot less from the total queue exodus we're seeing and what players they do get will likely be not good enough anyway, so you'll fail the optional and therefore the whole thing.
This was a totally insane idea. They've forced this policy onto everyone and ruined things in the process. The amazing players were asking for higher challenges. Why not just give them that with the new Elite and leave everyone else the hell alone? Instead, novice or intermediate players have been swept up in this and made to suffer.
I wouldn't expect a change for a few more weeks at least. Cryptic is in no rush as long as people are spending money hand over fist. Once people start to bail because of this, then it'll get fixed. Until then, expect the same of the same.
I suspect you are right. The whole things reeks of a calculated way to bully us into spending money imo. They've made queues unplayable, nerfed the rewards to nothing and pushed an Upgrade system that requires money and rare drops to invest into.
Its horribly abusive and shockingly obvious that they've strangled every realistic way to progress at endgame.
Has Gecko responded to this post? He asked a question and got overwhelming negative response. Seems like maybe an apology and a timeframe of when this will be patched would bea good start?
And i'm forced to upgrade and play STF for my R&D Materials...
If there where other means to get VR Particles, there would be no problem.. but..
There are other ways, they just give an even smaller return (in the case of the R&D Assistance doff assignment) or cost a lot of money (real or EC - R&D packs from the C-Store or exchange).
It's not like the Advanced queue packs ever had a lot of (or a high chance of) VR mats, it was just easy to get them and play the odds before.
I suspect you are right. The whole things reeks of a calculated way to bully us into spending money imo. They've made queues unplayable, nerfed the rewards to nothing and pushed an Upgrade system that requires money and rare drops to invest into.
Its horribly abusive and shockingly obvious that they've strangled every realistic way to progress at endgame.
I suspect this was the intent. Players will see that they need a T6 ship after all to do the queues so they'll go ahead and buy it. However there is a limit to how effective that will be based on outrage. It's clear that they've greatly exceeded that limit. I just hope it is fixed before lasting damage is done to the game.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
And i'm forced to upgrade and play STF for my R&D Materials...
If there where other means to get VR Particles, there would be no problem.. but..
For those who didn't begin the upgrade when the early upgrade event started - they are in big trouble now. The cost of the materials is absolutely skyrocketing. Even the blue rubidium was over 150,000 each and you burn through this like you wouldn't believe. The craylon gas has been removed from the game as the defend rhiho station is now impossible.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Comments
Not exactly the best time to be ironing out the balance of your public queue event difficulty. With them as the testers. It is unlikely most will bother taking to the forum to complain and with any luck they will avoid the queues or hopefully have already spent money on the game. Not the outcome I expect though.
Make advanced queues level 55+ before that crowd hits. Allow the story content on normal reward enough exp to advance you without resorting to admittedly unpolished queues.
Or not.
On another note I have hit up a few more advanced queues with my Fed Engineer in his Galor beam boat. Nothing special crazy tanky, mk xiii gear, 8 beams, 2x APB, faw, bo, eptw3, dem x2, the usual. He doesn't die but man his DPS is lacking for the new content. Previously he could solo a side of ISE for comparison.
My level 50 Rom Sci in her Recluse for giggles hit up CE A. While it took too long for my taste likely exasperated by me not bothering to get a 3rd tac console yet or upgrading any gear I still took 2nd place without doing any real healing or having gimmick heal passives (V console/2pc Borg) and only when I had the CE targeted did it's health go down. Then again four copies of APB3, one copy of APB2, and 130 AUX SS does effectively gut NPC resists. I can say with confidence she will be able to nearly solo the CE A by the end of the month.
The events are not unbalanced that badly. Boff abilities, consoles, ships, and so on are terribly balanced. No matter what I throw at it the poor Fed Eng Galor will never be half as effective as the Rom Sci Recluse.
He's playing to wave his e-peen and shout "I'm better than you cause I can buy power clear to top level right now!" and whatever else.
