This is by far the most cynical blog post I have read in years. The amount of absurd is just overwhelming. To start off with the changes, they want to introduce FUN factor to the game. Which is kinda the top of cynical bashing: everybody knows that fun is a filthy parasite and this game has never had any fun to begin with, just an endless grind mechanic and P2W lotteries. The line made me cringe and proves that the devs or whoever posted this mess knew: fun is a STO meme word, describing how bad this product at delivering any kind of entertainment.
Secondly, the whole balance revamp is nerfing tactical class. This is confirmed and you should not expect any changes beside of nerfing tacs to death and the entire combat mechanic of tac abilities. In anticipation of 17 times better game balance, you must know: nobody cares for buffing anything for the rest or making it less subpar to tactical. In other words, the easiest way for cryptic has always been a nerf. Enjoy. 7 years have been enough to understand this.
This is by far the most cynical blog post I have read in years. The amount of absurd is just overwhelming. To start off with the changes, they want to introduce FUN factor to the game. Which is kinda the top of cynical bashing: everybody knows that fun is a filthy parasite and this game has never had any fun to begin with, just an endless grind mechanic and P2W lotteries. The line made me cringe and proves that the devs or whoever posted this mess knew: fun is a STO meme word, describing how bad this product at delivering any kind of entertainment.
Secondly, the whole balance revamp is nerfing tactical class. This is confirmed and you should not expect any changes beside of nerfing tacs to death and the entire combat mechanic of tac abilities. In anticipation of 17 times better game balance, you must know: nobody cares for buffing anything for the rest or making it less subpar to tactical. In other words, the easiest way for cryptic has always been a nerf. Enjoy. 7 years have been enough to understand this.
Sounds like someone is upset he's going to have to actually work a little bit more for ground combat damage and is scared there might be an even more sizable space nerf to the BFAW/Embassy console stacking/Coalition Disruptor cheese he's been having to rely on instead of any type of skill. I hope the nerf to space tac are EPIC in scale just to see you have a full on meltdown over not having ridiculous damage numbers anymore from almost no work.
Other than the security escort, they sound like buffs.
We'll see what they do with space, the ground stuff is always pretty mild. My guess is that they're finally going to bend to those that cry about beam builds and fire at will. If so, fine.. it will just push something else to the top, we'll all adapt and they will cry about the new thing.
It's not the first time something like this has happened. Cryptic has been consistent in it's methodology over the years, 'balance changes' always just means blanket nerfs.
Call it "nerf" or call it "balance" but I for one welcome any nerf/balance that brings other builds (torp boats, cannon escorts, etc.) into a more balanced/consistent DPS with beam/FAW boats.
As it is today, I will "sometimes" switch to a build with torps, dual cannons, turrets, or whatever else, but I will ALWAYS end up coming back to a beam array/FAW build because that is what will "consistently" produce the highest DPS numbers for me.
That is BORING. I don't want my beam array/FAW builds to be worse than other builds, but FAW boats shouldn't ALWAYS beat other builds when you're trying to turn out the highest DPS numbers.
Whenever I get bored with this game I leave for a few months ... and that means PWE isn't making any money from me. If the devs can keep players like me from getting bored then STO makes more money and the game continues to thrive.
The trick is to find "balance" without making it feel like a totally lopsided nerf.
The only problem is that these balance passes always seem to only hurt the ... will call them casual players. The ones you end up with a pug that are doing about 3-5k dps. They will find themselves doing even less damage and contributing even less to the mission while those at the top will continue doing upwards of 100k dps and far beyond. I'm not totally against the idea of a balance pass it's just that cryptic has proven in the past that these passes generally hurt weak players or in the case of the great science nerf neutered an entire class.
Well, I don't think any doom and gloom here is warranted across the board, only if you're a Tac captain who is deluded about how broken many of the abilities of your profession is.
If there's any logical method to Cryptic's madness, I predict:
- Science is basically going to be left alone, as it seems to be sitting in a sweet spot.
