if they were dedicated to "no failoptionals," they would have implemented that into their new content.
Agreed. The speed they are moving to resolve this (and its possibly the biggest thing that has killed STO since the launch of DR) says it all. If this was important to them, they'd have done it by now. Even the most reasonable person knows it doesn't take this long to tweek or even remove some optional fails and in doing so, they'd resolve a huge issue for the game overnight.
They don't want to do it. They want to keep unrelentingly hard and frustrating in the hopes we'll see new ships, grinding power creeps or the cash eating upgrade system will make us think the solution to progression lies there.
Says so by the same group of players whining about how difficult advance is and needs to be nerfed down.
The nerfing of advance seems to be a specific group of players. Players who PuG, who refuses to improve their ability to carry their group during PuG, who refuse to improve their group they play with by moving out of PuG, player refuses to go down to normal or go solo missions, which ends up whining in the forums to nerf advance.
That is a very specific player base.
But it doesnt mean this kind of playerbase - you can PuG and carry your whole advance group by improving your skill. Or if a player moves away from PuG, improves their teammates. Or if neither wants, can go down to normal or simply stay at solo missions.
The Fail is not part of the original STF like infected space...This was added
In our fleet team this Fail is not a bother not a consideration it doersnt slow us down........It adds no difficulty to the STF for our team
So how is it a nerf ? explain that in detail
These fails are no issue for premade and fleet teams because they are coordinated ....something that's almost impossible in a pug
but please explain how removing this Fail that was not there before nerfs the STF
A fail like this is nothing more than Trolling pugs on cryptics part ..just like having the right side active is also a troll mechanice when clearly it should be shut off until the left side is cleared
just like both sides are shut off before the first mob is taken down
Removing this fail conditition is the only thing many of us want and what the game needs in general...........By adding more Fun in the game and removing frustration
You claim removing this Fail nerfs the STF
I call BS on your claim explain why I am wrong
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
Ya want to run advanced? you don't dumb down the instance, you improve yourself and your group. It isn't advanced anymore when you nerf it.
I'm glad it fails people out of it because if everyone could run them nobody would be in normals. Then the same crowd will be in here talking about how elite needs to be nerfed.
What does need improving is the reward for advanced missions. Time/reward for some is ludicrous.
The best explanation I've heard so far was that the real impetus was to increase the supply of argonite, to facilitate greater usage of the upgrade system, because it is a component in the upgrade manual for the most commonly chosen weapon type, beams.
The rest of the dog and pony show regarding additional changes was just a PR move.
I mean to say, if they had actually adopted "no failoptionals" as the new approach, they surely would have adjusted the new content before releasing it. That they didn't suggests the changes to ANRA are not indicative of a larger shift in design.
Beams are radiogenic particles. And yes they are very popular. That's why you can see CCAs going on 24/7.
So as my header describes i was wondering if the dev team is going to finally adjust the rest of the STF queues advanced levels as to say take out the optional fails?
Or did you decide not to
I hope they leave the STF's alone... they already made a mess of Azure Nebula, and I dread to think what they're going to do with the rest....
Ya want to run advanced? you don't dumb down the instance, you improve yourself and your group. It isn't advanced anymore when you nerf it.
I'm glad it fails people out of it because if everyone could run them nobody would be in normals. Then the same crowd will be in here talking about how elite needs to be nerfed.
What does need improving is the reward for advanced missions. Time/reward for some is ludicrous.
Right, because no one ran normals with the old pre DR elites? False.
I agree that the rewards are pathetic, though.
But advanced needs to be able to be PUGged as reliably as the old elites were, otherwise there is no point to them.
Another day = another day for the <10% to ask for 66% of the queues and to slam pugs - which for years were the bread and butter of sto because they enjoy sitting on headphones chatting about boys and clothes.
It's pointless to worry about this issue. The game will survive as long as it will now. Cryptic is married to the whalemilking business model as opposed to, say, calfmilking the masses. It is what it is. And there are still 10-15 advanced missions that go within 2 or 3 minutes and should be no problem for the majority (well maybe about half) of the players. Enjoy em while they last.
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."
The 1% got their wish the pve is harder and with a lot of fail optionals. A few of them pop and can be pugged, but teaming outside the public queue is must do for the majority of the events now.
That being so we have diminished interest for playing any queue, good job toxic community !
For you a healthy playbase is not a big casual one but small whiny elitist group always ready to compare sto with some amazing korean cartoon game that sto developers should look upon.
I dont know which one but some developer said that people playing sto dont know what they want .
Eureka dude !!!:P
The issue, as I have said many times, is not directly the difficulty of Advanced. It's a combination of 2 things, which work together to make Advanced miserable.
