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A challenge to those who PVE (some conditions apply)
snipey47a
Member Posts: 485 Media Corps
This subject of this challenge involves the ever last battle of philosophies between those who can achieve good DPS and those who cannot/don't want to. This has become such a polarising issue especially since Delta Rising that I believe that there needs to be some perspective on what's really going on and I hope those who engage with this thread being from either camp gain a better understanding of what's really going on.
I am a DPS'er and to many in this game I'm one of the bad guys. However, when I look back at what it what it took to get where I am I can't see how I can qualify as being "bad". Those who label me as bad usually come from the "I like to tank", "I'm a sci/healer", I'm a team player or my very own favourite "I play to have fun" camps.
Let's quickly touch on two of these - "I like to tank" - a tank that does TRIBBLE DPS because it is choked full of heals and defensive ability and doesn't die is held in high regard by these players. DPS isn't important because they didn't die and that makes them the best player in the advanced or elite pve they just did! This is ignoring the fact that a 20 DPS tank means the other 4 people on the team have increased workload to complete the mission and also due to the low DPS the NPCs think there isn't actually a player there, just empty space. No tankers, if you aren't contributing to your share of the DPS your builds aren't making it up to the team in other ways.
"I play to support the team" - well since STO is DPS centric. DPS people have this reputation by non-DPS people that they aren't team players and this is despite all videos you have seen from the DPS Wizards having a high amount of teamwork and coordination between players.
In my opinion, people who play in team matches oblivious to what their builds and play style do to the rest of the team AND (note the "and" here because this next part will cause some to scream) don't want to or care to improve are the real trolls in this game. I accept that people are at different levels and prefer a certain type of build/ship and 100k DPS is not everyone goal but not wanting to improve how they play is something I don't understand and can only put it down to arrogance.
Therefore to prove my point, I issue a challenge to everyone in the DPS channels or anyone that does 10k DPS or higher to PUG every space match in the queue and then at the end pass or fail, mention something that would have improved (or passed) the match and offer to help the members who were in the team. Do it by pm if you have to as many warp out without saying gg (meaning good game by the way). If my experience is anything to go by and I do this quite regularly you will be lucky if you get any response at all and even luckier if 1-2 to respond accepting help. Seriously try it, you will be amazed how much people actually don't care about or don't care for improvement....
What can I surmise from this? Most PUGs think they are playing the game perfectly already and your offer to help them improve is an insult or most PUGs don't care about their random team mates and how their performance impacts on them.... if the second part is more accurate then that is trollish behaviour to me.... A forum member from another thread put it very well and I quote: From my experience, pointing out any flaws in build, tactics, or execution will only draw obscenities, "I know what I'm doing, you're the one who doesn't," or ignores.
I urge people to take up this challenge, you will be shocked at how even your attempts to make contact are treated. Please report back your experiences.
I am a DPS'er and to many in this game I'm one of the bad guys. However, when I look back at what it what it took to get where I am I can't see how I can qualify as being "bad". Those who label me as bad usually come from the "I like to tank", "I'm a sci/healer", I'm a team player or my very own favourite "I play to have fun" camps.
Let's quickly touch on two of these - "I like to tank" - a tank that does TRIBBLE DPS because it is choked full of heals and defensive ability and doesn't die is held in high regard by these players. DPS isn't important because they didn't die and that makes them the best player in the advanced or elite pve they just did! This is ignoring the fact that a 20 DPS tank means the other 4 people on the team have increased workload to complete the mission and also due to the low DPS the NPCs think there isn't actually a player there, just empty space. No tankers, if you aren't contributing to your share of the DPS your builds aren't making it up to the team in other ways.
"I play to support the team" - well since STO is DPS centric. DPS people have this reputation by non-DPS people that they aren't team players and this is despite all videos you have seen from the DPS Wizards having a high amount of teamwork and coordination between players.
In my opinion, people who play in team matches oblivious to what their builds and play style do to the rest of the team AND (note the "and" here because this next part will cause some to scream) don't want to or care to improve are the real trolls in this game. I accept that people are at different levels and prefer a certain type of build/ship and 100k DPS is not everyone goal but not wanting to improve how they play is something I don't understand and can only put it down to arrogance.
Therefore to prove my point, I issue a challenge to everyone in the DPS channels or anyone that does 10k DPS or higher to PUG every space match in the queue and then at the end pass or fail, mention something that would have improved (or passed) the match and offer to help the members who were in the team. Do it by pm if you have to as many warp out without saying gg (meaning good game by the way). If my experience is anything to go by and I do this quite regularly you will be lucky if you get any response at all and even luckier if 1-2 to respond accepting help. Seriously try it, you will be amazed how much people actually don't care about or don't care for improvement....
What can I surmise from this? Most PUGs think they are playing the game perfectly already and your offer to help them improve is an insult or most PUGs don't care about their random team mates and how their performance impacts on them.... if the second part is more accurate then that is trollish behaviour to me.... A forum member from another thread put it very well and I quote: From my experience, pointing out any flaws in build, tactics, or execution will only draw obscenities, "I know what I'm doing, you're the one who doesn't," or ignores.
I urge people to take up this challenge, you will be shocked at how even your attempts to make contact are treated. Please report back your experiences.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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This is hilarious.
"Hey, everyone, try helping out people doing badly in STFs. Let us know how it turns out."
"LOL I'm going to troll your STFs with stupidity"
:rolleyes:
Cow dump.
The tank should tank, that's his job.
While taking aggro, the DPS should kill it.
That would be a normal way to function.
If so called tanks don't get it, they should take lessons in basic tactics.
The optionals in this game need to revolve around these roles so the optional can be completely in different ways. Say instead of needing to kill something in 10 mins make it where it has to be kept in a certain part of the instance or killed. So If you have a guy with a tank build thats insanely geared towards survival he can solve and complete the optional by keeping said npc busy while the other team mates focus on other goals or the crowd control can keep it pushed back and away with repulsors and gravity wells. Things that make these specs useful instead of a liability.
Honestly I do get the point that asking people or telling them that with a few changes they could improve their dps or their functionality can get your head bitten off but to a point I'd agree that they shouldnt have to change their style that this game allows them to be just to play the game the ways others want them too. The game should change to encourage players to try out different roles instead of making one playstyle the best and only acceptable playstyle.
I play "tank" but I know what that role entails: doing enough damage to gain the attention of the enemy while simultaneously being strong enough to survive said attention. I'm trying almost constantly to find the right balance between damage output, threat and survivability. I've changed my ship loadout 4 times in the last month while experimenting, but I always have at least 10k dps despite not having some of the really expensive gear from the Lobi store or exchange.
You call for people to play PuGs and try to PM players with how they can improve. How often on these forums have we seen people who claim to have done exactly that, only for the other player to return with insults and rude behavior? How many times has advice of that sort been strictly ignored? And how can be be sure the person on the other end even knows what we're saying due to language barriers? This may be a bit of a defeatist attitude, but I have no desire to go into a PuG with the sole purpose of telling others how they can be better when it seems like the likely outcome is that nothing will change.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
Snipey's point proven in the first reply. Classic.
That being said, I've given up on doing so. Half the times people don't respond or listen anyway. Same with ground missions, I used to give hints there every time I saw it was needed. Nowadays I just do it when I feel like doing it, otherwise I won't bother. Carrying a team through a ground mission is one thing, having to do it over and over again and having to think for three or four people every time you pug kills the fun for me.
Oh and if you want people in advanced to learn something, go take a look in the normal missions. Half the times I'm in Infected space normal, people are shooting the generators first. And then, once the first generator is down, they go after the normal spheres instead of the transformer.
On normal, in pugs, it may not be needed to kill the spheres first or use the 10 percent rule, but those same people probably start with the generators when they start playing advanced, thus ignoring the cube which, together with two spheres is much more dangerous than just two spheres. And that's why things are going wrong: people don't learn well on normal cause most tactics that are used on advanced aren't necessary to succeed on normal and therefore a large part of the playerbase is unfamiliar with those tactics. Especially when there's advanced and elite players joining normal missions and slaughtering all enemies before the people who are there to learn or teach ever get the chance of doing so.
Even if you're polite. They may not want your advice.
Sure you're trying to help, but nobody likes a nag.
Maybe a better idea if a fail occurs is to simply team message:
"Willing to train anyone here on how to not fail pve queues ever again. PM if interested."
Thats a better challenge to DPS channel players.
A true 'tank' has nothing to do with weaker players who just want to stay alive!
A true tank's role is to draw aggro. A true tanker is specced/geared for [+Threat], so as to take the heat for others, and him-/herself benefit in the process of this aggro (many yummie targets to land your BFAW on).
If you really were interested in a civil conversation, you would have used a different tone, attitude, and words to make your point.
Meh trolling attempt score: 2/10
Cirran
Bad team synergy
Bad team synergy
5 DPS'ers?
A completed queue
The truth is out there
I note an oddity here: "This is ignoring the fact that a 20 DPS tank means the other 4 people on the team have increased workload to complete the mission and also due to the low DPS the NPCs think there isn't actually a player there, just empty space. No tankers, if you aren't contributing to your share of the DPS your builds aren't making it up to the team in other ways."
If you meant 20,000 then fu. If you meant 20 - well I guess they didn't equip any weapons?
To respond to the intent of this. Pugs here have not been high on communication for some 3 years. For me this is the charm of them. I have no interest in protracted and or forced interaction. This is why I love the group content on STO: because it is not required.
I'll go a step further. With Azure getting the fail removed. If they remove the fail from borg disconnected my success rate would approach 100% without any chit chat or interaction in my grouping. My alternative is to skip borg disconnected and still enjoy the rest of the missions. In short, I don't experience problems in pugs aside from these 2 missions because they require something besides pew pew - which pugs will Never manage.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
If this were true then there would be no need for engineers or science officers. There are different roles and that's a good thing. And yes, if a tank is taking a large part of the damage, it's acceptable that he's doing less than average damage.
Same with healing. I fly a Voth Palisade on one character and I'm continuously providing passive shield heals to all allies within 10 km while draining enemies' shields with tachyon beam. Actively healing with Science team and HE. Edit: while doing respectable, not amazing DPS.
I'm also controlling crowds with gravity well, using subsystem targeting to disable enemies' weapons when it's most needed. Edit: all of this doesn't increase my DPS, but you can hardly claim that I'm not supporting the team and help achieving the goals.
Besides, doing a lot of DPS is nice, but I've seen people who were barely able to survive and even lost optionals because they were FAW spamming everything.
Funny thing, those DPS people often are the first to leave the match without saying anything, probably thinking they carried the team while ignoring the fact (or underestimating the importance of healers - you seem to be one of them) that they themselves were also carried since they wouldn't have survived without others' help.
Healers and tankers are, IMO, allowed to do less DPS as long as they provide other important roles. A dead DPS king doesn't do much DPS after all.
I used to run STFs all the time; could do KGE and KSE in my sleep, carrying an entire PUG team that didn't know what they were doing. But I know enough that since things changed while I was gone, I'm outclassed and undergeared for STFs now. So I haven't queued up, and I don't think I'm ever going to again. I don't want to add a gear grind to the dozen things I already have to grind in this game to just play the same content over and over and over and not advance the story at all.
All that being said? I wanted the marks, so I ran through the last CCE on *all* my characters; got first once or twice, but was *consistently* pulling second on my engineers and scis, doing what they do - tanking, healing, and spamming Grav Wells and Tykens Rifts -- in T5s and a couple T5Us. And you know what? Out of 3 weeks of daily runthroughs on 5 different characters, I was only ever in one PUG that failed, and it was because of a lagspike glitch.
But as I said, I know I'm out of touch with the current state of STFs. So I don't run them anymore. I'll stay out of your way. Please stop making me feel like a waste of space for wanting more story content, like they gave us in Legacy of Romulus.
The players NEED to adapt, following the new rules of the game.
That they refuse is upon them, they have the freedom to do that, but they do not have to bite off others heads for that.
Get along, each do their thing, make it work.
Silly "uumaans"....
This. Just like the incredibly arrogant/aggressive PvPers make all PvPers seem like massive jerks, so too do the loudest-mouth "I'm Awesome DPS/therefore God" folks.
Not "bad" as in bad players, or bad for the game.... "bad" as in massively unpleasant to be in the same room with.
You, sir, just helped me make my point. Thank you for showing your support for what I am trying to prove here
I never said anything about changing people's play styles. If they want to fly a cruiser, escort or whatever that is completely fine but maximising your potential in those ships is what I am talking about here.
Shows a complete lack of understanding on how the threat system works. If you don't do enough DPS the NPCs ignore you.
Tanks have their uses. My fleet doesn't subscribe to the "if you aren't doing at least 50k dps you're a waste of space" method of gameplay, many of them have a hard time hitting 10k. But we can still clear ISA with optional, and do you know why? Because with a tank player they can be consistent in putting out that damage rather than having to rez, and with a dedicated CCer we can ensure the nanite probes don't get into heal range. 50k+ dpsers don't need a tank because enemies die too quickly, but for those who play more casually, a good tank can be a godsend.
And before you say anything about suboptimal builds etc., this is a GAME. If we have fun playing this way, then the game has served its purpose. We are not required to min-mix damage, nor is that the only way to enjoy things.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
Tried that one too... first problem is that many warp out without even acknowledging or thanking their team mates. Second problem the ones that do stay either ignore you or are the ones that have their chat window minimised. Why in a team match do people have their window minimised? Doesn't make sense to me.
Kira,
As a DPS'er yourself, I am surprised to see you say that. The threat system isn't tuned enough away from DPS to make those consoles useful. Maybe on a sci that can have 5 of them but why would a sci do that to him/herself?
There is so much wrong with this post/rant
1 You are generalizing.
2 You are being insulting by assuming people can't make decisions without your guidance.
3 There is a thing called confirmation bias - when you are looking for evidence to confirm what you already believe. A true test is one that takes into account the possibility that your premise might be wrong.
4 You are assuming that your own personal experience is indicative of a trend. When searching for evidence to prove or disprove something it's better to take into account evidence from multiple sources that is why surveys aren't based on one persons experience or belief.
5 You are making projections and you claim to know how most people doing pugs think and feel. You might know how some people think and feel but unless you do pugs 24/7 I doubt you can know such things about so many people.
Unless you are about to claim that you are god maybe you should avoid making absolutist claims (most, all, etc)
Honestly not trying to start a fight, but if you don't do PvE queues, what do you do in game? Curious is all.