Actually I will have you know Dono is bad at the game, he's not the best player out there but he's far from the 'bad player zone' and some of us would miss him if he left because unlike others, he's fun to have around.
LOL Gee thanks it is true I'm not the best player but do okay (last time I checked 12k dps and still upgrading). I play to have fun with my friends
Quote:
Originally Posted by ssbn655
Yet another whiner about DPS. Tell ya what you don't like the way the game is ? Either take the time and effort to improve your ships and learn how to actually fight them and STFU or even better QUIT PLAYING STO NOBODY WILL MISS YOU.
Umm this was not a whiner post about dps but about how much game has changed since then. But I now know what kind of person you are though. I still play and have fun and have some idea about setting ships up and do have friends that will help if I need it.
Another note to think about those so called bad players might be kids after all it is a game. So should adults put kids down or help them out?
Remember when the GAME was good? I started playing a year, but less after the launch and I loved it. I got such a kick out of it being Star Trek, but that I could play myself! It's just been made to feel so corporate and les subtly about the money.
Either take the time and effort to improve your ships ...
So, basically either grind or buy my way into so called eliethood by getting better gear to kill things faster. Becuase this sure isn't the result of skill. It's the same dumb AIs we've been beating just by spamming space bar, the just have way more HP making them take longer to kill.
Honestly I perfered the days when the DPS race was optional because I could ignore it as it is and always will be a boring exercise in ego boosting.
Killing casual PvE in a casual MMO is an especially ill advised. The numbers speak for themselves since DR.
"All hands abandon ship ... all hands abandon ..."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Killing casual PvE in a casual MMO is an especially ill advised. The numbers speak for themselves since DR.
Yeah, any news on those dead queues yet?!
Btw, your sig-line inspired me.
"With the first nerf, the chain is forged. The first Dilithium reduced, the first playstyle forbidden, the first XP taken away, chains us all irrevocably."
The problem is not players striving for pure DPS. That is a natural response to the fact that Cryptic's idea of difficulty is simply more HP. They've done nothing to make opponents hit harder, or to make them smarter... they just have thicker hulls.
No need for tanks, no need for guile... just DPS. Just chip away the thick wall of borg.
I like your use of examples, or, rather, lack thereof. So, TNG was about a ship that couldn't beat anything on its own, but rather one that could take damage and hop someone else would do damage?
No. But:
1) The Galaxy wasn't an MMO. For many episodes, the Galaxy was the only protagonist/Starfleet ship in the fight, and in the cases when it wasn't, it wouldn't make any sense for it suddenly to have next to no offensive ability at all.
2) Sometimes it actually DID do that, in a sense - but the "someone else doing damage" was someone (Whether on the Enterprise itself or otherwise) talking down or disabling the enemy through something other than brute force - things you can't do in STO.
We remember different shows and movies. I actually saw Nemesis the other day, and, if that's tanking, that's an epic tanking fail.
Again, Nemesis isn't an MMO. The people flying the Scimitar aren't stupid AIs, and there aren't set number values attached to everything. If fighting units in movies were balanced like in MMOs, movies would be very, very boring and nonsensical.
Older players got adjusted, in the name of balance. Insane huh? So rather than asking newer players to level themselves up, like the rest of us did, the masses got "balanced". Talk about laziness huh?
Now some lecture the rest us about being lazy because we haven't got the highest level gear yet. :rolleyes:
You know what? I know this for a fact, because I play with a few of these conquering PVE heros and know them personally.
Course some of these best geared acquaintances , haven't put any effort at all into anything at all, they simply bought their way to the best gear, because they have more disposable income.
They have all the best stuff faster then the rest of the masses, but NOT through some Herculean effort, don't let some of them fool you. But they will tell you how "hard" they worked and judge others just the same.
These self appointed PVE heroes of my acquaintance, complain about having to carry other players of lesser gear too. Even after taking the easy way out themselves , but that's their little secret between Cryptic and themselves. Shhhhhhhh
Some of them have even complained about the winter race to get the new Breen ship and have bought the ship outright already.
Again, I know a few of these players personally. I'm not speaking to, or about any poster in this thread in particular, but felt that in the interest of clarity, my experience with some of these players was important to this conversation.
Not everyone, who is without epic gear is "lazy". But there are some who will tell you this.
Cryptic has carefully created a competitive situation as an incentive to get people to upgrade and as an easy way to make money, and while that's cool, they need to make money after all, they also sit back while some players who just spend money to upgrade quickly and easily, judge, shame and name call, those who can't and that's not cool at all.
I never said people without epic gear are lazy...I'm not fully epic'ed out...in fact I haven't upgraded a single item yet on my currently played main character.
You can do good DPS without upgrading...the people who I'm calling lazy are the people who can't be bothered to actually learn the game and want it nerfed back to the easysauce *elites* they used to have.
