No, this is not important enough to require developer attention
The problem with polling in this type of forum, is that is assumes that the respondents are somehow representative of the actual player base. Furthermore, when you have set responses, it is usually best practice to have two extremes, two "middle gorund" options and one "neither agree or disagree" option. As for drawing conclusions, only those responses that qualify as being statistically significant mean anything, and even then, said significance can be essentially manufactured by the entity taking the poll.
No, this is not important enough to require developer attention
The point is that the poll results are meaningless. Had you offered a more focused set of options you may have very well received different responses. For example, I think the Devs have far more important things to do than to address a perceived issue with how much DPS we can actually do, but I'm all for at least discussing a possible re-balancing.
Yeah, I actually think it should be a pretty high priority, too. Let me explain:
1) I fully get and support the idea that a knowledgeable player (I won't say "skilled" because the "skill" in spamming FAW is minimal) should absolutely be able to outperform someone who just threw a bunch of random junk together. However, the discrepancy shouldn't be as ridiculously huge as it currently is.
What the game needs is content that is meant for high-performance players. Something that does not get nerfed when the 1-5k crowd cries about it.
It's unbelievable this game has 3 difficulty levels, but fails to manage more than "babymode," "easy" and "maybe sorta medium if you squint."
This kind of problem wouldn't even be an issue if the DPS of the aforementioned high-performance players wasn't light-years ahead of the average scrubs. It's significantly easy to tailor content for different tiers of players when their damage isn't all over the place.
I know one major complaint is that Cryptic takes the lazy route by making "harder" content have absurdly-massive health and shield pools. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for such vast difference in power between players.
- Some abilities need to be buffed while others need to be nerfed
- Stat bonuses shouldn't be as significant as they are currently
2) Since for the most part, this game lacks the "MMO trinity" of tank/healer/dps, our 3 "class" choices (tactical, science, engineer) are really just a choice of "amazing damage, moderate damage, and crappy damage" respectively, and this makes the problem outlined in #1 even worse. Without tightening down and enforcing the trinity roles (something almost nobody wants for this game) the 3 "classes" need to be balanced out a lot better than they currently are. Similar damage, but through somewhat different playstyles, so to speak.
- Tactical needs to be knocked down several pegs
- Engineering needs to be bumped up
Currently, there are so many bonuses and so much synergy, it's no wonder the devs can't keep on top of balancing it all out. As much as I enjoy the complexity, it also makes me wonder if perhaps they've created a monster that they're no longer capable of controlling.
You can change the balance of weapons and boff abilities all you want, but as long as the use of those can range from "newbie with a mix of abilities, no slotted doffs/random boffs, clicking abilities periodically to trigger them" to "uber-pro with carefully chosen doffs/boffs, maintaining 100% uptime on multiple abilities", it's not going to make a difference. There's a really wide gap in player knowledge & skill, that can't be fixed by just making all the weapons do less damage, or saying Ability X is OP.
(I know this because I'm at the lower end - sure, I've got matching weapons & tac consoles, mk12-13 purple/violet/gold. But I still putter my way through normal-diff missions taking a good while to kills stuff. Because I've never been bothered to figure out all that super-pro stuff. So sure, I've got FAW on my beam boats... one copy, triggered when I notice it's available or when swarmed. I've got Tac Team, but not multiple copies running constantly. Don't have the recharge abilities to manage, I think, even if I could keep track of activating everything on schedule while still keeping track of targets, etc. But don't worry, I don't inflict myself on your STFs - I only play solo.)
...and yeah, I was a "clicker" in WoW, too. Never been good at managing a dozen or more hotkeys & dozens of abilities. /shrug
(I know this because I'm at the lower end - sure, I've got matching weapons & tac consoles, mk12-13 purple/violet/gold. But I still putter my way through normal-diff missions taking a good while to kills stuff. Because I've never been bothered to figure out all that super-pro stuff. So sure, I've got FAW on my beam boats... one copy, triggered when I notice it's available or when swarmed. I've got Tac Team, but not multiple copies running constantly. Don't have the recharge abilities to manage, I think, even if I could keep track of activating everything on schedule while still keeping track of targets, etc. But don't worry, I don't inflict myself on your STFs - I only play solo.)
...and yeah, I was a "clicker" in WoW, too. Never been good at managing a dozen or more hotkeys & dozens of abilities. /shrug
See I have friends who play the same way you do. I'm no silly dps player myself the last time I was parsed I came in just shy of 30k, to those friends I say "group together similar skills and put them where they feel right" for example I keep my Emergency power to subsystem on tray two slots four and five because for some reason that's where I instinctively look for them (have done since I started playing, not something I trained myself for), my sci team, eng team and tac team all sit on tray two slots eight, nine and ten respectively for the same reason. (I don't use sci team anymore though so I replaced it with other skills depending on the ship but I can't remember which they are.)
