I know because every day I try to run PUG matchs in an effort for various crafting materials. When I see a player get blown up against a Sphere on Advanced in under ten seconds, I label them as 'incapable'. There is a learning curve to this game, same as any game but there is an issue where a lot of people seem to just ignore you when you try to help them or point out what they are doing wrong.
As for the second part, you'd need to be a bit more clear on that one. If you mean in the other thread my comment about the Delta Torp and Ionic Turbulence I didn't complain about their being changed. I was simply stating that perhaps some items in the game could get a handicap bonus depending on how badly the team is doing.
You know that before DPS and STF channels everyone played PUG?
but you avoided the actual point of my question which was:
Back when we all had only blue gear, half borg, half maco sets, defiants, BoPs, mirror Recons and all there was were PUG games, people died and then some and still were able to beat elite missions with optionals.
Why is that shocking today? and Why is that like that?
My answer is spec Grind and easily obtainable high end gear.
Some people seem to expect that by equipping gold gear they are suddenly masters of some mission, and on the opposite side we have people that believe that everyone needs to do exactly what they do to be "capable" in their eyes.
So what if someone gets blown up? You are saying that you don't get blown up by Undine 300k AP overloads in VCE and 200k Voth Aceton pulses in BDE? or by 500k+ plasma lances in HSE? or by 300-400k Tricobalt explosions in Korfez?
Or are you talking about ISA which is a lv50-lv60 content which people do with various toons with various level of quality gear and experience?
You can't ever learn a mission as a new player if you don't try it, blow up a few times, even fail, so what?
And if you consider yourself worthy of title "capable" why not go and try to explain to people if they do something wrong in some mission?
How do you think 10% rule in former ISE now ISA came to be the norm pre massive damage boosts with LoR? or former MRRMLL/RML strategy in CSE or 5km away rule in KASE?
People communicated in PUGs.
They certainly didn't "do AP CRTD Pen plasma dope EAP BFAW DPS or get out"
Release Notes: February 26th, 2015: Adding a cooldown times allows us to keep the rewards relatively high, but still keep them normalized and acts failsafe in the event certain loopholes or exploits develop.
Exploits develop...:mad:
Does it imply that the farming Argala patrol was a form of bug exploit?
Do they insult us to cheat a 2nd time?
Since when the Xp farming in an MMORPG is cheating ?
We should do what now Xp ?
just connect up and wait exp ?
Bug, Nerf and Insult
What is STO now...
Where do you see this? I dont read it off the holodeck release notes.
Release Notes: February 26th, 2015: Adding a cooldown times allows us to keep the rewards relatively high, but still keep them normalized and acts failsafe in the event certain loopholes or exploits develop.
Exploits develop...:mad:
Does it imply that the farming Argala patrol was a form of bug exploit?
Do they insult us to cheat a 2nd time?
Since when the Xp farming in an MMORPG is cheating ?
We should do what now Xp ?
just connect up and wait exp ?
Bug, Nerf and Insult
What is STO now...
I think the possible "exploit" refered to here is the fact they added dilithium to the patrols and they wouldn't want players spamming it too much
You know that before DPS and STF channels everyone played PUG?
but you avoided the actual point of my question which was:
Back when we all had only blue gear, half borg, half maco sets, defiants, BoPs, mirror Recons and all there was were PUG games, people died and then some and still were able to beat elite missions with optionals.
Why is that shocking today? and Why is that like that?
My answer is spec Grind and easily obtainable high end gear.
Some people seem to expect that by equipping gold gear they are suddenly masters of some mission, and on the opposite side we have people that believe that everyone needs to do exactly what they do to be "capable" in their eyes.
So what if someone gets blown up? You are saying that you don't get blown up by Undine 300k AP overloads in VCE and 200k Voth Aceton pulses in BDE? or by 500k+ plasma lances in HSE? or by 300-400k Tricobalt explosions in Korfez?
Or are you talking about ISA which is a lv50-lv60 content which people do with various toons with various level of quality gear and experience?
You can't ever learn a mission as a new player if you don't try it, blow up a few times, even fail, so what?
And if you consider yourself worthy of title "capable" why not go and try to explain to people if they do something wrong in some mission?
How do you think 10% rule in former ISE now ISA came to be the norm pre massive damage boosts with LoR? or former MRRMLL/RML strategy in CSE or 5km away rule in KASE?
People communicated in PUGs.
They certainly didn't "do AP CRTD Pen plasma dope EAP BFAW DPS or get out"
Allow me to give you a few examples for what I am talking about, just what my complaint is and what kind of people are incapable. Just to be perfectly clear I will also point out I send out a message at the start of EVERY PvE telling the others what steps to follow in order to complete the mission because I EXPECT at least one person to have never played the mission before.
In the last week I have had the following:
In ISA, people who see the other four members of their team attacking one side and then try to solo the other, ignoring when anyone else tells them not to. Or people who rush the Generators and spam BFAW summoning the Nanite Spheres before the Cube is even dead. Others who try to attack the Gateway and complain about how its glitched because it isn't taking damage. After the 'optional' fails they then complain about how much everyone else sucks.
