Playing your role.

deokkent · July 2015

Before we begin this discussion, I would like people to take a moment to watch this short clip. Trust me it's relevant to the conversation.

https://youtu.be/vPzJSBHG4pI?t=2m44s

Did you observe anything peculiar? You might have noticed a barely functional Defiant close to getting destroyed by the Borg and the enterprise swooped in to defend it. You might have also noticed the enterprise crew going over logistics of their allies strength. You might have noticed some coordination too.

Now, my question is... How come this mentality is practically non-existent in this game? The majority of heals/resists can be cast to your teammates. Oddly enough, in my experience anyway, it is an anomaly if someone sends me a heal in STFs. I would sometimes go in a queue and warp out without having a single interaction with my teammates. I remember the same thing happening in organized matches. Isn't that a strange thing to have in a mmo?

PS: I realize there are language barriers and some people have personal issues interacting with people. Please refrain from using these excuses as not everyone is like that. I am not saying they aren't legitimate but that's not the issue here. What I am talking about here is a widespread thing.

I hope I am wrong about this, eh...

shadowwraith77 · July 2015

Well, flying into the path of an enemy, doesn't prevent it from attacking said weakened ally.

Now, with this in mind, we have these few reasons to blame!

A] The game doesn't actually require such teamwork, in 99.9% of all cases
B] Even when such instances it could help, many cannot get it right and/or, don't try or care
C] Any form of trinity roles that have been tried, have met with majority incompetence and/or, complaining
D] A good majority of players, just prefer to do it their way and/or, on their own

These are just 4 reasons, there are tons more other posters will add I am sure!

vivenneanthony · July 2015

You arent wrong. Who said we need teamwork when we have the almighty DPS non existent intelligent NPC.

rattler2 · July 2015

Probably because most people would rather focus on DPS and feel that if you can't keep yourself alive you fail. They probably also believe that what is dead cannot hurt you, so pew pew more.

I try and help when I can, but sometimes I'm not in range or the person I intend to heal slips out of range before I can cast a heal.

It kinda bugs me that there is so little communication outside of major hubs or Fleets. Most of the time I PUG an STF... its silent. Sometimes I get a "Hello", sometimes I run into someone who has an Ego and blames others for failing when that person is in fact the one who fails. And I've heard of people bailing on T5 ships, luckilly I haven't seen it but lets hope it stays VERY rare.

Unknown · July 2015

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gradii · July 2015

deokkent wrote: »

What really irks me, sometimes I would see a tanky cruiser on the team but it will NEVER send a single support ability to his/her teammate. This to me is very strange, it's like you're leaving a teammate behind to die.

I am not pushing for trinity roles. That's not what I am advocating for here. I am just wondering what's the point of flying a cruiser capable of supporting your teammates and watching them die left and right?

I think roles can be a good thing as long as people have the freedom to define their role for themselves.

Not every Science officer wants to be a medic, some want to debuff enemy damage and root them in place while burning them with fire.

Tactical officers can be bufftanks. Engineers can do more than set up turrets.

rattler2 · July 2015

gradii wrote: »

I think roles can be a good thing as long as people have the freedom to define their role for themselves.

Not every Science officer wants to be a medic, some want to debuff enemy damage and root them in place while burning them with fire.

Tactical officers can be bufftanks. Engineers can do more than set up turrets.

I think we're referring to space. The tactics you described are ground based.

gradii · July 2015

Space seems more difficult to implement roles for sure. Much explosions, hard to focus fully on teammates.

rattler2 · July 2015

Also ships tend to be more mobile, and get in and out of range. Also getting into range might put you in an awkward spot. Although Cruisers generally don't worry as much because AFAIK most Cruisers are beam builds so they can broadside.

farmallm · July 2015

On the ground I think it could work better. However in space I don't think it will. Since you have a lot more to keep an eye on. I been in a few red alerts / enemy encounters. There is too much to keep up with my ship than to keep an eye on the others.

Played many group instances on WoW it was easy on the ground. Since you usually stayed in a small area. And you had your job. I had tank, dps, and healed those. So once in a while you had to move around to avoid stuff. Nothing like what happens on ship like STO.

spyralpegacyon · July 2015

deokkent wrote: »

Did you observe anything peculiar?

The Akira didn't teamquit because the Defiant had to abandon ship and respawn, the Steamrunner was actually fighting and not loitering around the spawn point, the Enterprise effectively closed range to the cube instead of spamming FAW from 5k away, torpedoes actually did enough damage to blow up the cube...

lagomorphic · July 2015

Combat in this game is a DPS race. Good players bring enough heals to keep themselves alive. If you can't do DPS you're just not contributing.

