Is Advanced too difficult because of STILL insane NPC hit points and because the maps were changed making it ...almost... impossible -or- is it because we are not changing our strategies?
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Is Advanced too difficult because of STILL insane NPC hit points and because the maps were changed making it ...almost... impossible -or- is it because we are not changing our strategies?
It's some of both plus just too much time invested for reward.
I have noticed people seem to be focusing fire on 1 sphere at a time which is helping quite a bit.
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."
Is Advanced too difficult because of STILL insane NPC hit points and because the maps were changed making it ...almost... impossible -or- is it because we are not changing our strategies?
It started with the Devs making a promise and not keeping it.
They promised Advanced would be like the old Elite and the new Elite would be for the fetish abuse gimps.
A secondary issue, maybe even just as relevant, is Cryptic's solution to power creep...making everything a DPS race.
Because, obviously, the counter to more powerful weapons is...is...to make your weapons powerful.
EDIT: oopsy...and the rewards don't make it worth the time.
NO to ARC RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
ISA is flat-out brutal. No GW users to be found. No TBR users to be found. The mobs are killable now, but teams either lack the DPS to do it or the strategy to support it.
Pugging ISA is pure hell.
The artist formerly known as PlanetofHats.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
The mandatory optionals (oxymoron-much?) are what kill it for me. Not worth wasting my time waiting on long queues just to blow a mission halfway through and get jack for it. I've done a couple of advanced queues since the latest tweak and the HP / difficulties seem okay, but PUGs fail optionals all the time. Slow queue times compounded with frequent fail rate = poor ROI.
Unfortunately, the normal mode queues are boring as hell in a geared ship, so I don't really want to queue those either. Just been running a couple each day to get my daily mark packages and then derping around with the rest of the DR content (which is actually really good).
I tried ISA, CSA and KASA with an engineer and a tactical character.
ISA: I would say that ISA is almost ok, with a bit of strategy and coordination it can be done, although a gravity well is very very useful to complete it.
CSA: the BOPs have way too many HP, last time I did it 3 people were defending and 2 attacking the cubes. Still the Kang was surrounded by BOPs. Also the Kang resistance was increased and at the end we manage to finish it, however I have the feeling that BOPs are too resistant.
KASA: In this mission the probes have too many HP for a non-tactical character. As tanking engineer (survivability > DPS and DPS for that char is approx 10k) I had very hard time to stop the probes. Last time my group failed, I was able to stop 2 probes barely, whereas on the other side they weren't able to.
I think that the STF can be challenging not only by increasing the resistance of the enemies but, *maybe*, making the optional more complex or more stringent (example for KASA: "blow up the gates with delay of less than a minute").
Is Advanced too difficult because of STILL insane NPC hit points and because the maps were changed making it ...almost... impossible -or- is it because we are not changing our strategies?
The latter, very much the latter.
ISA was easy before the nerf, after the nerf it's back to the joke ISE was. Again the only difficulty you could have is if you don't have the DPS or there's an idiot on your team who decides to go off by himself and kirk it.
CSA was so easy you could pug it, since the Kang was only ever in danger from Negh'Vars.
BDA, with the exception of the dreadnought optional, was and is hilariously easy. It's quite possible to solo a repair bay without firing a shot and save all the disconnected Borg as soon as they appear.
CCA prior to the nerf was also easy, it was only the people who kept getting hit by EVERY damn shard that made it difficult. When it reaches a re-crystallize stack of 200 (+2% damage each), you know there's a few in the map who really should stick to CCN.
Enemies still have too much HP, I can't even kill spheres all by myself in BDA -_-
Why the hell devs don't restore the PVE as it was before ?
Why a game have to be this boring and punishing ?
Players crying out the game is not a challenge for their end-game ships ? Well, nerf their ships ...
Nerf cruisers and nerf A2B !!
A game should be balanced, so a player can select the ship he likes and get strong with it.
no, NPCs do not have too much HP, you and your group do WAY too little dmg.
The difficulty before DR was laughable...really, it was soloable even for mediocre people.
easy = boring...don't know why you would want them to restore the boring missions in the sentence before, you are basically contradicting yourself.