In The Cure Found, people who rush to attack the Cubes and ignore the Probes completely, dying over and over but continuing to attack the Cubes and complain about the game being broken because said Cube is not taking damage. Again all the while ignoring when you tell them they have to destroy the Probes first. And when the Kang is blown up they rant about how they are the only one doing their job and how you are trying to leech off of them.
In Visquious Cycle, people who ignore the Planet Killers and focus on killing the ever spawning NPCs and complain about why its taking the rest of the team so long, despite them not actually killing a single NPC.
In Battle of Korfez, people who don't even bother repairing the allied ships you are suppose to be escorting or defending.
The list goes on and on. I have no problems with new players, I myself was new to the game when I started three years ago. My issue is with people who ignore you when you tell them what you have to do to beat the mission. People who get under 1k DPS on an Elite Space PvE (currently about 15% of the people I've run into in the last month) and people who take a new ship out using the starting gear it came with when they bought it.
I'm also not too fond of AFKers.
Now would you say that any of my complaints are unreasonable?
"Why all the sales"?
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
Hmm here is a thought, what if there was a swing stat built into the game? Like if your team has under a certain amount of DPS, then certain items get a handicap buff?
Case and point, when running Korfez and the team has 14k DPS...and 12k of it is you...
That's not the game's fault. That's again the players' fault.
If you're doing the 12K in Korfez, yeah you're doing something right.
If the other 4 players in the queue are doing somewhere about 1K - 2K each (math, I know is wrong... but that's usually the low-ball numbers I see), then they're all in the wrong. They shouldn't be doing Korfez. Granted, they likely don't know their own DPS, but they should be able to see how painfully little their shots do against the enemy.
There's no way the Cryptic can play the balance game to compensate for that without a complete overhaul of the queuing system - it'd be a mess to implement anyways. What players need to realize is A) maybe they're just not at the level to play Adv. and Elite content yet, and it's completely OK not being day-one ready for the top end-game content.
But half of the complaining about the new PvEs being too hard has been people wanting to be day-one ready without equipping themselves for the difficulty. That's not Cryptic's fault. That's the fault of players who want everything, without putting in any work.
"Fine, keep your higher than normal XP Patrol, but we'll give a cooldown to curb people from levelling too fast because... Metrics."
Herding sheeple
I honestly don't see it that way. There were a lot of complaints about being "herded" into the Delta Quadrant for metrics reasons, and the devs responded to player feedback in this case and upped the XP rewards across the rest of the galaxy. And increased rewards will do the exact opposite of what you suggest - I'd expect to get spec points quicker under the new systems.
That's not the game's fault. That's again the players' fault.
If you're doing the 12K in Korfez, yeah you're doing something right.
If the other 4 players in the queue are doing somewhere about 1K - 2K each (math, I know is wrong... but that's usually the low-ball numbers I see), then they're all in the wrong. They shouldn't be doing Korfez. Granted, they likely don't know their own DPS, but they should be able to see how painfully little their shots do against the enemy.
There's no way the Cryptic can play the balance game to compensate for that without a complete overhaul of the queuing system - it'd be a mess to implement anyways. What players need to realize is A) maybe they're just not at the level to play Adv. and Elite content yet, and it's completely OK not being day-one ready for the top end-game content.
But half of the complaining about the new PvEs being too hard has been people wanting to be day-one ready without equipping themselves for the difficulty. That's not Cryptic's fault. That's the fault of players who want everything, without putting in any work.
I honestly don't see it that way. There were a lot of complaints about being "herded" into the Delta Quadrant for metrics reasons, and the devs responded to player feedback in this case and upped the XP rewards across the rest of the galaxy. And increased rewards will do the exact opposite of what you suggest - I'd expect to get spec points quicker under the new systems.
I have seen a number of people suggest a required test of sorts before a person can play Advanced or Elite missions, kind of like the License Tests on Grand Turismo. I don't think that is a bad idea for solving this issue, or perhaps a 'point' system tied in with gear. Assigning each piece of gear and weapon a point value and not allowing anyone whose current ship has under that point value to cue.
That would also reduce the number of trolls now that I think about it. Had a guy day before yesterday trolling Korfez of all things, came in with one of the new Command Cruisers, but only had a single Photon torp equipped -.-
I don't really put a ton of importance on DPS because I have seen a few builds out there with very low DPS but very high special use, like super crowd control. But under 2k DPS is just...not right. Photonic Fleet gets 4k DPS on its own.
"Why all the sales"?
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
That would also reduce the number of trolls now that I think about it. Had a guy day before yesterday trolling Korfez of all things, came in with one of the new Command Cruisers, but only had a single Photon torp equipped -.-
Oh sweet mercy... that just hurts to think about.
