and it'll remove the "i have better gear" pay to win element and wouldn't that , at the end of the day , be a good thing ?
No, as that would just burn everyone and anyone who has payed any amount of cash to get a better ship or w/e from wanting to play PVP.
All that would do is drive off what few PVPers the game has left by telling them their cash doesn't matter, when it should.
The two best ways to "fix" PVP would be to
A. Work on GECKO's version of PVP, which is a more advanced and developed version of Ker'rat, where both the Fed/KDF can be on both teams, and have "safe zones" for those people who want to play PVP, but don't want to deal with the whole "competitive" aspect of PVP.
B. Have the game parse your DPS at the end of every match, and break players up into tiers based on DPS, so 0-9k DPs are in one tier, 10-19 are in another, 20-29 in another, etc. etc. so that way only people of roughly equal DPS are playing together.
That is a resonable solution. Though best to use kill/death ratio than dps. And if someone suffers heavily losses lets say twice serverely downgrade their "rank".
Creating a tier system that groups people into different tiers that is based on the dps they are able to put out as Somtaawkhar suggested would be fine I think. Though i do think that for rewards that are rewarded during pvp matches it would be good to have a system that takes into account the player's effective dps/damage (so what dps/damage they deal to a target to kill them, disregarding overkill damage, or merely giving less contribution for the overkill dps/damage), also the player's kill to death ratio (maybe also how long they lived between death), and finally on maps that might have objectives add that in as well either as part of the score or as a bonus reward for doing it. Always though pure raw dps is alittle faulty as a measure to determine rewards by, since if only a certain percentage of that dps/damage is actually used to kill the target, the rest is effectively wasted an ineffective honestly.
was referring to the sheer amount of work involved in dealing with that concept: using dps to determine tiers. would be too complicated since it would have to cover each item and skill, etc., and every permutation that could possibly exist in the game. Unless you were to ban regular game items and install a pvp-only, preset item type of situation, then tiers by dps might make sense.
said something else, but deleted it, since it all comes down to an PVP systems having to get past Cryptic's statement about wanting to remove PVP from the game at some point. any idea that simplifies it down to a 'quick fix' and isn't complex at all, would likely be glanced at. Complex and it'd be file 13. KISS rule works, too. But toss the ideas around anyway, as something simple might stick. who knows?
was referring to the sheer amount of work involved in dealing with that concept: using dps to determine tiers. would be too complicated since it would have to cover each item and skill, etc., and every permutation that could possibly exist in the game. Unless you were to ban regular game items and install a pvp-only, preset item type of situation, then tiers by dps might make sense.
That depends on if you are taking it before or after a match, though we have a system like it kind of in the game already. What I mean is how they determine your reward quality gained from capture points in battle-zones, which might be able to be reworked an used in pvp areas as a basis for such a system. Though that depends on fully all of the underlying code an work in the existing system used for the reward system that is used to determine your reward quality cache from the battle-zones. The only other system that might work if a qualifying system that couold be masked as a mission gained from some group, and then takes data as you do the mission to determine your tier, but this is way too much work even if doable, but is something pvper most of all on consoles are used to.
Should just be pure kill death ratio, with all damage multiplier to rank to tier and if the population is high also map tiering. Healing can overcome dps, incoming damage reduction can also etc...
People who want to advance will see their efforts based on who they vs etc. People who just want to have fun and use whatever can do that too.
Also much less hate, since most people hate being unevenly defeated.
You all still realize that pvp combat hasn't been balanced, in like, never? Do you have any idea how many abusive combinations and glitches there are to tolchok the hell out of the other player? Fixing all of this would require such an immense work that even if Cryptic were 10x times bigger and richer, it would still be mind-boggling.
You can set forth all manner of different match restrictions and rules, but that has nothing to do with the badly, badly broken combat itself.
Get rid of pvp zones and queues, but keep the dueling system, so the die-hards can still bash each other's skulls in, but privately at least.
Pve has never been a problem as far as I'm concerned. The true goal of pve is to make the whales happy - whoever kills mindless NPC's the fastest and sets new dps records.
