And if they don't bother, should they be queuing for anything called Advanced? That's the only place where we disagree.
Actually we do agree on that, but until Cryptic allows them to get their BNPs in another fashion (on some of them) or gates them with some kind of arbitrary doorway... people will queue for them and fail.
So really the best thing would create a Normal mission, compete the optional, the reward for the optional is a single BNP, and only for the optional competion in the normal queues.
But since it's painfully obvious Cryptic is against this on some level, the other option is to gate Advanced somehow so they can get their BNPs without totally ruining it for the rest of us.
The other issue is, in which I'm agreement with, is that it's almost impossible to go into these missions with any gear above episode gear and do so poorly you only do 5k, and yet people do that all the time. It boggles my mind, but I just saw it in a MU normal. where not only were they doing poor dps, they blew up multiple times.
So it's obvious people are doing poorly in the game, and just don't care to improve.
You do remember that this is just a video game right? That people play for fun? Who bloody cares what DPS they do, what missions they fail miserably, ships, careers or marks of gear?
Those 'incompetent' players you keep running down for holding teams back or not getting the best out of a ship they fly are still having fun. So they are doing it right. You can't judge other players simply because their idea of fun is not yours.
Why do you lot take this stuff so seriously? It's a game! Have a laugh, blow up a few times, chuck any old junk onto any old ship and dive right in. It really isn't important.
Yeah, being carried makes things easy, who would have thought it. Personally, I think normal is too easy, advanced is too hard, elite I haven't even tried, but it seems suited to its audience from what I've read.
I think having normal as it is (maybe a touch tougher) makes it training for the core mechanics
Advanced, the introduction of the optionals (without necessary completion, obviously decent mark bonuses if they're done, but no fail state), effectively makes them training for elite
Then, elite is elite.
I think this would be a more sensible and appeasing approach.
You always have to remember there is a star trek fan playerbase who are not gamers.
Picture a 60-year-old who hasn't learned how to use folders and I don't say that flaming.
I am talking about that having been the premise and main concept of the game - that you could play fresh on elite at 50 allowing you to use whatever you wanted and do whatever you wanted so the casuals had a home here.
If you want to melt your credit for zen to dil and spend a few million dil to rebuy your old gear you can go pvp..
Same people who got the finger on the story part - first having to grind 4 months in between each mission but just as importantly YOU CANT PLAY WITH YOUR FRIENDS in a MULTPLAYER GAME.
Talk about stupid decisions and budget coding.
I am by no means a casual game and I laugh at the concept of "story" but we all know how a fundamental part of STO both elements are
Well everyone except THE DEVELOPERS
They could just have kept or even done as they said "current advanced is old elite", keep dil and let BNP drop so everyone can get them on all difficulties.
I mean are they that pitiful anticipating someone would farm BNP on normal and break their little metrics of average player time jesus f... christ gimme a break
Hey everyone let's turn the NPC health up to 4,000,0000 on normal because we have no concept of our own game then we'll look real awesome and competent coming out of the biggest content drought and weakest release post f2p !!!11
Whoever is in charge, duct tape him to an office chair and kick him over a cliff then he will know what it's like being a player
some advanced are ok, not easy but certainly doable, others are just way to easy to fail.
now I would not say they are too hard its more that there are way too many things that can cause a fail.
I don't know if its that maybe some things that were once optional for bonuses now are made mandetry or what but sometimes they seem to fail within seconds of starting.
I guess they have all been made slightly more difficult and that's ok but some are just impossible and that's definitely not ok.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
This is like saying Nurburgring isn't difficult while you're in the passenger seat and a professional dirver is actually driving the car...
Actually, as rough b*****d tarmacked courses go, the 'Ring is a nice place. It is like a nice B-road once you learn it. Just with even less run off and mega speeds.
Really, the residents are what you worry about, people in a massive array of kit from barryied up Golfs to buses to full on supercars/superbikes, all sharing the same bit of tarmac. Fly around, your knee on the deck and some Cee yoU Next Tuesday is on your backside everywhere.
But it is a nice place. I like it a lot.
The IOM TT you need to be insane to do. That is difficult, if I will ever ride there I will settle for completeing one decent pace lap, f**k racing there...
Those 'incompetent' players you keep running down for holding teams back or not getting the best out of a ship they fly are still having fun. So they are doing it right. You can't judge other players simply because their idea of fun is not yours.
You do realize that even my highest DPS ship is not DPS optimized? I am one of those "fun" people (I like to have torpedoes. I don't know why, I just do). I would have to change, I think 5(!) things to optimize my main character's DPS, and I have no desire to do so. Luckily, my main can hit over 20k and my sci alts (which I love) are 10-15k. If not, I wouldn't queue for Advanced.
I don't spend a ton of time testing, tweaking, checking, none of that. At most, I think "maybe I should try x" and look it up to see if it's complete garbage or not.
