I am not convinced that PUGging Advancedor Elite Queued Missions that can fail is worth the effort if the failure reward does not include the special reputation marks (Ancient Power Cells Voth Implants, Borg Neuroprocessors or Metamorphic Injections) for that queue, nor very rare materials.
Not unless failure rates go down significantly. I know, the players need to work a bit harder, but unfortunately, there is no guarantee with PUGs. I have not experienced a succesful Borg Disconnected run so far, for example, and have consequently given up on queuing. I don't need the Delta Alliance set items that much...
I also am an oh fer in Borg Disconnected pugs. About 0 for 60.
All other content is possible to pug right now. I would accept them making bug hunt and korfez unplayable if they make BDA possible. As I've pointed out many many times the spawn rate in the 2nd and especially 3rd round is messed up. Yesterday I had a group that actually covered all three zones. I soloed one and freed 6 or 7 in the 3rd round yet we only freed 13. One other time we freed 14. This is the most featured mission with DR. Shouldn't a pug actually be able to do it even 25% of the time ???????
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."
To which I asked, if the gear isn't needed to run Elites, then please: Show me a video of someone running an Elite (like ISE, CSE etc), in nothing but Common (White) gear. No special consoles, no special BOffs or DOffs. (and successfully completing it, preferrably with Optionals succeeded)
So no, I did not misquote you, and I did in fact read your entire post.
If you read the entire post...where did you get anything about Common (White) gear? Cause there was nothing in there about Common (White) gear and running Elites.
You even quoted the part you're not understanding while going on about Common (White) gear.
You don't need the gear that is rewarded from doing those Elites to do the Elites. Because you earn the items you need to get those rewards from doing the Elites themselves.
"You don't need the gear that is rewarded from doing those Elites to do the Elites."
If you're already running the Elites, you obviously did not need the gear from it to do them. You're already doing them.
"Because you earn the items you need to get those rewards from doing the Elites themselves."
If you're already running the Elites, you obviously did not need the gear from it to do them. You're already doing them.
Why is something so simple so difficult for you to process? There's nothing about not needing any gear...I mean, seriously, if I had gotten any sleep last night I'd probably have the sense to have ignored you for trolling. Nobody's that dense.
You said it yourself, that you earn the gear via things like the Reputation. Reputations require Marks, Dilithium, and BNPs/APCs etc. While it's possible to obtain these things elsewhere, BNPs (as far as I know) is exclusive to the Borg STFs. Normal difficulty doesn't award any. Advanced difficulty awards 1 per run (if you actually manage to succeed). Not 60 yet, can't speak for # of BNPs on Elite, but I assume it's still 1.
Which means, at best you can get the gear that requires BNPs, from the Advanced difficulty. So i'll assume most players don't actually have any of the Rep sets, before having run at least 5 Borg STFs (1 BNP per run, minimum 5 for 1 item).
Players might not have White (Common) gear before stepping into Advanced, but they sure as hell aren't swimming in Reputation gear before their first STF on Advanced.
I think you've gotten so used to having your Gold-colored Mark XIV's, that you've forgotten that there are still a great many players, who still run with Purple/Ultraviolet Mark XII's or even XIII's. Most aren't in the super-powered Mark XIV's yet, some will never have the Gold-colored Mark XIV's.
are you really agueing about the color (quality) of the gear?
how about a different approach on this....
Adv. missions are supposed to be playable and winable for lvl50 players
so what do you think... which gear do lvl50-60 players have?
some common... uncommn... rare..
yes
and how much dps do such players usually do?
2-5k dps (yes i think this are realistic numbers from what ive logged so far)
do you really think level 50-60 players can do adv. PVEs with such low dps rates?
They would need much luck to find a team member which has high dps and can prevent the mission from failing.
So how are these players supposed to make progress? How do they get better gear?
- Reputation system? -> no (without winning adv. missions they can not make any progress there)
- Fleet equipment? -> only if they have enough dilithium (which is hard to earn if you can not play missions that reward enough dil).
- Equipment from loot drops? -> yeah... well no... the loot is as TRIBBLE as their old equipment and meanwhile not even worth any EC
- Buying good equipment from the exchange? -> with which money? since they players fail adv. and elite missions they can only play normal... where the loot is TRIBBLE... the rewards are TRIBBLE... you dont earn anything there
Really, thats like trying to climb up a ladder with missing rungs.
You said it yourself, that you earn the gear via things like the Reputation. Reputations require Marks, Dilithium, and BNPs/APCs etc. While it's possible to obtain these things elsewhere, BNPs (as far as I know) is exclusive to the Borg STFs. Normal difficulty doesn't award any. Advanced difficulty awards 1 per run (if you actually manage to succeed). Not 60 yet, can't speak for # of BNPs on Elite, but I assume it's still 1.
