I see carebears everywhere. It bothers I am fast becoming one too. I don't know what it is about this game, it encourages ultra casual fooling/TRIBBLE around playstyle.
Yep, and then at some point - as you notice more and more folks leave, you notice you're just on the forums arguing things from the past and repeating yourself over and over, and you notice that Netflix has added a bunch of awesome movies from the 80s and early 90s...well, you just kind of walk away.
Movies from the 80s or 90s? It has awesome shows of the 10s, like Person of Interest!
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
the real question here is weather cryptic can DESIGN harder content... and by that I mean, actual difficulty increas/smarter AI not a few million hit points and large AoE spam
But it is not the question of this poll. So asking, if Cryptic did give us smarter AI used some of the tactics of lets say The Wizards of STO. Do you think most players would rise to fight the mobs or devs?
They will fight the Devs 110%...just like they did with DR when they couldn't be carried and there was no more face rolling of elite stfs.
I assume by "face rolling" that you mean they couldn't churn out 25k+ dps and curb stomp damage sponges...
the real question here is weather cryptic can DESIGN harder content... and by that I mean, actual difficulty increas/smarter AI not a few million hit points and large AoE spam
But it is not the question of this poll. So asking, if Cryptic did give us smarter AI used some of the tactics of lets say The Wizards of STO. Do you think most players would rise to fight the mobs or devs?
They will fight the Devs 110%...just like they did with DR when they couldn't be carried and there was no more face rolling of elite stfs.
I assume by "face rolling" that you mean they couldn't churn out 25k+ dps and curb stomp damage sponges...
Hrmm, you can curb stomp the damage sponges with 7k DPS and be considered face rolling...25k+ is more like eye rolling the mobs.
In some ways, I think how itemization is set up in this game discourages the need to pursue 'harder content', if we are to assume that harder content means more than just +HP/waves.
Cryptic has also moved toward bitesize and repeatable. Remember back when Dstahl was Executive Producer? We had insights like the game economy/missions/everything being balanced around an expected play time of just four hours per week. How could it possibly pay to develop more intricate content for that type of audience?
And without the need to upgrade, what is the motivation? There comes a point when the frustration of how the 'hard' content has been implemented, the poor player grouping mechanics (no kick/automated abuse tracking) and the meaningless rewards just overrule one's sense of motivation to stick it out, and challenge oneself. I find I hit that point far to quickly with Cryptic's content.
I guess all in all the game is what it is. Either play it as you like, or are able to...or not. I think Dstahl said that in a lot meaner way once to people telling him they didn't like the game mechanics of STO. Google Fu? I think the link is dead, Jim.
But it is not the question of this poll. So asking, if Cryptic did give us smarter AI used some of the tactics of lets say The Wizards of STO. Do you think most players would rise to fight the mobs or devs?
They'd probably fight the devs, but the PvE would be way more enjoyable than they currently are as it would shift the focus from spewing out DPS to actual teamwork and knowing to use abilities outside of damage dealing ones.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
While there sure aren't MMOs who have player rivaling AI they do have other things to compensate for that.
Stuff like varying behavior patterns, changing battle conditions, basic buffs for enemies (tactical team would be our example), etc . STO really has nothing besides insane HP scaling to ramp up the difficulty and the devs are caught in a terrible, lazy, loop. Make stronger weapons => buff mob hp => make stronger weapons => buff mob hp =>...... etc, etc.
Generally STO has one of the worst mob AIs I've seen in a MMO and no amount of hp scaling can hide that.
We dont know what exactly what all players are capable Not unless you have the Cryptic statistics for that.
We do have a publicly available statistics like ISA. The average mean for Players is around 9k+ DPS.
To do optional Advance in ISA is around 9k+ DPS per player via 42M+ HP, 15mins optional divided among 5 players equally.
The minimum requirement of ISA is roughly around 5-7k DPS in the current difficulty, roughly around 2k or less DPS increase minimum requirement vs the ISE of pre-DR even if you account the scaling of HP buffs and power creep.
