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Upcoming PvE Queue Difficulty Updates
pwgroverclvlnd
Member Posts: 11 Cryptic Developer
As part of the recent Delta Rising expansion released for Star Trek Online, PvE queues underwent a major overhaul to follow a new difficulty schema providing for interesting challenges as players advanced to the new maximum rank of Fleet Admiral. Unfortunately, our first attempts at updating difficulty have not been universally successful and as a result we will be working towards bringing the challenge of these queues in line with where we think they should be.
The key change in difficulty to the PvE queues was the addition of failure conditions for Advanced and Elite difficulties. Since the release of Delta Rising, weve been monitoring several key metrics regarding player experiences in STO, including player success rates for each queue. Adding failure conditions to queues was meant to add a challenge to them and so no advanced or elite queues should have a 100% success rate. At the same time, however, we dont expect any queue to have a success rate that is so low that players who are appropriately geared will never experience a successful run.
We have already started making adjustments to content throughout STO in order to tune difficulty. Most recently there was an update to the modifiers applied to critter health and damage output for advance difficulty (not just for queues but also for solo content played with the difficulty slider set to this value). There are more, similar changes planned that will continue to tune these critter modifiers. Additionally, PvE queues will be evaluated on a per queue basis and potentially have their mission requirements, critter spawns or other aspects updated to help tune their specific difficulties.
This will be an ongoing process one that we hope we can resolve quickly but we think it is much more important to have our changes be the right ones. We will continue to communicate with the players about all these updates as they occur.
Charles Gray
Lead Content Designer
Star Trek Online
The key change in difficulty to the PvE queues was the addition of failure conditions for Advanced and Elite difficulties. Since the release of Delta Rising, weve been monitoring several key metrics regarding player experiences in STO, including player success rates for each queue. Adding failure conditions to queues was meant to add a challenge to them and so no advanced or elite queues should have a 100% success rate. At the same time, however, we dont expect any queue to have a success rate that is so low that players who are appropriately geared will never experience a successful run.
We have already started making adjustments to content throughout STO in order to tune difficulty. Most recently there was an update to the modifiers applied to critter health and damage output for advance difficulty (not just for queues but also for solo content played with the difficulty slider set to this value). There are more, similar changes planned that will continue to tune these critter modifiers. Additionally, PvE queues will be evaluated on a per queue basis and potentially have their mission requirements, critter spawns or other aspects updated to help tune their specific difficulties.
This will be an ongoing process one that we hope we can resolve quickly but we think it is much more important to have our changes be the right ones. We will continue to communicate with the players about all these updates as they occur.
Charles Gray
Lead Content Designer
Star Trek Online
Cryptic Studios Team Member
Post edited by pwgroverclvlnd on
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Edit. Well, now you are.
Division Hispana
www.divisionhispana.com
-edit-
Look at the whining about HP and now imagine if the AI actually distributed shields or, worse, healed itself.
You keep producing more PvE queue missions, but you still restrict us to 3 missions we can queue for at a time. This clashes with the popularity of certain missions, and the time wasted waiting on a queue for a mission you really want to do, but can't stand around for an hour or more waiting for it to fill up.
Therefore, only the most popular missions will get people queued up for them, since they have a better chance of launching it quickly.
This particularly is noticable (and I'm sure your data would agree) on days for the Klingon Scout Force Daily, and that is just one example. If it isn't Klingon Scout Force Daily day, you can expect to wait a very long time for that mission to fill up with ~20 players who remember to hit the Launch button.
The addition of Advanced and Elite modes only exacerbates the problem we have had with the queues since their implementation.
"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, that's not even bringing up the new overly tedious "critter health" stalling the experience.
By all means there should be a real elite mode but how exactly did a 200% dil nerf across the board fit into that
Adding by subtracting, wrong math fellas
Edit; saw your other thread! Cool, thank you for the communication
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It is a peculiar phenomenon that we can imagine events that defy the laws of the universe.
Should I get my hopes back up yet? We have a *lot* of work to do here, to get this game back in shape.