Lets face it...most people suck at this game...and this game was easy to play when you can suck and a team can easily carry you or in some cases 1 person could easily carry a team through *elites*. Now Elite was supposed to be the toughest challenges this game has to offer and when they can be shrugged off and you can have people hop into elites as soon as they hit 50 with no gear, skill, or know how on how the STF's work means there is something completely wrong about these so called elites.
So now they made them tougher and some things are more than just a DPS fest but people don't like that...lots of people I see just want it nerfed back to their DPS snooze fest that is over in 2 minutes and you don't have to even try.
I like your use of examples, or, rather, lack thereof. So, TNG was about a ship that couldn't beat anything on its own, but rather one that could take damage and hop someone else would do damage? We remember different shows and movies. I actually saw Nemesis the other day, and, if that's tanking, that's an epic tanking fail.
There are numerous TNG episodes of the Enterprise-D tanking - including versus the Borg. Tanking is rather important given Picards reluctance to open the fight. The Enterprise-D has to be able to take a few shots and then fire back.
But comparing the show to the game is of limited use. Sometimes the writers made it break down immediately, because it was required for the plot, but in general far fewer shots are required on the show - a single photon will blow up nearly any unshielded target, which doesn't exactly happen in the game (except the Borgs insta-kill torps).
The best example is from First Contact however, when the cube has disabled the waffer-thin Defiant that otherwise have been putting hurt on it. The Enterprise-E arrives and sweeps in literally interposing itself between the cube and the Defiant, taking fire that was meant for the Defiant and ensuring that it doesn't get blown up?
And Nemesis is a tanking fail? The Enterprise taking continuous fire from an invisible foe, and in the end ramming it and still being mobile?
I.e. either cookie cutter builds in escorts, and investing time in the mind numbing DPS race.
The mentioning of escorts as the sole easy-and-cheap-to-do-ships disqualifies you for talking about skill... as you seem to lack knowledge about the synergies this game offers
I remember needing tactics to beat eSTFs. I remember sometimes needing almost an hour to do one if the team is weak. I remember the massive amount of rage as ignorant antisocial morons would cause eSTFs to fail by not knowing or caring about 10%, or MRRMLL, or being so weak they can't even protect Kang by themselves.
I remember when the forums would rage at the incompetent.
When DR hit, the old tactics became necessary again if you weren't in a strong group. The nanite sphere health sponges weren't and issue if you did 10% and had time to burn down the transformer.
Did people go back to the old tactics? No. People have grown used to being coddled, being so overpowered that their snowflakes can easily get through eSTFs. The forums no longer rage at the incompetent, because people had become complacent. They were what they once complained about - those who wouldn't learn and refused to learn, secure in their delusions of grandeur.
But alot of the blame for all this DPS TRIBBLE that is totay has those stupid parsers. Cryptic shouldve never allow players to look at more in-sight aspects of the game, they shouldve banned them. This killed team gameplay, since once players learned how to DPS, all teamplay went away. In other games I've played in like 10-15 years, every 3rd party program that you use along with the game is frowned upon and a bannable offence. Even if it "just reads stuff", like the log in our case, is still an outside program source.
Allowing players to parse DPS also killed the fun from trial and error method to improve, from experimenting with various builds and stuff like that.
What other MMOs did you play? Hello Kitty Online?
The only way to prevent people from trying to improve their character is to completely remove all feedback. Even in games like Borderlands or Guild Wars, people have recorded themselves and then reviewed the videos, either manually counting damage floaters to compare DPS, or timing how long it takes to kill something.
Humanity has always striven to improve themselves and their conditions. Looking to do better is the basis of human history.
I find more bizarre this need for compete and "improving" wich I see at some folks. Maybe its becouse not enuf challanges and improving in RL and thus the seek for those in a game, and for validation aswell. Its quite interesting from a psyhological point of veiw in fact.
No improvement/progress = no persistence/permanence of my efforts = unproductive use of my time.
There's two factors at play. One is to enjoying the process, the other is a sense of accomplishment. When you climb a mountain or ski a slope, you enjoy climbing/skiing but you also have a sense of accomplishment that you climbed that mountain, that you conquered that slope.
Even CoD or similar competitive games have advancement systems now to provide a sense of progression, that your time was not wasted.
I think that's what they tried to do by giving us the specialization system, though there are always those who'll grind to the top of the ladder.
True, but the gear that you were doing the long STF'S for was for the most part optional gear .
Or in other words you could do just as well in most scenarios with what you had .
Can you say the same about today's STF'S , with the fire being set under your butt by the ridiculous non-optionals on one hand and the crazy & uneven HP some critters show on the other ?
Yes.
Just like in the old days, STF gear is not necessary for STFs.
Unlike the old days, STF gear isn't even ideal for STFs.
Did people go back to the old tactics? No. People have grown used to being coddled, being so overpowered that their snowflakes can easily get through eSTFs. The forums no longer rage at the incompetent, because people had become complacent. They were what they once complained about - those who wouldn't learn and refused to learn, secure in their delusions of grandeur.
