If a player plays and parses several days in a row, and sees a consistant percetage drop in dps, and an increase in overal run time, it wont be long before the gig is up, and everyone knows about it, especially if they consistantly play with the same groups.
.A lot of the outcry happens when power creep is sold, and then nerfed later. People feel like it is planned, release something that is OP, wait until everyone buys it, nerf it to oblivion. Kemocite is a good example of that.
Sir that there is exactly what enrages me. There is little to no excuse to release items that are completely out of balance and scale with the game at this point in its lifetime as its been around for 5 years. So Developers should have a pretty dam good idea of their game mechanics and design by now and what scales with what.
My example would be the Plasma Embassy Consoles, yes they were powerful but, Big upgrade weekend people invest money/dil/time into making those consoles epic and straight after the weekend the consoles get nerfed with the next patch, all because cough ! cough ! someone forgot to add the notes in the Tribble patch before the weekend.
A crutch would be something like BFAW. I don't mean to turn this into a BFAW-bashing exercise but it perfectly fits the description. It's probably the most OP ability out there, and I mean that not in terms of sheer damage output but a combination of ease of use/lack of skill, power management, arcs, multi targeting, speed of fire, boosted by numerous other abilities, actually better than specialised abilities against single targets. It's the perfect storm of a crutch power that some players just could not manage the same DPS numbers without. A crutch power is something your build falls apiary if it's taken away of tuned down. Take away the ability and suddenly a lot of players have to rely on piloting and managing arcs and cool downs and they can't handle it. I'd say BFAW fits that bill perfectly for a lot of players (not nessessarily anyone here though).
and suddenly a lot of players have to rely on piloting and managing arcs and cool downs and they can't handle it.
I'm going to nitpick this part. Beam boats existed before FAW was fixed. They'll exist after. And the strength of what they do is they capitalize off of not needing to bring a forward (or rear) arc to bear. So remove FAW from the game and for that particular point you're making, it won't make much difference. Beam boats are built to compensate and overcome their slow turn rates.
And what makes them extremely effective without the FAW power is things like AMP and the power creep on literally power levels and power management. You can see the parses and breakdown where the damage is coming from. So you can take FAW out of the equation manually. And you can see that the damage provided by the beams themselves is still really potent and that has a lot to do with "EPS is DPS" and power management and power drain and all of that.
I just don't think piloting and arc management will really matter in the context you present it because beam boats are built to compensate for slow turn rates already.
Say you have an annual salary of $150,000. Not only will you not receive a bonus for the year, but your salary gets cut to $140,000 permanently, until the company decides to start handing out raises again to those people who have earned it.
You do not know if you were going to be one of those people that would have been laid off, but you do know your salary has been reduced by $10,000.
Without straying too far into politics, you'd be quite a bit selfish (to put it mildly) if you expected everyone else to work longer and harder just so you could retain that $10k and current workload, not to mention the hardship caused to the families of the people who get laid off in order to make that happen. Sadly, I'll bet that the company did exactly that which is why there is a particular backlash against executive level pay.
That's largely what it's about though. People love the status quo, particularly if it makes them top dog.
Simply, people like to be ahead of other people, whether it's in terms of money, material goods, power, status etc.
This is the way the world works.
If everyone starts to have these things, it stops making them feel special and talented (particularly if that talent comes straight out of a lockbox) and when everyone is special, talented and rich, no one is.
The game is called pay to win for a reason, thing is if you take away the "win" part the people that pay tend to object pretty strongly.
If a player plays and parses several days in a row, and sees a consistant percetage drop in dps, and an increase in overal run time, it wont be long before the gig is up, and everyone knows about it, especially if they consistantly play with the same groups.
@whamhammer1
Still well within the regular variance. A person would need at least 30 runs with the same team and even then it would not be an open and shut case.
And even IF people would notice, do you think anybody would take the complainant serious when he/she is throwing a tantrum over a 1-2% drop in performance, providing he/she can make a solid case that drop actually occurred?