A2B has nothing to do with this, since massive AOE dmg (BFAW spam) is kind of dead now, because NPCs have too much HP. FYI, A2B isn't even the best DPS specc for a long, long time now. It is still greatbecause you can easily propell to 10k dps or higher, but that is now doable with pretty much any setup, even with sci ships.
i agree with your last sentence though, but STO never offered that option and based on the grand design of the game it is not even possible to do so.
tried azure advanced, way too hard for the rewards, will not be wasting my time with that again.
in general, advanced is harder than the old elite, so cryptic have failed in their promise to keep it as it was.
is it all part of a plan to make us spend lots of money buying zen to convert to dil so we can make meagre upgrades so we can feel like we caught up?
coz I'm not playing that game, its rigged
I am reminded of an old Chris Rock stand-up routine; I forget the setup, but the line is, "You can do it, but that don't mean it's to be done! You can drive a car with your feet, doesn't make it a good bleeping idea!"
Even when they're doable, they're not fun, and they certainly aren't worth the halved dilithium rewards. This, compounded with the brazen lie that was, "Oh yeah, Advanced will be just like the old Elite was," has me soured on the whole Event queue experience.
I'm going to do my best to find some area of the game that is still 1) fun for me, 2) not bugged or broken, 3) not likely to catch Cryptic's eye as worth "improving on". Here's hoping I find it...
Generator
EDIT: I almost forgot to mention the Azure Nebula Advanced I endured last night, only to be rewarded with a Normal-grade reward pack. Well done, Cryptic. (sarcastic slow clap)
=================
I'm sure your DPS is great, but as Kahless said, "a petaQ with high system mastery is still a petaQ." (Well, he should have said it...!)
no, NPCs do not have too much HP, you and your group do WAY too little dmg.
The difficulty before DR was laughable...really, it was soloable even for mediocre people.
easy = boring...don't know why you would want them to restore the boring missions in the sentence before, you are basically contradicting yourself.
A2B has nothing to do with this, since massive AOE dmg (BFAW spam) is kind of dead now, because NPCs have too much HP. FYI, A2B isn't even the best DPS specc for a long, long time now. It is still greatbecause you can easily propell to 10k dps or higher, but that is now doable with pretty much any setup, even with sci ships.
i agree with your last sentence though, but STO never offered that option and based on the grand design of the game it is not even possible to do so.
Do you know what's the problem ?
My ship was really strong until cryptic nerfed cannons, and now I'm stuck with a ship that is not good for PVP and no more good for PVE.
Of course the game seems to easy for an End-Game Scimitar ... but this doesn't mean it is that easy for everyone.
1 - What about newbies ? How a newbie is supposed to earn Neural Processors with this difficulty ?
2 - Not everyone has the privilege to choose his team, many of us play with random teams.
3 - Not everyone is looking for a challenge, many of us just looks for dil and marks, if you want a challenge, then there is the new Elite difficulty.
4 - A2B is not the best for DPS, but its the best build cause:
- it tooks only 3 Doff slots.
- it reduces cooldown on healing and science abilities too.
- it boosts weapons, engines and shields.
The game looks too easy for you ? Try other ships, try other combinations.
Not everyone start with end.game gears, and its getting always herder to get something good.
Do you know what's the problem ?
My ship was really strong until cryptic nerfed cannons, and now I'm stuck with a ship that is not good for PVP and no more good for PVE.
Of course the game seems to easy for an End-Game Scimitar ... but this doesn't mean it is that easy for everyone.
1 - What about newbies ? How a newbie is supposed to earn Neural Processors with this difficulty ?
2 - Not everyone has the privilege to choose his team, many of us play with random teams.
3 - Not everyone is looking for a challenge, many of us just looks for dil and marks, if you want a challenge, then there is the new Elite difficulty.
4 - A2B is not the best for DPS, but its the best build cause:
- it tooks only 3 Doff slots.
- it reduces cooldown on healing and science abilities too.
- it boosts weapons, engines and shields.
The game looks too easy for you ? Try other ships, try other combinations.
Not everyone start with end.game gears, and its getting always herder to get something good.
well, what i missed out to say is, that STFs are now a TEAM EFFORT...1 person can't win the STF for the whole team anymore. Everybody needs to contribute. Unfortunately this does not happen in pugs and that is the ONLY reason pugging advanced STFs sucks currently.
The current advanced difficulty shouldn't be and actually isn't an issue in grps with people who know the tactics and have adequate builds.
Compared to other games, STO's advanced difficulty isn't actually that difficult, but since teamplay is something completely unknown to the average pugger, it becomes undoable.