I didn't even try Advanced when it hit, because I didn't want to be "that guy" who ruins it for everyone. Someone had to drag me into it (especially with one of my sci alts). It's not insulting. I see Advanced as having an advanced build and advanced tactics. If one's fun does not include this, why are they ruining someone elses idea of "fun?"
I didn't even upload parses or join the DPS channels until very recently, because I didn't feel the need to. I still rarely parse runs, unless someone asks me beforehand to do so.
Having fun is fine. It's what I do. I know that any hardcore DPS member would cringe looking at my builds. I know how to change them for max DPS, but that's not my idea of fun. That also means that I'm locking myself out of Elite content. I'm not going to jump into an Elite queue when I'm not built for it. That's the difference. Once you join other people, if your "fun" is detrimental to them, I see a problem, don't you?
My belief is that Advanced difficulty fails at its purpose to be the entry point in which a new level 50 character can strive to obtain his/her first high performance endgame gear set.
For many, the needed currency for that is the Borg Neural Processor. You need several of those to be able to shoot for a decent endgame survivability set, the Borg Assimilated set. It's kind of where you can get started before branching out and getting better stuff.
And from there, it becomes a question of the chicken and the egg. If you cannot gain the currency to try to get the better gear which might allow you a better chance to pull your weight in an advanced STF... how are you supposed to make this work? The majority of the casual people queue for instances, without the benefit of a channel/fleet to find teams that might be able to pull off the teamwork neccessary to bear up with the higher numbers of NPCs, their higher damage and resilience, and the stricter win condition Advanced offers over pre-DR Elite.
For my part, I'm exceptionally well geared on my Fed and Romulan characters, Especially the Fed one, whom not only has Mk14 stuff, but mostly UR with epic gear here and there. Still, my Fed character avoids going in Advanced because of how unfeasibly hard it is - the bloated HP are particularily frustrating to pound at and the fail condition on the optionals (optional meaning, well, that it should be optional) is just one more turn off. My Klingon character, whom is a recent level 50 that I got motivated in playing due to the cool KDF ships included in the Delta pack, has been unable to get geared up through Advanced STFs for the reasons I've outlined above.
That's how I feel the game stands right now. I feel Advanced badly needs to get tuned back to what Elite was before. Removing the fail condition on optional would at least allow Infected Space Advanced to be doable for a larger margin of people if they devoted the time and were patient enough about the respawning to keep trying. Other queued instances, like Cure or Khitomer, already had a fail condition - which I feel was enough. And then, there are the higher number of critter and their bloated HP buffers - they're tweaked in a way that makes it exceptionally hard to manage enemy numbers simply because you. can't. kill. the. in. time! The high numbers don't feel tougher, they just make me impatient and frustrated.
I played Guildwars2 before. It was a gorgeous looking game, and the gameplay could've been great, except that most of the combat had you bear up with ridiculously high buffers of HP - Dungeons made this even worse. Because of that, I don't play Guildwars 2 anymore. Neverwinter, by comparison, gets the action combat right in terms of balancing difficulty so that it can be viscerally satisfying.
If people keep having to do ridiculous amounts of effort to get thier carrot, they're eventually going to be turned off. I'm hardly a scrub, and I've been with STO for four years, but I'm at the point where I'm wondering if it's worth doing all this stupidly hard grinding - whereas I could just step away/log in to do my minimum Doffing/rep projects and bide my time until Cryptic pulls together.
You do realize that even my highest DPS ship is not DPS optimized? I am one of those "fun" people (I like to have torpedoes. I don't know why, I just do). I would have to change, I think 5(!) things to optimize my main character's DPS, and I have no desire to do so. Luckily, my main can hit over 20k and my sci alts (which I love) are 10-15k. If not, I wouldn't queue for Advanced.
I don't spend a ton of time testing, tweaking, checking, none of that. At most, I think "maybe I should try x" and look it up to see if it's complete garbage or not.
I didn't even try Advanced when it hit, because I didn't want to be "that guy" who ruins it for everyone. Someone had to drag me into it (especially with one of my sci alts). It's not insulting. I see Advanced as having an advanced build and advanced tactics. If one's fun does not include this, why are they ruining someone elses idea of "fun?"
I didn't even upload parses or join the DPS channels until very recently, because I didn't feel the need to. I still rarely parse runs, unless someone asks me beforehand to do so.
Having fun is fine. It's what I do. I know that any hardcore DPS member would cringe looking at my builds. I know how to change them for max DPS, but that's not my idea of fun. That also means that I'm locking myself out of Elite content. I'm not going to jump into an Elite queue when I'm not built for it. That's the difference. Once you join other people, if your "fun" is detrimental to them, I see a problem, don't you?