Which means, at best you can get the gear that requires BNPs, from the Advanced difficulty. So i'll assume most players don't actually have any of the Rep sets, before having run at least 5 Borg STFs (1 BNP per run, minimum 5 for 1 item).
You said you read my whole post there. This was covered. Perhaps it was not clear when I said, "To add to that, in speaking about the gearing, consider that none of them actually require any "Dungeon" to be run. Sure, it's a game of RNG to do the Hourly Boxes, but it's still possible to get any of the special items required from them."
You can obtain everything needed for any of the Rep gear without stepping foot in a single queue.
Players might not have White (Common) gear before stepping into Advanced, but they sure as hell aren't swimming in Reputation gear before their first STF on Advanced.
Again, you said you read my whole post there. This was covered. Let's ignore for a moment that you don't have to run any queues to get gear and take a look at what not-Common gear one can get without having to resort to RNG with the boxes, eh?
Nukara. Nukara requires no special tokens. It was mentioned in the post.
New Rom. New Rom requires no special tokens. It was mentioned in the post.
Fleet. Fleet requires no special tokens. It was mentioned in the post.
Dyson. Requires special tokens. Available from world content. It was mentioned in the post.
Counter-Command. Requires special tokens. Available from world content. It was mentioned in the post.
Why do you think you need Task Force Omega gear? Hell, what makes you think Task Force Omega gear is the best? It's the oldest set. That was mentioned in the post too.
I think you've gotten so used to having your Gold-colored Mark XIV's, that you've forgotten that there are still a great many players, who still run with Purple/Ultraviolet Mark XII's or even XIII's. Most aren't in the super-powered Mark XIV's yet, some will never have the Gold-colored Mark XIV's.
It's not an awesome build. It's a pretty damn failbuild. I'm not a DPS chaser, so the highest it has parsed in ISA is 20,178.5 DPS. I rarely run it, though - Hell, I've only got eight runs saved...and there were probably 2-3 fails that aren't saved. It's just not my thing...and...I don't need anything from it or any other queue...cause you can get everything either better/faster or with a little patience without having to go near them.
So let's take a look at the gearing on it anyway, eh?
3pcs Delta weapons...got the majority of the APCs from boxes, but after a fun run with some members of the fleet and seeing how easy BHE was, I did a couple more runs to finish off that set and grab the Trajector core (that's not on the build).
Counter-Command Deflector...didn't run any Fluidic queue to get that.
Nukara Engines/Shields...no special tokens required for those.
Spire Fleet Core...yeah, no queues for that.
Hrmm, couple of Lobi consoles, some Fleet consoles, couple of R&D consoles, a Lock Box console, pair of rare Tac consoles dropped in Argala...the pets...Widows and Scorps, yeah, no queues required there either.
The other four Beams? Yeah, they're not G14 AP [Ac/Dm][CrtD]x4...heh, what's that...[Acc]x2[Over] Polaron...2x VR14, 1x UR13 w/CrtD, and a VR13. I was testing the [Over] proc for something and I've never gotten around to switching them out for anything else.
Here's a thread for somebody else flying a Sarr Theln and their build. They're doing 34-35k DPS with a KDF Eng. http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1347061 Where's their omgherd I need to run Advanced/Elite STFs gearing there?
Seriously, I definitely think you're trolling...I'm going to grab some caffeine and try to wake up a bit.
I understand that every man and his dog has an opinion on the state of play at the moment in STO regarding these issues. However, I request that you please indulge my input.
I have attempted to put in the simplest possible the way the serious issue of Specialization Experience by map difficulty. I understand that Argala is a touchy subject, nonetheless I have used the Friends in Unlikely Place Argala Patrol as the test bed to collect some data. It is this data and my conclusions that I would like to share.
I ran the mission in Argala once for each difficulty - Normal, Advanced & Elite. I will solo and used the same ship and letting all timers reset between each attempt. I wanted to keep the variables as small as possible so that I could capture reliable mission duration data.
Below is a screenshot link of my data and some conclusions. The key piece of data is what I have termed the Earnings Quotient by difficulty. This is simply the total XP earned (both NPC deaths + completion reward) divided by the time invested to earn it.
One would expect such a quotient to increase based on difficulty as this would encourage players to strive to improve their gameplay in the pursuit of the stronger reward. However, as you can see the earnings quotient for Elite is around two thirds lower than Normal and this is an issue throughout the game. What is the incentive to learn to do Elite if the rewards aren't worth the effort? This leads to a player base less competent than they should be and is directly responsible for the state of the public queues for Advanced and Elite missions today.
