ISA DPS challenge: Only use an NX-Class Ship and see if you can beat a player on the random Queue on DPS.
First run:
Race against a player in a Recluse and see if I can stay ahead of him on DPS, funny conversation ensued.
Second run:
A Jem'Hadar Dreadnough, actually decently built, close match.
Third run:
We actually wanted to see what the ship could do, after getting more used to flying it like that, this is now a real premade group.
I blame it all on my dying. Watch out for the fireworks
Obviously for comical multi-purpose missions.
Thanks to everyone involved
Was I too subtle with the title? I would have thought that would have been enough to indicate this was for entertainment more than anything else.
Welcome to game forums. I tried to be very active in one once, I no longer even want to hear that game spoken of again. That's how bad forums are. Ask the guy who designed the Odyssey.
You suck because I can't do any of those things....jealously is not a good color on some of you guys
I felt a great disturbance in the Epeen, as if millions of Egos suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly bruised. I fear something AWESOME has happened.
What equipment and doffs? The video isn't worth much without info on how it's done.
look at around 3:35. He rearranges his weapons for a bit and you can see some of his gear.
But yeah, no idea how much DPS I did, but me and 4 other peeps from the Star trek battles channel did a run of Starbase defense using T1 and 2 ships. I only splatted once, and I was the guy in a T'Varo. Granted I used the best gear I had, but still.
I would say that fighting Orions made it easy, but Orions were smart enough to target my mega torps.
I'm confused, I thought CBS said NO to end game NXs, Oberths, Mirandas and Connies! :eek:
Yeah, well... Wait until he posts videos doing 25k DPS in a Connie. The NX looks a lot like a Akira. When he digs out a TOS Connie and does that (and there's no reason why he couldn't), THAT is when the jaws hit the floor and the devs start working overtime.
I also want to reiterate that the video IS funny and awesome and I have no ill will directed at the player.
But this should sent Cryptic's systems team re-evaluating a lot of things.
Among other things, how demoralizing is it that you have people spending hundreds of dollars on upgrades and doing what is their personal best (maybe the best they can get with any amount of work) and to see a guy, no matter how skilled, doing double their numbers in a $5 ship?
I also want to reiterate that the video IS funny and awesome and I have no ill will directed at the player.
But this should sent Cryptic's systems team re-evaluating a lot of things.
Among other things, how demoralizing is it that you have people spending hundreds of dollars on upgrades and doing what is their personal best (maybe the best they can get with any amount of work) and to see a guy, no matter how skilled, doing double their numbers in a $5 ship?
Sort of puts the lie to the P2W accusations, eh?
Edit: yes that's tongue in cheek, meant humourously. But seriously, I really hate it when people say this game is P2W. Not only is it inaccurate, it misses the point.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,670Community Moderator
edited November 2014
Now... that... was...
AWESOME!!!!!
Must be one helluva build to compete. I salute the pilot of the NX. Epicness right there.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
I also want to reiterate that the video IS funny and awesome and I have no ill will directed at the player.
But this should sent Cryptic's systems team re-evaluating a lot of things.
Among other things, how demoralizing is it that you have people spending hundreds of dollars on upgrades and doing what is their personal best (maybe the best they can get with any amount of work) and to see a guy, no matter how skilled, doing double their numbers in a $5 ship?
Simple. Power is nothing without control, and gear is nothing without the skill to use it.
The fact is, only a few hundred players operate somewhat near the limit of what their build can do. Ezriryan is one of those players who can fly a ship to it's own limits, and thus, he can take a T1 and out DPS at least 95% of STO players in T5s or T6s.
The fact is, if we look at actual builds used by players, the average DPS should be approaching 15-20k DPS, or more. The fact it is actually 4-6k DPS means essentially only a few thousand players actually understand the mechanics, and only a few hundred actually use it. And of those few hundred, only a few are capable of a 20k DPS T1.
To put it into a context more suited to make me look good, take motorcycles. In videogames I have held (and probably still do hold, TBF) a worldwide class lap record at the Nurburgring, and in the real world I could take a place on merit at a Club race. (if it wasn't for it being seriously expensive)
But if you put me up against Marc Marquez he would lap me in a far shorter time than I would like.
Same in STO - if I could be bothered, and I cant otherwise I would, I could break 30k quite easily. But then, along comes a really good guy who does 25k in a ship with basically half of what mine has.