- Engineering will be getting a bump in damage potential, and probably a major bump in resists and healing, since its inherent specialties have been given away to everyone else (power management via Intelligence/OSS, and healing/tanking via Strategist, Pilot, GDF, Kobali console, etc.) but has thus far received nothing in return.
- Tac is going to get reigned it, sensibly. The ground escort thing is already confirmed to be fixed. In space, APA is only going to buff Tac damage/abilities, GDF will have its tanking ability gutted and its duration put on a cooldown longer and harder than Ron Jeremy.
In general, I'm sure FAW/BO/CSV/CRF abilities will get adjusted so there's more of a reason to switch between them.
Of course, I could be wrong and Cryptic could go Full TRIBBLE, but I strongly doubt it as they seem to be on a continuous upward swing since learning lessons the hard way from the unmitigated disaster that was Delta Rising.
Anyone who is currently "the best" will still be "the best", and the whiners who are terrible will still need to "git gud". Nothing to worry about.
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."
Other than the security escort, they sound like buffs.
We'll see what they do with space, the ground stuff is always pretty mild. My guess is that they're finally going to bend to those that cry about beam builds and fire at will. If so, fine.. it will just push something else to the top, we'll all adapt and they will cry about the new thing.
It's not the first time something like this has happened. Cryptic has been consistent in it's methodology over the years, 'balance changes' always just means blanket nerfs.
Call it "nerf" or call it "balance" but I for one welcome any nerf/balance that brings other builds (torp boats, cannon escorts, etc.) into a more balanced/consistent DPS with beam/FAW boats.
As it is today, I will "sometimes" switch to a build with torps, dual cannons, turrets, or whatever else, but I will ALWAYS end up coming back to a beam array/FAW build because that is what will "consistently" produce the highest DPS numbers for me.
That is BORING. I don't want my beam array/FAW builds to be worse than other builds, but FAW boats shouldn't ALWAYS beat other builds when you're trying to turn out the highest DPS numbers.
Whenever I get bored with this game I leave for a few months ... and that means PWE isn't making any money from me. If the devs can keep players like me from getting bored then STO makes more money and the game continues to thrive.
The trick is to find "balance" without making it feel like a totally lopsided nerf.
The only problem is that these balance passes always seem to only hurt the ... will call them casual players. The ones you end up with a pug that are doing about 3-5k dps. They will find themselves doing even less damage and contributing even less to the mission while those at the top will continue doing upwards of 100k dps and far beyond. I'm not totally against the idea of a balance pass it's just that cryptic has proven in the past that these passes generally hurt weak players or in the case of the great science nerf neutered an entire class.
I strongly question the logic of this.
Casual players don't know enough to even try to exploit the cheese that's currently out of control. They'll be affected the least.
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."
Other than the security escort, they sound like buffs.
We'll see what they do with space, the ground stuff is always pretty mild. My guess is that they're finally going to bend to those that cry about beam builds and fire at will. If so, fine.. it will just push something else to the top, we'll all adapt and they will cry about the new thing.
It's not the first time something like this has happened. Cryptic has been consistent in it's methodology over the years, 'balance changes' always just means blanket nerfs.
Call it "nerf" or call it "balance" but I for one welcome any nerf/balance that brings other builds (torp boats, cannon escorts, etc.) into a more balanced/consistent DPS with beam/FAW boats.
As it is today, I will "sometimes" switch to a build with torps, dual cannons, turrets, or whatever else, but I will ALWAYS end up coming back to a beam array/FAW build because that is what will "consistently" produce the highest DPS numbers for me.
That is BORING. I don't want my beam array/FAW builds to be worse than other builds, but FAW boats shouldn't ALWAYS beat other builds when you're trying to turn out the highest DPS numbers.
Whenever I get bored with this game I leave for a few months ... and that means PWE isn't making any money from me. If the devs can keep players like me from getting bored then STO makes more money and the game continues to thrive.
The trick is to find "balance" without making it feel like a totally lopsided nerf.
