The devs need to make sure that the differences in power are not as enormous. There is no way around that. A difference of 100% may be tolerable. A difference if 10,000 % (from 2k to to 200k dps, to use a common if incomplete measurement) most certainly is not, not because someone might feel bad that he or she doesn't do that much damage - but simply because it makes the game experience so random that it - literally - isn't fun any more.
Some would claim that people doing below 10k don't belong in advanced anyway. And those that do just 10k are underperforming in their ships from my experience and numerous parses (see my post above). I personally think that people who do more than 50k belong to the Elite content (which are severely lacking at the moment).
Giving us those elite queues would solve a major problem introduced by that disparity. You can't do anything about the randomness of PUGs (nothing to stop badly geared, badly piloted ships from flying into an Elite PUG and nothing stopping an uber monster from doing a normal run) but that is the nature of PUGs.
If you really think the skill levels you find in random groups isn't fun then your best bet is not to PUG. If you really think that your view of fun serves a majority of players then I am sure it wouldn't be difficult for you to form a group of like-minded players. The Star Trek Battles channel has done it, the DPS-League(s) have done it. If you are having trouble finding and forming groups that fit your definition of "fun" then perhaps that's not what the players want, and changing the game to fit your definition of "fun" won't do it any good.
So why do you believe there are random queues? Do you really think the objective is to create a game experience that is so unpredictable that you absolutely have no chance to know what you are signing up for?
By your logic, removing the random queues altogether would be the only valid choice.
I'd rather have them repair the game.
The reason for the existence of random queues has been clearly stated by devs. It's there to provide players a quick access point to STFs. It's one of the reasons why the "trinity" was designed out of the game. That was stated in one of the "Tribbles in Ecstasy" podcasts when (I can't remember if it was Salami Inferno or Borticus) explained the reasoning why they won't introduce a Trinity in the game. They wanted to give any player a method to run this queues quickly and to hold their own in these random queues.
I run PUGs precisely for that reason myself. I would rather queue up for a quick run rather than wait to form one in one of the many channels I am in and I do enjoy the randomness of it.
They also formed the option to form more specialized groups if you want to through the private queue function. They've given you that choice to take.
Thank you for the history lesson. I'm a fairly new player myself so it really intrigues me to learn about the game's past and developmental progression. I came a few weeks before Delta Rising hit and only really started playing after that update.
Since you brought up the game's history, I'd also like to point at Delta Rising, which is at its core a balance pass that brought the game's power levels to the level some people like @sophlogimo wants: 10-15 minute runs and even longer (I remember 30-minute ISAs were not uncommon). I think we all know what happened to the queues because of that.
And that's primarily the reason why I am pointing out that you can create private queues if you want to have runs last that long. If there are truly that many people that want longer runs, then they should not have any problems forming such groups in the game. If there are that many people willing to join such runs, then maybe the game should be changed towards that direction. However as evidenced by all the other "power creep" threads and the results of Delta Rising's changes to player vs NPC performance and queue difficulties, I do not think the majority of players want that.
A few months ago I would have agreed with the anti-power creep group. In fact, I was one of the many "Nerf-BFAW" players. But now that I have gained more experience in the game and played more diverse builds, I have changed my opinion on the matter. I think the power creep isn't the problem. The lack of Elites are.
I think the "misunderstanding" goes both ways @patrickngo. What we know of the game is just what we see up front. For example, we do not know how many % of STFs run succeed with all optionals vs how many % fail apart from our own anecdotal experience. I have been in several ISA failures each day as an example. I and some of my friends have been plopped into an ISA that's been running for 5mins and the group has failed to even take out the cube on top of the left transformer while they are being swarmed by spheres.
The devs have that "metric" and maybe they are seeing that majority of players are still unable to complete stuff in advanced so they are introducing more powercreep. Conversely, they may also be seeing that the % of players that are "Elite-ready" to be few, that's why they aren't introducing Elite queues yet.
I've worked in different companies and have run my own businesses and I can tell you, what the employee sees in front of his desk, may not represent the macro view of the entire company. Maybe this is the case now (the devs are seeing something else on a macro level versus what some players experience in the "micro" level).
An example of this is the rants on how easy Crystalline Catastrophe has gotten. People complaining of 1min to sub 1-min runs. It's true that those runs exists (even in PUGs). What some players fail to see is that on those sub 1-min runs, it's usually just 1 or 2 really strong players out of 10 where 8 of those due very little damage (I've recorded damage below 500 DPS). I've been in KSA runs where I have been able to solo one side before the rest of my team has been able to even take down one transformer on the other side despite my ship being mid-tier as far as the DPS league is concerned.
This to me points to the fact that some players are just not able to cope with advanced and some (not all) of the players that think everything is "easy" thinks that way because they were carried.