And you know what? It really is as f**king demoralising as you say.
Yeah but what kind of control and how much control scales is totally what a game designer does.
Super Mario had two buttons and a control pad and skilled players could do amazing things, sure, but you didn't have 20 buttons that a skilled player could beat the whole game in 20 seconds with.
Skill is good but you need a limit on what kind of skill you're looking for. I think STO has too much to master to be as eloquent as it could be and that the multiplicative effect of mastery (which includes coordinated teamwork) here is a sick joke.
i generally agree, but I am quite sure they will not fix it, because it would mean a major overhaul of all abilities and shiplayouts. Though that might be"the right thing to do" you probably cant sell that to a VC. Just to make a few nerds happy ;D
I just have one question: how do you not pick up your loot while playing, it's such a conditioned reflex for me.
But seriously, that was awesome.
Formerly Known as Protector from June 2008 to June 20, 2012
Please enable us to buy a token with Zen to faction change a 25th Century FED to a TOS FED.
i generally agree, but I am quite sure they will not fix it, because it would mean a major overhaul of all abilities and shiplayouts. Though that might be"the right thing to do" you probably cant sell that to a VC. Just to make a few nerds happy ;D
Alright, I am off for today, good night ;D
Get working on the all Connie video. Maybe show a Connie out-DPSing T6 ships that got pugged. I'm not convinced Cryptic can have a good response overnight but I don't think lack of a good response NOW would mean that we won't still get a BAD response now and a decent response long-term.
My focus for awhile in terms of feedback has been on trying to brainstorm ways to boost underskilled players in a way that generates Cryptic money AND doesn't dramatically increase the gains for skilled players.
The ceiling on DPS should probably come down a little but I think most of the balance may need to come from raising the floor while leaving the ceiling MOSTLY intact. They could make 100k DPS darned near impossible with a few changes. Stopping 50k would be harder. But you could conceivably have things that bring up the average to closer to 50k.
I think the ease of acquiring turnrate consoles and arc weapons were one attempt at that, as is the TR-116B on the ground. I think they'll have to start bundling this stuff into defaults for it to fully work though. One of the faults of the Star Trek Card Game was actually the (noble-intentioned) approach that they tried to combat abusive strategies and boost the power of the average player by making important power boosts and counters to abusive strategies very common. It doesn't really work though when you have too many faults that need to be compensated for, to expect players to start gearing/collecting solely around design flaws or skill gaps.
What STCCG ultimately had to do was:
- Introduce a casting cost resource system.
- Integrate some fixes into core mechanics rather than relying on cards to fix them.
- Eliminate subtle distinctions between items that were similar but had scaling distinctions.
- Simplify and reduce the number of rules considerably with an emphasis on speed and basic mastery of mechanics being competitive with advanced mastery of mechanics.
It's really too late to do any of this for DR or T6 but imagine if all T7 ships got a +5 to turnrate and an Arcx2 mod applied to all weapons. That solves piloting issues there.
Cannons and torpedos get merged into a single weapon type with torpedos treated as "kinetic dual heavy cannons" that can be equipped by any ship type.
A cap placed on number of total debuffs that may be active on a target.
One other possibility is that much like STCCG's second edition, a total overhaul on all basic BO abilities. Which are available at which tiers, for example.
I can see a lot of this accomplished by switching BOs to use kit modules rather than training and have them use space kit modules in space, effectively nuking all current abilities while replacing BO abilities with easier to monetize abilities that are modular.
I feel like the writing is on the wall in any case for BOs becoming kit module storage receptacles. That part makes too much sense not to happen.
Why solve piloting issues? They are integral to being able to extract the best out of a ship. I by no means am good with Cannons for instance, however I'm not too shabby with placement for beams, which counter to a lot of the Anti-BFAW crowd actually needs a lot of work to get the most out of your abilities.
I do find it hilarious in the mirror invasion when I'm in a crappy Guardian with Mk X Polaron's and Mk X Polaron Phase Modulator's, piecemeal gear and I'm the one out damaging that Scimitar that's taking on a single Typhoon, while I'm swatting about 20 ships heading for the station. Admittedly in the same run one guy did a runner and was 200km out from the mission area and we only got about 10 rift's closed, but that starbase was still 10/10...