Such is the pug life though. All I can suggest is play with your friends, fleetmates, or whatever channel you happen to be in. I usually have great results if I'm pugging with at least one other captain I can trust.
I've got to think that the XP reward reallocation will help PvEs, though. There'll be more players doing PvE now that it rewards higher. And unless you're actually trying not to become better, the extra XP, dil, and good 'ol loot in those queues now that they're being run more often should benefit the playerbase as a whole. At this point, Cryptic kinda extended a hand and said "here, do anything you want in game and we'll reward you... please." :P
Either way, I hope that'll make it easier for even casual players to get their stuff quicker. I doubt many casuals were going into Argala several times a day, so now that rewards are boosted for all content then everyone should see a benefit.
As far as the xp rewards are concerned, this new arrangement they are doing will only benefit those who have always been playing the queues without care about leveling up. Those that were trying to level up will be hurt by this. It is a major xp nerf to them.
Again, instead of fixing queues, they are trying to find a way of herding players that are left, but not playing them, into them. If that was not the case, then why even put a timegate on being able to run patrols again? They wouldn't need to.
Also, why are the xp increases to those queues not giving what the patrols that players were grinding were giving?
They nerfed their progress, and added small increases of xp into other content to get them to move over there. However, it is now going to take longer for them to level up. Therefore, the grind is just getting even longer.
Every time they nerf something, they try to either explain it in a way to act like they are helping everyone, or they try to draw attention to something else, like holding a shiny object in front of someone.
I am not saying that xp didn't need to be added to other areas of the game. But for them to nerf the patrols like they did is just adding insult/punishment to players. They are trying to keep casual players from maxing out their captain specializations, and drag the grind out even longer for everyone in the game.
Personally, I would like to have content in the game that is more than just DPS, and I would like a long-term system that doesn't lock skills, or abilities to use gear behind an extremely long grind. Even the rep systems are not that harsh now, with all the power creep the queued missions cater to.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
Such is the pug life though. All I can suggest is play with your friends, fleetmates, or whatever channel you happen to be in. I usually have great results if I'm pugging with at least one other captain I can trust.
I've got to think that the XP reward reallocation will help PvEs, though. There'll be more players doing PvE now that it rewards higher. And unless you're actually trying not to become better, the extra XP, dil, and good 'ol loot in those queues now that they're being run more often should benefit the playerbase as a whole. At this point, Cryptic kinda extended a hand and said "here, do anything you want in game and we'll reward you... please." :P
Either way, I hope that'll make it easier for even casual players to get their stuff quicker. I doubt many casuals were going into Argala several times a day, so now that rewards are boosted for all content then everyone should see a benefit.
Sad thing though was I've actually seen people with full loadouts do less lol
Honestly I would have been curious to see the metrics if they had left patrols alone, but kept this new increase to everything else and see if there was a significant changeover in players doing more PvE and less patrols.
That would have been a controlled test at least you know?
"Why all the sales"?
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
That's not the game's fault. That's again the players' fault..
WTH...are you related to Gecko? Why blame the players when management decided to sheep-herd players to only focus on Argala for Spec leveling for 3 months. They wanted to get their metrics to prove the point to PWE that DR is the real BEST expansion ever (more people playing Argala>Delta quadrant>great numbers...get it).
Now...End of quarter from launch...time to Nerf if and use wording "for the sake of balancing" the game. I'm ALL for balancing but why not 3 months ago when they nerfed the first wave of XP big time. I'm not that naive nor just a number to trust blindly on hidden agendas.
So basicaly Cryptic was the Devil for forcing us to grind Argala over and over and over, but now there's a cooldown so Cryptic is the Super Devil for not letting us grind Argala over and over and over?
Don't get me wrong it seems like a pretty pointless change but there seems to be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over not being able to do something that people aparentaly hated to do anyhow.
So basicaly Cryptic was the Devil for forcing us to grind Argala over and over and over, but now there's a cooldown so Cryptic is the Super Devil for not letting us grind Argala over and over and over?
Don't get me wrong it seems like a pretty pointless change but there seems to be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over not being able to do something that people aparentaly hated to do anyhow.
People hated to do it but the only other choice was a grind that takes months and months.
Cryptic have removed the only option people had if they didn't want to spend a ridiculous amount of time grinding... a grind that only exists because... erm... reasons
I have seen a number of people suggest a required test of sorts before a person can play Advanced or Elite missions, kind of like the License Tests on Grand Turismo. I don't think that is a bad idea for solving this issue, or perhaps a 'point' system tied in with gear. Assigning each piece of gear and weapon a point value and not allowing anyone whose current ship has under that point value to cue.
That would also reduce the number of trolls now that I think about it. Had a guy day before yesterday trolling Korfez of all things, came in with one of the new Command Cruisers, but only had a single Photon torp equipped -.-
I don't really put a ton of importance on DPS because I have seen a few builds out there with very low DPS but very high special use, like super crowd control. But under 2k DPS is just...not right. Photonic Fleet gets 4k DPS on its own.