I can tell you from experience that it is harder to fly as the 100k DPS'er in a run than it is to fly as the 10k'er. The fact that things die quicker for a 100k'er masks the fact that the one doing that sort of damage is doing a lot more work behind the keyboard. They fly precisely, time their abilities precisely, while dealing with all the aggro that comes their way.
There is no denying that those that do 50k and up are a very small minority in this game. I think that these are the players that no longer belong in advanced. Giving them Elites could be the solution so that the game's "power creep" can be correctly applied. But they may be so few to be worth Cryptic's efforts at the moment. The lag introduced by the "Attribute Stacking" is only making them more visible because more of them are PUGging rather than running in their "Leagues".
I think the power creep is helping those struggling to get through advanced and is also filling Cryptic's coffers. The power creep is also benefitting those that play off the meta allowing for more diverse builds which I think is a good thing. We're seeing more canon builds doing well (even able to play Elites), Cannons are making a resurgence and pure sci builds are becoming more competitive (seeing more of them in Elite as well).
Tactics, on the other hand, have become quaint things only remembered by old grognards from pre-Rep days-because they're now irrelevant to the most-played queues in the stack.
THIS is what 'power Creep' really means-it means that gear has become more critical to success, than knowledge or skill, and therefore it has created a 'point of entry' below which, you're never going to be 'ready' no matter how well you know the map.
This for me sums it up pretty well I think.
The lack of requirement for "skill" and "understanding" of the missions and objectives has turned the whole affair into an arms race.
He who wields the biggest gun does best, even though they might not know what they are doing. You can now just smash your way through everything when before you had to think before you acted (remember when the 10% rule existed, or when a probe guard was required, or when someone had to nanny the Kang?)
Why bother to learn actual tactics if you can kill everything within impunity and not care.
The only place tactics and thought are required is in highly specialized build runs where you may not have a "monster" to kill 'em all (e.g. canon build runs or all sci boats), or for high end premades looking to break records.
So why do you believe there are random queues? Do you really think the objective is to create a game experience that is so unpredictable that you absolutely have no chance to know what you are signing up for?
By your logic, removing the random queues altogether would be the only valid choice.
I'd rather have them repair the game.
Again, your 'logic' is off the rails. You yourself call them 'random' ques and then you complain because the game experience is well.. random. People have told you over and over and you, as always REFUSE to listen. If you don't want a random experience, don't join a random queue, it's just that simple.
You want people to 'repair the game' based on the fact that YOU don't like the outcome you're getting on PUG queues. You have no consideration at all of people that are actually having fun with it. You don't want the game 'fixed' you want it tailored to your personal standards.. as always.
This for me sums it up pretty well I think.
The lack of requirement for "skill" and "understanding" of the missions and objectives has turned the whole affair into an arms race.
He who wields the biggest gun does best, even though they might not know what they are doing. You can now just smash your way through everything when before you had to think before you acted (remember when the 10% rule existed, or when a probe guard was required, or when someone had to nanny the Kang?)
Why bother to learn actual tactics if you can kill everything within impunity and not care.
The only place tactics and thought are required is in highly specialized build runs where you may not have a "monster" to kill 'em all (e.g. canon build runs or all sci boats), or for high end premades looking to break records.
I have Mk XIV Epic Terran Task Force Disruptor. Right now THE biggest gun. You have the same.
I am, in fact, not so sure about that. They do have those people (for a prominent example, Borticus himself is a passionate STO player who indeed does demonstrate a deep understanding of the mechanics, even if he doesn't necessarily care for highest dps for his private toons). It is just that the team's policy quite obviously doesn't care for the problem, because the decision makers don't understand it, or simply disagree with our observations.
The only way to fix that, I guess, is to explain patiently until they at least are willing to discuss it with argument and counter-argument.
I'd lean towards it being a case of them disagreeing. Keep in mind that they have a slightly different set of goals in mind with what they do. Their design intent is to be profitable as well as make a fun and enjoyable game for as many potential customers as possible.
So for instance, Bort may agree with you about critical percentage being out of control. But if it's something that can generate profit, by being placed on traits and ship traits and consoles that people pay money for, and that is something people gladly pay money for ... then the game will not nerf that or curb that, because it makes them money.
Geko might agree with players that TOS era stuff isn't his cup of tea. But if a TOS themed expansion of any sort gets new players interested in the 50th anniversary year, which opens up the chance to do more with the game next year after the new TV series launches, then the potential for increased profit and the ability to attract fresh blood and new customers is going to drive that decision.
This game over the past 6 years has made quite a few decisions that I personally did not like. There's ships in this game I think are designed wrong, and it bugs me. I loved and played the old exploration system every single day. I was one of those weirdos that had a whole Role Playing story background behind it and even though it was shallow content I made quite a lot more out of it, and it was essential to my enjoyment of the game. When they removed it, I was livid. But I realize that those decisions had nothing to do with me as an individual. And at the end of the day, this is a Star Trek game. I like Star Trek. I like games. I put up with the stuff I don't like because I get the stuff I do like.