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Since DR launched, and shortly before, there was some debate among the playerbase about what an "appropriately geared player" would mean after the expansion went live. However, I think we need to know what you at Cryptic consider this to be. Do you consider someone who is in all MK XIV purples to be appropriately geared? Or just in all MK XIV gear of any color to meet that? Rep gear? Fleet gear? What are you looking at here?
Without knowing your own criteria for being an appropriately geared player, I don't think we can accurately give feedback on any further difficulty adjustments.
Mine Trap Supporter
I would hope that the 'appropriately geared' didnt just mean each player should be mk XIII purple but that a balanced team should have between them a certain level of equipment/skill. An STF/FA is not an individual thing but a TEAM effort.
Still waiting to be able to use forum titles
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I am eager to see what you will do.
What I personally think is that it shouldn't neccessarilly be about failure vs success, but it should be graded rewards - the better you perform, the better the rewards. Before Delta Rising, this element existed, but it was... underdeveloped - the extra rewards were very low IMO.
Maybe it would help if the Elite Reputation Marks/Items (Borg Neural Processors or whatever) cost of items were higher, but the rewards could also go higher.
Maybe create a more or less standardized "bonus objectives achieved" package that contains a choice of extra marks, extra elite marks, or crafting packs (with the chance for VR materials), and reward 1 on Normal, 2 on Advanced, and 3 on Elite.
I wish the dev threads were coloured, but I think the current forum software doesn't allow for that.
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It is a peculiar phenomenon that we can imagine events that defy the laws of the universe.
I'm glad that the dev. team decided to react on these burning issues that have been troubling the playerbase these days. One of the most important ones is certianly this one - the difficulty level of the queues, more precisely - the advanced ones.
I personally think they should be eased up, because many casual players that play the game for simple enjoyment rather than competing and being the best found them overally too difficult and therefore unattractive to play, which hurts the end-game for everyone. Maybe reduce the number of must have optionals (can we change the name btw? sounds stupid like this) or instead of them being a fail option make them into more rewarding option if completed.
Now if I may suggest something additional - please do consider adding some of the 'must have' rewards for obtaining gear for new players/chars like the BNPs, injections, etc. as well as a minor chance of obtaining a VR R&D mats in the normal queues. I hope you seriously consider this suggestion Mr.Gray as it will be enable fresh new players the chance of slowly progresing towards their goal of being properly equipped at end-game, while at the same time learining the tricks of the end-game content on normal difficulty. I really believe this would be a big win for everyone.
All in all, thank you once again Mr.Grey, for communicating with us and for the most wellcome news.
P.S. I also want to add my voice in asking the mods. to make the 2 threads by Mr.Gray at least temporarily sticky, so players can see them as they come to the forum. The info is of great importance and I think it would be very usefull to have it clearly visible to the players.
Folks who do less than 15k DPS on Advance cant keep up with the 200k HP mobs that spawn out.
This current event is a good example... too many rifts that spew out 2 to 3 ships with 200k or more HP each... I do the event on Normal and I look at the ques... and they are mostly all dead.
You guys should review each mission que and play test em and make the code different for each que's setting. Right now the only difference is the HP of the Mobs and their stats/resists.
There was no testing or anything... in other games, devs actually play the game and complete the quest/missions to play test. If they fail they keep trying with different builds/gear till they can actually do the mission.
Show me a vid of the devs doing the Mirror Event on Advance and winning... and post the builds so we players know it's doable.
At least they are finally paying attention to us.
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The important thing to remember here is that the ability to step up from level to level--i.e. from Normal to Advanced to Elite needs to be clearly accounted for. You MUST be able to access a queue that will reward you for what you need for the next step with no gaps...not that it must reward immediately but the rewards must be materially useful for that next step or people will just surrender as they currently have and stop the attempt.
