I'm not going to bother with the rest of the elitist pat-myself-on-the-back-because-I-think-I'm-such-an-uber-player-and-all-the-rest-of-you-suck quote. My stomach can't handle any more of that garbage.
First, not everyone does STFs.
Second, if you're getting unwanted teammates in the STFs with you, that's what the closed team settings are for.
Third, what most complaints are about regarding increased difficulty (which has even been addressed by staff as being reduced in the near future as a result) has to do with storyline missions, those blasted patrols, and other NORMAL-grade content. If a player wants increased difficulty, they should be able to increase it by playing content at the Advanced or Elite settings. But the Normal settings should be doable by casual players that have no idea what their DPS ratings are, because they're playing the GAME for FUN and not statistics to craft laurels out of. Not that the missions should be cakewalks; I'm not saying that. I'm saying challenging, but doable without being pigeonholed or dying repeatedly in the process. That's not fun, and this is a game, meant to be fun, otherwise why are we even here?
Fourth, this game was originally designed so that it could be played by many different styles and loadouts and what-have-you. If the game was only meant to be won by playing with a specific ship with specific weaponry and specific BOffs and so on, then that's all that would be available. And what may work for you may not work for others, or be any fun for them.
Fifth, we shouldn't have to "learn how to play" when we already knew how to play and had been playing all this time successfully (some of us for years) and only recently started having problems due to the increased difficulty changes (note: they were changes made to the game, not to us).
So I suggest you get off your elitist soapbox telling us how to play our game your way and go find a way to be with your fellow elitists and play all by yourselves with your own toys in your own corner of the recess yard and let us play our game the way we choose to.
1. Your reading skills leave much room for improvement and it needs it.
2. I never said I'm an uber player. I don't have uber stuff on my ship. everything (except my spiral tac consoles) was gotten from collecting dil, marks and using them to buy rep stuff. I can barely do 27k dps.
3. I had my boffs laid out for optical healing and power boosts. I've engaged those uber people you talk about and I can' t even get their shields down before I blow up. Not uber here.
4. Again, your reading skills sucks. I never said I'm having problems with pugs. I pointed out that people are complaining about them. I use channels such as my fleet, or 10k dps.
5. Aside from the bugged Vadwaaur ship that has 1.6 million hp (that takes like 10 minutes to kill, sheesh) I haven't seen complaints about difficulties for storyline. I've done the storyline on easy with a lousy build before I learned how to play.
6. No, you need to learn how to play. Running around with 4 torpedo launchers with a shared cooldown and then whining about the content being too hard is just... facepalming. There are people that uses rainbow beam loadouts that do massive damage. There are torpedo builds that do massive damage. There are people who spam gravity wells that do massive damage. You want to know how they do massive damage? Because they focus on one build for one ship. They lay out their bridge officers for that build. They find consoles to enhance their damage. There are tanks that I've sat there for 5 minutes, at 500 metres off, just blasting away at them and their health never dropped below 80 percent. They got consoles that increased their survivability and they go into battle drawing fire for the heavy hitters to do damage. But their damage? still above 10k dps. It's entirely possible to be a healer, a destroyer, a tank, a crowd controller and still have your dps at 8-10k dps.
My point here is, there are many proper builds out there to fit your style of fighting that still gives you a level of damage that doesn't interfere with your playstyle and allows for the story to be completable.
So if you want to do a build that does nothing for your ability to engage a target and destroy it, ignore advice and refuse to go read up on how to improve your gameplay and still maintain your style of playing, then you really don't have a right to whine about it.
26231.5, ranked 1246 out of 10770 recorded scores for ISA.
Just outside the top 10% in the DPS League at 11.6%...
...considering the likelihood that increased parsing would only increase the number of folks below you rather than ahead of you; well, your perspective might be a bit different than other folks and they could easily find you in that upper 10% that doesn't know what it's really like, etc, etc, etc.
26231.5, ranked 1246 out of 10770 recorded scores for ISA.
Just outside the top 10% in the DPS League at 11.6%...
...considering the likelihood that increased parsing would only increase the number of folks below you rather than ahead of you; well, your perspective might be a bit different than other folks and they could easily find you in that upper 10% that doesn't know what it's really like, etc, etc, etc.
point taken. Didn't realise how high of a percentage... but my build is very achievable. the easy build is about 10k dps
point taken. Didn't realise how high of a percentage... but my build is very achievable. the easy build is about 10k dps
Yeah, it's kind of odd...like I think I babbled about earlier, when that tank testing thing put me at 22k...that's inside 15%. Meh, it's kind of a wtf moment.
