And again by asking for nerfs who you really think would be affected? The guy who does 100K DPS, will do 87K DPS and the poor player/casual will go from 5K DPS to 500 DPS TRIBBLE him/her out of the right to enjoy a game because a bunch of elitists are mad that they can show their awesomeness, how about you take your mighty weapons off the ship and attack the Borg with a bunch of Mk II torpedoes?
I am not a big DPS-er myself, I just make sure I have enough to not drag down my team. This is a log from an ISA I did just today. I agree I'm not sure if we can just nerf everything. If we did what do you reckon some of these guys dps would be?
(I didn't want to name and shame) I left my name unaltered (Im an engineer in a resolute class)
The guy at the bottom only managed to do 700k damage over the course of 14 minutes....on the plus side I did learn what my real sustained dps was. I guess thats good.
I dont think the problem can be fixed with just a single change, thats for sure.
I agree the way to solve this issue is not a overall nerf to the damage from abilities, weapons, as well as nerfs to gear, since in the end that just reduces everyone by that same amount leaving all in the same basic area. It is more that with the power-creep an the extremely high end damage output that some can output needs a look at. To me one of the best ways of doing this would be a system that would cap your ship's stats based on the difficulty of the stfs, making it that these super-powered/equipped ships would not unbalance the lower difficulty stfs as their stats would be adjusted back down to the allowed stat-cap of the stf an so bringing them more inline with the other players in the stf.
And again by asking for nerfs who you really think would be affected? The guy who does 100K DPS, will do 87K DPS and the poor player/casual will go from 5K DPS to 500 DPS TRIBBLE him/her out of the right to enjoy a game because a bunch of elitists are mad that they can show their awesomeness, how about you take your mighty weapons off the ship and attack the Borg with a bunch of Mk II torpedoes?
Well unfortunately nerfs are the only option available.
If you increase the difficulty of missions or queues or battlezones then you won't have any affect on the players shooting over 50K or 100K DPS, but you'd drastically affect the newbie players as they'd stand no chance.
We saw this exact thing when DR hit the servers as the forums were on fire with people who could no longer get anywhere. And that wasn't just newbie players moaning, it was older veterans as well who'd put in a lot of effort to get their build sorted right (and i don't mean the 100K club or anything, just those with well thought out efficient builds).
So any diffculty change will hit the lower players but not the top tier who are a symptom of the problems the game faces.
You'd need to ramp up difficulty to stupid level to make a dent of the players hitting 100K+ now, I mean every queue would need to be like Battle of Korfez.
Now nerfs are no better but they can at least be targeted much better so they only affect the over-powered or under-powered systems within the game.
The things like BFAW, Kemocite, accuracy overflow, the fact power management is pointless now, cannon range dropoff, pet AI & survivability to name but a few.
And again by asking for nerfs who you really think would be affected? The guy who does 100K DPS, will do 87K DPS and the poor player/casual will go from 5K DPS to 500 DPS TRIBBLE him/her out of the right to enjoy a game because a bunch of elitists are mad that they can show their awesomeness, how about you take your mighty weapons off the ship and attack the Borg with a bunch of Mk II torpedoes?
Well unfortunately nerfs are the only option available.
If you increase the difficulty of missions or queues or battlezones then you won't have any affect on the players shooting over 50K or 100K DPS, but you'd drastically affect the newbie players as they'd stand no chance.
We saw this exact thing when DR hit the servers as the forums were on fire with people who could no longer get anywhere. And that wasn't just newbie players moaning, it was older veterans as well who'd put in a lot of effort to get their build sorted right (and i don't mean the 100K club or anything, just those with well thought out efficient builds).
So any diffculty change will hit the lower players but not the top tier who are a symptom of the problems the game faces.
You'd need to ramp up difficulty to stupid level to make a dent of the players hitting 100K+ now, I mean every queue would need to be like Battle of Korfez.
Now nerfs are no better but they can at least be targeted much better so they only affect the over-powered or under-powered systems within the game.
The things like BFAW, Kemocite, accuracy overflow, the fact power management is pointless now, cannon range dropoff, pet AI & survivability to name but a few.
I agree with you here on damage output that high end players can put forth is the issue, and that such output makes the lower stfs too easy. What do you think of the idea i put forth of implimenting a stat-cap based on the difficulty of the stf, which would cause any ship's stats that are higher than this cap to be reduced to the cap for that stf, and so would not affect the lower players but only the higher end players. This would keep the difficulty of the existing stfs intact, while also implimenting a way of curbing power-creep ruining these for lower players via the cap?
I agree with you here on damage output that high end players can put forth is the issue, and that such output makes the lower stfs too easy. What do you think of the idea i put forth of implimenting a stat-cap based on the difficulty of the stf, which would cause any ship's stats that are higher than this cap to be reduced to the cap for that stf, and so would not affect the lower players but only the higher end players. This would keep the difficulty of the existing stfs intact, while also implimenting a way of curbing power-creep ruining these for lower players via the cap?
I think a limit could possibly be ok, but it could swing either way and you really have no way of knowing.
I mean sure it would limit the DPS etc so that newbie players or those not chasing the DPS would stand a chance, and it would push those super-DPS players into the elites rather than cake-walking it through normal or even advanced.
But what if those super-DPS players just aren't good enough to manage elite? After all DPS isn't a true measure of skill, anyone could slap some max rarity & Mk kit plus some million EC abilities on a ship and get a pretty high DPS score without much skill. I'm not saying STO Wizard territory is easy, because those guys know their ships and the game like the back of their hands and run extremely well planned missions. But power-creep is such an issue now that relatively unskilled players can get real quite big DPS numbers without any skill.
Push those guys into elite and they may just not be able to handle it, then they either quit or they are force to dial back and play a way they don't want to.
I agree with you here on damage output that high end players can put forth is the issue, and that such output makes the lower stfs too easy. What do you think of the idea i put forth of implimenting a stat-cap based on the difficulty of the stf, which would cause any ship's stats that are higher than this cap to be reduced to the cap for that stf, and so would not affect the lower players but only the higher end players. This would keep the difficulty of the existing stfs intact, while also implimenting a way of curbing power-creep ruining these for lower players via the cap?
I think a limit could possibly be ok, but it could swing either way and you really have no way of knowing.
I mean sure it would limit the DPS etc so that newbie players or those not chasing the DPS would stand a chance, and it would push those super-DPS players into the elites rather than cake-walking it through normal or even advanced.
But what if those super-DPS players just aren't good enough to manage elite? After all DPS isn't a true measure of skill, anyone could slap some max rarity & Mk kit plus some million EC abilities on a ship and get a pretty high DPS score without much skill. I'm not saying STO Wizard territory is easy, because those guys know their ships and the game like the back of their hands and run extremely well planned missions. But power-creep is such an issue now that relatively unskilled players can get real quite big DPS numbers without any skill.
