I've actually experienced issues like the one described by the targ, I think the main problem is the fact that people just aren't paying attention, and yes, believe that spraying DPS around like a sprinkler on a hot day is the solution to everything..
It's not.
Ever since DR hit the fan some months ago STF's require some coordination, or at the very least requires players to PAY ATTENTION!!!
Unfortunately since the pre-DR ESTF's could be accomplished with players turning off the ole 'think melons' and going 'pew pew pew', many people have yet to get that this can no longer guarantee success.
I suspect that those of us who PUG will likely have to deal with this until the bulk of STO players gets that they just cant 'pew pew pew' through STF missions and hope to succeed like in the past.
We can expedite this by trying to impart proper team etiquette on fleetmates who are new to STO or just inexperienced with STF missions, though I concede that this will be of little effect to assist the fleetless or those in other fleets.
I've actually experienced issues like the one described by the targ, I think the main problem is the fact that people just aren't paying attention, and yes, believe that spraying DPS around like a sprinkler on a hot day is the solution to everything..
It's not.
Ever since DR hit the fan some months ago STF's require some coordination, or at the very least requires players to PAY ATTENTION!!!
Unfortunately since the pre-DR ESTF's could be accomplished with players turning off the ole 'think melons' and going 'pew pew pew', many people have yet to get that this can no longer guarantee success.
I suspect that those of us who PUG will likely have to deal with this until the bulk of STO players gets that they just cant 'pew pew pew' through STF missions and hope to succeed like in the past.
We can expedite this by trying to impart proper team etiquette on fleetmates who are new to STO or just inexperienced with STF missions, though I concede that this will be of little effect to assist the fleetless or those in other fleets.
But the problem is that you can pew pew pew your way through Normal & a lot of players carry that through to Advance.
Unfortunately since the pre-DR ESTF's could be accomplished with players turning off the ole 'think melons' and going 'pew pew pew', many people have yet to get that this can no longer guarantee success.
I always parse my runs on ISA, so I will keep my thoughts on this map. It doesn't take much to take down those generators. Sometimes, the huge amount of BFAW spam from even low DPS ships will take those down well before the Cube.
I've been in many PUGs where this happened. At first it would seem that someone with high DPS was spamming BFAW on the wrong targets but after looking at the parse, it would becomes apparent that the team simply did not have enough DPS to take down the transformer in time.
I can understand how someone spamming antiproton BFAW on a Scimitar can be mistaken for someone with high DPS. But I've seen parses that show that they weren't doing that well at all. The initial engagement is so easy that a group of 5-8kDPS players can take the first group quickly and give a false impression that the team is running with high DPS.
Bringing a high DPS ship into a PUG with members with substantially lower DPS potential can also be a problem. These ships tend to draw too much aggro, killing them in the process. When they are gone, the team won't have enough firepower to take out the Transformer before the Spheres arrive.
I PUG most of the time. In all my failed ISAs, only a handful had high DPS ships doing the wrong thing. The majority still seems to be from players that come in unprepared or do not know the objectives. Once in a while, there are trolls (those are obvious to spot) but those are extremely rare (in my experience).
I won't argue that some people can't figure out how to build a ship (or fly it) even if someone held their hand during the whole process. I was referring to those who have a decent/good build and go 'pew pew pew' through missions without thinking or really paying attention.
But the problem is that you can pew pew pew your way through Normal & a lot of players carry that through to Advance.
And here lies part of the problem, people do the normals and breeze though them, then move on to advanced thinking it will be just as easy...
Edit: I'd like to add that 'worst STF experience' is not typical of your average PUG, I'm fairly certain that if someone created a thread titled "Post your average STF experience" (and if people would post in a thread not about complaining lol) that said thread would be significantly larger than the 'worst experience' thread.
I have run into people before that whine and moan and absolutely insist we are doing it wrong in an STF. Things like not ignoring the Cube and spheres above the generators in Infected space, or bringing the gens down to 10% first. That is the kind of thing that can work just fine in high DPS premades but in a PUG, you do it safe or go home, but they don't comprehend this. At least pre DR their blind insistence on doing it their way might only lose the optional not the whole STF.
Folks complain that the Dil refine cap needs to be increased...so Cryptic makes it even easier to get Dil...heh.
At least that indirectly increases the cap.
Also, I feel like your bartle score image needs a handle at one end and it would look like a slot machine, perfectly capturing what should be the fifth category, gambler.
"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society." - Aristotle
An observation of my own if I may, maybe a slight ramble.
I have five characters, many different builds but mostly hovering around the 10-15k mark. With my Delta toon I decided to try one of these scim AP beamboats everyone is raving about.
