What's the point of playing anymore

sisteric · February 2015

I try to use tactics, but the game cheats and just resets itself if it goes too far from it's spawn point. My little escort has to use hit and run tactics, but to use those means you get to see the enemy warp out and come back fully healed and no debuffs, crits or any or side effects you may have inflicted upon it doing the fight.

I don't have the money or the ****ing god-dam time to waste playing a game just so it can cheat and ignore anything I do.

Before DR I could use tactics, hit and run, and win without dieubg or blowing up. I ccould draw enemies away and seperate them so that I could take them on. Now, if I even try anything like it, it just ****ing warps out and bring itself back with fresh new units, leaving me with all the crit damage and hull damage from the guy who ****ing warped out. It is ****ing fair. It isn't fun anymore.

So Cryptic, explain to me how making it impossible to defeat enemies as lone escort with the gear you provide in the missions as fun! ****ing tell me that! Why the hell did I wast 200 ****ing dollars on this game so you can **** the living daylights out of me since DR? I really want to know. Because before the god forsaken expansion, I had FUN. I had alts that I played to vary the fun. Now, no ****ing fun, can't consider playing alts because of the hassle from not only the games resetting itself, but the ****ing time investment it takes to just get a ship somewhere in the vicinity of having snowballs chance in hell of winning any fight.

TELL ME!!!! Because right now your just ruining it more me.

And the real ****ty thing is I won't get answer from you because you don't like the negativity of this post. You can't see that what you have done is so harmful and damageing to the game, that it drives a relatively quiet, polite and positive person to pure hatred over something he loves. And you won't admit that you have gone so far overboard on the hp bags as harder content. And I can only beleive that at this point you don't give a flying **** about how your players feel anymore.

Unknown · February 2015

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daveyny · February 2015

It bugs the hell out of me that people make rants and insult each other without all the facts being apparent...

Like OP, what Level are you playing at... Normal/Advanced/Elite???

And Mr. Cold, why do you assume that he's playing at Elite???
And of what use is it to insult somebody who's obviously frustrated with the game???

Why the Hell can't folks be more supportive around here?

Jeepers, Mary & Joseph!

:rolleyes:

virusdancer · February 2015

It's like a Ker'rat rant...but directed not at players - but uh - NPCs...trippy.

rsoblivion · February 2015

Well neither of the first two posts are well written or have a decent point. Both are just vitriolic.

Anyway in response to the OP, you need to learn to play better. There are a lot of ways to increase DPS with just learning basics and learning flight mechanics. Did you do any build research? Did you look at any video's of those who have done high damage and learn what they did?

Using Mission based gear can be good, there's the Jem Hadar set, the Solonae set's both of which are perfectly good for the task at hand. Get some decent weapons and don't us a mix of cannons, torps and beams.

Check out http://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/ where you can find lots of useful tips on how to not suck at ship building. Then go and learn to use the ship properly.

I say this because even my alt's with Mk X Green's put out more DPS in an infected run than most people's main ships.

Unknown · February 2015

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bazag · February 2015

I play tactical in Escorts too.

Your build is probably lacking. In terms of equipment and skills.

High Mark = bigger numbers.

As an escort you want high speed, high turn rate and pretty much huge firepower.

You'd want a single energy weapon type Disruptor, tetryon, phaser, etc... and put the tactical consoles for that particular energy type on your ship.

If you put armour on your ship (Engineering consoles) then either have one for every energy type or find some general energy and kinetic and such armour consoles. The generic armours won't be as strong but they will apply in practically all circumstances.

As far as skills go... spend them.

Put them in tactical skills (such as Attack Patterns, Weapons training, Energy Weapons, Starship maneuvres and so on.

Starship Hull plating, Starship Armour reinforcements, and impulse thrusters are great engineering ones and you'll probably want the various efficiency and power boost skills too.

As for science... there are ones that will do you very little for Escorts. No need for Flow Capacitors, Graviton Generators, Particle Generators, Starship Sensors and so on. focus on the shield skills.