You all still realize that pvp combat hasn't been balanced, in like, never? Do you have any idea how many abusive combinations and glitches there are to tolchok the hell out of the other player? Fixing all of this would require such an immense work that even if Cryptic were 10x times bigger and richer, it would still be mind-boggling.
You can set forth all manner of different match restrictions and rules, but that has nothing to do with the badly, badly broken combat itself.
Get rid of pvp zones and queues, but keep the dueling system, so the die-hards can still bash each other's skulls in, but privately at least.
Yeah there are abusive glitches like that present. Even with a powerful GPU. I haven't had too many issues with them though. But of course the effectiveness of everything gets reduced the higher your kill/death ratio. I am sure a few abilities like that can be fixed. If not, I would like to hear the extent to which the abuse can go.
Pve has never been a problem as far as I'm concerned. The true goal of pve is to make the whales happy - whoever kills mindless NPC's the fastest and sets new dps records.
PvE would definately benefit from a balance pass. Though doing so would make the whales unhappy if done incorrectly and probably even still if done correctly. Also not really worth Cryptics effort unfortunately. Once a game is broke, fixing it doesn't really work too well to bring those old people back unfortunately. Though a lot of PvEers are still in game due to story and stuff...
Pve has never been a problem as far as I'm concerned. The true goal of pve is to make the whales happy - whoever kills mindless NPC's the fastest and sets new dps records.
That might be true, though in pvp an unbalanced combat system caters to the pvp whales as well. SInce they are merely using the same broken/op combinations to kill slightly smarter enemies compared to the npc enemies of the pve side. If the combat system is unbalanced in pve than it is also unbalanced in pvp too, since it is the same exact system in place regardless of content. Just because it serves to entertain a group of players does not make it okay, or make it less unbalanced in the end.
The pve whales are far more numerous than the insignificant 20 or so pvp whales. As long as the pve whales enjoy their dps parades, Cryptic won't stop what they're doing. PWE is not about fun, but about money.
Yeah I definately agree that the whales are not the only group to be served, Cryptic definitely cares about causals the most in fact. Which is the correct mindset. Even if it does not benefit us PvPers.
The pve whales are far more numerous than the insignificant 20 or so pvp whales. As long as the pve whales enjoy their dps parades, Cryptic won't stop what they're doing. PWE is not about fun, but about money.
DPS is not the largest money making thing for Cryptic either. They are suffering quite a bit too.
THey can rebalance the system, just need to do it by increments over time. Never has a huge single balance pass gone well for a game, but smaller incremental balancing passes do work quite well. SInce in the end it allows for time to see how changes affect the game at large, while also allowing for chances to milk new abilities during their release.
PvE whales, DPS parades, mindless NPCs, PWE is not about fun …
OP, you sure that PvP is the only thing in STO you are disappointed in?
Pre-Delta Rising was for me once a great game, far from perfect of course, but it was the best MMO I played at the time. Not that the actual storyline of Delta Rising was bad - it was okay - but rather the new system mechanics introduced that made many players leave. Nowadays I just stick around because I've been around for too long, and it's kind of hard to "just quit" like that.
But this is kind of offtopic, as we are discussing the problems with pvp here, so best to just stick with that.
PvE whales, DPS parades, mindless NPCs, PWE is not about fun …
OP, you sure that PvP is the only thing in STO you are disappointed in?
Pre-Delta Rising was for me once a great game, far from perfect of course, but it was the best MMO I played at the time. Not that the actual storyline of Delta Rising was bad - it was okay - but rather the new system mechanics introduced that made many players leave. Nowadays I just stick around because I've been around for too long, and it's kind of hard to "just quit" like that.
But this is kind of offtopic, as we are discussing the problems with pvp here, so best to just stick with that.
You are right and I agree with you as this has been my experience as well for a time. Nevertheless I managed to find a lot of fun in the activities you seem to devalue a bit with your comments. Each to his own I guess and back to your topic.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
-The idea of PVP only gear/ships/sets is idiotic because, within a month or two of the system roll-out, the best PVPers will have already grinded out the best gear, and it will be exactly as it is now, with "new" pvpers getting destroyed by vets due to their better builds/gear.