If you and your team still got problems with certain ASTFs, i'm sorry to hear that, but looking at it objectively it isn't because the NPCs have more HP now.
well, what i missed out to say is, that STFs are now a TEAM EFFORT...1 person can't win the STF for the whole team anymore. Everybody needs to contribute. Unfortunately this does not happen in pugs and that is the ONLY reason pugging advanced STFs sucks currently.
The current advanced difficulty shouldn't be and actually isn't an issue in grps with people who know the tactics and have adequate builds.
Compared to other games, STO's advanced difficulty isn't actually that difficult, but since teamplay is something completely unknown to the average pugger, it becomes undoable.
If you and your team still got problems with certain ASTFs, i'm sorry to hear that, but looking at it objectively it isn't because the NPCs have more HP now.
Well, I can even accept the point that my build is outdated and that an advanced STF may need team play, but man, have you tried Advanced Mirror Invasion ?
It took me about a minute to kill a fu**ed frigate with CRF1, TT1, THY3, APB3, APA, FOMM and TF...
GOD that's not acceptable for someone with elite fleet and rep gear, man. Its not acceptable !!!
tried azure advanced, way too hard for the rewards, will not be wasting my time with that again.
in general, advanced is harder than the old elite, so cryptic have failed in their promise to keep it as it was.
This. These public queues for these events are always empty, because pugs can't do them. Tholian ships have way way too much healt, particularly in Crystalline Entity and Azure Nebula.
In CE it doesn't matter as much cause the entity has been fixed to be beatable, but in Azure our entire team was pouring damage into the Tarantula for 5 minutes and didn't down it.
Advaned mode needs to be doable by any pug team. Elite is for groups who are organized and have refined their builds.
Even with that, just making the enemies have 5 times more HP is not fun. This game used to have that very problem and then you fixed it and it was fun.
The playable content is still good, but the various broken Advanced missions are still not playable, and there are rewards we're supposed to be grinding locked behind this broken content.
The best thing that cryptic can do now is change the normal back to what it was and fix it at level 50 do the same with advanced that brings it in line with what they said it would be. next use the advanced as it is now for the elite problem solved.
lets face it with the content as it is players are losing out on about 50% of the content and gear, do ether change it or make it so you can get VR mats and BNP and so on else where.
I am not sure what the numbers are actually doing in STO space fights now. I have my mains set at elite and have been trying to do all new DR content at that level. In a Vaadwaur encounter it took more than 15 attempts. In the end, with all elite gear in a Phantom, ship leveled up, I died 16 times against a single Assault ship that could not be killed. Literally could not. I would respawn, it would be fully healed, I started shooting, and it just flat killed me in seconds. Is my threat generation getting added to its stats? Hitting it with every buff and debuff, cloaked alpha strike, it just shrugged it off.
Ya, exited the instance and set back to normal for that one. But something isn't right. I've always done elite. Not now.
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
ISA is flat-out brutal. No GW users to be found. No TBR users to be found. The mobs are killable now, but teams either lack the DPS to do it or the strategy to support it.
Pugging ISA is pure hell.
So do them with a Science Vessel - then you can be sure GW and TBR are taken care of.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
short answer NO! especially when spheres are 350k and cubes are 450K. I have yet to be in a pug that got past the first transformer. Most pugs simply don't have the 30-40k group dps it would take to get it done the way its been done in the past. Especially true as the group makeup is random and there is no way to guarantee there is the right balance of tact/eng/sci to able to do it without top shelf dps. the last group did it all right but still couldn't get the transformer before the nanites reached it. Also the transformer is 1.8M which means at least 4 of the team have to focus on it or you will fail and even then at 30k dps it would take 60 seconds to take it down. Without a dedicated grav well sci guy in the group ISA is not possible as it stands right now for pugs. I don't want to use channels I like just queueing up. I don't like using channels and sitting around waiting 3-4xs longer than queues for someone to start a group for what I need and I don't like having to make my own groups.
Well, any cruiser with eject warp plasma and aux2 batt is more than capable of doing the same job. Even though it won't fully stop the spheres like gravity well, ewp slows them enough that the group can take out the transformer before they get there. The biggest problem really isn't the ships used, its the lack of teamwork, communication, and general know-how.