1. When Delta Rising hit, Advanced (supposed to be on par with the old Elite) got harder... and Normal got EASIER. This creates a situation where there is no real chance for a player to learn by doing - Normal doesn't provide practice because it just rolls over for you, and Advanced games fail out so suddenly that the player has no clue what - if anything - they did wrong.
2. While Elite marks are now available through Battlezones, the purple crafting materials that make upgrading tolerable are not. This means that, to get certain items, players have to play those same Advanced queues they're not actually able to learn. This is made worse by the fact that the same low-information players who most need to learn by doing also are the least likely to know about the battlezones.
There needs to be a difficulty on par with the old Elites, with no fail-optionals (I have no clue who thought those were a good idea) and that rewards elite marks and purple crafting stuff.
Advanced games fail out so suddenly that the player has no clue what - if anything - they did wrong.
Outside of it telling folks exactly what failed. It's right there in the objectives in red. That's what failed. Everything is there...what needs to be done...what needs to be avoided.
The current requirements for Advanced queues are not much higher than they were for the old Elites. They did not double. They're not even 150% of what they were. Where they were ~5.6% of the potential, they are now ~5.8% of the potential.
The price of the VR craftings mats are just downright silly these days because of sheer amount on the Exchange.
remove fails from adv
Double xp and mark payout from advanced
More item drops (for EC) from advanced
Tripple mark and xp payouts in elite
double dilithium payouts in elite
Double rare+ R&D mats in elite
Vastly increase chance to get random very rare drops in elite
Vastly increase chance to get R&D upgrade drops in elite
Maybe then people will play the queues
It would! If cryptic is afraid that peeps earn Dil to fast another option would be to hand out MUCH more Salvage Tech in higher settings. I see more peeps go for rarity upgrades and burn their Dil if that carrot would not hang that high.
Aside from battle zones (which tend to bore me fast) STO has not that much of PvE alternatives to offer. I suspect more peeps to queue up if cryptic would present them more reasons to do so instead of offering reasons not to.
At least they should keep their promise and finally remove the fails out of advanced weeks after the dev blog which announced that was published.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I'm glad it fails people out of it because if everyone could run them nobody would be in normals. Then the same crowd will be in here talking about how elite needs to be nerfed.
What does need improving is the reward for advanced missions. Time/reward for some is ludicrous.
There is already nobody in normal because the time/reward is even worse.
Currently, seeing how the queues are as a whole, something has to change. Even a LOT of normal stfs are not being run at all. Clearly people (almost the entire playerbase) thinks most of the stf's are not worth the time/effort.
...
Rebalance the entire stf reward system. More R&D rewards across the board, more loot drops (EC is so hard to make these days).
Remove the fail mechanics on optionals in advanced difficulty. Instead make doing optionals REALLY rewarding.
I think something like this would be great. People would be able to run the whole mission, getting a better feel for how it's supposed to be played, watching people try for the optional - even if they failed - and get something for their time for completing the main objective.
I think players would be more interested in trying again and trying to improve themselves - going for those optional - than the way things are currently: A player joins an stf and 2 minutes in they fail, get next to nothing but a lockout of the mission, and never want to touch it again.
The 1% got their wish the pve is harder and with a lot of fail optionals. A few of them pop and can be pugged, but teaming outside the public queue is must do for the majority of the events now.
That being so we have diminished interest for playing any queue, good job toxic community !
For you a healthy playbase is not a big casual one but small whiny elitist group always ready to compare sto with some amazing korean cartoon game that sto developers should look upon.
I dont know which one but some developer said that people playing sto dont know what they want .
Eureka dude !!!:P
I like when forums posts try to spew propaganda about percentage of player base without basis. How sure are you that it is only 1%? Because you say so? You TRIBBLE Cryptics Statistics for that? Later on this complaints about having hard time in advance are the real minority who dont even account for .00001% of the playerbase. until such time Cryptic shares those official statistics even if they have those stat.
The problem is a very specific playerbase of the Advance adjustments. Those who PuG, but refuse to improve themselves, refuse to improve their teammates by bringing competent teams or finding competent teams with the current social mechanic, if they did not take any above option, refuse to go down to normal or go solo. These are all self inflicted problems from a very specific playerbase. They demand adjustments in the mechanic because they refuse to use the current mechanic for whatever reason they can concoct.
The other problem I see is what is the definition of casual. Because if it is just mentality, then those who complain about having a hard time advance are not casuals but hardcore players being outcompeted by other hardcore players. Because they are casual who shouldnt care about completion. If it is time, then they are not casuals, why? A competent players plays 1-2 mins per missions and can play 30 Mins per day and complete missions. While a whiny incompetent player can play 1 hour a day and fail all missions. If time is your definition, Therefore an efficient competent hardcore player can qualify for casual while those who you think are casuals do not because of the time they need to complete missions due to their incompetence.