Or the game had become casual friendly in the last 4 years and casuals are less likely to care about the DPS race.
This is likely represented by the number of elite players still hanging around in advanced which implies they don't have the numbers to run elite.
What other MMOs did you play? Hello Kitty Online?
The only way to prevent people from trying to improve their character is to completely remove all feedback. Even in games like Borderlands or Guild Wars, people have recorded themselves and then reviewed the videos, either manually counting damage floaters to compare DPS, or timing how long it takes to kill something.
You do know you are talking to a playerbase that is probably more interested in feeding their quasi niche sci-fi fandom habits than caring about melting things faster right?
Humanity has always striven to improve themselves and their conditions. Looking to do better is the basis of human history.
yes but that was real life and on things that were important, not a fracking video game.
Also it involved doing things faster or making it easier, not having to get new stuff to do things in the time you were before or with the same difficulty you had before.
No improvement/progress = no persistence/permanence of my efforts = unproductive use of my time.
Its a video game, and all you are doing is killing things faster.
There's two factors at play. One is to enjoying the process, the other is a sense of accomplishment.
Which typically comes from the one and done not repeating a process 1000 times.
When you climb a mountain or ski a slope, you enjoy climbing/skiing but you also have a sense of accomplishment that you climbed that mountain, that you conquered that slope.
try doing those 1000 times per mountain or slope and tell me how much of an accomplishment it feels like.
Even CoD or similar competitive games have advancement systems now to provide a sense of progression, that your time was not wasted.
which typical reward you one time for doing something and don't need you to do it several times.
I think that's what they tried to do by giving us the specialization system, though there are always those who'll grind to the top of the ladder.
Instead they made it tedious and people are getting bored with the whole thing and seem to be barely bothering with it.
Yes.
Just like in the old days, STF gear is not necessary for STFs.
Unlike the old days, STF gear isn't even ideal for STFs.
So good to know that its utterly useless and pointless and as such advanced is a waste of time, no wonder people aren't doing it anymore.
Nope.
If you can't do Advanced with Mk XII purples, you won't be doing it in Mk XIV Epics.
So Another thing added to the game that is worthless.
yea, if you are talking about perpetual levelling and power gain, you are the problem killing rpg's with power creep.
if you are talking about getting your build together and learning how to do better with what you have, good for you, but make sure to distinguish between the two in future.
I literally just said I can't be bothered to grind, so yes, it's the latter. The point is self-improvement and persistence of effort.
yet cod is the shooter most people associate with rage. much like stf became.
I think you mean much like STFs used to be. I'm pretty sure one of (if not the) largest and oldest active threads is complaining about crappy people in STFs.
STO wasn't even F2P until 2012, and there aren't any Elite versions of the Borg STFs.
I literally just said I can't be bothered to grind, so yes, it's the latter. The point is self-improvement and persistence of effort.
I think you mean much like STFs used to be. I'm pretty sure one of (if not the) largest and oldest active threads is complaining about crappy people in STFs.
Still doesn't change that they still aren't playing the DPS race game judging by the ques.
and there aren't any Elite versions of the Borg STFs.
Then bug the devs about adding it.
Honestly its hard to be sympathetic to the plight of the Elite DPSers since it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that increasing your DPS against things with fixed HPs is eventually going to lead to a lack of challenge as everything eventually becomes a cake walk. So you guys had to see this coming. So you have no one to blame but yourselves for getting bored.
Honestly its hard to be sympathetic to the plight of the Elite DPSers since it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that increasing your DPS against things with fixed HPs is eventually going to lead to a lack of challenge as everything eventually becomes a cake walk. So you guys had to see this coming. So you have no one to blame but yourselves for getting bored.
Honestly, it's hard to be sympathetic to the plight of the sub-5k DPSers when it's trivial to get above 5k DPS.
It's also hard to be sympathetic to disingenuous claims that the inability to get gear requiring BNPs render them unable to get BNPs, when none of the BNP-requiring gear are even that good for STFs. Even in the old days nobody ran the Borg shield, and then they nerfed the 2-piece bonus.
Who said I was bored? I happened to enjoy queueing for ISE and blowing away the Borg. It's relaxing. It's not like there was anything else to do in the game aside from figuring out how to improve my DPS.
I'd wager 6K DPS is still plenty to get by on in single player. Last I parsed my Gal-X, it was running around 8K. It'd be hgiher now, because I moved alot of gear to Mk XIII, but probably not by much. Why don't I know what it puts out now? Because I don't pug anymore. In premades, I rarely, if ever, parse.
Both sides of the DPS-argument are stuck in their corners, and I truly believe that neither side is right. Pre-DR it didn't matter. As long as you were putting out over 2-3K, you could still participate in a pug, and the difference in time to completion was negligible. If a minmaxer was in the queue, maybe you'd do nothing, but hey - they chose to queue and have >20K, not you. If 5 players showed up with 2-5K, they'd get the job done, and probably still pretty quickly.