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
Why solve piloting issues? They are integral to being able to extract the best out of a ship.
And by making it easier to extract the best out of a ship, you bring players closer together, which is essential for content development. If you do it right, good players don't get a nerf and maintain an advantage but weaker players do closer to what they theoretically should be doing.
Extracting value should be a relatively simple process. I would contend that gear value extraction complexity leads to wide DPS inequality.
And this leads to nerfs, systems teams getting tied up on balance tasks which force bugs to go unfixed, delayed content, and bad AI. To begin to address these things, you need to narrow the range of DPS outputs seen in players. The best way to do that is probably to trim a little off the top and a lot off the bottom so that competent numbers are easier to achieve. Skill continues to see gains but there's a smaller gap between the best and worst.
Funny thing is there are some very simple ways to fix it without doing what the current education system is doing. With that they make it so everyone's a winner, problem is not everyone is and it just leads to incompetence later in life for a lot of those people who won when they did terribly in school.
What scares me is those people are getting into jobs which they aren't qualified for, but they think they are good enough for. When they turn out a liability the legislation enacted to prevent firing of good employees for no reason, protects the poor employees from being fired even though they fail consistently.
TBH piloting is a skill, if you want to make it irrelevant just make everything a 360 arc weapon and everyone can just run about in circles doing the hula. It's not going to help beyond teaching people nothing about movement or positioning.
I went into a fair bit of detail how to go about fixing a few things recently, but due to it being a positive thread in the realm of flames at the time, no-one really looked at it or commented. Thing is to fix the game it needs an overhaul from core out, not the bandaids that are applied by nerf's on a regular basis. A lot of work to do, but would remove the power creep issues, would allow people to play better with better balance between classes etc...
However there will always be a big gap between average players and great players. The difference is motivation and skill. They have the skill and motivation to be the best, avg players don't have either initially, though some will strive to get better, others will just whine and complain they need to be spoonfed. The trap is catering for the latter.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
Well, I'd dispute the whole "participation trophy" notion of education but what I support is, basically:
Trim a little off the top. Trim a lot off the bottom. Buff content. But you won't get away with buffing content first. What you can do with a narrower range is tune content to require work but make it so that the work required is doable for more players.
Also, I'm not remotely suggesting making every weapon 360 degree. I just think you need to tune piloting to a level where the work is intuitive and doable... But is still work.
Also, the whole "dip back and turn" piloting style is something that only evolved in response to mechanical deficiencies of the game. You'd never see any canon ship fly like that and I'd argue that the design intent of the ship classes was based around a far more balanced approach where reverse wasn't really intended as a serious piloting option. It was mainly there as a convenience for anomaly scanning, not for bobbing around back and forth in combat. Making that style viable has created balance issues among the ship classes all along.
Can't really change the movement mechanics due to the limitations imposed by the engine/dev's. I don't think increasing the arc's will do anything other than promote more stupidity.
Learning the game and how to play it seems defined as optional to people these days...
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
Yeah but what kind of control and how much control scales is totally what a game designer does.
Super Mario had two buttons and a control pad and skilled players could do amazing things, sure, but you didn't have 20 buttons that a skilled player could beat the whole game in 20 seconds with.
Skill is good but you need a limit on what kind of skill you're looking for. I think STO has too much to master to be as eloquent as it could be and that the multiplicative effect of mastery (which includes coordinated teamwork) here is a sick joke.
Trouble is, STO has no sort of tutorials, and the few present are ignored by the vast majority.
The thing is, STO is really simple. Sort your power levels, sort your skill points, pick a decent boat, equip it competently. That is all advanced actually requires.
But players do not know, and to some extent refuse to care about, the basics, and instead focus on gear like it is actually significant.
It really, really is not. For a typical player, they should pick weapon type on what colour it is, because they do not operate at the level where weapon type makes a noticeable difference.
Sad perhaps, but it is the truth.
The fact is you can break 20k DPS on mission reward gear if you know what to do - but if you don't, even a Mk XIV Epic boat will not overcome the issue of not knowing how to use it.
Simple. Power is nothing without control, and gear is nothing without the skill to use it.
The fact is, only a few hundred players operate somewhat near the limit of what their build can do. Ezriryan is one of those players who can fly a ship to it's own limits, and thus, he can take a T1 and out DPS at least 95% of STO players in T5s or T6s.