So what I'm trying to say is, there's a good chance that the stuff you don't like about the state of the game, is driven by Cryptic not agreeing with your personal tastes as they have made these decisions to support a different goal of theirs. The queues are a perfect example. People like fast missions. People like just logging in, tapping a join button, getting grouped in less than a minute and running at some stuff in space, blowing it up and moving on quickly. You don't like that. But more people than you do like that. Which is why most of the missions are barren and no one likes to queue up for them. But people have spent 5 consecutive years running at Infected Space maps. They LOVE it. It's fast, it's easy to pop. It's FUN for those people. The Dyson Sphere Trench Run? A map I personally like? Was only run a lot when it was FORCED on people as an event and people complained about it a ton. And life-TRIBBLE/exploited their way through the map to make it go quicker.
That is telling us all something ... a lot of players just want to pop in, shoot some stuff and be done. Cryptic likely disagrees with you on this particular point because they see more profit, more engagement and more overall customer happiness from the way the queues and the DPS race and power creep currently is.
Your feedback, across MANY threads has certainly been logged and noted. But unless you can figure out a way to show Cryptic MORE money can be made doing things your way, I doubt you're going to effect change.
This for me sums it up pretty well I think.
The lack of requirement for "skill" and "understanding" of the missions and objectives has turned the whole affair into an arms race.
He who wields the biggest gun does best, even though they might not know what they are doing. You can now just smash your way through everything when before you had to think before you acted (remember when the 10% rule existed, or when a probe guard was required, or when someone had to nanny the Kang?)
Why bother to learn actual tactics if you can kill everything within impunity and not care.
The only place tactics and thought are required is in highly specialized build runs where you may not have a "monster" to kill 'em all (e.g. canon build runs or all sci boats), or for high end premades looking to break records.
I have Mk XIV Epic Terran Task Force Disruptor. Right now THE biggest gun. You have the same.
Yet our DPS is vastly different.
Why is that?
That means nothing to anyone. There could be a million reasons our DPS is different; traits, skill set-up, passives from accolades and reps.
I know you're trying to prove that someone with better piloting can get more DPS than someone else with the same guns but that just doesn't really explain the nature of the power creep properly. Nobody is disputing that a seasoned veteran and a newbie will do different DPS from the exact same build.
Yes piloting and skills come into the top end in a big way, but for the vast majority of players they just don't bother with the skills, they can easily DPS their way to victory with little thought because there are so many buff, boosts, and pay-2-win items. It should not be that easy to get 40-50K+ DPS but it is because of badly borken and executed powers stacking up to create builds than any idiot can push massive DPS out of. And the worst of it is they never learn anything, they can't survive elites, they don't understand why they suffer in the Na'kuhl alerts, or why the Borg will sometimes outwit them.
I have no issue with people learning the game and getting into the guts of the mechanics to push their builds, but the fact is that these days you can easily put out ridiculous DPS and still have no clue what you're meant to do.
The game has given people more and more power, they just don't know anything else anymore.
I disagree that it's easy to do 40-50k DPS because if it was, more people would be doing that.
I do agree that DPS =|= Knowledge though. To get a 40-50k parse, all you need to know is ISA. They could very well not know all the maps.
Maybe I picked numbers a little high there i'll admit.
But like you say, you can run ISA and get 40K and think you're an expert, I've met plenty of players like that. But a lot of them still don't understand what the mission involves other than "kill everything". They have literally no idea what the 10% rule was and would be utterly lost in an elite where you need to know what you're doing an when to do it. People think because they can faceroll ISA that makes them ready for elite content, i'd like to see them try that same method in NWS or the old HSE.
I know you're trying to prove that someone with better piloting can get more DPS than someone else with the same guns but that just doesn't really explain the nature of the power creep properly.
That's part of it. But I'm also focusing in on this particular comment:
You can now just smash your way through everything when before you had to think before you acted
Which isn't a matter of semantics for me. That's an oft-uttered complaint all over these forums in these DPS threads. And it's completely untrue.
Because of the point I'm trying to make.
People yes can "smash" their way through Infected Space Advanced. But they need average DPS capability to do it. And usually they are carried by someone doing 40k or more, which offsets their average or below average play. Also the measurement in the end is skewed. Your 40k build can get 60k if you're in a different group because it just all dies quicker. So it's not a "set in stone" metric.
But setting all that aside ... ISA goes wonky when people don't have that higher DPS person there to smooth out the "use brute force" tactic. And that's when optionals fail. This happens. All the time. Less so since 11.5 when EVERYONE got a DPS boost. But it still happens.