Even with the 10k stuff...the lowest 10k person is #4925 out of 10770...5845 folks in the table below 10k. 54.2% of just those in the table are below 10k. Imagine all the folks out there that have never been parsed, eh?
It puts things in a different perspective, perhaps...
Yeah, it's kind of odd...like I think I babbled about earlier, when that tank testing thing put me at 22k...that's inside 15%. Meh, it's kind of a wtf moment.
Even with the 10k stuff...the lowest 10k person is #4925 out of 10770...5845 folks in the table below 10k. 54.2% of just those in the table are below 10k. Imagine all the folks out there that have never been parsed, eh?
It puts things in a different perspective, perhaps...
It does, it means that over half of advanced players, are confirmed to have an inefficient build. For me, an efficient build, but still pretty cheap, uncommon quality, would promote an 8k dps build.
Maybe your point is exactly right. Perhaps Cryptic no longer sees any value in keeping people like me around any longer, based on how few of us remain at this point. Everything since DR has just felt like a full-on assault from Cryptic toward the casual player. I keep going back and forth on whether or not this is intentional.
Probably intentional. Just some cursory reading I found some numbers suggesting that on average the Hardcore Gamers make up <10% of the average F2P MMO's population, but account for >90% for the spending. So roughly for every 1% of the Casuals or Semi Casuals they can change into a Gamer, profits go up 10%. Everything since at least DR if not S8 has been about social engineering to appeal to and even create the desired type of player. Cryptic doesn't hate the kind of people who boast about their DPS and the game being too easy; they want more of them.
Probably intentional. Just some cursory reading I found some numbers suggesting that on average the Hardcore Gamers make up <10% of the average F2P MMO's population, but account for >90% for the spending. So roughly for every 1% of the Casuals or Semi Casuals they can change into a Gamer, profits go up 10%. Everything since at least DR if not S8 has been about social engineering to appeal to and even create the desired type of player. Cryptic doesn't hate the kind of people who boast about their DPS and the game being too easy; they want more of them.
I'm not a hardcore player. Hardcore players are those above 30k dps. I'm... a player that learns and understands the rules but I dont go for spreadsheets or try to squeeze every last wattage out of my batteries in battle.
But still, I would deeply appreciate players who want to try to be competent at this game.
Kind of late to this thread; but I don't think the game is too hard - just too tedious.
I actually recently started a new character and was kind of surprised by how much I was enjoying the game: shield facings, protecting yourself from torpedos and adjusting tactics to different kinds of foes was actually engaging and relevant.
When I went back to my 60s, it's just an ability spam-athon that feels like a bunch of Marshmallow Men in a boxing match with padded gloves asking each other if they're dead yet. I run a variety of competent builds ranging from an Ionic-OSS Eclipse to a Drain-Sarr Theln to a Plasma Torpedo Boat, but they all suffer from the same problem of never feeling threatened or having real attacks of opportunity with a meaningful impact(The Eclipse can Volley for 100K+ and the Torp bomber can throw down 250k+ AoEs and they still feel "meh").
I've actually been finding myself dreading leveling up the character because I know I will simply be enjoying the character LESS at that upper range.
For fun and specialized points I go and attack the 8742 at the sphere. I've noticed that last major patch the 8742 have much higher DPS that prior. So the switch is flip on to make battling them "NOT A WALK IN THE PARK" anymore. Like they're saying "YOUR GOING DOWN MR"!
I have to agree with those here that said the fun it gone, sure is! If they don't change the game play back to fun instead of pushing player out of the game play. Got the best shield, weapons and ship still get hammered hard.
Can't help but remember all the posts right after the game's retail launch, with people complaining that the game was too casual and needed a super-hard endgame grind. It honestly feels to me like DR is Cryptic's attempt to please those players from five years ago, when many of those players have long since left, and many of the players who are here now are ones who actually liked the game the way it was. The parallels with SWG's NGE are indeed too strong to ignore!
If these players have left the game, why did we still see comments on the forums all the time that the game was too easy and people boasting that they'd solo or duoed elite difficulty scenarios?
If they can be appear so "forceful" on the forums that they can lead to changes that most players actually don't want, how can we distinguish the minority from the majority?
