and the requirement (gear + spec points ) to play queue is much more difficult for a new player
'Cuz a lot of people complained that STFs were too easy and they wanted a greater challenge.
Yeah we remember how that turned out. Delta Rising STF's.
Now I know the devs were honesty trying to turn the borg STF's into something more challenging to meet the power creep of powers. They I definitely agree they went a bit too far with their first changes.
However, I actually LIKED that you could fail ISA. If you didnt pay attention "BANG" failed mission, and off you go. The HP sponges were annoying, but after a while cryptic had a nice balance between HP, difficulty of ISA and chance of failure, and decent rewards.
Sadly, seems some people dont want challenges, and only want to do 2 minute missions that reward enough stuff to last one month in terms of dilithium, XP and loot.
Which is sad to see. Myself, like the others here, play for fun and challenges.
Hence why I am always exploring the other queues. Undine Assault can be tons of fun. Especially if you get the map dodging asteroids
They didn't go too far at all. Elite content was and should have been aimed at only the most top tier of players, using VOIP, and working together. Which rules out 99% of the STO community. However, every noob and his dog still felt they should be entitled to complete the hardest content in the game with little to no effort. So very few people actually wanted to apply, or even attempt to apply teamwork of any sort.
So lets not blame Cryptic. They tried it, because everyone whined content was too easy, then when they changed everything, everyone whined because there were actually very few players good enough to step up to the plate.
Probably the same people who think high DPS takes skill!
As a result, massive whining ensued, probably because all the jobless dil grinders couldnt grind as quickly for their daily dil quota on each character.
" Experience is a hard mistress, she gives the tests first, and the lessons after... "
Feeling that dil, mats, EC and fun are not reason enough to play a game. Devs oughtta pay me for gracing them with my radiant presence!
Not when most of the STF's are as terrible as they currently are. They should be paying us to play some of them, especially that abortion of PVE content, Battle for Procyon. What a tragedy that "content" is.
" Experience is a hard mistress, she gives the tests first, and the lessons after... "
The biggest issue with the STFs remains the difference between investment and reward between missions. When Crystalline and Breach offer the same reward, why would anyone ever touch Breach?
A dynamic system that updates the rewards for each STF weekly based on the average queue-to-completion time the previous week, with a small but measurable bonus for playing in public queues (which would entice people out of the private runs), would fix the majority of the issues with the missions and incentivize playing the less popular ones.
And it would reduce how many times people run ISA. Why is ISA so popular? It's a terrible mission.
Like I said, Cryptic got it right with the first revamp with Gozer at the helm, true challenging endgame content with Rewards that actually made it worthwhile for the hardcore crowd, as well as a little something for more casual players.
But entitlement issues ensued and we ended up with the Reputation System that turned the STF's into glorified currency grinds, rather than a reward grind.
I dare say that most of the queues would still be very active today if they had continued with the "Rare Drop" formula in order to get items.
Each and every single Queue needs its own "unique" rewards that cannot be obtained anywhere else in order to entice people. Be it equipment or even just cosmetic unlocks, like the original Elite Honor Guard/MACO and Omega costume unlocks which were "exclusively" available only to people that played the Elite Queues.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
Way I see it. The story Arc don't lead up to a STF. So therefor they don't exist. That is how my characters sees it. This is why I don't do them. No reason to.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Way I see it. The story Arc don't lead up to a STF. So therefor they don't exist. That is how my characters sees it. This is why I don't do them. No reason to.
Some of them like Undine Assault and the latest additions do. Only the older queues don't really have to do much with the storyline but that's probably because the story has been changed a few times.
Some of them like Undine Assault and the latest additions do. Only the older queues don't really have to do much with the storyline but that's probably because the story has been changed a few times.
There was no mission to tell you to see a person in charge of it. Or way to set it up. On WoW for example. The guy will tell you to go in there and take care of the threat. Then shows off a reward like a regular mission. There is none of that for any STFs. With them changing the old story arcs like they did. They didn't even bother to make that into the story arc.
Even the latest ones has nothing story wise to send me there. I have done the entire Future Proof. There was nothing mentioned that a conflict was in the Bad Lands. And your needed there.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
STFs are nearly dead. Even if they fixed it after the power creep of delta rising and then power creep v2.0 skill revamp no one would be around anymore to even take notice.