The fact is, if we look at actual builds used by players, the average DPS should be approaching 15-20k DPS, or more. The fact it is actually 4-6k DPS means essentially only a few thousand players actually understand the mechanics, and only a few hundred actually use it. And of those few hundred, only a few are capable of a 20k DPS T1.
To put it into a context more suited to make me look good, take motorcycles. In videogames I have held (and probably still do hold, TBF) a worldwide class lap record at the Nurburgring, and in the real world I could take a place on merit at a Club race. (if it wasn't for it being seriously expensive)
But if you put me up against Marc Marquez he would lap me in a far shorter time than I would like.
Same in STO - if I could be bothered, and I cant otherwise I would, I could break 30k quite easily. But then, along comes a really good guy who does 25k in a ship with basically half of what mine has.
And you know what? It really is as f**king demoralising as you say.
Imho Felisean is better and a better player, more helpfull to others, less arrogant, less bragging and he holds the DPS record.
My focus for awhile in terms of feedback has been on trying to brainstorm ways to boost underskilled players in a way that generates Cryptic money AND doesn't dramatically increase the gains for skilled players.
Every game system/mechanic in STO can be described as unintuitive, needlessly complex, obfuscated, and non uniform. Attempting to learn what a skill 'actually' does requires far too much effort for the minor effect of it. Turn rate bonuses are calculated differently depending upon source, energy efficiency complicates power levels, damage bonuses can be of two types and are not uniform by source, resists for shields is calculated differently from hull and not displayed anywhere. The game actively promotes bad ship builds with randomly generated boff abilities, default loadouts, and when it gives you a ship to fly the loadout is awful.
You cannot expect a person to make an optimal decision between choices when they have no clue what the effect of those choices would be. Nor can you expect the players of a game that has created casual oriented content for years to suddenly become hardcore and put in the stupid amount of effort it takes to actually learn what those effects are.
I could write a novel on how they could better educate players and how they could streamline mechanics and UI to give better feedback to the player. I already have. It has been ignored.
Something as simply as having default ship weapons be a reasonable setup. Why does the eclipse come default with the following weapon layout: Torpedo, beam array, dual cannon, dual beam bank fore and three beam array and a torpedo aft. That is a terrible layout and will never perform very well in normal content, let alone advanced, no matter what boffs or level of gear used. Yet the player sees that as what Cryptic feels the weapons should be unless they already know better. It is inexcusable.
A simple default set of 'ghost' boff ability recommendations in the 'station tab' boff slots that would be effective when combined with a proper default weapon layout would go a long way to helping. It wouldn't have to be an optimal build just something good enough to get the player on the right track.
Something as simply as having default ship weapons be a reasonable setup. Why does the eclipse come default with the following weapon layout: Torpedo, beam array, dual cannon, dual beam bank fore and three beam array and a torpedo aft. That is a terrible layout and will never perform very well in normal content, let alone advanced, no matter what boffs or level of gear used. Yet the player sees that as what Cryptic feels the weapons should be unless they already know better. It is inexcusable.
A simple default set of 'ghost' boff ability recommendations in the 'station tab' boff slots that would be effective when combined with a proper default weapon layout would go a long way to helping. It wouldn't have to be an optimal build just something good enough to get the player on the right track.
lol. Yeah it is pretty odd the weapons that come default on a ship. like...WTF?
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
lol. Yeah it is pretty odd the weapons that come default on a ship. like...WTF?
It's really simple. Base equipment is set up like a typical ST captain would set their ship up - and with even less exceptions than STO players, canon ST captains were all n00bs by and large.
It really, really is not. For a typical player, they should pick weapon type on what colour it is, because they do not operate at the level where weapon type makes a noticeable difference.
Sad perhaps, but it is the truth.
Mine are BLUE! Then I might grind Fluid Dynamics, a mind numbingly boring mission, until they can be RED! Yaaaaaay!
There's also the benefit that people are constantly told that Polaron and Tetryon suck, so they cost less on the Exchange. Give me my blue, suckers.
Seriously though, only reason I sadface about not being able to get antiprotons without a lot of work. I like red. I don't give a hoot about the powergaming, I just want red.