You do realise you are still basically saying, 'People that aren't up to a certain level are not allowed to play half the games content or to have any chance at alot of the favoured rep gears' sorry, that is not your decision, nor anyone elses in the game, it would be up to the devs and they have not made it that way, if you are so good, you can just carry those that aren't up to your standards, consider it an extra level of challenge, or just don't PUG and stop belittling other players.
Before DR the majority of players combat logs I saw suggested that on average people were doing 3-5k DPS. It doesn't matter how easy some people consider it to achieve a certain DPS, obviously not everyone finds it that easy else they would be doing more, or maybe not everyone cares what the DPS is, they just want to play a game.
It is a game, for fun, not anything important, it will still be there tomorrow, if you fail one run it doesn't mean you can never redo it, why stress? Help people that fail and maybe they won't fail again, instead of arrogantly scoffing at them and posting insulting threads
You do realise you are still basically saying, 'People that aren't up to a certain level are not allowed to play half the games content
Is this ridiculous? "I am not an advanced player, in any sense of the word. I'm going to queue for advanced content." That just makes no sense to me, unless someone is intentionally trolling people.
or to have any chance at alot of the favoured rep gears' sorry, that is not your decision, nor anyone elses in the game, it would be up to the devs and they have not made it that way,
The developers tying certain rewards to certain things is not my fault. Or any player's fault. Why would completely changing something to be easier make more sense than adding rewards (you feel are appropriate) to a lower level mission? If the skill level of Normal deserves these "Advanced" rewards, that would be the problem.
This is not "you can't have this." This is "you are not yet at the level to have this RIGHT NOW." You get more powerful just by leveling. Or upgrading. You don't have to change a single item on your ship, or gain any more skill to be more advanced, as long as you don't mind waiting.
if you are so good, you can just carry those that aren't up to your standards, consider it an extra level of challenge, or just don't PUG and stop belittling other players.
I must be saying this in the wrong way. Or people don't believe me. Or they want to think otherwise. I'm not sure which it is:
I don't care how people play. I don't even fully optimize MYSELF. However, not being optimal means that you aren't as advanced as others. If you aren't what one would consider "advanced," I don't think its appropriate to join anything called "advanced." I'm not sure how that is insulting. Who cares what 1k DPS people do, or 100k DPS people do to have fun- if it doesn't affect you. Joining something above your skill/build level affects everyone else on the team.
Before DR the majority of players combat logs I saw suggested that on average people were doing 3-5k DPS. It doesn't matter how easy some people consider it to achieve a certain DPS, obviously not everyone finds it that easy else they would be doing more, or maybe not everyone cares what the DPS is, they just want to play a game.
After DR, with ship upgrades, gear upgrades, specializations, and ship traits, it's higher without gaining any skill whatsoever. 5K pre-DR is higher now, assuming one has leveled, upgraded their ship or weapons, etc. You can't just use pre-DR levels anymore. Power creep has affected everyone who is playing normally. I assume this is why the queues were changed. Because 3k pre-DR is, what....5k now? Just by upgrading things and/or gaining levels.
I'm not a "DPS is everything" person, but if you look at a parse, you get a decent idea of what happened or went wrong.
It is a game, for fun, not anything important, it will still be there tomorrow, if you fail one run it doesn't mean you can never redo it, why stress? Help people that fail and maybe they won't fail again, instead of arrogantly scoffing at them and posting insulting threads
People doing the ridiculously low DPS (1-3k) don't care to be helped. We're not talking about the normal/average player (post-DR, 8-12k). We're talking about people barely able to compete in Normal, and are queuing for Advanced. There is no way they want help, or think they belong in those queues. They just want rewards. The average "I don't care about DPS, but I know how to play the game" people are absolutely able to complete Advanced STFs.
It is not fun to queue for something, and have it stop after 2 minutes because of someone else. The average player is more penalized by this, because of the "Fail cooldown."
At any rate, one can become more "advanced" simply by waiting and doing other things. Do you need BNPs right now? If you wait until you hit 55, you'll be much more "advanced" without doing anything other than gaining levels.
Random PUGs. 3 tries with same ship. All 3 times, I parsed it. All 3 times I was highest DPS (7500, 8200, 8500), and all others were lower than 5k, with most under 3k (and 1 person on two of them at 1k) All 3 failed.
No T6 ships. I didnt check to see if any were T5u.
You do realize that even my highest DPS ship is not DPS optimized? I am one of those "fun" people (I like to have torpedoes. I don't know why, I just do). I would have to change, I think 5(!) things to optimize my main character's DPS, and I have no desire to do so. Luckily, my main can hit over 20k and my sci alts (which I love) are 10-15k. If not, I wouldn't queue for Advanced.
I don't spend a ton of time testing, tweaking, checking, none of that. At most, I think "maybe I should try x" and look it up to see if it's complete garbage or not.