Finally... with skills as there is diminishing returns unless there is something you really want to ring everything out of and have the SP for going above six ranks in anything is generally not worth it.

loverofwars · February 2015

sounds like your doing delta patrols or something..

go grind a key from dil at dyson ground battlezone about 3 days 20k dil or so sell key about 2 mill ec

go buy xii or xi blue cannons accx2 3 of them and 1 torpedo photon/quantum critdx2 would be best on the torp and 2 turrets mk xi accx2 use the same energy type on all the weapons then buy blue xi consoles tactical of matching energy type or green something within the budget of 2 mill the cost of that key, armor consoles neutronium xi blue or green, and fill science consoles with whatever you pickup for now as cost v time playing. reply a step between stars and pick up the solanae shield and use cannon rapid fire x2 tactical team and torpedo spread try fitting them all in, engineering try emergency power to shields auxiliary power to structural intergirty engineering team, science hazard emitters and science team, or transfer shield strenght if playing dr missions however go for science and engineering team as they tend to have npcs who use abilitys that effects can be removed by those abilitys, these are basic choices and skills but important for surviving, you wont need to hit and run but attack head on kill them all, should do about 8-10k if decent skill setup too pretty much useable in any escort as well

(feel like you read a wall of text? well eat a cookie)

mirrorchaos · February 2015

coldnapalm wrote: »

I didn't. If you read a bit more carefully, I replied for all three difficulty...albiet with normal and advanced lumped.

As for the second part...because I am a jackarse. If you post a rant, expect one back from me with as much vitrol as you put in. If you can't take it, don't dish it out. You post in a polite manner, I will reply back in such...post like an TRIBBLE and I can reply in kind to that too.

as long as the mods expect you to keep it in line of course..

as for the op perhaps you should get back here, post again, but this time i would like to know what you are writing up without the insults.

dalolorn · February 2015

Am I the only one here who realized what the core of the OP's problems are?

He wants to use tactics, not tactical abilities/captains (though not necessarily excluding said abilities, either), to defeat his opponents more easily.

The game, however, disagrees with this choice (a choice I support wholeheartedly) and just respawns the NPCs whenever he tries to do that. Divide and conquer? Nope, we'll just warp out and call for reinforcements to take our place.

Hit and run? Nah, we've got l33t engineering skills, so by the time you come back for your second run, we'll be unharmed. SWTOR does all of this too, if memory serves.

I understand his pain, and fully sympathize with it. Me, I've grown accustomed to (somewhat suicidal) all-out attacks a long time ago.

seriousdave · February 2015

It's pretty difficult to give any meaningful advice or explanation when it's just a "can't faceroll, so it sucks"-rant.

Maybe he encountered some bugs, maybe he just has no idea how to build a ship and play accordingly, or maybe he wants to do stuff that's not even possible with the game mechanics. Without any actual information from the OP it's pretty hard to give constructive feddback....

aelfwin1 · February 2015

sisteric wrote: »

Before DR I could use tactics, hit and run, and win without dieubg or blowing up. I ccould draw enemies away and seperate them so that I could take them on. Now, if I even try anything like it, it just ****ing warps out and bring itself back with fresh new units, leaving me with all the crit damage and hull damage

You can purchase healing equipment that you can take with you in your inventory and apply it when in mission both in space and ground .
They are fairly cheap and I usually carry 20-40 of each in my inventory just in case .
(in my case , since I enjoy group play , being damaged and not healing one's self actually diminishes the effectiveness of the whole group , so it's a thing to be avoided if possible)

There 3 kinds of injuries (minor , major and critical) .
Healing equipment for minor , major can be purchased . Healing equipment for critical injuries sometimes drop from missions .

Here is some info (where to buy ect.) about the equipment :

Minor Components (space)

Major Components (space)

Minor Regenerator (ground)

Major Regenerator (ground)

As to how to use them , there are two ways :

1) pop open your character status and on the bottom right you will see an "Injured / Damaged" button . Click it and it will open a tab that will tell you how many injuries you got .
I usually click on the button "Heal All" and then log out of the window .

2) pop open your inventory , right click on the relevant Regenerator and click "use" .

Also , if you are fighting the Waaduar , when they drop their "spacial charges" (those flapjack looking things) , you can hit evasive maneuvers and fly away fast before they detonate them .

Hope this helps .

Unknown · February 2015

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sisteric · February 2015

daveyny wrote: »

It bugs the hell out of me that people make rants and insult each other without all the facts being apparent...

Like OP, what Level are you playing at... Normal/Advanced/Elite???

And Mr. Cold, why do you assume that he's playing at Elite???
And of what use is it to insult somebody who's obviously frustrated with the game???

Why the Hell can't folks be more supportive around here?

Jeepers, Mary & Joseph!

:rolleyes:

To answer your questions...