You suck because I can't do any of those things....jealously is not a good color on some of you guys
I felt a great disturbance in the Epeen, as if millions of Egos suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly bruised. I fear something AWESOME has happened.
Loved the vid.
Off topic here so, sorry mods but, this poster never ceases to amaze me with the signatures they come up with.
Also, the avatar photo is nicely done as well. :cool:
Mine are BLUE! Then I might grind Fluid Dynamics, a mind numbingly boring mission, until they can be RED! Yaaaaaay!
There's also the benefit that people are constantly told that Polaron and Tetryon suck, so they cost less on the Exchange. Give me my blue, suckers.
Seriously though, only reason I sadface about not being able to get antiprotons without a lot of work. I like red. I don't give a hoot about the powergaming, I just want red.
GOOD NEWS! You can make your own via the R&D interface!
Comments
Good evening Captains,
ISA DPS challenge: Only use an NX-Class Ship and see if you can beat a player on the random Queue on DPS.
First run:
Race against a player in a Recluse and see if I can stay ahead of him on DPS, funny conversation ensued.
Second run:
A Jem'Hadar Dreadnough, actually decently built, close match.
Third run:
We actually wanted to see what the ship could do, after getting more used to flying it like that, this is now a real premade group.
I blame it all on my dying. Watch out for the fireworks
Obviously for comical multi-purpose missions.
Thanks to everyone involved
Thanks for watching!
Welcome to game forums. I tried to be very active in one once, I no longer even want to hear that game spoken of again. That's how bad forums are. Ask the guy who designed the Odyssey.
I felt a great disturbance in the Epeen, as if millions of Egos suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly bruised. I fear something AWESOME has happened.
Loved the vid.
But yeah, no idea how much DPS I did, but me and 4 other peeps from the Star trek battles channel did a run of Starbase defense using T1 and 2 ships. I only splatted once, and I was the guy in a T'Varo. Granted I used the best gear I had, but still.
I would say that fighting Orions made it easy, but Orions were smart enough to target my mega torps.
My character Tsin'xing
Yeah, well... Wait until he posts videos doing 25k DPS in a Connie. The NX looks a lot like a Akira. When he digs out a TOS Connie and does that (and there's no reason why he couldn't), THAT is when the jaws hit the floor and the devs start working overtime.
But this should sent Cryptic's systems team re-evaluating a lot of things.
Among other things, how demoralizing is it that you have people spending hundreds of dollars on upgrades and doing what is their personal best (maybe the best they can get with any amount of work) and to see a guy, no matter how skilled, doing double their numbers in a $5 ship?
Sort of puts the lie to the P2W accusations, eh?
Edit: yes that's tongue in cheek, meant humourously. But seriously, I really hate it when people say this game is P2W. Not only is it inaccurate, it misses the point.
AWESOME!!!!!
Must be one helluva build to compete. I salute the pilot of the NX. Epicness right there.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
Simple. Power is nothing without control, and gear is nothing without the skill to use it.
The fact is, only a few hundred players operate somewhat near the limit of what their build can do. Ezriryan is one of those players who can fly a ship to it's own limits, and thus, he can take a T1 and out DPS at least 95% of STO players in T5s or T6s.
The fact is, if we look at actual builds used by players, the average DPS should be approaching 15-20k DPS, or more. The fact it is actually 4-6k DPS means essentially only a few thousand players actually understand the mechanics, and only a few hundred actually use it. And of those few hundred, only a few are capable of a 20k DPS T1.
To put it into a context more suited to make me look good, take motorcycles. In videogames I have held (and probably still do hold, TBF) a worldwide class lap record at the Nurburgring, and in the real world I could take a place on merit at a Club race. (if it wasn't for it being seriously expensive)
But if you put me up against Marc Marquez he would lap me in a far shorter time than I would like.
Same in STO - if I could be bothered, and I cant otherwise I would, I could break 30k quite easily. But then, along comes a really good guy who does 25k in a ship with basically half of what mine has.
And you know what? It really is as f**king demoralising as you say.
Super Mario had two buttons and a control pad and skilled players could do amazing things, sure, but you didn't have 20 buttons that a skilled player could beat the whole game in 20 seconds with.
Skill is good but you need a limit on what kind of skill you're looking for. I think STO has too much to master to be as eloquent as it could be and that the multiplicative effect of mastery (which includes coordinated teamwork) here is a sick joke.