And so no, you can't just smash your way to victory and BE a high DPS person. The bar on ISA is set really low. It's ancient content. It's not evolved a lick in 5 years. It's used as a baseline map for parses because it's consistent for testing. It's not a measuring stick of effectiveness in the end. Even top DPS chasers know this as they know their DPS changes in other maps. And they know, for instance, CCA requires a totally different build to top out DPS due to the boss of the encounter. And so on and so forth.
It's oversimplified to suggest smashing a space bar because you have MK XIV weapons will get you competitive DPS.
Piloting.
Build.
Team interaction.
All of that matters. Quite a bit.
In fact, the "smash your way to victory" completely disregards how hard it is to build a ship with the potential for top DPS. There's an entire forum here and an entire subreddit dedicated to build advice. That's not smashing your way to anything. It's the actual end-game right now. The time, resources and effort it takes to build that ship to even have that potential. Then the effort to fly it right for the map you're going to parse. Then the work with a team to take advantage of the flying, positioning and button sequences and buffing/debuffing.
No one is spacebarring their way to the top of the DPS league.
But a LOT of posters on this forum seem to think that's how it works. It's not. Yes, you can spacebar your way through ISA. But you're still being carried by others and your DPS isn't that hot when that's your playstyle.
Also, while I know the 10% rule and learned how to complete that map waaaay back when, I'm ok with ISA being brute forced. It's such an old piece of content. I use it only for convenience and testing. I'm much more interested in finding newer maps, newer content, newer challenges.
I slayed that "dragon" in that "dragon raid" years ago. That it's now a stepping stone, and testing tool, doesn't bother me one bit.
Hehe speaking of brute forcing ISA, I was recently (just before revamp) in an ISA with 2 50k'ers and the rest of the team at above 15k fail an optional (2nd transformer) because everyone (including 1 50k'er were shooting at everything but the transformer.
Almost all the elite maps mandatory optionals are tuned way to severely. For example Assault on Terok Nor the timer for the engineers is way to low or their hit point threshold is way to low compared to the damage the enemies do some combination needs to be altered. Not to make it so it's always beatable but at least high enough chance that people will play it. Pretty much all the elites have there optionals tuned so there is zero room for mistakes. Or in the case of Korfez there are certain maps that if they are picked it's almost certain most groups will fail. With minor tweaks all the queues could be made better.
I don't want to see the players nerfed but I'd like to play on maps where things don't die to one round of GWIII and Sub Space Vortex. But also have at least a 50% chance of victory in an above average group.
Removing the queue timer would also likely help as people would be more willing to risk the higher level maps if failure didn't mean a complete waste of time.
That's one way to look at power creep (system capability) but I think that's an inevitable part of the game's ongoing development and growth. I look at the case of Attribute Stacking as a sign of an old system needing an update similar to how we upgrade or replace computer hardware to keep up with current stuff. That issue is good power creep.
As for what most people here mean by power creep (damage)...
I think the term that better fit my post was "lack of understanding": players lack understanding on the meta view.
We don't know for sure if overly high damage is as rampant as some players think. I personally think it's just a few very active players doing it. Cryptic's (unjustly) maligned metrics would show that. And we don't know that metric says. We don't know how many % of the advanced missions run end with all the optionals successful. For all we know, a bigger chunk of players cannot succeed in Advanced. We lack understanding on the true extent of that power creep.
For sure the power creep exists. But maybe, it's just high enough to be good for the majority of players and our views are just skewed by the high visibility of the few hardcore players and our self-invented DPS metric in ISA. A metric that really just represents the theoretical maximum a ship can output in a team setting but in reality doesn't translate 1:1 to other STFs.
You can now just smash your way through everything when before you had to think before you acted
Which isn't a matter of semantics for me. That's an oft-uttered complaint all over these forums in these DPS threads. And it's completely untrue.
Because of the point I'm trying to make.
People yes can "smash" their way through Infected Space Advanced. But they need average DPS capability to do it. And usually they are carried by someone doing 40k or more, which offsets their average or below average play. Also the measurement in the end is skewed. Your 40k build can get 60k if you're in a different group because it just all dies quicker. So it's not a "set in stone" metric.
But setting all that aside ... ISA goes wonky when people don't have that higher DPS person there to smooth out the "use brute force" tactic. And that's when optionals fail. This happens. All the time. Less so since 11.5 when EVERYONE got a DPS boost. But it still happens.
And so no, you can't just smash your way to victory and BE a high DPS person. The bar on ISA is set really low. It's ancient content. It's not evolved a lick in 5 years. It's used as a baseline map for parses because it's consistent for testing. It's not a measuring stick of effectiveness in the end. Even top DPS chasers know this as they know their DPS changes in other maps. And they know, for instance, CCA requires a totally different build to top out DPS due to the boss of the encounter. And so on and so forth.