While I have your attention and on the public queue issue, would it be possible to investigate altering the queue forming process so that a private room opens before the mission begins? This will allow the team to discuss strategy and assign tasks to members based on their career and/or ship they are in. I do seriously think this is a good idea and can't imagine that it would require too much recoding as all the elements already exist which needs to be reorganised into a new process flow.
I hope this helps you with your efforts to improve the STO experience.
Regards,
Snipey47a
I couldn't agree more.
Effort vs reward in this game needs a serious overhaul.
Fleet Admiral/Chancellor Federation & Imperial Bushrangers Looking for a fun and friendly fleet? Sign up here: http://bushrangersfleet.enjin.com
Effort vs reward in this game needs a serious overhaul.
Their overhauls go kind of like this...
Drastic Reputation Overhaul by increasing mark reward given by 2 marks from the previous 5 for a 30 minute mission. As per 750-1000 marks for one piece of gear lol.
As a Mathematics professor at a local college, I must commend Snipey47 for his analysis. Based on one sample, he's pretty much got the analysis down very well. Assuming that the devs are all Math, CS, or CSE graduates, then they know more than enough math to understand Snipey's analysis. All I can say is "come on, devs! Please don't confirm that your own player-base interpret mathematical results better than you do."
LMAO.....
They are FULLY AWARE of the maths and the payout discrepancy. This is by design, sadly.
I understand that every man and his dog has an opinion on the state of play at the moment in STO regarding these issues. However, I request that you please indulge my input.
I have attempted to put in the simplest possible the way the serious issue of Specialization Experience by map difficulty. I understand that Argala is a touchy subject, nonetheless I have used the Friends in Unlikely Place Argala Patrol as the test bed to collect some data. It is this data and my conclusions that I would like to share.
I ran the mission in Argala once for each difficulty - Normal, Advanced & Elite. I will solo and used the same ship and letting all timers reset between each attempt. I wanted to keep the variables as small as possible so that I could capture reliable mission duration data.
Below is a screenshot link of my data and some conclusions. The key piece of data is what I have termed the Earnings Quotient by difficulty. This is simply the total XP earned (both NPC deaths + completion reward) divided by the time invested to earn it.
One would expect such a quotient to increase based on difficulty as this would encourage players to strive to improve their gameplay in the pursuit of the stronger reward. However, as you can see the earnings quotient for Elite is around two thirds lower than Normal and this is an issue throughout the game. What is the incentive to learn to do Elite if the rewards aren't worth the effort? This leads to a player base less competent than they should be and is directly responsible for the state of the public queues for Advanced and Elite missions today.
While I have your attention and on the public queue issue, would it be possible to investigate altering the queue forming process so that a private room opens before the mission begins? This will allow the team to discuss strategy and assign tasks to members based on their career and/or ship they are in. I do seriously think this is a good idea and can't imagine that it would require too much recoding as all the elements already exist which needs to be reorganised into a new process flow.
I hope this helps you with your efforts to improve the STO experience.
Regards,
Snipey47a
I feel like I've agreed with this before the first time they shut down and nuked the entire Tau Dewa sector and labelled it an 'exploit...' In fact, I have.
Yet again, I see absolutely no reason based on these figures to ever play Elite difficulty again. Where's the carrot? Because those numbers are all stick.
I'd rather mindlessly hit space bar on Normal difficulty in the Gerran system, and do it 20 times in an hour than have to even consider the possibility of going in to Argala or other places on Elite for such marginal returns for my time. The mark-to-dilithium conversion alone makes that a better value prospect.
What's the carrot? The loot? I can't remember the last thing I picked up from an NPC drop that wasn't sold at a vendor or airlocked. Sure as heck wouldn't use it, and definitely can't sell that junk on the exchange. Make the NPCs consistently drop purple XIVs and I might consider it... but green Mk XII EPS flow regulators really aren't cutting it in this day and age.
(You know your loot is stuffed when a Terran holiday ornament is worth more than a piece of usable hardware.)
Let's not even mention the fact that I can't even enter the DQ systems with a team for love or money. Wouldn't be so bad if I had some buddies with me.
I like the difference in HP bump between elite and adv vs adv and normal. Pretty much double from normal to adv, and 4X for adv to elite.
Anyway, I wish you did an stf for comparison. I can already tell you : 2K xp for kill and mission. I already know the result will be extremely low.