Alright, I am off for today, good night ;D
But seriously, that was awesome.
Please enable us to buy a token with Zen to faction change a 25th Century FED to a TOS FED.
Get working on the all Connie video. Maybe show a Connie out-DPSing T6 ships that got pugged. I'm not convinced Cryptic can have a good response overnight but I don't think lack of a good response NOW would mean that we won't still get a BAD response now and a decent response long-term.
My focus for awhile in terms of feedback has been on trying to brainstorm ways to boost underskilled players in a way that generates Cryptic money AND doesn't dramatically increase the gains for skilled players.
The ceiling on DPS should probably come down a little but I think most of the balance may need to come from raising the floor while leaving the ceiling MOSTLY intact. They could make 100k DPS darned near impossible with a few changes. Stopping 50k would be harder. But you could conceivably have things that bring up the average to closer to 50k.
I think the ease of acquiring turnrate consoles and arc weapons were one attempt at that, as is the TR-116B on the ground. I think they'll have to start bundling this stuff into defaults for it to fully work though. One of the faults of the Star Trek Card Game was actually the (noble-intentioned) approach that they tried to combat abusive strategies and boost the power of the average player by making important power boosts and counters to abusive strategies very common. It doesn't really work though when you have too many faults that need to be compensated for, to expect players to start gearing/collecting solely around design flaws or skill gaps.
What STCCG ultimately had to do was:
- Introduce a casting cost resource system.
- Integrate some fixes into core mechanics rather than relying on cards to fix them.
- Eliminate subtle distinctions between items that were similar but had scaling distinctions.
- Simplify and reduce the number of rules considerably with an emphasis on speed and basic mastery of mechanics being competitive with advanced mastery of mechanics.
It's really too late to do any of this for DR or T6 but imagine if all T7 ships got a +5 to turnrate and an Arcx2 mod applied to all weapons. That solves piloting issues there.
Cannons and torpedos get merged into a single weapon type with torpedos treated as "kinetic dual heavy cannons" that can be equipped by any ship type.
A cap placed on number of total debuffs that may be active on a target.
One other possibility is that much like STCCG's second edition, a total overhaul on all basic BO abilities. Which are available at which tiers, for example.
I can see a lot of this accomplished by switching BOs to use kit modules rather than training and have them use space kit modules in space, effectively nuking all current abilities while replacing BO abilities with easier to monetize abilities that are modular.
I feel like the writing is on the wall in any case for BOs becoming kit module storage receptacles. That part makes too much sense not to happen.
I do find it hilarious in the mirror invasion when I'm in a crappy Guardian with Mk X Polaron's and Mk X Polaron Phase Modulator's, piecemeal gear and I'm the one out damaging that Scimitar that's taking on a single Typhoon, while I'm swatting about 20 ships heading for the station. Admittedly in the same run one guy did a runner and was 200km out from the mission area and we only got about 10 rift's closed, but that starbase was still 10/10...
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
And by making it easier to extract the best out of a ship, you bring players closer together, which is essential for content development. If you do it right, good players don't get a nerf and maintain an advantage but weaker players do closer to what they theoretically should be doing.
Extracting value should be a relatively simple process. I would contend that gear value extraction complexity leads to wide DPS inequality.
And this leads to nerfs, systems teams getting tied up on balance tasks which force bugs to go unfixed, delayed content, and bad AI. To begin to address these things, you need to narrow the range of DPS outputs seen in players. The best way to do that is probably to trim a little off the top and a lot off the bottom so that competent numbers are easier to achieve. Skill continues to see gains but there's a smaller gap between the best and worst.
What scares me is those people are getting into jobs which they aren't qualified for, but they think they are good enough for. When they turn out a liability the legislation enacted to prevent firing of good employees for no reason, protects the poor employees from being fired even though they fail consistently.
TBH piloting is a skill, if you want to make it irrelevant just make everything a 360 arc weapon and everyone can just run about in circles doing the hula. It's not going to help beyond teaching people nothing about movement or positioning.
I went into a fair bit of detail how to go about fixing a few things recently, but due to it being a positive thread in the realm of flames at the time, no-one really looked at it or commented. Thing is to fix the game it needs an overhaul from core out, not the bandaids that are applied by nerf's on a regular basis. A lot of work to do, but would remove the power creep issues, would allow people to play better with better balance between classes etc...
