I don't think nerfing BFAW damage will be the answer to anything, neither will be limiting BFAW or any other skill to certain ship types. What I think makes BFAW OP compared to other skills is that you essentially get a 360 AOE ability. I'd prefer if BFAW was more in line with the other weapon abilities where it only applied to an arc around your main target. CSV and TS works this way, why not BFAW? Maybe a cone 150-180 degrees around the main target would do.
A limited arc around a main target would increase the need for team play IMO and make BFAW less spammy and easier to use in target rich environments where you want to focus fire on a specific target. It'll reward skilled pilots more too.
It's make a nice synergy with TS and CSV, fit a torp, DC/2x cannons, dual beam bank or two, hit CSV, TS, BFAW (modified to only hit in a cone as above) and watch as you literally blast a hole in that wall of enemy ships heading for you.
Of course the damage-drop-off-over-range on cannons would need to be looked at (I'd suggest removing it as the bolts are formed, fired and left to get on with it) but that's a separate discussion.
Not nerfing FAW? That's just asinine. FAW needs a nerf, while cannons need an overhaul.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
I agree it would be nice to have some alternative cannon/beam/torpedo weapon abilities, even if they were from something like doffs that added/altered the existing ones giving them a different effect or altered how you use them. Like a torpedo ability that might reduce the damage of your next torpedo's during the duration, but would increase thier rate of fire and/or travel speed (maybe making this stack-able with torpedo-spread an high yield) which could make some of the slower/destructible torpedoes able to hit targets abit more reliable an at the cost of some damage less susceptible being shot down.
It is always a bad idea to only use nerfing or buffing solely to balance a game, since that will either push the devs to adjust the hp and/or the damage output of the enemies to compensate for the lost or gained power. It is always better to use a combination of small incremental buffs as well as nerfs over several patches to align the output of the subjects being buffed/nerfed thru feed-back an data gained from each phase of alterations. There is also the fact of instead of buffing an nerfing abilities, you could go the result of either adding some new/altered abilities (such as those abilities that might have been seen as useless/sub-par being altered) to synergize with the weaker abilties adding to both the power of the abilities an the pool of viable/on-par abilities to make more builds with.
BFAW is very Star Trek looking so leave it alone please.
Cruisers unleashing devastating phaser beams....That's Star Trek Baby.
That is true, but so is spreads of torpedoes coming from cruisers, cannons firing on kdf cruisers or bops, even a beam overload which has been seen on occasions being them focusing a single beam attack on specific areas or singular ships to break thru shields. So it being star trek looking is less of a fact as in many ways all fo the attacks are star trek looking, Bfaw being such a much more powerful ability that almost invalidates other options/choices is less star trek like as it shows a reliance on a single type of attack. I would say seeing ships able to use as well as using more abilities, and even wanting to utilize a combination of these abilities (an having them actually almost equally effective) is far more star trek like than merely one of them being used primarily.
One thing i thought about was maybe a rework of beam overload. Which might actually cut your beam arrays/banks rate of fire in firing cycle during the duration, but than buffs the damage output of the beam arrays/banks based on the rate-of-fire reduction (maybe also giving them a passive shield pen, which might be done at higher ranks of it). Though i still would love the idea of a beam-attack like the current beam overload. though what if it was more of a charging attack that you divert power from other beam-weapons to the chosen beam array/bank to buff the next attack or attack-cycle by a percentage an giving a higher critical chance on the attack, but then you see marked drop in the output of the other beam array/banks output for a period of time as they recharge the diverted energy (maybe based on the time you charged/diverted power for the beam attack).
Bear in mind I have been out since the whole BFAW, FTW era of the game.
With that said I really don't see how making a weapon or ability weaker be an advantage. Wouldn't it make more sense to beef up the other abilities or weapons to match that with the BFAW?
"There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life... or death. It shall be life." - Ten Bears (Will Sampson)
Bear in mind I have been out since the whole BFAW, FTW era of the game.
With that said I really don't see how making a weapon or ability weaker be an advantage. Wouldn't it make more sense to beef up the other abilities or weapons to match that with the BFAW?