There is nothing in the game that tells the player that using rainbow beams or torpedo consoles is something they should not do, nor any in game method of determining DPS. If these are the base requirements of being able to enjoy content, then the devs need to implement a better system of ensuring that players can judge whether they have a quality build or not. Instead, the mission rewards give out so much pure junk that casual and new players don't realize that the game isn't giving them the tools necessary to complete content at a more difficult level.
It's not actually a base requirement. You don't need to know any of this if you play Normal difficulty missions.
But "Advanced" and "Elite"... are advanced and elite.
I think it is poor design to have "newbie" traps like torpedo consoles and subpar powers, of course*. But it's still not required knowledge.
*) There are actually designers that deliberately build in such features, because they reward "System Mastery" - e.g. knowing the traps from the good stuff makes you more powerful and you are rewarded for knowing this. I don't subscribe to this design theory. But maybe Cryptic does?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The Content of Sto is not hard you dont need to think or so ... the only problem are the absurd high damage numbers of some enemys (like 44k damage torps when you fly a escort) and that the whole thing is clicking or pressing the right buttons as fast as possible ... Hard would be if the enemy is clever but for such the engine is not made i think ... but since a lot people think mmos need skill ...
The Content of Sto is not hard you dont need to think or so ... the only problem are the absurd high damage numbers of some enemys (like 44k damage torps when you fly a escort) and that the whole thing is clicking or pressing the right buttons as fast as possible ... Hard would be if the enemy is clever but for such the engine is not made i think ... but since a lot people think mmos need skill ...
What kind of "clever" AI makes life more difficult for a 20K DPS but not as much for a 5K DPS?
At the start, NPCs need to be able to survive the incoming damage. If he can't do that, he is dead before his smartness is notable. That is pretty much how normal difficulty works right now - Some NPC ships do actually stuff like heal each other, and activate particular powers - but it's not notable because they blow up so fast. (Just something simple - the Federation Frigate Group consists of 3 Miranda Variants that also use Engineering Team. How often do you notice that they can do that?).
If you start adding stuff like healing or powers, you are making it extra hard for low DPS players - because suddenly their low DPS might be too low to overcome the healing abilities.
So the problem starts again way back at the vast difference in DPS that is possible.
Virusdancer pointed how how much impact weapon power alone has on the damage calculation. And you probably experienced that difference even in casual play - when you switch to a new ship and forget to reset energy settings... Whoa, suddenly the game turns hard!
(IMO, Weapon Energy setting should work similar to like it worked in X-Wing and TIE Fighter - it fills up a bank of energy that the weapons use when they fire. High power doesn't raise your damage output - it determines how long you can fire. But that would have needed to be something done 5 years ago... Too late now. )
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The Content of Sto is not hard you dont need to think or so ... the only problem are the absurd high damage numbers of some enemys (like 44k damage torps when you fly a escort) and that the whole thing is clicking or pressing the right buttons as fast as possible ... Hard would be if the enemy is clever but for such the engine is not made i think ... but since a lot people think mmos need skill ...
Some do have high damage, and sometimes it's bugged where you got a target that's not supposed to be that strong. Knowing how to survive is key to winning. Remember that bug that would dump the elite artillery ship in a normal storyline mission? Took me 10 minutes to kill the bloody thing, and I didn't die because I knew how to survive.
If I understand it correctly from the latest patch notes is that they are trying to get people to play more ground queue and less space for a more balanced and dynamic queue overall.
However, they are still doing this the wrong way, just because the ground rewards gets bigger, the mission itself has still the same problem.
I MUST do Bug Hunt on advanced so I can get Ancient Cell for my reputation gear, and it is a pain every time, sure it depends on the group but I still find the mission very disorientated, there is no real structure and having 30 bugs spawn in a 360 circle every 10 sec doesn't help.
Borg Disconnected Advanced is another thing, its not harder, it is just slower because of the enemy buff in HP, and I don't find that fun at all, just makes me stand still and fire all my beams for 20 seconds longer the usual.
Doing everything on Normal is fun, but you are not really rewarded for it, and advanced is to hard for PUG so we just ignore it and continue on Normal.
Advanced is from 5-15 minutes waiting time with 50-70% chance of fail and no rewards.
Or Normal with 1-5 minutes waiting time with 50-70% chance of win with no rewards.
So whatever happens, my chance of getting Ancient Cells are very low.