I've seen teams start off really well, taking out the first cube and spheres easily enough, but then they get to the first transformer, and don't work together. While 3 or 4 players go for the cube and sphere, the others go after the generators, and that's where the problems begin. Going after the generators causes the nanite spheres to appear early, and before the cube is even dead, the mission is over. Everyone needs to understand the patter of thus mission; cube first, then generators, then 1 player goeas and slows the spheres, and returns to help finish the transformer. Lather, rinse, repeat. Put a message in team chat so everyone knows what to do, and designate someone with gravity well or ewp to handle the nanite spheres when the time comes.
While 3 or 4 players go for the cube and sphere, the others go after the generators, and that's where the problems begin. Going after the generators causes the nanite spheres to appear early, and before the cube is even dead, the mission is over.
I've seen this very thing happen 5 times now. I didn't see it prior to DR, so it's making me think that a lot of the returning players simply don't know how to do ISA, which is why so many people are thinking it's hard.
My solution for ISA is to wait for the first gen to pop and then use TBR w/reverse doff to drag the spheres away from the transformer. I do this repeatedly, grabbing 3 at a time, until the team kills the trans. Combined with a nice stream of warp plasma it does the job.
Of course the above is now moot since they needed Advanced back to pre-DR levels. But I'm sure my teammates will thank me if and when Cryptic ever releases a new Elite version. :-)
Fed up with people going on about how it isn't hard and that it requires teamwork. I call utter BS on that. the thing that matters is individual people knowing how to use their boff skills rather than 1 guy shouting down vc and swearing in chat that they do this, that and the other. thats what premade teams are for.Ffs advanced should be easy to pug with and everyone to know what to do without saying a word and not fail. Either they need to do away with fails or massively increase the time lengths in times objectives, and for things like ICA I'm sure they can space the transformers slightly further from the gate or just make the nanite spheres heal the gens when they get within 2.50km of them. People come on, this is supposed to be a step up for newer players once they feel they can take adv on, and tbh they are even struggling in normal. So HTF do you think they will cope? The awnser is they won't, As the new gear they need which elitists are moaning at them to get our locked behind rep systems which ARE LOCKED behind advanced because you need at least 15 impants/bnps or whatever for each set. Cryptic/PWE expects players to do these PvE's with the crappy vendor rewards and mission rewards. Good darn luck with that! I personally have a FAC which does FAW/DEM/EPW/APO spam and it works mighty well at drawing crowds, and job in ICE is to weaken enemy nanites shields down for the rest of my pug team to then. Knock them down with torps. This worked well before DR, now even if I bring facing shields down, my pug buddies, no matter how many torps they fire into enemy hull, they cannot kill the spheres because of the masses of HP. From what I then asked them after failing, they had fleet elite gear mixed with sets on some of them. All upgraded to MKXIV with crith bonuses on most of their weapons. By all right those spheres should have been reduced to nothing but slag as I saw high yield plasma torps and barrages fly straight into the nanite mass. And did nothing to halt them. I saw a load of Crits go off but they shrugged it off and then healed the transformers. Every team I have pugged with on ICE has failed because of the damn optional/required objective. And every time everyone knew what they were doing. There was TEAMWORK blatantly being showed, he'll we even had a sci in there using crowd control like damn crazy but that didn't hold em off at all. DR is the worst expansion to date and the devs know it. They won't fix it because they are making a tonne of money from it because everybody was shocked by the difficulty spike and thought T6 would resolve it. It doesn't. I've beaten several T6 ships in my time crawling across delta quad and they rage in chat about me having hacks and leave, saying T6 should be able to beat t5f. My TRIBBLE it is. Seems like people were brainwashed with t6 being the unbroken and op ships that cryptic advertised them as and now they are rolling in the money that they just made laughing at the players for being so rightly stupid in believing them. DR was a MONEY GRAB and you all know that, yet some just deny it cause of their fanboy and elitist belief that sto is solely for them and that all f2pers and people who play for the fun of the game should GTFO. Come on guys, they knew that not the entire community would rage on them cause of the small percentage of those angered people post on here. I had quite a time trying to even get on forums as my password had been changed to a previous one which I had forgotten and customer service was extremely poor, leading me to chase my tail for 4 months as hey sent me back and forth as to what the problem was. People who try to login to forums is for the majority those who wish to add grievances and post issues about the problems. Yet all those people are probablygetting the same 4month treatment cause the login has changed. So most people who had tried to post their grievances on forums give up cause they couldn't be bothered to put up with the bad customer service. I've heard from not one but several players much older than me taking their