I like when forums posts try to spew propaganda about percentage of player base without basis. How sure are you that it is only 1%? Because you say so? You TRIBBLE Cryptics Statistics for that? Later on this complaints about having hard time in advance are the real minority who dont even account for .00001% of the playerbase. until such time Cryptic shares those official statistics even if they have those stat.
The problem is a very specific playerbase of the Advance adjustments. Those who PuG, but refuse to improve themselves, refuse to improve their teammates by bringing competent teams or finding competent teams with the current social mechanic, if they did not take any above option, refuse to go down to normal or go solo. These are all self inflicted problems from a very specific playerbase. They demand adjustments in the mechanic because they refuse to use the current mechanic for whatever reason they can concoct.
The other problem I see is what is the definition of casual. Because if it is just mentality, then those who complain about having a hard time advance are not casuals but hardcore players being outcompeted by other hardcore players. Because they are casual who shouldnt care about completion. If it is time, then they are not casuals, why? A competent players plays 1-2 mins per missions and can play 30 Mins per day and complete missions. While a whiny incompetent player can play 1 hour a day and fail all missions. If time is your definition, Therefore an efficient competent hardcore player can qualify for casual while those who you think are casuals do not because of the time they need to complete missions due to their incompetence.
Stop blaming the players for Cryptic's bad design. The players didn't change the old elite into the new advanced queues, Cryptic did. They made them highly vulnerable to trolls, they set the bars far too high in some places, they nerfed the rewards, but also managed to make some of the queues actually work okay. They are highly inconsistent and many are poorly designed.
CCA is pretty easy, and doesn't bug much. Avoiding the fail conditions isn't overly difficult, is hard to troll, and demands nothing more than paying attention.
Bug hunt is fairly straightforward, though setting the bombs is near impossible, ground combat in general is plagued with over the top damage (pestilents especially in BH), and the alarm bugs are not obvious nor are they even described anywhere.
Gates of Grethor seems fairly hard to fail, though the stupidity of the NPCs is baffling (hurr durr lets sit in the radiation portal instead of waiting just outside for them to close it) but the Herald design is not particularly enjoyable with so much disable spam and ridiculous amounts of damage one can take in such a short time, especially while disabled.
The other two herald queues, having done them on normal, I can't say I'll ever make the attempt to try them on advanced based on their design on normal.
ISA is way too easy to troll, as is Undine Infiltration. The Borg space STFs still suffer from major balance issues in large part due to the massive tachyon beam buff, and the invisible mega torpedoes that have never been fixed. They are doable, but definitely not worth the effort.
Borg Disconnected optionals are wildly difficult even on normal, and show an out of touch design, just like Bug Hunt and the bombs. The new no-fail ANRA design is also atrocious, plagued by the bugs and poorly thought out objectives given the difficulty of the enemies and the way the STF works even if there were no bugs.
I have no idea what most of the others are like on advanced because who actually queues for them?
Cryptic's design ranges from getting it nearly right to utterly ridiculous. To add arbitrary fail conditions on top of that was just nonsensical and unnecessary.
And in most other MMOs if you fail a boss fight, it resets and you can try again. This one you just get kicked out, forced to have a half hour time out, and certainly can't even try to adjust your tactics to fit the limits of your PUG team. The players are not responsible for bad design.
ISA is way too easy to troll, as is Undine Infiltration. The Borg space STFs still suffer from major balance issues in large part due to the massive tachyon beam buff, and the invisible mega torpedoes that have never been fixed. They are doable, but definitely not worth the effort.
Tachyon beam- been discussed much already. Easily handled by players that are willing to adjust.
Invisa-torps- been in the game a long time. Easily handled by players that are willing to adjust.
Tachyon beam- been discussed much already. Easily handled by players that are willing to adjust.
Invisa-torps- been in the game a long time. Easily handled by players that are willing to adjust.
And this is why the game is in such a crapy state. Becouse its so easy to talk from your high horses.
What "adjust" means to you, hmm? Like spending skills points in the skill that "should" help you against drain? Gee... 6 lvls so 84 points and you can see no difference. How about spending 15/30 points in an intel specialisation for a trait wich "should" grand you debuffs cleanse. Gee... even after that much time after it was released predictive algoritms still doesnt clear debuffs.
And yeah... lol... "adjust" on insta-torp when you only see a red msg: 147k damage poping up above your ship, and your ship poping along with it aswell ofc.
Anyway, on topic, was kinda surprised that those adjustements werent included with S10. Hope they make it soon. These new Iconian STFs are really awful. And who had the terible idea to add even more random optionals? Thats really sucky.
I for one am not convinced that adjusting the requirements in advanced would solve the empty queues. If an adjustment is all that is needed, then ANRA would be filled all the time. It's now guaranteed success and gives out one of the more expensive R&D materials in the game. It's still pretty empty. When the queue does pop, it doesn't seem any of the players make an effort to succeed at the optional.