The pugs are slowly getting better at it. Its gone from 85% or whatever failure on advanced (easy stuff, ica, khita, cca, BHa, BDa, etc) to closer to 25% or so. I can only recall one STF fail all weekend -- bad team in ICA --- and 10 or 15 or so successes. I got 2 for 2 undine space advanced to complete for the rep item, got another deflector (hopefully the last one, that is a very long run). Had a few ugly, ugly crystal runs --- ppl not sure how to handle the difficulty revamp, but they all WON.
Virusdancer pointed how how much impact weapon power alone has on the damage calculation. And you probably experienced that difference even in casual play - when you switch to a new ship and forget to reset energy settings... Whoa, suddenly the game turns hard!
The Weapons setting should have been the default setting, not Balanced.
Solo, everyone has to deal damage and all but projectile boats (or the now end-of-lifed Vesta with its [Aux] cannons) need weapon power to do it.
Grouped, everyone should be dealing damage to meet the timers. Aux is set up to be more forgiving at moderate power levels from what I've read.
Plus I hate getting a mission ship with a random set of weapons and Boff abilities and on top of those forgetting to set it back to Weapons power.
It's a gentle and non-costly newb trap but still a newb trap.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The Weapons setting should have been the default setting, not Balanced.
Solo, everyone has to deal damage and all but projectile boats (or the now end-of-lifed Vesta with its [Aux] cannons) need weapon power to do it.
Grouped, everyone should be dealing damage to meet the timers. Aux is set up to be more forgiving at moderate power levels from what I've read.
Plus I hate getting a mission ship with a random set of weapons and Boff abilities and on top of those forgetting to set it back to Weapons power.
It's a gentle and non-costly newb trap but still a newb trap.
We are in agreement.
Of course, if "max weapon power" is the default setting that works best for the game... It makes you wonder if the energy management in this game is reasonably designed. There is no other activity but combat where energy levels eve matter. And if the choice is always Weapon Power (unless you're a speciality build)...
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Of course, if "max weapon power" is the default setting that works best for the game... It makes you wonder if the energy management in this game is reasonably designed. There is no other activity but combat where energy levels eve matter. And if the choice is always Weapon Power (unless you're a speciality build)...
that would actually drastically increase the damage of many players who aren't realising that their power isn't in weapons.
...If a player wants increased difficulty, they should be able to increase it by playing content at the Advanced or Elite settings. But the Normal settings should be doable by casual players that have no idea what their DPS ratings are, because they're playing the GAME for FUN and not statistics to craft laurels out of. Not that the missions should be cakewalks; I'm not saying that. I'm saying challenging, but doable without being pigeonholed or dying repeatedly in the process. That's not fun, and this is a game, meant to be fun, otherwise why are we even here?
Fourth, this game was originally designed so that it could be played by many different styles and loadouts and what-have-you. If the game was only meant to be won by playing with a specific ship with specific weaponry and specific BOffs and so on, then that's all that would be available. And what may work for you may not work for others, or be any fun for them.
If the devs read this, I bet they'd say: "Oh -- so it's *still* not hard enough for them." Sarcasm: Thanks for telling them. More sarcasm: That really helped improve the game.
I've played on "normal" for over 2 years ... and I want "normal" to stay that way, not get pushed up into the stratosphere. I'm one of those casual, non-hardcore players who liked how the difficulties were *before* Delta Rising. I do *not* want to have to have a ship with 10K DPS and higher to survive STFs and PVEs. No thank you. I want a game that's like Star Trek, not like Quake, not like a wargame.
Devs: Thank you for "Empress Sela". Please do more like that one.
If you can't break 10k DPS, you're not playing the game. I don't mean "oh you're playing it wrong" I mean you have to be stuck running around at level 30 in mark V gear or something. Want to see a ship that can crack 10k?
Cheap mk X gear with terrible mods, no rep gear, no fleet gear, 2 of 6 doffs, no rommie boffs, no nausicaan boffs, missing consoles, not a fleet ship, not T5-U, not even level 60 and I can still break 10k in that.
10k doesn't require any specific effort. Or any effort. Just don't run round with 50 weapons power or spend 3 minutes tooling around not shooting at anything.
If you can't break 10k DPS, you're not playing the game. I don't mean "oh you're playing it wrong" I mean you have to be stuck running around at level 30 in mark V gear or something. Want to see a ship that can crack 10k?
Cheap mk X gear with terrible mods, no rep gear, no fleet gear, 2 of 6 doffs, no rommie boffs, no nausicaan boffs, missing consoles, not a fleet ship, not T5-U, not even level 60 and I can still break 10k in that.