cases for bad customer service to business bureaus (I don't really know the actual term but yes this involves getting legal in) some of these claims involve not refunding paid items /ships which were lost by system errors caused by patches and bugs. Before Dr customer service was excellent, now it next to non existent. Seems they played nice so we bought their items and cannot now give a damn now that they are swimming in money. And tbh it's all true, we are all nothing but revenue percentages on pwe/cryptics profit pie chart now made of solid gold since I guess they can afford that now. They put everything they did down to the communities fault as "we" (elitists,tryhards and hardcore players which make up less than 1/10th of the main community) wanted it. So forums have erupted into a yotube vid comment war and thus a consensus is not being met by the community as a majority of these forums are controlled by that 1/10th and the true people who are genuinely trying to give proper feedback are outnumbered. BTW cryptic will only listen to their rev threads which they post for. A ridiculously small time period before removing them. Where they only get what they want to hear(fanboys and elitists praising them for a fantastic job of ridding all the casual fun and f2p players). Come on, the main purpose of a damn game is to be fun for everyone and not the select few. This is starting to fit the theme of the apartheid in south Africa. IMHO I think cryptic is creating their master race (reference to another man during ww2 who wanted the exact Same thing). Don't you all see what has happened. A small part of the community gave the companies am escape goat for a plan which they could make millions off of and thus put all blame on the whole community saying "this is what you wanted, we shall hand it to you then cause it benefits is more than you". They might as well put a bit of text on their sto website saying they fooled us. They had a way to do this right and that was by adding another difficulty called nightmare offering enemies who have recieved ungodly buffs( x100 health multiplier, crowd control and debuff abilities, reverse shield pol, emergency power to shields and weps and eng team 3) and required objectives with 1minute timers for all of them, add 50% more enemy npcs,add ridiculous resists and instant death weapons on every enemy npc. And for the rewards, make them ridiculously high. Because that seems to be what every person who complained that elite wasn't hard enough wanted. And too add to that, to leave elite,advanced and normal the way it was. Btw if you do post replies I probably won't take any notice of them unless they are politely written and you have understood what i have spent the past 15minutes putting down.
And to add, Adv Pves are a waste of time. I won't be playing any new content until they do right by their community. ALL OF THEM! Only time i will come on is for soc events and events that pay out dilithium like crazy eg MuI event rep. Cause who doesn't like free stuff? Btw cryptic you probably have the logs and know of the huge dip in people playing pves. They thank thier calendar for MUI was close to release so they could delay the rants by shoving Dili down player throats as some kind of insurance payout or bribe to tell us all to shut up. Even if it was no amount of free items will shut me up, as I will still post your errors cryptic for the community to see, reguardless of format. I thus excersize my right of free speech in my posts. Yes, I just did that. And as a human rights law, it cannot be bypassed by any excuse that even staff or FO come up with. And just to refresh. Pves are a waste of time, and are barely salvageable. So for all those having trouble with them. Don't play them. Boycotting is the only way we can get cryptic to see their errors, because they won't listen otherwise when they cite how we apparently wanted it.
I was a faithful player, but I can say this, LOR has DR beat hands down
Ps how do you add on signature? Been trying to find out how and so far failed. Ty in adv if you post how to as we'll as your comment
I don't think this is as simple as telling everyone to just learn teamwork. Not for a PuG at least.
I was in a few Pugs that seemed to be leaning. We took out the Cubes and spheres at the first transformer, then as everyone moved on to the generators then transformer. I moved down to intercept the nanite spheres. I've tried EWP and Tractor beam repulsors.
The fact is that the Enemy HP is too high. even with that basic team work down, the others didn't have the DPS to destroy the transformers fast enough and I was overwhelmed and killed by the nanite spheres in Seconds. And I don't have a bad ship. its a guardian with all reputation and fleet gear. Not the best. But I should be able to survive longer than that. I was spamming all my hull and shield heals. There were too many nanite spheres and the Enenmy HP is too high for any group that does not have very high DPS. reguardless of teamwork.
New Advanced STF's are built for DPS first and teamwork second.
Comments
SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
It's some of both plus just too much time invested for reward.
I have noticed people seem to be focusing fire on 1 sphere at a time which is helping quite a bit.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
It started with the Devs making a promise and not keeping it.
They promised Advanced would be like the old Elite and the new Elite would be for the fetish abuse gimps.
A secondary issue, maybe even just as relevant, is Cryptic's solution to power creep...making everything a DPS race.
Because, obviously, the counter to more powerful weapons is...is...to make your weapons powerful.