That means all this complaint of HP increase or DPS increase requirement really happened except all this complaint about DPS requirement/HP bloating is totally exaggerated since the minimum requirement increase is very small.
Essentially, You need to be below than your average STO player to able to not complete or at least contribute your own load in Advance.
While there sure aren't MMOs who have player rivaling AI they do have other things to compensate for that.
Stuff like varying behavior patterns, changing battle conditions, basic buffs for enemies (tactical team would be our example), etc . STO really has nothing besides insane HP scaling to ramp up the difficulty and the devs are caught in a terrible, lazy, loop. Make stronger weapons => buff mob hp => make stronger weapons => buff mob hp =>...... etc, etc.
Generally STO has one of the worst mob AIs I've seen in a MMO and no amount of hp scaling can hide that.
We dont know what exactly what all players are capable Not unless you have the Cryptic statistics for that.
We do have a publicly available statistics like ISA. The average mean for Players is around 9k+ DPS.
To do optional Advance in ISA is around 9k+ DPS per player via 42M+ HP, 15mins optional divided among 5 players equally.
The minimum requirement of ISA is roughly around 5-7k DPS in the current difficulty, roughly around 2k or less DPS increase minimum requirement vs the ISE of pre-DR even if you account the scaling of HP buffs and power creep.
That means all this complaint of HP increase or DPS increase requirement really happened except all this complaint about DPS requirement/HP bloating is totally exaggerated since the minimum requirement increase is very small.
Essentially, You need to be below than your average STO player to able to not complete or at least contribute your own load in Advance.
Unless you have cryptic data, that is the average for DPS league parsed activities. Which is already skewed irrecoverably by having a minimum of one dpsleague player in every parse. It is further off average because it is also only the subset of people who feel qualified to queue for advanced. Evidence suggests the average player doesn't queue at all, not even for normal (hence the abysmal queue rates).
It is as far from the actual average as mixing radar gun speed statistics from highways and NASCAR racers in a 3:1 ratio and claiming to have the average driving speed of American drivers when most drivers are on surface streets.
Unless you have cryptic data, that is the average for DPS league parsed activities. Which is already skewed irrecoverably by having a minimum of one dpsleague player in every parse. It is further off average because it is also only the subset of people who feel qualified to queue for advanced. Evidence suggests the average player doesn't queue at all, not even for normal (hence the abysmal queue rates).
It is as far from the actual average as mixing radar gun speed statistics from highways and NASCAR racers in a 3:1 ratio and claiming to have the average driving speed of American drivers when most drivers are on surface streets.
Which evidence suggest that an average player doesnt queue at all? Please give your official cryptic numbers that we didnt see.
Is this data coming from I dont and my friends dont data?
The DPS league data have parses from public and private with data ranging from 233K DPS to 100 to 0 DPS. Where is your "evidence" coming from?
First of all, you need to accept that there are player that want to go STF and there are players who dont want to go to STF. You dont count players who dont want to go to STF even if cryptic nerfs the queues since those player isnt part of the population who are willing to go to STFs. Which in population sample will skew results since these players wont go to STFS regardless of the situation.
The problem is players who want to go to STF but isnt competent enough to complete advance queues, not normal, but advance. that means these are willing players who go to STF which you cannot say are average players. They demand to compete/rewards like "an elitist", not enough capability to compete but unwilling to improve self. These are subset of players who believes they belong in the advance/elitist area but cannot achieve it without improving.
Cryptic can't design harder content. Look at dr...It's not so much hard as it is annoying. Add a bunch of hit points to the enemies and reduce timers for mission and add insta-failure conditions. That's not harder content it's lazy content.
Cryptic can't design harder content. Look at dr...It's not so much hard as it is annoying. Add a bunch of hit points to the enemies and reduce timers for mission and add insta-failure conditions. That's not harder content it's lazy content.
