How do these players reach Elite status? They play a LOT.
How can they have the time to play so much? They are most likely on the dole, be it school or some other hand out that we the casual players are working to provide them with.
So it's a double face slap.
Please have a bit of humility if you don't have to work for a living.
Thanks for assuming we're all students or dole dossers. For your information I've worked full time 39 hrs plus per week since I've left school in 96 as well as raising a family. Now how do we get to be so good well simply put we play the game we learn, we teach others as we ourselves were taught. We look at each others builds pull them apart and put them back together. By taking the time to learn, myself and another person that has quoted you have managed to pull stuff off on ground such as running kage with just the two of us. Cryptic revamped the rep traits, so we went back and run it again and we proved the revamp did nothing to effect the playability or difficulty of the Stf's. What cryptic have done this time is the same as they did last time which was to tack on a load more hit points. The tactics are the same, the only time strategy comes into play in space is when someone drops the ball and the rest of the team has to pick it up. Power creep has been put back 6 months or a year at most. The only reason people aren't ramping their gear up to is the shear cost of dilithium involved. But once the new gear starts becoming more wide spread the queues will get easier. Space Stf's are radically overrun in my opinion and by spreading the crafting mats out across grounds as well was a good move on cryptics part.
And humility has nothing to do with it. It simply boils down to that we have better understandings of how the game works and why certain elements work better together than others. The biggest challenge in the game is a players ignorance.
How do these players reach Elite status? They play a LOT.
How can they have the time to play so much? They are most likely on the dole, be it school or some other hand out that we the casual players are working to provide them with.
So it's a double face slap.
Please have a bit of humility if you don't have to work for a living.
I loled hard at this, your an elite player so you obviously have no job or are at school.
Give your head a shake, then go hang it in shame for being such a judgemental douche.
I don't get where the hell people saying NPC's should do more damage are coming from, or what game they're playing. I looked away from my Defiant for a few seconds yesterday and it had gone from full everything to front shield gone and 60 hull. When a game punishes you that hard for not having your total attention at all times, it's not balanced. Having to sneeze in real life shouldn't be the line between life and death. Damage most certainly cannot be angled upwards, it's as much of a completely stupid 'just add more numbers' attempt as raising the hitpoints was.
The solution is far more wide ranging than something so simple as just raising NPC damage for more challenge because just raising NPC hitpoints didn't work and needed reverting, and would certainly include PLAYER hitpoints being increased if you want such rebalancing to work out. When the distance between the player and the NPC is so arbitrarily large, players feel cheated on top of all the other issues, which is what actually creates frustration.
Players don't want to feel the game is being unfair...it doesn't matter if it is or not, the trick is making sure they don't FEEL it...or see it. An NPC higher than a frigate can eat torpedo salvoes to the hull like they were tic tacs; when a salvo heads towards the player's open shield facing the only response is to stand up out your chair, resign yourself to death, and quote Hamlet just before impact. Things like this make the 'cheating' required for an AI to compete, completely blatant. Players thus no longer feel challenged by the game, they feel cheated. Then they get angry.
All the datamining in the world is completely irrelevant, all the numbers you put up to 'prove' the game is balanced is meaningless, if they players don't feel it's right. Stuff like this is why the Diablo III patch notes after Reaper of Souls sometimes included lines like, "This power didn't feel meaty enough or satisfying to use, so we did this and this."
I somehow doubt that people who have real world commitments who can't spend a lot of time or money on this game have ship builds that are capable of doing 60+K DPS...or what is REQUIRED to do hive elite. And that is PER SHIP. Come the update, this is going up to 66+k per ship. And hive advanced ain't currently much better at around 55+k per ship required. I'm sorry but tell me how somebody without spending a ton of real world money or spending a ton of time is hitting those marks again?
Sqwished has already said what needs to be said, but I'll re-iterate. It's about making good use of your time, and yes pre DR I had 7 characters and they all had good ships. I have a lot of real life commitments, which hasn't stopped me making a high DPS Scimitar or any number of other ships. I've even helped others build their ships.