I PUG almost exclusively. The only time I go for a pre-made is when my fleet mates set something up or if i want to do a proper parse (even then I usually go with a PUG).
I do think that normals do not prepare players enough for advanced difficulty. I also believe that terminating a mission due to failure and slapping the full cooldown to boot is a little excessive. To compromise, here is a suggestion:
Keep NPC HP and numbers at Advanced.
Do not end the mission when the optional fails. Let it continue.
Award the advanced materials/elite marks only when the optional succeeds.
If the optional fails, rewards (marks, materials and dil) would equal that of normals. Maybe put a small random chance for advanced materials (but not elite marks) to be awarded even if the optional fails to encourage players to see the mission to its end.
Leaving a mission before it ends should trigger the mission's cooldown x2 to prevent leavers if an optional fails.
I think keeping the mission going will better prepare players and help them to learn how to deal with higher HP and harder hitting mobs while succeeding at the optional.
And this is why the game is in such a crapy state. Becouse its so easy to talk from your high horses.
What "adjust" means to you, hmm? Like spending skills points in the skill that "should" help you against drain? Gee... 6 lvls so 84 points and you can see no difference. How about spending 15/30 points in an intel specialisation for a trait wich "should" grand you debuffs cleanse. Gee... even after that much time after it was released predictive algoritms still doesnt clear debuffs.
And yeah... lol... "adjust" on insta-torp when you only see a red msg: 147k damage poping up above your ship, and your ship poping along with it aswell ofc.
When I started playing, I was horrible beyond belief. Most PUGs are way better than I was when I started. It's taken a lot of learning, putting my foot in my mouth too, and a lot of work to get to be able to play respectably. If this poor idiot can do it, you can too.
I use the word adjust, because there is often much to adjust. Sometimes it is a big adjustment, sometimes it might be some small tweaks. Gear, BO setups, DOFFs, playstyle, etc. Each person is different and what will work for one does not necessarily work for another.
Increase the difficulty of Normal.
Hide Advanced and Elite from the public list until unlocked.
The unlock...
Cryptic already uses scoring and accolades, so use a combination of the two in Normal.
X number of runs doing Y DPS, each run providing an increment to the accolade showing progress.
X number of runs completing Y Objectives, each run providing an increment to the accolade showing progress.
Both accolades completed...Advanced unlocked.
Could even treat it as a form of STF Mastery...providing additional rewards for folks that go through the process - offering a little something-something as they move from Normal to Advanced to Elite.
* * * * *
But something would still have to be done about certain Objectives because of the ease by which one can troll with them - changed to something that provides some form of equivalent challenge, but something that somebody cannot simply ruin the run for the rest of the group because they find it entertaining.
* * * * *
The "locking" would just be for public queues - folks doing private runs could do as they please.
locking advanced and elites behind a 'completion' gate is an interesting idea.
Normals and advanced would need to have their objectives synced though, just in different numbers.
For example, the new GG stf, on normal you must allow 10 ships to pass trough, on advanced 25, and on elite 35 (or w/e it is on elite)
Then have:
-Complete GG normal 10 times with all optionals to unlock advanced difficulty.
-Complete GG advanced 10 times with all optionals to unlock elite difficulty.
Sure it'll be a bit of a pita for the first few days because people who run adv/elite today need to 'grind' trough it to get back where they were. But thats a small price to pay for forcing the general plebs to learn how to play.
locking advanced and elites behind a 'completion' gate is an interesting idea.
Normals and advanced would need to have their objectives synced though, just in different numbers.
For example, the new GG stf, on normal you must allow 10 ships to pass trough, on advanced 25, and on elite 35 (or w/e it is on elite)
Then have:
-Complete GG normal 10 times with all optionals to unlock advanced difficulty.
-Complete GG advanced 10 times with all optionals to unlock elite difficulty.
Sure it'll be a bit of a pita for the first few days because people who run adv/elite today need to 'grind' trough it to get back where they were. But thats a small price to pay for forcing the general plebs to learn how to play.
That'd be a great way for Cryptic to double down on their anti-Altist crusade.
Run 10+ to 20+ of each queue I want to play just to be able to play it, on each captain I want to play it on? The queues would have to be both a lot more entertaining and a lot more rewarding.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'm still in favour of my earlier idea though, without the gating. Simple move most stf rewards behind the optionals. (and also vastly increase rewards across the board).
*- Bad player team but complete the stf without optionals? Here's 10 marks.
*- Good player team and complete all optionals? Here's your 50 marks, and tripple dilithium, and r&d boxes, and extra rare/very rare items.
Increase the difficulty of Normal.
Hide Advanced and Elite from the public list until unlocked.
The unlock...
Cryptic already uses scoring and accolades, so use a combination of the two in Normal.