I thought I was playing at Normal. But somewhere along the line it dropped me to elite without my knowledge. So I had been doing all of DR at Elite on my first go around. I was two thirds of the way through DR before I hit this brick wall. And until maybe 30 minutes ago, never dawned on me that the difficulty had been changed from normal.

So to clarify my frustration, I had elite settings before DR game out and did fine. Then DR came out and I know I set difficulty back to normal, expecting that the difficulty would have been raised a bit. I don't know at what point the dificulty got reset to elite, but I am going to say that my most recent frustration was from me trying to do contact beleiving it to be at normal and finding out it's on on Elite instead.

As for my build, it's a phaser beam FAW build. I have asked for help on upgrading my dps before, and have taken that knowledge and applied it to what I can get my hands on. With dilithium being what it is, it's been the thing that has most limited me in upgrading my gear to tier 14.

My rant was not for the option to faceroll, but for the clear advantage of having tactics actually work in this game. dalolorn hit the nail on the head over what I was most frustrated about.

I have since gone back and tried the mission set to normal now, and had no problems applying my standard ways of doing things.

I guess now I am wondering as to when my difficulty got changed to elite. I was getting those ships to 4% hull before dieing myself on elite, so I guess my gear is almost thier, and it's not all purple Tier 14 yet.

angrytarg · February 2015

dalolorn wrote: »

Am I the only one here who realized what the core of the OP's problems are?

He wants to use tactics, not tactical abilities/captains (though not necessarily excluding said abilities, either), to defeat his opponents more easily.

The game, however, disagrees with this choice (a choice I support wholeheartedly) and just respawns the NPCs whenever he tries to do that. Divide and conquer? Nope, we'll just warp out and call for reinforcements to take our place.

Hit and run? Nah, we've got l33t engineering skills, so by the time you come back for your second run, we'll be unharmed. SWTOR does all of this too, if memory serves.

I understand his pain, and fully sympathize with it. Me, I've grown accustomed to (somewhat suicidal) all-out attacks a long time ago.

I was thinking the same. Once again, a point is completely lost.

Star Trek Online's strategy is limited to "put the best gear on your ship and don't die". I wasn't even aware that you cannot "kite" mobs anymore because they just reset when you try to do that. That's not good game design right here.

Unknown · February 2015

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dalolorn · February 2015

deokkent wrote: »

0_o :eek: you're joking.... Tell me you're joking.

There is some truth to his statement. Outside of an approach predetermined by the devs for a specific encounter or encounter type, there is very little need or even reward for thinking outside the "deal and tank damage until one side explodes" routine when engaging an NPC.

nimbull · February 2015

sisteric wrote: »

... Before DR I could use tactics, hit and run, and win without dieubg or blowing up. I ccould draw enemies away and seperate them so that I could take them on. ...

That right there is what made things really fun in missions. I did this in Night of the Comet when all the KDF ships started warping in and I had to blow up the comet. It was fun playing cat and mouse with those ship using my own warbird. Lure them away from the comet and destroy a piece of it over and over again. I called it the "Trolling Klingons" tactic.

So much fun to have the option to pick things apart like this. *sigh*

thatcursedwolf · February 2015

Kiting doesn't really make sense in space.

Spaceships tend to have ranged weapons, and generally as many, if not more, in the fore as the aft.

Melee ships would be the heavy torps.

sisteric · February 2015

thatcursedwolf wrote: »

Kiting doesn't really make sense in space.

Spaceships tend to have ranged weapons, and generally as many, if not more, in the fore as the aft.

Melee ships would be the heavy torps.

Running in and out of weapons range to keep his big torps off of me and maximizing my hull life works well in this game. I only "kite" a unit away from a group so that I am not pitting myself against to many units for me to handle. It works fairly well as tactic before DR. And made it fun for me to figure out those vectors and angles it takes to accomplish this.

Now it just doesn't seem to matter. Tactics can't win when the units will just reset themselves once they get a certain range from their spawn point.

noroblad · February 2015

sisteric wrote: »

I try to use tactics, but the game cheats and just resets itself if it goes too far from it's spawn point. My little escort has to use hit and run tactics, but to use those means you get to see the enemy warp out and come back fully healed and no debuffs, crits or any or side effects you may have inflicted upon it doing the fight.

I don't have the money or the ****ing god-dam time to waste playing a game just so it can cheat and ignore anything I do.