I didn't even try Advanced when it hit, because I didn't want to be "that guy" who ruins it for everyone. Someone had to drag me into it (especially with one of my sci alts). It's not insulting. I see Advanced as having an advanced build and advanced tactics. If one's fun does not include this, why are they ruining someone elses idea of "fun?"
I didn't even upload parses or join the DPS channels until very recently, because I didn't feel the need to. I still rarely parse runs, unless someone asks me beforehand to do so.
Having fun is fine. It's what I do. I know that any hardcore DPS member would cringe looking at my builds. I know how to change them for max DPS, but that's not my idea of fun. That also means that I'm locking myself out of Elite content. I'm not going to jump into an Elite queue when I'm not built for it. That's the difference. Once you join other people, if your "fun" is detrimental to them, I see a problem, don't you?
I'm with you all the way on this.
I was leveling up my T5-U Vesta, the other day. I use a particularly 'fun' setup for it. My primary attack are Reverse Tractor Beam Repulsors, along with near 300 Particle Gens, and Torps. Activate RTBR, move forward a bit, watch foes trail behind you, unleash hefty Torp/Mine barrage, profit! It's an unusually aft-oriented technique I thought of myself.
My setup is fun. But I'm sure a Tact, doing his usual, boring BFAW, will do better DPS. So, there I was, doing Argala, thinking "Too bad I can't bring this into an Advanced." And that is sad, really, as nothing but the rawest DPS gets rewarded in this game.
Advanced is old Elite. Is it difficult - no. Does it reward Rep Special items (where available) yes. Can it be done by a T1 ship? Yep, albeit only by the very best players. Is the average player still somewhat incompetent, yes. Could the average player's build cope just fine if it wasn't for them holding it back, definitely.
The content, with the exception of Hive Space Elite, left Tribble needing buffs because it is not at the level advertised. Except Normal, that is at the level advertised.
My only argument with these parts is, no advanced is not the same as old elites.
If it were, than a whole group of 3k dpsers would make it look easy.
And normal supposedly being the equivalent in lvl to old elites, well it seems weaker than the old elites and, dare I say it seems even weaker than the old normal as well.
But, otherwise yes competent player's with experience, could/should be able to handle advanced, even flying a weaker so to speak ship.
Random PUGs. 3 tries with same ship. All 3 times, I parsed it. All 3 times I was highest DPS (7500, 8200, 8500), and all others were lower than 5k, with most under 3k (and 1 person on two of them at 1k) All 3 failed.
No T6 ships. I didnt check to see if any were T5u.
How surprising. You take getting carried out and now it's not so easy.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Random PUGs. 3 tries with same ship. All 3 times, I parsed it. All 3 times I was highest DPS (7500, 8200, 8500), and all others were lower than 5k, with most under 3k (and 1 person on two of them at 1k) All 3 failed.
No T6 ships. I didnt check to see if any were T5u.
Those #'s look to be about the normal average pug and, with that in mind it shows just how drastically it can effect you own personal dps #'s.
These are what quite a few people try to explain, as what they use for a normal benchmark testing and, not testing with a well lubed group!
But, either way I get what you are trying to point out to other's so, don't feel alone.
Random PUGs. 3 tries with same ship. All 3 times, I parsed it. All 3 times I was highest DPS (7500, 8200, 8500), and all others were lower than 5k, with most under 3k (and 1 person on two of them at 1k) All 3 failed.
No T6 ships. I didnt check to see if any were T5u.
I appreciate you taking the challenge and posting back about these. My personal experience now is only on crystalline and ISA. I don't have any trouble with these as I am using and leveling my GW Vesta. Also the groups in these are much much much better than the other missions as there is a little bit of knowledge.
In fact the mission that caused me to retire from other pugs was bug hunt (and borg disconnected). These are an absolute pug nightmare. Most pugs I've been in can not kill the final queen no matter if given 100 hours. I can not solo it. I can only get it halfway there before running out of saves.
Most disconnected runs fail in the first wave with all ships going to the same section and then only helping 5 or 6 borg there. I would recommend trying these 2 and the 3 min azure rescue to get a complete sense of the pug experience advanced. Oh and give Rhiho station a try for a laugh. GL getting those 6 scientists in 3 min unless you can solo them.
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."
Ya, right. DOFF levelled, because grinding or buying all purple BOFFs and Marion is sooo much faster than gringing all the reps and R&D schools.
DOFF levelled, because I was using it for dil farming, honestly. I still would be, if not for saying "I can use a fresh 50 and beat ISA with any random 10dps channel team." I didn't buy anything except what I stated. No Marion for me.
How surprising. You take getting carried out and now it's not so easy.
You do understand, that there were 2 fresh 50s on that team, right? The average DPS of the 2 fresh 50s was 8k, which is enough to complete the mission.
Not getting carried is different than trying to carry 4 people, no?
My only argument with these parts is, no advanced is not the same as old elites.
If it were, than a whole group of 3k dpsers would make it look easy.