Hi,
I didn't do a STF as that would have introduced an array of unwanted variables such as four more players and their variability in piloting to say the least. If I was to repeat my data collection series multiple times, I would be confident of achieving very similar mission duration times across a series of attempts per difficulty. Relying on 4 extra people to take the same line, manage abilities in identical fashion each attempt etc etc would be extremely hard. Alternatively, I could state that this is the normal variability inherent to the STFs but incorporating that variability would increase the margin for error on the earning quotient figure.
Snipey47a's comment is spot on. You hear a lot of complaints but here is something that is broke (with evidence) and the way to fix it. Maybe I missed something - likely in my advanced years but if you are trying to get players to improve and be willing to take on greater (more difficult) challenges you either up the ante or there is no point in playing it. According to the Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 62 The riskier the road, the greater the profit.
Please do not take NWS away. It is still fun. Simply take it back to what it used to be. We have whole channels devoted to NWS. I fear that it will be "revisited in near future" like Terradome was going to be revisited and re-released--what, are we going on a year now?
NWS is still played a ton--just not on public queues as you have to have a strategy to win it. That is why we formed the private channels.
So, again, PLEASE DO NOT TAKE NWS AWAY as I am pretty sure it will never come back.
+1 I play an average of 5 no win scenario games and win 3/5 because.. lag bad luck and other factors exist..
No one plays advanced and elite versions cause you forgot to BOOST the rewards.
Time is money as the ferengi should say (if they dont they need to add it)
Has anyone actually logged on tribble and figured out how much of a difference the Advance/Elite change has made?
How many runs are we talking to get a spec point is really the only question that I need answered.
Since an STF (advanced, and some elite) usually award around 2K stf pre patch (without xp boost), and the patch will increase xp by 1/5, you are looking at a 400xp increase. So 2400xp instead of 2k. And I included the mission XP reward with it. It should be slightly lower.
I'm not that good in math, so if anyone could confirm, that would be nice.
Anyway, do not expect anything big. The boost is rather small.
As for how many STF run per spec point for a lvl 60 without xp boost :
pre patch : 75 runs
post patch : 62.5 runs
For Argala, that's a bit more complicated. I don't have the numbers (I don't know if snipey's data are before or after patch, also they might be affected by the xp boost Tribble enjoyed for a while).
Also, as shown by his data, normal Argala is more interesting for XP grind.
The game is going in the wrong direction. Every buff to enemies in Adv/Eli eliminates players from an already dwindling player base; especially on ground, where players are very few. I am not looking forward to the changes to Adv/Eli enemies and hope you reconsider pushing such changes to Holodeck.
DPS-Bronze, DPS-Silver, DPS-Gold, etc. are FAKE! They were created by an outvoted minority who destroyed the original DPS channels!
Tactical Team sucked, once upon a time. I got it buffed. Don't think for a minute that Cryptic ignores forum feedback.
Since an STF (advanced, and some elite) usually award around 2K stf pre patch (without xp boost), and the patch will increase xp by 1/5, you are looking at a 400xp increase. So 2400xp instead of 2k. And I included the mission XP reward with it. It should be slightly lower.
I'm not that good in math, so if anyone could confirm, that would be nice.
Anyway, do not expect anything big. The boost is rather small.
As for how many STF run per spec point for a lvl 60 without xp boost :
pre patch : 75 runs
post patch : 62.5 runs
For Argala, that's a bit more complicated. I don't have the numbers (I don't know if snipey's data are before or after patch, I'also they might be affected by the xp boost Tribble enjoyed for a while).
Also, as shown by his data, normal Argala is more interesting for XP grind.
Hi,
Just letting you know my data was collected on Holodeck 30 mins before the date on my original post.
I'm just going to copy this in from another thread as it puts things into perspective with regard the spec point system and how badly implemented it is due to lack of good rewards on missions.
On the point of spec point acquisition, I thought I might try to get some points during this xp weekend. I managed to get 17 spec points. However that took 227 back-to-back Gerren runs, and it is just simply depressing when you think if it wasn't an event, you'd get half the spec points and so would have to run 454 of the darn things. My mate did 500 runs or so, god knows how, I thought I was the crazy one. So for him to have achieved the same he'd have had to do over 1000 runs.
Now considering this is the closest we can get to content that is rewarding enough for time investment and realistic progress this is shockingly poor, so now that the level cap has essentially increased to 140 (30(Command)+30(Intel)+15(Commando)+15(Pilot)+60(Level Cap)-10(for 50-60)=140) is it really reasonable to expect people to do this, because that is without taking alts into consideration.