Am I amused that they've pandered all the content to a DPS race? Absolutely not. However if you really think real life commitments have stopped us before you are sorely mistaken. Also do remember that this time round a lot of people just aren't willing to use the upgrade system because the costs are insane, not because we can't get the dil but because we consider it wasting said dil. At least that's the case for most of the group I play with.
So tell me again how you supposedly need to tar us all with that brush, or is it just an excuse for your own failings?
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
I disagree with the OP. More HP and resists do NOT make things more challenging and definitely don't make them more fun. Between the nerfed rewards and sheer boredom from spending way too long to kill ships that shouldn't be able to hold a candle to mine. It's just driving me out of the game instead of down to a lower level.
My solution is, nerf Aux2Bat so you eliminate these 50k builds so they actually have to come up with something other than a cookie cutter build to play through STO's content.
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One phrase rings well. Increasing health pools , and forcing harsher DPS requirements were making a head on dash back to Escorts Online: Doubts Rising.
However, I am begging you, Cryptic, DO NOT LISTEN TO THE RAGE! Stay fast your decision and let the community adapt to these new queues. This provides a real challenge for people to look forward to in the game
The real challenge is elite. Why do you want such a challenge in advanced for half the reward? All advanced is now is a waste of time, where literally a week ago it was a fun, faced paced queue with good rewards.
This upcoming nerf is a good first step but the rewards still suck balls. They need to revert the changes.
Plus it's not more difficult, only more tedious. That's its own difficulty though - the difficulty of putting up with the increased tedium of the DR STFs.
No it doesn't, with one exception - beating 'time gate' objectives. This isn't fun and only puses us back further to the Star Trek Online: Escorts Rising. There is no increase in tactics, it's merely 'get more deeps'. Stop fooling yourself here.
You know im having a real bad day but wow I come on here and see
You see, there IS a difficulty level for people who want a "challenge" and to "rise to the occasion", it's called Elite. Go play that and leave other players who aren't freaking masochists alone.
Thank you.
How do people still not get it? The best way to appeal to everyone is put Advanced Back like it was and have Elite for people like the OP who like to spend 10 minutes chewing through cubes with 7 million HP.
For the 100th time.. you can have your content without taking away from the rest of us. It's not an either/or relationship.. everyone can have what they want. Advanced needs a huge change, do what you want with Elite.. I couldn't care less.
How do people still not get it? The best way to appeal to everyone is put Advanced Back like it was and have Elite for people like the OP who like to spend 10 minutes chewing through cubes with 7 million HP.
For the 100th time.. you can have your content without taking away from the rest of us. It's not an either/or relationship.. everyone can have what they want. Advanced needs a huge change, do what you want with Elite.. I couldn't care less.
He probably has not played Elite yet...Just wait over the next couple weeks when the masochists get their epeens slapped in Elite and start QQing for a safe word.:P
So the thing for me has more to do with not wanting to have to refit my science character into a DPS gunboat in order to be able to obtain things like R&D materials and Rep stuff.
All the shouting is that you need 13k in order to come to the table or just step off. Yeah I dont have that, I have no intention of having MK XIV stuff tomorrow, no I dont have a maxed out EC bank. None of this should be required in order to enjoy a game.
Isnt having fun what people started playing for anyways, not to stand atop a pile of defeated enemies and gloat?
So the thing for me has more to do with not wanting to have to refit my science character into a DPS gunboat in order to be able to obtain things like R&D materials and Rep stuff.
All the shouting is that you need 13k in order to come to the table or just step off. Yeah I dont have that, I have no intention of having MK XIV stuff tomorrow, no I dont have a maxed out EC bank. None of this should be required in order to enjoy a game.
Isnt having fun what people started playing for anyways, not to stand atop a pile of defeated enemies and gloat?
^^ This...again, I blame it on the 'win or else' crowd, a few of them are reasonable, but....
I -still- haven't cracked 4k dps on my T5-U Fleet Nebula(now with mostly Mk XIII stuff)...and I'm not trying to...I'm having a ball just doing great crowd control/support and tons 'o exotic damage...I set 'em up, you knock 'em down, I survive long enough to heal you, -you- survive because I heal you, we all win....