Push those guys into elite and they may just not be able to handle it, then they either quit or they are force to dial back and play a way they don't want to.
True though how big is that group of people, and pushing players into playing harder content is not a bad thing. I mean if the reason they are playing in the lower tiers is that it is the easier method as they are not skilled enough, than such a change would not change much as they would stay where they are, while those others would want to show off an push higher. I would also say that having such super-powered players lurking in the lower stf difficulties making them so unfun for other players that want to actually do the content over having it done for them could push those players out of playing stfs or even the game. That is the issue i think you will always have is "what is good for the community as a whole" and "what is good for me" are fighting as many want to play how they wish regardless of how it affects other players. There needs to be more incentivces for players to improve an do higher tier content outside of the normal marks an dil.
One of the problems I have, especially on the ground, is that difficulty has increased only in the durability of enemy npc's, but not in the lethality of npc's. So the missions have morphed from a balanced strategic challenge to an all out DPS clock race.
I miss the balance of challenge that these missions presented in yesteryear.
I miss the days when tanking Armek was a real triumph: usually for sci toons only. I miss the days when Becky was actually scary and teams had to coordinate to focus for on her all while worrying about drones spawning on the flanks. I miss the days when I actually feared the few Elite drones I faced. Now they are a dime a dozen- just a quick DPS sink to deal with.
Please give us elite Borg STFs back, and give the Borg a little bit of the bite they used to have.
The skill lies in being at the right place at the right time using the right skills! My build is around crowd control and AoE, combinded with self-heals, which makes me a perfect gate guard whilst the rest can Uber-DPS the transformers.
Sorry but as one sci captain to another, this is one of my pet peeves in ISA. I'm not saying playing a gate-guard won't work, but in most ISA PUGs I've played in, the team generally has just enough DPS to take down the transformer in time. If someone stayed at the gate to wait for spheres to spawn, the team will be one man down on the transformer. They may or may not have enough DPS to take down the transformer in time or have enough "tankiness" to share the aggro of the spheres between the 4. It gets worse when you have more than 1 gate-guard.
Again, I am not saying it will never work, because it could work for you. It's just that when I am out not playing my sci toon and I see other people wait near the gate hoping to CC spheres, it generally becomes a more difficult run than if everyone just focused fire on the transformer. This is also apparent in some DPS-channel runs where someone camps the spheres (I call it camping because at that DPS level, you don't need a gate-guard). Whenever someone does that, the entire team suffers a DPS loss and the run generally takes a bit longer because that person wasn't helping take down the transformer.
I'm not saying you shouldn't CC the Spheres either. You can focus first on the generators and transformer but position yourself so that you can fire off a GW with a minimal shift on your ship's position before they reach the transformer while still be able to fire at the transformer while they are pinned down by your GW.
And one more thing... to other sci-ship captains out there, please do not use an non-reversed TBR in ISA. If you push the spheres too far away from each other, they can be very difficult to control for any other ship in your team that has a GW. I've seen so many runs lately that had someone push spheres away only to have them come back at us from multiple angles making them close to impossible to be properly catched by a GW.
Back on topic....
As for DPS and skill, they are not mutually inclusive. Just yesterday I was in 3 consecutive PUGs where at least one of us was above 20k, 3 of us were in the 15-20k range and just one was below 10k and we still failed the optionals. DPS wise, that should have been more than enough to win the optionals even with the absence of a GW (which on one run we actually had). I think those 3 runs were good examples of players having good damage builds, but did not know how to apply that damage to complete the mission objectives. GGA is also an example here where people take out all those Iconians pretty well, but fail to close any of the radiation gates in time. In fact, they can just ignore those ship spawns since those ships will hardly tickle your shields or scratch the paint of those transports.
IMHO The new missions are going the right direction in mixing up DPS requirements and other non-DPS objectives to cater to a wider variety of playstyles. Counterpoint is a good example of this. You've got the initial stage where DPS helps you complete things faster, a second stage that rewards good teamplay and speedier builds, a third stage that rewards teams with good tanks that can take aggro away from those shuttling assault teams and also rewards high DPS teams that can take down the stations HP in time (but smart enough to stop at 40% health) and a final battle that is just awesome with a mega grav well thrown into the mix.
I think the current Borg STFs should be left alone. They can be "easy" mode for those that want to play them. What we need are new Borg STFs that have mixed objectives and newer Borg ships that use abilities to throw you off if you aren't on guard the same way the Mirror Ships do in the new Terran STFs. Counterpoint is proof that Cryptic can make great missions and revitalize old NPCs to be better and more fun opponents. I think that if they choose to, they can make some really fun new Borg content that requires a bit more than firepower to finish right.
Not saying that it is not nice to have easy content, but many times if you do not try an push players to get better or improve you will have many going the route of least resistance (Ie the easy stfs, like now an in recent history). Having super high dps ships in the stfs has spoiled the player-base allowing them to not so much worry about improving or getting better, since in the end many times you can be carried by the higher dps ships. If you make it that players need to get better as there is no longer this fact of having super-powered ships that can carry the stf groups, making it that all in the group need to pull their weight more in the groups.
Not saying that it is not nice to have easy content, but many times if you do not try an push players to get better or improve you will have many going the route of least resistance (Ie the easy stfs, like now an in recent history). Having super high dps ships in the stfs has spoiled the player-base allowing them to not so much worry about improving or getting better, since in the end many times you can be carried by the higher dps ships. If you make it that players need to get better as there is no longer this fact of having super-powered ships that can carry the stf groups, making it that all in the group need to pull their weight more in the groups.
High DPS ships mingling with low DPS ships is a problem brought about by:
A lack of elite content for Borg (Elite Borg content can have upgraded NPCs with better abilities and not just high hitpoints)
A lack of gating for advanced queues. When you go down to the root of things, advanced Borg STFs has a built-in minimum DPS requirements to get all the optionals right. IMO players who can't make the cut should be playing normal (I refused to play advanced until my ship parsed at least 8k before moving to advanced for example).
IMO before all adjustments are made, there should be some sort of gating requirement before allowing a player to play advanced missions. My personal favorite is being able to get all optionals won 10x and racking an x number of kills on the normal version of the STF before being allowed into advanced.
Gating advanced and elite modes will balance out the DPS levels of ships within that queue. The 100k+ guys are more than game to play elite rather than advanced, and I don't see a lot of 10-50k players going to normal queues. It's usually the lower DPS ships that try to get into advanced and elite even if they aren't prepared for it.
But having gated content again brings up the problem of how do newbie players measure their performance? Do you just have a results chart at the end of a run telling you all what you did in that run?
There's no way to measure performance in STO without third party applications so the overwhelming majority of players will have no way of knowing if they are getting better or not or even what level they should be playing at. And then you have some abilities and skills that aren't even measured bugging a like CLR plus certain runs are too large to record all the data required so they aren't even accurate. Finally, measuring someone's DPS doesn't truly indicate their skill or whether they should move up to elite or advanced. Just the same as I could give you the most powerful sports car in the world, won't mean you're the best driver. Power does not equal skill.
