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should npc ships use pvp/kerrat builds?
skollulfr
Member Posts: 5,407 Arc User
at least in the case where player versions of ships exist, should these npc's by default use the same builds as those used in pvp? and have their HP restricted by the same limits the players have.
possibly those used effectively in kerrat.
despite likeing a lot of what DR had to offer, one of my biggest gripes, and shared by many others, is the issue of delta npc's being bottomless pits of hp, especially on the harder difficulties.
which took the shine off the novelty of the increased activity these npc's displayed. since it essentially forced the path of least resistance for the players, to be sustained high dps unless they could consistently pull off 150k spike damage to kill even the smallest targets outside easy.
as it stands, the current ethos seems to be annoying everybody.
the RPers just want to faceroll through unchallenged, and nobody with a dps build is going to call more hp a source of real difficulty.
half the high dps builds are only viable due to lack of npc's using fbp or aceton assimilators.
possibly those used effectively in kerrat.
despite likeing a lot of what DR had to offer, one of my biggest gripes, and shared by many others, is the issue of delta npc's being bottomless pits of hp, especially on the harder difficulties.
which took the shine off the novelty of the increased activity these npc's displayed. since it essentially forced the path of least resistance for the players, to be sustained high dps unless they could consistently pull off 150k spike damage to kill even the smallest targets outside easy.
as it stands, the current ethos seems to be annoying everybody.
the RPers just want to faceroll through unchallenged, and nobody with a dps build is going to call more hp a source of real difficulty.
half the high dps builds are only viable due to lack of npc's using fbp or aceton assimilators.
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Post edited by skollulfr on
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Cryptic has attempted many times to introduce NPCs with better AI and using more abilities. The forums flood with tears about the difficulty. Things can end up being nerfed half a dozen times before it even hits Holodeck...only to end up being nerfed further once it gets there cause apparently some folks missed the opportunity to complain about it on Tribble.
So if Cryptic wants to slow things down - cause combat encounters are happening too fast - but they can't actually go about increasing the difficulty, then increasing HP would be a means for them to do that, yeah? Slows things down without increasing difficulty, that compromise of what Cryptic wanted and what the player wanted.
Free Tibet!
I complained about the Undine but not the Voth. The Voth are challenging to fight in a glass cannon, and I think they helped to get rid of the "Escorts Online" thing by driving people towards cruisers and forcing them to think about their positioning.
The Undine are just annoying and spammy as hell with the stupid snotballs, and "Viscous Cycle" is a pain in the TRIBBLE.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
The Undine need more hard counters for their pulling snot bubble rifts, and the space set blast should destroy any that are in a 5km radius of you.
I personally think the addition of more powers and possibly a restructuring of how hard counters work would be nice.
And, as always, I advocate and support the DPS Meta STO has to be reigned in and give support builds a reason to contribute meaningfully to the game without seeing what their Tactical capabilities are.
This, in turn, could be reflected in how the NPC behavior is.
The Undine... ugh... Eye of Sauron grav well is evil, and so is the Space Snot. Pack lots of ability to repair engines too.
Voth... were pretty tough when they first came out. Even in my geared Assault Cruiser Refit I didn't want to tangle with anything over a Bastion Cruiser alone. Having to be aware of your position was a nice touch though.
Vaadwaur... space Artillery strikes, constrictor drones that have NO counter to break free other than destroy the anchor drone, hit and run... decent challenge.
Other games have been able to address it by offering rewards to dedicated support builds. Critical heals, heals with beneficial after-effects if used strategically. A merit system on how well you're able to keep your team alive.
The main thing is the gameplay would need to be drastically altered to fit this. A scoring system based on how well a team plays together rather than how fast they can get through a mission together.
This would mean the removal or reduction of timers. If Cryptic wants us to take longer in missions, a perfectly valid alternative to super-buffed HP of enemies is by purposefully gimping players by offering them greater rewards for teamwork.
Did you nearly save a teammate from getting killed? You get a cookie.