Post-DR, the elite DPS folks are fed up having to "carry" the rest of the player base, because it's "trivial, easy, insert condescending word here" to get over 10K.
People in the low-DPS camp are saying "I'll play how I want, starship roles, etc, etc".
This has been going on for months - and the arguments don't change. Both sides are right. Both sides are also wrong.
Anyone who cares, shouldn't pug, simple as that.
High-DPS crowds can make pre-mades. With people who do high-DPS. They can finish off the Advanced queues in seconds like in the old days.
Low-DPS crowds can make pre-mades, with people who don't, or people who don't care what your DPS is. They can use tactics, team work, healing, tanking, etc. Star Trek Battles channel is a pretty good example of this, if you like flying canon loadouts.
People who don't care - could pug. If you pug, you take what you get, and you may fail the mission. If you are high-DPS, so be it - follow established tactics for the mission (10%, etc), ask if anyone has a grav well, and all will go fine. Don't want to communicate or follow tactics? Better be ready to carry harder, or at the very least help with constructive advice. "Elite" players shouldn't complain about noobs. A lot of them don't. Instead, they should offer constructive advice to people on how they could improve, and only if they want. IE - PM with "Want some tips?", not Team Chat with "Do more DEEEPZ scrubs!" If a player says they don't want help, then just shrug it off. No need to be hostile, and some players want to figure things out their own way. Again, when pugging, you'll get what you get.
People trying to force people in pugs to comply with their own vision of the game is why I don't really pug since DR, that and the huge HP-sponge enemies that aren't more challenging, just more time consuming. Pugs are for casual players, and casuals should all be willing to accept some failed missions - part of being casual. It is just a game afterall.
Perhaps Cryptic will make the optionals optional again (preventing trolling), or do some more adjustments to Advanced (in a downward direction) and create more Elite queus (Borgs, looking at you). Then everything could get back to normal around here, well whatever passes for normal.
The fail condition has ruined space pve. Between bugs, looking at you VCE, to players INTENTIONALLY failing a mission, the griefers, 6k dps is of little consequence. Rules like 10% and probe duty mean nothing if the stronger players cannot shore up slack by weaker builds.
You fail, you lose, so no queues. Just how is that good for the game?
Low-DPS crowds can make pre-mades, with people who don't, or people who don't care what your DPS is. They can use tactics, team work, healing, tanking, etc. Star Trek Battles channel is a pretty good example of this, if you like flying canon loadouts.
Except you need more than 6,000 DPS not to fail a que becuase optionals are mandatory now.
Honestly, it's hard to be sympathetic to the plight of the sub-5k DPSers
aka 95% of the playerbase and the people keeping the lights on.
It's also hard to be sympathetic to disingenuous claims that the inability to get gear requiring BNPs render them unable to get BNPs, when none of the BNP-requiring gear are even that good for STFs. Even in the old days nobody ran the Borg shield, and then they nerfed the 2-piece bonus.
Its not the freaking BNPS its the rare mats needed to upgrade stuff cheaply. And don't give me that defense mechanism baloney about not needing better gear becuase if "elite" players couldn't be matched by people with better gear there wouldn't be so much ranting about power creep around the forums.
Very good point. I also miss those days. Escorts were the ones doing DPS. With the right build a cruiser or sci could tank it or heal. It was more of a realistic feel to the game.
We all understand the reasons for this new system. They have to make money and keep the game going. Sadly everybody who does grind to play feel the pressure. It has become the "have patience for a long grind or pay" game. It could be worse though. Lets just hope they don't tighten the rope any more then they already have.
In ISA - the probes not healing is mandatory. Last I checked, the timer was still optional.
I've been in one with sub-6K ships - we did not fail the queue. It took forever, but we got it done.
Nobody likes taking an hour to run a que for the amount of rewards you get for it, as no one is pugging anymore.
Secret = crowd control on multiple player ships, and coordinating what each person will do.
Except DPS makes crowd control obsolete since you can just fry everything and not have to worry about it.
Seriously all the stories about how some groups can do this and that, and the all the appeals to spending more time on the game than casuals are comfortable with amount to squat (especially since the devs even mentioned most people were failing ques) as with puging pretty much dead it seems the majority of people have taken the path of lest resistance and not bothering.
This is bad for the ques becuase the devs have no problem nuking anything that seems remotely like a waste of resources. Which is probably why they ditched the long mission length STFs for the short pugable ones, or then introduced the rep system, becuase if everything was so hunky dory way would they make that many changes to it?
And don't give me that defense mechanism baloney about not needing better gear becuase if "elite" players couldn't be matched by people with better gear there wouldn't be so much ranting about power creep around the forums.
DPS is gear multiplied by build multiplied by piloting ability. Of those, gear is the smallest and least important factor.
If you think that gear is what's holding you back from breaking 6k, then you have no idea what you're talking about.