Single power adjustments are easy and incredibly difficult to detect when done gradually.
The cascades, which are the real problem, are an entirely different story though.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
This game has fully embraced Power Creep going on for years now. World Peace is a likelier real life event before the unrestrained Power Creep that is actively being sold is going to be reigned in. There used to be warnings about that but not anymore, because it's readily apparent this is the direction the game will go.
Besides, if one thing gets nerfed, you can rest assured that people will figure out another way to blast this game several times over.
There was a time when this game was Escorts Online and it was, "DHCs or GTFO." It's been entirely different for a while now. And it can easily change into something else because do not doubt for a minute that people won't know how to make the most of what's out there in interesting ways.
Say you have an annual salary of $150,000. Not only will you not receive a bonus for the year, but your salary gets cut to $140,000 permanently, until the company decides to start handing out raises again to those people who have earned it.
You do not know if you were going to be one of those people that would have been laid off, but you do know your salary has been reduced by $10,000.
Without straying too far into politics, you'd be quite a bit selfish (to put it mildly) if you expected everyone else to work longer and harder just so you could retain that $10k and current workload, not to mention the hardship caused to the families of the people who get laid off in order to make that happen. Sadly, I'll bet that the company did exactly that which is why there is a particular backlash against executive level pay.
Actually, the company I worked at did option #2. No one was laid off. No one got raises and all employees who were VPs and above (including the CEO) took pay cuts. Though I am sure the executives were compensated with stock options.
As for the company to expect everyone to work longer and harder... while it is not fair, it is the nature of the beast and it actually depends on the industry itself. In this case the company answered to both the shareholders and federal regulatory agencies. The shareholders do not want to loose money on their investments in the company as a whole and the federal regulatory agencies demand strict adherence to government guidelines and no disruption of in daily, weekly, monthly regulatory reports that are required. Failure to provide required regulatory reports in a timely manner can result in massive fines.
I would also like to point out that (due in large part to the cost of special effects) Star Trek ship combat tends to favor fast, brutal, decisive engagements over sustained slugfests. Unless it's a Borg cube, targets that take forever to grind down from HP bloat or nerfed attack damage are boring, and I think stylistically wrong for the franchise.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
If you paid money/ spent time and effort to achieve something, say a Corvette in game and STO suddenly changes it to a Volkswagon without your consent, Well in the real world that would be litigable.
Nerfs are also generated by a small minority of loud people who cannot or most likely will not put in the effort to change their builds to accommodate a new mechanic. Easier just to cry and cry and cry until the Devs mistakenly think it's a consensus and break the game to shut them up.
If I ran this company, only the managers would read the forums if at all. Also once something was established in game, it would be unchangeable for the life of the game. Also much less greed, but that's another thread.
I wouldn't mind if they came out and nerfed everything across the board, we all get the same toolkit to play with. What kinda pisses me off is when certain things are nerfed after I have advised people to buy them for their builds. As a player that has pretty much everything, I can easily adapt. But people who are just trying to get their build in order have limited resources, and I feel bad when something gets nerfed out from under them.
A lot of the outcry happens when power creep is sold, and then nerfed later. People feel like it is planned, release something that is OP, wait until everyone buys it, nerf it to oblivion. Kemocite is a good example of that.
Then don't buy into it? Plain and simple solution to me...
I've seen it over and over...someone discovers something that is broken and OP, all the lambs copy said person because they need a crutch, devs fix said crutch and people complain and call it a nerf.
Cycle starts anew when the devs release something else that is broken...you know what...these people should have learned by now this has happened numerous times...but people keep doing it because they need a crutch.
Can't have a honest conversation because of a white knight with power
If you paid money/ spent time and effort to achieve something, say a Corvette in game and STO suddenly changes it to a Volkswagon without your consent, Well in the real world that would be litigable.
Nerfs are also generated by a small minority of loud people who cannot or most likely will not put in the effort to change their builds to accommodate a new mechanic. Easier just to cry and cry and cry until the Devs mistakenly think it's a consensus and break the game to shut them up.