Your sig says imagine and yet you can not "get" a what if question. Stuff like this is why my vote for was a nope.avi. If PVE really did become anything more that a DPS race I sure we would see the last 3 pvpers on the forums get mad that grinding for spec points/ec/dil/trait mastery is taking even longer and that is ruining their fun. It would be kind of nice. PVP and PVE players both whining about the same thing.
the real question here is weather cryptic can DESIGN harder content... and by that I mean, actual difficulty increase/smarter AI not a few million hit points and large AoE spam
This right here.
The current system is just a way to get people to grind more TRIBBLE for "TEH DEEPS" to deal with the HP sponges on a tight timer. That's not what I call a true difficulty increase.
Cryptic can't design harder content. Look at dr...It's not so much hard as it is annoying. Add a bunch of hit points to the enemies and reduce timers for mission and add insta-failure conditions. That's not harder content it's lazy content.
in fariness, cryptic did design npc that disables you. Of course, a player like you won't notice that since you don't player the other STFs?
Besides, in all MMos, npc have HPs. The only difference is raid players in those game have the damage requirement. In these forums, certain players is trying to tie up that is everyone's right to complete advance or elite mission even though they don't contribute nor understand the game mechanics. My point being, in whatever game you go there is a damage/hp requirement it just happen here that those complain here do not want To achieve those minimum Requirements and still complete whatever difficulty of a raid/STf.
Cryptic can't design harder content. Look at dr...It's not so much hard as it is annoying. Add a bunch of hit points to the enemies and reduce timers for mission and add insta-failure conditions. That's not harder content it's lazy content.
in fariness, cryptic did design npc that disables you. Of course, a player like you won't notice that since you don't player the other STFs?
Besides, in all MMos, npc have HPs. The only difference is raid players in those game have the damage requirement. In these forums, certain players is trying to tie up that is everyone's right to complete a highly difficult mission even though they don't contribute nor understand the game mechanics. My point being, in whatever game you go there is a damage/hp requirement it just happen here that those complain here do not want To achieve those minimum Requirements and still complete whatever difficulty of a raid/STf.
You completely missed the point of my post even tho I kept it pretty simple for all the slow people. First of all I don't have any trouble completing what you call "high level" content and I understand the games mechanics better then most. None of that even matters. I'm saying that if they wanted to raise the level cap and create this supposedly elite content then they should have put some actual thought into it. The ai is just as stupid as before and uses all the same limited abilities as it did before. Adding more hit points does not constitute increased challenge. The enemies still can't do much of anything that would make them a danger unless you've got a very poorly built ship. They may take slightly longer to kill, but that's about it. Does that sound like elite content to you?
This is going to be my last post before I do the smart thing and go to sleep.
I remember in the early days of No Win when players was really trying to beat it. One of the big things I remember when a fleet mate asked to join their pre-made that had ready to beat it. A lot of quitting. Some factions are really annoying to fight and can or at least use to ruin a run. Not NPCs are created equal.
You completely missed the point of my post even tho I kept it pretty simple for all the slow people. First of all I don't have any trouble completing what you call "high level" content and I understand the games mechanics better then most. None of that even matters. I'm saying that if they wanted to raise the level cap and create this supposedly elite content then they should have put some actual thought into it. The ai is just as stupid as before and uses all the same limited abilities as it did before. Adding more hit points does not constitute increased challenge. The enemies still can't do much of anything that would make them a danger unless you've got a very poorly built ship. They may take slightly longer to kill, but that's about it. Does that sound like elite content to you?
Have you actually completed elite content like herald space elite or hive space elite recently?
if you actually noticed they don't just add HP. They also add npc damage, potency of the disable and their abilities.
Look at ISA vs pre dr ISE. The Dps difference change between the 2 is around1-2k Dps. That is a very small increase. you forgot how they change the potency of the tachyon beam. And only noticed according to you added only HP.
because if it were just Hp they added, we won't be needing more heals in elite like Hive space or herald space or GGe nor any form of counter.
