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What would you expect for "Elite"?
cbrjwrr
Member Posts: 2,782 Arc User
Referring to Elite STFs in general.
Largely due to recent threads, I've been reviewing what I think Elite STFs should be like. A few years back when I started playing STO, I got to the part where Admiral D'Vak asks you to stop by DS9; you all know the rest. And there were two lines that have stuck with me ever since; "STFs are missions for the best of the best" and another stating "The challenges of Elite STFs are designed for expert players and groups accustomed to working together as a team. Not everyone can complete an Elite STF."
I don't think there is anyone who would realistically say this has been true of Elite STFs for as long as I've been playing, given anyone could turn up and do the old ESTFs, and the post-DR STFs were released inferior to the "Elite" players could already do with VR/UR Mk XII, and Epic Mk XIV has made it so ISA is even quicker than old ISE...
And it just doesn't match what the expectation I had/have is.
Largely due to recent threads, I've been reviewing what I think Elite STFs should be like. A few years back when I started playing STO, I got to the part where Admiral D'Vak asks you to stop by DS9; you all know the rest. And there were two lines that have stuck with me ever since; "STFs are missions for the best of the best" and another stating "The challenges of Elite STFs are designed for expert players and groups accustomed to working together as a team. Not everyone can complete an Elite STF."
I don't think there is anyone who would realistically say this has been true of Elite STFs for as long as I've been playing, given anyone could turn up and do the old ESTFs, and the post-DR STFs were released inferior to the "Elite" players could already do with VR/UR Mk XII, and Epic Mk XIV has made it so ISA is even quicker than old ISE...
And it just doesn't match what the expectation I had/have is.
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- an intelligent AI capable of adapting to player's strategies and abilities
- a strategic fight rather than a shooting range dominated by pure DPS
What we're gonna get instead?
- enemies with ridiculously high HP and DPS
We saw how well that went over with Delta Rising. HP Sponge an increase in difficulty it does not make.
I remember fighting at Vaadwaur Prime for I swear it felt like an hour because everything had uber HP... ON NORMAL! Especially the Astikas...
We know the code to have some npcs run some boff abilities is there, surely it could be put togther for a couple of test levels.
-Enemies with sufficient stats to resist high-performance players.
-Variation based on RNG and/or adapting to player loadouts.
-Single-player qualifying missions that players must complete with sufficient performance to unlock Elite queues.
-A reward that doesn't lose to grinding piece-of-cake queues like ISA over and over.
- Viability and need of different roles. Something like the objective in Bug Hunt where Lt. Derp is not allowed to die. For missions like ISA/E it could be that a specific ship or Starbase 82 has to be defended/healed etc.
- Some mechanism that will punish those who are trying to win by spamming a specific ability. Add, for example, weapons to Starbase 82 that are being used by the Borg over there. The Starbase would appear as a targetable enemy and it may be disabled (subsystem targeting or perhaps some sort of interaction button could be added for this) but destruction must be avoided. Make it such that stuff like mindlessly spamming FAW, scatter volley or torpedo spreads are likely to result in failure.
- Interesting non-resource rewards as occasional drops: special uniforms, perhaps even an option to unlock new colours and options for the existing ones, borg bridge officers etc. Stuff that's nice to have, but which will put those who aren't good enough to play elite content Edit: NOT at a disadvantage (hence why I said non-resource rewards). Make these things very, very rare and tradeable.
But before all of that is released and added to elite content, I'd prefer to see advanced being fixed first. Right now, with all the power creep, there's hardly anything 'advanced' about it.
And I do believe for the majority of the population, Elite is still a challenge.
Is it really that broken if only the top 20% can do elites with out too much trouble ?
Get a group of 10k DPS'ers together and try some of the elites...
It's not as easy as you make it out to be.
But I wouldn't mind having more Elite options in the queues.
What I want out of them ?
Pretty much what Szim has said.
That's something I forgot in my earlier post: a need for other things than being able to deal damage. That might add some challenge without making top DPS performance more necessary.
Basically what I expect of Advanced and Elite is a need to think, every time you do it. It should never be a walk in the park, certainly not elites. Add enemies that will use different tactics every new instance, add random elements. Make it such that trying to shoot your way through will not always work, and indeed may be detrimental in some cases. Normal and perhaps also advanced could remain as they are, but Elites need to add something that isn't just 'make your ship more powerful to succeed'. I would never support such changes, which would likely only serve the top DPS players indeed. Which is why I'm advocating another approach
I think Crystaline ranks heals more than damage output. I finally landed 1st and the trophy against the CE by using a Kobali Samsar healboat.
I kinda agree too. We need a shift away from DPS being the end all solution to everything. The only thing that results from it is the elitests looking down on everyone else for not meeting their percieved standards. You don't perform to their standards, you get ripped a new one and told to either quit the game or go back to normal "where you belong" as if they owned Advanced.
I personally feel that this obsession with DPS is toxic for the community. We need something to encourage gameplay veriety and different playstyles. Another issue is that we have very little communication. If a team is struggling, communication may turn the tide in the team's favor by coordinating ships with certain abilities.