It's oversimplified to suggest smashing a space bar because you have MK XIV weapons will get you competitive DPS.
Piloting.
Build.
Team interaction.
All of that matters. Quite a bit.
In fact, the "smash your way to victory" completely disregards how hard it is to build a ship with the potential for top DPS. There's an entire forum here and an entire subreddit dedicated to build advice. That's not smashing your way to anything. It's the actual end-game right now. The time, resources and effort it takes to build that ship to even have that potential. Then the effort to fly it right for the map you're going to parse. Then the work with a team to take advantage of the flying, positioning and button sequences and buffing/debuffing.
No one is spacebarring their way to the top of the DPS league.
But a LOT of posters on this forum seem to think that's how it works. It's not. Yes, you can spacebar your way through ISA. But you're still being carried by others and your DPS isn't that hot when that's your playstyle.
Also, while I know the 10% rule and learned how to complete that map waaaay back when, I'm ok with ISA being brute forced. It's such an old piece of content. I use it only for convenience and testing. I'm much more interested in finding newer maps, newer content, newer challenges.
I slayed that "dragon" in that "dragon raid" years ago. That it's now a stepping stone, and testing tool, doesn't bother me one bit.
But, ignoring the top 10% of players (those doing over 50K for example) the trend these days is for a smash through the content approach, rather than a plan ahead and use tactics method. You can see this in pug runs all day long, even those without a high DPS'er to carry them. The vast majority of players seem to just going tearing in all guns blazing without a care in the world for what the actual mission involves.
-It's why ISA fails despite people having more than adequate DPS - they are too busy spamming BFAW they don't spot the incoming nanite train.
-It's why you don't get the optionals in CPA - people spend so much effort massacring the Terran's they don't shut portals.
They are able to produce reasonably high DPS (say 30K) with little effort, but stick them in an elite queue where tactics are required and they won't have a clue. Their smash n' grab approach won't work and there would be cries on the forums for nerfs to the elite content.
Adding elite content would be a big help in providing the end-game content the game requires so desperately, but I don't think a lot of players would be able to hack it unless they took time to learn more than just spamming damage abilities.
@lordsteve1 people attempting to smash through content with damage is not a power creep issue but a player problem in my opinion. Whether they had the damage capability or not, they'd still do it as you said.
That problem is not unique to STO. It's present in every MMO I've played. And when the Leeroy approach fails, they cry for nerfs (like how people cried about failure objectives in advanced here).
@lordsteve1 people attempting to smash through content with damage is not a power creep issue but a player problem in my opinion. Whether they had the damage capability or not, they'd still do it as you said.
That problem is not unique to STO. It's present in every MMO I've played. And when the Leeroy approach fails, they cry for nerfs (like how people cried about failure objectives in advanced here).
Yes but as mentioned up-thread by @patrickngo the prevalence of super-powered toys has made any form of tactical thinking obsolete in STO on the whole. So although it's a player problem the root cause is the over abundance of all this powerful new toys which are replacing what required skills and tactics to reproduce in the past.
Doesn't mater how well you know a mission now, it's not important unless you;re at the very top level. You can just pour on the Mk XIV Epics and blast through without worrying.
One of the best ways to learn how to do better (dps) is to ask those that are succeeding "how do I improve?" Thats what I did, and I have quadrupled what I do, mostly through knowing what to dow, and when.
Nothing. The devs bosses are only interested in money. Pay2win brings them in loads of money. Power creep will never be solved. Bugs and balance fixes with never come. PvP is dead. Tier 7 will appear soon where you can buy a ship that looks like the one you currently use but with slightly better stats. Sto is doomed.
Comments
Some would claim that people doing below 10k don't belong in advanced anyway. And those that do just 10k are underperforming in their ships from my experience and numerous parses (see my post above). I personally think that people who do more than 50k belong to the Elite content (which are severely lacking at the moment).
Giving us those elite queues would solve a major problem introduced by that disparity. You can't do anything about the randomness of PUGs (nothing to stop badly geared, badly piloted ships from flying into an Elite PUG and nothing stopping an uber monster from doing a normal run) but that is the nature of PUGs.
If you really think the skill levels you find in random groups isn't fun then your best bet is not to PUG. If you really think that your view of fun serves a majority of players then I am sure it wouldn't be difficult for you to form a group of like-minded players. The Star Trek Battles channel has done it, the DPS-League(s) have done it. If you are having trouble finding and forming groups that fit your definition of "fun" then perhaps that's not what the players want, and changing the game to fit your definition of "fun" won't do it any good.