Those are my thoughts on the spec point system, and really when the game is that lopsided that only a couple of missions are rewarding right, you do need to rethink how this is done. Personally, I'd like to see the levelling speed returned to that of pre DR. Absolutely no reason to not do it, and if people want to power level it in under a few days that's up to them, we shouldn't have that decision made for us. As I see it, someone should be able to keep a good pace without making a second job of the game.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
Personally, I'd like to see the levelling speed returned to that of pre DR. Absolutely no reason to not do it, and if people want to power level it in under a few days that's up to them, we shouldn't have that decision made for us. As I see it, someone should be able to keep a good pace without making a second job of the game.
I have to agree, in terms of grinds, exp was one step too far and unnecessary at that all it's served to do is put people off. At least if the levelling is returned to pre-DR there is a chance people might stop running Argala and Garren and start running queues which might even help with the dead queues issue.
As Tarastheslayer has already commented on, I've gone managed to collect 35 spec points. 7 of which were collected before the Bonus Xp weekend, the rest during. Now first of all I've reached the maximum number of spec points allowed. Despite there being the command officer spec tree due for release shortly. Secondly as a ball park figure I've run around 500 patrol missions being divided up between Argala and Gerren systems, with the odd fleet alert thrown in for good measure. Outside of the Bonus event this would have doubled to over a thousand.
Now I know Taras thinks that the one or both patrol missions are soul destroying and on that point I can not disagree with him. But it is a necessary evil, because of the way Cryptic has structured the Xp rewards to herd people into the Delta quadrant. for example over a 5 min period (and I've chosen 5 min because thats how long it takes me to run a Argala patrol) starting with the Argala patrol I'm looking at a average figure of around 10,000xp from a normal run. so that equals out to around 15 runs to gain a spec point.
So why keep running the patrol missions, simple they offer the best rewards when leveraged against the time required to complete them. Cryptic throws its metrics up every now and then, but the fact is that by forcing people into these missions they are in fact doctoring their own metrics. So people cant or shouldn't take them seriously, they may well show people are flocking to the Delta quadrant, but that's because its the path of least resistance to levelling.
The amount of XP earned needs to be returned to where is was before DR, Cryptic allowed people to level as fast as we were, then made the arbitrary decision to chuck out the anchors, for reasons unknown. Out of 7 alts, one so far is capable of maxing out the current 3 spec tree's the other 6 have been reduced to doffing mules.
Onto the Queue Difficulty, well Not only were the old elites meant to be new advanced only turned out not to be, not only did they ramp up the HP on targets and turn the game into a DPS race, but it also seems they've pulled the teeth on certain end level bosses. Rebecca Simmons has been dropped in 7 shots I believe with a 3 man team, Armek gets killed before the poor fellow even gets chance to finish the second part of his speech and his dps output from the Orbital strikes is a joke. The Crystaline entity's Absorption wave on Advanced used to have players running for their lives, I've seen a few ships able to weather it and remain in action. Now every class cannon in the game can stand their ground and not worry about it.
So after that wall of text, here's what I think needs to happen
1/ XP needs returning to where is was before DR, if a small minority want to power level then let them.
2/ Spec points after we've filled the available trees lets us acquire additional points for use in the next tree that your going to introduce.
3/ Turning STF mobs into damage sponges is the easy way out. Look at how these ships would be built by players and work something around that.
4/ Give the curtailed bosses their teeth back, make them threatening again.
4/ Give the curtailed bosses their teeth back, make them threatening again.
The last one they are doing, though by increasing their "damage sponge" rating. The math section at the beginning comments on that. Otherwise... yeah, progression is boring these days and I doubt that +20% (Advanced) or +25% (Elite) kill XP (from their current rewards) is going to change that since the NPC scaling at those difficulty settings exceeds the XP increase. It won't hurt, but it's a bit of a baby step after Delta Rising throttled our progression back so drastically... hopefully we eventually learn to run again at some point.
God I wish I'd been in Japori instead of trying out the Delta Episodes...
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Their just fixing one part of the problem. It's not enough to simply increase for example Armek's health when they've still got him wearing the kid gloves so to speak. Like I said before his orbital strikes were previously capable of one hitting the average player. Now they just get shrugged off and Armek just gets the snot kicked out of him.
The latest balance fix for NPC on advanced and elite difficulty on the ground has effectively killed all the ground advanced and elite queues.
Combined with the large amount of critters (npc) spawned the amount of fire power required has suddenly doubled or tripled.
Nukara transdimentional, Bug Hunt Elite and the Elachi station (seriously rename that to a name people can remember) were the only reliable queues for their respective marks/elite item.
Before Thursday they were tough but doable. Now they have a fail rate of over 75%. The only ones doing them are those who have not played it since Thursday.