X number of runs doing Y DPS, each run providing an increment to the accolade showing progress.
X number of runs completing Y Objectives, each run providing an increment to the accolade showing progress.
Both accolades completed...Advanced unlocked.
Could even treat it as a form of STF Mastery...providing additional rewards for folks that go through the process - offering a little something-something as they move from Normal to Advanced to Elite.
* * * * *
But something would still have to be done about certain Objectives because of the ease by which one can troll with them - changed to something that provides some form of equivalent challenge, but something that somebody cannot simply ruin the run for the rest of the group because they find it entertaining.
* * * * *
The "locking" would just be for public queues - folks doing private runs could do as they please.
My only issue with basing on DPS alone is that hybrid builds that do something else as their primary function will find it harder to gain entry, though they may be very good at that function that isn't DPS.
The XP payout for advanced Ques are whacked. When a deployable FRIGATE has 220k HP in an advanced queue and only pays out 50xp, theres something VERY wrong with the system here.
And this is why the game is in such a crapy state. Becouse its so easy to talk from your high horses.
What "adjust" means to you, hmm? Like spending skills points in the skill that "should" help you against drain? Gee... 6 lvls so 84 points and you can see no difference. How about spending 15/30 points in an intel specialisation for a trait wich "should" grand you debuffs cleanse. Gee... even after that much time after it was released predictive algoritms still doesnt clear debuffs.
And yeah... lol... "adjust" on insta-torp when you only see a red msg: 147k damage poping up above your ship, and your ship poping along with it aswell ofc.
Anyway, on topic, was kinda surprised that those adjustements werent included with S10. Hope they make it soon. These new Iconian STFs are really awful. And who had the terible idea to add even more random optionals? Thats really sucky.
Helpful hint about invisatorps...others can see it....so Maybe if ppl were better team players.....
I always type out when I see one cause them the target has a chance to move.
My only issue with basing on DPS alone is that hybrid builds that do something else as their primary function will find it harder to gain entry, though they may be very good at that function that isn't DPS.
The problem I'd actually see would be with the DPS folks, rather than the "support" DPS folks. Cause the threshold would be set for the "support" DPS folks at a content (not player) requirement level...which means that the DPS folks could get in with a lower amount than would be expected because of them being DPS - which could in turn leave them less prepared to deal with the higher tier.
Jerry "Support" hitting 5-6k and bringing his stuff vs. Tom DPS hitting 5-6k and that's all he's bringing.
When 5x folks doing a combined 36-40k throughout a particular run is more than is needed, as long as it is focused, some support's thrown in, etc, etc, etc - the content requirements are pretty low for many of the Advanced. Folks wanting 5-9 minute runs instead of 11-15 minute runs gets into player requirements instead of content requirements. In many cases, it's not just the amount of DPS but rather the application of the DPS.
It's not just about how well one shoots at something, but also knowing when and what to shoot at...where the latter, when/what can make up for a lack of how well - while with no matter how well, if the when/what is wrong...it's doomed. I've seen more failures where there has been far more than enough DPS going on from the team combined, even folks working their support angles - and - it should have been a straightforward run...but folks were off chasing butterflies so it ended up being a miserable failure.
But just cause there are folks out there doing 15k, 20k, 30k, 50k, 75k, 100k, 120k DPS...doesn't mean an Advanced requires anywhere near that. Those folks aren't doing that to see if they can complete something, that's a result of them seeing how well they can complete something.
My last ISA run (brutal lagfest with a total of 8 deaths amongst the pug)...
Player A) 18.2k
Player 14.9k
Player C) 8.7k
Player D) 6.4k
Player E) 3.5k
51921.9 combined/team DPS...it was a 12:08 minutes (728 seconds) run. 76 seconds for the initial engagement, and 10:52 into the 15:00 minute timer after that engagement. 4:08 minutes before missing out on the timed Optional.
The requirements just aren't anywhere near the potential in the game...
edit: There are 210 folks with a higher individual DPS than that group had. There are 2948 folks with a higher DPS than Player A, 4005 higher than Player B, 7591 higher than Player C, 9524 higher than Player D, and 13232 higher than Player E...
Comments
Agreed. The speed they are moving to resolve this (and its possibly the biggest thing that has killed STO since the launch of DR) says it all. If this was important to them, they'd have done it by now. Even the most reasonable person knows it doesn't take this long to tweek or even remove some optional fails and in doing so, they'd resolve a huge issue for the game overnight.
They don't want to do it. They want to keep unrelentingly hard and frustrating in the hopes we'll see new ships, grinding power creeps or the cash eating upgrade system will make us think the solution to progression lies there.