In other words, it's less about managing your hotkeys, rather than placing abilities where you 'expect' to find them so you don't have to think "where did I put that?" you just think "I need this" press the instinctive button combo and it happens, or doesn't if it's on cooldown. The alternative is to make macros but simple as it is to implement it's considered 'advanced' play and I kinda get why but in the event that sort of time and concentration saving tool interests you I have a page on it here.
Anyways, having rambled slightly, I agree with those who say high dps ceilings are a problem, I also agree with those who say nerfing things isn't the answer, we're long past that being an option. We need to tackle the issue from another angle, at the end of the day the driving forces behind dps culture are NPC design and power creep, we hate to admit it but the game needs power creep to sustain itself, thus we're left with NPC design as our only sensible option to change things, problem with that is it takes time and money and it seems to me at least that the dev team just aren't interested enough in balance to invest that or indeed to make that investment worth it. I also see power creep becoming power leaps, I don't think it's intentional by the devs, I dare say they just don't take the time to properly consider the effects of what they're adding but it's killing pve queues which in turn will put new endgame players off who them put new players off entirely and eventually the game dies due to lack of take up.
I tried to queue up for Hive Onslaught Space Elite recently. Didn't pop ever.
And it doesn't surprise me that it didn't pop.
Calls for HSE are usually done in the 50k and up channels or in even more private groups because it requires both DPS and a good mix of specialized ship builds. 50k ships that aren't glass cannons are the lower limit for this map because of the timer.
We do a fair amount of Elite stuff in The Science Channel as well. Star Trek Battles also does elite runs with canon ship builds with specialized teams.
Just because it didn't pop for you doesn't mean it isn't run in higher channels or in specialized channels. The logical conclusion is you are looking for teams in the wrong places for the wrong map.
None of the answers properly reperesent my response, so:
Maybe.
They already did a little of this during the Skill Revamp, by "normalizing" Science, increasing base magnitudes and decreasing the effects of Skill levels. Doing something similar with weapons, where the base damage goes up but stacking bonuses, buffs, debuffs, etc. has a smaller overall impact... it seems like that would be more of a priority than even high-end Science, if only because weapon damage is so much higher than Science damage at the upper end of things.
The problem with that, though, is just how much we're stacking on how many different kinds of weapons. Heck, there's even the different kinds of weapons themselves... just how amazing is the damage output from Chronitons versus Photons, or torpedoes versus energy weapons? That doesn't even factor in the special variants of each of the base weapons. There is just so damn much to review that it would be a non-starter. The "normalization" of Science was a cake walk compared to trying to "normalize" weapon damage... and even the Science "normalization" wasn't perfect.
So sure, it'd be nice, but I just don't think it's anywhere near possible. The only thing I could see working would be to convert all damage bonuses to Skill bonuses, "normalizing" that akin to how Science was addressed, and pulling an ESO as far as buffs/debuffs (only one instance of any buff or debuff can be on any given entity, though you can stack a one Minor and one Major version). The problem with this, of course, is that it'd seriously TRIBBLE off the playerbase... so still a non-starter.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
No, this is not important enough to require developer attention
Keeping my eyes on this - this has so far, hasn't promoted a very friendly conversation.
And with taking a moderator-hat off - Let people have fun they want to have it. If someone puts in effort to learn how the game works, they shouldn't be "narrowed" down. Someone else's effort should not be made meaningless; that's what in fact would be somewhat defeating the point of why even try harder, if everyone gets the same, even if they say, just AFK through queues. For some people, beating a challenge = fun, raising the bar for themselves = fun. And if chasing high DPS is not your thing? Well, you can still go through most content without that anyways.
Besides, I think there are bigger issues the game has than this anyways..
Just my 0.1 Darseks.
[10:20] Your Lunge deals 4798 (2580) Physical Damage(Critical) to Tosk of Borg.
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator "bIghojchugh DaneH, Dumev pagh. bIghojqangbe'chugh, DuQaHlaH pagh." "Learn lots. Don't judge. Laugh for no reason. Be nice. Seek happiness."~Day[9] "Your fun isn't wrong."~LaughingTrendy
No. One of the things that makes STO great is its diversity in setups and builds. IDIC baby. Are you going to say Spock was wrong? This seems more of an attempt to moderate the success of better players by people who for one reason or another, are not as successful. So no, I really don't get the complaint.