If I ran this company, only the managers would read the forums if at all. Also once something was established in game, it would be unchangeable for the life of the game. Also much less greed, but that's another thread.
And your game would be a lousy bug ridden game that would fail! Good going!
I'm sorry you need obviously broken mechanics to carry you to so-so DPS...and when something obviously broken is fixed you call it a nerf...but well that's gaming life.
Can't have a honest conversation because of a white knight with power
*Grabs popcorn* @jodarkrider might wanna keep an eye on this...I smell smoke!
That was me. Forgot to grab the bacon from the oven. It's extra crispy now.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
I guess I will be very blunt to the people who fool themselves into believing that nerfing is ever a good thing. Yes, I can wholeheartedly agree that certain level of balancing can be healthy if done correctly and in modest proportions. However, you need to understand that fair play in this game does not exist. Yes, it may be Free-To-Play but you can still pay for extra services and extra items. People think that the whole Pay-To-Win is a special priviledge. No it is not. It comes at a cost of real money that somebody has worked for in real life. Claiming that the players who pay to win do not put an effort into achieving the level they want to reach is ignorant. Anyone can get money if they really want but if you cannot be arsed to even do that then it isn't surprising that we have so many whiners about the whole DPS and pay to win situation. It means you are entitled whether you like it or not.
And I think people have the wrong idea about overpowered. People don't seem to understand that it is the combination and accumulation of several things in the game that can make you very overpowered. Alone these things can still be strong but they may not necessarily be so excessively overpowered as people claim them to be. So do you intend to have the developers nerf everything that contribute to this larger pool of almightiness? Yes, I can agree that certain abilities may need certain balancing... Kemocite was among them. But when you are asking for a widespread nerf I am totally against that.
Nerfs are bad because they're a herd animal. Also because their shepherds tend to be somewhat scruffy-looking.
I've avoiding posting here for some time, but Cryptic Rock has a point. I'll get to it in a sec.
Star Trek Online goes through phases. Something becomes all the rage, while something gets spoken of as being bad. Can you remember when players thought plasma weapons were 'a waste of time 'cause the Borg use them and defend against them'? Back in the day - the Borg were the end game.
Star Trek Online gets rebranded by us - 'Escorts Online' during a time when 10K spd was a dream and not a reality. 'Cruisers Online' when nothing but cruisers (it seemed) were being offered. The came the dominance of FAW, then came 'the dark time' when FAW was broken for 3 weeks and it was the end of the world. And then it came back.
No one died during the great FAW famine except for the dignity of a few posters.
Only one thing is certain in Star Trek Online - stuff changes. And that's a good thing.
Nerfs - or adjustments - happen all the time. They are not done to TRIBBLE you off. They are done to balance the game, in a game where not everything can be easily balanced. (Imagining a Sisko rage comment - 'YOU CALL THIS BALANCE!!) While I'm sure that somewhere a developer has a decent handle on the code in general, no one on the team can fully comprehend the unintended consequences of any 1 change. That's why they do their best to QA on Tribble - to smooth out the biggest and most noticeable game ending bugs. Holodeck - for better or for worse - is the only real life QA environment 'we' have.
And sometimes things slip through. Lag enhancers. Plasma consoles, double proccing, item duplicating and my personal favourite - nearly unlimited console slots on a lockbox ship. Enjoy these while they last- but never NEVER assume it's going to stay that way.
I can say honestly that no nerf is ever done with the sole intention to target one group. I will add one slight 'but' to that statement - torpedoes. The math with torpedoes is questionable at best and I know on the wish list of things to fix, Torpedoes are likely on that list at position four or five. One day they will get revisited.
Back to Cryptic Rock's comment. It's funny, and it's true. I'll read into it a bit further: We herd together when we're unhappy about a change or 'nerf'. Most occasions our issues are minor in terms of overall gameplay, but they mean a lot to us individually. With persistence in bugging STO, they often get changed. The devs always listen, even when our demands are unrealistic. They simply keep the changes in line to making Star Trek Online a game for everyone.