In reality your dedicated healer is just keeping other baddies alive and your tank is flying around in circles thinking he's tanking like a boss while pulling exactly zero aggro.

bernatk · July 2015

heal me noob!

seaofsorrows · July 2015

To be fair.. it's easy enough to watch a fight scene in a scripted and planned out movie scene and ask 'why can't the game be like this?' but the reality is that from the perspective of a coder making an AI in a game, it's simply not that easy. The writers of the movie know how things are going to go because they're scripting it, game developers have to deal with an endless amount of variables that all go into considering how a game engine will handle combat.

I'm not saying that there isn't room for improvement, because there is.. a lot of room for massive improvement. But sadly, we're not really in a day and age where video games are going to mimic movie space battles.. at least not yet.

Oh, and thanks for the video clip, always loved that sequence.

picard51 · July 2015

I can see an argument to be made for having set roles for space in so much that you'd have offense and support roles, support being healing or anything else not purely based on DPS. A certain degree of healing yourself is to be expected and I can totally get behind that, but I also know from experience that the support helps.
I run an intel escort and I can usually keep myself alive with ease, however my brother and I run a lot of stuff together because it's just good old fashioned family fun, and he runs a cruiser. He can take more hits and bounce back than a kevlar coated rubber ball. When we run together we both have an easier time because I can dish out damage like crazy and he can keep me alive when I draw more threat than my shields can handle. I know that's my limited experience, but I've found it to be true that teh queues we run have a really high success rate because we're yelling at each other and using our strengths as crutches for the other's weaker points.
I can see whre a system of set roles could be abused where you have people queueing as support because the timer is shorter but even with that risk of abuse I think it'd be worth trying. Right now it's hit or miss on pugs if you'll have the straight DPS to go the shoot it if it moves route, or on the other end the communication and teamwork to take the cooperative route. So a system of roles couldn't hurt so long as it doesn't confine you by profession. There's no reason that a sci captain using anomalies can't do as much dmg as a tac officer with a full array of weapons firing.
So long story short, I think there's room for it if it isn't confining because the freedom to decide how you play is one of my favorite things about this game and what I think sets it apart.

adastra1930 · July 2015

You might be too quick to assume it's deliberate...I'm not sure I've ever used a heal on a team member, but that's because I usually play on my own and my play style is more focused on not getting myself blown up! That said, you raise a good point and next time I'm in a pug pve I'll try and throw a few heals/buffs around

sysil84 · July 2015

I don't know why the OP started this thread because in the 5 years I've played this game this has been the prevalent attitude. Players don't work as teams even when teamed up. Even when I play with fleet mates, people I know and talk with on TS, I have to ask for heals. Even when asked the heals come too late because they are unused to healing somebody else. They will very rarely heal or debuff me on their own.

I send out heals myself without being asked, but that's my PvP team-oriented healer reflexes. I do keep an eye out on the team and when I can help out I will.

seriousdave · July 2015

It's really less about "roles" but general teamplay which is pretty nonexistent if you don't actually know the people you're playing with.
And even for that, people would need to stick together within 10km to actually be able to do some crosshealing/supporting. And now think about it when does that actually happen?
Escorts have to move all over the place to stay alive and do some damage, cruisers aren't as maneuverable and usually just stay within optimal firing range & course, sci ships usually tend to be farther away to debuff and wreck havoc with boff powers like gw, tbr, etc. In runs with fleeties & friends with teamspeak or voicechat coordinating this is managable but in pugs without those things it's pretty much doomed from beginning simply because there's no way to communicate well enough to actually coordinate this. Srsly, people actually being in range for heals when needed only happens once in a blue moon.

Let alone the fact that random people also tend to ignore any advice, request, tactic, etc. to begin with. Best and most recent example for this would be pugging Gateway to Gre'thor. Srsly you wouldn't belive how many people just speed to the egde of the map to attack those groups after being told right at the start to go to the stations right in front of them....it's amazing, really.

spyralpegacyon · July 2015

reyan01 wrote: »

Yes. They used torpeodes as their real heavy firepower. It was torpedoes that finished the cube off. NOT the stupid, OP 'every build has to have a copy' (in STO) BFAW.
When they wanted to kill the cube, they used Torpedoes.

STO doesn't understand that concept. At all.

Thought experiment I'm too lazy to follow up on because I'm on vacation:

Come up with a round number of HP the cube would have left by the time of Enterprise's arrival.
Count how many torpedoes hit the cube on Picard's order.
Divide the first number by the second. Is this acceptable damage numbers for a single torpedo?

captainmal3 · July 2015

The flimsiest ships in the game can keep themselves alive. In addition, ability cooldowns are too long to use it on people who should be able to handle themselves. If the game were designed such that you needed a dedicated healer or the team will wipe then people would heal each other (or rather, the healer would, if death weren't a slap on the wrist) but the game just isn't built that way. Which is fine, in my opinion. This isn't a trinity mmo and there's no reason that it has to be.