Wel it depends on how you look at it. If you buff just the abilities in effectiveness (ie damage) than to keep the content challenging and interesting without adding too many mechanics then you need to buff the damage and/or the hp/shields of the enemies to compensate for the increased in damage output. The other side of the coin you will need to reduce the hp/damage of your enemies if you nerf things into balance to make up for the loss of damage output. Its basically power creep as you will see each ability slowly get buffed in a somewhat sterile environment, yet then a combo or circumstance will arise that makes it or another ability/weapon the best thus needing again to buff the lower performing abilities/weapons up to the new par again. Byt using both a buffing an nerfing route you bring things inline at a lower point, while not nerfing/buffing something into the point of being completely useless or op, which help to also keep the power-creep minimized an needing less buffs/nerfs to content an enemies to balance things out.
Bear in mind I have been out since the whole BFAW, FTW era of the game.
With that said I really don't see how making a weapon or ability weaker be an advantage. Wouldn't it make more sense to beef up the other abilities or weapons to match that with the BFAW?
That'd trigger a buffing of NPCs that'd make DR look like a good season.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
You are assuming that you NEED BFAW level of broken to play this game. You don't even need half that to roflstomp this game. We can nerf BFAW quite a bit and still not need to touch the enemies one bit. So once again, WRONG.
I never said anything like that. I said that the enemies have been adjusted to the current average player power level, which is correct. At no point did I say you need to max everything out to be competitive. By no means do I feel that 100k DPS is required for anything in this game, that would be silly. I'm talking about average players, the people pulling 5-10k. You're talking about an elite minority. For the average player, nerfing BFAW would be a devastating blow if enemies weren't altered in kind. The players that have everything maxed out and pull insane DPS are not the majority.
There will always be players like the top guys in the DPS league that can roll through any content uncontested. Adjusting the game to meet their standards is a flawed ideal at best. You don't adjust the power level of a game according to it's highest performing minority, you adjust to the average.
Also it is not an insult to point out logical flaws or lack of understanding of something. If you think it is, how the hell did you ever learn anything?!?
It's insulting to imply that because someone has a different view then yours that it automatically means they lack understanding. Just because someone differs with your opinion does mean they don't know what they're talking about or that they lack understanding. You can state your opinions without being insulting or without putting things in all caps or implying that someone doesn't understand the argument.
weapons need a complete overhaul, torpedoes don't need multiple way to balance them. There really shouldn't be destructible torpedoes, they already have much less shield damage. Remove crew system it's nothing more then a relic of a broken and destroyed mechanic. Give photons and quantums their own special proc, photons should stack a slight hull stress debuff, reducing max hull? Quantums get to bypass all natural shield resistances on proc ? Just some ideas, make single cannons somewhat the equivalent of beams, with the ability to put them in back and 225 degrees, giving them a 45 degree broadside. Improve dual cannons to 70 degrees.
Reduce the ranks of the cannon skills, rank 3 should be a lt.com. The hard change will be trying to make aoe skills only effective during a aoe encounter. Then by making them like that, the skills should not share timers though only one should be able to be activated at any given time.
A system that i also think needs to be updated is shield distribution, why do I have to either use tact team or continually have to tell my BOFFS to redistribute my shields, it's like i have to summon security officers to make sure they do there job at gun point...
8x Beams + Hitting BFAW and Space is just too suprior and boring Beam Overload should also maybe be overlooked that it should do Massive energy spikes for 5-10 seconds like the Romulan Singularity power does. But most the time singletarget abilities are worthless if there are always 10 enemys+....
cant play game his way so tries to change it to his way
Change Surgical Strikes 3 to lt.com too, and of course SS1 to ensign and SS2 to lt.
Also Attack Pattern Omega 1 could be lt and APO 2 lt.com like APB is, there's no real reason not to do that.
That 225 arc or even 250 on cannons would be interesting, but make a turret/cannon hybrid weapon with the same arc than cannons so you can have a little more punch from the back if you want to broadside things.
And then just nerf everything because someone doesn't like that someone else has a ship that destroys things faster than his ship.
After that make a new STF that has even more small, medium and big flying stuff that will use abilities that makes playing almost impossible because you can't really see anything and then we'll be happy campers.
Galavant!
"Use Temporal Skills to NERF EVERYTHING before it happened!" -Unknown source.