Using ISA as an example. Usually in any other of my ships I engage the cube then set about the generators, and generally by the time I have taken one out myself and moved on to another they are all pretty much dead (unless theres a dps powerhouse about or its a very bad pug).
Now in my own high dps build I find I do the same thing (I do not FAW at this point I should stress). I engage the cube, and again set about the generators, however in this instance by the time I have taken out two on my own (wondering where everyone else is), I turn to see at least one generator still remaining with nanites getting near, this has caused a fail unless someone had some CC handy.
That's not dps being the problem, that's a glaring example of the gap in dps between average builds and higher dps builds (and of course the people that fly them), and how that can effect the game.
Now you might say " but you know you have a high dps ship, go easy on the gens, think of the possible variations in your team".
That was of course my first thought once I saw what this ship could do. The problem there is as others have stated is the low hp of the generators. In a high dps build its gone almost instantly making even "the safe 10% rule" difficult to do as a gen is typically dead in one firing cycle.
So its a double edged sword, sure you can kill many things very quickly but sometimes dps IS a problem, depending on your team. I understand many will not agree with me, but as I say, I do generally fly pretty average dps builds (I like to think reasonably well) and am making a comparison between my experiences in both using the same tactics.
I don't think dps is bad, but the gap in dps between players in advanced can make it something to be very wary of if you're either the guy in the average build in the team or the guy with the high dps in the team.
I enjoy pugging but I do see why many high dps players have gone to private channels etc, sometimes its easier for everyone.
"If this will be our end, then I will have them make SUCH an end as to be worthy of rememberance! Out of torpedos you say?! Find me the ferengi!".
I must apologize to some people who claimed that STFs are unpugable. In general I made different experiences and usually roughly 7/10 advanced STF pugs were a success. Today though I experienced something entirely different - I tried 8 advanced STFs in pugs and actually only one succeeded. The others failed miserably, one or two minutes in (tops). While I still am convinced that there are just good and bad days I can see that there are definitely some basic problems with people trying advanced STFs nowadays. But it doesn't seem to be that people struggle to deal appropriate amounts of damage - in almost all instances today the problem was one or two players actually doing way too much damage, BFAW away at generators and mobs, starting sphere spawn in infected before the cube above the transformer was killed or pulling some weird stunts like spawning both cubes on one side in khitomer and then die. It's not all that hard to get a scimitar or other ship with Tac LTC and slap APs on your ship and deal a sufficient amount of damage. But the whole DPS race thing maybe makes people, I don't know - overconfident? And while pewing away they completely ignore the basic rules of those missions and ultimately fail.
I don't demand some restrictive gamechanges that somehow regulate gameplay or anything - but maybe want to remind people that it helps reading some hints about those old missions, even if you can deal a big number of dps?
And no, having people play normals doesn't help in my opinion as they are too different from the advanced version.
What you said here is basicly STOs core problem. From ground combat to Space combat. You get ppl thinking about nothing but how high they can get thier dps and not once since they have played the game have they read the mission objectives. Well put my friend. Hopefully a few ppl who fall into this catagory will read this and take heed.
I must apologize to some people who claimed that STFs are unpugable. In general I made different experiences and usually roughly 7/10 advanced STF pugs were a success. Today though I experienced something entirely different - I tried 8 advanced STFs in pugs and actually only one succeeded. The others failed miserably, one or two minutes in (tops). While I still am convinced that there are just good and bad days I can see that there are definitely some basic problems with people trying advanced STFs nowadays. But it doesn't seem to be that people struggle to deal appropriate amounts of damage - in almost all instances today the problem was one or two players actually doing way too much damage, BFAW away at generators and mobs, starting sphere spawn in infected before the cube above the transformer was killed or pulling some weird stunts like spawning both cubes on one side in khitomer and then die. It's not all that hard to get a scimitar or other ship with Tac LTC and slap APs on your ship and deal a sufficient amount of damage. But the whole DPS race thing maybe makes people, I don't know - overconfident? And while pewing away they completely ignore the basic rules of those missions and ultimately fail.
I don't demand some restrictive gamechanges that somehow regulate gameplay or anything - but maybe want to remind people that it helps reading some hints about those old missions, even if you can deal a big number of dps?
And no, having people play normals doesn't help in my opinion as they are too different from the advanced version.
I made the same observation myself.
Unlike some other players i have seen, i don't leave as soon as a PUG makes a mistake, i try to save the mission as best as i can. That's the challenge i have set for myself and to be honest it's much more thrilling than having a x-thousand DPS PUG that steamrolls a mission in half a minute.
Yeah, some people seem to think DPS solves anything. It's sad to see that excessive dps racing has come so far by now.