Also, please remember that hit points should not be so absurd as to be barely even doable on Normal sometimes. I am not joking--I have literally ended up in pain through my elbows and wrists due to the protracted patrol battles one right after the other, a problem I have never encountered to this extent before in my time in STO. This is especially critical when you have Geko considering what really feels like a punishment to those of us who play and love our carriers. I am not a Scimitar pilot--I am a Vesta pilot in a crowd control build, not a DPSer, and I don't want to see my play style nerfed into uselessness. I think you really need to talk to Geko and make sure you two are working together on the pets and NPC's to make sure that those of us with carriers...and who can because of all else that has happened, no longer afford ship or character changes.
Or who, sadly, have taken such a hit to our confidence that we have real worries that if we do invest, we'll just get burned.
These suggestions, as I always say, are not personal attacks. These are intended to try to help save this game from the dangerously-spiraling state that it is currently in and I hope you will take it that way.
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You want to be "appropriately geared" for these queues? Here's a few simple tips that will help, and requires no nerfing of the difficulty:
1. In PvE, run beams and run them all the same energy type (I recommend disruptor or antiproton personally). Cruisers should stick to beam arrays and escorts should use beam banks. Science ships could arguably go either way.
2. Only use a torpedo if it is giving you a set bonus with a console. Otherwise, the time it takes is not worth the damage it might do assuming their shields are actually down.
3. Use the universal consoles from the Reputation tiers. They're all better than whatever you're probably using now save for a couple of Lobi store consoles.
4. Use tactical consoles in your tactical slots only. Do not put universal consoles here, it's robbing you of damage potential. If you can't get Vulnerability Locators from a Fleet Spire, use the highest Mark and quality of console that boosts the energy type of your beams.
These are all things you should have figured out after you hit level 50. A lot of you didn't because all the content before that is so mind-numbingly easy you can use pretty much anything and get through it eventually.
I knew that eventually Cryptic would cave to all the whining about it being too hard, but I held onto a sliver of hope that they would actually force people to think about their tactics and loadouts for once. But it must be that people actually spend less money when they're doing poorly.
Vice Admiral of - Starfleet Command -
I agree 100% here.
I also want to add, I am more than pleased, down right happy, to see the crew here at Cryptic, communicating with us. This means a lot to us all.
The advanced ques should be at least doable, either by (God I hate to say this) dumbing it down for the average pugger, or have the optional failure be gone. I am going to take it from the OP's post, that this is what they are looking into.
This is great, get those people back in the Captains chairs. I've met some great people doing pugs, but if there is nothing but frustration when trying to do them, all those future friends are gone.
I haven't fought Vaadwau in space since the last set of health nerfs so I can't comment there.
The HP buffs do make it more about DPS than anything else. If you have a competent team, some space advances can be done even if each ship is doing 6-7k DPS, but take forever. Mirror event is unwinnable at that level, though. Another part of the problem is that it's a new season, so people who haven't played since the last new episode are trying advanced without realizing what's changed since then. Upgrading a single weapon to can now cost the same amount of dil as getting a new rep set item. That's a major discrepancy with that much grind / waiting / micro-transactions that I don't think will please many in the long run.
In the past you could focus your attention on multiple alts and have fun with different faction based content. Now, you're stuck in spending that same amount of time to upgrade one single character.
The ground elites are doable, though, and have been a glimmer of hope that there's still people that know how to make content challenging, but still doable if you pug. Those don't need any nerfs, in my opinion.
Three posts in two days. I'm starting to think they got the message about communication.
Thank you Charles - much appreciated.
I am looking forward to any steps that would make the game more engaging, less grinding, and ultimately something that will bring players back.
In the Podcast it was mentioned that one of the driving factors for the changes to the queues was the extreme dps a small percentage of players were able to generate.
He also mentioned that powers adjustments didn't make it into DR becomes of time.
Small changes to pets as mentioned today by Gecko is one change the anticipated, and have had the time to apply (or, if I have misread this change was more to unintended consequences).
Can you provide insight into upcoming powers 'adjustment' and how it might pertain to high dps players?
My Two Bits
Admiral Thrax
I really hope so.