Which is about what the case is. Someone said 8000 dil to zen isn't enough. Correct. It's INTENDED to be not enough, the new difficulties seem to me to be a blatant attempt to extort zen money from the playerbase by making the new content unplayable without pouring money into zen and dil to get things upgraded fully fast.
Not all of us are the "super elite 50k dpsers". Yeah, the supposed 'minority' closes their wallets totally, and the e-peeners will be going somewhere else, there aren't enough of them to support all of STO if others are discouraged enough to stop paying money to Cryptic/PWE.
Lower the difficulties. Right now they are effectively extortion to force upgrades. And the vast MAJORITY of the players, who don't want to have to slog and supergrind, will leave.
1) Are you trying to chase away the casual gamers?
I used to like this game was alot of fun the PvE queues were fun and doable was hard enough but even an average player like me could do it.
Not everyone grinds profesionally and not everyone has the best gear and not everyone are DPS monsters doing 50K DPS all the time.
what are you guys thinking are you seriously chasing players like me away?
For the PVE queues - I got *owned* in CCE with some others but it was because people were taking shards right to the face. The dynamic had changed and they didn't adapt. Then throw in more enemies, everything being harder, and you have a disaster. Maybe when more people, including myself, hit 60 I'll be more inclined to try the elite PVE queues.
I actually like how it's harder but I do wish the rewards were sweeter right from the beginning. More r&d loot and more loot in general please.
Tried then again at 55, hard but doable. Fleet Alert fine, was close-ish on the timers, a minute or so to spare.
Colony Invasion seems much as before the expansion.
I'm guessing at 60 things will feel much more like they did before the patch, so I'll play normal queues while I gear up and then move on to trying the Advanced stuff.
Running queues that used to be simple, at 50 post patch, was a shock. But I think we'll level in to it.
What frustrates me is I have a level 60 char on tribble with a T5U, all mk XIV Elite gear, and a chunk of the specialization tree filled out, and its still takes forever to kill anything.
How can I justify spending a million dilithium, (or waiting the next 2 months upgrading my crafting and then spending almost as much on the materials since I can't take advanced mode with my current gear), on upgrading my ship when the end result is only marginally better than what I'm using now?
scale it back a bit - or scale the gear up a bit. Maybe then we'd have more incentive to buy/grind for it.
The pug groups stink, have yet to see one that could take infected advanced, much less elite.
The dificulty to reward ratio is way out of whack.
They feel more like the original STFs that Cryptic pulled the plug on because such a low percentage of the game population found them fun. I doubt the population has changed that much guys, but that is just an opinion.
I really hope you guys have a T6 or T5u (with a mastery) ship in your plans for the holiday event, or the f2p population will start to fall off, as the p2p players won't want them in groups given their total lack of starship mastery boons.
I really dislike the content progression. I never thought I would find myself prefering to play alts that hadn't already completed all the episode content, but there I am now.
I love the look and feel of the new content, get some of the content balance issues sorted and this will be a great expansion.
I have also stopped queuing up, as an insignificant form of protest, and heck, I have access to far better teammates than pugs.
I have also stopped using my alt characters for any purpose other than turning in contraband or marauding. Not because I don't want to play those characters. But I simply cannot afford to upgrade another ship worth of weapons and equipment. I got my main up to Mk XIV and it broke me.
In time, I'll raise the dil to repeat that horrific process, and I am able to craft almost all of the superior upgrades I need myself (though I won't be getting VR materials, will I?). So I have some small hope of being able to use my sci captain again, or of using my KDF for something other than murdering doffs.
Just to repeat myself yet again: new elite difficulty is fine. Should be harder, even. The people who wanted it should feel challenged. But we were straight-up lied to about advanced and normal.