Strange that there is so much confusion I thought it was quite clear how the difficulties are supposed to work:
Normal: ppl who dont have a clue what they are doing with or without gear
Advanced: ppl who know a bit about what to do but lack the gear and all
Elite: those who know what they do and have all the shinies
Wheres the fun in simply having a bigger gun than the NPC's? for all the DPS bravado, I've seen very few fair well in serious ground combat. Everything so far has been about people crying about space combat. Hitting 60K DPS is all well and good providing your willing to min/max everything all the while. But I've been with a team form the DPS channel before that have gotten wiped by a rouge cube spawning in KASE, by the time they could bring their weapons to bear on the target they all got wiped.
When was the last time any of you min/maxer's pulled anything like this off?
Space is simply the easiest thing to run. Now I was one of those people that actually pushed for harder content, by harder I mean more challenging. But all we've been given is something that all is needed is the biggest gun in the game. The tactics have not changed from the pre DR STF's (And I'm not taking into account Disconnected here) There is no strategy involved. It's nothing more than people trying to face roll everything with DPS.
Wheres the fun in simply having a bigger gun than the NPC's? for all the DPS bravado, I've seen very few fair well in serious ground combat. Everything so far has been about people crying about space combat. Hitting 60K DPS is all well and good providing your willing to min/max everything all the while. But I've been with a team form the DPS channel before that have gotten wiped by a rouge cube spawning in KASE, by the time they could bring their weapons to bear on the target they all got wiped.
When was the last time any of you min/maxer's pulled anything like this off?
Space is simply the easiest thing to run. Now I was one of those people that actually pushed for harder content, by harder I mean more challenging. But all we've been given is something that all is needed is the biggest gun in the game. The tactics have not changed from the pre DR STF's (And I'm not taking into account Disconnected here) There is no strategy involved. It's nothing more than people trying to face roll everything with DPS.
Why not give NPCs more abilites that Captains use or make the existing abilities more powerful for NPCs. I don't think I've ever seen a Mob use GW outside of the CCE Event.
30% nerf on advanced and 10% buff on elite is about right to make them accesible for all
Yeah, I've been in 2 pretty good ISA groups. In both cases we were 10 minutes over the time limit. Most of this was spent on the final tac cube - 8 minutes for it in my last run. I'll try again on Thursday. The reduction should bring the time to do advanced into or close to the realm of reason. That 8 minutes seems to = appx 15000 dps for the group.
As for elite - I'd have to make up some 12 minutes to beat the timer. Well, we'll see in a month's time when people have more upgrades done. I guess the question is - how small a % is desired for elite. Personally, I'd go with between 5 and 10% I think they are aiming closer to 1 or 2% right now. May be a little low.
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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
advanced IS NOT endgame. advanced is for lvl 50-60. 60 is endgame. and there is ELITE stf.
Oh, I do think it is.
It's in the same format as a fresh 50 in Pre-DR STO jumping in to Elite STFs unprepared and not being familiar with how things are and likely doing things to contribute to the team's failure.
Also, I love the fact that there are people saying that the better players should just stick to "Elite" while those that can't be bothered to get better should have "Advanced." Oh the irony of that.
Why not give NPCs more abilites that Captains use or make the existing abilities more powerful for NPCs. I don't think I've ever seen a Mob use GW outside of the CCE Event.
If NPCs had a better variety of abilities to use against us it would be more in-line with the Undine and Voth. Both of which are much more fun to play against. The only other Species with an interesting use of weapons/abilities is the Vaadwuur with their cluster mine Torp.
Massing hitpoints on the npcs does not make for exciting gameplay, it is really quite boring.
A couple glaring problems with the game design, and the community:
While the fights have been drawn out with these ridiculous pools of health on npc's their damage output almost seems like it had been reduced, though it may be the new starship and captain traits. I feel like my Vesta has ben nerfed not because it isnt viable, but because since DR launched I have not had to use any consoles defensively, I rarely have to use hadard emitters.
Community - I suspect that the meta is shifting by design to something that requires more Science skills, which I have proven numerous timed in runs where I didnt get spectacular damage, but everyone around me did because of my efforts debuffing the enemy to reduce the impact of their health pool. As long as the players cling to the reduced scope of 'damage only' they are not going to succeed in this new meta.