Too many queues have gone barren already because the time, difficulty, failure rate and lack of rewards frustrate people. Perhaps you corrected a bug which spawned NPC with lower than intended hit points and shields, but truth be told the NPC hit point sponges drive players away and the bar should be lowered to allow players to succeed.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Comments
I also am an oh fer in Borg Disconnected pugs. About 0 for 60.
All other content is possible to pug right now. I would accept them making bug hunt and korfez unplayable if they make BDA possible. As I've pointed out many many times the spawn rate in the 2nd and especially 3rd round is messed up. Yesterday I had a group that actually covered all three zones. I soloed one and freed 6 or 7 in the 3rd round yet we only freed 13. One other time we freed 14. This is the most featured mission with DR. Shouldn't a pug actually be able to do it even 25% of the time ???????
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
If you read the entire post...where did you get anything about Common (White) gear? Cause there was nothing in there about Common (White) gear and running Elites.
You even quoted the part you're not understanding while going on about Common (White) gear.
"You don't need the gear that is rewarded from doing those Elites to do the Elites."
If you're already running the Elites, you obviously did not need the gear from it to do them. You're already doing them.
"Because you earn the items you need to get those rewards from doing the Elites themselves."
If you're already running the Elites, you obviously did not need the gear from it to do them. You're already doing them.
Why is something so simple so difficult for you to process? There's nothing about not needing any gear...I mean, seriously, if I had gotten any sleep last night I'd probably have the sense to have ignored you for trolling. Nobody's that dense.
Hey, at least I didn't go in on insulting you.
You said it yourself, that you earn the gear via things like the Reputation. Reputations require Marks, Dilithium, and BNPs/APCs etc. While it's possible to obtain these things elsewhere, BNPs (as far as I know) is exclusive to the Borg STFs. Normal difficulty doesn't award any. Advanced difficulty awards 1 per run (if you actually manage to succeed). Not 60 yet, can't speak for # of BNPs on Elite, but I assume it's still 1.
Which means, at best you can get the gear that requires BNPs, from the Advanced difficulty. So i'll assume most players don't actually have any of the Rep sets, before having run at least 5 Borg STFs (1 BNP per run, minimum 5 for 1 item).
Players might not have White (Common) gear before stepping into Advanced, but they sure as hell aren't swimming in Reputation gear before their first STF on Advanced.
I think you've gotten so used to having your Gold-colored Mark XIV's, that you've forgotten that there are still a great many players, who still run with Purple/Ultraviolet Mark XII's or even XIII's. Most aren't in the super-powered Mark XIV's yet, some will never have the Gold-colored Mark XIV's.
how about a different approach on this....
Adv. missions are supposed to be playable and winable for lvl50 players
so what do you think... which gear do lvl50-60 players have?
some common... uncommn... rare..
yes
and how much dps do such players usually do?
2-5k dps (yes i think this are realistic numbers from what ive logged so far)
do you really think level 50-60 players can do adv. PVEs with such low dps rates?
They would need much luck to find a team member which has high dps and can prevent the mission from failing.
So how are these players supposed to make progress? How do they get better gear?
- Reputation system? -> no (without winning adv. missions they can not make any progress there)
- Fleet equipment? -> only if they have enough dilithium (which is hard to earn if you can not play missions that reward enough dil).
- Equipment from loot drops? -> yeah... well no... the loot is as TRIBBLE as their old equipment and meanwhile not even worth any EC
- Buying good equipment from the exchange? -> with which money? since they players fail adv. and elite missions they can only play normal... where the loot is TRIBBLE... the rewards are TRIBBLE... you dont earn anything there
Really, thats like trying to climb up a ladder with missing rungs.
It's a pet peeve of mine. Cause there's no way you read what I said to write the reply you did.
And I swear you're trolling me...and I really should just walk away.
You said you read my whole post there. This was covered. Perhaps it was not clear when I said, "To add to that, in speaking about the gearing, consider that none of them actually require any "Dungeon" to be run. Sure, it's a game of RNG to do the Hourly Boxes, but it's still possible to get any of the special items required from them."
You can obtain everything needed for any of the Rep gear without stepping foot in a single queue.
Again, you said you read my whole post there. This was covered. Let's ignore for a moment that you don't have to run any queues to get gear and take a look at what not-Common gear one can get without having to resort to RNG with the boxes, eh?
Nukara. Nukara requires no special tokens. It was mentioned in the post.
New Rom. New Rom requires no special tokens. It was mentioned in the post.
Fleet. Fleet requires no special tokens. It was mentioned in the post.