The Fail is not part of the original STF like infected space...This was added
In our fleet team this Fail is not a bother not a consideration it doersnt slow us down........It adds no difficulty to the STF for our team
So how is it a nerf ? explain that in detail
These fails are no issue for premade and fleet teams because they are coordinated ....something that's almost impossible in a pug
but please explain how removing this Fail that was not there before nerfs the STF
A fail like this is nothing more than Trolling pugs on cryptics part ..just like having the right side active is also a troll mechanice when clearly it should be shut off until the left side is cleared
just like both sides are shut off before the first mob is taken down
Removing this fail conditition is the only thing many of us want and what the game needs in general...........By adding more Fun in the game and removing frustration
You claim removing this Fail nerfs the STF
I call BS on your claim explain why I am wrong
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
Ya want to run advanced? you don't dumb down the instance, you improve yourself and your group. It isn't advanced anymore when you nerf it.
I'm glad it fails people out of it because if everyone could run them nobody would be in normals. Then the same crowd will be in here talking about how elite needs to be nerfed.
What does need improving is the reward for advanced missions. Time/reward for some is ludicrous.
Beams are radiogenic particles. And yes they are very popular. That's why you can see CCAs going on 24/7.
I hope they leave the STF's alone... they already made a mess of Azure Nebula, and I dread to think what they're going to do with the rest....
Right, because no one ran normals with the old pre DR elites? False.
I agree that the rewards are pathetic, though.
But advanced needs to be able to be PUGged as reliably as the old elites were, otherwise there is no point to them.
2) Remove Mandatory Objectives from Advanced.
3) Rename Advanced to Normal.
4) Create remaining Elite.
5) Remove Elite from the public queue list.
It's pointless to worry about this issue. The game will survive as long as it will now. Cryptic is married to the whalemilking business model as opposed to, say, calfmilking the masses. It is what it is. And there are still 10-15 advanced missions that go within 2 or 3 minutes and should be no problem for the majority (well maybe about half) of the players. Enjoy em while they last.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Oh boy !
.... /big toothy Klingon grin ...
That being so we have diminished interest for playing any queue, good job toxic community !
For you a healthy playbase is not a big casual one but small whiny elitist group always ready to compare sto with some amazing korean cartoon game that sto developers should look upon.
I dont know which one but some developer said that people playing sto dont know what they want .
Eureka dude !!!:P
1. When Delta Rising hit, Advanced (supposed to be on par with the old Elite) got harder... and Normal got EASIER. This creates a situation where there is no real chance for a player to learn by doing - Normal doesn't provide practice because it just rolls over for you, and Advanced games fail out so suddenly that the player has no clue what - if anything - they did wrong.
2. While Elite marks are now available through Battlezones, the purple crafting materials that make upgrading tolerable are not. This means that, to get certain items, players have to play those same Advanced queues they're not actually able to learn. This is made worse by the fact that the same low-information players who most need to learn by doing also are the least likely to know about the battlezones.
There needs to be a difficulty on par with the old Elites, with no fail-optionals (I have no clue who thought those were a good idea) and that rewards elite marks and purple crafting stuff.
Outside of it telling folks exactly what failed. It's right there in the objectives in red. That's what failed. Everything is there...what needs to be done...what needs to be avoided.
The current requirements for Advanced queues are not much higher than they were for the old Elites. They did not double. They're not even 150% of what they were. Where they were ~5.6% of the potential, they are now ~5.8% of the potential.
The price of the VR craftings mats are just downright silly these days because of sheer amount on the Exchange.
Argonite Gas: 75,000
Craylon Gas: 8,065
Dentarium: 7,908
Plekton Particle: 49,697
Radiogenic Particle: 80,000
Trellium-K: 9,500
It would! If cryptic is afraid that peeps earn Dil to fast another option would be to hand out MUCH more Salvage Tech in higher settings. I see more peeps go for rarity upgrades and burn their Dil if that carrot would not hang that high.
Aside from battle zones (which tend to bore me fast) STO has not that much of PvE alternatives to offer. I suspect more peeps to queue up if cryptic would present them more reasons to do so instead of offering reasons not to.
At least they should keep their promise and finally remove the fails out of advanced weeks after the dev blog which announced that was published.
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There is already nobody in normal because the time/reward is even worse.
I think something like this would be great. People would be able to run the whole mission, getting a better feel for how it's supposed to be played, watching people try for the optional - even if they failed - and get something for their time for completing the main objective.
I think players would be more interested in trying again and trying to improve themselves - going for those optional - than the way things are currently: A player joins an stf and 2 minutes in they fail, get next to nothing but a lockout of the mission, and never want to touch it again.
I like when forums posts try to spew propaganda about percentage of player base without basis. How sure are you that it is only 1%? Because you say so? You TRIBBLE Cryptics Statistics for that? Later on this complaints about having hard time in advance are the real minority who dont even account for .00001% of the playerbase. until such time Cryptic shares those official statistics even if they have those stat.