DPS is also a bad measuring stick contrary to what people tell you. It's a bad measuring stick for several reasons like being map dependent or effected by player skill, team makeup and luck. A number that would be a good gauge would not change combat to combat, map to map. Anyway, if you're one of the people who get your jollies with DPS, why not see it as a challenge to yourself? Something to "shoot for", literally.
You can change the balance of weapons and boff abilities all you want, but as long as the use of those can range from "newbie with a mix of abilities, no slotted doffs/random boffs, clicking abilities periodically to trigger them" to "uber-pro with carefully chosen doffs/boffs, maintaining 100% uptime on multiple abilities", it's not going to make a difference. There's a really wide gap in player knowledge & skill, that can't be fixed by just making all the weapons do less damage, or saying Ability X is OP.
Of course you can't erase such a gap, nor should you. However, I really do think the gap could be lessened somewhat. According to the DPS League website, the top tac players are at 200k-250k, while the top sci & eng players are around 130k-190k. In contrast, a max-level player with unplanned throw-together stuff is...what? Probably somewhere below 10k? (I actually don't know, someone who parses a lot want to toss in a number?)
Right now, the difference between both types of max level players is pretty much comparable to this:
Actually no, wait. It's more like this:
A gap to distinguish these two types of players is important, but right now, it's so big that it's becoming something of a detriment to the game overall. By reducing the size of this gap, a "noob" is less of a hindrance to their group than they are currently. It also means challenging content can be more than just "it hits twice as hard and has 100x as much shields and hp."
What is the connection between this and balance, anyway?
When the devs design a mission, they must make assumptions about the average ability of a player or team trying to do it. If those assumptions are unrealistic because the variance of possible builds is so high that the devs cannot even remotely guess what a group will be able to do in that mission, then how can they design a mission that is just hard enough to be barely doable if you don't make too many mistakes? Obviously, they cannot.
Imagine a mission that is designed to be done by 5 players with a dps of 10,000. You are one of those players, but in your randomly assembled team, there is one player whose ship is twice as fast and does a dps of 200,000. What will now happen is that he flies ahead, kills everything before you even get the chance to act, and the mission is over. That is neither fun for him nor for you. It makes a joke out of the developers' effort, your reason to even queue up for that mission, and even the game itself on the long run.
What, in my opinion, should have happend is that the highly skilled player does 12,000 dps when the average player does 10,000, and the mission becomes slightly easier due to that, but still with some actual task to do for everyone. (And I don't count "close radiaten gates without bothering with any enemies" an actual task.)
So, here's what you do then. You invite 4 terribads into your group, start a private queue and go on an adventure with them.
You're welcome. Game is fine. You have every tool to make it fun for yourself.
No, there may be some issues with that, but the devs should work on several other things first.
The lowest recorded parse on the table is 496.6 DPS, the highest is 273k. Worth noting we are looking at different tables (I am using the "Numbers" channels' tables, you are looking at the "Metals").
Out of 17493 unique (alts excluded, only best scores from each unique @handle) recorded players,
11544 players hit 10k and up.
4352 players hit 30k and up
2075 hit 50k and up
797 hit 75k and up
322 hit 100k and up
That should give you a rough idea of the DPS distribution.
Going down the breakdowns further for 100k and up (these include alts):
292 Tac captains out of 13342 hit 100k and up (top 273,817.44)
18 Sci captains out of 4284 hit 100k and up (top 201,440.51)
34 Eng captains out of 4605 hit 100k and up (top 198,908.16)
And yea it is correct. Even when both leagues are combined only 400 players out of 34.000(!) ever recorded manage to dish out 100k or more DPS in ISA so far. The cool new seasonal table of the metals narrows it down a bit towards more like 160 currently actives.
I would also take the top records on the league tables (as in 200k DPS+) with a grain of salt when comparing to average runs you and I are familiar with. Most of those I know are engineered by the team promoting the DPS of a single individual so in essence it was more of a team effort. An also often used strategyis is to shorten the match duration by making splits in high end teams. It is/was also possible to get such high numbers by cheating as in gate doping as recently demonstrated and maybe even used by some to fake records.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
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The poll is missing the point entirely, cryptic needs to put a crud load of changes to bring balance to the game, some of which no player would want, especially those that spent years crafting their garbage scows into special garbage scows. some changes no player is willing to endure and with that stated, this cruddy system will remain as is unfortunately.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
And yea it is correct. Even when both leagues are combined only 400 players out of 34.000(!) ever recorded manage to dish out 100k or more DPS in ISA so far. The cool new seasonal table of the metals narrows it down a bit towards more like 160 currently actives.