If a team can't beat ISA with Mk XII purples, they're not going to beat ISA just by upgrading to Mk XIV Epics. (Unless they all just happen to be right on the edge, I guess.)
Nobody likes taking an hour to run a que for the amount of rewards you get for it, as no one is pugging anymore.
Except DPS makes crowd control obsolete since you can just fry everything and not have to worry about it.
Seriously all the stories about how some groups can do this and that, and the all the appeals to spending more time on the game than casuals are comfortable with amount to squat (especially since the devs even mentioned most people were failing ques) as with puging pretty much dead it seems the majority of people have taken the path of lest resistance and not bothering.
This is bad for the ques becuase the devs have no problem nuking anything that seems remotely like a waste of resources. Which is probably why they ditched the long mission length STFs for the short pugable ones, or then introduced the rep system, becuase if everything was so hunky dory way would they make that many changes to it?
1- Forever, didn't mean an hour - more like a few minutes past the optional.
2 - This is why I said I don't pug, and don't think either the low-DPS or the high-DPS crowd should pug. Casuals do not run ships that have over 20K, it doesn't happen, it's probably not going to happen. No where in this game are proper build strategies explained to players. Default builds are horrible. Story builds are horrible. Livestream builds are...you get my picture. Maybe Cryptic should put some effort into tutorials and training in the missions, so many mechanics not explained. That said, I'm not sure they have enough knowledge to teach what needs to be taught.
3 - Finally - if DPS invalidates crowd control, then people with that mentality should be able to just carry harder. Seriously - nothing is invalidated in a pug - you have no idea what you are going to get. I stopped because I had no idea what type of players I'd be with, and I'd say I'm not the worst when it comes to DPS.
People are failing queues because of either a)they are not OP enough to simply wipe out the enemies, or b)they didn't figure out a strategy and beat the mission the hard way. Not saying which way is the way to go - both certainly have their places. Normal for hard way, elite for wipe everything off the map - Advanced is a hodgepodge in the middle, and that's why I do pre-mades now (and far less of them).
To be honest, I think we agree more than disagree - because I don't bother with pugging anymore myself.
I remember when players were young and innocent ... and then Geko and his metrics had their way with us. :eek:
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I remember needing tactics to beat eSTFs. I remember sometimes needing almost an hour to do one if the team is weak. I remember the massive amount of rage as ignorant antisocial morons would cause eSTFs to fail by not knowing or caring about 10%, or MRRMLL, or being so weak they can't even protect Kang by themselves.
What other MMOs did you play? Hello Kitty Online?
I'd soooooooooo play that! :P
The only way to prevent people from trying to improve their character is to completely remove all feedback.
And I suppose you never had to go to school to learn either, right?! Seriously, you're overdoing it.
Even in games like Borderlands or Guild Wars, people have recorded themselves and then reviewed the videos, either manually counting damage floaters to compare DPS, or timing how long it takes to kill something.
Yeah, no. You're making several mistakes here:
1) You're confusing individual progress with team progress. Take BDA, for instance. I have learned, from my own observations, that it's better to spread out, and each take a side to work on. Does me no good, though, not one iota, when the rest of the team just blindly follows the others, and thus fail the mission. That is why BDA fails, and ISA does not. In the latter, if you just follow the group, as a swarm, you're good. All you have to do is watch to see whether you're not all work on the same gens. In BDA, however, 'follow the leader' is not going to work, though. Hence, it fails.
And the irony is, that people are following you, *precisely* because they want to learn how it's done!
2) It is not about 'timing how long it takes to kill something.' It's about lack of sufficient coordination: something inherently absent in a PUG (or not present enough of a time to count on).
Humanity has always striven to improve themselves and their conditions. Looking to do better is the basis of human history.
Humanity also has a history of helping each other. See, 'I remember needing tactics to beat eSTFs' too. It was a time when helpful folks posted instructive videos; and blaming someone was actually kinda justified, because they had so much uploaded material (video/guides) to come prepared. And nowadays? Now we have you, suggesting we 'completely remove all feedback.' I sincerely hope people will find it in their heart to be a mite more social than that.
Comments
LOL Gee thanks it is true I'm not the best player but do okay (last time I checked 12k dps and still upgrading). I play to have fun with my friends
Quote:
Originally Posted by ssbn655
Yet another whiner about DPS. Tell ya what you don't like the way the game is ? Either take the time and effort to improve your ships and learn how to actually fight them and STFU or even better QUIT PLAYING STO NOBODY WILL MISS YOU.
Umm this was not a whiner post about dps but about how much game has changed since then. But I now know what kind of person you are though.
Another note to think about those so called bad players might be kids after all it is a game. So should adults put kids down or help them out?
So, basically either grind or buy my way into so called eliethood by getting better gear to kill things faster. Becuase this sure isn't the result of skill. It's the same dumb AIs we've been beating just by spamming space bar, the just have way more HP making them take longer to kill.