Just from a Star Trek story logic perspective, BFAW was only ever shown, in any way, as something that a large ship with a plethora of beam arrays ever did. You didn't see the Defiant shooting beams all over the place. You didn't even see Voyager doing that.
A proper balancing would involve:
1) limiting BFAW to cruisers -- making that their primary DPS ability
2) limiting CSV and CRF to Escorts/Raiders -- making that their primary DPS ability
3) limiting GW and other major damage dealing Sci magic abilities to Science ships -- making that their primary DPS ability
4) that leaves TS and THY as an ability available to all types of ship, allowing a variety of torp builds -- balance Torpedo builds against the other three styles.
Do all that, and make it approximately equal chances, in terms of the possible DPS output.
But that would take a whole heck of a lot of work.
That's the way it should be.
I'd probably use Beam Overload more often if it were more like the Pulse Compression Wave from DS9, where the next firing cycle of all beams gets a significant damage increase.
Nerfing single abilities in isolation is not the answer. What realistically needs to happen is a complete overhaul of all the abilities, and how they interact, and compare with each other.
Unfortunately, this would be such a mammoth undertaking, that they may as well scrap all the abilities we have now and start again from scratch. That will never happen.
Ultimately, I agree with a few of the people in this thread... don't nerf BFAW! Make other things comparable! Give players alternatives.
FAW works fine, and is actually in one of the least bugged states it has ever been right now. Instead, buff Beam Overload, Surgical Strikes (it used to perform fine...), Reroute Reserves to Weapons and especially Target Subystem.
I agree with that the abilities we have access to overall could use a rework and re-balancing form the ground up, which is just a mammoth undertaking, though if such a undertaking could make the game more enjoyable for players an give them more diversity it is well worth the time an resources to undertake.
You can't just buff other abilities up to par with a over preforming ability, most of all ones that give a buff to damage output or critical severity or the power you have available for weapons, and then expect that will balance it out as it won't the buff to such abilities will just push the over-performing ability further ahead. You need to buff yes the weaker abilities, but then also nerf the over performing ability/s as well to bring them inline with each other. Also if you do not nerf the over-performing ability you will get a fact that enemies need to be bloated with even more resistances, shield/hull hp, and even stronger attacks to keep an interesting to some extent, and by just buffing you will push that bloat much higher as everything is performing at the degree of the over-performing ability compared to setting he par lower thru a buffing an nerfing set up of alterations.
Targeting sub-systems has alot has issues, and should be looked at. I personally wish that it would as it says knock off-line certain sub-systems for a duration, but would also leave a debuff on the target from the attack wit the severity of the debuff being based on if it was normal hit or critical hit. I could see things like a damage output reduction or accuracy reduction on weapons for targeting weapon systems, a shield hardness reduction or penetration bonus on shields from the shield system targeting, and for Aux just a overall reduction on hull/shield healing or exotic damage reduction.
I have said this before, I'll say it again. The chief concern with Fire At Will right now is that everyone uses it. It's the 'best' ability and is therefore the 'go to.'
Lets ask ourselves why this is? Why does everyone FAW everything? Does everyone hate the idea of Cannons?
There is one reason only.. lack of alternatives.
You can go Cannons, who's mechanics are horribly flawed and make them require far more effort for less payoff (in most cases.)
Even if you're a Beam Captain, what's your alternative? Beam Overload? Again.. odd mechanics, most people don't use it. Surgical Strikes? Sure.. that one is not bad but of course there is what.. 3 ships that can even use it? Hardly a mass solution.
Nerfing abilities does not cause diversity.. it never has and it never will. When you take the best ability and reduce it's effectiveness, it has one of two effects. Either it still remains the best ability even after the nerf and everyone sticks with it while setting the forums on fire. Or the nerfed ability moves below the 2nd best option and the 2nd best becomes the new 'Meta' and the problem persists.
The way you create diversity is creating desirable alternatives. You overhaul Cannons to make them competitive. You look at introducing other Beam Skills or improving things like Overload or Surigical Strikes to make them viable alternatives to Fire At Will. When you give people options, they'll try different things. Back when Aux2Bat was the big thing everyone wanted it nerfed. Cryptic instead did the smart thing, and introduced alternatives. They put in the Nukara traits that made people want high Aux, they put in traits and other mechanics that people could use as alternatives and people naturally moved away from A2B. Meanwhile, those who enjoyed it were able to stick with it and didn't have to change if they didn't want to.