Average solo queue pugs seem to still contain only new players who are perpetually clueless or indifferent about optional/mandatory objectives. If it isn't that, then it's min-maxers who obliterate everything on their own in no time.
Game pace is way too fast, strategy has gone out the window in favor of keybind ability spamming, self heals from damage dealt destroyed any class roles outside of DPS, they can't even fix the AI of pets so nevermind proper challenging AI which when they tried a bit with map fail conditions people complained cause it was too hard for their vacant skills or desire to apply themselves a tiny bit to learn.
They killed PVP and drove away the good players, along with my own motivation to enjoy PvP "once I gear up" (which will never happen with super expensive RNG lockbox weapons/gear/etc.) making the rest of the gameplay have meaning. That ship sailed years ago, now enjoy your empty queues, I'm mostly done this mind-numbing experience of doing the same thing over and over, and having a blast in other proper PvP games.
STO may be the only Star Trek Online game, but it isn't the only online game out there. I can't even get ******* I.R.W. option for my ****** role play enjoyment ffs.
Agreed. It's almost impossible to do the objectives. One guy runs through and hits the end before you can to the optionals. blitz! done. What the hell?! and to heck with those people trying to get the rare rewards, like the old Borg BOFF one used to give.
STO may be the only Star Trek Online game, but it isn't the only online game out there. I can't even get ******* I.R.W. option for my ****** role play enjoyment ffs.
And it wouldn't make sense within the scopes of this game to have that I.R.W. option. Granted, a lot of things don't make much sense, some maybe even more important to gameplay, but I.R.W. is evil and players are not supposed to be.
They didn't go too far at all. Elite content was and should have been aimed at only the most top tier of players, using VOIP, and working together. Which rules out 99% of the STO community. However, every noob and his dog still felt they should be entitled to complete the hardest content in the game with little to no effort.
While it makes sense to have top tier content which can only be done by the top tier of players, it probably just isn't economically viable to ignore the 99%. Well, not exactly ignore, but put a lot of effort (a real challenge that is more than just a DPS sponge with OP wonder weapons) into content for only very few players - who may easily outgrow this mission again - while the majority gets zilch.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Average solo queue pugs seem to still contain only new players who are perpetually clueless or indifferent about optional/mandatory objectives.
True enough. Though it is also not that easy to get understanding from experienced players for new players to be more of a burden first couple of times until they understand. I get that it can be tiring, but newbs need (a) to want to educate themselves and (b) get help doing so. With many it fails at a, but with many others, b is the problem.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
As somebody who runs STF almost exclusively I don’t really think that much of „fixing“ is in order. Most of which would be a better or more equal distribution of the rewards related to the average time it takes to do the respective map.
By the competency of my selected team I decide for the difficulty of the runs, more or less independent of the in game difficulty setting itself. When I feel like farming I take a good group, when eager for a challenge I take a bad one.
My AoY toon is one month old. It currently sits on roughly 120 salvage techs and 0,7 mil Dil. Enough marks to do the reputs 3 times over or so.
Given the XP outcome of the admiralty System the toon progression over teamed PvE works better than it ever did. Boy, under current prices selling blue crafting materials makes doing STF already worth it on it own.
So in short, no problems here.
One of the worst comments on this topic i have ever seen.
...
What are you grinding for?
Hi,
At the moment I play for the Zahl ship trait on my AoY toon. Given my regular income I get for my job in RL I could easily buy it any day however I found buying all the rewards away is quiet a fun killer in the long run.
I also use the term “playing for” over the word “grind” since I do it by choice and consider teamed pve to be a fun activity rather than something I have to do. On rare occasions when I decide that 4k Ico marks or anything are requiered that words comes to mind but how often is that?!
Well having access to “bad players” is the easiest thing in STO and something which is not needed to be advertised. Usually lining up for a random pve que is already sufficed, preferably on weekends. Of course how you percept a match directly correlates with how good you are yourself. If you are above average you are much more often in a position where you have to carry others than when you are below average and need to be carried yourself. Of course the game is easy when being carried. Take Bug Hunt Elite. I played it with 3 of the top 5 DPSer in STO yesterday. The match was so easy that the only challenge for me was to find something left to shoot at. Later on I made a pug run. I really did my best to contribute however the queen fight posed too much of a challenge and the group failed.