EDIT: oopsy...and the rewards don't make it worth the time.
RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
2 out of 3 ISA failed because people didn't know what the **** to do or simply blew up generators prematurely on purpose.
all in all, from my persopective, people are the problem, not the increased difficulty of the content.
Pugging ISA is pure hell.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
Unfortunately, the normal mode queues are boring as hell in a geared ship, so I don't really want to queue those either. Just been running a couple each day to get my daily mark packages and then derping around with the rest of the DR content (which is actually really good).
ISA: I would say that ISA is almost ok, with a bit of strategy and coordination it can be done, although a gravity well is very very useful to complete it.
CSA: the BOPs have way too many HP, last time I did it 3 people were defending and 2 attacking the cubes. Still the Kang was surrounded by BOPs. Also the Kang resistance was increased and at the end we manage to finish it, however I have the feeling that BOPs are too resistant.
KASA: In this mission the probes have too many HP for a non-tactical character. As tanking engineer (survivability > DPS and DPS for that char is approx 10k) I had very hard time to stop the probes. Last time my group failed, I was able to stop 2 probes barely, whereas on the other side they weren't able to.
I think that the STF can be challenging not only by increasing the resistance of the enemies but, *maybe*, making the optional more complex or more stringent (example for KASA: "blow up the gates with delay of less than a minute").
The latter, very much the latter.
ISA was easy before the nerf, after the nerf it's back to the joke ISE was. Again the only difficulty you could have is if you don't have the DPS or there's an idiot on your team who decides to go off by himself and kirk it.
CSA was so easy you could pug it, since the Kang was only ever in danger from Negh'Vars.
BDA, with the exception of the dreadnought optional, was and is hilariously easy. It's quite possible to solo a repair bay without firing a shot and save all the disconnected Borg as soon as they appear.
CCA prior to the nerf was also easy, it was only the people who kept getting hit by EVERY damn shard that made it difficult. When it reaches a re-crystallize stack of 200 (+2% damage each), you know there's a few in the map who really should stick to CCN.
A bit of brains, that's all it required.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Enemies still have too much HP, I can't even kill spheres all by myself in BDA -_-
Why the hell devs don't restore the PVE as it was before ?
Why a game have to be this boring and punishing ?
Players crying out the game is not a challenge for their end-game ships ? Well, nerf their ships ...
Nerf cruisers and nerf A2B !!
A game should be balanced, so a player can select the ship he likes and get strong with it.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
no, NPCs do not have too much HP, you and your group do WAY too little dmg.
The difficulty before DR was laughable...really, it was soloable even for mediocre people.
easy = boring...don't know why you would want them to restore the boring missions in the sentence before, you are basically contradicting yourself.
A2B has nothing to do with this, since massive AOE dmg (BFAW spam) is kind of dead now, because NPCs have too much HP. FYI, A2B isn't even the best DPS specc for a long, long time now. It is still greatbecause you can easily propell to 10k dps or higher, but that is now doable with pretty much any setup, even with sci ships.
i agree with your last sentence though, but STO never offered that option and based on the grand design of the game it is not even possible to do so.
in general, advanced is harder than the old elite, so cryptic have failed in their promise to keep it as it was.
is it all part of a plan to make us spend lots of money buying zen to convert to dil so we can make meagre upgrades so we can feel like we caught up?
coz I'm not playing that game, its rigged
Even when they're doable, they're not fun, and they certainly aren't worth the halved dilithium rewards. This, compounded with the brazen lie that was, "Oh yeah, Advanced will be just like the old Elite was," has me soured on the whole Event queue experience.
I'm going to do my best to find some area of the game that is still 1) fun for me, 2) not bugged or broken, 3) not likely to catch Cryptic's eye as worth "improving on". Here's hoping I find it...
Generator
EDIT: I almost forgot to mention the Azure Nebula Advanced I endured last night, only to be rewarded with a Normal-grade reward pack. Well done, Cryptic. (sarcastic slow clap)
I'm sure your DPS is great, but as Kahless said, "a petaQ with high system mastery is still a petaQ." (Well, he should have said it...!)
Do you know what's the problem ?
My ship was really strong until cryptic nerfed cannons, and now I'm stuck with a ship that is not good for PVP and no more good for PVE.
Of course the game seems to easy for an End-Game Scimitar ... but this doesn't mean it is that easy for everyone.
1 - What about newbies ? How a newbie is supposed to earn Neural Processors with this difficulty ?