Trust me, a system like this sounds good in theory, but at the end of the day it doesn't accomplish anything. WoW had exactly this now for heroics (look up proving grounds) and all it does is block off the absolute bottom of the barrel.
Many trolls actually know how to play so they get through, then go back to trolling. Anyone who grasps either how to play their class or basic instance mechanics, but no necessarily both, usually gets through. And you don't need to talk to get through so who knows if your teammates are gonna communicate (more of an issue in STO, but still).
So at the end of the day, nothing is accomplished.
The reason there is a time gate on patrols is the addition of dilithium to everything. So now I stead of doing one thing over and over you need to play other parts of the game. Sounds crazy but we don't NEED to max spec point on every tree. I only did any grinding I did to gain level 3 of Intel abilities but now I can trade and teach all my buffs even turning them into specialized buffs without putting a point into specialization. Now there are some things that are really nice to have like rock and roll from the pilot tree but really why the rush to get to the end? Ship mysteries I can see a bit more cause of the trait but again these are rewards for playing not an immediate goal.
The reason there is a time gate on patrols is the addition of dilithium to everything. So now I stead of doing one thing over and over you need to play other parts of the game. Sounds crazy but we don't NEED to max spec point on every tree. I only did any grinding I did to gain level 3 of Intel abilities but now I can trade and teach all my buffs even turning them into specialized buffs without putting a point into specialization. Now there are some things that are really nice to have like rock and roll from the pilot tree but really why the rush to get to the end? Ship mysteries I can see a bit more cause of the trait but again these are rewards for playing not an immediate goal.
I'm not in a rush but I don't want it to take over 6 months. There's a balance to be struck and Cryptic haven't got there yet.
The reason there is a time gate on patrols is the addition of dilithium to everything. So now I stead of doing one thing over and over you need to play other parts of the game. Sounds crazy but we don't NEED to max spec point on every tree. I only did any grinding I did to gain level 3 of Intel abilities but now I can trade and teach all my buffs even turning them into specialized buffs without putting a point into specialization. Now there are some things that are really nice to have like rock and roll from the pilot tree but really why the rush to get to the end? Ship mysteries I can see a bit more cause of the trait but again these are rewards for playing not an immediate goal.
Why not give players a REAL option between DIL and XP? IMO dont care for DIL..all I need is XP/Spec points.
... who needs to play the game for entertainment, the blogs and resulting forum storms are far more entertaining and free! Free 2 Laugh!
Again, instead of fixing queues, they are trying to find a way of herding players that are left, but not playing them, into them. If that was not the case, then why even put a timegate on being able to run patrols again? They wouldn't need to.
WTH...are you related to Gecko? Why blame the players when management decided to sheep-herd players to only focus on Argala for Spec leveling for 3 months. They wanted to get their metrics to prove the point to PWE that DR is the real BEST expansion ever (more people playing Argala>Delta quadrant>great numbers...get it).
The timegate on patrols makes sense to me. Cryptic received so much flak from the playerbase about 'forcing' players to grind Argala. Despite the devs going on record time and time again speaking about how this was not the intent, they still got continued flak for it.
No idea if this was the intent, but I think they made a statement here. A very vocal part of the playerbase was screaming at them about being forced to play Argala. This is Cryptic saying emphatically "no, we didn't. Please feel free to play other things, at any time, and be well-rewarded for it."
Kudos to Cryptic on this one. They could've just put their foot down and killed Argala straight-up. But instead, they took the time to redevelop the rewards across the rest of the entire galaxy.
This isn't a nerf. It's a net boost to XP across the entire game, with the exception of a few patrols that players had been complaining about having to grind.
Trust me, a system like this sounds good in theory, but at the end of the day it doesn't accomplish anything. WoW had exactly this now for heroics (look up proving grounds) and all it does is block off the absolute bottom of the barrel.
Many trolls actually know how to play so they get through, then go back to trolling. Anyone who grasps either how to play their class or basic instance mechanics, but no necessarily both, usually gets through. And you don't need to talk to get through so who knows if your teammates are gonna communicate (more of an issue in STO, but still).
So at the end of the day, nothing is accomplished.
1% improvement is still an improvement. Personally I'd be happy with ONLY the close to the very bottom and troll over close to the very bottom, trolls AND the bottom of the barrel.
"Why all the sales"?
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
maybe now people will start doing pve queues more again. breaking the planet and such. though if they keep removing pve instances we wont have anything left to do but lol. argala was boring imo wish they would jus take the cd off of things like red alert i would jus do it all day if i wanted to be bored lol. anyways i read the wall of updates an they fixed alot of the exploty TRIBBLE so im happy. hoping it gets to a point where we can fly what we want without having to rely on the cstore to stay current not that you have to now but you kinda do lol in space anyway. gonna go do my daily dil then im off to play HW remastered i have pretty much given up on sto for the short term till they decide what they are gonna do.