10k doesn't require any specific effort. Or any effort. Just don't run round with 50 weapons power or spend 3 minutes tooling around not shooting at anything.
Is that breaking 10k at the top or 10k at the bottom?
If you can't break 10k DPS, you're not playing the game. I don't mean "oh you're playing it wrong" I mean you have to be stuck running around at level 30 in mark V gear or something. Want to see a ship that can crack 10k?
Cheap mk X gear with terrible mods, no rep gear, no fleet gear, 2 of 6 doffs, no rommie boffs, no nausicaan boffs, missing consoles, not a fleet ship, not T5-U, not even level 60 and I can still break 10k in that.
10k doesn't require any specific effort. Or any effort. Just don't run round with 50 weapons power or spend 3 minutes tooling around not shooting at anything.
I'm not a hardcore player. Hardcore players are those above 30k dps. I'm... a player that learns and understands the rules but I dont go for spreadsheets or try to squeeze every last wattage out of my batteries in battle.
But still, I would deeply appreciate players who want to try to be competent at this game.
You're just outside the top ~10% of a group that most of the player base likely doesn't even know exists, and of those that do know most don't participate in, so at least numerically you're in the top 3-5% if not higher. And how much tuning and practicing and use of outside resources has gone into that? And then wanting other players should change for your benefit? You're exactly the kind of player Cryptic is trying to engineer.
(And I don't mean that as a shot against you personally, just that you're the kind of player they're trying to make more of, and if you used to be a true casual then you're a success story as far as their social engineering is concerned.)
Whether its hard or not is irrelevant. They shouldn't have to change if they don't want to, and who is anyone else to demand otherwise? Its not a question of mechanics, its a question of principle.
Whether its hard or not is irrelevant. They shouldn't have to change if they don't want to, and who is anyone else to demand otherwise? Its not a question of mechanics, its a question of principle.
But that's the thing, no?
Somebody demands that I change anything while I'm off dorking around by myself? They can go TRIBBLE themselves.
Somebody demands that I'm prepared for group content where I'm one of five to ten players on a team? Why would they have to? Shouldn't I be demanding that of myself in the first place? That if I'm going to hook up with four to nine other players, that I'm going to bring what's necessary to do it?
So yeah, for folks that don't demand that of themselves and complain about others that in turn do demand that...yeah, I'd say it's a question of principle.
Cheap mk X gear with terrible mods, no rep gear, no fleet gear, 2 of 6 doffs, no rommie boffs, no nausicaan boffs, missing consoles, not a fleet ship, not T5-U, not even level 60 and I can still break 10k in that.
10k doesn't require any specific effort. Or any effort. Just don't run round with 50 weapons power or spend 3 minutes tooling around not shooting at anything.
That's a nice beamboat. My problem is I don't like playing like that.
I enjoyed having the 360 turrets in the back, with two beams and a turret or torpedo in front. I *like* running a ship like that. Its fun, for me. I could play like that in PVE and on missions without blowing to pieces. It got me from level 1 to level 50.
Then Delta Rising came out. I had to rebuild my ship from scratch, turning it into a beamboat. Remember when I said I don't like playing like that? Well, now to even keep up I have to play the game in a way I don't like.
That's a nice beamboat. My problem is I don't like playing like that.
I enjoyed having the 360 turrets in the back, with two beams and a turret or torpedo in front. I *like* running a ship like that. Its fun, for me. I could play like that in PVE and on missions without blowing to pieces. It got me from level 1 to level 50.
Then Delta Rising came out. I had to rebuild my ship from scratch, turning it into a beamboat. Remember when I said I don't like playing like that? Well, now to even keep up I have to play the game in a way I don't like.
Why did you need to rebuild your boat for Delta Rising?
I'm being serious...I haven't felt the need to change anything with Delta Rising. Actually with all the broken and overpowered stuff they've added with DR, I've been able to fly even more off the wall ships.
The "keep up" aspect...is that keeping up with content requirements or keeping up with somebody out there doing ludicrous damage?
I'm 27k, yes, top 3-5 percent player base, probably.
But that's not my point. My point is, 10k is achievable. If you want to play the advanced/elite content, please at least know how to play. Anyone who knows how to play will have a build that does 8k dps at the very least.
I go into normal content, just the normal ones, and I expect a lot of people who don't know how to play. that's fine. It's normal, easy and it doesn't matter.