I already stated a possible solution above. Instead of gating through damage or gear, you place requirements based on success and kill counts. 5-10 consecutive successful STFs and/or x number of total kills for Borg STFs could work in my opinion.
If someone could make a vid or something to show devs how easy it is to do this maybe we help them to come up with idea's...
They got the picture alright and gave us Delta Rising.
They come up with time gated contend, they come up with annoying tasks to do and fail criteria to make it hard for us to play together. Still they will keep on selling power cuz it runs the game…
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If someone could make a vid or something to show devs how easy it is to do this maybe we help them to come up with idea's...
They are quite aware. Not long ago, the Devs invited players over to Tribble to test several fixes. I got in a round of CCA with Borticus. I'm not even sure it lasted a full minute. So much for acquiring data on the fixes. Bort actually boo'd in chat.
Problem is, power creep (I wish it was just a creep) sells. Even if the Devs are not happy with the current state of things: Money. It trumps all other concerns. If the game was anything other than a DPS race, would the money still roll in as it does?
I'm going that way too - I very rarely bother with ISA anymore. Being that I play a Sci ship 90% of the time, doing ISA generally results in my being a spectator to the sort of spectacle you described.
I've also pretty much given up on the whole thing. I spend money on this game, but I'm not about to throw money at it. Given that and the fact that Balance is a Curse word at Cryptic, I really see no reason to continue chasing a carrot I'll never reach. I play everything on Normal now. Maybe not quite as gratifying, but I can play how I want and can stop dumping resources into trying to make my builds work in Cryptic's cryptic vision of balance and endgame gameplay.
No matter witch one you take Normal or Advanced is it just me or is it now a days a walk in the park ? I think where I was frustrated because off the people and the lack off inexperience now is even become easy for those people... And playtime advanced well is done with an few elites in matter of seconds... Well I know I should say thank you, but for the new chars this can be a pain in the butt because they aren't ready yet for an elite STF but they must because of the lack of people because there all in advanced and not Normal play anymore... Make I any sense ???
GREAT.. another run that the STF's are too easy !!.. Last time end-game elitiest whinned about the STF's we ALL suffered thru the UBER Cryptic NPC Buff that went across the board for ALL NPC's.. Even the Boss in "Badlands" (Story Arc) was buffed from 350K HP to 875k HP on "elite" play settings..
Face it.. Now, those endgame elitiest are NOT playing the ELITE STF's they whinned for 'cause they are too hard. Instead, you see them in RED ALERTS and then bragging about one-shotting the TAC Groups, not just the TAC cube, the whole group. Or, they are just running Advanced STF's and then condeming players that are not good enough and don't match their Elitiest-Uber MKXIV EPIC everything set-up.
Gimme a break,, They asked for Elite stuff, they got it, and now they can't do Elite, so, now they focus on whinning about Advanced being too easy hoping Cryptic bends over backwards AGAIN for the elite few; Uber Buffs on Advanced STF's, just so the elite few will do what ?? ... (wait for it...) START WHINNING about "Normal STF's being to easy..
Player DO want to evolve; Players DO want to Upgrade; Players DO want to Do Elite stuff.. However, IMHO, the condencending attitudes, "Blacklist"; abusive/abrasive language towards players that aren't up to the Elitiest self-proclaimed-DPS-god status; only feeds the contempt of the majority of the player base.
After all, isn't that the REASON for the DPS "invite-only" Chats/que's ?? to keep the "lesser newbs/noobs" off of Mt. Olympus with the rest of the "DPS-Elitiest".. I say STAY in your Ques, private Chats, and keep isolated form the rest of the player base for ONE Reason - --
No matter witch one you take Normal or Advanced is it just me or is it now a days a walk in the park ? I think where I was frustrated because off the people and the lack off inexperience now is even become easy for those people... And playtime advanced well is done with an few elites in matter of seconds... Well I know I should say thank you, but for the new chars this can be a pain in the butt because they aren't ready yet for an elite STF but they must because of the lack of people because there all in advanced and not Normal play anymore... Make I any sense ???
GREAT.. another run that the STF's are too easy !!.. Last time end-game elitiest whinned about the STF's we ALL suffered thru the UBER Cryptic NPC Buff that went across the board for ALL NPC's.. Even the Boss in "Badlands" (Story Arc) was buffed from 350K HP to 875k HP on "elite" play settings..
Face it.. Now, those endgame elitiest are NOT playing the ELITE STF's they whinned for 'cause they are too hard. Instead, you see them in RED ALERTS and then bragging about one-shotting the TAC Groups, not just the TAC cube, the whole group. Or, they are just running Advanced STF's and then condeming players that are not good enough and don't match their Elitiest-Uber MKXIV EPIC everything set-up.
Gimme a break,, They asked for Elite stuff, they got it, and now they can't do Elite, so, now they focus on whinning about Advanced being too easy hoping Cryptic bends over backwards AGAIN for the elite few; Uber Buffs on Advanced STF's, just so the elite few will do what ?? ... (wait for it...) START WHINNING about "Normal STF's being to easy..
Player DO want to evolve; Players DO want to Upgrade; Players DO want to Do Elite stuff.. However, IMHO, the condencending attitudes, "Blacklist"; abusive/abrasive language towards players that aren't up to the Elitiest self-proclaimed-DPS-god status; only feeds the contempt of the majority of the player base.
After all, isn't that the REASON for the DPS "invite-only" Chats/que's ?? to keep the "lesser newbs/noobs" off of Mt. Olympus with the rest of the "DPS-Elitiest".. I say STAY in your Ques, private Chats, and keep isolated form the rest of the player base for ONE Reason - --
So we can ENJOY the game...
tyvm.. Be nice to each other.. Have fun..
Exactly the point, some of the people sound like the e-peen PVPeers, we want PVP, a week later PVP sucks, no one wants to participate, no new people to gank, so PVP sucks.
Seek and ye shall find. Ask and ye shall receive. Rabboni
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" (Benjamin Franklin).
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
No matter witch one you take Normal or Advanced is it just me or is it now a days a walk in the park ? I think where I was frustrated because off the people and the lack off inexperience now is even become easy for those people... And playtime advanced well is done with an few elites in matter of seconds... Well I know I should say thank you, but for the new chars this can be a pain in the butt because they aren't ready yet for an elite STF but they must because of the lack of people because there all in advanced and not Normal play anymore... Make I any sense ???
The problem is that Cryptic has allowed the ceation of a massive divide between the bad player and the good player.
A bad player trundles at sub 5k dps. He will NEVER do any advanced qeue with success. Then we have the good player whose dps ranges from 18k+ to 100k+.
How do you, in eanest, even try to balance the content if you have divides like this? Do you scale the mobs for the 100k dps guys? Or the mid-tier?