Section 31Lane/Jeffjr/Varek @jeffjr USS Stadi/USS Grendel/USS AshigaruDreadnought Class Refit / Avenger Class Refit/Rhode Island Class Refit"With your shield or on it"/"Mors venit ad omnes."/"One with courage is a majority"https://www.youtube.com/@jeffjr84
The timegate on patrols makes sense to me. Cryptic received so much flak from the playerbase about 'forcing' players to grind Argala. Despite the devs going on record time and time again speaking about how this was not the intent, they still got continued flak for it.].
You possess a funny sense of historical revisionism.
There used to be time everything around Argala was rewarding. Then they nerfed XP across the board, leaving de facto only Argala. Oh yeah, and then they added Spec trees that require 158,000 XP per point. So, whilst blatingly nerfing everything but Argala, they themselves caused *exactly* what they supposedly didn't intend: people flocking to Argala.
Kudos to Cryptic on this one. They could've just put their foot down and killed Argala straight-up. But instead, they took the time to redevelop the rewards across the rest of the entire galaxy.
Rewards across the rest of the entire galaxy they first nerfed themselves.
Basically, what we're seeing here is Cryptic reversing some of its earlier decisions to nerf XP everywhere. And THAT, for certain, is a good direction they're taking!
Trust me, a system like this sounds good in theory, but at the end of the day it doesn't accomplish anything. WoW had exactly this now for heroics (look up proving grounds) and all it does is block off the absolute bottom of the barrel.
Many trolls actually know how to play so they get through, then go back to trolling. Anyone who grasps either how to play their class or basic instance mechanics, but no necessarily both, usually gets through. And you don't need to talk to get through so who knows if your teammates are gonna communicate (more of an issue in STO, but still).
So at the end of the day, nothing is accomplished.
Yes but then it would be easier to punish the trolls, because they wouldn't be hidden in a sea of bads.
"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society." - Aristotle
So basicaly Cryptic was the Devil for forcing us to grind Argala over and over and over, but now there's a cooldown so Cryptic is the Super Devil for not letting us grind Argala over and over and over?
Don't get me wrong it seems like a pretty pointless change but there seems to be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over not being able to do something that people aparentaly hated to do anyhow.
The reason the cooldown became is important is basically that you now also earn Dilithium for every patrol. The cooldown means that even if people manage to find some exploit in doing a patrol super-fast (or are just that good), the amount of dilithium they gain is limited by the cooldown itself.
I think adding dilithium to the patrols was not a pointless change. I very much appreciate that.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
You possess a funny sense of historical revisionism.
...
Basically, what we're seeing here is Cryptic reversing some of its earlier decisions to nerf XP everywhere. And THAT, for certain, is a good direction they're taking!
Maybe But I think the biggest difference in opinion I come up against, is what many players consider a nerf, I usually find the logic or balance behind it. They rarely take out the nerf bat, without running a few bases or even putting out a home run. But it's often the nerf that gets the most attention.
There used to be time everything around Argala was rewarding. Then they nerfed XP across the board, leaving de facto only Argala. Oh yeah, and then they added Spec trees that require 158,000 XP per point. So, whilst blatingly nerfing everything but Argala, they themselves caused *exactly* what they supposedly didn't intend: people flocking to Argala.
I've heard the devs say quite often that spec points, ship mastery, etc are all things that are supposed to come naturally as players play and enjoy the game. They never intended to create a race to the finish as soon as possible. These were supposed to be slow, continual rewards for logging in on a regular basis.
(Kinda side point here: when DR launched, I went in knowing that I wouldn't be lvl60 immediately, and that it would be a couple months before I got sufficient spec points to fill a primary tree. Matter of perspective there, maybe.)
So with that in mind, this rebalance is actually a lot closer to the intended goal. I think the Delta patrols were originally over-rewarding A) by scaling mistake, and to give players playing the new content the boost they needed to keep going. Also, it made sense that players would want to spend a lot of their time playing the new content.
But the spreading and increasing of rewards across PvE, story, battlezone, and other patrol content is more in-line with their original stated goal: 'play the game the way you want to play, and we'll keep rewarding you for every minute you're logged in.' Hence why now, they're really trying to get across the point that XP, dil, etc are more-or-less time currencies, that are given to the player according to their activity in the game.
I do like it as well that they have added more rewards to the game, but progressing in level and spec points is harder now, and don't get yourself blended by the current numbers you will only get half of that when the weekend is over.
The only two decent missions so far that I have played are Infected Space Advanced and Hive Space Advanced that will give about 10K without the XP Bonus from the weekend everything else seems to give only 3 to 5K without the XP Bonus at best, and those missions will be locked for an hour.
Argala was a grind but it should still give 10K XP give us the option to either get Dilithium or XP and keep the cooldown of 30 minutes.
158K for a Spec Point is crazy, most people have not finished one specialization and Cryptic has already released the next one and this will go on and on.