I don’t think it makes any sense to reply to your comments in more detail. Reason is that it basically comes down to the question of “Are you having fun in game?”. That’s something I can easily answer with “yes” while I’m not sure about you given the bitterness of your post. The teamed PvE endgame mechanics are like 6 years old in this game. True, power creep gives them a more easy time atm but claiming that it’s flat out without any challenge is not correct. I think if one is having fun one can easily bring the motivation and the creativity to tend to the game and looking for ways to uphold or even multiply it.
If you have lost your fun however there is not much help. My original reply was toward the OP. A person which belongs to those type of players which seem to focus entirely on a handful of advanced space maps while leaving 80% of the other maps completely out of order. He does not even consider doing ground maps. That’s all fine and good if it suits his purpose but quiet frankly making your STO experience as claustrophobic at this and then log into forums claiming that “fixing” is needed is something I have a hard time leaving without comment.
The Devs in this game never had an easy task with PvE. What are they supposed to do given the infinite variety of customers of this product? I mean we have covered everything from hardcore gamers up to two-left handed trekkies going to conventions with prosthetic Spock ears. We have players with that much of an RL income that they can open 100 lock boxes a day while for others spending 1 Euro for a game would be an unforgettable sin. If one finds oneself close to one of the extremes of course limitations are expected but for 90% of the rest all things should work fine in PvE.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Try them on Elite. Be very familiar with the content before you do. If you ( or someone else on the team) didn't learn them before the last time they were "fixed" you can expect some degree of frustration when somebody blows one of the "optionals" for the team, and you are on cooldown reconsidering your decision to try elite.
My original reply was toward the OP. A person which belongs to those type of players which seem to focus entirely on a handful of advanced space maps while leaving 80% of the other maps completely out of order.
Oh, you know me?
Than you would know thats TRIBBLE.
I don't care for easier maps. If anything i'm waiting for a real challange not some Zombies with tons of HP and with real rewards: Ships, Doffs, Tech, XP ... not everyone has fun playing that admirality "game".
Back in the old days there where rules how to win a STF or you failed. Is it even possible to fail a so called "advanced" STF these days? It was too easy, yes. Even on Elite and without power creep but still way better than today. The main problem was the same: no AI. Even games in the 90s had some sort of AI ...
I didn't "play" any STF since AoY. It's impossible with pugs because, you know, the public queues are completely dead. It's nearly impossible with Fleet/Armada peeps because nobody wants to "play" a "harder" map when you get everything in a shorter time elsewhere.
Try them on Elite
Uhm why (i did btw)? There are the same Zombies just with more HP. There are people out there who play them alone!
Sorry but Team-Missions shouldn't be doable alone, right?
What are you grinding for?
That's a good question...
it basically comes down to the question of “Are you having fun in game?”
Nonsense. I do have fun in the game, but not by "playing" Zombie Shooter 4D on easy with god mode enabled.
[...]If one finds oneself close to one of the extremes of course limitations are expected but for 90% of the rest all things should work fine in PvE.
You don't need to spend anything for any STF up to advanced. You don't even need rare/ultra rare stuff.
I have a bit of a hard time to understand your problem OP.
One the one hand you claim the desire for more challenging contend, on the other you say that you don’t play the stuff that presents the most challenges currently. On the one hand you claim that elite is not challenging enough for you (especially considering that you heard of others that can solo it) while on the other say that you can’t play them in the first place because queues are dead and in your fleet the players don’t share your eagerness and rather stick to easy stuff.
If I throw all of this on a tablet, eat it and form an opinion out of it I’d say you have become too good for this game and totally grew beyond the PvE challenges available. Unfortunately you seem to belong to a discrete minority because most of the players in game seem to reject the stuff that comes closest to your desire and which results in the barren PvE list we currently have.
I’m sure the error is on my part here, which is most likely due to the fact that I’m far from being as good as you. Still I managed to do 10 elite pve in my gaming session yesterday which I did with pugs, fleet-mates and friends alike. I also had an engaging and entertained time. Most runs we won, on occasion we lost. That’s the game as it presents to me.