And normal supposedly being the equivalent in lvl to old elites, well it seems weaker than the old elites and, dare I say it seems even weaker than the old normal as well.
But, otherwise yes competent player's with experience, could/should be able to handle advanced, even flying a weaker so to speak ship.
3k is now officially one fifth of a T1 ship's potential before debuffs - someone only doing 3k does not belong in anything to do with grouped content, not even in Normal. And certainly not Advanced or Elite.
In fact, to only do 3k DPS means you are actively doing something to reduce your DPS, as a T1 ship could reasonably expect 5-7k DPS now, let alone if it is a Torpboat NX flown by Ezriryan where 25k DPS has been done in ISA.
In many ways, that very fact sums up STO - on paper, you are good amongst STO players for parsing 10k, while a T1 flown right can parse more than double that.
And Advanced is set up to only require the DPS of half that NX. The content really did leave Tribble needing buffs.
Those #'s look to be about the normal average pug and, with that in mind it shows just how drastically it can effect you own personal dps #'s.
These are what quite a few people try to explain, as what they use for a normal benchmark testing and, not testing with a well lubed group!
But, either way I get what you are trying to point out to other's so, don't feel alone.
I'm being honest. I'm not trying to belittle anyone, or be contrary.
The others in the PUGs I was in did not seem to know what they were doing at all. This is my main point. The majority could not complete Normal. This is not "too hard," it's like the Mirror Invasion; "too troll'd." I don't believe they represented the average player.
3k is now officially one fifth of a T1 ship's potential before debuffs - someone only doing 3k does not belong in anything to do with grouped content, not even in Normal. And certainly not Advanced or Elite.
EXACTLY. These are not the "average" players. Who cares what people do to have fun, but I really don't want them having their fun as my surprise teammates.
I'm being honest. I'm not trying to belittle anyone, or be contrary.
The others in the PUGs I was in did not seem to know what they were doing at all. This is my main point. The majority could not complete Normal. This is not "too hard," it's like the Mirror Invasion; "too troll'd." I don't believe they represented the average player.
Lol, you need get out and do more pugs!
99.9% of all my queues are pug runs and, what you just said is a factor of about 75-90% of all my pug experiences for well over 2 years now!
While the other 10-25% is being somehow mixed in with, omg actual good or, at least experienced player's.
EXACTLY. These are not the "average" players. Who cares what people do to have fun, but I really don't want them having their fun as my surprise teammates.
Yep. No one cares what you do in single player content, but when you enter a teamed queue you are no longer in single player content, and you must pull your weight or better. In STO, that means DPS. (or certain actions in between DPS)
3k is now officially one fifth of a T1 ship's potential before debuffs - someone only doing 3k does not belong in anything to do with grouped content, not even in Normal. And certainly not Advanced or Elite.
In fact, to only do 3k DPS means you are actively doing something to reduce your DPS, as a T1 ship could reasonably expect 5-7k DPS now, let alone if it is a Torpboat NX flown by Ezriryan where 25k DPS has been done in ISA.
In many ways, that very fact sums up STO - on paper, you are good amongst STO players for parsing 10k, while a T1 flown right can parse more than double that.
And Advanced is set up to only require the DPS of half that NX. The content really did leave Tribble needing buffs.
You keep saying this but have yet to convince me. How can anyone possibly be shooting 100% of the time to maintain that DPS rating ? Are you reading the logs averaged mission DPS or just looking at the average DPS until the target explodes ?
You keep saying this but have yet to convince me. How can anyone possibly be shooting 100% of the time to maintain that DPS rating ? Are you reading the logs averaged mission DPS or just looking at the average DPS until the target explodes ?
A1) I don't need to convince you, it is the truth, A2) you can easily complete ISA without needing to ever stop firing, part of why it is used as the DPS standard candle, A3) DPS = Damage per second = equals total damage divided by total time for an STF - other contexts may vary.
Comments
Actually we do agree on that, but until Cryptic allows them to get their BNPs in another fashion (on some of them) or gates them with some kind of arbitrary doorway... people will queue for them and fail.
So really the best thing would create a Normal mission, compete the optional, the reward for the optional is a single BNP, and only for the optional competion in the normal queues.
But since it's painfully obvious Cryptic is against this on some level, the other option is to gate Advanced somehow so they can get their BNPs without totally ruining it for the rest of us.
The other issue is, in which I'm agreement with, is that it's almost impossible to go into these missions with any gear above episode gear and do so poorly you only do 5k, and yet people do that all the time. It boggles my mind, but I just saw it in a MU normal. where not only were they doing poor dps, they blew up multiple times.
So it's obvious people are doing poorly in the game, and just don't care to improve.
You do remember that this is just a video game right? That people play for fun? Who bloody cares what DPS they do, what missions they fail miserably, ships, careers or marks of gear?