So when something gets nerfed, and the pitchforks and torches get passed around, the only people who get scruffy looking are the volunteer mods that act as a fire wall here in the forums. Take a moment and think about that thankless position.
So I wrote this long, drawn-out explanation as to why nerfs are bad, but then I realized I wasn't saying anything that hadn't already been said at least 5 or 9 times in the past week. If you want something nerfed because you see a legitimate issue with the game's balance, then go to the appropriate place and make your case by way of a suggestion. If you want something nerfed because you don't have it . . . well, you need to go take a good look in the mirror. If you want something nerfed because your idea of fun hasn't received the same amount of attention as another's, then you need to consider how you would feel if the roles were reversed, and someone was projecting their displeasure onto you.
STO needs a nerf/balancing accross the board. It's not a case of "nerf BFAW" or "kemocite". Everything needs to be looked at to make the combat system fair again and not allow such massive exploits with equipment and abilities that haven't been tested properly to reward player skill.
This won't just affect the "top end players" this'll affect the mid- low end. Their damage/dos/resistance will be reduced too, but it'll help everyone especially those who struggle to understand STO better and work with it instead of grinding to get the latest meta ASAP before the next lockbox.
[...]
Anyways, more to the point, players do not like their status and power levels changed for the negative. [...]
Yes, that is what I observed in the OP. But my question is - why?
Strangely enough OP, some people still think DPS output equals skill. Now let's be clear, anyone can look up a high-DPS build and think they are now highly skilled, when fact is, they are no more skilled than they were before they googled, and all they care about is THAT number!
Now lets be honest though, it's not the fault of the players that Cryptic allowed such an enormous increase in power-creep. Players asked for harder, more challenging content, which they got in HP-inflated enemies. People then went and complained that it was 'too hard' or taking 'too long', so Cryptic upped player DPS and dropped the HP of enemies in response, so now there is absolutely no chance of having that satisfying 'EPIC' battle that alot of people crave. Now people have settled into a 'if it's not finished in less than 3 minutes, I won't play it' scenario. However, players have also increasingly got greedier in their expectations of what rewards 'should' be given, with some saying MK XIV equipment should be available as drops, increase Marks/Dil, drop the cooldowns etc, all because they 'don't want to grind', so any drop of DPS, increase in NPC HP makes them have to 'mash the space bar' for another 5 seconds!
Compared to the game as it was 4 years ago, this game is now so 'hand-holdingly' easy (the new skill system for example) that even an 8 year old can master it in a few weeks.........so much for 'the career' aspect of the game I say! Remove all the 'themed' STF's and stick them on hourly rotation with tweaked rewards, leaving only those STF's which only reward Fleet Marks as open. That way we'll get those fuller queues, and also level restrict STF's, so those with full specialisations aren't matched with freshman lvl 50's!
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
Its amazing that your description of something that is a "DPS crutch" is "OP", thats akin to describing "evil", as "something thats not good". what exactly are you saying is "OP"? How and who exactly is the grand decider of what OP is?
Is a battle cloak OP? Is Plasmonic Leech OP? Are Aux2Batt build cruisers OP? Are torp builds OP? Is FAW OP? Is Sci-Spam OP?
If so, how?
If I had a nickel everytime someone has declared something was op in this game, Id be a billionare. If I had $5.00 for each different kind of thing that has been declared to be OP, Id still be a millionaire. I've even heard that Mask Energy Signature was OP, back in the day, because it gave the Fed's a cloak, then people learned to put more Aux power in their ships.
Do you know what the greatest "nerf"is for "OP", learning to play better.
What, by your estimation is "fair"? I know players doing 100k without lockbox ships or consoles, just ships that were from the Zstore, acailable for sale to every player here. They levelled up thier gear, just like anyone can in the game, with boffs, doffs and skill set ups that are available in the game to everyone.