The problem is a very specific playerbase of the Advance adjustments. Those who PuG, but refuse to improve themselves, refuse to improve their teammates by bringing competent teams or finding competent teams with the current social mechanic, if they did not take any above option, refuse to go down to normal or go solo. These are all self inflicted problems from a very specific playerbase. They demand adjustments in the mechanic because they refuse to use the current mechanic for whatever reason they can concoct.
The other problem I see is what is the definition of casual. Because if it is just mentality, then those who complain about having a hard time advance are not casuals but hardcore players being outcompeted by other hardcore players. Because they are casual who shouldnt care about completion. If it is time, then they are not casuals, why? A competent players plays 1-2 mins per missions and can play 30 Mins per day and complete missions. While a whiny incompetent player can play 1 hour a day and fail all missions. If time is your definition, Therefore an efficient competent hardcore player can qualify for casual while those who you think are casuals do not because of the time they need to complete missions due to their incompetence.
One of the best jokes in quite some time.
its nice to complete the optionals in that one if you onle get 1 pt ships spawning and spawns dont reset fast enough or at all.
but ur right . it works so you can at least lousily complete it
Stop blaming the players for Cryptic's bad design. The players didn't change the old elite into the new advanced queues, Cryptic did. They made them highly vulnerable to trolls, they set the bars far too high in some places, they nerfed the rewards, but also managed to make some of the queues actually work okay. They are highly inconsistent and many are poorly designed.
CCA is pretty easy, and doesn't bug much. Avoiding the fail conditions isn't overly difficult, is hard to troll, and demands nothing more than paying attention.
Bug hunt is fairly straightforward, though setting the bombs is near impossible, ground combat in general is plagued with over the top damage (pestilents especially in BH), and the alarm bugs are not obvious nor are they even described anywhere.
Gates of Grethor seems fairly hard to fail, though the stupidity of the NPCs is baffling (hurr durr lets sit in the radiation portal instead of waiting just outside for them to close it) but the Herald design is not particularly enjoyable with so much disable spam and ridiculous amounts of damage one can take in such a short time, especially while disabled.
The other two herald queues, having done them on normal, I can't say I'll ever make the attempt to try them on advanced based on their design on normal.
ISA is way too easy to troll, as is Undine Infiltration. The Borg space STFs still suffer from major balance issues in large part due to the massive tachyon beam buff, and the invisible mega torpedoes that have never been fixed. They are doable, but definitely not worth the effort.
Borg Disconnected optionals are wildly difficult even on normal, and show an out of touch design, just like Bug Hunt and the bombs. The new no-fail ANRA design is also atrocious, plagued by the bugs and poorly thought out objectives given the difficulty of the enemies and the way the STF works even if there were no bugs.
I have no idea what most of the others are like on advanced because who actually queues for them?
Cryptic's design ranges from getting it nearly right to utterly ridiculous. To add arbitrary fail conditions on top of that was just nonsensical and unnecessary.
And in most other MMOs if you fail a boss fight, it resets and you can try again. This one you just get kicked out, forced to have a half hour time out, and certainly can't even try to adjust your tactics to fit the limits of your PUG team. The players are not responsible for bad design.
Tachyon beam- been discussed much already. Easily handled by players that are willing to adjust.
Invisa-torps- been in the game a long time. Easily handled by players that are willing to adjust.
And this is why the game is in such a crapy state. Becouse its so easy to talk from your high horses.
What "adjust" means to you, hmm? Like spending skills points in the skill that "should" help you against drain? Gee... 6 lvls so 84 points and you can see no difference. How about spending 15/30 points in an intel specialisation for a trait wich "should" grand you debuffs cleanse. Gee... even after that much time after it was released predictive algoritms still doesnt clear debuffs.
And yeah... lol... "adjust" on insta-torp when you only see a red msg: 147k damage poping up above your ship, and your ship poping along with it aswell ofc.
Anyway, on topic, was kinda surprised that those adjustements werent included with S10. Hope they make it soon. These new Iconian STFs are really awful. And who had the terible idea to add even more random optionals?
I PUG almost exclusively. The only time I go for a pre-made is when my fleet mates set something up or if i want to do a proper parse (even then I usually go with a PUG).
I do think that normals do not prepare players enough for advanced difficulty. I also believe that terminating a mission due to failure and slapping the full cooldown to boot is a little excessive. To compromise, here is a suggestion:
I think keeping the mission going will better prepare players and help them to learn how to deal with higher HP and harder hitting mobs while succeeding at the optional.
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When I started playing, I was horrible beyond belief. Most PUGs are way better than I was when I started. It's taken a lot of learning, putting my foot in my mouth too, and a lot of work to get to be able to play respectably. If this poor idiot can do it, you can too.