Although I am disagreeing with this, I agree with you that the AI isn't yet at par with a pvp chain disable-vape wherein it gives the possibility you die within 1 sec of the mission.
STO's AI is not stupid. It plays much like a similarly-equipped player would, but less mobile. This is very much a spam-all-abilities kind of game, the enemies just have less abilities to spam than players.
In a game like STO that has unlimited respawns, the purpose of enemies is to slow you down. It doesn't matter challenge-wise if that slowdown comes from them killing you and forcing you to respawn or just tanking and healing. Either way, you're losing time. Of course, to realize that challenge, there has to be a relevant failure condition. If you can't lose the mission no matter what, then there is no challenge no matter what.
DR upgraded many Advanced/Elite missions from no challenge to a some challenge. A subset of players who couldn't handle any challenge but refused to move to a lower difficulty level (which remained at zero challenge) threw a huge hissy fit over it, with the result that the devs now intend to make them zero challenge again.
the real question here is weather cryptic can DESIGN harder content... and by that I mean, actual difficulty increas/smarter AI not a few million hit points and large AoE spam
But it is not the question of this poll. So asking, if Cryptic did give us smarter AI used some of the tactics of lets say The Wizards of STO. Do you think most players would rise to fight the mobs or devs?
They will fight the Devs 110%...just like they did with DR when they couldn't be carried and there was no more face rolling of elite stfs.
I assume by "face rolling" that you mean they couldn't churn out 25k+ dps and curb stomp damage sponges...
Hrmm, you can curb stomp the damage sponges with 7k DPS and be considered face rolling...25k+ is more like eye rolling the mobs.
LOL I only do 16-19k. I am still just face rolling. ;-P
So let another question. What happens to a pug when a pack of borg ships cross heal each other?
They do.. In the Red Alerts, it is the task of the nanite probes around the unimatrix ships to heal each other and the mothership with hazard emitters.
The same happens in all 3 classic Borg STFs, except there the probes are all stationary, have a fixed target to heal and are partly disguised as generators and unshielded.
So let another question. What happens to a pug when a pack of borg ships cross heal each other?
They do.. In the Red Alerts, it is the task of the nanite probes around the unimatrix ships to heal each other and the mothership with hazard emitters.
The same happens in all 3 classic Borg STFs, except there the probes are all stationary, have a fixed target to heal and are partly disguised as generators and unshielded.
So they answer is: They are BFAWed away?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I have no reason to believe that Cryptic wants to or is even able to create truly challenging content. They're driving it so far into the Star Trek amusement park model that they are actually ashamed of having semi-challenging missions. (Remember Terradome?)
STO's AI is not stupid. It plays much like a similarly-equipped player would, but less mobile. This is very much a spam-all-abilities kind of game, the enemies just have less abilities to spam than players.
In a game like STO that has unlimited respawns, the purpose of enemies is to slow you down. It doesn't matter challenge-wise if that slowdown comes from them killing you and forcing you to respawn or just tanking and healing. Either way, you're losing time. Of course, to realize that challenge, there has to be a relevant failure condition. If you can't lose the mission no matter what, then there is no challenge no matter what.
DR upgraded many Advanced/Elite missions from no challenge to a some challenge. A subset of players who couldn't handle any challenge but refused to move to a lower difficulty level (which remained at zero challenge) threw a huge hissy fit over it, with the result that the devs now intend to make them zero challenge again.
I can't say the possibility of failure offers a challenge at all, especially so when there is no possibility to adapt and overcome like in other games. If you fail a queue in STO, you get kicked out. No post mortem with your team to discuss what went wrong and how to approach it differently, and a half hour time out for your trouble.
In other games you do something like STFs and it can be really easy or really hard depending on the group. There is no challenge with a good group. In a bad group you have to work harder for it, but the key is you can adjust, work with them, and talk strategy as you fail the boss for the third time.