Dyson. Requires special tokens. Available from world content. It was mentioned in the post.
Counter-Command. Requires special tokens. Available from world content. It was mentioned in the post.
Others not mentioned in that post?
Breen. VR mission reward set.
Jem'Hadar. VR mission reward set.
Solanae. VR mission reward set.
Why do you think you need Task Force Omega gear? Hell, what makes you think Task Force Omega gear is the best? It's the oldest set. That was mentioned in the post too.
Here's my highest parsing build: http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=sarrwheee4_5343
It's not an awesome build. It's a pretty damn failbuild. I'm not a DPS chaser, so the highest it has parsed in ISA is 20,178.5 DPS. I rarely run it, though - Hell, I've only got eight runs saved...and there were probably 2-3 fails that aren't saved. It's just not my thing...and...I don't need anything from it or any other queue...cause you can get everything either better/faster or with a little patience without having to go near them.
So let's take a look at the gearing on it anyway, eh?
3pcs Delta weapons...got the majority of the APCs from boxes, but after a fun run with some members of the fleet and seeing how easy BHE was, I did a couple more runs to finish off that set and grab the Trajector core (that's not on the build).
Counter-Command Deflector...didn't run any Fluidic queue to get that.
Nukara Engines/Shields...no special tokens required for those.
Spire Fleet Core...yeah, no queues for that.
Hrmm, couple of Lobi consoles, some Fleet consoles, couple of R&D consoles, a Lock Box console, pair of rare Tac consoles dropped in Argala...the pets...Widows and Scorps, yeah, no queues required there either.
The other four Beams? Yeah, they're not G14 AP [Ac/Dm][CrtD]x4...heh, what's that...[Acc]x2[Over] Polaron...2x VR14, 1x UR13 w/CrtD, and a VR13. I was testing the [Over] proc for something and I've never gotten around to switching them out for anything else.
Here's a thread for somebody else flying a Sarr Theln and their build. They're doing 34-35k DPS with a KDF Eng. http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1347061 Where's their omgherd I need to run Advanced/Elite STFs gearing there?
Seriously, I definitely think you're trolling...I'm going to grab some caffeine and try to wake up a bit.
I couldn't agree more.
Effort vs reward in this game needs a serious overhaul.
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Their overhauls go kind of like this...
Drastic Reputation Overhaul by increasing mark reward given by 2 marks from the previous 5 for a 30 minute mission. As per 750-1000 marks for one piece of gear lol.
...#LLAP...
LMAO.....
They are FULLY AWARE of the maths and the payout discrepancy. This is by design, sadly.
I feel like I've agreed with this before the first time they shut down and nuked the entire Tau Dewa sector and labelled it an 'exploit...' In fact, I have.
Yet again, I see absolutely no reason based on these figures to ever play Elite difficulty again. Where's the carrot? Because those numbers are all stick.
I'd rather mindlessly hit space bar on Normal difficulty in the Gerran system, and do it 20 times in an hour than have to even consider the possibility of going in to Argala or other places on Elite for such marginal returns for my time. The mark-to-dilithium conversion alone makes that a better value prospect.
What's the carrot? The loot? I can't remember the last thing I picked up from an NPC drop that wasn't sold at a vendor or airlocked. Sure as heck wouldn't use it, and definitely can't sell that junk on the exchange. Make the NPCs consistently drop purple XIVs and I might consider it... but green Mk XII EPS flow regulators really aren't cutting it in this day and age.
(You know your loot is stuffed when a Terran holiday ornament is worth more than a piece of usable hardware.)
Let's not even mention the fact that I can't even enter the DQ systems with a team for love or money. Wouldn't be so bad if I had some buddies with me.
Hi,
I didn't do a STF as that would have introduced an array of unwanted variables such as four more players and their variability in piloting to say the least. If I was to repeat my data collection series multiple times, I would be confident of achieving very similar mission duration times across a series of attempts per difficulty. Relying on 4 extra people to take the same line, manage abilities in identical fashion each attempt etc etc would be extremely hard. Alternatively, I could state that this is the normal variability inherent to the STFs but incorporating that variability would increase the margin for error on the earning quotient figure.
regards,
Snipey47a
+1 I play an average of 5 no win scenario games and win 3/5 because.. lag bad luck and other factors exist..
No one plays advanced and elite versions cause you forgot to BOOST the rewards.
Time is money as the ferengi should say (if they dont they need to add it)
Thats the most fun stf in the game, the rest are too exhausting to play for fun.
Remove NWS?
What is wrong with you people deving?
How many runs are we talking to get a spec point is really the only question that I need answered.