Nerfing Fire At Will is a reactionary, short sided solution that lacks imagination and won't fix the problem. You want to really fix the problem? Give people alternatives.. give them other effective abilities and people will naturally migrate away from Fire At Will.
Just say no to nerfs.
Amen, this player gets it.
It amazes me that people ask for nerfs instead of alternatives, how about asking for some diversity instead, trust me it makes the game a whole lot more fun for everyone.
The problem right now is that you have 2 alternatives, you fight using a caliber 50 machine gun against your enemy or you use a stick against all, machine gun vs stick. machine gun? stick? machine gun? stick?
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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
I know how to solve the problem. Let's just nerf everything and give everyone a Red Rider BB gun. You'll shoot your eye out but have fun doing it.
More seriously I'd like to see weapons combos work better. Almost all the ships had both laser/phasers/canons and torpedos. Every build in this game is "one weapon only and $diety forbid you do anything else or you aren't UBAARRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!"
Comments
It's make a nice synergy with TS and CSV, fit a torp, DC/2x cannons, dual beam bank or two, hit CSV, TS, BFAW (modified to only hit in a cone as above) and watch as you literally blast a hole in that wall of enemy ships heading for you.
Of course the damage-drop-off-over-range on cannons would need to be looked at (I'd suggest removing it as the bolts are formed, fired and left to get on with it) but that's a separate discussion.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
It is always a bad idea to only use nerfing or buffing solely to balance a game, since that will either push the devs to adjust the hp and/or the damage output of the enemies to compensate for the lost or gained power. It is always better to use a combination of small incremental buffs as well as nerfs over several patches to align the output of the subjects being buffed/nerfed thru feed-back an data gained from each phase of alterations. There is also the fact of instead of buffing an nerfing abilities, you could go the result of either adding some new/altered abilities (such as those abilities that might have been seen as useless/sub-par being altered) to synergize with the weaker abilties adding to both the power of the abilities an the pool of viable/on-par abilities to make more builds with.
Cruisers unleashing devastating phaser beams....That's Star Trek Baby.
That is true, but so is spreads of torpedoes coming from cruisers, cannons firing on kdf cruisers or bops, even a beam overload which has been seen on occasions being them focusing a single beam attack on specific areas or singular ships to break thru shields. So it being star trek looking is less of a fact as in many ways all fo the attacks are star trek looking, Bfaw being such a much more powerful ability that almost invalidates other options/choices is less star trek like as it shows a reliance on a single type of attack. I would say seeing ships able to use as well as using more abilities, and even wanting to utilize a combination of these abilities (an having them actually almost equally effective) is far more star trek like than merely one of them being used primarily.
One thing i thought about was maybe a rework of beam overload. Which might actually cut your beam arrays/banks rate of fire in firing cycle during the duration, but than buffs the damage output of the beam arrays/banks based on the rate-of-fire reduction (maybe also giving them a passive shield pen, which might be done at higher ranks of it). Though i still would love the idea of a beam-attack like the current beam overload. though what if it was more of a charging attack that you divert power from other beam-weapons to the chosen beam array/bank to buff the next attack or attack-cycle by a percentage an giving a higher critical chance on the attack, but then you see marked drop in the output of the other beam array/banks output for a period of time as they recharge the diverted energy (maybe based on the time you charged/diverted power for the beam attack).
With that said I really don't see how making a weapon or ability weaker be an advantage. Wouldn't it make more sense to beef up the other abilities or weapons to match that with the BFAW?
Wel it depends on how you look at it. If you buff just the abilities in effectiveness (ie damage) than to keep the content challenging and interesting without adding too many mechanics then you need to buff the damage and/or the hp/shields of the enemies to compensate for the increased in damage output. The other side of the coin you will need to reduce the hp/damage of your enemies if you nerf things into balance to make up for the loss of damage output. Its basically power creep as you will see each ability slowly get buffed in a somewhat sterile environment, yet then a combo or circumstance will arise that makes it or another ability/weapon the best thus needing again to buff the lower performing abilities/weapons up to the new par again. Byt using both a buffing an nerfing route you bring things inline at a lower point, while not nerfing/buffing something into the point of being completely useless or op, which help to also keep the power-creep minimized an needing less buffs/nerfs to content an enemies to balance things out.