Challenge isn't offered by the existence of failure conditions, though. Lets be honest, there is no challenge whatsoever for a group that knows what they are doing and how to do it unless they are very poorly equipped. Even if they can "potentially" fail, they never will. There is no real risk of failure so removing failure conditions has zero effect on that group that knows how to do things and has the tools to do things. They have no challenge as it is, no difficulty to overcome.
But if we say failure potential is challenge, then in fact most people that play this game don't want challenge. That is why they flocked to fleet/channel runs when the failure conditions went in, so they could still play it and virtually never fail it. Fail conditions were a colossal failure because they didn't actually challenge anyone, just pissed people off who PUG to the point that they stop PUGging.
I don't think this game can offer real challenge. The game has far too few dimensions to demand the player consider and all too often the only one it bothers with demanding is DPS. Can they do other things? Not really. There isn't anything outside the box in STO.
Mobs will never be challenging because they have no AI beyond using abilities in a certain order or under certain conditions. When a player learns how the AI works, they can out play the AI easily because they don't use it with any intelligence or strategy. SNB using enemies, for example: If you can't get and stay behind them, you just wait for the SNB then hit science team, buff up and take them out. They won't wait to use it till you are buffed. They won't fire it at a random point. They do it ~5s into the engagement.
The issue of course comes when you end up doing something ridiculous that pigeonholes players into using certain specific builds and abilities and exclude too many others. This happens when DPS checks are far too high, mob abilities are made to powerful, or when entire subsets of ships are made extremely undesirable, like cannon boats against heralds.
Harder content??????? i dont see harder content since, well, years. Oh wait, dont tell me people still mix more hp points with increased difficulty?? lol. Why im surprised xD.
They made the content harder and now hardly anyone is running anything when you look at the ques compared to a year ago.. most are a ghost town.
Curious. I went through all the Delta quadrant content with my last character that has 100% common and uncommon equipment. No reputation items, not anything at all. And im playing in advanced difficulty. Hell, hard??? are you serious?? i didnt die once in all the arc. Not even in the Kobali front (and i did all the battlezone missions).
About space, same, only common and uncommon equipment in a tier 4 Hafeh lol. Not died once single time. Advanced difficulty. Now maybe it is because i am a real skilled player (lol) or maybe not, but if you think the game is harder now than before.. think again.
The content is not harder. STFS are "empty" because the rewards are not worthy and the lag is making some people to avoid queues. And because other things. But because "difficulty"??? you must be kidding me. Unless you play in Elite, there is no "harder" difficulty. Not if you have minimum playing skills. Making me to waste 5 more minutes to kill a npc is not harder for me, it is just, i have more time to finish my coffee. lol.
Let's look at that the past track record of things shall we?
Cryptic has already stated that they will not put in an AI. Let's face it, an AI would potentially make the game even more unplayable for most and technically, could only apply in story arc missions. So Cryptic increased the hull of ships and resistances that they have. They put in timers for completing the missions. They had rewards worth getting if you completed said missions.
Upon completion of this, those who did the old "elite" facerolling missions until the enemy died missions took to the new advanced and elite missions. They failed gloriously. Complained heavily. Meanwhile some of us who wanted a real challenge found the VERY first changes extremely challenging. For the first time we couldn't go in focus on the transformer and generators like we used to. We had to take out the cubes on both sides first and then could do the generators and transformer. It made a 90second mission into 4-5 minutes easily for us. And kept us on our toes. Some of us loved it. But enough felt it was too difficult and so they nerfed it. Our first real challenge was met with such opposition that it never stood a change.
So upon changing it again after this, it became doable for a lot more. But still more are complaining about the content. Instead of trying to better themselves, either from spending time on the game in other areas or by repeating missions for gear rewards they simply tried to stay as they were. And while there was some minor tweaks here and there, it wasn't until recently that the time to complete missions was removed. So now or at least in due time, once again with doing a one thing at a time completion it can basically be facerolled again until completion.