What some people forget about DPS is knowing the scenario, and where and when to position ones-self, and when/what abilites/skills/weapons to use.
Blinds spamming the spacebar with BFAW, will only get a person so much DPS, otherwise, everyone would be over 100k.
Do you doubt for an instant that there aren groups that do a high volume of parsed runs with a close group of players in a short amount of time, and do t hyper-analyze the data? I know players that are bug hunters, that specifically do exactly that to check to see if what is advertised is on the straight and narrow.
If you think that dropping it 1% a time, over several updates wont get noticed, thats on you but I know that Cryptic can't afford to lose any trust by "sneaking" something like that in.
I wouldn't mind if they came out and nerfed everything across the board, we all get the same toolkit to play with.
Yeah I wouldn't mind an across the board adjustment either. But what's the point of doing that though? You'll just end up at the exact same place we are now and people will still complain.
There is a bit of difference between nerfing across the board vs buffing NPCs though. Nerfing across the board will hurt the top end more than the low end because believe it or not, there are diminishing returns at the top end. As an example, CrtD has a bigger effect on lower-end players than on the top end. Buffing NPCs though can push the low-end further under the bus if done in Normal and Advanced.
The best compromise in my opinion is to re-introduce the missing elite queues. Give the high-end players a playground to frolic in and give low-end players a goal to aim for. It's a win/win for players and cryptic (players have more fun, and Cryptic adds a reason to sell more creep).
A few months ago I would have agreed, but having played around with a more diverse set of builds, I have come to the conclusion that FAW isn't the overpowered skill people think it is. It isn't FAW in itself but a combination of many different things that end up buffing FAW. @snoggymack22 is on the right track here.
Strangely enough OP, some people still think DPS output equals skill. Now let's be clear, anyone can look up a high-DPS build and think they are now highly skilled, when fact is, they are no more skilled than they were before they googled, and all they care about is THAT number!
Except when you go around build groups/forums, you'll notice a lot of people wondering why the 100k builds they copied only does 15k. So yeah whether you like it or not, there is more to a big number than build alone. Is it skill? Maybe not. Knowledge definitely, but then again, some will equate knowledge to skill too.
Edit: While I am not against an across the board adjustment, it has to be done with balance in mind (not just a 50% drop across the board for example). The new revamp and current power creep has made a lot of builds viable (looking at canon hybrids especially), and I would like to keep that build diversity. A straight-on nerf might narrow down the meta even further.
Comments
If a player plays and parses several days in a row, and sees a consistant percetage drop in dps, and an increase in overal run time, it wont be long before the gig is up, and everyone knows about it, especially if they consistantly play with the same groups.
Sir that there is exactly what enrages me. There is little to no excuse to release items that are completely out of balance and scale with the game at this point in its lifetime as its been around for 5 years. So Developers should have a pretty dam good idea of their game mechanics and design by now and what scales with what.
My example would be the Plasma Embassy Consoles, yes they were powerful but, Big upgrade weekend people invest money/dil/time into making those consoles epic and straight after the weekend the consoles get nerfed with the next patch, all because cough ! cough ! someone forgot to add the notes in the Tribble patch before the weekend.
It's probably the most OP ability out there, and I mean that not in terms of sheer damage output but a combination of ease of use/lack of skill, power management, arcs, multi targeting, speed of fire, boosted by numerous other abilities, actually better than specialised abilities against single targets. It's the perfect storm of a crutch power that some players just could not manage the same DPS numbers without.
A crutch power is something your build falls apiary if it's taken away of tuned down. Take away the ability and suddenly a lot of players have to rely on piloting and managing arcs and cool downs and they can't handle it.
I'd say BFAW fits that bill perfectly for a lot of players (not nessessarily anyone here though).