However there will always be a big gap between average players and great players. The difference is motivation and skill. They have the skill and motivation to be the best, avg players don't have either initially, though some will strive to get better, others will just whine and complain they need to be spoonfed. The trap is catering for the latter.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
Trim a little off the top. Trim a lot off the bottom. Buff content. But you won't get away with buffing content first. What you can do with a narrower range is tune content to require work but make it so that the work required is doable for more players.
Also, the whole "dip back and turn" piloting style is something that only evolved in response to mechanical deficiencies of the game. You'd never see any canon ship fly like that and I'd argue that the design intent of the ship classes was based around a far more balanced approach where reverse wasn't really intended as a serious piloting option. It was mainly there as a convenience for anomaly scanning, not for bobbing around back and forth in combat. Making that style viable has created balance issues among the ship classes all along.
Learning the game and how to play it seems defined as optional to people these days...
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
Trouble is, STO has no sort of tutorials, and the few present are ignored by the vast majority.
The thing is, STO is really simple. Sort your power levels, sort your skill points, pick a decent boat, equip it competently. That is all advanced actually requires.
But players do not know, and to some extent refuse to care about, the basics, and instead focus on gear like it is actually significant.
It really, really is not. For a typical player, they should pick weapon type on what colour it is, because they do not operate at the level where weapon type makes a noticeable difference.
Sad perhaps, but it is the truth.
The fact is you can break 20k DPS on mission reward gear if you know what to do - but if you don't, even a Mk XIV Epic boat will not overcome the issue of not knowing how to use it.
Imho Felisean is better and a better player, more helpfull to others, less arrogant, less bragging and he holds the DPS record.
Every game system/mechanic in STO can be described as unintuitive, needlessly complex, obfuscated, and non uniform. Attempting to learn what a skill 'actually' does requires far too much effort for the minor effect of it. Turn rate bonuses are calculated differently depending upon source, energy efficiency complicates power levels, damage bonuses can be of two types and are not uniform by source, resists for shields is calculated differently from hull and not displayed anywhere. The game actively promotes bad ship builds with randomly generated boff abilities, default loadouts, and when it gives you a ship to fly the loadout is awful.
You cannot expect a person to make an optimal decision between choices when they have no clue what the effect of those choices would be. Nor can you expect the players of a game that has created casual oriented content for years to suddenly become hardcore and put in the stupid amount of effort it takes to actually learn what those effects are.
I could write a novel on how they could better educate players and how they could streamline mechanics and UI to give better feedback to the player. I already have. It has been ignored.
Something as simply as having default ship weapons be a reasonable setup. Why does the eclipse come default with the following weapon layout: Torpedo, beam array, dual cannon, dual beam bank fore and three beam array and a torpedo aft. That is a terrible layout and will never perform very well in normal content, let alone advanced, no matter what boffs or level of gear used. Yet the player sees that as what Cryptic feels the weapons should be unless they already know better. It is inexcusable.
A simple default set of 'ghost' boff ability recommendations in the 'station tab' boff slots that would be effective when combined with a proper default weapon layout would go a long way to helping. It wouldn't have to be an optimal build just something good enough to get the player on the right track.
lol. Yeah it is pretty odd the weapons that come default on a ship. like...WTF?
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
It's really simple. Base equipment is set up like a typical ST captain would set their ship up - and with even less exceptions than STO players, canon ST captains were all n00bs by and large.
Mine are BLUE! Then I might grind Fluid Dynamics, a mind numbingly boring mission, until they can be RED! Yaaaaaay!
There's also the benefit that people are constantly told that Polaron and Tetryon suck, so they cost less on the Exchange. Give me my blue, suckers.
Seriously though, only reason I sadface about not being able to get antiprotons without a lot of work. I like red. I don't give a hoot about the powergaming, I just want red.
Off topic here so, sorry mods but, this poster never ceases to amaze me with the signatures they come up with.
Also, the avatar photo is nicely done as well. :cool:
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
My character Tsin'xing
Not to mention you can also grind Sphere of Influence for a 360 degree red beam and a warp core that gives a red beam boost of 10%.
It also gains [AMP] when upgraded, meaning it doesn't lack that disadvantage any more.