Honestly I perfered the days when the DPS race was optional because I could ignore it as it is and always will be a boring exercise in ego boosting.
"All hands abandon ship ... all hands abandon ..."
- Judge Aaron Satie
Yeah, any news on those dead queues yet?!
Btw, your sig-line inspired me.
"With the first nerf, the chain is forged. The first Dilithium reduced, the first playstyle forbidden, the first XP taken away, chains us all irrevocably."
No need for tanks, no need for guile... just DPS. Just chip away the thick wall of borg.
1) The Galaxy wasn't an MMO. For many episodes, the Galaxy was the only protagonist/Starfleet ship in the fight, and in the cases when it wasn't, it wouldn't make any sense for it suddenly to have next to no offensive ability at all.
2) Sometimes it actually DID do that, in a sense - but the "someone else doing damage" was someone (Whether on the Enterprise itself or otherwise) talking down or disabling the enemy through something other than brute force - things you can't do in STO.
Again, Nemesis isn't an MMO. The people flying the Scimitar aren't stupid AIs, and there aren't set number values attached to everything. If fighting units in movies were balanced like in MMOs, movies would be very, very boring and nonsensical.
I never said people without epic gear are lazy...I'm not fully epic'ed out...in fact I haven't upgraded a single item yet on my currently played main character.
You can do good DPS without upgrading...the people who I'm calling lazy are the people who can't be bothered to actually learn the game and want it nerfed back to the easysauce *elites* they used to have.
Lets face it...most people suck at this game...and this game was easy to play when you can suck and a team can easily carry you or in some cases 1 person could easily carry a team through *elites*. Now Elite was supposed to be the toughest challenges this game has to offer and when they can be shrugged off and you can have people hop into elites as soon as they hit 50 with no gear, skill, or know how on how the STF's work means there is something completely wrong about these so called elites.
So now they made them tougher and some things are more than just a DPS fest but people don't like that...lots of people I see just want it nerfed back to their DPS snooze fest that is over in 2 minutes and you don't have to even try.
Do you remember when you had a choice of established and active chat channels to set up a private game?
Do you remember when Mine Trap was played?
Do you remember when Azure Nebula could be pugged?
Do you remember when the number of people in ISE was over 200? 400? 600?
Do you remember exploration?
Do you remember when team-play, science and engineering abilities mattered as much as DPS?
Ok - that was definitely blowing smoke out of my tuchus.
But comparing the show to the game is of limited use. Sometimes the writers made it break down immediately, because it was required for the plot, but in general far fewer shots are required on the show - a single photon will blow up nearly any unshielded target, which doesn't exactly happen in the game (except the Borgs insta-kill torps).
The best example is from First Contact however, when the cube has disabled the waffer-thin Defiant that otherwise have been putting hurt on it. The Enterprise-E arrives and sweeps in literally interposing itself between the cube and the Defiant, taking fire that was meant for the Defiant and ensuring that it doesn't get blown up?
And Nemesis is a tanking fail? The Enterprise taking continuous fire from an invisible foe, and in the end ramming it and still being mobile?
I.e. either cookie cutter builds in escorts, and investing time in the mind numbing DPS race.
Aka not part of the hardcore 5%ers with nothing better to do then invest hours on boring the digital ego trip that is the dps race.
Of course this is again equating massive dps with skill, which it is not.
The mentioning of escorts as the sole easy-and-cheap-to-do-ships disqualifies you for talking about skill... as you seem to lack knowledge about the synergies this game offers
I remember needing tactics to beat eSTFs. I remember sometimes needing almost an hour to do one if the team is weak. I remember the massive amount of rage as ignorant antisocial morons would cause eSTFs to fail by not knowing or caring about 10%, or MRRMLL, or being so weak they can't even protect Kang by themselves.
I remember when the forums would rage at the incompetent.
When DR hit, the old tactics became necessary again if you weren't in a strong group. The nanite sphere health sponges weren't and issue if you did 10% and had time to burn down the transformer.
Did people go back to the old tactics? No. People have grown used to being coddled, being so overpowered that their snowflakes can easily get through eSTFs. The forums no longer rage at the incompetent, because people had become complacent. They were what they once complained about - those who wouldn't learn and refused to learn, secure in their delusions of grandeur.
What other MMOs did you play? Hello Kitty Online?
The only way to prevent people from trying to improve their character is to completely remove all feedback. Even in games like Borderlands or Guild Wars, people have recorded themselves and then reviewed the videos, either manually counting damage floaters to compare DPS, or timing how long it takes to kill something.
Humanity has always striven to improve themselves and their conditions. Looking to do better is the basis of human history.
No improvement/progress = no persistence/permanence of my efforts = unproductive use of my time.
There's two factors at play. One is to enjoying the process, the other is a sense of accomplishment. When you climb a mountain or ski a slope, you enjoy climbing/skiing but you also have a sense of accomplishment that you climbed that mountain, that you conquered that slope.