Honestly, even IF Cryptic came out with some elite content, there's not a lot of challenge going on anymore. Biggest challenge is hitting Iconians and that's only a challenge because they can stop you in your tracks for a few seconds and disable your ship weapons thus delaying their demise. And even the couple Elite missions we have can be done in the right team setups. So it's less a matter of time and just a matter of skill and team work for those. Something a lot don't particularly aim to improve or even do.
This is the point in a nutshell, unfortunately this is a post most will ignore because it speaks volumes of not just the general playerbase but the vocal minority who roam these forums.
Cryptic did what they could with what was available to them, they increased the "difficulty" and added necessary requirements to complete missions and all they got was TRIBBLE kicked in their faces.
Not enough people were willing to change or learn for that matter, and lets not even talk about team work. Now one can easily retort that its their fault for leaving the general curve stagnant for 5 years, and that in many ways is true, but the fact remains that its been proven twice that with the players this game has that any type of greater intelligence and ability placed in the hands of the NPC causes severe backlash. Thankfully, I'm not in the positions the devs are because with some of the changes they've made IE Sphere being able to chase you down, I'd have left it and tell you all where to shove your FAW iWin spam.
The Iconian STF's are a challenge mainly due to disabling abilities. Take those out of the match and you're left with a boring brick wall of shields and hull to pew pew through. ISA, CSA, KSA, initially when DR rolled out had a few extra npc's added which was nice but the HP and Shields were crazy, this was scaled back. However these 3 are still mainly a hull and hit point sponge mission. NPC'S don't hit harder, they certainly aren't smarter its
When I say harder content I don't just mean things like new (soon to be old) Advanced. It could be things like no gear switching on combat maps, NPCs that use the same types of powers and tactics of players, and more. Do you think players would adapt or would they push back until NPCs are nerfed into pointlessness?
Devs are out to push P2W by changing the NPCs. Fight until they are back to normal.
Comments
Movies from the 80s or 90s? It has awesome shows of the 10s, like Person of Interest!
What is "Harder content"?
Is it higher HP and More DPS from the enemies, but the same idiotic AI, or is it an enhanced AI, but same-as-now DPS and HP?
It's just like saying "Hello! This is the part where I kill you!" to every NPC you meet.
I assume by "face rolling" that you mean they couldn't churn out 25k+ dps and curb stomp damage sponges...
Hrmm, you can curb stomp the damage sponges with 7k DPS and be considered face rolling...25k+ is more like eye rolling the mobs.
Cryptic has also moved toward bitesize and repeatable. Remember back when Dstahl was Executive Producer? We had insights like the game economy/missions/everything being balanced around an expected play time of just four hours per week. How could it possibly pay to develop more intricate content for that type of audience?
And without the need to upgrade, what is the motivation? There comes a point when the frustration of how the 'hard' content has been implemented, the poor player grouping mechanics (no kick/automated abuse tracking) and the meaningless rewards just overrule one's sense of motivation to stick it out, and challenge oneself. I find I hit that point far to quickly with Cryptic's content.
They'd probably fight the devs, but the PvE would be way more enjoyable than they currently are as it would shift the focus from spewing out DPS to actual teamwork and knowing to use abilities outside of damage dealing ones.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Unless you have cryptic data, that is the average for DPS league parsed activities. Which is already skewed irrecoverably by having a minimum of one dpsleague player in every parse. It is further off average because it is also only the subset of people who feel qualified to queue for advanced. Evidence suggests the average player doesn't queue at all, not even for normal (hence the abysmal queue rates).
It is as far from the actual average as mixing radar gun speed statistics from highways and NASCAR racers in a 3:1 ratio and claiming to have the average driving speed of American drivers when most drivers are on surface streets.
Which evidence suggest that an average player doesnt queue at all? Please give your official cryptic numbers that we didnt see.
Is this data coming from I dont and my friends dont data?