Problem is, the efforts a debuffing sci takes to make the run a success are not quantifiable by a single basic combat log parser, so the fact that a single person can increase 4 other people's damage by a huge margin doesent mean anything to them, and they will not likely want you on their team for a second game because their log parser suggests that you arent good.
The only solution I see to this problem is to remove the combat log so that it cant be parsed by a third party application and its results spammed in chat boasting the prowress of the 'winner' - invariably the person with the highest dps is the person who posts about it. Removing the combat log and denying this behavior would shift the community goals from 'what can I do to make the combat log suggest that I am better then everyone else' to: how fast can me and these other 4 people complete this run. - It wouldnt take long at all for science to emerge as a key part of this new meta, and no one would complain about a single person's low 'dps' - because there is so much more to the game then just making combat log entries.
Ergo, the idea that things need to be nerfed is just as much the community's fault as it is the developers.
Why not give NPCs more abilites that Captains use or make the existing abilities more powerful for NPCs. I don't think I've ever seen a Mob use GW outside of the CCE Event.
Exactly, this is what we need! not just the same old dps face roll.
Massing hitpoints on the npcs does not make for exciting gameplay, it is really quite boring.
A couple glaring problems with the game design, and the community:
While the fights have been drawn out with these ridiculous pools of health on npc's their damage output almost seems like it had been reduced, though it may be the new starship and captain traits. I feel like my Vesta has ben nerfed not because it isnt viable, but because since DR launched I have not had to use any consoles defensively, I rarely have to use hadard emitters.
Community - I suspect that the meta is shifting by design to something that requires more Science skills, which I have proven numerous timed in runs where I didnt get spectacular damage, but everyone around me did because of my efforts debuffing the enemy to reduce the impact of their health pool. As long as the players cling to the reduced scope of 'damage only' they are not going to succeed in this new meta.
Problem is, the efforts a debuffing sci takes to make the run a success are not quantifiable by a single basic combat log parser, so the fact that a single person can increase 4 other people's damage by a huge margin doesent mean anything to them, and they will not likely want you on their team for a second game because their log parser suggests that you arent good.
LMAO The game isnt shifting to Science Abilities. Debuffs have always boosted DPS damage to an enemy. Thats the point of Debuffs. The only reason its been so rare to see is because soloing proved to be difficult even with Debuffs...Since you didnt have a Tac Escort utilizing the Debuffs the fights took longer. And it didnt take long for the community to go DPS crazy and forget the usefulness of Debuff/CC Science Class Abilities. Its only making a return because of the larger HP. I doubt Cryptic thought that far ahead. They just didnt want us railroading the content within a day. Which we would have had they not spread it across ten levels.
Why not give NPCs more abilites that Captains use or make the existing abilities more powerful for NPCs. I don't think I've ever seen a Mob use GW outside of the CCE Event.
Why not give NPCs more abilites that Captains use or make the existing abilities more powerful for NPCs. I don't think I've ever seen a Mob use GW outside of the CCE Event.
Haven't they been doing that? The Vaadwuar and Heirarchy both run very ability heavy setups. Any more and, especially with the larger fights, you risk devolving space combat into a choatic mess of things happening at you all the time without the necessary boff and ability resources to consistently counter them.
Think of it this way, while a single vaadwuar cruiser isn't going to spam you as much as a player does its rarely the only ship you're fighting at a given moment in PVE. Add up ALL the ships in the encounter and you see a much more respectable set of abilities all directed at YOU (for the most part). That needs to be moderated or else there's not going to be much you can do across that much more tremendous scale of spamming (think of how a 5 v 1 fight goes in PvP, and lets assume for the moment that the AI's haven't been balanced to instantly kill you. Do you really want that to become the staple of PVE?)
Though older, non-revamped species aren't as responsive, cryptics standpoint for some time now (basically back to the Voth and Tholians) has been to put the emphasis on powers. Now we're seeing both power usage and more HP, but the latter does not preclude the former, nor does it justify adding any more to that either (since minus a few bad balance tweaks things are gonig fairly well even on a less pathetic scale for video game design than "good for STO".)