That'd trigger a buffing of NPCs that'd make DR look like a good season.
I never said anything like that. I said that the enemies have been adjusted to the current average player power level, which is correct. At no point did I say you need to max everything out to be competitive. By no means do I feel that 100k DPS is required for anything in this game, that would be silly. I'm talking about average players, the people pulling 5-10k. You're talking about an elite minority. For the average player, nerfing BFAW would be a devastating blow if enemies weren't altered in kind. The players that have everything maxed out and pull insane DPS are not the majority.
There will always be players like the top guys in the DPS league that can roll through any content uncontested. Adjusting the game to meet their standards is a flawed ideal at best. You don't adjust the power level of a game according to it's highest performing minority, you adjust to the average.
It's insulting to imply that because someone has a different view then yours that it automatically means they lack understanding. Just because someone differs with your opinion does mean they don't know what they're talking about or that they lack understanding. You can state your opinions without being insulting or without putting things in all caps or implying that someone doesn't understand the argument.
Reduce the ranks of the cannon skills, rank 3 should be a lt.com. The hard change will be trying to make aoe skills only effective during a aoe encounter. Then by making them like that, the skills should not share timers though only one should be able to be activated at any given time.
A system that i also think needs to be updated is shield distribution, why do I have to either use tact team or continually have to tell my BOFFS to redistribute my shields, it's like i have to summon security officers to make sure they do there job at gun point...
Also Attack Pattern Omega 1 could be lt and APO 2 lt.com like APB is, there's no real reason not to do that.
That 225 arc or even 250 on cannons would be interesting, but make a turret/cannon hybrid weapon with the same arc than cannons so you can have a little more punch from the back if you want to broadside things.
And then just nerf everything because someone doesn't like that someone else has a ship that destroys things faster than his ship.
After that make a new STF that has even more small, medium and big flying stuff that will use abilities that makes playing almost impossible because you can't really see anything and then we'll be happy campers.
"Use Temporal Skills to NERF EVERYTHING before it happened!" -Unknown source.
Not that something doesn't need doing, but one of the best examples of BFAW in the series is from Voyager itself: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_eYlitrcW00
I'd probably use Beam Overload more often if it were more like the Pulse Compression Wave from DS9, where the next firing cycle of all beams gets a significant damage increase.
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Unfortunately, this would be such a mammoth undertaking, that they may as well scrap all the abilities we have now and start again from scratch. That will never happen.
Ultimately, I agree with a few of the people in this thread... don't nerf BFAW! Make other things comparable! Give players alternatives.
You can't just buff other abilities up to par with a over preforming ability, most of all ones that give a buff to damage output or critical severity or the power you have available for weapons, and then expect that will balance it out as it won't the buff to such abilities will just push the over-performing ability further ahead. You need to buff yes the weaker abilities, but then also nerf the over performing ability/s as well to bring them inline with each other. Also if you do not nerf the over-performing ability you will get a fact that enemies need to be bloated with even more resistances, shield/hull hp, and even stronger attacks to keep an interesting to some extent, and by just buffing you will push that bloat much higher as everything is performing at the degree of the over-performing ability compared to setting he par lower thru a buffing an nerfing set up of alterations.
Targeting sub-systems has alot has issues, and should be looked at. I personally wish that it would as it says knock off-line certain sub-systems for a duration, but would also leave a debuff on the target from the attack wit the severity of the debuff being based on if it was normal hit or critical hit. I could see things like a damage output reduction or accuracy reduction on weapons for targeting weapon systems, a shield hardness reduction or penetration bonus on shields from the shield system targeting, and for Aux just a overall reduction on hull/shield healing or exotic damage reduction.
Amen, this player gets it.
It amazes me that people ask for nerfs instead of alternatives, how about asking for some diversity instead, trust me it makes the game a whole lot more fun for everyone.
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
That's the solution I prefer, in addition to boosting basic torpedoes and Beam:Overload.
More seriously I'd like to see weapons combos work better. Almost all the ships had both laser/phasers/canons and torpedos. Every build in this game is "one weapon only and $diety forbid you do anything else or you aren't UBAARRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!"