Even CoD or similar competitive games have advancement systems now to provide a sense of progression, that your time was not wasted.
I think that's what they tried to do by giving us the specialization system, though there are always those who'll grind to the top of the ladder.
Yes.
Just like in the old days, STF gear is not necessary for STFs.
Unlike the old days, STF gear isn't even ideal for STFs.
Nope.
If you can't do Advanced with Mk XII purples, you won't be doing it in Mk XIV Epics.
Or the game had become casual friendly in the last 4 years and casuals are less likely to care about the DPS race.
This is likely represented by the number of elite players still hanging around in advanced which implies they don't have the numbers to run elite.
You do know you are talking to a playerbase that is probably more interested in feeding their quasi niche sci-fi fandom habits than caring about melting things faster right?
yes but that was real life and on things that were important, not a fracking video game.
Also it involved doing things faster or making it easier, not having to get new stuff to do things in the time you were before or with the same difficulty you had before.
Its a video game, and all you are doing is killing things faster.
Which typically comes from the one and done not repeating a process 1000 times.
try doing those 1000 times per mountain or slope and tell me how much of an accomplishment it feels like.
which typical reward you one time for doing something and don't need you to do it several times.
Instead they made it tedious and people are getting bored with the whole thing and seem to be barely bothering with it.
So good to know that its utterly useless and pointless and as such advanced is a waste of time, no wonder people aren't doing it anymore.
So Another thing added to the game that is worthless.
So why the level cap raise again?
Psst, your ignorance is showing.
STO wasn't even F2P until 2012, and there aren't any Elite versions of the Borg STFs.
I literally just said I can't be bothered to grind, so yes, it's the latter. The point is self-improvement and persistence of effort.
I think you mean much like STFs used to be. I'm pretty sure one of (if not the) largest and oldest active threads is complaining about crappy people in STFs.
Psst, Hive Onslaught Elite.
so its only 2 years.
Still doesn't change that they still aren't playing the DPS race game judging by the ques.
Then bug the devs about adding it.
Honestly its hard to be sympathetic to the plight of the Elite DPSers since it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that increasing your DPS against things with fixed HPs is eventually going to lead to a lack of challenge as everything eventually becomes a cake walk. So you guys had to see this coming. So you have no one to blame but yourselves for getting bored.
The 10% method did not become obsolete from power creep when F2P went live.
Honestly, it's hard to be sympathetic to the plight of the sub-5k DPSers when it's trivial to get above 5k DPS.
It's also hard to be sympathetic to disingenuous claims that the inability to get gear requiring BNPs render them unable to get BNPs, when none of the BNP-requiring gear are even that good for STFs. Even in the old days nobody ran the Borg shield, and then they nerfed the 2-piece bonus.
Who said I was bored? I happened to enjoy queueing for ISE and blowing away the Borg. It's relaxing. It's not like there was anything else to do in the game aside from figuring out how to improve my DPS.
Ah, that's news to me.
Both sides of the DPS-argument are stuck in their corners, and I truly believe that neither side is right. Pre-DR it didn't matter. As long as you were putting out over 2-3K, you could still participate in a pug, and the difference in time to completion was negligible. If a minmaxer was in the queue, maybe you'd do nothing, but hey - they chose to queue and have >20K, not you. If 5 players showed up with 2-5K, they'd get the job done, and probably still pretty quickly.
Post-DR, the elite DPS folks are fed up having to "carry" the rest of the player base, because it's "trivial, easy, insert condescending word here" to get over 10K.
People in the low-DPS camp are saying "I'll play how I want, starship roles, etc, etc".
This has been going on for months - and the arguments don't change. Both sides are right. Both sides are also wrong.
Anyone who cares, shouldn't pug, simple as that.
High-DPS crowds can make pre-mades. With people who do high-DPS. They can finish off the Advanced queues in seconds like in the old days.
Low-DPS crowds can make pre-mades, with people who don't, or people who don't care what your DPS is. They can use tactics, team work, healing, tanking, etc. Star Trek Battles channel is a pretty good example of this, if you like flying canon loadouts.
People who don't care - could pug. If you pug, you take what you get, and you may fail the mission. If you are high-DPS, so be it - follow established tactics for the mission (10%, etc), ask if anyone has a grav well, and all will go fine. Don't want to communicate or follow tactics? Better be ready to carry harder, or at the very least help with constructive advice. "Elite" players shouldn't complain about noobs. A lot of them don't. Instead, they should offer constructive advice to people on how they could improve, and only if they want. IE - PM with "Want some tips?", not Team Chat with "Do more DEEEPZ scrubs!" If a player says they don't want help, then just shrug it off. No need to be hostile, and some players want to figure things out their own way. Again, when pugging, you'll get what you get.
People trying to force people in pugs to comply with their own vision of the game is why I don't really pug since DR, that and the huge HP-sponge enemies that aren't more challenging, just more time consuming. Pugs are for casual players, and casuals should all be willing to accept some failed missions - part of being casual. It is just a game afterall.