Finishing one specialization will be always a grind it does not matter if you want to get it done as fast as possible or if you do it in your personal speed it just take too long. Recently crafting was changed and I love this change something similar needs to be done for spec points.
Some of us only have one alt and it is not that big of a deal but a lot have more and they really love to play them like I do.
One of the other MMO's I am playing is Star Wars The Old Republic the F2P system sucks but one of the things I really love about this game is the "Legacy System" were every alt benefits from each other.
For Example (adapted to STO):
Legacy Levels & Global Unlocks:
Starship Mailbox
Starship Bank Access to all Banks (Character, Account, Fleet)
Starship Exchange Console
Combat Training Dummy Ground
Combat Training Dummy Space
Class Unlocks:
When reaching a certain level abilities from one class becomes available on the other:
Tactical: Attack Pattern Alpha I
Engineering: Miracle Worker I
Science: Sensor Scan I (might be a bit too powerful)
Special Unlocks:
A Legacy Shipyard would be cool when reaching a certain level you get access to Lockbox ships of other alts with their gear and their crew and you can use them on every alt, or you can transfer them from one alt to the other with it's equipment for a small price.
Comments
You know that before DPS and STF channels everyone played PUG?
but you avoided the actual point of my question which was:
Back when we all had only blue gear, half borg, half maco sets, defiants, BoPs, mirror Recons and all there was were PUG games, people died and then some and still were able to beat elite missions with optionals.
Why is that shocking today? and Why is that like that?
My answer is spec Grind and easily obtainable high end gear.
Some people seem to expect that by equipping gold gear they are suddenly masters of some mission, and on the opposite side we have people that believe that everyone needs to do exactly what they do to be "capable" in their eyes.
So what if someone gets blown up? You are saying that you don't get blown up by Undine 300k AP overloads in VCE and 200k Voth Aceton pulses in BDE? or by 500k+ plasma lances in HSE? or by 300-400k Tricobalt explosions in Korfez?
Or are you talking about ISA which is a lv50-lv60 content which people do with various toons with various level of quality gear and experience?
You can't ever learn a mission as a new player if you don't try it, blow up a few times, even fail, so what?
And if you consider yourself worthy of title "capable" why not go and try to explain to people if they do something wrong in some mission?
How do you think 10% rule in former ISE now ISA came to be the norm pre massive damage boosts with LoR? or former MRRMLL/RML strategy in CSE or 5km away rule in KASE?
People communicated in PUGs.
They certainly didn't "do AP CRTD Pen plasma dope EAP BFAW DPS or get out"
Super SpecialStar Trek Online Review
SpecialTemporal PUG 100K DPS Build
We are Travelers
Where do you see this? I dont read it off the holodeck release notes.
I think the possible "exploit" refered to here is the fact they added dilithium to the patrols and they wouldn't want players spamming it too much
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=22508031&postcount=1
and report here too
https://lootcritter.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/additional-rewards-holodeck-release-notes-for-22615-plus-ui-fix-incoming-fingers-crossed/
Missed those threads since I was only looking at release notes. Cool and thanks
Allow me to give you a few examples for what I am talking about, just what my complaint is and what kind of people are incapable. Just to be perfectly clear I will also point out I send out a message at the start of EVERY PvE telling the others what steps to follow in order to complete the mission because I EXPECT at least one person to have never played the mission before.
In the last week I have had the following:
In ISA, people who see the other four members of their team attacking one side and then try to solo the other, ignoring when anyone else tells them not to. Or people who rush the Generators and spam BFAW summoning the Nanite Spheres before the Cube is even dead. Others who try to attack the Gateway and complain about how its glitched because it isn't taking damage. After the 'optional' fails they then complain about how much everyone else sucks.
In The Cure Found, people who rush to attack the Cubes and ignore the Probes completely, dying over and over but continuing to attack the Cubes and complain about the game being broken because said Cube is not taking damage. Again all the while ignoring when you tell them they have to destroy the Probes first. And when the Kang is blown up they rant about how they are the only one doing their job and how you are trying to leech off of them.
In Visquious Cycle, people who ignore the Planet Killers and focus on killing the ever spawning NPCs and complain about why its taking the rest of the team so long, despite them not actually killing a single NPC.
In Battle of Korfez, people who don't even bother repairing the allied ships you are suppose to be escorting or defending.
The list goes on and on. I have no problems with new players, I myself was new to the game when I started three years ago. My issue is with people who ignore you when you tell them what you have to do to beat the mission. People who get under 1k DPS on an Elite Space PvE (currently about 15% of the people I've run into in the last month) and people who take a new ship out using the starting gear it came with when they bought it.
I'm also not too fond of AFKers.
Now would you say that any of my complaints are unreasonable?
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
Herding sheeple
That's not the game's fault. That's again the players' fault.
If you're doing the 12K in Korfez, yeah you're doing something right.