Kitomer Advanced... I usually take on a defensive role with a cruiser, preventing probes on one side from escaping. I amy not be helping to take down the generators, but I give my team one less thing to worry about on one side. And I have ways to help in that role such as Warp Plasma and my Tetryon weapons on my Fleet Assault Cruiser.
Tactics can be just as effective. Sure you won't kill things instantly, but good tactics can make up for lack of DPS.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
They did that ages ago. With the Crystaline Entity. We know how that turned out though.
Don't make the failure conditions a simple timer. When GGE came out, is was mathematically impossible for the vast majority of the dps league to win just because they did not meet the dps requirements to beat out the timer on the final stage. It wasn't that tanks or control builds were bad or anything, they just weren't tall enough to ride. A team with appropriate coordination and strategy should be able to succeed, even if it takes a bit more time.
The first stage of HSE is another map that comes to mind that has this stupid timer restriction as a failure condition. They are basically saying DPS makes you elite, not piloting or strategy. I like the failure conditions that maps like ISA, KSA, and CSA have (besides any timers). ISA you can't let the transformers get healed, KSA probes can't reach the gate, CSA you have to keep the Kang alive. These are objective based requirements that the player is free to accomplish in any way he or she sees fit.
Pre-fix HSE would be a decent mark to aim for here in my opinion, just expanded to the rest of the popular queues. It felt about right to me, where survival and success were not guaranteed, especially if bringing in a sub-optimal team.
I don't really expect qualification missions if elites are really up to the right difficulty level. Pug runs will almost always fail, as the team composition and coordination required wont be present. They are meant to be the apex of challenging content, requiring some thought before having a shot at success. It would also require additional dev work to implement, reducing the chance that we actually get decent elite content.
What I do ask for is the devs to turn a deaf ear to the inevitable whiners on the forums who feel that this hypothetical content is too hard for them to complete with their current builds in pugged runs. These people feel entitled to have everything handed to them, and would rather complain than try to adapt to a new challenge.
You can find them repeating that 15k is good enough for all content, upgrading gear beyond Mk XII VR is a waste. They will wear the fact that they do not parse as a badge of honor, and look down on anyone who would use a tool to help gauge build performance.
This would certainly be nice. With all of the resources they have dumped on us via the admiralty system, I find it odd that they don't properly reward people who are actively playing things instead of mindlessly doing paperwork simulator whack-a-mole.
That has more to do with what elite content is available than the difficulty of the current elites being to hard. When new content comes out, I will beat it on elite and then never play it again if it isn't fun. Time gated content is not fun for me, so maps like GGE, ATNE, and CPE are never gonna be in my personal playlist once I have completed the challenge of finishing the content.
Most importantly, the lag needs to be addressed before any elite content can really be created at the high end. When you get a full team using a lot of the best gear and abilities, these maps are grinding to a stand still. If elites were created with an appropriately difficult level with the current sad state of server performance, they would be insanely frustrating if not almost impossible.
For NPCs (enemy and allied alike):
-NPCs that have high damage resistance and damage soak.
-NPCs that effectively use offensive BOff abilities and coordinate with each other to destroy the players as quickly and efficiently as possible
-NPCs that HEAL THEMSELVES AND OTHERS if and when necessary, and effectively use defensive BOff abilities
-NPCs that cycle buffs and debuffs well in general
-NPCs that will withdraw when they receive critical damage (and still have time to get out) or are in a bad position
-NPCs that if unable to withdraw, will do their utmost to take at least one of the players with them when they go (ie do some form of lockdown on the player and then use ramming speed and the subsequent warp core breach to kill the player, or at least hurt them so badly that another NPC will finish them off)
-NPCs that are opportunistic and will switch targets to a weaker one if the possibility exists of eliminating said target.
-NPCs that adapt to player tactics and adjust their own accordingly
I'll just sum it up with NPCs with a much nastier and effective combat AI.
For Players:
-Players who have intimate knowledge of the game mechanics and can use their ship effectively
-Players who are capable of coordinating well with others, and can adapt quickly to changing situations
-Players who are experienced enough that if someone makes an error, large or small, they can pull an audible and still win (*coughs* BENTHANS ANYONE?? *coughs again*).
-Players who actually stick around if something goes wrong, instead of just bailing
Simply put, upper echelon players in damage output and overall capability.
For the Missions themselves:
-A mission that provides combat and objective based rewards and requirements
-A mission that cannot simply be facerolled for laughs, but requires actual knowledge of the mission mechanics
-A mission that CHANGES. Sort of like Korfez, only more. Something that requires constant adaptation of players (like for example: your objective is to eliminate targets A and B before target C reaches objective 1, but suddenly you also need to protect NPC 1 from being destroyed by target D. Things like that.)
-A mission that requires much improvisation (basically something that a single tactic won't work on. Something that you need to keep on changing things up to win).