But if I go into advanced/elite, that means I expect a team that at least knows how to play. Players who know what to do on ground, generally are able to perform or at the least, not ruin it. In space, having a proper loadout (even if it's not decent) will give a player the ability to hold their own in any of the advanced space matches.
Advanced/Elite is where I'm griping about players who don't know how to play at all, coming in and making the match a lot harder for those who do know how to play.
Why did you need to rebuild your boat for Delta Rising?
I'm being serious...I haven't felt the need to change anything with Delta Rising. Actually with all the broken and overpowered stuff they've added with DR, I've been able to fly even more off the wall ships.
The "keep up" aspect...is that keeping up with content requirements or keeping up with somebody out there doing ludicrous damage?
My main ship (Vesta) was built for pvp tanking. This happened to work just fine on Oct 13th. Since then I have changed it somewhat to go from around 15k to 25k because I felt I had to to keep playing. Sacrificed some of the absurd defense for offense. The purpose is to be able to help iffy pug groups solve various missions with various avoid interrupts and controls. This is because I have no interest in sitting around for hours waiting for someone in a chat group to start a mission that I want to play.
Sadly I just lost my only playing partner to the last round of queue buffs so it puts a damper. However, I will drive on until the lights go off.
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."
Comments
1. Your reading skills leave much room for improvement and it needs it.
2. I never said I'm an uber player. I don't have uber stuff on my ship. everything (except my spiral tac consoles) was gotten from collecting dil, marks and using them to buy rep stuff. I can barely do 27k dps.
3. I had my boffs laid out for optical healing and power boosts. I've engaged those uber people you talk about and I can' t even get their shields down before I blow up. Not uber here.
4. Again, your reading skills sucks. I never said I'm having problems with pugs. I pointed out that people are complaining about them. I use channels such as my fleet, or 10k dps.
5. Aside from the bugged Vadwaaur ship that has 1.6 million hp (that takes like 10 minutes to kill, sheesh) I haven't seen complaints about difficulties for storyline. I've done the storyline on easy with a lousy build before I learned how to play.
6. No, you need to learn how to play. Running around with 4 torpedo launchers with a shared cooldown and then whining about the content being too hard is just... facepalming. There are people that uses rainbow beam loadouts that do massive damage. There are torpedo builds that do massive damage. There are people who spam gravity wells that do massive damage. You want to know how they do massive damage? Because they focus on one build for one ship. They lay out their bridge officers for that build. They find consoles to enhance their damage. There are tanks that I've sat there for 5 minutes, at 500 metres off, just blasting away at them and their health never dropped below 80 percent. They got consoles that increased their survivability and they go into battle drawing fire for the heavy hitters to do damage. But their damage? still above 10k dps. It's entirely possible to be a healer, a destroyer, a tank, a crowd controller and still have your dps at 8-10k dps.
My point here is, there are many proper builds out there to fit your style of fighting that still gives you a level of damage that doesn't interfere with your playstyle and allows for the story to be completable.
So if you want to do a build that does nothing for your ability to engage a target and destroy it, ignore advice and refuse to go read up on how to improve your gameplay and still maintain your style of playing, then you really don't have a right to whine about it.
26231.5, ranked 1246 out of 10770 recorded scores for ISA.
Just outside the top 10% in the DPS League at 11.6%...
...considering the likelihood that increased parsing would only increase the number of folks below you rather than ahead of you; well, your perspective might be a bit different than other folks and they could easily find you in that upper 10% that doesn't know what it's really like, etc, etc, etc.
point taken. Didn't realise how high of a percentage... but my build is very achievable. the easy build is about 10k dps
Yeah, it's kind of odd...like I think I babbled about earlier, when that tank testing thing put me at 22k...that's inside 15%. Meh, it's kind of a wtf moment.
Even with the 10k stuff...the lowest 10k person is #4925 out of 10770...5845 folks in the table below 10k. 54.2% of just those in the table are below 10k. Imagine all the folks out there that have never been parsed, eh?
It puts things in a different perspective, perhaps...
It does, it means that over half of advanced players, are confirmed to have an inefficient build. For me, an efficient build, but still pretty cheap, uncommon quality, would promote an 8k dps build.
Probably intentional. Just some cursory reading I found some numbers suggesting that on average the Hardcore Gamers make up <10% of the average F2P MMO's population, but account for >90% for the spending. So roughly for every 1% of the Casuals or Semi Casuals they can change into a Gamer, profits go up 10%. Everything since at least DR if not S8 has been about social engineering to appeal to and even create the desired type of player. Cryptic doesn't hate the kind of people who boast about their DPS and the game being too easy; they want more of them.