I'm going to nitpick this part. Beam boats existed before FAW was fixed. They'll exist after. And the strength of what they do is they capitalize off of not needing to bring a forward (or rear) arc to bear. So remove FAW from the game and for that particular point you're making, it won't make much difference. Beam boats are built to compensate and overcome their slow turn rates.
And what makes them extremely effective without the FAW power is things like AMP and the power creep on literally power levels and power management. You can see the parses and breakdown where the damage is coming from. So you can take FAW out of the equation manually. And you can see that the damage provided by the beams themselves is still really potent and that has a lot to do with "EPS is DPS" and power management and power drain and all of that.
I just don't think piloting and arc management will really matter in the context you present it because beam boats are built to compensate for slow turn rates already.
Without straying too far into politics, you'd be quite a bit selfish (to put it mildly) if you expected everyone else to work longer and harder just so you could retain that $10k and current workload, not to mention the hardship caused to the families of the people who get laid off in order to make that happen. Sadly, I'll bet that the company did exactly that which is why there is a particular backlash against executive level pay.
That's largely what it's about though. People love the status quo, particularly if it makes them top dog.
Simply, people like to be ahead of other people, whether it's in terms of money, material goods, power, status etc.
This is the way the world works.
If everyone starts to have these things, it stops making them feel special and talented (particularly if that talent comes straight out of a lockbox) and when everyone is special, talented and rich, no one is.
The game is called pay to win for a reason, thing is if you take away the "win" part the people that pay tend to object pretty strongly.
@whamhammer1
Still well within the regular variance. A person would need at least 30 runs with the same team and even then it would not be an open and shut case.
And even IF people would notice, do you think anybody would take the complainant serious when he/she is throwing a tantrum over a 1-2% drop in performance, providing he/she can make a solid case that drop actually occurred?
Single power adjustments are easy and incredibly difficult to detect when done gradually.
The cascades, which are the real problem, are an entirely different story though.
Besides, if one thing gets nerfed, you can rest assured that people will figure out another way to blast this game several times over.
There was a time when this game was Escorts Online and it was, "DHCs or GTFO." It's been entirely different for a while now. And it can easily change into something else because do not doubt for a minute that people won't know how to make the most of what's out there in interesting ways.
Actually, the company I worked at did option #2. No one was laid off. No one got raises and all employees who were VPs and above (including the CEO) took pay cuts. Though I am sure the executives were compensated with stock options.
As for the company to expect everyone to work longer and harder... while it is not fair, it is the nature of the beast and it actually depends on the industry itself. In this case the company answered to both the shareholders and federal regulatory agencies. The shareholders do not want to loose money on their investments in the company as a whole and the federal regulatory agencies demand strict adherence to government guidelines and no disruption of in daily, weekly, monthly regulatory reports that are required. Failure to provide required regulatory reports in a timely manner can result in massive fines.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Using something OP that is obviously broken and some day will get fixed...and then complain when it was fixed and call it a nerf.
If you paid money/ spent time and effort to achieve something, say a Corvette in game and STO suddenly changes it to a Volkswagon without your consent, Well in the real world that would be litigable.
Nerfs are also generated by a small minority of loud people who cannot or most likely will not put in the effort to change their builds to accommodate a new mechanic. Easier just to cry and cry and cry until the Devs mistakenly think it's a consensus and break the game to shut them up.
If I ran this company, only the managers would read the forums if at all. Also once something was established in game, it would be unchangeable for the life of the game. Also much less greed, but that's another thread.
Then don't buy into it? Plain and simple solution to me...
I've seen it over and over...someone discovers something that is broken and OP, all the lambs copy said person because they need a crutch, devs fix said crutch and people complain and call it a nerf.
Cycle starts anew when the devs release something else that is broken...you know what...these people should have learned by now this has happened numerous times...but people keep doing it because they need a crutch.
And your game would be a lousy bug ridden game that would fail! Good going!
I'm sorry you need obviously broken mechanics to carry you to so-so DPS...and when something obviously broken is fixed you call it a nerf...but well that's gaming life.
That was me. Forgot to grab the bacon from the oven. It's extra crispy now.