Scaling it to the lowly non-effort (as in effort to actually do some research on how to equip and captain their ships properly...) Player sure as hell will not be good.
You could try to mitigate dps usefullness by introducing silly mechanics and timed triggers, but those things carry their very own brand of suckage fruit. Just think about the aggravating timer in mirror incursion, the braindead gat section of grethor. The idiotic whack a mole of the Breach core.
Cryptic does not exactly have reliable track record with this, in fact the Mission "Assault on terok nor" is an example of the negative, in that it mitigates DPs by making mirror leeta invulnerable (but then also fails to make sure even the dumbest palyer understands what is required of him. Since leeta cannot be crowd controled or aggro-led, it comes down to random chance whether you can or can not finish this fight fast.
"Counterpoint" and the Badlands Zone are an example of a good mission, both reward you for DPS but do not require it do fullfill the mission objectives. They also do not introduce aggravating stop mechanics that leave the player at the mercy of random chance - or his dumbass teammate.
The Reason people play borg queues is because dps can sufficiently make up for horrible teammates.
All the deserted qeueues are those that require upper level brain activity for decent completion, something the average STO player has long since proven to not have. Or the ar queues with stop mechanics that waste the players time.
Infected SpacE Advanced and Khitmoer space advanced are in a good place, the average decent pug can complet them without issue, get their dil and marks and materials and walk away with their goal achieved.
The Cure Space advanced ca nbe nasty if the team in unprepared to deal with the assault on the kang, but still doable with a decent tam.
So those missinos are actually good the way they are. And as a player who was here since headstart i can tell you right now that i prefer these 5-7 minutes of shooting to the dumb script mess they were before their revamps.
Another Good mission in STO? Korfez. I like this mission. Yes it sucks if your team sucks but it rewards all players-archtypes, the tanks, the scis and the tacs. The mission objectives are never directly centered on killing stuff, after the first "you need to meet this minimum requirement" stage. A good tank can hold a full side of the map on his own and keep the NPC charges alive, simply by being an excellent tank.
A Sc ichar can crowndcontrol/magick murder and the tac can succeed by shooting stuff.
The last part again gives roles to everyone palyer type. The tank can aggro and tank all the spawns, the dps and sci will take care of the mission critical tortpedoes and the Boss ship itself. Anyoen can contribute and dps is a quality of live measure more than anything.
I think more missions should follow this example, but instead of a straight game over, the failed first stage should send the palyers to an easier chain of scenarios.
You can gauge the teams performance with the first stage, then dynamically send the team to a different followup stages.
You can create missinos that do not automatically fail and never waste the players time. Reward good players by giving them more and do not punish bad players or those who are dragged dow nby their pug.
I think korfez has shown us a nice way to do these things. Add a stag that gauges the teams perforance in a given task ,then proceed to shuttle them along the scenearios that meet the teams performance level.
Pretty much everything that was said here. Except not many people play Korfez because it isn't just a mash spacebar scenerio. Which I think is also another root of the problem.
As many others have put it, Cryptic upped the abilities available to the Borg at one point, and the forums was filled with people complaining about how hard it was. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong about this, they had openly stated that they can't just up the AI difficulty of the NPCs.. So they can either increase HP or give the AI more player abilities to spam, to which they did one and the other and it looks like they are experimenting with both now (albeit extremely scaled down).
This has nothing to do with elitists vs casual players but everything to do with the back and forth in terms of changes imo. Cryptic is one of the very few game devs who actually do listen to their playerbase and effect changes catered toward them. "Don't like the Elite Tac Cube tanking and being able to survive everything you've got in an alpha? No problem, we'll tone it down a bit.." or "You need someone to sci cc and placate an enemy long enough for your engi's to do x,y,z? No problem, we'll remove that requirement for full rewards entirely."
Here's where the opinion rant comes in.. This also has some to do with the 140char lazy entitlement behavior that has been bred into the new and learned/embraced by the older "gamer" crowd and its not limited to just STO either. It sounds horrible and negative and I'm guilty of it myself as well, but hey.. /rant
Anyway, this has been going on for a long time and I generally chalked up the dead STFs as being a normal thing.. I mean how many times would you want to run a dungeon you've already gotten the gear its related to for? Sure you'd have the odd groups running it for new chars and whatnot but its typically the evolution of the game. Right now you'll see full queues of Mirror related stuff because its the new bread. Why is ISA so easy? Sure, power creep, under normal circumstances its a very normal thing (this all aside from people outputting 110k dps of course)
Not saying that it is not nice to have easy content, but many times if you do not try an push players to get better or improve you will have many going the route of least resistance (Ie the easy stfs, like now an in recent history). Having super high dps ships in the stfs has spoiled the player-base allowing them to not so much worry about improving or getting better, since in the end many times you can be carried by the higher dps ships. If you make it that players need to get better as there is no longer this fact of having super-powered ships that can carry the stf groups, making it that all in the group need to pull their weight more in the groups.
High DPS ships mingling with low DPS ships is a problem brought about by:
A lack of elite content for Borg (Elite Borg content can have upgraded NPCs with better abilities and not just high hitpoints)
A lack of gating for advanced queues. When you go down to the root of things, advanced Borg STFs has a built-in minimum DPS requirements to get all the optionals right. IMO players who can't make the cut should be playing normal (I refused to play advanced until my ship parsed at least 8k before moving to advanced for example).
IMO before all adjustments are made, there should be some sort of gating requirement before allowing a player to play advanced missions. My personal favorite is being able to get all optionals won 10x and racking an x number of kills on the normal version of the STF before being allowed into advanced.
Gating advanced and elite modes will balance out the DPS levels of ships within that queue. The 100k+ guys are more than game to play elite rather than advanced, and I don't see a lot of 10-50k players going to normal queues. It's usually the lower DPS ships that try to get into advanced and elite even if they aren't prepared for it.
That would work except you are still going to get alot of players that want to get the borg elite marks that are needed for the borg rep items. Also gating has the issue of just like a rotation of the available stf ques that would make different line-up of stfs to be played on a weekly rotation in the bid to push players to play different stfs, it would be seen as the devs an players pushing other players to play the game how they want not how the player desires. To me gating the stfs both on which ones you can enter or not enter (like that a ship able to enter elite cann't enter advanced now or normal.), as well as a limiting of the available stfs by rotating them on a weekly/bi-weekly time frame (though you would need to keep one stf that gives the marks for each of the factions in game available.). Now i doubt this would be done as like said players hate being told how to play an would cry for weeks over such a turn.
I would much rather see a fully done system that alters an scales players back to a appropriate level of stats an abilities , to allow these player to not unbalance the stf they are in. It would be nice if they could give the borg and other enemies more abilities,or even just more interesting ways of interacting with the players, such as the idea of giving the borg both a adapting system that improves their damage/abilties an shields based on how long they are hitting or being hit by players. Like a stacking shield resistance buff that is applied to either the specific ship's weapon damage that is hitting the borg-ship, or against the energy type of the ship's weapons that are hitting the borg-ship. Than you can also have a shield penetration buff that the borg-weapons apply to ships they hit stacking as they hit the ship, and then with these shield resistance/penetration buffs being able to be taken off the borg-ship or the borg-ship's target by using different abilties (science team, tactical team, extend shields/transfer shield strength.).