I'm not saying FAW is the pure evil, lol. But it removes any kind of creative playstyle, for some even the need to maneuver the ship. Some people actually don't seem the need to move at all and just park their cruisers and shoot at a enemy, even before "anchored" was introduced. (The most depressing thing about it, is to see that they don't even broadside lol.)
As you know, i always was a committed advocate for more stronger Cruisers in STO, but i think FAW is the wrong way to go, imo. Not only that it delivers nonsense values, it's also the most boring type of playing STO, imaginable.
Obviously people seem to only look at the numbers and tend to think that's enough to do a mission, although a bit of independent thinking and flexibility helps sometimes much more than pure DPS imo.
I don't know what Cryptic can do about it, since they advocate more and more DPS all the time.
Maybe they could increase NPCs damage output, so players had to create more balanced (Defense/Offense) builds, instead to put everyting into more DPS.
They could also revamp Energy space weapons and remove Beam - Cannon types completely and make them all simply energy weapons. All BOFF powers (BO; FAW, C:SV, C:RF) would apply to all weapons and the player could decide which FX (Cannon or Beams) to use. This would open up much more possible playstyles and some players may even find that fireing at everyting in range doesn't help much exept from raising some obscure numbers.
Also, the introduction of "kemocite weaponry" BOFF ability was a nice step into the right direction to make torpedoes more useable, they should also make [arc] (180° fireing arc) a common torpedo R&D mod. Especially big slow ships simply cannot use torpedoes in a efficient way as long as almost any torpedoes have a 90° fireing arc.
"...'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 first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
A lot of people replace their braincells with derpcells once they acquire power. But, people working together plain and simple and using a bit of brain power will win a mission.
I remember months ago (when I was still trying to be interested in most PvE queus) I decided to play Khitomer Vortex. Got into the match, whoopdie doo. There was me, 2 scimitars, and like 2 other ships I forgot what they were. This was a random group as well, so I sit a moment waiting to see what everyone's going to do. (I tend to cover spots other people won't) and at the beginning of the match... the two scimitar guys are already arguing at each other.
Now, I watch them run off to the transformers and what not, watched what they did and they were doing some nice damage. (no doubt somewhere between 20k or 30k.) So, they got that down... but what were they arguing over? Who was going to do probe duty... and the other two guys weren't going to do it either. So, the two scimitar guys began complaining, arguing, fighting, swearing, etc at each other all game long.
Obviously, since no one else decided to watch the probes (and flat out refused to kill one even if it cost the mission. Yes, that happened.), I took my DHC Bortasqu' and defended probes from both gates. So, I'm just going from one side to the next killing probe after probe and watching the insanity in chat.
Another time, and this being an actual good time, I remember doing said mission and we were all science officers in science vessels and cruisers. Was a random pick-up group. We had a fun time, we'd communicate on who was doing what, had zero problems in the mission while we all had a fun time and goofed off in chat.
This can be said for any game though. I ran with some good folks that could do post-DR TRIBBLE with no problems and we'd just have a ball. It doesn't take military strategic training, rocket science, study of magical arts, programming or how to weld sections of a ship together to make it work to win an queue mission or anything in many games for that matter. It just takes some form of basic common sense, basic communication and in some cases basic math.
Another thing in gaming some people need to realize though is many people often have the attitude of, "I'm not doing that, it's their problem not mine. I don't need to take care of that." mentality. This happens in many games, and as an avid gamer, I see this a lot. For example, the two scimitars I stated above. It was another person's problem (in this case, mine), but not their own even if it failed the mission.
Stupidity can be anywhere from the top of leader boards to the bottom. There's no limit to how far stupid can go. Real world is a good example of that, probably why it shows up in games a lot, too.
So, I guess what I'm saying is... DPS isn't necessarily ruining PUGs. Just the people without a brain are.
STO forum term definitions for newbies:Piloting Skill: That thing you do where you fly around and avoid big scary green plasma balls of death. Pressing F and spacebar may also relate to skill.Taco: A very sacred thing. Do not speak I'll of the Taco or things will happen. Terrible things! Humor: Something not found here. Don't bring it. This forum is serious business.Fun: Something illegal. Don't have it and don't bring it
You get ppl thinking about nothing but how high they can get thier dps and not once since they have played the game have they read the mission objectives.
You cannot get high DPS without completing the mission faster.
You cannot complete the mission faster if you don't know the mission objectives.