And I think people have the wrong idea about overpowered. People don't seem to understand that it is the combination and accumulation of several things in the game that can make you very overpowered. Alone these things can still be strong but they may not necessarily be so excessively overpowered as people claim them to be. So do you intend to have the developers nerf everything that contribute to this larger pool of almightiness? Yes, I can agree that certain abilities may need certain balancing... Kemocite was among them. But when you are asking for a widespread nerf I am totally against that.
I've avoiding posting here for some time, but Cryptic Rock has a point. I'll get to it in a sec.
Star Trek Online goes through phases. Something becomes all the rage, while something gets spoken of as being bad. Can you remember when players thought plasma weapons were 'a waste of time 'cause the Borg use them and defend against them'? Back in the day - the Borg were the end game.
Star Trek Online gets rebranded by us - 'Escorts Online' during a time when 10K spd was a dream and not a reality. 'Cruisers Online' when nothing but cruisers (it seemed) were being offered. The came the dominance of FAW, then came 'the dark time' when FAW was broken for 3 weeks and it was the end of the world. And then it came back.
No one died during the great FAW famine except for the dignity of a few posters.
Only one thing is certain in Star Trek Online - stuff changes. And that's a good thing.
Nerfs - or adjustments - happen all the time. They are not done to TRIBBLE you off. They are done to balance the game, in a game where not everything can be easily balanced. (Imagining a Sisko rage comment - 'YOU CALL THIS BALANCE!!) While I'm sure that somewhere a developer has a decent handle on the code in general, no one on the team can fully comprehend the unintended consequences of any 1 change. That's why they do their best to QA on Tribble - to smooth out the biggest and most noticeable game ending bugs. Holodeck - for better or for worse - is the only real life QA environment 'we' have.
And sometimes things slip through. Lag enhancers. Plasma consoles, double proccing, item duplicating and my personal favourite - nearly unlimited console slots on a lockbox ship. Enjoy these while they last- but never NEVER assume it's going to stay that way.
I can say honestly that no nerf is ever done with the sole intention to target one group. I will add one slight 'but' to that statement - torpedoes. The math with torpedoes is questionable at best and I know on the wish list of things to fix, Torpedoes are likely on that list at position four or five. One day they will get revisited.
Back to Cryptic Rock's comment. It's funny, and it's true. I'll read into it a bit further: We herd together when we're unhappy about a change or 'nerf'. Most occasions our issues are minor in terms of overall gameplay, but they mean a lot to us individually. With persistence in bugging STO, they often get changed. The devs always listen, even when our demands are unrealistic. They simply keep the changes in line to making Star Trek Online a game for everyone.
So when something gets nerfed, and the pitchforks and torches get passed around, the only people who get scruffy looking are the volunteer mods that act as a fire wall here in the forums. Take a moment and think about that thankless position.
This won't just affect the "top end players" this'll affect the mid- low end. Their damage/dos/resistance will be reduced too, but it'll help everyone especially those who struggle to understand STO better and work with it instead of grinding to get the latest meta ASAP before the next lockbox.
OP totally ignores the business model of the game, which is to sell power.
Third or fourth thread about the exact same thing, which is to make everyone play the game how the OP thinks the game should be played.
Obvious troll is obvious.
Strangely enough OP, some people still think DPS output equals skill. Now let's be clear, anyone can look up a high-DPS build and think they are now highly skilled, when fact is, they are no more skilled than they were before they googled, and all they care about is THAT number!
Now lets be honest though, it's not the fault of the players that Cryptic allowed such an enormous increase in power-creep. Players asked for harder, more challenging content, which they got in HP-inflated enemies. People then went and complained that it was 'too hard' or taking 'too long', so Cryptic upped player DPS and dropped the HP of enemies in response, so now there is absolutely no chance of having that satisfying 'EPIC' battle that alot of people crave. Now people have settled into a 'if it's not finished in less than 3 minutes, I won't play it' scenario. However, players have also increasingly got greedier in their expectations of what rewards 'should' be given, with some saying MK XIV equipment should be available as drops, increase Marks/Dil, drop the cooldowns etc, all because they 'don't want to grind', so any drop of DPS, increase in NPC HP makes them have to 'mash the space bar' for another 5 seconds!