Did you make sure nobody died? You get a cookie.
Did you strategically use your non-DPS abilities in a combination to create an even bigger effect? You get a cookie.
Did you use a tractor beam before deploying Boarding Party I? You get a cookie. Did you use it with Boarding Party III? You get an even bigger cookie.
Outside the box thinking is how you reign it in. You reward that, you get rid of the DPS meta.
Other combat games have made support roles extremely rewarding and fulfilling. STO has that potential. It just requires Cryptic to be willing to get off the teat of players thinking Tactical consoles and Universe/Tactical bridge officer seating is the only way to win.
I can't blame Cryptic. It's a low-hanging fruit and it's easy to capitalize on. But in the end it just makes cruisers and science vessels wish they were more like Escorts.
Do people want to earn more spec points faster than Argala by playing routine content?
Give them expertise points each time they do something else in a match other than concentrate on burning through enemies as fast as possible.
Do people want to see the Galaxy-class 'fixed'? Make Cryptic alter the gameplay to the point where 5 engineering consoles and 2 tactical consoles on a ship is a very lucrative way to get awesome things and contribute meaningfully to a team.
Make people want more Engineering/Science slots for something else other than universal consoles.
Because Cryptic failed so badly at it. Do you remember the borg sphere's with EP2E that would randomly fly off into nowhere land? It didn't make things more challenging it just made them more annoying. The new hit point sponges they introduced in DR are the same. The only thing hard about them is when you have a time limit along with low damage team members which make the mission an auto-fail.
Timers artificially create tension, but the only valid response to beating the timers is by killing enemies fast enough, or killing them fast enough to rescue other ships or perform some other action. In either scenario, it exists to further the DPS Meta.
If routine content is scored on how well players know their ships and use their abilities, you could achieve similar results with less grind.
What if Boarding Party III landed on a ship and created a series of kinetic explosions that outright obliterated massive chunks of the enemy's HP faster than a Scimitar or Escort could burn it down?
That'd make ships with a Commander Engineering slot pretty lucrative, wouldn't it? The trick would be making sure your shuttles landed on the enemy ship first, so you'd need other team members to defend them while you're performing this boarding maneuver.
Secondary Deflectors scratched the surface of what the game can do in regards to support ships, and I think if these abilities were given an equal amount of viability as damage dealing, or allowed to deal similar damage by using powers strategically, you would see more desire for those kinds of ships in team play.
5 Scimitars burn down a Tactical Cube in 10 seconds. Fine.
1 Scimitar, 2 escorts, a Cruiser, and a Science ship are able to chain a combination attack and destroys the same cube in 30 seconds. But each of the team members who attacked together get way more Expertise and Skill Points, and if they're good enough maybe they get an extra cookie out of it like Contraband for each participant.
Yes, it purposefully delays the mission time. That's the point. But the enemy wouldn't necessarily need a bunch of HP, and bigger rewards are reaped from doing the same thing as burning a target down, but using a different way of going about it.
If the Cruisers/Science Ships are able to save a team member from impending death, the whole team gets a bigger score.
You distill 5 or 6 Argala runs into one mission as long as everybody can play their ship to its strengths, and do it well.
They didn't really improve the AI per say.. they just tacked on some added skills to some of the NPC's and called it a day. Unfortunately, the NPC's, in most cases, didn't know how to handle the added skills. The borg sphere's with Emergency power to engines that I mentioned in my earlier post for instance would activate the skill and fly off the edge of the map or get stuck in the gate. There was no real challenge unless you call chasing down a bunch of rogue sphere's challenging.
There are people that run support in this game while finding it rewarding and fulfilling.
Did you fight the original Elachi on Tribble during the LoR beta? It was awesome, they worked together - it was like pugging PvP.
Heh, it's kind of funny thinking back to it...them tossing debuffs, healing each other, moving around...it was awesome. They got nerfed into the ground...they got nerfed so far down into the ground they went from one side of the planet to the other compared to what they were originally.