-Disabling the best skills/traits in PVP is also an idiotic idea, as the people who worked for them WORKED FOR THEM, and have every right to use them.
Which stemms from the lack of wanting to work for being able to play PVP.
Quote above culled to focus on the issue of 'work' to play PvP.
Becoming skilled in PvP does require effort (re: work). This effort is realized through practice with a class, ship, and bridge officer team. In other popular PvP games, this would be called your 'load out'.
Note this effort has nothing to do with grinding for gear, but has everything to do with understanding how to play with a set of tools offered to every player.
Since this is also an MMO, there is an expectation to improve your character over time. This improvement can include new powers and gear, but the influence of these improvements over the core PvP play experience is where game balance can fall apart.
Putting in the effort to be better at a PvP game should be about developing your skill as a player, not who can get the best stuff first.
-snix
Snix? As in former STO game developer, responsible for one of the arguably biggest and most important across-the-board balance passes that made countless of powers finally useful, way before the F2P move?
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One of the biggest problems IME is that the power creep means that PvP gets faster, and at some point, especially new or casual players just cannot keep up. Even if they actually have the same "gear level", it doesn't matter because if they don't have the counter ready in 0.75 seconds, they are dead 1.5 seconds later (or some such numbers). Even if the power creep is applied to both sides, e.g. defense and offense, it will usually also rely on people's reaction time to bring the buffed defense to bear, and if they don't, they die quickly. And a poor reaction time will also make it impossible to effectively launch an assault, since the enemy will have counters and heals up much faster.
Now, better reaction times and better reflexes due to experience is something you want to matter, but you must still leave enough time for people to see what's happening to them.
Someone said that a game is a series of interesting, meaningful choices. To be able to really make it interesting however, people must basically be aware that there was a choice, and that made the mistake of going zig instead of zag. If the combat is too fast, they don't see it, and just feel overwhelmed (because they were). We don't have a slow-motion replay usually...
And that is where STO was already problematic 3-4 years ago, and the power creep only added on that.
I was extremely skeptical about some random idea from Geko or Borticus to apply a hit point buff on PvP maps. And I still have some doubts, especially since we also got a lot of immunity abities now and healing was never really weak, either (but healing would presumably not scale with the hit point buff, so it might be okay.)
But it might actually be a more viable "stop gap" for PvP issues then trying to balance the entire power set of the game for PvP (regardless of whether those changes only affect PvP or are universal.)
Of course... They'll still need to boost the incentive side and provide better rewards for PvP. And some kind of ranking system to balance matches better would be good, too, but that only makes sense once the population has grown.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
All pvp needs is a vanilla mode, that way people can choose between the current hot mess and something that's actually workable for the average player.
No rep/R&D traits, no lockbox anything (traits, boff abilities, kit modules, etc), no click ability consoles, no doffs. Just common quality gear, starting traits, and commonly available boff abilities. One step further, give us a separate loadout slot just for pvp and it's all good.
Except, where is the competitive fun in that? Beer without alcohol. I'd rather that pvp is just removed and be done with it.
You can have a party without alcohol, and ruin a party with way too much alcohol.
There was a time in STO when we didn't have all that stuff. The best gear you get was purple Mark X, and there weren't even sets. And then there was a time of Purle Mark XII gear and the Borg and Aegis sets.
That was a time where PvP was relatively strong and busy. It still suffered from obvious imbalanced powers, but everyone could have them. The environment was still extremely competitive, and good teams were unbeatable by new players or pick up groups. Not because they had such good gear , but because they knew how to use their ships to the best abilities. They knew best how to deliver pressure to overextend the healers and then take down an opponent with a massive spike, and how to keep themselves alive by clever use of their team's healing abilities and debuffing the enemy to mimize his threat.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
All pvp needs is a vanilla mode, that way people can choose between the current hot mess and something that's actually workable for the average player.