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It's been said over and over again: More HP does not equal more difficulty. Even I, with my crappy, deliberately NPC-like weapon layouts and assorted mismatched gear (and possibly abilities), would like more difficulty - but this is not the way it needs to be done, and if I have to choose between the way it was pre-DR and the way it is now, I will gladly go to the pre-DR version of the game.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I have heard alot of the rage about the community about the revamped queues being harder than before yada yada yada...
First, what was needed was more challenge in the Elite queues. Challenge.
Maybe something like a Unimatrix warping into KASE spawning assimilated BoPs and Aquarius and destroying it would reward purple stuffs for all.
What did they give us?
A nerf to weapons.
Technically they buffed some NPC's but the result is the same. That is NOT a challenge, it's just plain lazy.
What about the new players?
I feel sorry for them because they don't have the entry level STFs that we had.
Bring back the pre-DR Normal and Elite STFs.
Keep the new "Elite" for the fetish abuse gimps.
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Comments
Thanks for assuming we're all students or dole dossers. For your information I've worked full time 39 hrs plus per week since I've left school in 96 as well as raising a family. Now how do we get to be so good well simply put we play the game we learn, we teach others as we ourselves were taught. We look at each others builds pull them apart and put them back together. By taking the time to learn, myself and another person that has quoted you have managed to pull stuff off on ground such as running kage with just the two of us. Cryptic revamped the rep traits, so we went back and run it again and we proved the revamp did nothing to effect the playability or difficulty of the Stf's. What cryptic have done this time is the same as they did last time which was to tack on a load more hit points. The tactics are the same, the only time strategy comes into play in space is when someone drops the ball and the rest of the team has to pick it up. Power creep has been put back 6 months or a year at most. The only reason people aren't ramping their gear up to is the shear cost of dilithium involved. But once the new gear starts becoming more wide spread the queues will get easier. Space Stf's are radically overrun in my opinion and by spreading the crafting mats out across grounds as well was a good move on cryptics part.
And humility has nothing to do with it. It simply boils down to that we have better understandings of how the game works and why certain elements work better together than others. The biggest challenge in the game is a players ignorance.
I loled hard at this, your an elite player so you obviously have no job or are at school.
Give your head a shake, then go hang it in shame for being such a judgemental douche.
The solution is far more wide ranging than something so simple as just raising NPC damage for more challenge because just raising NPC hitpoints didn't work and needed reverting, and would certainly include PLAYER hitpoints being increased if you want such rebalancing to work out. When the distance between the player and the NPC is so arbitrarily large, players feel cheated on top of all the other issues, which is what actually creates frustration.
Players don't want to feel the game is being unfair...it doesn't matter if it is or not, the trick is making sure they don't FEEL it...or see it. An NPC higher than a frigate can eat torpedo salvoes to the hull like they were tic tacs; when a salvo heads towards the player's open shield facing the only response is to stand up out your chair, resign yourself to death, and quote Hamlet just before impact. Things like this make the 'cheating' required for an AI to compete, completely blatant. Players thus no longer feel challenged by the game, they feel cheated. Then they get angry.
All the datamining in the world is completely irrelevant, all the numbers you put up to 'prove' the game is balanced is meaningless, if they players don't feel it's right. Stuff like this is why the Diablo III patch notes after Reaper of Souls sometimes included lines like, "This power didn't feel meaty enough or satisfying to use, so we did this and this."
Sqwished has already said what needs to be said, but I'll re-iterate. It's about making good use of your time, and yes pre DR I had 7 characters and they all had good ships. I have a lot of real life commitments, which hasn't stopped me making a high DPS Scimitar or any number of other ships. I've even helped others build their ships.
Am I amused that they've pandered all the content to a DPS race? Absolutely not. However if you really think real life commitments have stopped us before you are sorely mistaken. Also do remember that this time round a lot of people just aren't willing to use the upgrade system because the costs are insane, not because we can't get the dil but because we consider it wasting said dil. At least that's the case for most of the group I play with.
So tell me again how you supposedly need to tar us all with that brush, or is it just an excuse for your own failings?