Another thought, a lot of people think they have more DPS than they actually have because they don't know how to do a standard parse (ISA). I have come across a lot of people that claim to have xx,TRIBBLE DPS only to surprise them when they parse just x,TRIBBLE DPS in ISA. When asked where they parsed their xx,TRIBBLE DPS they give out y patrol or a test against another player in a PvP map. What they think is their DPS is actually their burst damage, damage numbers they cannot sustain in a mission.
Comments
It's not.
Ever since DR hit the fan some months ago STF's require some coordination, or at the very least requires players to PAY ATTENTION!!!
Unfortunately since the pre-DR ESTF's could be accomplished with players turning off the ole 'think melons' and going 'pew pew pew', many people have yet to get that this can no longer guarantee success.
I suspect that those of us who PUG will likely have to deal with this until the bulk of STO players gets that they just cant 'pew pew pew' through STF missions and hope to succeed like in the past.
We can expedite this by trying to impart proper team etiquette on fleetmates who are new to STO or just inexperienced with STF missions, though I concede that this will be of little effect to assist the fleetless or those in other fleets.
But the problem is that you can pew pew pew your way through Normal & a lot of players carry that through to Advance.
Post your worst STF experiance
3245 posts over 325 pages disagrees with that...
...those were the posts before Delta Rising.
I've been in many PUGs where this happened. At first it would seem that someone with high DPS was spamming BFAW on the wrong targets but after looking at the parse, it would becomes apparent that the team simply did not have enough DPS to take down the transformer in time.
I can understand how someone spamming antiproton BFAW on a Scimitar can be mistaken for someone with high DPS. But I've seen parses that show that they weren't doing that well at all. The initial engagement is so easy that a group of 5-8kDPS players can take the first group quickly and give a false impression that the team is running with high DPS.
Bringing a high DPS ship into a PUG with members with substantially lower DPS potential can also be a problem. These ships tend to draw too much aggro, killing them in the process. When they are gone, the team won't have enough firepower to take out the Transformer before the Spheres arrive.
I PUG most of the time. In all my failed ISAs, only a handful had high DPS ships doing the wrong thing. The majority still seems to be from players that come in unprepared or do not know the objectives. Once in a while, there are trolls (those are obvious to spot) but those are extremely rare (in my experience).
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The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
I won't argue that some people can't figure out how to build a ship (or fly it) even if someone held their hand during the whole process. I was referring to those who have a decent/good build and go 'pew pew pew' through missions without thinking or really paying attention.
And here lies part of the problem, people do the normals and breeze though them, then move on to advanced thinking it will be just as easy...
Edit: I'd like to add that 'worst STF experience' is not typical of your average PUG, I'm fairly certain that if someone created a thread titled "Post your average STF experience" (and if people would post in a thread not about complaining lol) that said thread would be significantly larger than the 'worst experience' thread.
Of course, any requests for a single-target meta are met with Cryptic doubling down on BFAW.
It is a trip...it's also not the only thing.
Folks complain that the Dil refine cap needs to be increased...so Cryptic makes it even easier to get Dil...heh.
Folks complain about FAW...so Cryptic keeps buffing it...meh.
At least that indirectly increases the cap.
Also, I feel like your bartle score image needs a handle at one end and it would look like a slot machine, perfectly capturing what should be the fifth category, gambler.
I have five characters, many different builds but mostly hovering around the 10-15k mark. With my Delta toon I decided to try one of these scim AP beamboats everyone is raving about.
Using ISA as an example. Usually in any other of my ships I engage the cube then set about the generators, and generally by the time I have taken one out myself and moved on to another they are all pretty much dead (unless theres a dps powerhouse about or its a very bad pug).
Now in my own high dps build I find I do the same thing (I do not FAW at this point I should stress). I engage the cube, and again set about the generators, however in this instance by the time I have taken out two on my own (wondering where everyone else is), I turn to see at least one generator still remaining with nanites getting near, this has caused a fail unless someone had some CC handy.
That's not dps being the problem, that's a glaring example of the gap in dps between average builds and higher dps builds (and of course the people that fly them), and how that can effect the game.
Now you might say " but you know you have a high dps ship, go easy on the gens, think of the possible variations in your team".
That was of course my first thought once I saw what this ship could do. The problem there is as others have stated is the low hp of the generators. In a high dps build its gone almost instantly making even "the safe 10% rule" difficult to do as a gen is typically dead in one firing cycle.
So its a double edged sword, sure you can kill many things very quickly but sometimes dps IS a problem, depending on your team. I understand many will not agree with me, but as I say, I do generally fly pretty average dps builds (I like to think reasonably well) and am making a comparison between my experiences in both using the same tactics.
I don't think dps is bad, but the gap in dps between players in advanced can make it something to be very wary of if you're either the guy in the average build in the team or the guy with the high dps in the team.