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The reason for the existence of random queues has been clearly stated by devs. It's there to provide players a quick access point to STFs. It's one of the reasons why the "trinity" was designed out of the game. That was stated in one of the "Tribbles in Ecstasy" podcasts when (I can't remember if it was Salami Inferno or Borticus) explained the reasoning why they won't introduce a Trinity in the game. They wanted to give any player a method to run this queues quickly and to hold their own in these random queues.
I run PUGs precisely for that reason myself. I would rather queue up for a quick run rather than wait to form one in one of the many channels I am in and I do enjoy the randomness of it.
They also formed the option to form more specialized groups if you want to through the private queue function. They've given you that choice to take.
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Since you brought up the game's history, I'd also like to point at Delta Rising, which is at its core a balance pass that brought the game's power levels to the level some people like @sophlogimo wants: 10-15 minute runs and even longer (I remember 30-minute ISAs were not uncommon). I think we all know what happened to the queues because of that.
And that's primarily the reason why I am pointing out that you can create private queues if you want to have runs last that long. If there are truly that many people that want longer runs, then they should not have any problems forming such groups in the game. If there are that many people willing to join such runs, then maybe the game should be changed towards that direction. However as evidenced by all the other "power creep" threads and the results of Delta Rising's changes to player vs NPC performance and queue difficulties, I do not think the majority of players want that.
A few months ago I would have agreed with the anti-power creep group. In fact, I was one of the many "Nerf-BFAW" players. But now that I have gained more experience in the game and played more diverse builds, I have changed my opinion on the matter. I think the power creep isn't the problem. The lack of Elites are.
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The devs have that "metric" and maybe they are seeing that majority of players are still unable to complete stuff in advanced so they are introducing more powercreep. Conversely, they may also be seeing that the % of players that are "Elite-ready" to be few, that's why they aren't introducing Elite queues yet.
I've worked in different companies and have run my own businesses and I can tell you, what the employee sees in front of his desk, may not represent the macro view of the entire company. Maybe this is the case now (the devs are seeing something else on a macro level versus what some players experience in the "micro" level).
An example of this is the rants on how easy Crystalline Catastrophe has gotten. People complaining of 1min to sub 1-min runs. It's true that those runs exists (even in PUGs). What some players fail to see is that on those sub 1-min runs, it's usually just 1 or 2 really strong players out of 10 where 8 of those due very little damage (I've recorded damage below 500 DPS). I've been in KSA runs where I have been able to solo one side before the rest of my team has been able to even take down one transformer on the other side despite my ship being mid-tier as far as the DPS league is concerned.
This to me points to the fact that some players are just not able to cope with advanced and some (not all) of the players that think everything is "easy" thinks that way because they were carried.
I can tell you from experience that it is harder to fly as the 100k DPS'er in a run than it is to fly as the 10k'er. The fact that things die quicker for a 100k'er masks the fact that the one doing that sort of damage is doing a lot more work behind the keyboard. They fly precisely, time their abilities precisely, while dealing with all the aggro that comes their way.
There is no denying that those that do 50k and up are a very small minority in this game. I think that these are the players that no longer belong in advanced. Giving them Elites could be the solution so that the game's "power creep" can be correctly applied. But they may be so few to be worth Cryptic's efforts at the moment. The lag introduced by the "Attribute Stacking" is only making them more visible because more of them are PUGging rather than running in their "Leagues".
I think the power creep is helping those struggling to get through advanced and is also filling Cryptic's coffers. The power creep is also benefitting those that play off the meta allowing for more diverse builds which I think is a good thing. We're seeing more canon builds doing well (even able to play Elites), Cannons are making a resurgence and pure sci builds are becoming more competitive (seeing more of them in Elite as well).
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The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
This for me sums it up pretty well I think.
The lack of requirement for "skill" and "understanding" of the missions and objectives has turned the whole affair into an arms race.
He who wields the biggest gun does best, even though they might not know what they are doing. You can now just smash your way through everything when before you had to think before you acted (remember when the 10% rule existed, or when a probe guard was required, or when someone had to nanny the Kang?)
Why bother to learn actual tactics if you can kill everything within impunity and not care.
The only place tactics and thought are required is in highly specialized build runs where you may not have a "monster" to kill 'em all (e.g. canon build runs or all sci boats), or for high end premades looking to break records.
Again, your 'logic' is off the rails. You yourself call them 'random' ques and then you complain because the game experience is well.. random. People have told you over and over and you, as always REFUSE to listen. If you don't want a random experience, don't join a random queue, it's just that simple.
You want people to 'repair the game' based on the fact that YOU don't like the outcome you're getting on PUG queues. You have no consideration at all of people that are actually having fun with it. You don't want the game 'fixed' you want it tailored to your personal standards.. as always.
I have Mk XIV Epic Terran Task Force Disruptor. Right now THE biggest gun. You have the same.
Yet our DPS is vastly different.
Why is that?