Easy - old normal
Normal - old elite
Advanced
Elite
keep the old rewards for the first 2. make Advanced 1440 Dil and elite 1920 Dil . plus obvious increases in vr mat drops and BNPs/VCIs/IIs
this would result in all the people complaining having their old modes back, and everyone who likes the new system would still have it. and the rewards i specified should make everyone happy.
that way you get easy to learn the ropes at 45, Normal to get you your rep gear, advanced help with upgrades and to get you ready for elite.
if cryptic really wants people to buy zen. scrap the dilithium exchange. it's far less insulting to do that then to start reducing dilithium so we can't buy it(or anything else for that matter)
btw, the undine BZ had marks and Dilithium slashed also. dilithium was down 30% last night( 800Dil instead of 1200 for helping with 2 PKs), and the marks were about 40% lower(150 instaed of 250 pre-DR including daily).
I assume Voth ground BZ has seen similar slashing, but i have not confirmed this. so it's just a hunch atm.
in the new advanced STFs and other PvEs my tank cruiser(mostly UR XII weapons and consoles, 7K DPS) is essentially useless. i tank just like a did before, but since I'm not an uber-dps player , i have become a liability, since i can't really keep up with the HP mounds that have been added. it's a mirror assault cruiser. so i literally CAN'T level it up and get specializations.
Ya feeling pretty misled too on normal and Advanced. The reward shift too is crazy, guess its more battle zones for me, Undine and Voth drops at least can be acquired in their battle zone. Could care less about elite, give the hard core wing nuts something meaningless to brag about fine (maybe a shiny outfit to show off their giant heroic epeens with).
I have 9 characters (yes I am Steve and I am an altaholic). The new content level curve matrix has really punished already having done all the episodes. My KDF alts (who mostly leveled before all the shiney KDF content was added) have been able to rip up the levels, while my main who had done all the content really feels like a grind now.
I went back and read the thread to find this gem. I love this idea.
Reward scaling for the sub-difficulties actually isn't too hard in this instance. All they would have to do even for sake of simplicity is implement an Elder Scrolls Skyrim'esque sort of thing.
You want to get that 2880 by playing on 1.5 Elite? Well that will just do a client-side change of your HP/Shield HP and your Damage divided by 1.5 for the duration of the mission. Make the sub-bar difficulty unchangeable once you get into the match, and if by the end the game detects a certain sub-bar setting, you get the Elite reward multiplied by some factor. Pretty simple.
Could be nice to see lower amount of NPCs in normal space instances + a bit less health for bosses.
However what bother me much more than difficulty - it's extreme price of upgrades. Up to the point where I didn't even start to upgrade anything - and I'm not game-poor.
I totally agree here. Lovin the changes, Please help ease the grind tho!
I failed 10 times in crystaline advanced but when finally won it felt nice.
For walking in parks and watching content there is Normal difficulty.
For good gear there are 2 ways at least for new players:
1. fleet gear + upgrades to 14
2. regular exchange gear + upgrades.
Beside i guess the new advanced is tuned for level 60 with lev14 gear and ships upgraded etc.
I want that advanced STILL present a CHALLENGE at lev 60 and pug success rate to be around 50%.
The box is still waiting over --->here, when you accomplish this in a PUG by yourself!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
1) They wouldn't be able to get fleet gear (or at least not for a few years), because at the rate that normals give rewards it would take years to get fleet equipment.
2) How would they be able to get exchange gear without any EC? They took reward drops out. The best you could hope for is the occasional Mk XI blue in a normal queue, which don't sell well at all.
3) How are they going to upgrade without any of the upgrade materials that are trapped behind an advanced and elite difficulty wall?
Support 90 degree arc limitation on BFaW! Save our ships from looking like flying disco balls of dumb!
There are players out there who take pride in squeezing every decimal point out of their ship to get DPS up to and over 50K but they are in a minority.
But the average player i'd wager is shooting a lot, lot lower, probably in the 10K or less range. They are not doing it because they are rubbish players, they are doing it because they are casual players and chasing some mythical DPS number is not of interest to then in a game like STO.