Their is one simple solution to all off it.... Lower the cost or bring it back like it was you earn a borg elite mark and later you might trade it on the DS9 shop and make it a very rare drop. But I rather would go for lowering the cost because when you have it you still have to get it to Mark XIV and that's quite expensive !!! doesn't matter if you upgrade it with the help of R&D or exchange both cases it's pretty expensive...
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised. It's got me through the worst of the last three years. I beat the Borg with it."
I agree that the power creep needs to be curbed to help with the outright laughable amount of dps a single ship can output, and making it that something which is meant to be played as a group is now solo-able by those players. Though also it would help to allow the team to better balance an create interesting, challenging content that is so for all players. Most games seek to get a good 10-20% different between the output of players top to bottom at top ranks.
As weird as it sounds i would not mind seeing a gear/stat cap placed on the ques, now in this idea it would be that each stf difficulty has a upper threshold that your ship's stats are set to if it's stats outstrip these threshold levels. If this was done than you would have that a fully decked out ship would still be very powerful as it would be at the top of the stat point levels allowed in that stf, but would not be so much able to solo the content or finish it extremely quick unless you have all the ship in the stf at the cap. This would also push players to try other difficulties of the stfs.
Myself i always liked the idea that was brought up in past threads for a revamp to the borg in space content, that instead of buffing their damage they gain a adaptation type ability/feature. In this idea their shields would gain a shield hardness/resistance buff that would be applied to the energy type being used against their shields, maybe make it that it is a chance based effect that or is applied to the energy type used the most against the borg ship. While this could also be done to the weapons of the borg making it that the longer they fire on your shields they either gain a stacking pen buff against your ship specifically, or just that it would gain a stacking shield damage buff against your ship specifically. One big reason i like this idea is that it actually feels very borg-like, and would make them more interesting to fight in the content. Now of course this idea would need to be fully fleshed out, and developed before implemented into the game yet i think it would be very interesting an fun change.
I remember suggesting adding the adaptive ability of the Borg(one of the reasons they were scary) into space combat. I was dodging Force chokes for days.
STO: Where men are men and the women probably are too.
I support the Star Trek Battles channel.
I agree that the power creep needs to be curbed to help with the outright laughable amount of dps a single ship can output, and making it that something which is meant to be played as a group is now solo-able by those players. Though also it would help to allow the team to better balance an create interesting, challenging content that is so for all players. Most games seek to get a good 10-20% different between the output of players top to bottom at top ranks.
As weird as it sounds i would not mind seeing a gear/stat cap placed on the ques, now in this idea it would be that each stf difficulty has a upper threshold that your ship's stats are set to if it's stats outstrip these threshold levels. If this was done than you would have that a fully decked out ship would still be very powerful as it would be at the top of the stat point levels allowed in that stf, but would not be so much able to solo the content or finish it extremely quick unless you have all the ship in the stf at the cap. This would also push players to try other difficulties of the stfs.
Myself i always liked the idea that was brought up in past threads for a revamp to the borg in space content, that instead of buffing their damage they gain a adaptation type ability/feature. In this idea their shields would gain a shield hardness/resistance buff that would be applied to the energy type being used against their shields, maybe make it that it is a chance based effect that or is applied to the energy type used the most against the borg ship. While this could also be done to the weapons of the borg making it that the longer they fire on your shields they either gain a stacking pen buff against your ship specifically, or just that it would gain a stacking shield damage buff against your ship specifically. One big reason i like this idea is that it actually feels very borg-like, and would make them more interesting to fight in the content. Now of course this idea would need to be fully fleshed out, and developed before implemented into the game yet i think it would be very interesting an fun change.
I remember suggesting adding the adaptive ability of the Borg(one of the reasons they were scary) into space combat. I was dodging Force chokes for days.
I believe i remember that though i will agree that making it like how the borg in ground is would not be good, as than you would have weapons becoming fully useless, which is why i was thinking of making it a shield hardness/resistance stacking buff as than you could still overcome it with exceeding high damage. Same thing with adding an adapting weapon system feature with the borg that would make it that them focusing your shields/hulls too long effectively enhances thier damage.
Though these would need to be more fleshed out, and would work best in a stf system that has defined limits on what kind of stats players/ships have in that content level. Also having defined stat ranges are really good as than you can balance the content on the difficulty rating (normal, advanced, elite) as you know that the top end will not exceed this stat-limit as they are restricted to that limit an brought back inline with that limit if they exceed in when in the stf. Honestly i think even jsut this measure of placing stat-limits on stfs can bring back the feel of difficulty an power of the stf/enemies, since even the highest geared player will be only able to be at the top stat limit since their stats would be reset to those limits if it exceeds it (also would make it funnier for those other players as they can play actually.).
Upgraded everything it takes me a few seconds to get an Tac cube down, upgraded all fleet stuff up to Mk XIV purple. I take the portal out alone in a 54,6 secs, most team players needed a few minutes to even make a dent in a portal. They should upgrade Borg stuff to Mk XIV I believe it's still Mk XII that's why it's so easy to destroy.... I don't know how they do this I'm not familiar with coding like that. I'm a mod builder not a game builder !!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised. It's got me through the worst of the last three years. I beat the Borg with it."
For the most part, this game is horrendously unbalanced. Whether it be that new content is clearly better as a means designed to push sales, some abilities not working properly or at all, or just some weapons being blatantly better than others (which can also be used to push sales). Some times, people who pay for everything get the better experience and can build the 50k+ dps builds to boot (hence some of the P2W claims). Regardless of the reasoning why things can be unbalanced, they just are. For better or worse, they just are.
To make matters worse, Cryptic doesn't really do anything to teach you any better. There is no real tutorial that teaches you exactly how to play on advanced or elite, but instead, just the general "Build it your way" mentality, which as we all know, can be very ineffective. Things might be better if Cryptic made the effort to better balance the weapons, so they were better all around rather than just in one specific instance or against enemies of a certain type. Adding things into the game to actually teach people to play at better levels, things in the game might be a lot better.
For the second issue, the same thing could apply here. Having a more informative tutorial, or even an end game tutorial teaching players how to build and captain for advanced and elite modes would go a long way to making things better. Unfortunately, as has been the case of the mirror event recently, the major issue against players is the fact that so many players just. don't. care.
So, so many leechers...