Perhaps Cryptic will make the optionals optional again (preventing trolling), or do some more adjustments to Advanced (in a downward direction) and create more Elite queus (Borgs, looking at you). Then everything could get back to normal around here, well whatever passes for normal.
You fail, you lose, so no queues. Just how is that good for the game?
Except you need more than 6,000 DPS not to fail a que becuase optionals are mandatory now.
Its not the freaking BNPS its the rare mats needed to upgrade stuff cheaply. And don't give me that defense mechanism baloney about not needing better gear becuase if "elite" players couldn't be matched by people with better gear there wouldn't be so much ranting about power creep around the forums.
We all understand the reasons for this new system. They have to make money and keep the game going. Sadly everybody who does grind to play feel the pressure. It has become the "have patience for a long grind or pay" game. It could be worse though. Lets just hope they don't tighten the rope any more then they already have.
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In ISA - the probes not healing is mandatory. Last I checked, the timer was still optional.
I've been in one with sub-6K ships - we did not fail the queue. It took forever, but we got it done.
Secret = crowd control on multiple player ships, and coordinating what each person will do.
Nobody likes taking an hour to run a que for the amount of rewards you get for it, as no one is pugging anymore.
Except DPS makes crowd control obsolete since you can just fry everything and not have to worry about it.
Seriously all the stories about how some groups can do this and that, and the all the appeals to spending more time on the game than casuals are comfortable with amount to squat (especially since the devs even mentioned most people were failing ques) as with puging pretty much dead it seems the majority of people have taken the path of lest resistance and not bothering.
This is bad for the ques becuase the devs have no problem nuking anything that seems remotely like a waste of resources. Which is probably why they ditched the long mission length STFs for the short pugable ones, or then introduced the rep system, becuase if everything was so hunky dory way would they make that many changes to it?
If you're making your own upgrades, you probably can't math.
(Though I will concede the numbers may have changed with the reduction in costs. I doubt it, though.)
DPS is gear multiplied by build multiplied by piloting ability. Of those, gear is the smallest and least important factor.
If you think that gear is what's holding you back from breaking 6k, then you have no idea what you're talking about.
If a team can't beat ISA with Mk XII purples, they're not going to beat ISA just by upgrading to Mk XIV Epics. (Unless they all just happen to be right on the edge, I guess.)
1- Forever, didn't mean an hour - more like a few minutes past the optional.
2 - This is why I said I don't pug, and don't think either the low-DPS or the high-DPS crowd should pug. Casuals do not run ships that have over 20K, it doesn't happen, it's probably not going to happen. No where in this game are proper build strategies explained to players. Default builds are horrible. Story builds are horrible. Livestream builds are...you get my picture. Maybe Cryptic should put some effort into tutorials and training in the missions, so many mechanics not explained. That said, I'm not sure they have enough knowledge to teach what needs to be taught.
3 - Finally - if DPS invalidates crowd control, then people with that mentality should be able to just carry harder. Seriously - nothing is invalidated in a pug - you have no idea what you are going to get. I stopped because I had no idea what type of players I'd be with, and I'd say I'm not the worst when it comes to DPS.
People are failing queues because of either a)they are not OP enough to simply wipe out the enemies, or b)they didn't figure out a strategy and beat the mission the hard way. Not saying which way is the way to go - both certainly have their places. Normal for hard way, elite for wipe everything off the map - Advanced is a hodgepodge in the middle, and that's why I do pre-mades now (and far less of them).
To be honest, I think we agree more than disagree - because I don't bother with pugging anymore myself.
- Judge Aaron Satie
So was I.
I'd soooooooooo play that! :P
And I suppose you never had to go to school to learn either, right?! Seriously, you're overdoing it.
Yeah, no. You're making several mistakes here:
1) You're confusing individual progress with team progress. Take BDA, for instance. I have learned, from my own observations, that it's better to spread out, and each take a side to work on. Does me no good, though, not one iota, when the rest of the team just blindly follows the others, and thus fail the mission. That is why BDA fails, and ISA does not. In the latter, if you just follow the group, as a swarm, you're good. All you have to do is watch to see whether you're not all work on the same gens. In BDA, however, 'follow the leader' is not going to work, though. Hence, it fails.
And the irony is, that people are following you, *precisely* because they want to learn how it's done!
2) It is not about 'timing how long it takes to kill something.' It's about lack of sufficient coordination: something inherently absent in a PUG (or not present enough of a time to count on).
Humanity also has a history of helping each other. See, 'I remember needing tactics to beat eSTFs' too. It was a time when helpful folks posted instructive videos; and blaming someone was actually kinda justified, because they had so much uploaded material (video/guides) to come prepared. And nowadays? Now we have you, suggesting we 'completely remove all feedback.' I sincerely hope people will find it in their heart to be a mite more social than that.