For Rewards:
-Good chunk of dilithium
-Nice chunk of ECs
-Actually decent gear drops (ie mk XIV VR, UR, and Epic if you're lucky, with possibility of crafted mods)
I think that more or less covers what I'd expect from elites.
This is my STO fear too...
In a way, I think it is all of ours, in different ways.
What I want from Elite encounters:
1- Unicorns. I want to fight unicorns! I want to fight, click and experience things no one else can!
2- Rewards. I want treasures that no one else can get anywhere else!
3- Bragging Rights. I want titles, particle effects, shinies, things that when other people see me in game, they KNOW, they just straight KNOW I did something they can't.
That's ELITE gaming.
2) have some sort of measure of the team's speed and effectiveness and have the game adapt rapidly to what it sees, so über teams killing everything in seconds will find themselves facing swarms of enemies warping in to reinforce or boss level mobs instead of a couple of trash waves.
3) get rid of timers to complete objectives in if they are stupid. Why does it mater how long we take to kill a boss if nothing escapes the encounter. Have timers for sensible things like defending friendly npcs etc.
4) npcs should at least have access to all our regular powrers, not hyped up nonsense like the Borg tachyon beams, actual real powers. Then they should be less predictable and have randomly chosen powers on top of their regular stuff, shake things up a bit. Also make waves of npcs less uniform, we all know what comes next in CSA for example but what if wave 1 suddenly spawns a a load of battle cruisers not bops.
5) objectives that can be completed by more than just DPS. Let's allow the specialised players a chance to shine or save the day.
Also reward alternative play styles the same way CCA rewards healing.
Yeah, this is what the game needs but probably not what it's going to get. PWI/cryptic insists on pushing new shinies that ramp up the power creep to new heights then just buff HP/damage for enemies to compensate so they can sell the next lockbox with more shinies.
I remember when KSA used to REQUIRE someone to cover the probes on one side while the rest of the team took care of business on the other side. Then it became 2 one side 3 another, meet in the middle for Donatra. Now half the time we get one guy wiping out one side completely before the rest are even half done with their side. It used to be fun using GW, cloaking tractor mines, target engines, etc. to take care of probes but for more and more people it's now why bother? Just upgrade your gear, overcap weapon power, and DPS your way to victory.
No, that's 31337 gaming.
You say potato, I say Chief Science Officer Devro.
In general,
-I don't think elite content should be soloable. I don't think the trinity is needed but there should be some events in a mission that require more than one person to complete. As an example, Khitomer Ground requires one person to break from the group so the others can complete the mission. That element could work in space maps too.
-I would rather see NPCs get more abilities like EPtS, PH, APD, and TT rather than increase their HP.
-I wish there were more randomness to all the queues but especially in elite content.
STO isn't the only MMO with this problem. DCUO and DDO both are struggling with keeping elite content elite, and they both have similar threads such as this in their forums. I agree that power creep is needed for player progression but it needs to creep slowly and content difficulty needs to creep with the player's power creep.
This here is a great suggestion I haven't even thought about, yet - randomized BOFF abilities. Some are set, but some are random making the players have to adapt on the fly and improvise.
Randomization is something this game desperately needs, not everything should be planable before you even get there.
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Well, is top 20% a mark of being "elite"? Advanced I would agree, but I don't think top 20% is actually "elite" - that's the same as saying every 5th player is the best of the best, and that is both contradictory in terms and untrue of STO players...
It's a great game engine, awesome artwork, IP and concept, loaded with near-endless potential, but sadly driven into the ground by those who really have no clue about what makes for a challenging and fun MMO.
And by power creep/solo play focus. It may slowly degrade into a hosted singleplayer game that way, and honestly STO is not pretty enough for that, and not simple enough for an average browser-based time killer.
1) whatever the mission, a need for cc over pew for parts (such as preventing x invincible oppnent reaching a certain point) and a use for non gw controls (such as a tac cube having a bonus vulnerability to powers like scramble (as weapons are on the same wavelength, thus do more damage as the factions shields operate on a different setting)
2) enemies with powers like a player (dual tac team, maybe an epts, ect)
3) fail capable optionals AND bonus optionals
4) A need to teamplay/a reason to stick together in one group
5) FBP that works (but is balanced so every enemy doesn't fbp at once)
6) Powers you identify by the ship class (see Terrans)
7) Randomised mission setups (like Korfez), multiple options with variations
8) Static emplacements (transformers, gate) get energy resists
9) all damage is immune class on said emplacements until objective is complete
Imagine ISE with the usual setup ... gw is needed to hold back the spheres while a teamate helps as the spheres tac teams are lowering direct hull damage; one nanite sphere having hit fbp thats returning 600% more damage to its attacker and once you've blown one transformer, you get a random mission to complete (defeat x, find a lone survivor in a pod, prevent borg nannite repair cube from reaching the gate and serving as a replacement transformer until blown) then go onto the next transformer...and as all no relevant objects are immune, everyone stays on target
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Same... CPE is my favourite S-STF in STO by far.. you know to stay away from the HECs with their torpedo PDS if you're in a bop/weak hulled ship
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