Needless to say, they either don't care about the team, their build, or doing things properly, because some times the lack of effort still yields the same rewards, so why bother? Other times, the players don't know any better (due to lack of tutorials) how to build a better ship. Cryptic can't punish the casual players, yet as we've seen with the Advanced queue for the mirror event, they can't just cater to the hardcore group as well. With that mission specifically though, they pushed in one direction and it really just seemed to be a bit overkill, making it too difficult for casual players.
On the one hand, they can't just make the game for one group without upsetting the other. On the other hand, it seems like sometimes, they just don't know how to do things without breaking the game somehow. For the most part, Cryptic can't really handle challenging, instead opting for more hp and dps, and maybe some unseen buffs or some such, who knows. The game seems to cheat to win more than actually provide real challenges for players, which only enhances the money grubbing DPS race that is Star Trek Online.
I feel like they should spend a little more time trying to add in more things that would add challenge rather than just boosting the enemies to unrealistic (unachievable by players) levels. They should rebalance weapons and such, to allow for a wider variety of builds, but also add in a mission series that would actually teach players (and perhaps test them) how to play at the harder difficulties.
Until they do a few of those things, the game will still be a mismatched system, where elite in some missions is easier than advanced in others, while newer content might be bugged (due to lack of testing) and harder than intended. Other times, things might still just boil down to being on a bad team, or having the one or two people who are just there for marks.
I rather they update the Borg not change weapons again then we have to refit again all the stuff and upgrade all the fleet stuff again. they could make some better stuff to challenge the fleet stuff but I think they will not because they jeopardize there income... But there enough FAQ's online how to build 50K or higher DPS Ships, ask fleet members or other players most will tell you the basics of getting a good ship and get you up to speed. ( Welcome to the world of DPS )
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised. It's got me through the worst of the last three years. I beat the Borg with it."
The real problem is that it's possible to have a disparity of dps from sub 1k to over 100k on the same ship.
They need to up the minimum to around 5k by changing weapons power system mechanics and the minimum that can contribute, while also providing a tutorial on DPS, tanking, and healing.
The fact is there are so many variables for increasing damage - I think the easiest solution would be to raise the minimum that the window lickers can do.
In regards to tutorials, while some game developer's do make them, I have also seen many games now a days relying solely on game books, and/or people youtubing/forum posting tutorials like this MMO currently has available.
While STO might not have game books available, the community has made plenty of tutorials readily available!!!
Comments
I am not a big DPS-er myself, I just make sure I have enough to not drag down my team. This is a log from an ISA I did just today. I agree I'm not sure if we can just nerf everything. If we did what do you reckon some of these guys dps would be?
(I didn't want to name and shame) I left my name unaltered (Im an engineer in a resolute class)
SCM - Infected [LR] (S) - [14:06] DMG(DPS) -
Torg: 23.35M (27.78K) dps
R--o: 12.73M (15.08K) dps
K---r: 6.33M (7.56K) dps
T---n: 2.06M (2.47K) dps
H--e: 723.19K (876.17) dps
The guy at the bottom only managed to do 700k damage over the course of 14 minutes....on the plus side I did learn what my real sustained dps was. I guess thats good.
I dont think the problem can be fixed with just a single change, thats for sure.
Well unfortunately nerfs are the only option available.
If you increase the difficulty of missions or queues or battlezones then you won't have any affect on the players shooting over 50K or 100K DPS, but you'd drastically affect the newbie players as they'd stand no chance.
We saw this exact thing when DR hit the servers as the forums were on fire with people who could no longer get anywhere. And that wasn't just newbie players moaning, it was older veterans as well who'd put in a lot of effort to get their build sorted right (and i don't mean the 100K club or anything, just those with well thought out efficient builds).
So any diffculty change will hit the lower players but not the top tier who are a symptom of the problems the game faces.
You'd need to ramp up difficulty to stupid level to make a dent of the players hitting 100K+ now, I mean every queue would need to be like Battle of Korfez.
Now nerfs are no better but they can at least be targeted much better so they only affect the over-powered or under-powered systems within the game.
The things like BFAW, Kemocite, accuracy overflow, the fact power management is pointless now, cannon range dropoff, pet AI & survivability to name but a few.
I agree with you here on damage output that high end players can put forth is the issue, and that such output makes the lower stfs too easy. What do you think of the idea i put forth of implimenting a stat-cap based on the difficulty of the stf, which would cause any ship's stats that are higher than this cap to be reduced to the cap for that stf, and so would not affect the lower players but only the higher end players. This would keep the difficulty of the existing stfs intact, while also implimenting a way of curbing power-creep ruining these for lower players via the cap?
I think a limit could possibly be ok, but it could swing either way and you really have no way of knowing.
I mean sure it would limit the DPS etc so that newbie players or those not chasing the DPS would stand a chance, and it would push those super-DPS players into the elites rather than cake-walking it through normal or even advanced.
But what if those super-DPS players just aren't good enough to manage elite? After all DPS isn't a true measure of skill, anyone could slap some max rarity & Mk kit plus some million EC abilities on a ship and get a pretty high DPS score without much skill. I'm not saying STO Wizard territory is easy, because those guys know their ships and the game like the back of their hands and run extremely well planned missions. But power-creep is such an issue now that relatively unskilled players can get real quite big DPS numbers without any skill.
Push those guys into elite and they may just not be able to handle it, then they either quit or they are force to dial back and play a way they don't want to.
True though how big is that group of people, and pushing players into playing harder content is not a bad thing. I mean if the reason they are playing in the lower tiers is that it is the easier method as they are not skilled enough, than such a change would not change much as they would stay where they are, while those others would want to show off an push higher. I would also say that having such super-powered players lurking in the lower stf difficulties making them so unfun for other players that want to actually do the content over having it done for them could push those players out of playing stfs or even the game. That is the issue i think you will always have is "what is good for the community as a whole" and "what is good for me" are fighting as many want to play how they wish regardless of how it affects other players. There needs to be more incentivces for players to improve an do higher tier content outside of the normal marks an dil.
Quite the difference from 100k+
RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
I miss the balance of challenge that these missions presented in yesteryear.
I miss the days when tanking Armek was a real triumph: usually for sci toons only. I miss the days when Becky was actually scary and teams had to coordinate to focus for on her all while worrying about drones spawning on the flanks. I miss the days when I actually feared the few Elite drones I faced. Now they are a dime a dozen- just a quick DPS sink to deal with.
Please give us elite Borg STFs back, and give the Borg a little bit of the bite they used to have.
Sorry but as one sci captain to another, this is one of my pet peeves in ISA. I'm not saying playing a gate-guard won't work, but in most ISA PUGs I've played in, the team generally has just enough DPS to take down the transformer in time. If someone stayed at the gate to wait for spheres to spawn, the team will be one man down on the transformer. They may or may not have enough DPS to take down the transformer in time or have enough "tankiness" to share the aggro of the spheres between the 4. It gets worse when you have more than 1 gate-guard.