I would also take the top records on the league tables (as in 200k DPS+) with a grain of salt when comparing to average runs you and I are familiar with. Most of those I know are engineered by the team promoting the DPS of a single individual so in essence it was more of a team effort. An also often used strategyis is to shorten the match duration by making splits in high end teams. It is/was also possible to get such high numbers by cheating as in gate doping as recently demonstrated and maybe even used by some to fake records.
I believe the "numbers" table will be reset today/tomorrow due to some fixes now in Holodeck. I doubt it'll change anything. I expect the same 100k'ers to remain 100k'ers.
I myself am possibly a bit biased, and probably somewhat of a rarity - I can certainly understand why my opinion may not be worth much.
As far as I know, I'm perfectly capable of making a mid-tier DPS build. I have the resources (possibly even enough for a high-tier build, I'd have to check what's popular right now ). I either have the knowledge myself or know where to find it.
So why don't I? Why do I stubbornly refuse to get out of the low-performance 'gutter'?
Conscious choice. Examining any of my ships on Gateway would promptly lead people to conclude that mine are haphazardly-built, overpriced (for their performance level, that is) garbage scows typically containing an assortment of gear no worse than Mk XI VR, and an overabundance of 'clicky' consoles with little regard for the kind of buffs they give (most of them aren't T6 consoles to begin with, so there aren't any buffs).
But they're also the kind of 'garbage scows' you'd find if you pulled a ship out of the shows with as little compromise as sanely possible (and a sane budget), every last one of them. If a ship like that can't hold its own against a 'proper' build, if it can't even give it a bloody nose, for crying out loud... you bet I'm going to think there's something wrong with the game, and with the interactions between developer and player that allowed it to happen.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
DPS can vary enormously between players - some barely reach 5000, others easily crack 50.000 and much more. Should this be narrowed down to a range that allows both low-level and high-level DPS characters to contribute in a given queue?
One of these threads again. What balance is needed really? I mean, it is not like as if PVP is particularly alive.
Besides, poorly geared players can still contribute to queues if that's really the problem everyone sees. The answer is right there but just requires a little bit of effort to acknowledge and implement. If everyone were to get off their asses and get better gear (or improve their current one) they will eventually be able to contribute. If people cannot be arsed to take the time to do some research, invest some effort into learning and implementing what they learned, and perhaps spend a bit of time and possibly also some money to get to where they want to be, then they deserve to get that 2 hour AFK punishment. Why should the people who put a lot of effort and time into this game be punished for those who cannot be arsed? It's a major slap in the face.
It's not particularly difficult to create a decent build that can spank enemies fairly easily. Here is an example of how you can do it. If it is time you lack then all you need to spend is like 10 Euro for 1100 Zen + bonus. Get one fleet ship module and sell it for 14~ million on the exchange, and then get one ship upgrade module. For that 14 mil, buy the Nihydron Destroyer for 4 million and apply the upgrade module on it. Now you got yourself a decent T5U ship with really good console and BOFF layout.
Next you get yourself the mission rewards Quantum Phase Torpedo, Quantum Phase Converter and Quantum Phase Beam Array for some nice set with good bonuses. It also allows you to have a homogen build with components that buff and benefit from one another. Next you either craft (or get somebody to craft) or use the remaining EC to buy yourself MK XII or MK XIV Phaser beam arrays and the remaining tactical consoles (or get the fleet ones if you can). Then you work yourself through Tier 1 in each reputation for the very easy-to-get and cheap consoles. For example, the Borg, Undine, Dyson, Iconian and Terran consoles... and eventually you work yourself through all the tiers of a select reputation for the shield, deflector and engine. Finally you get yourself BOFFs with the space traits you want and give them proper and all the same Tier 1 - Tier 4 abilities (for multirole purposes). And then you have a ship that can do a lot.
And if someone find this tedious and cumbersome to do then perhaps you shouldn't be playing MMOs at all.
I did not try to 50k dps channels, but Star Trek Battles and Public Elite STF (because HOSE is a Public Elite STF). I'll have to try the dps channels, though, thanks for the hint.
50k and 75k are both good places to start. If you aren't up to that DPS level yet, you can try asking in 10k and 30k and hope that a team from 50k and 75k will be willing to take you under their wing. HSE has been nerfed to the point where a team can effectively 3-man it so as long as you demonstrate that you know how to play the map (hint, don't spam AOEs or pets and aggro the entire map at the start), you should be fine.
You can also contact me in-game (my @handle is my forum name) and if an HSE is forming while I am on, I can ask on your behalf if they will be willing to take you under their wing.
Ah to hell with it.....just add in elite versions of queues, or "nightmare" mode and lock it behind a wall of x-number of advanced runs finished before you get access. So essentially you've got to prove you are capable before Startfleet, KDF, RR lets you loose on the elite stuff.