I enjoy pugging but I do see why many high dps players have gone to private channels etc, sometimes its easier for everyone.
"If this will be our end, then I will have them make SUCH an end as to be worthy of rememberance! Out of torpedos you say?! Find me the ferengi!".
What you said here is basicly STOs core problem. From ground combat to Space combat. You get ppl thinking about nothing but how high they can get thier dps and not once since they have played the game have they read the mission objectives. Well put my friend. Hopefully a few ppl who fall into this catagory will read this and take heed.
Unlike some other players i have seen, i don't leave as soon as a PUG makes a mistake, i try to save the mission as best as i can. That's the challenge i have set for myself and to be honest it's much more thrilling than having a x-thousand DPS PUG that steamrolls a mission in half a minute.
Yeah, some people seem to think DPS solves anything. It's sad to see that excessive dps racing has come so far by now.
I'm not saying FAW is the pure evil, lol. But it removes any kind of creative playstyle, for some even the need to maneuver the ship. Some people actually don't seem the need to move at all and just park their cruisers and shoot at a enemy, even before "anchored" was introduced. (The most depressing thing about it, is to see that they don't even broadside lol.)
As you know, i always was a committed advocate for more stronger Cruisers in STO, but i think FAW is the wrong way to go, imo. Not only that it delivers nonsense values, it's also the most boring type of playing STO, imaginable.
Obviously people seem to only look at the numbers and tend to think that's enough to do a mission, although a bit of independent thinking and flexibility helps sometimes much more than pure DPS imo.
I don't know what Cryptic can do about it, since they advocate more and more DPS all the time.
Maybe they could increase NPCs damage output, so players had to create more balanced (Defense/Offense) builds, instead to put everyting into more DPS.
They could also revamp Energy space weapons and remove Beam - Cannon types completely and make them all simply energy weapons. All BOFF powers (BO; FAW, C:SV, C:RF) would apply to all weapons and the player could decide which FX (Cannon or Beams) to use. This would open up much more possible playstyles and some players may even find that fireing at everyting in range doesn't help much exept from raising some obscure numbers.
Also, the introduction of "kemocite weaponry" BOFF ability was a nice step into the right direction to make torpedoes more useable, they should also make [arc] (180° fireing arc) a common torpedo R&D mod. Especially big slow ships simply cannot use torpedoes in a efficient way as long as almost any torpedoes have a 90° fireing arc.
I remember months ago (when I was still trying to be interested in most PvE queus) I decided to play Khitomer Vortex. Got into the match, whoopdie doo. There was me, 2 scimitars, and like 2 other ships I forgot what they were. This was a random group as well, so I sit a moment waiting to see what everyone's going to do. (I tend to cover spots other people won't) and at the beginning of the match... the two scimitar guys are already arguing at each other.
Now, I watch them run off to the transformers and what not, watched what they did and they were doing some nice damage. (no doubt somewhere between 20k or 30k.) So, they got that down... but what were they arguing over? Who was going to do probe duty... and the other two guys weren't going to do it either. So, the two scimitar guys began complaining, arguing, fighting, swearing, etc at each other all game long.
Obviously, since no one else decided to watch the probes (and flat out refused to kill one even if it cost the mission. Yes, that happened.), I took my DHC Bortasqu' and defended probes from both gates. So, I'm just going from one side to the next killing probe after probe and watching the insanity in chat.
Another time, and this being an actual good time, I remember doing said mission and we were all science officers in science vessels and cruisers. Was a random pick-up group. We had a fun time, we'd communicate on who was doing what, had zero problems in the mission while we all had a fun time and goofed off in chat.
This can be said for any game though. I ran with some good folks that could do post-DR TRIBBLE with no problems and we'd just have a ball. It doesn't take military strategic training, rocket science, study of magical arts, programming or how to weld sections of a ship together to make it work to win an queue mission or anything in many games for that matter. It just takes some form of basic common sense, basic communication and in some cases basic math.
Another thing in gaming some people need to realize though is many people often have the attitude of, "I'm not doing that, it's their problem not mine. I don't need to take care of that." mentality. This happens in many games, and as an avid gamer, I see this a lot. For example, the two scimitars I stated above. It was another person's problem (in this case, mine), but not their own even if it failed the mission.
Stupidity can be anywhere from the top of leader boards to the bottom. There's no limit to how far stupid can go. Real world is a good example of that, probably why it shows up in games a lot, too.
So, I guess what I'm saying is... DPS isn't necessarily ruining PUGs. Just the people without a brain are.
You cannot get high DPS without completing the mission faster.
You cannot complete the mission faster if you don't know the mission objectives.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!