Again, I am not saying it will never work, because it could work for you. It's just that when I am out not playing my sci toon and I see other people wait near the gate hoping to CC spheres, it generally becomes a more difficult run than if everyone just focused fire on the transformer. This is also apparent in some DPS-channel runs where someone camps the spheres (I call it camping because at that DPS level, you don't need a gate-guard). Whenever someone does that, the entire team suffers a DPS loss and the run generally takes a bit longer because that person wasn't helping take down the transformer.
I'm not saying you shouldn't CC the Spheres either. You can focus first on the generators and transformer but position yourself so that you can fire off a GW with a minimal shift on your ship's position before they reach the transformer while still be able to fire at the transformer while they are pinned down by your GW.
And one more thing... to other sci-ship captains out there, please do not use an non-reversed TBR in ISA. If you push the spheres too far away from each other, they can be very difficult to control for any other ship in your team that has a GW. I've seen so many runs lately that had someone push spheres away only to have them come back at us from multiple angles making them close to impossible to be properly catched by a GW.
Back on topic....
As for DPS and skill, they are not mutually inclusive. Just yesterday I was in 3 consecutive PUGs where at least one of us was above 20k, 3 of us were in the 15-20k range and just one was below 10k and we still failed the optionals. DPS wise, that should have been more than enough to win the optionals even with the absence of a GW (which on one run we actually had). I think those 3 runs were good examples of players having good damage builds, but did not know how to apply that damage to complete the mission objectives. GGA is also an example here where people take out all those Iconians pretty well, but fail to close any of the radiation gates in time. In fact, they can just ignore those ship spawns since those ships will hardly tickle your shields or scratch the paint of those transports.
IMHO The new missions are going the right direction in mixing up DPS requirements and other non-DPS objectives to cater to a wider variety of playstyles. Counterpoint is a good example of this. You've got the initial stage where DPS helps you complete things faster, a second stage that rewards good teamplay and speedier builds, a third stage that rewards teams with good tanks that can take aggro away from those shuttling assault teams and also rewards high DPS teams that can take down the stations HP in time (but smart enough to stop at 40% health) and a final battle that is just awesome with a mega grav well thrown into the mix.
I think the current Borg STFs should be left alone. They can be "easy" mode for those that want to play them. What we need are new Borg STFs that have mixed objectives and newer Borg ships that use abilities to throw you off if you aren't on guard the same way the Mirror Ships do in the new Terran STFs. Counterpoint is proof that Cryptic can make great missions and revitalize old NPCs to be better and more fun opponents. I think that if they choose to, they can make some really fun new Borg content that requires a bit more than firepower to finish right.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
High DPS ships mingling with low DPS ships is a problem brought about by:
IMO before all adjustments are made, there should be some sort of gating requirement before allowing a player to play advanced missions. My personal favorite is being able to get all optionals won 10x and racking an x number of kills on the normal version of the STF before being allowed into advanced.
Gating advanced and elite modes will balance out the DPS levels of ships within that queue. The 100k+ guys are more than game to play elite rather than advanced, and I don't see a lot of 10-50k players going to normal queues. It's usually the lower DPS ships that try to get into advanced and elite even if they aren't prepared for it.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
There's no way to measure performance in STO without third party applications so the overwhelming majority of players will have no way of knowing if they are getting better or not or even what level they should be playing at.
And then you have some abilities and skills that aren't even measured bugging a like CLR plus certain runs are too large to record all the data required so they aren't even accurate.
Finally, measuring someone's DPS doesn't truly indicate their skill or whether they should move up to elite or advanced. Just the same as I could give you the most powerful sports car in the world, won't mean you're the best driver. Power does not equal skill.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
"Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised. It's got me through the worst of the last three years. I beat the Borg with it."
They got the picture alright and gave us Delta Rising.
They come up with time gated contend, they come up with annoying tasks to do and fail criteria to make it hard for us to play together. Still they will keep on selling power cuz it runs the game…
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
They are quite aware. Not long ago, the Devs invited players over to Tribble to test several fixes. I got in a round of CCA with Borticus. I'm not even sure it lasted a full minute. So much for acquiring data on the fixes. Bort actually boo'd in chat.
Problem is, power creep (I wish it was just a creep) sells. Even if the Devs are not happy with the current state of things: Money. It trumps all other concerns. If the game was anything other than a DPS race, would the money still roll in as it does?
I've also pretty much given up on the whole thing. I spend money on this game, but I'm not about to throw money at it. Given that and the fact that Balance is a Curse word at Cryptic, I really see no reason to continue chasing a carrot I'll never reach. I play everything on Normal now. Maybe not quite as gratifying, but I can play how I want and can stop dumping resources into trying to make my builds work in Cryptic's cryptic vision of balance and endgame gameplay.
GREAT.. another run that the STF's are too easy !!.. Last time end-game elitiest whinned about the STF's we ALL suffered thru the UBER Cryptic NPC Buff that went across the board for ALL NPC's.. Even the Boss in "Badlands" (Story Arc) was buffed from 350K HP to 875k HP on "elite" play settings..
Face it.. Now, those endgame elitiest are NOT playing the ELITE STF's they whinned for 'cause they are too hard. Instead, you see them in RED ALERTS and then bragging about one-shotting the TAC Groups, not just the TAC cube, the whole group. Or, they are just running Advanced STF's and then condeming players that are not good enough and don't match their Elitiest-Uber MKXIV EPIC everything set-up.
Gimme a break,, They asked for Elite stuff, they got it, and now they can't do Elite, so, now they focus on whinning about Advanced being too easy hoping Cryptic bends over backwards AGAIN for the elite few; Uber Buffs on Advanced STF's, just so the elite few will do what ?? ... (wait for it...) START WHINNING about "Normal STF's being to easy..
Player DO want to evolve; Players DO want to Upgrade; Players DO want to Do Elite stuff.. However, IMHO, the condencending attitudes, "Blacklist"; abusive/abrasive language towards players that aren't up to the Elitiest self-proclaimed-DPS-god status; only feeds the contempt of the majority of the player base.
After all, isn't that the REASON for the DPS "invite-only" Chats/que's ?? to keep the "lesser newbs/noobs" off of Mt. Olympus with the rest of the "DPS-Elitiest".. I say STAY in your Ques, private Chats, and keep isolated form the rest of the player base for ONE Reason - --
So we can ENJOY the game...
tyvm.. Be nice to each other.. Have fun..
Exactly the point, some of the people sound like the e-peen PVPeers, we want PVP, a week later PVP sucks, no one wants to participate, no new people to gank, so PVP sucks.
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
Pretty much everything that was said here. Except not many people play Korfez because it isn't just a mash spacebar scenerio. Which I think is also another root of the problem.
As many others have put it, Cryptic upped the abilities available to the Borg at one point, and the forums was filled with people complaining about how hard it was. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong about this, they had openly stated that they can't just up the AI difficulty of the NPCs.. So they can either increase HP or give the AI more player abilities to spam, to which they did one and the other and it looks like they are experimenting with both now (albeit extremely scaled down).