No rep/R&D traits, no lockbox anything (traits, boff abilities, kit modules, etc), no click ability consoles, no doffs. Just common quality gear, starting traits, and commonly available boff abilities. One step further, give us a separate loadout slot just for pvp and it's all good.
Except, where is the competitive fun in that? Beer without alcohol. I'd rather that pvp is just removed and be done with it.
You can have a party without alcohol, and ruin a party with way too much alcohol.
There was a time in STO when we didn't have all that stuff. The best gear you get was purple Mark X, and there weren't even sets. And then there was a time of Purle Mark XII gear and the Borg and Aegis sets.
That was a time where PvP was relatively strong and busy. It still suffered from obvious imbalanced powers, but everyone could have them. The environment was still extremely competitive, and good teams were unbeatable by new players or pick up groups. Not because they had such good gear , but because they knew how to use their ships to the best abilities. They knew best how to deliver pressure to overextend the healers and then take down an opponent with a massive spike, and how to keep themselves alive by clever use of their team's healing abilities and debuffing the enemy to mimize his threat.
What I mean is that I wouldn't consider it fun if PVP had some kind of gear or ability restriction. Smart balance is needed instead.
Pre-DR pvp was imho fine in all its stages - because perfect pvp doesn't exist. I had no problems with it. I had a fun Norgh sci-Torp bomber, an engi D'deridex tank who could tank about 3-4 escorts at the time when shield-tanking was actually a viable option (unlike with the 100% shield/hull pen stuff now) while not packing too shabby of a punch... and couple of other builds I don't remember.
Even ground combat was not too bad.
Right after the release of DR, pvp was still kind of OK, but from then it went rapidly downhill. With the release of ships/mechanics like the abominable temporal T'liss we have now, the final stake has been driven into the heart of pvp, and there seems to be no turning back.
You can still make a legitimate tank or healer nowdays, but you'll have to unfortunately sacrifice as much firepower as possible, for obvious powercreep reasons. So called "hybrid" builds are no longer viable I think (and that may be the case for pve too, interestingly enough). You either have to run "absolute slow tank" or "absolute speedy/cloaky escort" as far as I'm aware, but I could be wrong. (For pve though it's more only about raw, direct dps, and not so much about tanking or the disables, stuns, immunities, glitches and so forth typically found in pvp)
So if you like to use "hybrid" ships like the new breen ship, don't bring it in pvp nowadays, or you'll get your TRIBBLE handed to you, and that sucks that you can't fly what you like, and have to bring a very specific type of ship and gear to actually stand a chance. In pre-DR, pretty much any T5 ship was viable for pvp if you knew what you were doing. STO is known for its many ships and abilities, and even in pvp, things shouldn't be restricted to only a handful of ships and (broken) abilities.
But this may be the case like with Rift. So many classes were made that they couldn't keep up with pvp balance, and gave up on it as well.
And finally, I actually *do* have the wealth and requirements to get myself a T'liss with all its latest "n00b-pwn1ng" gadgets, but I *don't* want to fly that ship.
It's certainly possible to rank players on kill/death or win/loss ratio. A bazillion games do that.
But before it's possible to divide players in the queue into separate matches based on those rankings, there needs to be enough players in the queue to actually start multiple instances. As it is, the PvP queues rarely have enough people in them to start even one.
To the people saying Pre-DR PvP was hopelessly unbalanced and unplayable, I have to wonder if you played PvP then. I remember the first time I brought my engineer into Ker'rat, I had standard, mk x neutroniums and sif generator consoles with those crappy shield regen boosting science consoles. No rep gear, lobi gear, lockbox traits, not even elite fleet gear. I still managed to tank 3 tactical escorts before dying. Let's not even talk about how many people zombie tanks in recluses, bulwarks, or science odysseys could tank. Nowadays the tankiest people can get one shotted or killed in seconds if they don't have invincible, continuity, or immunities. That's what you call unbalanced and honestly unplayable. Seems like the game (at least PvP) is better off if it's skewed in favor of defensive builds. Currently it's skewed so far towards damage it's not even funny.