Of course there could also be an easier explanation between the differences in experience between the two of us. That would be that my games already start with the very attempt to assemble teams or queue up to actually face the content in the first place. You know, make the best of it. You on the other hand admit not to have even bothered to do that in over a month…
Most of the issues and thoughts discussed here was discussed (directly and indirectly) by @crypticrock last night. This portion specifically addresses STF's and his thought process, but what he has to say overall is enlightening.
My original reply was toward the OP. A person which belongs to those type of players which seem to focus entirely on a handful of advanced space maps while leaving 80% of the other maps completely out of order.
Oh, you know me?
Than you would know thats ****.
I don't care for easier maps. If anything i'm waiting for a real challange not some Zombies with tons of HP and with real rewards: Ships, Doffs, Tech, XP ... not everyone has fun playing that admirality "game".
You already get XP, Salvaged Techs (if on Elite). The Dil (and vendor-trashed loots) you acquire can, over time add up to the point that you can afford Ships and/or DOff packs.
Part and parcel of the "problem", however, was that while "back in the day when you had to climb uphill both ways through the ionic (snow) storm" to have a shot at possibly getting the specific reward in question because it was "gated" behind an RNG - too many people ran hundreds or even thousands of the mission and was officially "discouraged" at the game because of their "luck", while others were rubbing into these people's faces that they got the reward on run 3 and therefore had no more reason to populate that queue.
Thusly, while there's no more "massive insta-reward of great popularity", there's also no "omg, I'm doing this map in my sleep and I have to keep doing so to get massive insta-reward of great popularity that this cheesy game isn't giving me..."
Back in the old days there where rules how to win a STF or you failed. Is it even possible to fail a so called "advanced" STF these days? It was too easy, yes. Even on Elite and without power creep but still way better than today. The main problem was the same: no AI. Even games in the 90s had some sort of AI ...
"Difficulty" via the addition of quasi-artificial fail conditions? Removed due to player complaints. "Difficulty" through the application of player-based powers? Please see "Borg spheres scattering to the corners of the map making it impossible to kill them all before the optional timer expired due to their Emergency Power to Engines (ab)use" during the times where there were fail conditions. "Difficulty" through making the enemies essentially player-clones that are spamming 12 powers instead of 2? Argued before and yet to be implemented...
I didn't "play" any STF since AoY. It's impossible with pugs because, you know, the public queues are completely dead. It's nearly impossible with Fleet/Armada peeps because nobody wants to "play" a "harder" map when you get everything in a shorter time elsewhere.
As a few in this thread have hinted, the most viable solution would be to "expand your friend base", like, oh, possibly through the DPS channels, and find people willing to play these alternate queues "for the fun" rather than "for the reward".
Otherwise, you're counting on Cryptic to do what others have requested - rebalance the rewards to be much more time-invested gives X items - but Cryptic's hinted before that the current reward structure is set up on their intended playtime values, not what the playerbase is capable of doing the mission in (Read: ISA and CC are "set up" to be 15 minute missions, and pay as such, even though players pop these missions in 2 minutes...)
Uhm why (i did btw)? There are the same Zombies just with more HP. There are people out there who play them alone!
Sorry but Team-Missions shouldn't be doable alone, right?
Team missions should require a team, yeah. But when there exists such a disparate power spread - "average Joe" puts out 10k, "elite Joe" puts out 100k - a guy who's worth 2 teams worth of "average joes" can handily clear a mission designed for one team's worth[/I] of average Joes...
You hinted earlier. To a point, you are trying to play for "fun", not a grind per-se, and are going to take what rewards come along with the fun. However, you do seem a little... confused... on the reward system, being a "semi-casual-friendly" time-based one instead of the "old school" luck based one.
[...]If one finds oneself close to one of the extremes of course limitations are expected but for 90% of the rest all things should work fine in PvE.
You don't need to spend anything for any STF up to advanced. You don't even need rare/ultra rare stuff.
I think you... misjudged... the comment. Quote says "if you're a player in a certain... extreme, things are going to "feel" limited, but if you're much "closer to average", then things will seem just fine". It's not a commentary on gear, it's a commentary on other less tangible things.