I use the word adjust, because there is often much to adjust. Sometimes it is a big adjustment, sometimes it might be some small tweaks. Gear, BO setups, DOFFs, playstyle, etc. Each person is different and what will work for one does not necessarily work for another.
Hide Advanced and Elite from the public list until unlocked.
The unlock...
Cryptic already uses scoring and accolades, so use a combination of the two in Normal.
X number of runs doing Y DPS, each run providing an increment to the accolade showing progress.
X number of runs completing Y Objectives, each run providing an increment to the accolade showing progress.
Both accolades completed...Advanced unlocked.
Could even treat it as a form of STF Mastery...providing additional rewards for folks that go through the process - offering a little something-something as they move from Normal to Advanced to Elite.
* * * * *
But something would still have to be done about certain Objectives because of the ease by which one can troll with them - changed to something that provides some form of equivalent challenge, but something that somebody cannot simply ruin the run for the rest of the group because they find it entertaining.
* * * * *
The "locking" would just be for public queues - folks doing private runs could do as they please.
Normals and advanced would need to have their objectives synced though, just in different numbers.
For example, the new GG stf, on normal you must allow 10 ships to pass trough, on advanced 25, and on elite 35 (or w/e it is on elite)
Then have:
-Complete GG normal 10 times with all optionals to unlock advanced difficulty.
-Complete GG advanced 10 times with all optionals to unlock elite difficulty.
Sure it'll be a bit of a pita for the first few days because people who run adv/elite today need to 'grind' trough it to get back where they were. But thats a small price to pay for forcing the general plebs to learn how to play.
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It is a peculiar phenomenon that we can imagine events that defy the laws of the universe.
That'd be a great way for Cryptic to double down on their anti-Altist crusade.
Run 10+ to 20+ of each queue I want to play just to be able to play it, on each captain I want to play it on? The queues would have to be both a lot more entertaining and a lot more rewarding.
Yeah definitally.
I'm still in favour of my earlier idea though, without the gating. Simple move most stf rewards behind the optionals. (and also vastly increase rewards across the board).
*- Bad player team but complete the stf without optionals? Here's 10 marks.
*- Good player team and complete all optionals? Here's your 50 marks, and tripple dilithium, and r&d boxes, and extra rare/very rare items.
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It is a peculiar phenomenon that we can imagine events that defy the laws of the universe.
My only issue with basing on DPS alone is that hybrid builds that do something else as their primary function will find it harder to gain entry, though they may be very good at that function that isn't DPS.
Helpful hint about invisatorps...others can see it....so Maybe if ppl were better team players.....
I always type out when I see one cause them the target has a chance to move.
The problem I'd actually see would be with the DPS folks, rather than the "support" DPS folks. Cause the threshold would be set for the "support" DPS folks at a content (not player) requirement level...which means that the DPS folks could get in with a lower amount than would be expected because of them being DPS - which could in turn leave them less prepared to deal with the higher tier.
Jerry "Support" hitting 5-6k and bringing his stuff vs. Tom DPS hitting 5-6k and that's all he's bringing.
When 5x folks doing a combined 36-40k throughout a particular run is more than is needed, as long as it is focused, some support's thrown in, etc, etc, etc - the content requirements are pretty low for many of the Advanced. Folks wanting 5-9 minute runs instead of 11-15 minute runs gets into player requirements instead of content requirements. In many cases, it's not just the amount of DPS but rather the application of the DPS.
It's not just about how well one shoots at something, but also knowing when and what to shoot at...where the latter, when/what can make up for a lack of how well - while with no matter how well, if the when/what is wrong...it's doomed. I've seen more failures where there has been far more than enough DPS going on from the team combined, even folks working their support angles - and - it should have been a straightforward run...but folks were off chasing butterflies so it ended up being a miserable failure.
But just cause there are folks out there doing 15k, 20k, 30k, 50k, 75k, 100k, 120k DPS...doesn't mean an Advanced requires anywhere near that. Those folks aren't doing that to see if they can complete something, that's a result of them seeing how well they can complete something.
My last ISA run (brutal lagfest with a total of 8 deaths amongst the pug)...
Player A) 18.2k
Player
Player C) 8.7k
Player D) 6.4k
Player E) 3.5k
51921.9 combined/team DPS...it was a 12:08 minutes (728 seconds) run. 76 seconds for the initial engagement, and 10:52 into the 15:00 minute timer after that engagement. 4:08 minutes before missing out on the timed Optional.
The requirements just aren't anywhere near the potential in the game...
edit: There are 210 folks with a higher individual DPS than that group had. There are 2948 folks with a higher DPS than Player A, 4005 higher than Player B, 7591 higher than Player C, 9524 higher than Player D, and 13232 higher than Player E...
Grav Well, Tyken's Rift, Eject Warp Plasma, Aceton Assimilators, and countless other things...