Before DR I could use tactics, hit and run, and win without dieubg or blowing up. I ccould draw enemies away and seperate them so that I could take them on. Now, if I even try anything like it, it just ****ing warps out and bring itself back with fresh new units, leaving me with all the crit damage and hull damage from the guy who ****ing warped out. It is ****ing fair. It isn't fun anymore.

So Cryptic, explain to me how making it impossible to defeat enemies as lone escort with the gear you provide in the missions as fun! ****ing tell me that! Why the hell did I wast 200 ****ing dollars on this game so you can **** the living daylights out of me since DR? I really want to know. Because before the god forsaken expansion, I had FUN. I had alts that I played to vary the fun. Now, no ****ing fun, can't consider playing alts because of the hassle from not only the games resetting itself, but the ****ing time investment it takes to just get a ship somewhere in the vicinity of having snowballs chance in hell of winning any fight.

TELL ME!!!! Because right now your just ruining it more me.

And the real ****ty thing is I won't get answer from you because you don't like the negativity of this post. You can't see that what you have done is so harmful and damageing to the game, that it drives a relatively quiet, polite and positive person to pure hatred over something he loves. And you won't admit that you have gone so far overboard on the hp bags as harder content. And I can only beleive that at this point you don't give a flying **** about how your players feel anymore.

Why do you need to use hit and run? This is the underlying problem. A dps ship that spends 1/2 or more of its time running away, guns facing the wrong direction, is not effective. Effective escorts have their guns on a target nearly 100% of the time. If you can't do this, your build needs to be tweaked somehow... you have too little durability, maybe, or your engines are too fast, or your dps is too low, or something. And yes, I drive escorts, or raiders, to be precise.

What, exactly, is warping out anyway? The undine do a version of this, but its more like romulan singularity warp. The DR mobs use evasive move and can zip around at a pretty fast clip, but you can eventually catch them. I am not sure what you even mean, what specific content has this happen?

DR is a little harder, but it should not be as you describe. Your ship should be able to fly in and blow up these enemy same as anything else. But you *do* need to adjust your officer skills and tactics a bit to counter the new enemy skills.

One thing that can make your life easier in DR is tractor repulsors, if you can seat it. Warpin mobs in patrols etc are not spawned by your tactics but by killing the enemy -- you kill a few, they get reinforcements, that is the way in many of the missions. TBR will shove them away and split them up for divide and kill, if they pop in onto your head unexpectedly. It also clears mines and anchors and other stupid stuff.

Edit: I just noticed you were on elite or advanced or something .... have you tried it again on normal since changing that? I can just barely handle advanced on a very well geared char -- and a crit TS will kill him too -- and can't solo elite at all (too much damage from npc torps, just can't be done in escorts with 1/2 the hull and shields of others).

darkjeff · February 2015

Enemies resetting after being too far is not unique to STO. It's in pretty much every game where it's possible, from Guild Wars to Borderlands. It's to prevent abuse of AI.

Unknown · February 2015

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hornet6 · February 2015

I can understand the frustration that the OP expresses. I always play on elite and use a variety of ships and builds, mostly using cruisers. The problem from my experience is not so much that the "hit and run" tactics OP might be using are ineffective but may be the tendency of the NPC ships to run, just as player ships often do, to escape destruction but if I can use the mouse or tab to stay on target (targets that run tend not to stay the primary target and have to be reaquired, from my experience).

I have had good luck using "pet" ships or devices in DR, although I don't use carriers. Even a turret dropped seems to help. If your hull drops below 50%, immediately activate fleet support and bring in a support ship of your own. It helps immensely.

Due to the increase in hull hp in DR ships, it is difficult to "alpha strike" one (one of the escort's main strengths, in my opinion) and destroy it as quickly as you are likely accustomed so you will have to increase your durrability and repair abilities without losing too much dps, a challenging build requirement.

My main problem with DR has always been those infernal blue "star" looking mines. I have found 2 ways to deal with them (hopefuly others can suggest more ways to deal with them too). First, put your "recharge evasive maneuveres" doff on duty. When the mines fly, get out of there fast. Keep "polarize hull" and/or "attack pattern omega" handy so the enemy or those pesky "anchors"can't tractor you and prevent your escape. If you are stuck when those mines go off, hit RSP and hope for the best. You may also have to have a BOFF with some sort of repair skill. These things tend to cut into dps but I have found it to be a necessary evil. It also tends to make an engineer captain (with "miracle worker" skill) in an escort not nearly as useless as before.