To wit, it seems you lie a lot closer to an extreme than you'd think - but your "extreme" is your "desire for a certain 'type' of difficulty - seemingly to have opposition that plays a lot more like a 'player' than 'zombie bag of HP'." As such, when playing a game that does not cater to "that type of difficulty", you're going to feel "much more limited in your choices" than the "average Joe" or "DPS lord looking for more ways to make them HP disappear faster" which it where STO focuses a lot of their "difficulty options" ATM.
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
I have to admit that I was surprised that when on advanced for the Battle of Procyon 5 that you didn't fail if the Enterprise-J basically gets destroyed. The only thing you lose is like 20 marks, if that. Kind of makes that a pointless objective.
I still say the old reward system with gear drops made queues more playable. Instead of tieing everything to rep they could have made a hybrid where we got the queue specific gear drops AND marks for the misc items like kit mods, devices, secondary sets ( ex. Dyson 3pc proton set). The queues werent graveyards back then, it gave you a reason to play ige/cge/kge whereas now youd be hardup to get a pug to pop for these.
endgame content on "advanced" last only some seconds
A.I. is not existent
absolutely no skill required
That just doesn't add up
They give plenty of XP and rewards.
The only problem is the rewards aren't scaled to the length of time needed. 2-3 minutes in CCA to get 75 marks is too much of a reward IMO, whereas the same Marks for Breach which was a 15 minute mission is too little.
Most certainly BFAW removes the need for skill and planning. It's way over-powered in terms of DPS and Cooldown.
And finally, AFK'ers should be auto-kicked and receive NO reward. It winds me up when people don't take part in STF's and still get rewarded!
"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.
My AoY Agent is nearly maxed out with everthing epic. But for what?
What can i do with my 16 toons and all their dill,mark,tech -"playing" another 20s CCA or 30s ISA?
Or vaporize red-dotted idiots in [enter any stf name] for even more dil, marks, tech?
You've just asked the question facing every player of every MMOever.
What DO you do with a max level epic equipped character in Diablo 3? What about WoW? Champions Online? The Old Republic? Dragonball Xenosaga? Everquest Online? Minesweeper?
it shouldn't be called advanced, period...it is in fact the easy mode, and normal is mostly empty queues anyway.
It is by far not that simple.
People are breezing through advanced content because they know the game and the game mechanics. Total newbies however do not, and throw a bunch of fresh newbies into an advanced queue and there's no way they are going to complete it in a reasonable time frame, if at all depending on queue.
The power gap between experienced players and newbies is enormous.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
Sorry if i misunderstood some of the hints/comments, it's not my mother tongue
I played all STFs with my other toons ad nauseam. I was in DPS channels - it was agonizingly boring: "WFP ..." BRRRRRRZ - finished. I (nearly) maxed this toon without STFs, have 650k unrefiened dil, countles marks and what not. I just finished CCA (pug), that poor thing didn't shoot even once. And all i got was a tiny amount of XP and a stupid VR Sensor Probe ... you can't even sell this junk
I do remember the spheres on speed, it was a lazy attempt to make STF more challenging. It didn't really work becaus all "AI" does is rotating abilities - regardless of useful or not.
Maybe this is a problem every MMO out there has. It doesn't really matter. This isn't WoW, TOR or something. This is STO.
Don't know how it is today, but i remember TOR endgame was quite challenging with the need of the (un)holy trinity and tactic. The only mindless AOE-DPS spamming games i know of are STO and Neverwinter but on the other side i don't know many MMOs.
You know STO as it is "now" but way back in the day STF's were pretty much hardcore content that required roles and coordination to complete.
That is, before they dumbed down the STF's for the casual masses and then indirectly dumbed down further via power creep.
Taking on Armek without a tank and healer used to be suicide.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
Comments
They didn't go too far at all. Elite content was and should have been aimed at only the most top tier of players, using VOIP, and working together. Which rules out 99% of the STO community. However, every noob and his dog still felt they should be entitled to complete the hardest content in the game with little to no effort. So very few people actually wanted to apply, or even attempt to apply teamwork of any sort.
So lets not blame Cryptic. They tried it, because everyone whined content was too easy, then when they changed everything, everyone whined because there were actually very few players good enough to step up to the plate.
Probably the same people who think high DPS takes skill!
As a result, massive whining ensued, probably because all the jobless dil grinders couldnt grind as quickly for their daily dil quota on each character.