That gives the high-powered DPS guys something to enjoy and it means those of us not worthy either try to improve or accept we can't go that high and settle for advanced stuff. The only thing the elites should offer should be more marks, don't lock any shiny toys behind that wall or it'll just become pay-2-win to get them where the most OP ships and gear are required. Just give them some fancy accolade or title to win.
This'll keep the elite players from giving the newbies AFK penalties and it'll give the lower tier people something to aim for. Then at least the huge gulf between a newbie and elite player would be worth something and justified, you'd need to be that powerful to hope to finish those nightmare queues.
Doing anything to affect performances of guns, ships, skills etc will just harm the low tier people, the top elites will adapt and find other ways to get "moar deepz".
Of course slowing up on releasing OP ships might help. I know the powerful stuff sells but i'd imagine some nice cosmetic space-barbie stuff would sell just as well. We pretty much have all bases covered with ships now (well except KDF/RR science) so why not just release some nice skins/costumes to alter appearances. Something other than the next OP item to aim for would be nice.
No thx. I'm on the lower end of dps scale, think some 15k was my best last time measured, have ships of all shapes and sizes with varying gear and I don't have problems dealing with this games pve content (not interested in pvp) outside of space elites and some adv queues depending on enemy type. If people want to chase top dps let them. Why ruin their fun just because you can't do it and feel inferior. Besides any tampering with skills and gear by the devs doesn't affect them as much as it affects me.
"Let people have fun the way they have it" that was one of the earlier comments... Hmmm
I used to have a lot of fun in PvP (you know, the place where DPS doesn't prove how skilled you are at STO and gives you an actual challenge) but I'm not allowed to have that fun anymore.
Myself and others who enjoy what is often criticised as depravity and an inhospitable environment (saying you PvPed once and didn't like it doesn't mean you can say every PvPer is a bad person and wether you're right) have been insulted, lied to and promised a great many things, have had the worst end of the stick out of the whole community.
And 'why'??? You might ask...
Because Al Rivera and the, speaking frankly, often clueless PvE community don't want to "let us have fun the way we like it".
And 'why', you ask again??
Because the PvP community, read carefully, wants - challenging content.
That's why PvP exists, to test yourself against the other. DPS doesn't offer this! All it says about you is that you can swing a big club around... Whoop-ti-doo!!! It's not very impressive. It makes players lazy and let's them operate mindlessly by tying everything to the spacebar. It also spoils the fun for others who still getting to grips with STFs and literally cannot keep up because by the time they start attacking a target it's destroyed.
Sadly, however, without "balance" or a balanced released of powercreep this kind of 'Spcebar Hero' type of play has crept over to PvP where now everyone with enough money, immunities, sci spam and CritD can zip around blowing people up (even farmers in Ker'rat) without a fight. These people are the scum you hate so very much. They don't want a fair fight, they want to faceroll. To top it off, both the PvE community and CaptainGecko have given PvP over to these cheese-weilding turnips, that are universally hated, and given them the tools to run rampant.
You the PvE and DPS obsessed community are responsible for the total collapse of balance in the game and the mindlessness of PvE.
The PvP community was asking for gear/ability balance and control checks before the release of new abilities to maintain the fun of the game (which we can argue would be of great benefit to PvE, the only ones who complained were the people who wanted rewards for next to no effort) since before free-to-play and the PvE community fought us every step of the way...
So what's your problem now!? You wanted the imbalance, you obviously wanted to cut skill out of the game entirely, get rewards for nothing [unnecessary namecalling modded] So why the complaints??
Can you see the problem with letting people "have fun the way they have it"? It's not fair for everyone.
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Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
1) I fully get and support the idea that a knowledgeable player (I won't say "skilled" because the "skill" in spamming FAW is minimal) should absolutely be able to outperform someone who just threw a bunch of random junk together. However, the discrepancy shouldn't be as ridiculously huge as it currently is.
For example:
This kind of problem wouldn't even be an issue if the DPS of the aforementioned high-performance players wasn't light-years ahead of the average scrubs. It's significantly easy to tailor content for different tiers of players when their damage isn't all over the place.
I know one major complaint is that Cryptic takes the lazy route by making "harder" content have absurdly-massive health and shield pools. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for such vast difference in power between players.