And as for people not talking to each other, why is this actually a bad thing? You still get the job done, and if you want to interact socially there's fleets (or zone chat, for the masochists). When I go in to an STF, it's to kill some borg and get my rewards, not to have a nice chat with random people.

ryakidrys · July 2015

deokkent wrote: »

Before we begin this discussion, I would like people to take a moment to watch this short clip. Trust me it's relevant to the conversation.

https://youtu.be/vPzJSBHG4pI?t=2m44s

Did you observe anything peculiar? You might have noticed a barely functional Defiant close to getting destroyed by the Borg and the enterprise swooped in to defend it. You might have also noticed the enterprise crew going over logistics of their allies strength. You might have noticed some coordination too.

Now, my question is... How come this mentality is practically non-existent in this game? The majority of heals/resists can be cast to your teammates. Oddly enough, in my experience anyway, it is an anomaly if someone sends me a heal in STFs. I would sometimes go in a queue and warp out without having a single interaction with my teammates. I remember the same thing happening in organized matches. Isn't that a strange thing to have in a mmo?

Actual teamwork is rare. It's easier to blame others than work on teamwork.

Good players, even high end DPS players do things like sending heals to others since keeping players in the game helps the team. So, not every player is bad, just enough of them to frustrate folks.

As a tank player, I totally understand your point. If I setup lighter on the damage taking and more toward dishing out the damage, I find myself dangerously close to blowing up more often. In those cases, if I send someone a heal, I get blown up for it sometimes since I really should have used it on myself. If I build in more than enough tank, some players will think my DPS too low to be effective since they are only checking DPS, though I had most of the hits in (aggro) the entire STF. I've seen STFs fail with team averages near 20k DPS, and passed (all optionals) at below 6.5k DPS.

shadowwraith77 · July 2015

You know, I see tons of people who must have forgot, that when the heat becomes too much, get out of the battle with evasive maneuvers!

1 simple skill, that so many never seem to use, when their heals are on cd and no 1 else is lending them some aid!!!

rattler2 · July 2015

captainmal3 wrote: »

And as for people not talking to each other, why is this actually a bad thing? You still get the job done, and if you want to interact socially there's fleets (or zone chat, for the masochists). When I go in to an STF, it's to kill some borg and get my rewards, not to have a nice chat with random people.

True, however being able to coordinate when someone decides "F This you F'n N00bs sukz" and bails because the team doesn't meet his or her percieved "Standards" can mean the difference between victory and defeat. Once had that happen in an old ISE (Before Advanced was added) and some guy bailed on us because things weren't going "Perfectly". Dude actually bailed on us over a missed OPTIONAL. I went into Team Chat, coordinated the remaining players... and if I remember correctly we won anyways.
And being able to communicate in a Kitomer Space is valuable as if you got guys on Probe Duty they can call for help if they start getting overwhelmed or the probes are pushing them back towards the temporal gate because they're coming out staggered and you can't keep up because of cooldowns.

Sometimes you can counter a lack of DPS via Coordination and Teamwork. Got two low DPS ships? Get them firing on the same thing. Got a Grav Well? Use it to buy time for the rest of the team to do their thing. Lone Wolf attitudes are QUITE prevelant in STO. But if you can get some teamwork going... anything is possible. Unless you're rocking Mk I gear. Then that's just ridiculous.

medalionemissary · July 2015

This isn't a movie... we want the freedom to do what we want... that's why it's a game

sysil84 · July 2015

rattler2 wrote: »

Sometimes you can counter a lack of DPS via Coordination and Teamwork. Got two low DPS ships? Get them firing on the same thing. Got a Grav Well? Use it to buy time for the rest of the team to do their thing. Lone Wolf attitudes are QUITE prevelant in STO. But if you can get some teamwork going... anything is possible. Unless you're rocking Mk I gear. Then that's just ridiculous.

Personally I would make the missions in a way that REQUIRES coordination and teamwork to win. And not just DPS so that Grav Well, even if it does not do much damage, is valuable.

Unknown · July 2015

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rattler2 · July 2015

sysil84 wrote: »

Personally I would make the missions in a way that REQUIRES coordination and teamwork to win. And not just DPS so that Grav Well, even if it does not do much damage, is valuable.

When a fleetmate of mine is on and we run Infected, he's usually Slapping Grav Wells on the Nanite Spheres and can hold them practically forever.

deokkent wrote: »

This is the kind of experience I'd like to have in missions. Not red beams everywhere.

I don't have an AP build at all. ^^ I run Phaser, Disurptor, Phased Biomatter, Plasmatic Biomatter, Phased Polaron... kinda depends on which ship I'm in. But I've never had an AP build. Heck... for a long time I was running a Phased Tetryon build on my main's ship.

Playing your role.

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