Not when most of the STF's are as terrible as they currently are. They should be paying us to play some of them, especially that abortion of PVE content, Battle for Procyon. What a tragedy that "content" is.
Also, powerfull aux to sif and hazard emitters.
Or be cheap and copy the ground adaption.
Add a new space consumable that modulates the weapons.
Have the Borg Related sets have auto adaption as further set bonus...
A dynamic system that updates the rewards for each STF weekly based on the average queue-to-completion time the previous week, with a small but measurable bonus for playing in public queues (which would entice people out of the private runs), would fix the majority of the issues with the missions and incentivize playing the less popular ones.
And it would reduce how many times people run ISA. Why is ISA so popular? It's a terrible mission.
But entitlement issues ensued and we ended up with the Reputation System that turned the STF's into glorified currency grinds, rather than a reward grind.
I dare say that most of the queues would still be very active today if they had continued with the "Rare Drop" formula in order to get items.
Each and every single Queue needs its own "unique" rewards that cannot be obtained anywhere else in order to entice people. Be it equipment or even just cosmetic unlocks, like the original Elite Honor Guard/MACO and Omega costume unlocks which were "exclusively" available only to people that played the Elite Queues.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Some of them like Undine Assault and the latest additions do. Only the older queues don't really have to do much with the storyline but that's probably because the story has been changed a few times.
There was no mission to tell you to see a person in charge of it. Or way to set it up. On WoW for example. The guy will tell you to go in there and take care of the threat. Then shows off a reward like a regular mission. There is none of that for any STFs. With them changing the old story arcs like they did. They didn't even bother to make that into the story arc.
Even the latest ones has nothing story wise to send me there. I have done the entire Future Proof. There was nothing mentioned that a conflict was in the Bad Lands. And your needed there.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Agreed. It's almost impossible to do the objectives. One guy runs through and hits the end before you can to the optionals. blitz! done. What the hell?! and to heck with those people trying to get the rare rewards, like the old Borg BOFF one used to give.
And it wouldn't make sense within the scopes of this game to have that I.R.W. option. Granted, a lot of things don't make much sense, some maybe even more important to gameplay, but I.R.W. is evil and players are not supposed to be.
... for failing it if I am not mistaken
While it makes sense to have top tier content which can only be done by the top tier of players, it probably just isn't economically viable to ignore the 99%. Well, not exactly ignore, but put a lot of effort (a real challenge that is more than just a DPS sponge with OP wonder weapons) into content for only very few players - who may easily outgrow this mission again - while the majority gets zilch.
True enough. Though it is also not that easy to get understanding from experienced players for new players to be more of a burden first couple of times until they understand. I get that it can be tiring, but newbs need (a) to want to educate themselves and (b) get help doing so. With many it fails at a, but with many others, b is the problem.
1. One shot invisa-torps.
2. Making the derpy AI enemy, thicker dammage sponges.
Hi,
At the moment I play for the Zahl ship trait on my AoY toon. Given my regular income I get for my job in RL I could easily buy it any day however I found buying all the rewards away is quiet a fun killer in the long run.
I also use the term “playing for” over the word “grind” since I do it by choice and consider teamed pve to be a fun activity rather than something I have to do. On rare occasions when I decide that 4k Ico marks or anything are requiered that words comes to mind but how often is that?!
Well having access to “bad players” is the easiest thing in STO and something which is not needed to be advertised. Usually lining up for a random pve que is already sufficed, preferably on weekends. Of course how you percept a match directly correlates with how good you are yourself. If you are above average you are much more often in a position where you have to carry others than when you are below average and need to be carried yourself. Of course the game is easy when being carried. Take Bug Hunt Elite. I played it with 3 of the top 5 DPSer in STO yesterday. The match was so easy that the only challenge for me was to find something left to shoot at. Later on I made a pug run. I really did my best to contribute however the queen fight posed too much of a challenge and the group failed.
I don’t think it makes any sense to reply to your comments in more detail. Reason is that it basically comes down to the question of “Are you having fun in game?”. That’s something I can easily answer with “yes” while I’m not sure about you given the bitterness of your post. The teamed PvE endgame mechanics are like 6 years old in this game. True, power creep gives them a more easy time atm but claiming that it’s flat out without any challenge is not correct. I think if one is having fun one can easily bring the motivation and the creativity to tend to the game and looking for ways to uphold or even multiply it.