- Some abilities need to be buffed while others need to be nerfed
- Stat bonuses shouldn't be as significant as they are currently
2) Since for the most part, this game lacks the "MMO trinity" of tank/healer/dps, our 3 "class" choices (tactical, science, engineer) are really just a choice of "amazing damage, moderate damage, and crappy damage" respectively, and this makes the problem outlined in #1 even worse. Without tightening down and enforcing the trinity roles (something almost nobody wants for this game) the 3 "classes" need to be balanced out a lot better than they currently are. Similar damage, but through somewhat different playstyles, so to speak.
- Tactical needs to be knocked down several pegs
- Engineering needs to be bumped up
Currently, there are so many bonuses and so much synergy, it's no wonder the devs can't keep on top of balancing it all out. As much as I enjoy the complexity, it also makes me wonder if perhaps they've created a monster that they're no longer capable of controlling.
(I know this because I'm at the lower end - sure, I've got matching weapons & tac consoles, mk12-13 purple/violet/gold. But I still putter my way through normal-diff missions taking a good while to kills stuff. Because I've never been bothered to figure out all that super-pro stuff. So sure, I've got FAW on my beam boats... one copy, triggered when I notice it's available or when swarmed. I've got Tac Team, but not multiple copies running constantly. Don't have the recharge abilities to manage, I think, even if I could keep track of activating everything on schedule while still keeping track of targets, etc. But don't worry, I don't inflict myself on your STFs - I only play solo.)
...and yeah, I was a "clicker" in WoW, too. Never been good at managing a dozen or more hotkeys & dozens of abilities. /shrug
See I have friends who play the same way you do. I'm no silly dps player myself the last time I was parsed I came in just shy of 30k, to those friends I say "group together similar skills and put them where they feel right" for example I keep my Emergency power to subsystem on tray two slots four and five because for some reason that's where I instinctively look for them (have done since I started playing, not something I trained myself for), my sci team, eng team and tac team all sit on tray two slots eight, nine and ten respectively for the same reason. (I don't use sci team anymore though so I replaced it with other skills depending on the ship but I can't remember which they are.)
In other words, it's less about managing your hotkeys, rather than placing abilities where you 'expect' to find them so you don't have to think "where did I put that?" you just think "I need this" press the instinctive button combo and it happens, or doesn't if it's on cooldown. The alternative is to make macros but simple as it is to implement it's considered 'advanced' play and I kinda get why but in the event that sort of time and concentration saving tool interests you I have a page on it here.
Anyways, having rambled slightly, I agree with those who say high dps ceilings are a problem, I also agree with those who say nerfing things isn't the answer, we're long past that being an option. We need to tackle the issue from another angle, at the end of the day the driving forces behind dps culture are NPC design and power creep, we hate to admit it but the game needs power creep to sustain itself, thus we're left with NPC design as our only sensible option to change things, problem with that is it takes time and money and it seems to me at least that the dev team just aren't interested enough in balance to invest that or indeed to make that investment worth it. I also see power creep becoming power leaps, I don't think it's intentional by the devs, I dare say they just don't take the time to properly consider the effects of what they're adding but it's killing pve queues which in turn will put new endgame players off who them put new players off entirely and eventually the game dies due to lack of take up.
You tried to PUG it:
And it doesn't surprise me that it didn't pop.
Calls for HSE are usually done in the 50k and up channels or in even more private groups because it requires both DPS and a good mix of specialized ship builds. 50k ships that aren't glass cannons are the lower limit for this map because of the timer.
We do a fair amount of Elite stuff in The Science Channel as well. Star Trek Battles also does elite runs with canon ship builds with specialized teams.
Just because it didn't pop for you doesn't mean it isn't run in higher channels or in specialized channels. The logical conclusion is you are looking for teams in the wrong places for the wrong map.
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The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Maybe.
They already did a little of this during the Skill Revamp, by "normalizing" Science, increasing base magnitudes and decreasing the effects of Skill levels. Doing something similar with weapons, where the base damage goes up but stacking bonuses, buffs, debuffs, etc. has a smaller overall impact... it seems like that would be more of a priority than even high-end Science, if only because weapon damage is so much higher than Science damage at the upper end of things.
The problem with that, though, is just how much we're stacking on how many different kinds of weapons. Heck, there's even the different kinds of weapons themselves... just how amazing is the damage output from Chronitons versus Photons, or torpedoes versus energy weapons? That doesn't even factor in the special variants of each of the base weapons. There is just so damn much to review that it would be a non-starter. The "normalization" of Science was a cake walk compared to trying to "normalize" weapon damage... and even the Science "normalization" wasn't perfect.
So sure, it'd be nice, but I just don't think it's anywhere near possible. The only thing I could see working would be to convert all damage bonuses to Skill bonuses, "normalizing" that akin to how Science was addressed, and pulling an ESO as far as buffs/debuffs (only one instance of any buff or debuff can be on any given entity, though you can stack a one Minor and one Major version). The problem with this, of course, is that it'd seriously TRIBBLE off the playerbase... so still a non-starter.