The DPS league data have parses from public and private with data ranging from 233K DPS to 100 to 0 DPS. Where is your "evidence" coming from?
First of all, you need to accept that there are player that want to go STF and there are players who dont want to go to STF. You dont count players who dont want to go to STF even if cryptic nerfs the queues since those player isnt part of the population who are willing to go to STFs. Which in population sample will skew results since these players wont go to STFS regardless of the situation.
The problem is players who want to go to STF but isnt competent enough to complete advance queues, not normal, but advance. that means these are willing players who go to STF which you cannot say are average players. They demand to compete/rewards like "an elitist", not enough capability to compete but unwilling to improve self. These are subset of players who believes they belong in the advance/elitist area but cannot achieve it without improving.
Your sig says imagine and yet you can not "get" a what if question. Stuff like this is why my vote for was a nope.avi. If PVE really did become anything more that a DPS race I sure we would see the last 3 pvpers on the forums get mad that grinding for spec points/ec/dil/trait mastery is taking even longer and that is ruining their fun. It would be kind of nice. PVP and PVE players both whining about the same thing.
It is late so I might not be at 100% chipper.
This right here.
The current system is just a way to get people to grind more TRIBBLE for "TEH DEEPS" to deal with the HP sponges on a tight timer. That's not what I call a true difficulty increase.
in fariness, cryptic did design npc that disables you. Of course, a player like you won't notice that since you don't player the other STFs?
Besides, in all MMos, npc have HPs. The only difference is raid players in those game have the damage requirement. In these forums, certain players is trying to tie up that is everyone's right to complete advance or elite mission even though they don't contribute nor understand the game mechanics. My point being, in whatever game you go there is a damage/hp requirement it just happen here that those complain here do not want To achieve those minimum Requirements and still complete whatever difficulty of a raid/STf.
You completely missed the point of my post even tho I kept it pretty simple for all the slow people. First of all I don't have any trouble completing what you call "high level" content and I understand the games mechanics better then most. None of that even matters. I'm saying that if they wanted to raise the level cap and create this supposedly elite content then they should have put some actual thought into it. The ai is just as stupid as before and uses all the same limited abilities as it did before. Adding more hit points does not constitute increased challenge. The enemies still can't do much of anything that would make them a danger unless you've got a very poorly built ship. They may take slightly longer to kill, but that's about it. Does that sound like elite content to you?
I remember in the early days of No Win when players was really trying to beat it. One of the big things I remember when a fleet mate asked to join their pre-made that had ready to beat it. A lot of quitting. Some factions are really annoying to fight and can or at least use to ruin a run. Not NPCs are created equal.
Have you actually completed elite content like herald space elite or hive space elite recently?
if you actually noticed they don't just add HP. They also add npc damage, potency of the disable and their abilities.
Look at ISA vs pre dr ISE. The Dps difference change between the 2 is around1-2k Dps. That is a very small increase. you forgot how they change the potency of the tachyon beam. And only noticed according to you added only HP.
because if it were just Hp they added, we won't be needing more heals in elite like Hive space or herald space or GGe nor any form of counter.
Although I am disagreeing with this, I agree with you that the AI isn't yet at par with a pvp chain disable-vape wherein it gives the possibility you die within 1 sec of the mission.
In a game like STO that has unlimited respawns, the purpose of enemies is to slow you down. It doesn't matter challenge-wise if that slowdown comes from them killing you and forcing you to respawn or just tanking and healing. Either way, you're losing time. Of course, to realize that challenge, there has to be a relevant failure condition. If you can't lose the mission no matter what, then there is no challenge no matter what.
DR upgraded many Advanced/Elite missions from no challenge to a some challenge. A subset of players who couldn't handle any challenge but refused to move to a lower difficulty level (which remained at zero challenge) threw a huge hissy fit over it, with the result that the devs now intend to make them zero challenge again.