Comments
That is a resonable solution. Though best to use kill/death ratio than dps. And if someone suffers heavily losses lets say twice serverely downgrade their "rank".
That depends on if you are taking it before or after a match, though we have a system like it kind of in the game already. What I mean is how they determine your reward quality gained from capture points in battle-zones, which might be able to be reworked an used in pvp areas as a basis for such a system. Though that depends on fully all of the underlying code an work in the existing system used for the reward system that is used to determine your reward quality cache from the battle-zones. The only other system that might work if a qualifying system that couold be masked as a mission gained from some group, and then takes data as you do the mission to determine your tier, but this is way too much work even if doable, but is something pvper most of all on consoles are used to.
People who want to advance will see their efforts based on who they vs etc. People who just want to have fun and use whatever can do that too.
Also much less hate, since most people hate being unevenly defeated.
You can set forth all manner of different match restrictions and rules, but that has nothing to do with the badly, badly broken combat itself.
Get rid of pvp zones and queues, but keep the dueling system, so the die-hards can still bash each other's skulls in, but privately at least.
Yeah there are abusive glitches like that present. Even with a powerful GPU. I haven't had too many issues with them though. But of course the effectiveness of everything gets reduced the higher your kill/death ratio. I am sure a few abilities like that can be fixed. If not, I would like to hear the extent to which the abuse can go.
PvE would definately benefit from a balance pass. Though doing so would make the whales unhappy if done incorrectly and probably even still if done correctly. Also not really worth Cryptics effort unfortunately. Once a game is broke, fixing it doesn't really work too well to bring those old people back unfortunately. Though a lot of PvEers are still in game due to story and stuff...
That might be true, though in pvp an unbalanced combat system caters to the pvp whales as well. SInce they are merely using the same broken/op combinations to kill slightly smarter enemies compared to the npc enemies of the pve side. If the combat system is unbalanced in pve than it is also unbalanced in pvp too, since it is the same exact system in place regardless of content. Just because it serves to entertain a group of players does not make it okay, or make it less unbalanced in the end.
DPS is not the largest money making thing for Cryptic either. They are suffering quite a bit too.
OP, you sure that PvP is the only thing in STO you are disappointed about?
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Pre-Delta Rising was for me once a great game, far from perfect of course, but it was the best MMO I played at the time. Not that the actual storyline of Delta Rising was bad - it was okay - but rather the new system mechanics introduced that made many players leave. Nowadays I just stick around because I've been around for too long, and it's kind of hard to "just quit" like that.
But this is kind of offtopic, as we are discussing the problems with pvp here, so best to just stick with that.
You are right and I agree with you as this has been my experience as well for a time. Nevertheless I managed to find a lot of fun in the activities you seem to devalue a bit with your comments. Each to his own I guess and back to your topic.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
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One of the biggest problems IME is that the power creep means that PvP gets faster, and at some point, especially new or casual players just cannot keep up. Even if they actually have the same "gear level", it doesn't matter because if they don't have the counter ready in 0.75 seconds, they are dead 1.5 seconds later (or some such numbers). Even if the power creep is applied to both sides, e.g. defense and offense, it will usually also rely on people's reaction time to bring the buffed defense to bear, and if they don't, they die quickly. And a poor reaction time will also make it impossible to effectively launch an assault, since the enemy will have counters and heals up much faster.
Now, better reaction times and better reflexes due to experience is something you want to matter, but you must still leave enough time for people to see what's happening to them.
Someone said that a game is a series of interesting, meaningful choices. To be able to really make it interesting however, people must basically be aware that there was a choice, and that made the mistake of going zig instead of zag. If the combat is too fast, they don't see it, and just feel overwhelmed (because they were). We don't have a slow-motion replay usually...
And that is where STO was already problematic 3-4 years ago, and the power creep only added on that.
I was extremely skeptical about some random idea from Geko or Borticus to apply a hit point buff on PvP maps. And I still have some doubts, especially since we also got a lot of immunity abities now and healing was never really weak, either (but healing would presumably not scale with the hit point buff, so it might be okay.)