I mean i've got a fair bit of fleet and rep gear and some top-end fleet ships to run with. Plus i've learnt enough about the game to know how to run the old ESTFs without being too much of an embarrassment to the team. I'm not a DPS monster, probably only up to 15K at the absolute best.
The only players who now stand a chance at the high-end content are those either grinding non-stop for hours every day or those throwing 100's of $'s at the game to buy kit or whiz through the crafting.
I'm at a loss as to how a fresh Lvl. 50 player is meant to get competitive now that to even get the higher rep gear they need things like BNP's and the like that are effectively locked behind content they can't hope to compete in. And even if they do get some rep gear it's all Mk XII and outdated too.
Who is seriously going to queue to join a PVE where the rewards are tiny and outdated and the whole affair is just another grind?
At the end of the day they've effectively turned PVE into the new PVP.
I'm not much of a min/maxer. I understand how to do it, I just don't like to do it. I prefer to build characters and ships thematically. That wasn't a problem under the old difficulty; I felt that if I got a couple pieces of gear (which I could with the ten processors I got for reaching rep level 5) and put some time into upgrading weapons via the exchange, I could hold my own and make myself useful in Conduit. Occasionally we'd miss the bonus objective but it usually wasn't my fault, and we all came away with something. Now, I don't feel I can risk that.
Give me another way to acquire processors, and I'll be fine with the new difficulty. I don't know if I'll participate in Advanced queues (if it's necessary to min/max to be successful, I know I won't be successful), but at least I'll be able to progress in my own way at my own pace.
I agree. A hardcore minority of players have now be satisfied, those whose are top end players with amazing builds and DPS monsters. At the cost of the vast majority of the playerbase who just can't do these new queues. Don't even get me started on new or novice skilled players. They are totally locked out of progressing to high end builds and becoming better. Cryptic have effectively killed endgame for everyone except the highest class of player.
Ironically, I think even the top end players will see the mistake of all this as time goes on. They won't be able to complete the queues without others players, those players will be a lot less from the total queue exodus we're seeing and what players they do get will likely be not good enough anyway, so you'll fail the optional and therefore the whole thing.
This was a totally insane idea. They've forced this policy onto everyone and ruined things in the process. The amazing players were asking for higher challenges. Why not just give them that with the new Elite and leave everyone else the hell alone? Instead, novice or intermediate players have been swept up in this and made to suffer.
I suspect you are right. The whole things reeks of a calculated way to bully us into spending money imo. They've made queues unplayable, nerfed the rewards to nothing and pushed an Upgrade system that requires money and rare drops to invest into.
Its horribly abusive and shockingly obvious that they've strangled every realistic way to progress at endgame.
Really, I gotta play the TRIBBLE that makes this game feel like a job? Unenjoyable rubbish?
NM, I'll stfu and buy some zen to buy some dil from the dil exchange
That's what you guys want right?
Exactly. You get it.
And i'm forced to upgrade and play STF for my R&D Materials...
If there where other means to get VR Particles, there would be no problem.. but..
There are other ways, they just give an even smaller return (in the case of the R&D Assistance doff assignment) or cost a lot of money (real or EC - R&D packs from the C-Store or exchange).
It's not like the Advanced queue packs ever had a lot of (or a high chance of) VR mats, it was just easy to get them and play the odds before.
I suspect this was the intent. Players will see that they need a T6 ship after all to do the queues so they'll go ahead and buy it. However there is a limit to how effective that will be based on outrage. It's clear that they've greatly exceeded that limit. I just hope it is fixed before lasting damage is done to the game.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
For those who didn't begin the upgrade when the early upgrade event started - they are in big trouble now. The cost of the materials is absolutely skyrocketing. Even the blue rubidium was over 150,000 each and you burn through this like you wouldn't believe. The craylon gas has been removed from the game as the defend rhiho station is now impossible.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."