If you have lost your fun however there is not much help. My original reply was toward the OP. A person which belongs to those type of players which seem to focus entirely on a handful of advanced space maps while leaving 80% of the other maps completely out of order. He does not even consider doing ground maps. That’s all fine and good if it suits his purpose but quiet frankly making your STO experience as claustrophobic at this and then log into forums claiming that “fixing” is needed is something I have a hard time leaving without comment.
The Devs in this game never had an easy task with PvE. What are they supposed to do given the infinite variety of customers of this product? I mean we have covered everything from hardcore gamers up to two-left handed trekkies going to conventions with prosthetic Spock ears. We have players with that much of an RL income that they can open 100 lock boxes a day while for others spending 1 Euro for a game would be an unforgettable sin. If one finds oneself close to one of the extremes of course limitations are expected but for 90% of the rest all things should work fine in PvE.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Than you would know thats TRIBBLE.
I don't care for easier maps. If anything i'm waiting for a real challange not some Zombies with tons of HP and with real rewards: Ships, Doffs, Tech, XP ... not everyone has fun playing that admirality "game".
Back in the old days there where rules how to win a STF or you failed. Is it even possible to fail a so called "advanced" STF these days? It was too easy, yes. Even on Elite and without power creep but still way better than today. The main problem was the same: no AI. Even games in the 90s had some sort of AI ...
I didn't "play" any STF since AoY. It's impossible with pugs because, you know, the public queues are completely dead. It's nearly impossible with Fleet/Armada peeps because nobody wants to "play" a "harder" map when you get everything in a shorter time elsewhere.
Uhm why (i did btw)? There are the same Zombies just with more HP. There are people out there who play them alone!
Sorry but Team-Missions shouldn't be doable alone, right?
That's a good question...
Nonsense. I do have fun in the game, but not by "playing" Zombie Shooter 4D on easy with god mode enabled.
You don't need to spend anything for any STF up to advanced. You don't even need rare/ultra rare stuff.
One the one hand you claim the desire for more challenging contend, on the other you say that you don’t play the stuff that presents the most challenges currently. On the one hand you claim that elite is not challenging enough for you (especially considering that you heard of others that can solo it) while on the other say that you can’t play them in the first place because queues are dead and in your fleet the players don’t share your eagerness and rather stick to easy stuff.
If I throw all of this on a tablet, eat it and form an opinion out of it I’d say you have become too good for this game and totally grew beyond the PvE challenges available. Unfortunately you seem to belong to a discrete minority because most of the players in game seem to reject the stuff that comes closest to your desire and which results in the barren PvE list we currently have.
I’m sure the error is on my part here, which is most likely due to the fact that I’m far from being as good as you. Still I managed to do 10 elite pve in my gaming session yesterday which I did with pugs, fleet-mates and friends alike. I also had an engaging and entertained time. Most runs we won, on occasion we lost. That’s the game as it presents to me.
Of course there could also be an easier explanation between the differences in experience between the two of us. That would be that my games already start with the very attempt to assemble teams or queue up to actually face the content in the first place. You know, make the best of it. You on the other hand admit not to have even bothered to do that in over a month…
You also seem to reject entire parts of the game out of principle.
Sorry there, but I think the problem that teamed PvE does not offer anything manful to you is much more you rather than the maps we have.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
You already get XP, Salvaged Techs (if on Elite). The Dil (and vendor-trashed loots) you acquire can, over time add up to the point that you can afford Ships and/or DOff packs.
Part and parcel of the "problem", however, was that while "back in the day when you had to climb uphill both ways through the ionic (snow) storm" to have a shot at possibly getting the specific reward in question because it was "gated" behind an RNG - too many people ran hundreds or even thousands of the mission and was officially "discouraged" at the game because of their "luck", while others were rubbing into these people's faces that they got the reward on run 3 and therefore had no more reason to populate that queue.
Thusly, while there's no more "massive insta-reward of great popularity", there's also no "omg, I'm doing this map in my sleep and I have to keep doing so to get massive insta-reward of great popularity that this cheesy game isn't giving me..."