Try these tactics and see if they work for you. I am open to suggestion if anyone has any additional ideas. To me, learning from other players and adapting builds and tactics to a particular enemy, is part of what the game is about.

darkjeff · February 2015

deokkent wrote: »

I tried to pay attention to your opinion, but my brain just shut off at the dps ship part lol.:D

I think you are the problem lol.

It's an escort, a glass cannon. How else would you describe it?

adamkafei · February 2015

I run a DHC and torp setup on my tac/scort, my primary tactic is to sit behind a target until it dies and when faced with mixed groups pick off the small ones before going for the less mobile big ships, that way I avoid your issue.

With beam using ships I tend to play shepherd with DQ NPCs, they really are that stupid, it again prevents them warping in and out.

thatcursedwolf · February 2015

darkjeff wrote: »

It's an escort, a glass cannon. How else would you describe it?

My Kumari Escort always felt more like an A-10 than an F-16.

Unknown · February 2015

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kostamojenx · February 2015

I've been parking and shooting with Escorts since day 1. Its always been the best tactic for PVE Escorts. Heck, the new lockbox Escort even has a Mastery skill designed to help this kind of tactic!

The only time you really want a "speed" escort is for PVP. Vape builds, Alpha strikes, gtfo of there asap type of tactics. Thats where speed tactics makes sense.

thatcursedwolf · February 2015

kostamojenx wrote: »

The only time you really want a "speed" escort is for PVP. Vape builds, Alpha strikes, gtfo of there asap type of tactics. Thats where speed tactics makes sense.

A Risian Corvette torpedo boat with pegged engine power is hella fun in PvE. Not a need, definitely a want.

Full throttle is as fast as some ship's full impulse. 80 something percent defense at half throttle.

esquire1980 · February 2015

I can feel a bit of the OP's pain altho I hope I would of calmed down a bit before posting.

It seem to me that they used a script to add hitpoints/resists/etc to every NPC in the game, without giving much thought to specifics.

Case in point, I Doffed a eng up to 50 and began the missions at 50. I got to the DS-9 missions and came to the one where you fly a shuttle and take out the worker bees. I hoped in my lifetime larger and more consoled shuttle and proceeded like I had many times before. Only this time, the 360 phaser that comes with it, and another droped phaser beam just didn't have the DPS required for the new "worker bees" and yes, I had a DPS phaser specific console equipped, DPS skillpoints on the toon, along with eng/sci consoles. Made it thru 2 of them, barely, but 3 was impossible. All in the math, DPS v hitpoints v "repairs" time. To make it thru the mission, I transferred some "account bound" ACCX2 CRT1 pols, transferred a antiproton turret from another toon, appropriate consoles, and got thru the mission. Way over done here with difficulty, which it would seem to Cryptic, translates to hitppoint additions to shields/hull. Imagine trying this in the freebee shuttle your given with the equipment that comes with it. Impossible.

New players are NOT going to be able to transfer items, with all this DPS and DPS gain equipment, to another toon to bring it up. They get what drops or what rewards in missions. They probably are not going to have enough credits at that point in time to buy items of the bazaar for a shuttle, much less have the ship nicely equipped and ground toon/boffs decked out like I had or have the ability to do.

Poor, lazy, design and basic easy way of development (with a script that loads at every instance) that we all have seen in some other games as well. When you start retro-balancing things, expecially EVERY NPC contact in the game for min/maxers and min/maxers alone, you end up with PVE not being balanced and as bad as selling DPS and even thinking about the word "balance" in PVP gameplay. There is a difference between hard and impossible.

Personally, I don't blame this on coding devs at all. Devs come up with all kinds of crazy ideas they think is "cool". Anyone remember SOE's NGE? Where this sits, IMHO, is right on the desk of the Producer who should weed thru the crazy ideas and try to figure out what else is affected by said, crazy idea, and then nix said crazy idea, or require more development on the crazy idea to make it palletable.

Only way to "fix" this now, is to revert the script (which they won't do, SOE never reverted the NGE either) or have some new QA (not a guy who has played the game for 5 years) playtest each and EVERY mission in the game, find out what is adversely affected, and develop accordingly. (doub't they'll do this either - they'll wait for people to 'ragequit" or /ragepost before they get to anything) I was in the STO beta and it's never ended. I just paid for it now.

What's the point of playing anymore

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