I'd lean towards it being a case of them disagreeing. Keep in mind that they have a slightly different set of goals in mind with what they do. Their design intent is to be profitable as well as make a fun and enjoyable game for as many potential customers as possible.
So for instance, Bort may agree with you about critical percentage being out of control. But if it's something that can generate profit, by being placed on traits and ship traits and consoles that people pay money for, and that is something people gladly pay money for ... then the game will not nerf that or curb that, because it makes them money.
Geko might agree with players that TOS era stuff isn't his cup of tea. But if a TOS themed expansion of any sort gets new players interested in the 50th anniversary year, which opens up the chance to do more with the game next year after the new TV series launches, then the potential for increased profit and the ability to attract fresh blood and new customers is going to drive that decision.
This game over the past 6 years has made quite a few decisions that I personally did not like. There's ships in this game I think are designed wrong, and it bugs me. I loved and played the old exploration system every single day. I was one of those weirdos that had a whole Role Playing story background behind it and even though it was shallow content I made quite a lot more out of it, and it was essential to my enjoyment of the game. When they removed it, I was livid. But I realize that those decisions had nothing to do with me as an individual. And at the end of the day, this is a Star Trek game. I like Star Trek. I like games. I put up with the stuff I don't like because I get the stuff I do like.
So what I'm trying to say is, there's a good chance that the stuff you don't like about the state of the game, is driven by Cryptic not agreeing with your personal tastes as they have made these decisions to support a different goal of theirs. The queues are a perfect example. People like fast missions. People like just logging in, tapping a join button, getting grouped in less than a minute and running at some stuff in space, blowing it up and moving on quickly. You don't like that. But more people than you do like that. Which is why most of the missions are barren and no one likes to queue up for them. But people have spent 5 consecutive years running at Infected Space maps. They LOVE it. It's fast, it's easy to pop. It's FUN for those people. The Dyson Sphere Trench Run? A map I personally like? Was only run a lot when it was FORCED on people as an event and people complained about it a ton. And life-TRIBBLE/exploited their way through the map to make it go quicker.
That is telling us all something ... a lot of players just want to pop in, shoot some stuff and be done. Cryptic likely disagrees with you on this particular point because they see more profit, more engagement and more overall customer happiness from the way the queues and the DPS race and power creep currently is.
Your feedback, across MANY threads has certainly been logged and noted. But unless you can figure out a way to show Cryptic MORE money can be made doing things your way, I doubt you're going to effect change.
Show them the money and they'll listen.
Wait. That didn't come out right.
Or ... DID IT?
That means nothing to anyone. There could be a million reasons our DPS is different; traits, skill set-up, passives from accolades and reps.
I know you're trying to prove that someone with better piloting can get more DPS than someone else with the same guns but that just doesn't really explain the nature of the power creep properly. Nobody is disputing that a seasoned veteran and a newbie will do different DPS from the exact same build.
Yes piloting and skills come into the top end in a big way, but for the vast majority of players they just don't bother with the skills, they can easily DPS their way to victory with little thought because there are so many buff, boosts, and pay-2-win items. It should not be that easy to get 40-50K+ DPS but it is because of badly borken and executed powers stacking up to create builds than any idiot can push massive DPS out of. And the worst of it is they never learn anything, they can't survive elites, they don't understand why they suffer in the Na'kuhl alerts, or why the Borg will sometimes outwit them.
I have no issue with people learning the game and getting into the guts of the mechanics to push their builds, but the fact is that these days you can easily put out ridiculous DPS and still have no clue what you're meant to do.
The game has given people more and more power, they just don't know anything else anymore.
I do agree that DPS =|= Knowledge though. To get a 40-50k parse, all you need to know is ISA. They could very well not know all the maps.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Maybe I picked numbers a little high there i'll admit.
But like you say, you can run ISA and get 40K and think you're an expert, I've met plenty of players like that. But a lot of them still don't understand what the mission involves other than "kill everything". They have literally no idea what the 10% rule was and would be utterly lost in an elite where you need to know what you're doing an when to do it. People think because they can faceroll ISA that makes them ready for elite content, i'd like to see them try that same method in NWS or the old HSE.
That's part of it. But I'm also focusing in on this particular comment:
Which isn't a matter of semantics for me. That's an oft-uttered complaint all over these forums in these DPS threads. And it's completely untrue.
Because of the point I'm trying to make.
People yes can "smash" their way through Infected Space Advanced. But they need average DPS capability to do it. And usually they are carried by someone doing 40k or more, which offsets their average or below average play. Also the measurement in the end is skewed. Your 40k build can get 60k if you're in a different group because it just all dies quicker. So it's not a "set in stone" metric.
But setting all that aside ... ISA goes wonky when people don't have that higher DPS person there to smooth out the "use brute force" tactic. And that's when optionals fail. This happens. All the time. Less so since 11.5 when EVERYONE got a DPS boost. But it still happens.