Those 'incompetent' players you keep running down for holding teams back or not getting the best out of a ship they fly are still having fun. So they are doing it right. You can't judge other players simply because their idea of fun is not yours.
Why do you lot take this stuff so seriously? It's a game! Have a laugh, blow up a few times, chuck any old junk onto any old ship and dive right in. It really isn't important.
I think having normal as it is (maybe a touch tougher) makes it training for the core mechanics
Advanced, the introduction of the optionals (without necessary completion, obviously decent mark bonuses if they're done, but no fail state), effectively makes them training for elite
Then, elite is elite.
I think this would be a more sensible and appeasing approach.
Picture a 60-year-old who hasn't learned how to use folders and I don't say that flaming.
I am talking about that having been the premise and main concept of the game - that you could play fresh on elite at 50 allowing you to use whatever you wanted and do whatever you wanted so the casuals had a home here.
If you want to melt your credit for zen to dil and spend a few million dil to rebuy your old gear you can go pvp..
Same people who got the finger on the story part - first having to grind 4 months in between each mission but just as importantly YOU CANT PLAY WITH YOUR FRIENDS in a MULTPLAYER GAME.
Talk about stupid decisions and budget coding.
I am by no means a casual game and I laugh at the concept of "story" but we all know how a fundamental part of STO both elements are
Well everyone except THE DEVELOPERS
They could just have kept or even done as they said "current advanced is old elite", keep dil and let BNP drop so everyone can get them on all difficulties.
I mean are they that pitiful anticipating someone would farm BNP on normal and break their little metrics of average player time jesus f... christ gimme a break
Hey everyone let's turn the NPC health up to 4,000,0000 on normal because we have no concept of our own game then we'll look real awesome and competent coming out of the biggest content drought and weakest release post f2p !!!11
Whoever is in charge, duct tape him to an office chair and kick him over a cliff then he will know what it's like being a player
now I would not say they are too hard its more that there are way too many things that can cause a fail.
I don't know if its that maybe some things that were once optional for bonuses now are made mandetry or what but sometimes they seem to fail within seconds of starting.
I guess they have all been made slightly more difficult and that's ok but some are just impossible and that's definitely not ok.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Actually, as rough b*****d tarmacked courses go, the 'Ring is a nice place. It is like a nice B-road once you learn it. Just with even less run off and mega speeds.
Really, the residents are what you worry about, people in a massive array of kit from barryied up Golfs to buses to full on supercars/superbikes, all sharing the same bit of tarmac. Fly around, your knee on the deck and some Cee yoU Next Tuesday is on your backside everywhere.
But it is a nice place. I like it a lot.
The IOM TT you need to be insane to do. That is difficult, if I will ever ride there I will settle for completeing one decent pace lap, f**k racing there...
You do realize that even my highest DPS ship is not DPS optimized? I am one of those "fun" people (I like to have torpedoes. I don't know why, I just do). I would have to change, I think 5(!) things to optimize my main character's DPS, and I have no desire to do so. Luckily, my main can hit over 20k and my sci alts (which I love) are 10-15k. If not, I wouldn't queue for Advanced.
I don't spend a ton of time testing, tweaking, checking, none of that. At most, I think "maybe I should try x" and look it up to see if it's complete garbage or not.
I didn't even try Advanced when it hit, because I didn't want to be "that guy" who ruins it for everyone. Someone had to drag me into it (especially with one of my sci alts). It's not insulting. I see Advanced as having an advanced build and advanced tactics. If one's fun does not include this, why are they ruining someone elses idea of "fun?"
I didn't even upload parses or join the DPS channels until very recently, because I didn't feel the need to. I still rarely parse runs, unless someone asks me beforehand to do so.
Having fun is fine. It's what I do. I know that any hardcore DPS member would cringe looking at my builds. I know how to change them for max DPS, but that's not my idea of fun. That also means that I'm locking myself out of Elite content. I'm not going to jump into an Elite queue when I'm not built for it. That's the difference. Once you join other people, if your "fun" is detrimental to them, I see a problem, don't you?
For many, the needed currency for that is the Borg Neural Processor. You need several of those to be able to shoot for a decent endgame survivability set, the Borg Assimilated set. It's kind of where you can get started before branching out and getting better stuff.
And from there, it becomes a question of the chicken and the egg. If you cannot gain the currency to try to get the better gear which might allow you a better chance to pull your weight in an advanced STF... how are you supposed to make this work? The majority of the casual people queue for instances, without the benefit of a channel/fleet to find teams that might be able to pull off the teamwork neccessary to bear up with the higher numbers of NPCs, their higher damage and resilience, and the stricter win condition Advanced offers over pre-DR Elite.