My solution is, nerf Aux2Bat so you eliminate these 50k builds so they actually have to come up with something other than a cookie cutter build to play through STO's content.
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The real challenge is elite. Why do you want such a challenge in advanced for half the reward? All advanced is now is a waste of time, where literally a week ago it was a fun, faced paced queue with good rewards.
This upcoming nerf is a good first step but the rewards still suck balls. They need to revert the changes.
Plus it's not more difficult, only more tedious. That's its own difficulty though - the difficulty of putting up with the increased tedium of the DR STFs.
You know im having a real bad day but wow I come on here and see
"Star Trek Online: Escorts Rising"
and my day is officially made.
LOL
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Thank you.
How do people still not get it? The best way to appeal to everyone is put Advanced Back like it was and have Elite for people like the OP who like to spend 10 minutes chewing through cubes with 7 million HP.
For the 100th time.. you can have your content without taking away from the rest of us. It's not an either/or relationship.. everyone can have what they want. Advanced needs a huge change, do what you want with Elite.. I couldn't care less.
He probably has not played Elite yet...Just wait over the next couple weeks when the masochists get their epeens slapped in Elite and start QQing for a safe word.:P
All the shouting is that you need 13k in order to come to the table or just step off. Yeah I dont have that, I have no intention of having MK XIV stuff tomorrow, no I dont have a maxed out EC bank. None of this should be required in order to enjoy a game.
Isnt having fun what people started playing for anyways, not to stand atop a pile of defeated enemies and gloat?
^^ This...again, I blame it on the 'win or else' crowd, a few of them are reasonable, but....
I -still- haven't cracked 4k dps on my T5-U Fleet Nebula(now with mostly Mk XIII stuff)...and I'm not trying to...I'm having a ball just doing great crowd control/support and tons 'o exotic damage...I set 'em up, you knock 'em down, I survive long enough to heal you, -you- survive because I heal you, we all win....
Normal: ppl who dont have a clue what they are doing with or without gear
Advanced: ppl who know a bit about what to do but lack the gear and all
Elite: those who know what they do and have all the shinies
Seems quite logical to me..
Wheres the fun in simply having a bigger gun than the NPC's? for all the DPS bravado, I've seen very few fair well in serious ground combat. Everything so far has been about people crying about space combat. Hitting 60K DPS is all well and good providing your willing to min/max everything all the while. But I've been with a team form the DPS channel before that have gotten wiped by a rouge cube spawning in KASE, by the time they could bring their weapons to bear on the target they all got wiped.
When was the last time any of you min/maxer's pulled anything like this off?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9JouiRH-xs
or better yet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj266xu4dyw
Space is simply the easiest thing to run. Now I was one of those people that actually pushed for harder content, by harder I mean more challenging. But all we've been given is something that all is needed is the biggest gun in the game. The tactics have not changed from the pre DR STF's (And I'm not taking into account Disconnected here) There is no strategy involved. It's nothing more than people trying to face roll everything with DPS.
50% nerf on Advanced and 50% buff on Elite for all the PWE fanbois, sounds better.
Why not give NPCs more abilites that Captains use or make the existing abilities more powerful for NPCs. I don't think I've ever seen a Mob use GW outside of the CCE Event.
Yeah, I've been in 2 pretty good ISA groups. In both cases we were 10 minutes over the time limit. Most of this was spent on the final tac cube - 8 minutes for it in my last run. I'll try again on Thursday. The reduction should bring the time to do advanced into or close to the realm of reason. That 8 minutes seems to = appx 15000 dps for the group.
As for elite - I'd have to make up some 12 minutes to beat the timer. Well, we'll see in a month's time when people have more upgrades done. I guess the question is - how small a % is desired for elite. Personally, I'd go with between 5 and 10% I think they are aiming closer to 1 or 2% right now. May be a little low.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Or maybe you can get better.
Oh, I do think it is.
It's in the same format as a fresh 50 in Pre-DR STO jumping in to Elite STFs unprepared and not being familiar with how things are and likely doing things to contribute to the team's failure.
Also, I love the fact that there are people saying that the better players should just stick to "Elite" while those that can't be bothered to get better should have "Advanced." Oh the irony of that.