LOL I only do 16-19k. I am still just face rolling. ;-P
The same happens in all 3 classic Borg STFs, except there the probes are all stationary, have a fixed target to heal and are partly disguised as generators and unshielded.
So they answer is: They are BFAWed away?
I can't say the possibility of failure offers a challenge at all, especially so when there is no possibility to adapt and overcome like in other games. If you fail a queue in STO, you get kicked out. No post mortem with your team to discuss what went wrong and how to approach it differently, and a half hour time out for your trouble.
In other games you do something like STFs and it can be really easy or really hard depending on the group. There is no challenge with a good group. In a bad group you have to work harder for it, but the key is you can adjust, work with them, and talk strategy as you fail the boss for the third time.
Challenge isn't offered by the existence of failure conditions, though. Lets be honest, there is no challenge whatsoever for a group that knows what they are doing and how to do it unless they are very poorly equipped. Even if they can "potentially" fail, they never will. There is no real risk of failure so removing failure conditions has zero effect on that group that knows how to do things and has the tools to do things. They have no challenge as it is, no difficulty to overcome.
But if we say failure potential is challenge, then in fact most people that play this game don't want challenge. That is why they flocked to fleet/channel runs when the failure conditions went in, so they could still play it and virtually never fail it. Fail conditions were a colossal failure because they didn't actually challenge anyone, just pissed people off who PUG to the point that they stop PUGging.
I don't think this game can offer real challenge. The game has far too few dimensions to demand the player consider and all too often the only one it bothers with demanding is DPS. Can they do other things? Not really. There isn't anything outside the box in STO.
Mobs will never be challenging because they have no AI beyond using abilities in a certain order or under certain conditions. When a player learns how the AI works, they can out play the AI easily because they don't use it with any intelligence or strategy. SNB using enemies, for example: If you can't get and stay behind them, you just wait for the SNB then hit science team, buff up and take them out. They won't wait to use it till you are buffed. They won't fire it at a random point. They do it ~5s into the engagement.
The issue of course comes when you end up doing something ridiculous that pigeonholes players into using certain specific builds and abilities and exclude too many others. This happens when DPS checks are far too high, mob abilities are made to powerful, or when entire subsets of ships are made extremely undesirable, like cannon boats against heralds.
Curious. I went through all the Delta quadrant content with my last character that has 100% common and uncommon equipment. No reputation items, not anything at all. And im playing in advanced difficulty. Hell, hard??? are you serious?? i didnt die once in all the arc. Not even in the Kobali front (and i did all the battlezone missions).
About space, same, only common and uncommon equipment in a tier 4 Hafeh lol. Not died once single time. Advanced difficulty. Now maybe it is because i am a real skilled player (lol) or maybe not, but if you think the game is harder now than before.. think again.
The content is not harder. STFS are "empty" because the rewards are not worthy and the lag is making some people to avoid queues. And because other things. But because "difficulty"??? you must be kidding me. Unless you play in Elite, there is no "harder" difficulty. Not if you have minimum playing skills. Making me to waste 5 more minutes to kill a npc is not harder for me, it is just, i have more time to finish my coffee. lol.
This is the point in a nutshell, unfortunately this is a post most will ignore because it speaks volumes of not just the general playerbase but the vocal minority who roam these forums.
Cryptic did what they could with what was available to them, they increased the "difficulty" and added necessary requirements to complete missions and all they got was TRIBBLE kicked in their faces.
Not enough people were willing to change or learn for that matter, and lets not even talk about team work. Now one can easily retort that its their fault for leaving the general curve stagnant for 5 years, and that in many ways is true, but the fact remains that its been proven twice that with the players this game has that any type of greater intelligence and ability placed in the hands of the NPC causes severe backlash. Thankfully, I'm not in the positions the devs are because with some of the changes they've made IE Sphere being able to chase you down, I'd have left it and tell you all where to shove your FAW iWin spam.
Devs are out to push P2W by changing the NPCs. Fight until they are back to normal.