I'm not that good in math, so if anyone could confirm, that would be nice.
Anyway, do not expect anything big. The boost is rather small.
As for how many STF run per spec point for a lvl 60 without xp boost :
pre patch : 75 runs
post patch : 62.5 runs
For Argala, that's a bit more complicated. I don't have the numbers (I don't know if snipey's data are before or after patch, also they might be affected by the xp boost Tribble enjoyed for a while).
Also, as shown by his data, normal Argala is more interesting for XP grind.
Tactical Team sucked, once upon a time. I got it buffed. Don't think for a minute that Cryptic ignores forum feedback.
Good job.
Hi,
Just letting you know my data was collected on Holodeck 30 mins before the date on my original post.
Snipey
Those are my thoughts on the spec point system, and really when the game is that lopsided that only a couple of missions are rewarding right, you do need to rethink how this is done. Personally, I'd like to see the levelling speed returned to that of pre DR. Absolutely no reason to not do it, and if people want to power level it in under a few days that's up to them, we shouldn't have that decision made for us. As I see it, someone should be able to keep a good pace without making a second job of the game.
I have to agree, in terms of grinds, exp was one step too far and unnecessary at that all it's served to do is put people off. At least if the levelling is returned to pre-DR there is a chance people might stop running Argala and Garren and start running queues which might even help with the dead queues issue.
Now I know Taras thinks that the one or both patrol missions are soul destroying and on that point I can not disagree with him. But it is a necessary evil, because of the way Cryptic has structured the Xp rewards to herd people into the Delta quadrant. for example over a 5 min period (and I've chosen 5 min because thats how long it takes me to run a Argala patrol) starting with the Argala patrol I'm looking at a average figure of around 10,000xp from a normal run. so that equals out to around 15 runs to gain a spec point.
So why keep running the patrol missions, simple they offer the best rewards when leveraged against the time required to complete them. Cryptic throws its metrics up every now and then, but the fact is that by forcing people into these missions they are in fact doctoring their own metrics. So people cant or shouldn't take them seriously, they may well show people are flocking to the Delta quadrant, but that's because its the path of least resistance to levelling.
The amount of XP earned needs to be returned to where is was before DR, Cryptic allowed people to level as fast as we were, then made the arbitrary decision to chuck out the anchors, for reasons unknown. Out of 7 alts, one so far is capable of maxing out the current 3 spec tree's the other 6 have been reduced to doffing mules.
Onto the Queue Difficulty, well Not only were the old elites meant to be new advanced only turned out not to be, not only did they ramp up the HP on targets and turn the game into a DPS race, but it also seems they've pulled the teeth on certain end level bosses. Rebecca Simmons has been dropped in 7 shots I believe with a 3 man team, Armek gets killed before the poor fellow even gets chance to finish the second part of his speech and his dps output from the Orbital strikes is a joke. The Crystaline entity's Absorption wave on Advanced used to have players running for their lives, I've seen a few ships able to weather it and remain in action. Now every class cannon in the game can stand their ground and not worry about it.
So after that wall of text, here's what I think needs to happen
1/ XP needs returning to where is was before DR, if a small minority want to power level then let them.
2/ Spec points after we've filled the available trees lets us acquire additional points for use in the next tree that your going to introduce.
3/ Turning STF mobs into damage sponges is the easy way out. Look at how these ships would be built by players and work something around that.
4/ Give the curtailed bosses their teeth back, make them threatening again.
The last one they are doing, though by increasing their "damage sponge" rating. The math section at the beginning comments on that. Otherwise... yeah, progression is boring these days and I doubt that +20% (Advanced) or +25% (Elite) kill XP (from their current rewards) is going to change that since the NPC scaling at those difficulty settings exceeds the XP increase. It won't hurt, but it's a bit of a baby step after Delta Rising throttled our progression back so drastically... hopefully we eventually learn to run again at some point.
God I wish I'd been in Japori instead of trying out the Delta Episodes...
Combined with the large amount of critters (npc) spawned the amount of fire power required has suddenly doubled or tripled.
Nukara transdimentional, Bug Hunt Elite and the Elachi station (seriously rename that to a name people can remember) were the only reliable queues for their respective marks/elite item.
Before Thursday they were tough but doable. Now they have a fail rate of over 75%. The only ones doing them are those who have not played it since Thursday.
Too many queues have gone barren already because the time, difficulty, failure rate and lack of rewards frustrate people. Perhaps you corrected a bug which spawned NPC with lower than intended hit points and shields, but truth be told the NPC hit point sponges drive players away and the bar should be lowered to allow players to succeed.