Compared to the game as it was 4 years ago, this game is now so 'hand-holdingly' easy (the new skill system for example) that even an 8 year old can master it in a few weeks.........so much for 'the career' aspect of the game I say! Remove all the 'themed' STF's and stick them on hourly rotation with tweaked rewards, leaving only those STF's which only reward Fleet Marks as open. That way we'll get those fuller queues, and also level restrict STF's, so those with full specialisations aren't matched with freshman lvl 50's!
Its amazing that your description of something that is a "DPS crutch" is "OP", thats akin to describing "evil", as "something thats not good". what exactly are you saying is "OP"? How and who exactly is the grand decider of what OP is?
Is a battle cloak OP?
Is Plasmonic Leech OP?
Are Aux2Batt build cruisers OP?
Are torp builds OP?
Is FAW OP?
Is Sci-Spam OP?
If so, how?
If I had a nickel everytime someone has declared something was op in this game, Id be a billionare. If I had $5.00 for each different kind of thing that has been declared to be OP, Id still be a millionaire. I've even heard that Mask Energy Signature was OP, back in the day, because it gave the Fed's a cloak, then people learned to put more Aux power in their ships.
Do you know what the greatest "nerf"is for "OP", learning to play better.
What, by your estimation is "fair"? I know players doing 100k without lockbox ships or consoles, just ships that were from the Zstore, acailable for sale to every player here. They levelled up thier gear, just like anyone can in the game, with boffs, doffs and skill set ups that are available in the game to everyone.
What some people forget about DPS is knowing the scenario, and where and when to position ones-self, and when/what abilites/skills/weapons to use.
Blinds spamming the spacebar with BFAW, will only get a person so much DPS, otherwise, everyone would be over 100k.
Do you doubt for an instant that there aren groups that do a high volume of parsed runs with a close group of players in a short amount of time, and do t hyper-analyze the data? I know players that are bug hunters, that specifically do exactly that to check to see if what is advertised is on the straight and narrow.
If you think that dropping it 1% a time, over several updates wont get noticed, thats on you but I know that Cryptic can't afford to lose any trust by "sneaking" something like that in.
Yeah I wouldn't mind an across the board adjustment either. But what's the point of doing that though? You'll just end up at the exact same place we are now and people will still complain.
There is a bit of difference between nerfing across the board vs buffing NPCs though. Nerfing across the board will hurt the top end more than the low end because believe it or not, there are diminishing returns at the top end. As an example, CrtD has a bigger effect on lower-end players than on the top end. Buffing NPCs though can push the low-end further under the bus if done in Normal and Advanced.
The best compromise in my opinion is to re-introduce the missing elite queues. Give the high-end players a playground to frolic in and give low-end players a goal to aim for. It's a win/win for players and cryptic (players have more fun, and Cryptic adds a reason to sell more creep).
A few months ago I would have agreed, but having played around with a more diverse set of builds, I have come to the conclusion that FAW isn't the overpowered skill people think it is. It isn't FAW in itself but a combination of many different things that end up buffing FAW. @snoggymack22 is on the right track here.
Genius!
Except when you go around build groups/forums, you'll notice a lot of people wondering why the 100k builds they copied only does 15k. So yeah whether you like it or not, there is more to a big number than build alone. Is it skill? Maybe not. Knowledge definitely, but then again, some will equate knowledge to skill too.
Edit: While I am not against an across the board adjustment, it has to be done with balance in mind (not just a 50% drop across the board for example). The new revamp and current power creep has made a lot of builds viable (looking at canon hybrids especially), and I would like to keep that build diversity. A straight-on nerf might narrow down the meta even further.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!