I'm not a hardcore player. Hardcore players are those above 30k dps. I'm... a player that learns and understands the rules but I dont go for spreadsheets or try to squeeze every last wattage out of my batteries in battle.
But still, I would deeply appreciate players who want to try to be competent at this game.
I actually recently started a new character and was kind of surprised by how much I was enjoying the game: shield facings, protecting yourself from torpedos and adjusting tactics to different kinds of foes was actually engaging and relevant.
When I went back to my 60s, it's just an ability spam-athon that feels like a bunch of Marshmallow Men in a boxing match with padded gloves asking each other if they're dead yet. I run a variety of competent builds ranging from an Ionic-OSS Eclipse to a Drain-Sarr Theln to a Plasma Torpedo Boat, but they all suffer from the same problem of never feeling threatened or having real attacks of opportunity with a meaningful impact(The Eclipse can Volley for 100K+ and the Torp bomber can throw down 250k+ AoEs and they still feel "meh").
I've actually been finding myself dreading leveling up the character because I know I will simply be enjoying the character LESS at that upper range.
I have to agree with those here that said the fun it gone, sure is! If they don't change the game play back to fun instead of pushing player out of the game play. Got the best shield, weapons and ship still get hammered hard.
Time will only tell!
If they can be appear so "forceful" on the forums that they can lead to changes that most players actually don't want, how can we distinguish the minority from the majority?
It's not actually a base requirement. You don't need to know any of this if you play Normal difficulty missions.
But "Advanced" and "Elite"... are advanced and elite.
I think it is poor design to have "newbie" traps like torpedo consoles and subpar powers, of course*. But it's still not required knowledge.
*) There are actually designers that deliberately build in such features, because they reward "System Mastery" - e.g. knowing the traps from the good stuff makes you more powerful and you are rewarded for knowing this. I don't subscribe to this design theory. But maybe Cryptic does?
Torpedo builds aren't noobie traps. They're quite possible to do but you need 1 or 2, not 3/4
What kind of "clever" AI makes life more difficult for a 20K DPS but not as much for a 5K DPS?
At the start, NPCs need to be able to survive the incoming damage. If he can't do that, he is dead before his smartness is notable. That is pretty much how normal difficulty works right now - Some NPC ships do actually stuff like heal each other, and activate particular powers - but it's not notable because they blow up so fast. (Just something simple - the Federation Frigate Group consists of 3 Miranda Variants that also use Engineering Team. How often do you notice that they can do that?).
If you start adding stuff like healing or powers, you are making it extra hard for low DPS players - because suddenly their low DPS might be too low to overcome the healing abilities.
So the problem starts again way back at the vast difference in DPS that is possible.
Virusdancer pointed how how much impact weapon power alone has on the damage calculation. And you probably experienced that difference even in casual play - when you switch to a new ship and forget to reset energy settings... Whoa, suddenly the game turns hard!
(IMO, Weapon Energy setting should work similar to like it worked in X-Wing and TIE Fighter - it fills up a bank of energy that the weapons use when they fire. High power doesn't raise your damage output - it determines how long you can fire. But that would have needed to be something done 5 years ago... Too late now. )
Some do have high damage, and sometimes it's bugged where you got a target that's not supposed to be that strong. Knowing how to survive is key to winning. Remember that bug that would dump the elite artillery ship in a normal storyline mission? Took me 10 minutes to kill the bloody thing, and I didn't die because I knew how to survive.
The pugs are slowly getting better at it. Its gone from 85% or whatever failure on advanced (easy stuff, ica, khita, cca, BHa, BDa, etc) to closer to 25% or so. I can only recall one STF fail all weekend -- bad team in ICA --- and 10 or 15 or so successes. I got 2 for 2 undine space advanced to complete for the rep item, got another deflector (hopefully the last one, that is a very long run). Had a few ugly, ugly crystal runs --- ppl not sure how to handle the difficulty revamp, but they all WON.
The Weapons setting should have been the default setting, not Balanced.
Solo, everyone has to deal damage and all but projectile boats (or the now end-of-lifed Vesta with its [Aux] cannons) need weapon power to do it.
Grouped, everyone should be dealing damage to meet the timers. Aux is set up to be more forgiving at moderate power levels from what I've read.
Plus I hate getting a mission ship with a random set of weapons and Boff abilities and on top of those forgetting to set it back to Weapons power.