This has nothing to do with elitists vs casual players but everything to do with the back and forth in terms of changes imo. Cryptic is one of the very few game devs who actually do listen to their playerbase and effect changes catered toward them. "Don't like the Elite Tac Cube tanking and being able to survive everything you've got in an alpha? No problem, we'll tone it down a bit.." or "You need someone to sci cc and placate an enemy long enough for your engi's to do x,y,z? No problem, we'll remove that requirement for full rewards entirely."
Here's where the opinion rant comes in.. This also has some to do with the 140char lazy entitlement behavior that has been bred into the new and learned/embraced by the older "gamer" crowd and its not limited to just STO either. It sounds horrible and negative and I'm guilty of it myself as well, but hey.. /rant
Anyway, this has been going on for a long time and I generally chalked up the dead STFs as being a normal thing.. I mean how many times would you want to run a dungeon you've already gotten the gear its related to for? Sure you'd have the odd groups running it for new chars and whatnot but its typically the evolution of the game. Right now you'll see full queues of Mirror related stuff because its the new bread. Why is ISA so easy? Sure, power creep, under normal circumstances its a very normal thing (this all aside from people outputting 110k dps of course)
That would work except you are still going to get alot of players that want to get the borg elite marks that are needed for the borg rep items. Also gating has the issue of just like a rotation of the available stf ques that would make different line-up of stfs to be played on a weekly rotation in the bid to push players to play different stfs, it would be seen as the devs an players pushing other players to play the game how they want not how the player desires. To me gating the stfs both on which ones you can enter or not enter (like that a ship able to enter elite cann't enter advanced now or normal.), as well as a limiting of the available stfs by rotating them on a weekly/bi-weekly time frame (though you would need to keep one stf that gives the marks for each of the factions in game available.). Now i doubt this would be done as like said players hate being told how to play an would cry for weeks over such a turn.
I would much rather see a fully done system that alters an scales players back to a appropriate level of stats an abilities , to allow these player to not unbalance the stf they are in. It would be nice if they could give the borg and other enemies more abilities,or even just more interesting ways of interacting with the players, such as the idea of giving the borg both a adapting system that improves their damage/abilties an shields based on how long they are hitting or being hit by players. Like a stacking shield resistance buff that is applied to either the specific ship's weapon damage that is hitting the borg-ship, or against the energy type of the ship's weapons that are hitting the borg-ship. Than you can also have a shield penetration buff that the borg-weapons apply to ships they hit stacking as they hit the ship, and then with these shield resistance/penetration buffs being able to be taken off the borg-ship or the borg-ship's target by using different abilties (science team, tactical team, extend shields/transfer shield strength.).
"Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised. It's got me through the worst of the last three years. I beat the Borg with it."
I remember suggesting adding the adaptive ability of the Borg(one of the reasons they were scary) into space combat. I was dodging Force chokes for days.
I support the Star Trek Battles channel.
I believe i remember that though i will agree that making it like how the borg in ground is would not be good, as than you would have weapons becoming fully useless, which is why i was thinking of making it a shield hardness/resistance stacking buff as than you could still overcome it with exceeding high damage. Same thing with adding an adapting weapon system feature with the borg that would make it that them focusing your shields/hulls too long effectively enhances thier damage.
Though these would need to be more fleshed out, and would work best in a stf system that has defined limits on what kind of stats players/ships have in that content level. Also having defined stat ranges are really good as than you can balance the content on the difficulty rating (normal, advanced, elite) as you know that the top end will not exceed this stat-limit as they are restricted to that limit an brought back inline with that limit if they exceed in when in the stf. Honestly i think even jsut this measure of placing stat-limits on stfs can bring back the feel of difficulty an power of the stf/enemies, since even the highest geared player will be only able to be at the top stat limit since their stats would be reset to those limits if it exceeds it (also would make it funnier for those other players as they can play actually.).
"Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised. It's got me through the worst of the last three years. I beat the Borg with it."
1) Cryptic's infinite uncaring laziness
2) Players' infinite uncaring laziness
For the most part, this game is horrendously unbalanced. Whether it be that new content is clearly better as a means designed to push sales, some abilities not working properly or at all, or just some weapons being blatantly better than others (which can also be used to push sales). Some times, people who pay for everything get the better experience and can build the 50k+ dps builds to boot (hence some of the P2W claims). Regardless of the reasoning why things can be unbalanced, they just are. For better or worse, they just are.
To make matters worse, Cryptic doesn't really do anything to teach you any better. There is no real tutorial that teaches you exactly how to play on advanced or elite, but instead, just the general "Build it your way" mentality, which as we all know, can be very ineffective. Things might be better if Cryptic made the effort to better balance the weapons, so they were better all around rather than just in one specific instance or against enemies of a certain type. Adding things into the game to actually teach people to play at better levels, things in the game might be a lot better.
For the second issue, the same thing could apply here. Having a more informative tutorial, or even an end game tutorial teaching players how to build and captain for advanced and elite modes would go a long way to making things better. Unfortunately, as has been the case of the mirror event recently, the major issue against players is the fact that so many players just. don't. care.
So, so many leechers...
Needless to say, they either don't care about the team, their build, or doing things properly, because some times the lack of effort still yields the same rewards, so why bother? Other times, the players don't know any better (due to lack of tutorials) how to build a better ship. Cryptic can't punish the casual players, yet as we've seen with the Advanced queue for the mirror event, they can't just cater to the hardcore group as well. With that mission specifically though, they pushed in one direction and it really just seemed to be a bit overkill, making it too difficult for casual players.
On the one hand, they can't just make the game for one group without upsetting the other. On the other hand, it seems like sometimes, they just don't know how to do things without breaking the game somehow. For the most part, Cryptic can't really handle challenging, instead opting for more hp and dps, and maybe some unseen buffs or some such, who knows. The game seems to cheat to win more than actually provide real challenges for players, which only enhances the money grubbing DPS race that is Star Trek Online.
I feel like they should spend a little more time trying to add in more things that would add challenge rather than just boosting the enemies to unrealistic (unachievable by players) levels. They should rebalance weapons and such, to allow for a wider variety of builds, but also add in a mission series that would actually teach players (and perhaps test them) how to play at the harder difficulties.
Until they do a few of those things, the game will still be a mismatched system, where elite in some missions is easier than advanced in others, while newer content might be bugged (due to lack of testing) and harder than intended. Other times, things might still just boil down to being on a bad team, or having the one or two people who are just there for marks.
"Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised. It's got me through the worst of the last three years. I beat the Borg with it."
They need to up the minimum to around 5k by changing weapons power system mechanics and the minimum that can contribute, while also providing a tutorial on DPS, tanking, and healing.
The fact is there are so many variables for increasing damage - I think the easiest solution would be to raise the minimum that the window lickers can do.
While STO might not have game books available, the community has made plenty of tutorials readily available!!!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!