And with taking a moderator-hat off - Let people have fun they want to have it. If someone puts in effort to learn how the game works, they shouldn't be "narrowed" down. Someone else's effort should not be made meaningless; that's what in fact would be somewhat defeating the point of why even try harder, if everyone gets the same, even if they say, just AFK through queues. For some people, beating a challenge = fun, raising the bar for themselves = fun. And if chasing high DPS is not your thing? Well, you can still go through most content without that anyways.
Besides, I think there are bigger issues the game has than this anyways..
Just my 0.1 Darseks.
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DPS is also a bad measuring stick contrary to what people tell you. It's a bad measuring stick for several reasons like being map dependent or effected by player skill, team makeup and luck. A number that would be a good gauge would not change combat to combat, map to map. Anyway, if you're one of the people who get your jollies with DPS, why not see it as a challenge to yourself? Something to "shoot for", literally.
Right now, the difference between both types of max level players is pretty much comparable to this:
Actually no, wait. It's more like this:
A gap to distinguish these two types of players is important, but right now, it's so big that it's becoming something of a detriment to the game overall. By reducing the size of this gap, a "noob" is less of a hindrance to their group than they are currently. It also means challenging content can be more than just "it hits twice as hard and has 100x as much shields and hp."
So, here's what you do then. You invite 4 terribads into your group, start a private queue and go on an adventure with them.
You're welcome. Game is fine. You have every tool to make it fun for yourself.
Out of 17493 unique (alts excluded, only best scores from each unique @handle) recorded players,
That should give you a rough idea of the DPS distribution.
Going down the breakdowns further for 100k and up (these include alts):
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
http://sto-dps.danfai.de/
And yea it is correct. Even when both leagues are combined only 400 players out of 34.000(!) ever recorded manage to dish out 100k or more DPS in ISA so far. The cool new seasonal table of the metals narrows it down a bit towards more like 160 currently actives.
I would also take the top records on the league tables (as in 200k DPS+) with a grain of salt when comparing to average runs you and I are familiar with. Most of those I know are engineered by the team promoting the DPS of a single individual so in essence it was more of a team effort. An also often used strategyis is to shorten the match duration by making splits in high end teams. It is/was also possible to get such high numbers by cheating as in gate doping as recently demonstrated and maybe even used by some to fake records.
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Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I believe the "numbers" table will be reset today/tomorrow due to some fixes now in Holodeck. I doubt it'll change anything. I expect the same 100k'ers to remain 100k'ers.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
I myself am possibly a bit biased, and probably somewhat of a rarity - I can certainly understand why my opinion may not be worth much.
As far as I know, I'm perfectly capable of making a mid-tier DPS build. I have the resources (possibly even enough for a high-tier build, I'd have to check what's popular right now
So why don't I? Why do I stubbornly refuse to get out of the low-performance 'gutter'?
Conscious choice. Examining any of my ships on Gateway would promptly lead people to conclude that mine are haphazardly-built, overpriced (for their performance level, that is) garbage scows typically containing an assortment of gear no worse than Mk XI VR, and an overabundance of 'clicky' consoles with little regard for the kind of buffs they give (most of them aren't T6 consoles to begin with, so there aren't any buffs).
But they're also the kind of 'garbage scows' you'd find if you pulled a ship out of the shows with as little compromise as sanely possible (and a sane budget), every last one of them. If a ship like that can't hold its own against a 'proper' build, if it can't even give it a bloody nose, for crying out loud... you bet I'm going to think there's something wrong with the game, and with the interactions between developer and player that allowed it to happen.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Besides, poorly geared players can still contribute to queues if that's really the problem everyone sees. The answer is right there but just requires a little bit of effort to acknowledge and implement. If everyone were to get off their asses and get better gear (or improve their current one) they will eventually be able to contribute. If people cannot be arsed to take the time to do some research, invest some effort into learning and implementing what they learned, and perhaps spend a bit of time and possibly also some money to get to where they want to be, then they deserve to get that 2 hour AFK punishment. Why should the people who put a lot of effort and time into this game be punished for those who cannot be arsed? It's a major slap in the face.
It's not particularly difficult to create a decent build that can spank enemies fairly easily. Here is an example of how you can do it. If it is time you lack then all you need to spend is like 10 Euro for 1100 Zen + bonus. Get one fleet ship module and sell it for 14~ million on the exchange, and then get one ship upgrade module. For that 14 mil, buy the Nihydron Destroyer for 4 million and apply the upgrade module on it. Now you got yourself a decent T5U ship with really good console and BOFF layout.