It's a gentle and non-costly newb trap but still a newb trap.
We are in agreement.
Of course, if "max weapon power" is the default setting that works best for the game... It makes you wonder if the energy management in this game is reasonably designed. There is no other activity but combat where energy levels eve matter. And if the choice is always Weapon Power (unless you're a speciality build)...
throll post...YES it IS
that would actually drastically increase the damage of many players who aren't realising that their power isn't in weapons.
+ 100 (Bars of GPL)
If you can't break 10k DPS, you're not playing the game. I don't mean "oh you're playing it wrong" I mean you have to be stuck running around at level 30 in mark V gear or something. Want to see a ship that can crack 10k?
http://i.imgur.com/IodtLZ5.png
Cheap mk X gear with terrible mods, no rep gear, no fleet gear, 2 of 6 doffs, no rommie boffs, no nausicaan boffs, missing consoles, not a fleet ship, not T5-U, not even level 60 and I can still break 10k in that.
10k doesn't require any specific effort. Or any effort. Just don't run round with 50 weapons power or spend 3 minutes tooling around not shooting at anything.
Is that breaking 10k at the top or 10k at the bottom?
exactly! it's not that hard
You're just outside the top ~10% of a group that most of the player base likely doesn't even know exists, and of those that do know most don't participate in, so at least numerically you're in the top 3-5% if not higher. And how much tuning and practicing and use of outside resources has gone into that? And then wanting other players should change for your benefit? You're exactly the kind of player Cryptic is trying to engineer.
(And I don't mean that as a shot against you personally, just that you're the kind of player they're trying to make more of, and if you used to be a true casual then you're a success story as far as their social engineering is concerned.)
Whether its hard or not is irrelevant. They shouldn't have to change if they don't want to, and who is anyone else to demand otherwise? Its not a question of mechanics, its a question of principle.
But that's the thing, no?
Somebody demands that I change anything while I'm off dorking around by myself? They can go TRIBBLE themselves.
Somebody demands that I'm prepared for group content where I'm one of five to ten players on a team? Why would they have to? Shouldn't I be demanding that of myself in the first place? That if I'm going to hook up with four to nine other players, that I'm going to bring what's necessary to do it?
So yeah, for folks that don't demand that of themselves and complain about others that in turn do demand that...yeah, I'd say it's a question of principle.
That's a nice beamboat. My problem is I don't like playing like that.
I enjoyed having the 360 turrets in the back, with two beams and a turret or torpedo in front. I *like* running a ship like that. Its fun, for me. I could play like that in PVE and on missions without blowing to pieces. It got me from level 1 to level 50.
Then Delta Rising came out. I had to rebuild my ship from scratch, turning it into a beamboat. Remember when I said I don't like playing like that? Well, now to even keep up I have to play the game in a way I don't like.
Why did you need to rebuild your boat for Delta Rising?
I'm being serious...I haven't felt the need to change anything with Delta Rising. Actually with all the broken and overpowered stuff they've added with DR, I've been able to fly even more off the wall ships.
The "keep up" aspect...is that keeping up with content requirements or keeping up with somebody out there doing ludicrous damage?
But that's not my point. My point is, 10k is achievable. If you want to play the advanced/elite content, please at least know how to play. Anyone who knows how to play will have a build that does 8k dps at the very least.
I go into normal content, just the normal ones, and I expect a lot of people who don't know how to play. that's fine. It's normal, easy and it doesn't matter.
But if I go into advanced/elite, that means I expect a team that at least knows how to play. Players who know what to do on ground, generally are able to perform or at the least, not ruin it. In space, having a proper loadout (even if it's not decent) will give a player the ability to hold their own in any of the advanced space matches.
Advanced/Elite is where I'm griping about players who don't know how to play at all, coming in and making the match a lot harder for those who do know how to play.
So I made a beamboat, because I see them all the time and it 'works'.
My main ship (Vesta) was built for pvp tanking. This happened to work just fine on Oct 13th. Since then I have changed it somewhat to go from around 15k to 25k because I felt I had to to keep playing. Sacrificed some of the absurd defense for offense. The purpose is to be able to help iffy pug groups solve various missions with various avoid interrupts and controls. This is because I have no interest in sitting around for hours waiting for someone in a chat group to start a mission that I want to play.
Sadly I just lost my only playing partner to the last round of queue buffs so it puts a damper. However, I will drive on until the lights go off.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."