"Difficulty" via the addition of quasi-artificial fail conditions? Removed due to player complaints. "Difficulty" through the application of player-based powers? Please see "Borg spheres scattering to the corners of the map making it impossible to kill them all before the optional timer expired due to their Emergency Power to Engines (ab)use" during the times where there were fail conditions. "Difficulty" through making the enemies essentially player-clones that are spamming 12 powers instead of 2? Argued before and yet to be implemented...
As a few in this thread have hinted, the most viable solution would be to "expand your friend base", like, oh, possibly through the DPS channels, and find people willing to play these alternate queues "for the fun" rather than "for the reward".
Otherwise, you're counting on Cryptic to do what others have requested - rebalance the rewards to be much more time-invested gives X items - but Cryptic's hinted before that the current reward structure is set up on their intended playtime values, not what the playerbase is capable of doing the mission in (Read: ISA and CC are "set up" to be 15 minute missions, and pay as such, even though players pop these missions in 2 minutes...)
Team missions should require a team, yeah. But when there exists such a disparate power spread - "average Joe" puts out 10k, "elite Joe" puts out 100k - a guy who's worth 2 teams worth of "average joes" can handily clear a mission designed for one team's worth[/I] of average Joes...
You hinted earlier. To a point, you are trying to play for "fun", not a grind per-se, and are going to take what rewards come along with the fun. However, you do seem a little... confused... on the reward system, being a "semi-casual-friendly" time-based one instead of the "old school" luck based one.
Entire post is filled with ways to make the game "a little more fun" perhaps. Though yeah, these methods require a bit of "work"...
I think you... misjudged... the comment. Quote says "if you're a player in a certain... extreme, things are going to "feel" limited, but if you're much "closer to average", then things will seem just fine". It's not a commentary on gear, it's a commentary on other less tangible things.
To wit, it seems you lie a lot closer to an extreme than you'd think - but your "extreme" is your "desire for a certain 'type' of difficulty - seemingly to have opposition that plays a lot more like a 'player' than 'zombie bag of HP'." As such, when playing a game that does not cater to "that type of difficulty", you're going to feel "much more limited in your choices" than the "average Joe" or "DPS lord looking for more ways to make them HP disappear faster" which it where STO focuses a lot of their "difficulty options" ATM.
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
They give plenty of XP and rewards.
The only problem is the rewards aren't scaled to the length of time needed. 2-3 minutes in CCA to get 75 marks is too much of a reward IMO, whereas the same Marks for Breach which was a 15 minute mission is too little.
Most certainly BFAW removes the need for skill and planning. It's way over-powered in terms of DPS and Cooldown.
And finally, AFK'ers should be auto-kicked and receive NO reward. It winds me up when people don't take part in STF's and still get rewarded!
You've just asked the question facing every player of every MMO ever.
What DO you do with a max level epic equipped character in Diablo 3? What about WoW? Champions Online? The Old Republic? Dragonball Xenosaga? Everquest Online? Minesweeper?
It is by far not that simple.
People are breezing through advanced content because they know the game and the game mechanics. Total newbies however do not, and throw a bunch of fresh newbies into an advanced queue and there's no way they are going to complete it in a reasonable time frame, if at all depending on queue.
The power gap between experienced players and newbies is enormous.
I played all STFs with my other toons ad nauseam. I was in DPS channels - it was agonizingly boring: "WFP ..." BRRRRRRZ - finished. I (nearly) maxed this toon without STFs, have 650k unrefiened dil, countles marks and what not. I just finished CCA (pug), that poor thing didn't shoot even once. And all i got was a tiny amount of XP and a stupid VR Sensor Probe ... you can't even sell this junk
I do remember the spheres on speed, it was a lazy attempt to make STF more challenging. It didn't really work becaus all "AI" does is rotating abilities - regardless of useful or not.
Maybe this is a problem every MMO out there has. It doesn't really matter. This isn't WoW, TOR or something. This is STO.
Don't know how it is today, but i remember TOR endgame was quite challenging with the need of the (un)holy trinity and tactic. The only mindless AOE-DPS spamming games i know of are STO and Neverwinter but on the other side i don't know many MMOs.
That is, before they dumbed down the STF's for the casual masses and then indirectly dumbed down further via power creep.
Taking on Armek without a tank and healer used to be suicide.