And so no, you can't just smash your way to victory and BE a high DPS person. The bar on ISA is set really low. It's ancient content. It's not evolved a lick in 5 years. It's used as a baseline map for parses because it's consistent for testing. It's not a measuring stick of effectiveness in the end. Even top DPS chasers know this as they know their DPS changes in other maps. And they know, for instance, CCA requires a totally different build to top out DPS due to the boss of the encounter. And so on and so forth.
It's oversimplified to suggest smashing a space bar because you have MK XIV weapons will get you competitive DPS.
Piloting.
Build.
Team interaction.
All of that matters. Quite a bit.
In fact, the "smash your way to victory" completely disregards how hard it is to build a ship with the potential for top DPS. There's an entire forum here and an entire subreddit dedicated to build advice. That's not smashing your way to anything. It's the actual end-game right now. The time, resources and effort it takes to build that ship to even have that potential. Then the effort to fly it right for the map you're going to parse. Then the work with a team to take advantage of the flying, positioning and button sequences and buffing/debuffing.
No one is spacebarring their way to the top of the DPS league.
But a LOT of posters on this forum seem to think that's how it works. It's not. Yes, you can spacebar your way through ISA. But you're still being carried by others and your DPS isn't that hot when that's your playstyle.
Also, while I know the 10% rule and learned how to complete that map waaaay back when, I'm ok with ISA being brute forced. It's such an old piece of content. I use it only for convenience and testing. I'm much more interested in finding newer maps, newer content, newer challenges.
I slayed that "dragon" in that "dragon raid" years ago. That it's now a stepping stone, and testing tool, doesn't bother me one bit.
That was an epic run in its own right. LOL
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Almost all the elite maps mandatory optionals are tuned way to severely. For example Assault on Terok Nor the timer for the engineers is way to low or their hit point threshold is way to low compared to the damage the enemies do some combination needs to be altered. Not to make it so it's always beatable but at least high enough chance that people will play it. Pretty much all the elites have there optionals tuned so there is zero room for mistakes. Or in the case of Korfez there are certain maps that if they are picked it's almost certain most groups will fail. With minor tweaks all the queues could be made better.
I don't want to see the players nerfed but I'd like to play on maps where things don't die to one round of GWIII and Sub Space Vortex. But also have at least a 50% chance of victory in an above average group.
Removing the queue timer would also likely help as people would be more willing to risk the higher level maps if failure didn't mean a complete waste of time.
As for what most people here mean by power creep (damage)...
I think the term that better fit my post was "lack of understanding": players lack understanding on the meta view.
We don't know for sure if overly high damage is as rampant as some players think. I personally think it's just a few very active players doing it. Cryptic's (unjustly) maligned metrics would show that. And we don't know that metric says. We don't know how many % of the advanced missions run end with all the optionals successful. For all we know, a bigger chunk of players cannot succeed in Advanced. We lack understanding on the true extent of that power creep.
For sure the power creep exists. But maybe, it's just high enough to be good for the majority of players and our views are just skewed by the high visibility of the few hardcore players and our self-invented DPS metric in ISA. A metric that really just represents the theoretical maximum a ship can output in a team setting but in reality doesn't translate 1:1 to other STFs.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
But, ignoring the top 10% of players (those doing over 50K for example) the trend these days is for a smash through the content approach, rather than a plan ahead and use tactics method. You can see this in pug runs all day long, even those without a high DPS'er to carry them. The vast majority of players seem to just going tearing in all guns blazing without a care in the world for what the actual mission involves.
-It's why ISA fails despite people having more than adequate DPS - they are too busy spamming BFAW they don't spot the incoming nanite train.
-It's why you don't get the optionals in CPA - people spend so much effort massacring the Terran's they don't shut portals.
They are able to produce reasonably high DPS (say 30K) with little effort, but stick them in an elite queue where tactics are required and they won't have a clue. Their smash n' grab approach won't work and there would be cries on the forums for nerfs to the elite content.
Adding elite content would be a big help in providing the end-game content the game requires so desperately, but I don't think a lot of players would be able to hack it unless they took time to learn more than just spamming damage abilities.
That problem is not unique to STO. It's present in every MMO I've played. And when the Leeroy approach fails, they cry for nerfs (like how people cried about failure objectives in advanced here).
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Yes but as mentioned up-thread by @patrickngo the prevalence of super-powered toys has made any form of tactical thinking obsolete in STO on the whole. So although it's a player problem the root cause is the over abundance of all this powerful new toys which are replacing what required skills and tactics to reproduce in the past.
Doesn't mater how well you know a mission now, it's not important unless you;re at the very top level. You can just pour on the Mk XIV Epics and blast through without worrying.
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The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!