The problem with the devs dabling so far is they add more abilities but the potential of these abilities in the NPCs hands far exceeds the capacity of players using the same ability on the same ships. it also doesn't help that these ships despite getting all these nice new abilities still have silly HP levels which ultimately make the game less fun.
NPCs should not be designed to do an amount of damage and die, they should be designed to impede the player's progress, the lazy way is to build the HP walls we have now, the harder but better and ultimately more rewarding both in gameplay and in feedback is to take the time to do the AI properly and build NPCs that have the same maximum potential as a player at a given level with a given ship/class, NPC ships that have this potential improve the re-playability of any content because no two fights against the same NPC are the same, it keeps the player thinking rather than putting together automated point and shoot builds that roflstomp anything in their path.
If need be devs can fix the base of all NPC ship classes, for example adding cycle-able EPtX to cruisers and escorts, giving raiders built in damage powers, they could fix Neutronium consoles to some or all NPC classes in case the AI doesn't.
Stuff like the spheres that got lost in space thanks to their EptE and the undine rifts and snot balls are among the best examples for this.
I also remember something about npc's feedbackpulses taking down beamboats before their first firing cycle was even complete.
I really would like to see smart enemies in the game but what I'd expect if cryptic announces something along those lines are overpowered instakill ships with like 2 million hp, and skills equivalent to grav well XVI and BO XX.
Reminds me of the time when the Borg were buffed...but they weren't buffed, they were bugged. Everybody complaining cause their glass cannons were fodder...while others could just play on through and have an engaging engagement. So of course the bugged Borg were fixed.
Reminds me of the initial Crystalline Advanced...everybody complaining cause their glass cannons were fodder...while others could just play on through and have an engaging engagement. So of course it was nerfed.
There's been quite a few things like that, stuff that was bugged but enjoyable as Hell...unless you were flying a glass cannon. Stuff that was purposefully made more difficult and was engaging as Hell...unless you were flying a glass cannon.
No, I'm not talking about Tac Cubes slinging 300k torps or Spheres tossing 80k torps...not that extreme stuff...
...but if NPCs were actually a threat, so folks had to build to deal with that threat either individually or as teams...
...oh well, doesn't matter.
I think the Elachi have the same abilities, they just use them less often. Kinda like how you used to need two EngTeam to fight them in space because they would spam Viral Matrix endlessly.
My character Tsin'xing
During S6 you could fly in the same mobs, and either eternally tank them or destroy them (CSV-Escort) within seconds. In this scenario, they werent nerfed, but powercreep began.
On the other hand, you can be sure, that the moment you introduce smart AI with BO-Skills, the whining about DR and HP-Spongs and Obligatory optionals would have been a joke.
The moment you only increase HP, the solution is rather simple: Either increase damage yourself or bet for one of those evil DPS-Guys to be in your pug, so he will pull you through.
Now, if they would increase the AI, the builds would have to change fundamentally, hence in pugs the dps would decrease, and obligatory optionals might not be reachable. There wouldnt be an obvious choice (yes, "adapt" is not obvious to most ppl) and most likely the evil DPSers would either adapt too (most likely reducing their DPS in pugs in the process), and this wouldnt be able to pull as much players as before through, or they would just fly more with friends and DPS-Chans.
Of course, I lied when saying there wouldnt be a obvious choice, of course there is, but its not in the game itself. Its going to the forums and whine "its too hard, its for too specialized builds, it only caters the top 0.x percent" hence forcing cryptic to nerf the content so hard it nearly auto-completes.
That happened for example with the most epic battle yet: The Battle of New Romulus.
From going to "your friendly NPCs could get wiped out" its gone to "your friendly NPCs mob the floor with the invasion fleet, just cross the lines for auto-completion".
And that was a battle you could have won with a little wits...
This. On equal kit you could just about make an Elite NPC be able to do PvP tournaments if you scripted it properly, and you could easily scale it down for lower difficulties.
They just don't care.
This is related, I swear...