If the other 4 players in the queue are doing somewhere about 1K - 2K each (math, I know is wrong... but that's usually the low-ball numbers I see), then they're all in the wrong. They shouldn't be doing Korfez. Granted, they likely don't know their own DPS, but they should be able to see how painfully little their shots do against the enemy.
There's no way the Cryptic can play the balance game to compensate for that without a complete overhaul of the queuing system - it'd be a mess to implement anyways. What players need to realize is A) maybe they're just not at the level to play Adv. and Elite content yet, and
But half of the complaining about the new PvEs being too hard has been people wanting to be day-one ready without equipping themselves for the difficulty. That's not Cryptic's fault. That's the fault of players who want everything, without putting in any work.
I honestly don't see it that way. There were a lot of complaints about being "herded" into the Delta Quadrant for metrics reasons, and the devs responded to player feedback in this case and upped the XP rewards across the rest of the galaxy. And increased rewards will do the exact opposite of what you suggest - I'd expect to get spec points quicker under the new systems.
I have seen a number of people suggest a required test of sorts before a person can play Advanced or Elite missions, kind of like the License Tests on Grand Turismo. I don't think that is a bad idea for solving this issue, or perhaps a 'point' system tied in with gear. Assigning each piece of gear and weapon a point value and not allowing anyone whose current ship has under that point value to cue.
That would also reduce the number of trolls now that I think about it. Had a guy day before yesterday trolling Korfez of all things, came in with one of the new Command Cruisers, but only had a single Photon torp equipped -.-
I don't really put a ton of importance on DPS because I have seen a few builds out there with very low DPS but very high special use, like super crowd control. But under 2k DPS is just...not right. Photonic Fleet gets 4k DPS on its own.
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
Oh sweet mercy... that just hurts to think about.
Such is the pug life though. All I can suggest is play with your friends, fleetmates, or whatever channel you happen to be in. I usually have great results if I'm pugging with at least one other captain I can trust.
I've got to think that the XP reward reallocation will help PvEs, though. There'll be more players doing PvE now that it rewards higher. And unless you're actually trying not to become better, the extra XP, dil, and good 'ol loot in those queues now that they're being run more often should benefit the playerbase as a whole. At this point, Cryptic kinda extended a hand and said "here, do anything you want in game and we'll reward you... please." :P
Either way, I hope that'll make it easier for even casual players to get their stuff quicker. I doubt many casuals were going into Argala several times a day, so now that rewards are boosted for all content then everyone should see a benefit.
Again, instead of fixing queues, they are trying to find a way of herding players that are left, but not playing them, into them. If that was not the case, then why even put a timegate on being able to run patrols again? They wouldn't need to.
Also, why are the xp increases to those queues not giving what the patrols that players were grinding were giving?
They nerfed their progress, and added small increases of xp into other content to get them to move over there. However, it is now going to take longer for them to level up. Therefore, the grind is just getting even longer.
Every time they nerf something, they try to either explain it in a way to act like they are helping everyone, or they try to draw attention to something else, like holding a shiny object in front of someone.
I am not saying that xp didn't need to be added to other areas of the game. But for them to nerf the patrols like they did is just adding insult/punishment to players. They are trying to keep casual players from maxing out their captain specializations, and drag the grind out even longer for everyone in the game.
Personally, I would like to have content in the game that is more than just DPS, and I would like a long-term system that doesn't lock skills, or abilities to use gear behind an extremely long grind. Even the rep systems are not that harsh now, with all the power creep the queued missions cater to.
Sad thing though was I've actually seen people with full loadouts do less lol
Honestly I would have been curious to see the metrics if they had left patrols alone, but kept this new increase to everything else and see if there was a significant changeover in players doing more PvE and less patrols.
That would have been a controlled test at least you know?
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
WTH...are you related to Gecko? Why blame the players when management decided to sheep-herd players to only focus on Argala for Spec leveling for 3 months. They wanted to get their metrics to prove the point to PWE that DR is the real BEST expansion ever (more people playing Argala>Delta quadrant>great numbers...get it).
Now...End of quarter from launch...time to Nerf if and use wording "for the sake of balancing" the game. I'm ALL for balancing but why not 3 months ago when they nerfed the first wave of XP big time. I'm not that naive nor just a number to trust blindly on hidden agendas.
Don't get me wrong it seems like a pretty pointless change but there seems to be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over not being able to do something that people aparentaly hated to do anyhow.
People hated to do it but the only other choice was a grind that takes months and months.
Cryptic have removed the only option people had if they didn't want to spend a ridiculous amount of time grinding... a grind that only exists because... erm... reasons
Free Tibet!
Trust me, a system like this sounds good in theory, but at the end of the day it doesn't accomplish anything. WoW had exactly this now for heroics (look up proving grounds) and all it does is block off the absolute bottom of the barrel.
Many trolls actually know how to play so they get through, then go back to trolling. Anyone who grasps either how to play their class or basic instance mechanics, but no necessarily both, usually gets through. And you don't need to talk to get through so who knows if your teammates are gonna communicate (more of an issue in STO, but still).