For my part, I'm exceptionally well geared on my Fed and Romulan characters, Especially the Fed one, whom not only has Mk14 stuff, but mostly UR with epic gear here and there. Still, my Fed character avoids going in Advanced because of how unfeasibly hard it is - the bloated HP are particularily frustrating to pound at and the fail condition on the optionals (optional meaning, well, that it should be optional) is just one more turn off. My Klingon character, whom is a recent level 50 that I got motivated in playing due to the cool KDF ships included in the Delta pack, has been unable to get geared up through Advanced STFs for the reasons I've outlined above.
That's how I feel the game stands right now. I feel Advanced badly needs to get tuned back to what Elite was before. Removing the fail condition on optional would at least allow Infected Space Advanced to be doable for a larger margin of people if they devoted the time and were patient enough about the respawning to keep trying. Other queued instances, like Cure or Khitomer, already had a fail condition - which I feel was enough. And then, there are the higher number of critter and their bloated HP buffers - they're tweaked in a way that makes it exceptionally hard to manage enemy numbers simply because you. can't. kill. the. in. time! The high numbers don't feel tougher, they just make me impatient and frustrated.
I played Guildwars2 before. It was a gorgeous looking game, and the gameplay could've been great, except that most of the combat had you bear up with ridiculously high buffers of HP - Dungeons made this even worse. Because of that, I don't play Guildwars 2 anymore. Neverwinter, by comparison, gets the action combat right in terms of balancing difficulty so that it can be viscerally satisfying.
If people keep having to do ridiculous amounts of effort to get thier carrot, they're eventually going to be turned off. I'm hardly a scrub, and I've been with STO for four years, but I'm at the point where I'm wondering if it's worth doing all this stupidly hard grinding - whereas I could just step away/log in to do my minimum Doffing/rep projects and bide my time until Cryptic pulls together.
You do realise you are still basically saying, 'People that aren't up to a certain level are not allowed to play half the games content or to have any chance at alot of the favoured rep gears' sorry, that is not your decision, nor anyone elses in the game, it would be up to the devs and they have not made it that way, if you are so good, you can just carry those that aren't up to your standards, consider it an extra level of challenge, or just don't PUG and stop belittling other players.
Before DR the majority of players combat logs I saw suggested that on average people were doing 3-5k DPS. It doesn't matter how easy some people consider it to achieve a certain DPS, obviously not everyone finds it that easy else they would be doing more, or maybe not everyone cares what the DPS is, they just want to play a game.
It is a game, for fun, not anything important, it will still be there tomorrow, if you fail one run it doesn't mean you can never redo it, why stress? Help people that fail and maybe they won't fail again, instead of arrogantly scoffing at them and posting insulting threads
Is this ridiculous? "I am not an advanced player, in any sense of the word. I'm going to queue for advanced content." That just makes no sense to me, unless someone is intentionally trolling people.
The developers tying certain rewards to certain things is not my fault. Or any player's fault. Why would completely changing something to be easier make more sense than adding rewards (you feel are appropriate) to a lower level mission? If the skill level of Normal deserves these "Advanced" rewards, that would be the problem.
This is not "you can't have this." This is "you are not yet at the level to have this RIGHT NOW." You get more powerful just by leveling. Or upgrading. You don't have to change a single item on your ship, or gain any more skill to be more advanced, as long as you don't mind waiting.
I must be saying this in the wrong way. Or people don't believe me. Or they want to think otherwise. I'm not sure which it is:
I don't care how people play. I don't even fully optimize MYSELF. However, not being optimal means that you aren't as advanced as others. If you aren't what one would consider "advanced," I don't think its appropriate to join anything called "advanced." I'm not sure how that is insulting. Who cares what 1k DPS people do, or 100k DPS people do to have fun- if it doesn't affect you. Joining something above your skill/build level affects everyone else on the team.
After DR, with ship upgrades, gear upgrades, specializations, and ship traits, it's higher without gaining any skill whatsoever. 5K pre-DR is higher now, assuming one has leveled, upgraded their ship or weapons, etc. You can't just use pre-DR levels anymore. Power creep has affected everyone who is playing normally. I assume this is why the queues were changed. Because 3k pre-DR is, what....5k now? Just by upgrading things and/or gaining levels.
I'm not a "DPS is everything" person, but if you look at a parse, you get a decent idea of what happened or went wrong.
People doing the ridiculously low DPS (1-3k) don't care to be helped. We're not talking about the normal/average player (post-DR, 8-12k). We're talking about people barely able to compete in Normal, and are queuing for Advanced. There is no way they want help, or think they belong in those queues. They just want rewards. The average "I don't care about DPS, but I know how to play the game" people are absolutely able to complete Advanced STFs.
It is not fun to queue for something, and have it stop after 2 minutes because of someone else. The average player is more penalized by this, because of the "Fail cooldown."
At any rate, one can become more "advanced" simply by waiting and doing other things. Do you need BNPs right now? If you wait until you hit 55, you'll be much more "advanced" without doing anything other than gaining levels.