Next you get yourself the mission rewards Quantum Phase Torpedo, Quantum Phase Converter and Quantum Phase Beam Array for some nice set with good bonuses. It also allows you to have a homogen build with components that buff and benefit from one another. Next you either craft (or get somebody to craft) or use the remaining EC to buy yourself MK XII or MK XIV Phaser beam arrays and the remaining tactical consoles (or get the fleet ones if you can). Then you work yourself through Tier 1 in each reputation for the very easy-to-get and cheap consoles. For example, the Borg, Undine, Dyson, Iconian and Terran consoles... and eventually you work yourself through all the tiers of a select reputation for the shield, deflector and engine. Finally you get yourself BOFFs with the space traits you want and give them proper and all the same Tier 1 - Tier 4 abilities (for multirole purposes). And then you have a ship that can do a lot.
And if someone find this tedious and cumbersome to do then perhaps you shouldn't be playing MMOs at all.
50k and 75k are both good places to start. If you aren't up to that DPS level yet, you can try asking in 10k and 30k and hope that a team from 50k and 75k will be willing to take you under their wing. HSE has been nerfed to the point where a team can effectively 3-man it so as long as you demonstrate that you know how to play the map (hint, don't spam AOEs or pets and aggro the entire map at the start), you should be fine.
You can also contact me in-game (my @handle is my forum name) and if an HSE is forming while I am on, I can ask on your behalf if they will be willing to take you under their wing.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
That gives the high-powered DPS guys something to enjoy and it means those of us not worthy either try to improve or accept we can't go that high and settle for advanced stuff. The only thing the elites should offer should be more marks, don't lock any shiny toys behind that wall or it'll just become pay-2-win to get them where the most OP ships and gear are required. Just give them some fancy accolade or title to win.
This'll keep the elite players from giving the newbies AFK penalties and it'll give the lower tier people something to aim for. Then at least the huge gulf between a newbie and elite player would be worth something and justified, you'd need to be that powerful to hope to finish those nightmare queues.
Doing anything to affect performances of guns, ships, skills etc will just harm the low tier people, the top elites will adapt and find other ways to get "moar deepz".
Of course slowing up on releasing OP ships might help. I know the powerful stuff sells but i'd imagine some nice cosmetic space-barbie stuff would sell just as well. We pretty much have all bases covered with ships now (well except KDF/RR science) so why not just release some nice skins/costumes to alter appearances. Something other than the next OP item to aim for would be nice.
I used to have a lot of fun in PvP (you know, the place where DPS doesn't prove how skilled you are at STO and gives you an actual challenge) but I'm not allowed to have that fun anymore.
Myself and others who enjoy what is often criticised as depravity and an inhospitable environment (saying you PvPed once and didn't like it doesn't mean you can say every PvPer is a bad person and wether you're right) have been insulted, lied to and promised a great many things, have had the worst end of the stick out of the whole community.
And 'why'??? You might ask...
Because Al Rivera and the, speaking frankly, often clueless PvE community don't want to "let us have fun the way we like it".
And 'why', you ask again??
Because the PvP community, read carefully, wants - challenging content.
That's why PvP exists, to test yourself against the other. DPS doesn't offer this! All it says about you is that you can swing a big club around... Whoop-ti-doo!!! It's not very impressive.
It makes players lazy and let's them operate mindlessly by tying everything to the spacebar.
It also spoils the fun for others who still getting to grips with STFs and literally cannot keep up because by the time they start attacking a target it's destroyed.
Sadly, however, without "balance" or a balanced released of powercreep this kind of 'Spcebar Hero' type of play has crept over to PvP where now everyone with enough money, immunities, sci spam and CritD can zip around blowing people up (even farmers in Ker'rat) without a fight.
These people are the scum you hate so very much. They don't want a fair fight, they want to faceroll.
To top it off, both the PvE community and CaptainGecko have given PvP over to these cheese-weilding turnips, that are universally hated, and given them the tools to run rampant.
You the PvE and DPS obsessed community are responsible for the total collapse of balance in the game and the mindlessness of PvE.
The PvP community was asking for gear/ability balance and control checks before the release of new abilities to maintain the fun of the game (which we can argue would be of great benefit to PvE, the only ones who complained were the people who wanted rewards for next to no effort) since before free-to-play and the PvE community fought us every step of the way...
So what's your problem now!? You wanted the imbalance, you obviously wanted to cut skill out of the game entirely, get rewards for nothing [unnecessary namecalling modded] So why the complaints??
Can you see the problem with letting people "have fun the way they have it"?
It's not fair for everyone.