So at the end of the day, nothing is accomplished.
I'm not in a rush but I don't want it to take over 6 months. There's a balance to be struck and Cryptic haven't got there yet.
Free Tibet!
Why not give players a REAL option between DIL and XP? IMO dont care for DIL..all I need is XP/Spec points.
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The timegate on patrols makes sense to me. Cryptic received so much flak from the playerbase about 'forcing' players to grind Argala. Despite the devs going on record time and time again speaking about how this was not the intent, they still got continued flak for it.
No idea if this was the intent, but I think they made a statement here. A very vocal part of the playerbase was screaming at them about being forced to play Argala. This is Cryptic saying emphatically "no, we didn't. Please feel free to play other things, at any time, and be well-rewarded for it."
Kudos to Cryptic on this one. They could've just put their foot down and killed Argala straight-up. But instead, they took the time to redevelop the rewards across the rest of the entire galaxy.
This isn't a nerf. It's a net boost to XP across the entire game, with the exception of a few patrols that players had been complaining about having to grind.
1% improvement is still an improvement. Personally I'd be happy with ONLY the close to the very bottom and troll over close to the very bottom, trolls AND the bottom of the barrel.
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
You possess a funny sense of historical revisionism.
There used to be time everything around Argala was rewarding. Then they nerfed XP across the board, leaving de facto only Argala. Oh yeah, and then they added Spec trees that require 158,000 XP per point. So, whilst blatingly nerfing everything but Argala, they themselves caused *exactly* what they supposedly didn't intend: people flocking to Argala.
Rewards across the rest of the entire galaxy they first nerfed themselves.
Basically, what we're seeing here is Cryptic reversing some of its earlier decisions to nerf XP everywhere. And THAT, for certain, is a good direction they're taking!
You completely missed my point
Trolls get through
Vast majority of bads find a way to get through somehow
Worst players flood forums asking for the test to be removed
Nothing gets accomplished
The reason the cooldown became is important is basically that you now also earn Dilithium for every patrol. The cooldown means that even if people manage to find some exploit in doing a patrol super-fast (or are just that good), the amount of dilithium they gain is limited by the cooldown itself.
I think adding dilithium to the patrols was not a pointless change. I very much appreciate that.
Yes, I realize that.
WoW difficulty is really low at the low end, or so I've heard. Not every game is as supportive of this.
But there's no valid reason to remove it. The rewards are available elsewhere.
Maybe
I've heard the devs say quite often that spec points, ship mastery, etc are all things that are supposed to come naturally as players play and enjoy the game. They never intended to create a race to the finish as soon as possible. These were supposed to be slow, continual rewards for logging in on a regular basis.
(Kinda side point here: when DR launched, I went in knowing that I wouldn't be lvl60 immediately, and that it would be a couple months before I got sufficient spec points to fill a primary tree. Matter of perspective there, maybe.)
So with that in mind, this rebalance is actually a lot closer to the intended goal. I think the Delta patrols were originally over-rewarding A) by scaling mistake, and
But the spreading and increasing of rewards across PvE, story, battlezone, and other patrol content is more in-line with their original stated goal: 'play the game the way you want to play, and we'll keep rewarding you for every minute you're logged in.' Hence why now, they're really trying to get across the point that XP, dil, etc are more-or-less time currencies, that are given to the player according to their activity in the game.
The only two decent missions so far that I have played are Infected Space Advanced and Hive Space Advanced that will give about 10K without the XP Bonus from the weekend everything else seems to give only 3 to 5K without the XP Bonus at best, and those missions will be locked for an hour.
Argala was a grind but it should still give 10K XP give us the option to either get Dilithium or XP and keep the cooldown of 30 minutes.
158K for a Spec Point is crazy, most people have not finished one specialization and Cryptic has already released the next one and this will go on and on.
Finishing one specialization will be always a grind it does not matter if you want to get it done as fast as possible or if you do it in your personal speed it just take too long. Recently crafting was changed and I love this change something similar needs to be done for spec points.
Some of us only have one alt and it is not that big of a deal but a lot have more and they really love to play them like I do.
One of the other MMO's I am playing is Star Wars The Old Republic the F2P system sucks but one of the things I really love about this game is the "Legacy System" were every alt benefits from each other.
For Example (adapted to STO):
Legacy Levels & Global Unlocks:
Starship Mailbox
Starship Bank Access to all Banks (Character, Account, Fleet)
Starship Exchange Console
Combat Training Dummy Ground
Combat Training Dummy Space
Class Unlocks:
When reaching a certain level abilities from one class becomes available on the other:
Tactical: Attack Pattern Alpha I
Engineering: Miracle Worker I
Science: Sensor Scan I (might be a bit too powerful)
Special Unlocks:
A Legacy Shipyard would be cool when reaching a certain level you get access to Lockbox ships of other alts with their gear and their crew and you can use them on every alt, or you can transfer them from one alt to the other with it's equipment for a small price.