Random PUGs. 3 tries with same ship. All 3 times, I parsed it. All 3 times I was highest DPS (7500, 8200, 8500), and all others were lower than 5k, with most under 3k (and 1 person on two of them at 1k) All 3 failed.
No T6 ships. I didnt check to see if any were T5u.
Still don't see whats so advanced about players whose strategies always boil down to variations of melt everything with fire.
Its actually kind of boring.
I'm with you all the way on this.
I was leveling up my T5-U Vesta, the other day. I use a particularly 'fun' setup for it. My primary attack are Reverse Tractor Beam Repulsors, along with near 300 Particle Gens, and Torps. Activate RTBR, move forward a bit, watch foes trail behind you, unleash hefty Torp/Mine barrage, profit!
My setup is fun. But I'm sure a Tact, doing his usual, boring BFAW, will do better DPS. So, there I was, doing Argala, thinking "Too bad I can't bring this into an Advanced." And that is sad, really, as nothing but the rawest DPS gets rewarded in this game.
My only argument with these parts is, no advanced is not the same as old elites.
If it were, than a whole group of 3k dpsers would make it look easy.
And normal supposedly being the equivalent in lvl to old elites, well it seems weaker than the old elites and, dare I say it seems even weaker than the old normal as well.
But, otherwise yes competent player's with experience, could/should be able to handle advanced, even flying a weaker so to speak ship.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
How surprising. You take getting carried out and now it's not so easy.
Those #'s look to be about the normal average pug and, with that in mind it shows just how drastically it can effect you own personal dps #'s.
These are what quite a few people try to explain, as what they use for a normal benchmark testing and, not testing with a well lubed group!
But, either way I get what you are trying to point out to other's so, don't feel alone.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
I appreciate you taking the challenge and posting back about these. My personal experience now is only on crystalline and ISA. I don't have any trouble with these as I am using and leveling my GW Vesta. Also the groups in these are much much much better than the other missions as there is a little bit of knowledge.
In fact the mission that caused me to retire from other pugs was bug hunt (and borg disconnected). These are an absolute pug nightmare. Most pugs I've been in can not kill the final queen no matter if given 100 hours. I can not solo it. I can only get it halfway there before running out of saves.
Most disconnected runs fail in the first wave with all ships going to the same section and then only helping 5 or 6 borg there. I would recommend trying these 2 and the 3 min azure rescue to get a complete sense of the pug experience advanced. Oh and give Rhiho station a try for a laugh. GL getting those 6 scientists in 3 min unless you can solo them.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
DOFF levelled, because I was using it for dil farming, honestly. I still would be, if not for saying "I can use a fresh 50 and beat ISA with any random 10dps channel team." I didn't buy anything except what I stated. No Marion for me.
You do understand, that there were 2 fresh 50s on that team, right? The average DPS of the 2 fresh 50s was 8k, which is enough to complete the mission.
Not getting carried is different than trying to carry 4 people, no?
3k is now officially one fifth of a T1 ship's potential before debuffs - someone only doing 3k does not belong in anything to do with grouped content, not even in Normal. And certainly not Advanced or Elite.
In fact, to only do 3k DPS means you are actively doing something to reduce your DPS, as a T1 ship could reasonably expect 5-7k DPS now, let alone if it is a Torpboat NX flown by Ezriryan where 25k DPS has been done in ISA.
In many ways, that very fact sums up STO - on paper, you are good amongst STO players for parsing 10k, while a T1 flown right can parse more than double that.
And Advanced is set up to only require the DPS of half that NX. The content really did leave Tribble needing buffs.
I'm being honest. I'm not trying to belittle anyone, or be contrary.
The others in the PUGs I was in did not seem to know what they were doing at all. This is my main point. The majority could not complete Normal. This is not "too hard," it's like the Mirror Invasion; "too troll'd." I don't believe they represented the average player.
EXACTLY. These are not the "average" players. Who cares what people do to have fun, but I really don't want them having their fun as my surprise teammates.
Lol, you need get out and do more pugs!
99.9% of all my queues are pug runs and, what you just said is a factor of about 75-90% of all my pug experiences for well over 2 years now!
While the other 10-25% is being somehow mixed in with, omg actual good or, at least experienced player's.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Yep. No one cares what you do in single player content, but when you enter a teamed queue you are no longer in single player content, and you must pull your weight or better. In STO, that means DPS. (or certain actions in between DPS)
If you don't, you are trolling your teammates.
You keep saying this but have yet to convince me. How can anyone possibly be shooting 100% of the time to maintain that DPS rating ? Are you reading the logs averaged mission DPS or just looking at the average DPS until the target explodes ?
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Now, it's not so fun anymore.
A1) I don't need to convince you, it is the truth, A2) you can easily complete ISA without needing to ever stop firing, part of why it is used as the DPS standard candle, A3) DPS = Damage per second = equals total damage divided by total time for an STF - other contexts may vary.