But it might actually be a more viable "stop gap" for PvP issues then trying to balance the entire power set of the game for PvP (regardless of whether those changes only affect PvP or are universal.)
Of course... They'll still need to boost the incentive side and provide better rewards for PvP. And some kind of ranking system to balance matches better would be good, too, but that only makes sense once the population has grown.
There was a time in STO when we didn't have all that stuff. The best gear you get was purple Mark X, and there weren't even sets. And then there was a time of Purle Mark XII gear and the Borg and Aegis sets.
That was a time where PvP was relatively strong and busy. It still suffered from obvious imbalanced powers, but everyone could have them. The environment was still extremely competitive, and good teams were unbeatable by new players or pick up groups. Not because they had such good gear , but because they knew how to use their ships to the best abilities. They knew best how to deliver pressure to overextend the healers and then take down an opponent with a massive spike, and how to keep themselves alive by clever use of their team's healing abilities and debuffing the enemy to mimize his threat.
What I mean is that I wouldn't consider it fun if PVP had some kind of gear or ability restriction. Smart balance is needed instead.
Pre-DR pvp was imho fine in all its stages - because perfect pvp doesn't exist. I had no problems with it. I had a fun Norgh sci-Torp bomber, an engi D'deridex tank who could tank about 3-4 escorts at the time when shield-tanking was actually a viable option (unlike with the 100% shield/hull pen stuff now) while not packing too shabby of a punch... and couple of other builds I don't remember.
Even ground combat was not too bad.
Right after the release of DR, pvp was still kind of OK, but from then it went rapidly downhill. With the release of ships/mechanics like the abominable temporal T'liss we have now, the final stake has been driven into the heart of pvp, and there seems to be no turning back.
You can still make a legitimate tank or healer nowdays, but you'll have to unfortunately sacrifice as much firepower as possible, for obvious powercreep reasons. So called "hybrid" builds are no longer viable I think (and that may be the case for pve too, interestingly enough). You either have to run "absolute slow tank" or "absolute speedy/cloaky escort" as far as I'm aware, but I could be wrong. (For pve though it's more only about raw, direct dps, and not so much about tanking or the disables, stuns, immunities, glitches and so forth typically found in pvp)
So if you like to use "hybrid" ships like the new breen ship, don't bring it in pvp nowadays, or you'll get your TRIBBLE handed to you, and that sucks that you can't fly what you like, and have to bring a very specific type of ship and gear to actually stand a chance. In pre-DR, pretty much any T5 ship was viable for pvp if you knew what you were doing. STO is known for its many ships and abilities, and even in pvp, things shouldn't be restricted to only a handful of ships and (broken) abilities.
But this may be the case like with Rift. So many classes were made that they couldn't keep up with pvp balance, and gave up on it as well.
And finally, I actually *do* have the wealth and requirements to get myself a T'liss with all its latest "n00b-pwn1ng" gadgets, but I *don't* want to fly that ship.
But before it's possible to divide players in the queue into separate matches based on those rankings, there needs to be enough players in the queue to actually start multiple instances. As it is, the PvP queues rarely have enough people in them to start even one.
Same
To the people saying Pre-DR PvP was hopelessly unbalanced and unplayable, I have to wonder if you played PvP then. I remember the first time I brought my engineer into Ker'rat, I had standard, mk x neutroniums and sif generator consoles with those crappy shield regen boosting science consoles. No rep gear, lobi gear, lockbox traits, not even elite fleet gear. I still managed to tank 3 tactical escorts before dying. Let's not even talk about how many people zombie tanks in recluses, bulwarks, or science odysseys could tank. Nowadays the tankiest people can get one shotted or killed in seconds if they don't have invincible, continuity, or immunities. That's what you call unbalanced and honestly unplayable. Seems like the game (at least PvP) is better off if it's skewed in favor of defensive builds. Currently it's skewed so far towards damage it's not even funny.
Recently, that pay-to-win elitist attitude is also why I had to leave the DPS channels.
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