2 - Not everyone has the privilege to choose his team, many of us play with random teams.
3 - Not everyone is looking for a challenge, many of us just looks for dil and marks, if you want a challenge, then there is the new Elite difficulty.
4 - A2B is not the best for DPS, but its the best build cause:
- it tooks only 3 Doff slots.
- it reduces cooldown on healing and science abilities too.
- it boosts weapons, engines and shields.
The game looks too easy for you ? Try other ships, try other combinations.
Not everyone start with end.game gears, and its getting always herder to get something good.
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well, what i missed out to say is, that STFs are now a TEAM EFFORT...1 person can't win the STF for the whole team anymore. Everybody needs to contribute. Unfortunately this does not happen in pugs and that is the ONLY reason pugging advanced STFs sucks currently.
The current advanced difficulty shouldn't be and actually isn't an issue in grps with people who know the tactics and have adequate builds.
Compared to other games, STO's advanced difficulty isn't actually that difficult, but since teamplay is something completely unknown to the average pugger, it becomes undoable.
If you and your team still got problems with certain ASTFs, i'm sorry to hear that, but looking at it objectively it isn't because the NPCs have more HP now.
Well, I can even accept the point that my build is outdated and that an advanced STF may need team play, but man, have you tried Advanced Mirror Invasion ?
It took me about a minute to kill a fu**ed frigate with CRF1, TT1, THY3, APB3, APA, FOMM and TF...
GOD that's not acceptable for someone with elite fleet and rep gear, man. Its not acceptable !!!
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This. These public queues for these events are always empty, because pugs can't do them. Tholian ships have way way too much healt, particularly in Crystalline Entity and Azure Nebula.
In CE it doesn't matter as much cause the entity has been fixed to be beatable, but in Azure our entire team was pouring damage into the Tarantula for 5 minutes and didn't down it.
Advaned mode needs to be doable by any pug team. Elite is for groups who are organized and have refined their builds.
Even with that, just making the enemies have 5 times more HP is not fun. This game used to have that very problem and then you fixed it and it was fun.
The playable content is still good, but the various broken Advanced missions are still not playable, and there are rewards we're supposed to be grinding locked behind this broken content.
In short, nerf space mob HP again please.
lets face it with the content as it is players are losing out on about 50% of the content and gear, do ether change it or make it so you can get VR mats and BNP and so on else where.
Ya, exited the instance and set back to normal for that one. But something isn't right. I've always done elite. Not now.
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Expatriot Might Characters in EXILE
So do them with a Science Vessel - then you can be sure GW and TBR are taken care of.
Hehe, if you want something done right...
I've seen teams start off really well, taking out the first cube and spheres easily enough, but then they get to the first transformer, and don't work together. While 3 or 4 players go for the cube and sphere, the others go after the generators, and that's where the problems begin. Going after the generators causes the nanite spheres to appear early, and before the cube is even dead, the mission is over. Everyone needs to understand the patter of thus mission; cube first, then generators, then 1 player goeas and slows the spheres, and returns to help finish the transformer. Lather, rinse, repeat. Put a message in team chat so everyone knows what to do, and designate someone with gravity well or ewp to handle the nanite spheres when the time comes.
I've seen this very thing happen 5 times now. I didn't see it prior to DR, so it's making me think that a lot of the returning players simply don't know how to do ISA, which is why so many people are thinking it's hard.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Of course the above is now moot since they needed Advanced back to pre-DR levels. But I'm sure my teammates will thank me if and when Cryptic ever releases a new Elite version. :-)
RCK
Ps how do you add on signature? Been trying to find out how and so far failed. Ty in adv if you post how to as we'll as your comment
I was in a few Pugs that seemed to be leaning. We took out the Cubes and spheres at the first transformer, then as everyone moved on to the generators then transformer. I moved down to intercept the nanite spheres. I've tried EWP and Tractor beam repulsors.
The fact is that the Enemy HP is too high. even with that basic team work down, the others didn't have the DPS to destroy the transformers fast enough and I was overwhelmed and killed by the nanite spheres in Seconds. And I don't have a bad ship. its a guardian with all reputation and fleet gear. Not the best. But I should be able to survive longer than that. I was spamming all my hull and shield heals. There were too many nanite spheres and the Enenmy HP is too high for any group that does not have very high DPS. reguardless of teamwork.
New Advanced STF's are built for DPS first and teamwork second.