If NPCs had a better variety of abilities to use against us it would be more in-line with the Undine and Voth. Both of which are much more fun to play against. The only other Species with an interesting use of weapons/abilities is the Vaadwuur with their cluster mine Torp.
A couple glaring problems with the game design, and the community:
While the fights have been drawn out with these ridiculous pools of health on npc's their damage output almost seems like it had been reduced, though it may be the new starship and captain traits. I feel like my Vesta has ben nerfed not because it isnt viable, but because since DR launched I have not had to use any consoles defensively, I rarely have to use hadard emitters.
Community - I suspect that the meta is shifting by design to something that requires more Science skills, which I have proven numerous timed in runs where I didnt get spectacular damage, but everyone around me did because of my efforts debuffing the enemy to reduce the impact of their health pool. As long as the players cling to the reduced scope of 'damage only' they are not going to succeed in this new meta.
Problem is, the efforts a debuffing sci takes to make the run a success are not quantifiable by a single basic combat log parser, so the fact that a single person can increase 4 other people's damage by a huge margin doesent mean anything to them, and they will not likely want you on their team for a second game because their log parser suggests that you arent good.
The only solution I see to this problem is to remove the combat log so that it cant be parsed by a third party application and its results spammed in chat boasting the prowress of the 'winner' - invariably the person with the highest dps is the person who posts about it. Removing the combat log and denying this behavior would shift the community goals from 'what can I do to make the combat log suggest that I am better then everyone else' to: how fast can me and these other 4 people complete this run. - It wouldnt take long at all for science to emerge as a key part of this new meta, and no one would complain about a single person's low 'dps' - because there is so much more to the game then just making combat log entries.
Ergo, the idea that things need to be nerfed is just as much the community's fault as it is the developers.
Exactly, this is what we need! not just the same old dps face roll.
LMAO The game isnt shifting to Science Abilities. Debuffs have always boosted DPS damage to an enemy. Thats the point of Debuffs. The only reason its been so rare to see is because soloing proved to be difficult even with Debuffs...Since you didnt have a Tac Escort utilizing the Debuffs the fights took longer. And it didnt take long for the community to go DPS crazy and forget the usefulness of Debuff/CC Science Class Abilities. Its only making a return because of the larger HP. I doubt Cryptic thought that far ahead. They just didnt want us railroading the content within a day. Which we would have had they not spread it across ten levels.
Voth Bulkwarks and Citadels will pop GW's.
Haven't they been doing that? The Vaadwuar and Heirarchy both run very ability heavy setups. Any more and, especially with the larger fights, you risk devolving space combat into a choatic mess of things happening at you all the time without the necessary boff and ability resources to consistently counter them.
Think of it this way, while a single vaadwuar cruiser isn't going to spam you as much as a player does its rarely the only ship you're fighting at a given moment in PVE. Add up ALL the ships in the encounter and you see a much more respectable set of abilities all directed at YOU (for the most part). That needs to be moderated or else there's not going to be much you can do across that much more tremendous scale of spamming (think of how a 5 v 1 fight goes in PvP, and lets assume for the moment that the AI's haven't been balanced to instantly kill you. Do you really want that to become the staple of PVE?)
Though older, non-revamped species aren't as responsive, cryptics standpoint for some time now (basically back to the Voth and Tholians) has been to put the emphasis on powers. Now we're seeing both power usage and more HP, but the latter does not preclude the former, nor does it justify adding any more to that either (since minus a few bad balance tweaks things are gonig fairly well even on a less pathetic scale for video game design than "good for STO".)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
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Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
First, what was needed was more challenge in the Elite queues.
Challenge.
Maybe something like a Unimatrix warping into KASE spawning assimilated BoPs and Aquarius and destroying it would reward purple stuffs for all.
What did they give us?
A nerf to weapons.
Technically they buffed some NPC's but the result is the same.
That is NOT a challenge, it's just plain lazy.
What about the new players?
I feel sorry for them because they don't have the entry level STFs that we had.
Bring back the pre-DR Normal and Elite STFs.
Keep the new "Elite" for the fetish abuse gimps.
RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev