Oh look a catch 22! Eject players who need to get BPN's for gearing for STF's :rolleyes:.
But then again it seems that Threat Generation on this game is usually to blame for that which you find a problem. Half the time on these STF's I find I am the one getting gang banged by the Sphere's etc and there are others at least within 3km around me firing on the same targets. . . Threat Generation is what needs to be closer looked at.
And for the record, no I do not have Threat control in skills or other.
I agree threat generation needs help
I also believe ( -Threat ) should be removed entirely
If a player needs BNPs doing a space stf is NOT the place to get them...You get (4 ) BNPs for doing the Hard 4 missions on Defera which are ( easy ) I mean really easy
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Scared to die, you act like its a requirement for high DPS.
It should be shamed upon as its a true failure.
One should now that blowing is not a good thing.
After all you are not doing any DPS while your waiting to respawn.
If I see someone is calling themselves a "tank" or a "healer" in a mission, for me that means I'll die more.
If they're deliberately lowering their damage output, then the NPCs will attack me more. I have not seen a healer competent enough to make up for that. And while someone was in the forums talking about how there are true tanks in the game and all they need to do is buff threat generation and do between 10 and 20K dps, I have yet to run into someone calling themselves a "tank" in-game who can actually hold aggro.
Dying happens. It's part of the game. 15 seconds isn't that much time to be out if you're doing something worthwhile when you're in.
Your ship is OP in normal but can't handle advanced? How does that work?
Humans respond to incentives. If there are no fail conditions, then people will play the mission terribly, get their participation award, and repeat it again later. If there are, then they'll try to improve if they think it's worth their time.
It's annoying to me to play a queue and be the only person trying to play it correctly. I've stayed away from ANRA since it got dumbed down and, judging from the few people who I see in that queue over the last few weeks, not many people have decided to go in there and hang out for 12 minutes to get their participation award.
Unless I am soloing it on advanced I have to deal with people who want to purposely fail the q or whatever but you need to read what I said.
It handles advanced quite well, but I have to deal with other people in the instance who may or may not be able to handle it or be purposely trolling it simply because they can fail it. i stay away from advanced for the same reason you do because it fails because others are causing it to fail as I stated in the CC I would be the only person to survive a blast during that event and it happend to me 3 times in a row so I sat in line and finally gave up that day after the 3rd fail and an hour and a half I waited once more and well it failed again so I logged out mid isntance as everyone around me died yet again... It had nothing to do with me dying I didnt die.. they did. I suffered for their issues but I did nothing wrong.
What makes it tricky is that it's often difficult to identify who the problem player is monkeying around with the generators with all the FAW's and TRIBBLE blowing up and shoting everywhere without stealing focus from the task at hand yourself and before you know it, the mission has failed and everyone has beamed out before you can type out what went wrong and how to do it better. Every once in a while I'd get a group that was good, but it wasn't enough fun to balance out the constant barrage of bad.
What DR did wasn't so much that it made the game impossible as much as it just made pugging unfun and unviable. "Just stop being casual and be hardcore. Just stop pugging and only run with premades sitting around a vent server" yadda yadda, I know I know. I've heard the time treasured "I have a sandwich so you can't be starving." argument only too often, so I know the sentiment by now. But that is just not my playstyle.
The problem with your suggestion is what prevents people in Advanced Optional demanding again in the forums that they make Advanced Mandatories easier for them because they want to do it?
I actually liked Virusdancer's idea, but I agree with this.
When ANRA got dumbed down (free 1 ship in 12 minutes!), I saw 2 people a day after on separate threads here saying that ANRA is still too hard. One actually completed it, mind you, but his team only freed 2 ships, so the mission was still "broken" according to him. Of course he would never consider that maybe he could improve his game....
If Cryptic would spend some time adjusting the mandatory conditions and rewards and compare that to metrics, a balance can be found. But that balance will never stop some people from complaining about the game being too hard because that's just how people are.
What makes it tricky is that it's often difficult to identify who the problem player is monkeying around with the generators with all the FAW's and TRIBBLE blowing up and shoting everywhere without stealing focus from the task at hand yourself and before you know it, the mission has failed and everyone has beamed out before you can type out what went wrong and how to do it better. Every once in a while I'd get a group that was good, but it wasn't enough fun to balance out the constant barrage of bad.
What DR did wasn't so much that it made the game impossible as much as it just made pugging unfun and unviable. "Just stop being casual and be hardcore. Just stop pugging and only run with premades sitting around a vent server" yadda yadda, I know I know. I've heard the time treasured "I have a sandwich so you can't be starving." argument only too often, so I know the sentiment by now. But that is just not my playstyle.
Pugging is fun in the right scenario sure you might get some meany heads but I prefer pugging over premades hands down for meeting fun people plus the content is not well engaging enough for me to spend 2 hours waiting for people to login so I can play it in a premade.
Yes pugging is less precise its the nature of the beast I have however had some great pugs and made friends as a result of them. I would never have met those people otherwise. I also enjoy the dyson zone and other open zones for the same reason as pugging. Those who consider these things to be "antisocial" are wrong its spontaneous and the opposite of antisocial you meet people who you have never talked to before I made many friends some who barely speak english but we made friends anyhow using basic english.
this however is destroyed in the present situation because you must must must isolate in vent servers with the same 20 guys never talk to people in group chat or whatever after the run etc.
If I see someone is calling themselves a "tank" or a "healer" in a mission, for me that means I'll die more.
If they're deliberately lowering their damage output, then the NPCs will attack me more. I have not seen a healer competent enough to make up for that. And while someone was in the forums talking about how there are true tanks in the game and all they need to do is buff threat generation and do between 10 and 20K dps, I have yet to run into someone calling themselves a "tank" in-game who can actually hold aggro.
Dying happens. It's part of the game. 15 seconds isn't that much time to be out if you're doing something worthwhile when you're in.
If your being destroyed in a advanced (Pug) STF then you got a Bad build or a poor ship caption or both
Their are no Diaper changers...No DPS Buffers...No Repair ships following you around in a Pug...Actually Pugs are more like star trek should be............To be a Tank so someone else can DPS is the most stupid thing cryptic ever brought into the game
Its your ship and your crew with some allies fighting a Threat...Like in the shows...like it should be
When you make a Pug build Its a much more true to a canon build than some dps or team build
I do 15 to 20k dps and draw my fair share of agro and almost never die
When I do get destroyed its big news in fleet chat and I take a lot of ribbing...that's how I think it should be.........It should be rare you getting destroyed
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
If your being destroyed in a advanced (Pug) STF then you got a Bad build or a poor ship caption or both
When you have borg chain draining you and chucking out inviso-torpedo-of-death it's easier than you think. And shield insulators are a great stat in theory but not a terribly ineffective one in practice. I had insulators maxed in my tree and was stacking it on my gear and it was basically useless for all the good it did. I've found that my trading out my useless insulators and doubling down on resist, and by linking all kinds of TRIBBLE from Bio-molecular shield generator, Rock and Roll, Quantum singularity manipulation, molecular cohesion nullifier field, reverse shield polarity, brace for impact, subspace field modulator, rock and roll again etc I can just about almost barely keep up with the borg onslaught. But it's one hell of a dance. And it's only managable on my t6 fleet galaxy with boat loads of hull. And that's great for someone like me with a beefy cruisers that has accumulated numerous toys and powerful traits over a great length of time.
You make it sound like any screwball with one eye closed and two arms tied behind their back could do it. :rolleyes: Sometimes I wonder if I'm playing the same game to hear some forum goers tell it.
One could see the Tachyon Beam and Torp thing as a deterrent to using FAW/CSV/etc. Don't use those abilities unless you can take the heat sort of thing. 1-2 Spheres draining and dropping out their torps isn't the same as 4-5 Spheres draining and dropping out their torps.
However the only change I would love to see..And I know I wont see it is when a player is destroyed they are ejected from the STF at that point and another player in the Q replaces them
This comment was so poorly considered I couldn't let it pass without responding.
I feel that the person who wrote it must have never flown an escort.
So ... You're saying.. when I tank an entire instance as an escort, with just 2 boff skills on "defensive/healing" powers, for over 5 minutes, because my DPS draws so much more threat than "hardier ship skill layouts", that I should then be penalized while you reap the rewards of the ships that my damage shot down? ...
Here's an idea - Why don't you suggest that tank builds be made more viable, so someone actually assumes the role, instead of trying to imply that poorly designed ships are more deserving of completing an instance because they are willing to bring healing and defensive powers, crippling the teams overall damage.
There is only one accepted internet response to that .. "Roflmfao"
I understand the concept that if your ship is the one dying, then you probably could change something to keep it alive better, but again, the current name of the game is damage output, and escorts specifically are designed to be glass cannons, weak defensively, they are meant to be flown as "wingmen" to cruiser tanks and science support ships -- The problem with that is that everyone plays cruiser and science damage dealing ships, instead of trying to run proper team composition.
Clearly the game was designed to be played co-operatively, I mean, it is an online, multiplayer, team game. The way of thinking demonstrated by the above quoted comment is a clear example of what is wrong on this game.. People dismiss teamwork in favor of elitism.. or in this case, good ole fashioned ignorance.
If I see someone is calling themselves a "tank" or a "healer" in a mission, for me that means I'll die more.
If they're deliberately lowering their damage output, then the NPCs will attack me more. I have not seen a healer competent enough to make up for that. And while someone was in the forums talking about how there are true tanks in the game and all they need to do is buff threat generation and do between 10 and 20K dps, I have yet to run into someone calling themselves a "tank" in-game who can actually hold aggro.
Dying happens. It's part of the game. 15 seconds isn't that much time to be out if you're doing something worthwhile when you're in.
I'm firm believer in a balance build, no matter what the ship.
Second if your a Glasser then you should getting out dodge when you start taking damage:
Yah fly out lowers your DPS, but I don't think the objective is to stay close and get blown up.
I couldnt even read this thread, since everybody acts like the stfs are even a viable source of entertainment anymore. Do you all remember when many of the queues actually had dozens of players lined up and actually fired off? Talking bout griefers or noobs seems irrelevevant to me now when the queues are just a dead waste of time. You want to satisfy a small minority that cried the loudest or the majority that only wanted to play a game for fun? Cryptic = Failed IMO and the layoffs/returns support that.
So you would force peolple to use Tank/Self Healing builds instead of DPS builds and making a STF take forever to complete.
That's the design of the game.
There are no tanks or healers in the IP (at least as far as space goes).
Every ship is, to some degree or another, self-sufficient. The "healer" is spacedock. The "tank" is the logically selected most efficient target, usually the one with the highest DPS/EHP ratio (aka the DPSer).
When you have borg chain draining you and chucking out inviso-torpedo-of-death it's easier than you think. And shield insulators are a great stat in theory but not a terribly ineffective one in practice. I had insulators maxed in my tree and was stacking it on my gear and it was basically useless for all the good it did. I've found that my trading out my useless insulators and doubling down on resist, and by linking all kinds of TRIBBLE from Bio-molecular shield generator, Rock and Roll, Quantum singularity manipulation, molecular cohesion nullifier field, reverse shield polarity, brace for impact, subspace field modulator, rock and roll again etc I can just about almost barely keep up with the borg onslaught. But it's one hell of a dance. And it's only managable on my t6 fleet galaxy with boat loads of hull. And that's great for someone like me with a beefy cruisers that has accumulated numerous toys and powerful traits over a great length of time.
You make it sound like any screwball with one eye closed and two arms tied behind their back could do it. :rolleyes: Sometimes I wonder if I'm playing the same game to hear some forum goers tell it.
I fly escorts too.................there hull isn't that much less than a cruiser either............ hull regen/shield regen..........And speed..........hull resistance is key here as well.........I got no problem tanking in my escorts But I do it different than my cruisers
you cant kill what you cant hit
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Eject someone for getting destroyed... That's probably one of the most bigotry remarks that I've read on the forums. As it stands, considering average builds for the playerbase, players are having a hard enough time completing queues WITH 5 people. Remove one of those players, and the probability of succeeding at the queue goes to near zero. Oh, lets remove another one and leave only 3 in the queue: now it's all the harder for the average player to pass. I say average because those who take an avid interest in their builds and damage numbers, say the DPS Channels, they can easily complete Infected with 3, even 2 and some can solo the entire queue.
I digress, the average DPS output in this game is between 1k and 5k, which last I checked, is quite low.
My point... Ejecting someone for getting blown up in a queue is the worst idea and will cause severe problems to the playerbase, and does the opposite of what fail rewards are, as well as respawn timers. The system in place, more or less, encourages players to do better, but if they get ejected from a queue a minute or two in does them no good.
TheGrateLordeCheesus Ship build coordinator for The Breakfast Club http://WWW.TBCSTO.COM Doesn't Owe AnyoneEC Kirks Prot
Sure for elite maybe, as that's where the to class players will be and they should not be dying much.
But take this scenario, which i've been in many times:
ISA i'm in my Pathfinder crowd control boat. I take the role of CC'ing the nanites and hold them off for long enough that the other guys get the transformer down.
But in the process I get whacked because i'm up against up to 10 spheres/nanites with only limited heals (even on a sci boat).
Now the game boots me out, but I've probably just saved the mission failing as nobody else is running a CC boat and the nanites nearly always get through without one unless everyone is a DPS king and paying attention. I've just dropped a near constant chain of grav wells and holds on the approaching fail condition, possible with massive DPS but I've died so I get kicked?!
Also what reward do I get? I've saved half of the mission so far! What I I survive left side and right side and get nuked by the Tac Cube as i've got all the aggro from it (yes this happens a lot as grav wells get a lot of aggro!).
Kicking people solves nothing, they don't learn to improve they just get TRIBBLE off and don't bother playing the queue again.
One could see the Tachyon Beam and Torp thing as a deterrent to using FAW/CSV/etc. Don't use those abilities unless you can take the heat sort of thing. 1-2 Spheres draining and dropping out their torps isn't the same as 4-5 Spheres draining and dropping out their torps.
Well it sure sucks to be a GW dropping science ship with high shield modifiers, low hull strength and poor engineering layouts if that is the goal of things. I guess someone else can slow the spheres then?
There are no tanks or healers in STO. There is not support for that in the IP (at least as far as space goes).
Every ship is, to some degree or another, self-sufficient. The "healer" is spacedock. The "tank" is the logically selected most efficient target, usually the one with the highest DPS/EHP ratio (aka the DPSer).
That was probably the intent.
It's still an inferior solution.
There are tanks, support, healers in space PvE. Except this requires expert level or specialized teams. For advanced level teams, these are needed for record runs or purposedly gimped runs like an all Pet video recorded run. For Elite, these are used for all sort of stuff.
If you dont know what or have seen tank or support ships effectively, it is most likely you spend all of your time in PuGs or doing solo missions or with bad teams.
Instead of hacking on the newbies or weaker ones, help them.
No one wants to hear advice from a random stranger on the internet.
There have been recent accounts from people trying to practice what you're suggesting. The overwhelming response is negative, when it's even printable.
A starship captain. Because in Trek, there are no healers, no tanks, and each ship does it all (even if some do some things better).
For what it's worth, my last ISA featured two "healers," one of whom parsed under 1k. Needless to say, we failed. I can't solo a transformer to zero before the nanite spheres get in range.
Just had a failed run (odd how I've had more failed runs in the past couple of days than I've had all year, eh?)...but it got me thinking about what could happen if the Mandatory Objective was made Optional.
Player 3,230
Player C) 2,575
Player D) 2,023
Player E) 1,982
If Player A was also in that range of damage, when would the ISA complete? It wouldn't. It would never end.
Er, so in that particular run I was doing the counterclockwise thing around the Cube so I could make a run over to the Nanites if somebody dropped a Gen early or whatever. All four of them charged the first Gen, popped it, and then proceeded to attack the Spheres that spawned. I dragged it out for almost 7 minutes playing with the Nanites and keeping them away - but with only two Gens down at that point (including the first) - I may have er - allowed myself to die - so the Nanites would get to the Trans and just end it.
But yeah, if Player A was in that group with those B-E players...it would never end. Say they popped the first Gen - are they going to bring down the other Gens? Nanites are going to get there and cause the "Optional" to fail. Do they managed to get the other Gens down? Does it matter? Will they ever be able to take out the Nanites? Cause more Nanites will keep coming through. Will they even target the Nanites? How many times would they die? Injuries build up, yeah? Become even less effective. It would never end.
Until enough of them left and were replaced by folks getting stuck in a run with likely both Objectives failed that could carry them...and if folks that could carry didn't stick around and just warped instead...it would just never end.
That's why, in a sense, the Mandatory Objective is actually a good thing. It prevents something like that from happening. Even in getting stuck with a group like that, so it's 30 minutes until the next ISA can be run - there's other stuff that can be done in the interim, and it's better than possibly eating the leaver penalty depending on how soon one felt like warping. There are all sorts of things one can do for those 27 or so minutes until the next ISA that would be more rewarding.
The content requirements for ISA are pretty damn low, they're just not that low.
What's to be learned from trying to run ISA like that? The actual Objectives are the same as ISN. The map is the same. So where one goes and what one shoots at isn't going to change. It's only up with the high DPS folks where other things start to come into play because of the sheer amount of DPS they can do.
The difference would just be the amount of DPS one can do (even if doing some particular role, everything's pretty much hybrd: DPS-Tank, DPS-Healer, DPS-Support - unless one is in some premade group where the Healer/Support are accounted for in the DPS the others do)...
...and well, should the actual run be the place to let somebody know that they're not meeting even the content's low requirements? At the expense of the rest of the team?
Wouldn't it be better to have some form of content where the person could find that out - without having to put anybody else out and without having to deal with any potential backlash from that? Working toward something that would offer a more positive experience for all involved rather than that potential sour experience for all involved?
And in having that form of content that provided that feedback, one would also have a form of gating for the various tiers of content.
Perhaps a mission that popped up after a player had run a certain number of Normal runs, eh? Get a bit of the knowledge of the map - the Objectives - and then the challenge of "Are you ready?" to give a sense of progression there.
Just different things that might lead to a more positive experience for one and all...
This comment was so poorly considered I couldn't let it pass without responding.
I feel that the person who wrote it must have never flown an escort.
So ... You're saying.. when I tank an entire instance as an escort, with just 2 boff skills on "defensive/healing" powers, for over 5 minutes, because my DPS draws so much more threat than "hardier ship skill layouts", that I should then be penalized while you reap the rewards of the ships that my damage shot down? ...
Here's an idea - Why don't you suggest that tank builds be made more viable, so someone actually assumes the role, instead of trying to imply that poorly designed ships are more deserving of completing an instance because they are willing to bring healing and defensive powers, crippling the teams overall damage.
There is only one accepted internet response to that .. "Roflmfao"
I understand the concept that if your ship is the one dying, then you probably could change something to keep it alive better, but again, the current name of the game is damage output, and escorts specifically are designed to be glass cannons, weak defensively, they are meant to be flown as "wingmen" to cruiser tanks and science support ships -- The problem with that is that everyone plays cruiser and science damage dealing ships, instead of trying to run proper team composition.
Clearly the game was designed to be played co-operatively, I mean, it is an online, multiplayer, team game. The way of thinking demonstrated by the above quoted comment is a clear example of what is wrong on this game.. People dismiss teamwork in favor of elitism.. or in this case, good ole fashioned ignorance.
Its clear to me you don't know how to build or fly a escort in a Pug
If you die in a escort in a pug advanced stf you lack skills/traits , gear or tactics and how to use what you got or you picked the worst escort in the game....Lots of escorts have more than a Lt engineer you know
Threat mechanics work poorly and those needing threat like most cruisers cant get it! The cruiser command attract fire gives 100 threat , It should give 400 threat with all of the Dev power creep they have added
And if you set up your escort as a glass cannon guess what , You will be a glass cannon expect to be Broken ...............A lot
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
I'm glad you have a place where tanking's relevant. But, to be honest, in a game where tanks only matter in pugs... why would you tank?
I know my answer wouldn't be for fun, because I'm not masochistic enough to pug.
Would it make a difference if I mentioned I had Reciprocity and All Hands on Deck slotted?
edit: Normally I would have argued about the pugging being masochistic, but the past few days have been brutal.
edit2: On the other hand, I don't want to do any channel-like runs because I don't want it to some wham, bam, farming status thing - I don't need anything from it. I'm not interested in seeing how fast I can run or how much DPS I can do in it. Pugging can provide the type of challenge I'm looking for...
edit3: I just don't want to warp into a guaranteed failed run...meh. Failure when there was a chance at success is one thing, guaranteed failure is another...
edit4: Still, the worst would be the latency fiascos...like the run I just had - we were rocking, it was going great - then it turned into rubberband city for everybody taking out the second Trans.
Player Me) 4
Player 3
Player C) 6
Player D) 4
Player E) 2
Those were the deaths...game would just freeze or start bouncing...dead. Was brutal.
edit5: Meh, yeah...took 9 minutes after dropping the second Trans...of those 19 deaths, only 1 took place before the rubberbanding garbage.
Tuesdays patch put a lot of lag back into the space STfs
I saw some on Esd as well
But the ground Q's like BHE I didn't see any
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Guess they need make some changes to normal as well, as I am seeing people not even competent enough for those either.
Wouldn't expect folks always to succeed at Normal, much less anything; but with Normal it would be a case of folks likely showing up for the first time - not really sure of what's going on with their build, what the Objectives are, and the layout of the map. I wouldn't say it was a case of them being incompetent in Normal in the least...it's the place where one would start to learn stuff...don't see the need to attack folks in there as well.
Wouldn't expect folks always to succeed at Normal, much less anything; but with Normal it would be a case of folks likely showing up for the first time - not really sure of what's going on with their build, what the Objectives are, and the layout of the map. I wouldn't say it was a case of them being incompetent in Normal in the least...it's the place where one would start to learn stuff...don't see the need to attack folks in there as well.
Ok, I will grant you that but, we see all to often, that what they should be learning from normal, they do not carry over into an advanced so, one would assume they learned nothing from normal!
I see them doing the same thing as usual, blow a generator or more and, first thing they go after is all of the spheres that pop out, leaving the transformer alone till spheres are cleared!
there's a lot of new or undergeared/trained players right now.
I just started normal today with new level 51 character. Mix of level 8 and 10 gear on the t5u defiant - mows through normal very well - 2 minutes to spare in cure normal, 4 min ISN. And crystalline advanced is no problem. It would be a disaster in ISA however. But people will line up for it anyway. I'm just going to do normal to get marks for a week or 2.
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."
Ok, I will grant you that but, we see all to often, that what they should be learning from normal, they do not carry over into an advanced so, one would assume they learned nothing from normal!
I see them doing the same thing as usual, blow a generator or more and, first thing they go after is all of the spheres that pop out, leaving the transformer alone till spheres are cleared!
For Normal, perhaps it's something they could treat as a training scenario thing...highlighting targets so to speak...providing info about what needs to be done. All sorts of little things to prepare folks. Not everybody's a gamer, not everybody's hit up information about the run beforehand, and not everybody's get feedback in the run.
I take certain things for granted - the way my wee brain works - so that when something new comes along, I'm generally going to be looking for available info before hitting it up...being prepared for it. That's not something folks might do - I don't do it for solo missions, I just go in there wheeeee! But the team stuff, I want to be prepared...
Comments
I agree threat generation needs help
I also believe ( -Threat ) should be removed entirely
If a player needs BNPs doing a space stf is NOT the place to get them...You get (4 ) BNPs for doing the Hard 4 missions on Defera which are ( easy ) I mean really easy
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
If I see someone is calling themselves a "tank" or a "healer" in a mission, for me that means I'll die more.
If they're deliberately lowering their damage output, then the NPCs will attack me more. I have not seen a healer competent enough to make up for that. And while someone was in the forums talking about how there are true tanks in the game and all they need to do is buff threat generation and do between 10 and 20K dps, I have yet to run into someone calling themselves a "tank" in-game who can actually hold aggro.
Dying happens. It's part of the game. 15 seconds isn't that much time to be out if you're doing something worthwhile when you're in.
Unless I am soloing it on advanced I have to deal with people who want to purposely fail the q or whatever but you need to read what I said.
It handles advanced quite well, but I have to deal with other people in the instance who may or may not be able to handle it or be purposely trolling it simply because they can fail it. i stay away from advanced for the same reason you do because it fails because others are causing it to fail as I stated in the CC I would be the only person to survive a blast during that event and it happend to me 3 times in a row so I sat in line and finally gave up that day after the 3rd fail and an hour and a half I waited once more and well it failed again so I logged out mid isntance as everyone around me died yet again... It had nothing to do with me dying I didnt die.. they did. I suffered for their issues but I did nothing wrong.
What DR did wasn't so much that it made the game impossible as much as it just made pugging unfun and unviable. "Just stop being casual and be hardcore. Just stop pugging and only run with premades sitting around a vent server" yadda yadda, I know I know. I've heard the time treasured "I have a sandwich so you can't be starving." argument only too often, so I know the sentiment by now. But that is just not my playstyle.
I actually liked Virusdancer's idea, but I agree with this.
When ANRA got dumbed down (free 1 ship in 12 minutes!), I saw 2 people a day after on separate threads here saying that ANRA is still too hard. One actually completed it, mind you, but his team only freed 2 ships, so the mission was still "broken" according to him. Of course he would never consider that maybe he could improve his game....
If Cryptic would spend some time adjusting the mandatory conditions and rewards and compare that to metrics, a balance can be found. But that balance will never stop some people from complaining about the game being too hard because that's just how people are.
Pugging is fun in the right scenario sure you might get some meany heads but I prefer pugging over premades hands down for meeting fun people plus the content is not well engaging enough for me to spend 2 hours waiting for people to login so I can play it in a premade.
Yes pugging is less precise its the nature of the beast I have however had some great pugs and made friends as a result of them. I would never have met those people otherwise. I also enjoy the dyson zone and other open zones for the same reason as pugging. Those who consider these things to be "antisocial" are wrong its spontaneous and the opposite of antisocial you meet people who you have never talked to before I made many friends some who barely speak english but we made friends anyhow using basic english.
this however is destroyed in the present situation because you must must must isolate in vent servers with the same 20 guys never talk to people in group chat or whatever after the run etc.
If your being destroyed in a advanced (Pug) STF then you got a Bad build or a poor ship caption or both
Their are no Diaper changers...No DPS Buffers...No Repair ships following you around in a Pug...Actually Pugs are more like star trek should be............To be a Tank so someone else can DPS is the most stupid thing cryptic ever brought into the game
Its your ship and your crew with some allies fighting a Threat...Like in the shows...like it should be
When you make a Pug build Its a much more true to a canon build than some dps or team build
I do 15 to 20k dps and draw my fair share of agro and almost never die
When I do get destroyed its big news in fleet chat and I take a lot of ribbing...that's how I think it should be.........It should be rare you getting destroyed
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
When you have borg chain draining you and chucking out inviso-torpedo-of-death it's easier than you think. And shield insulators are a great stat in theory but not a terribly ineffective one in practice. I had insulators maxed in my tree and was stacking it on my gear and it was basically useless for all the good it did. I've found that my trading out my useless insulators and doubling down on resist, and by linking all kinds of TRIBBLE from Bio-molecular shield generator, Rock and Roll, Quantum singularity manipulation, molecular cohesion nullifier field, reverse shield polarity, brace for impact, subspace field modulator, rock and roll again etc I can just about almost barely keep up with the borg onslaught. But it's one hell of a dance. And it's only managable on my t6 fleet galaxy with boat loads of hull. And that's great for someone like me with a beefy cruisers that has accumulated numerous toys and powerful traits over a great length of time.
You make it sound like any screwball with one eye closed and two arms tied behind their back could do it. :rolleyes: Sometimes I wonder if I'm playing the same game to hear some forum goers tell it.
This comment was so poorly considered I couldn't let it pass without responding.
I feel that the person who wrote it must have never flown an escort.
So ... You're saying.. when I tank an entire instance as an escort, with just 2 boff skills on "defensive/healing" powers, for over 5 minutes, because my DPS draws so much more threat than "hardier ship skill layouts", that I should then be penalized while you reap the rewards of the ships that my damage shot down? ...
Here's an idea - Why don't you suggest that tank builds be made more viable, so someone actually assumes the role, instead of trying to imply that poorly designed ships are more deserving of completing an instance because they are willing to bring healing and defensive powers, crippling the teams overall damage.
There is only one accepted internet response to that .. "Roflmfao"
I understand the concept that if your ship is the one dying, then you probably could change something to keep it alive better, but again, the current name of the game is damage output, and escorts specifically are designed to be glass cannons, weak defensively, they are meant to be flown as "wingmen" to cruiser tanks and science support ships -- The problem with that is that everyone plays cruiser and science damage dealing ships, instead of trying to run proper team composition.
Clearly the game was designed to be played co-operatively, I mean, it is an online, multiplayer, team game. The way of thinking demonstrated by the above quoted comment is a clear example of what is wrong on this game.. People dismiss teamwork in favor of elitism.. or in this case, good ole fashioned ignorance.
I'm firm believer in a balance build, no matter what the ship.
Second if your a Glasser then you should getting out dodge when you start taking damage:
Yah fly out lowers your DPS, but I don't think the objective is to stay close and get blown up.
Can't wait for the 50 mark auto-win snooze fest.
That's the design of the game.
There are no tanks or healers in the IP (at least as far as space goes).
Every ship is, to some degree or another, self-sufficient. The "healer" is spacedock. The "tank" is the logically selected most efficient target, usually the one with the highest DPS/EHP ratio (aka the DPSer).
That was probably the intent.
It's still an inferior solution.
I fly escorts too.................there hull isn't that much less than a cruiser either............ hull regen/shield regen..........And speed..........hull resistance is key here as well.........I got no problem tanking in my escorts But I do it different than my cruisers
you cant kill what you cant hit
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
I digress, the average DPS output in this game is between 1k and 5k, which last I checked, is quite low.
My point... Ejecting someone for getting blown up in a queue is the worst idea and will cause severe problems to the playerbase, and does the opposite of what fail rewards are, as well as respawn timers. The system in place, more or less, encourages players to do better, but if they get ejected from a queue a minute or two in does them no good.
Ship build coordinator for The Breakfast Club http://WWW.TBCSTO.COM
Doesn't Owe Anyone EC
Kirks Prot
Sure for elite maybe, as that's where the to class players will be and they should not be dying much.
But take this scenario, which i've been in many times:
ISA i'm in my Pathfinder crowd control boat. I take the role of CC'ing the nanites and hold them off for long enough that the other guys get the transformer down.
But in the process I get whacked because i'm up against up to 10 spheres/nanites with only limited heals (even on a sci boat).
Now the game boots me out, but I've probably just saved the mission failing as nobody else is running a CC boat and the nanites nearly always get through without one unless everyone is a DPS king and paying attention. I've just dropped a near constant chain of grav wells and holds on the approaching fail condition, possible with massive DPS but I've died so I get kicked?!
Also what reward do I get? I've saved half of the mission so far! What I I survive left side and right side and get nuked by the Tac Cube as i've got all the aggro from it (yes this happens a lot as grav wells get a lot of aggro!).
Kicking people solves nothing, they don't learn to improve they just get TRIBBLE off and don't bother playing the queue again.
Well it sure sucks to be a GW dropping science ship with high shield modifiers, low hull strength and poor engineering layouts if that is the goal of things. I guess someone else can slow the spheres then?
There are tanks, support, healers in space PvE. Except this requires expert level or specialized teams. For advanced level teams, these are needed for record runs or purposedly gimped runs like an all Pet video recorded run. For Elite, these are used for all sort of stuff.
If you dont know what or have seen tank or support ships effectively, it is most likely you spend all of your time in PuGs or doing solo missions or with bad teams.
Hits In
Player A) 13.259%
Player Me) 72.812%
Player C) 3.724%
Player D) 7.374%
Player E) 2.831%
Damage In/BaseDamage In
Player A) 13.007% / 7.964%
Player Me) 61.488% / 74.765%
Player C) 5.972% / 5.718%
Player D) 16.948% / 9.415%
Player E) 2.586% / 2.136%
Heal Out / Heal In
Player A) 9.88% / 15.85%
Player Me) 76.425% / 64.423%
Player C) 5.014% / 10.94%
Player D) 6.968% / 6.106%
Player E) 1.714% / 2.681%
DPS
Player A) 33.92%
Player Me) 32.37%
Player C) 17.536%
Player D) 11.299%
Player E) 4.874%
Sensor Scan, Trait'd Sci Fleet, Intel Fleet, SNB, APB, Scattering Field, Grav Well, Reverse TBR, running 6x Bio-Molecular Disruptors (VR12) - was in a Sarr Theln.
* * * * *
Tank?
Support?
Heals?
DPS?
What am I?
Goofball? Well, yeah...duh...but what am I? :P
There have been recent accounts from people trying to practice what you're suggesting. The overwhelming response is negative, when it's even printable.
A starship captain. Because in Trek, there are no healers, no tanks, and each ship does it all (even if some do some things better).
For what it's worth, my last ISA featured two "healers," one of whom parsed under 1k. Needless to say, we failed. I can't solo a transformer to zero before the nanite spheres get in range.
Yes, but not in the IP.
Besides, I'm not the person who would try to play a tank without any sort of +threat modifier.
I entirely believe woodwhitty (and others) can tank. And that proper healships can be built.
I suppose I should edit my post for clarity.
Player
Player C) 2,575
Player D) 2,023
Player E) 1,982
If Player A was also in that range of damage, when would the ISA complete? It wouldn't. It would never end.
Er, so in that particular run I was doing the counterclockwise thing around the Cube so I could make a run over to the Nanites if somebody dropped a Gen early or whatever. All four of them charged the first Gen, popped it, and then proceeded to attack the Spheres that spawned. I dragged it out for almost 7 minutes playing with the Nanites and keeping them away - but with only two Gens down at that point (including the first) - I may have er - allowed myself to die - so the Nanites would get to the Trans and just end it.
But yeah, if Player A was in that group with those B-E players...it would never end. Say they popped the first Gen - are they going to bring down the other Gens? Nanites are going to get there and cause the "Optional" to fail. Do they managed to get the other Gens down? Does it matter? Will they ever be able to take out the Nanites? Cause more Nanites will keep coming through. Will they even target the Nanites? How many times would they die? Injuries build up, yeah? Become even less effective. It would never end.
Until enough of them left and were replaced by folks getting stuck in a run with likely both Objectives failed that could carry them...and if folks that could carry didn't stick around and just warped instead...it would just never end.
That's why, in a sense, the Mandatory Objective is actually a good thing. It prevents something like that from happening. Even in getting stuck with a group like that, so it's 30 minutes until the next ISA can be run - there's other stuff that can be done in the interim, and it's better than possibly eating the leaver penalty depending on how soon one felt like warping. There are all sorts of things one can do for those 27 or so minutes until the next ISA that would be more rewarding.
The content requirements for ISA are pretty damn low, they're just not that low.
What's to be learned from trying to run ISA like that? The actual Objectives are the same as ISN. The map is the same. So where one goes and what one shoots at isn't going to change. It's only up with the high DPS folks where other things start to come into play because of the sheer amount of DPS they can do.
The difference would just be the amount of DPS one can do (even if doing some particular role, everything's pretty much hybrd: DPS-Tank, DPS-Healer, DPS-Support - unless one is in some premade group where the Healer/Support are accounted for in the DPS the others do)...
...and well, should the actual run be the place to let somebody know that they're not meeting even the content's low requirements? At the expense of the rest of the team?
Wouldn't it be better to have some form of content where the person could find that out - without having to put anybody else out and without having to deal with any potential backlash from that? Working toward something that would offer a more positive experience for all involved rather than that potential sour experience for all involved?
And in having that form of content that provided that feedback, one would also have a form of gating for the various tiers of content.
Perhaps a mission that popped up after a player had run a certain number of Normal runs, eh? Get a bit of the knowledge of the map - the Objectives - and then the challenge of "Are you ready?" to give a sense of progression there.
Just different things that might lead to a more positive experience for one and all...
A tank.
I'm glad you have a place where tanking's relevant. But, to be honest, in a game where tanks only matter in pugs... why would you tank?
I know my answer wouldn't be for fun, because I'm not masochistic enough to pug.
SCM - Hive (S) - [02:31] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 30.62M(204.66K) - Fed Sci
Tacs are overrated.
Game's best wiki
Build questions? Look here!
Its clear to me you don't know how to build or fly a escort in a Pug
If you die in a escort in a pug advanced stf you lack skills/traits , gear or tactics and how to use what you got or you picked the worst escort in the game....Lots of escorts have more than a Lt engineer you know
Threat mechanics work poorly and those needing threat like most cruisers cant get it! The cruiser command attract fire gives 100 threat , It should give 400 threat with all of the Dev power creep they have added
And if you set up your escort as a glass cannon guess what , You will be a glass cannon expect to be Broken ...............A lot
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Would it make a difference if I mentioned I had Reciprocity and All Hands on Deck slotted?
edit: Normally I would have argued about the pugging being masochistic, but the past few days have been brutal.
edit2: On the other hand, I don't want to do any channel-like runs because I don't want it to some wham, bam, farming status thing - I don't need anything from it. I'm not interested in seeing how fast I can run or how much DPS I can do in it. Pugging can provide the type of challenge I'm looking for...
edit3: I just don't want to warp into a guaranteed failed run...meh. Failure when there was a chance at success is one thing, guaranteed failure is another...
edit4: Still, the worst would be the latency fiascos...like the run I just had - we were rocking, it was going great - then it turned into rubberband city for everybody taking out the second Trans.
Player Me) 4
Player
Player C) 6
Player D) 4
Player E) 2
Those were the deaths...game would just freeze or start bouncing...dead. Was brutal.
edit5: Meh, yeah...took 9 minutes after dropping the second Trans...of those 19 deaths, only 1 took place before the rubberbanding garbage.
I saw some on Esd as well
But the ground Q's like BHE I didn't see any
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Wouldn't expect folks always to succeed at Normal, much less anything; but with Normal it would be a case of folks likely showing up for the first time - not really sure of what's going on with their build, what the Objectives are, and the layout of the map. I wouldn't say it was a case of them being incompetent in Normal in the least...it's the place where one would start to learn stuff...don't see the need to attack folks in there as well.
Ok, I will grant you that but, we see all to often, that what they should be learning from normal, they do not carry over into an advanced so, one would assume they learned nothing from normal!
I see them doing the same thing as usual, blow a generator or more and, first thing they go after is all of the spheres that pop out, leaving the transformer alone till spheres are cleared!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
I just started normal today with new level 51 character. Mix of level 8 and 10 gear on the t5u defiant - mows through normal very well - 2 minutes to spare in cure normal, 4 min ISN. And crystalline advanced is no problem. It would be a disaster in ISA however. But people will line up for it anyway. I'm just going to do normal to get marks for a week or 2.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
For Normal, perhaps it's something they could treat as a training scenario thing...highlighting targets so to speak...providing info about what needs to be done. All sorts of little things to prepare folks. Not everybody's a gamer, not everybody's hit up information about the run beforehand, and not everybody's get feedback in the run.
I take certain things for granted - the way my wee brain works - so that when something new comes along, I'm generally going to be looking for available info before hitting it up...being prepared for it. That's not something folks might do - I don't do it for solo missions, I just go in there wheeeee! But the team stuff, I want to be prepared...