The only problem is that these balance passes always seem to only hurt the ... will call them casual players. The ones you end up with a pug that are doing about 3-5k dps. They will find themselves doing even less damage and contributing even less to the mission while those at the top will continue doing upwards of 100k dps and far beyond. I'm not totally against the idea of a balance pass it's just that cryptic has proven in the past that these passes generally hurt weak players or in the case of the great science nerf neutered an entire class.
I don't think hurting the weaker players will happen now though.
Take a look at the Tribble patch notes. Most changes are either bug fixes (meaning some things actually get buffed btw) or establishing hard cooldowns and removing stacking of multiple buffs like Medical generators.
And then there's some slight nerfs to very powerful items like the Kligat, armour with up to 80% CritD bonus and some other small things.
Who's benefitting the most from these things at the moment? Surely not the casual player with episode or reputation gear, who joins a PUG, but rather the more advanced player who knows all these generators can enhance each other, who knows how to stack all the cooldown reducing powers, and who knows there's such a thing as 80% CritD buffing armour or kit modules from a fleet holding that always crits, ignores shields and such.
Most of the lower end players will probably not even be aware of the existence of many of these things, it's even less likely that they are using it that much. No, these changes are aimed at reducing the highly optimised builds that stack multiple things upon other things to reach effects that combined are leading to effects of greater magnitude than was ever intended.
I'm fairly certain that these changes will therefore not cause serious problems.
Other than the security escort, they sound like buffs.
We'll see what they do with space, the ground stuff is always pretty mild. My guess is that they're finally going to bend to those that cry about beam builds and fire at will. If so, fine.. it will just push something else to the top, we'll all adapt and they will cry about the new thing.
It's not the first time something like this has happened. Cryptic has been consistent in it's methodology over the years, 'balance changes' always just means blanket nerfs.
Call it "nerf" or call it "balance" but I for one welcome any nerf/balance that brings other builds (torp boats, cannon escorts, etc.) into a more balanced/consistent DPS with beam/FAW boats.
As it is today, I will "sometimes" switch to a build with torps, dual cannons, turrets, or whatever else, but I will ALWAYS end up coming back to a beam array/FAW build because that is what will "consistently" produce the highest DPS numbers for me.
That is BORING. I don't want my beam array/FAW builds to be worse than other builds, but FAW boats shouldn't ALWAYS beat other builds when you're trying to turn out the highest DPS numbers.
Whenever I get bored with this game I leave for a few months ... and that means PWE isn't making any money from me. If the devs can keep players like me from getting bored then STO makes more money and the game continues to thrive.
The trick is to find "balance" without making it feel like a totally lopsided nerf.
The only problem is that these balance passes always seem to only hurt the ... will call them casual players. The ones you end up with a pug that are doing about 3-5k dps. They will find themselves doing even less damage and contributing even less to the mission while those at the top will continue doing upwards of 100k dps and far beyond. I'm not totally against the idea of a balance pass it's just that cryptic has proven in the past that these passes generally hurt weak players or in the case of the great science nerf neutered an entire class.
I strongly question the logic of this.
Casual players don't know enough to even try to exploit the cheese that's currently out of control. They'll be affected the least.
Or this... I need to learn not to write walls of text when three sentences can be enough lol.
I don't think hurting the weaker players will happen now though.
Take a look at the Tribble patch notes. Most changes are either bug fixes (meaning some things actually get buffed btw) or establishing hard cooldowns and removing stacking of multiple buffs like Medical generators.
And then there's some slight nerfs to very powerful items like the Kligat, armour with up to 80% CritD bonus and some other small things.
Who's benefitting the most from these things at the moment? Surely not the casual player with episode or reputation gear, who joins a PUG, but rather the more advanced player who knows all these generators can enhance each other, who knows how to stack all the cooldown reducing powers, and who knows there's such a thing as 80% CritD buffing armour or kit modules from a fleet holding that always crits, ignores shields and such.
Most of the lower end players will probably not even be aware of the existence of many of these things, it's even less likely that they are using it that much. No, these changes are aimed at reducing the highly optimised builds that stack multiple things upon other things to reach effects that combined are leading to effects of greater magnitude than was ever intended.
I'm fairly certain that these changes will therefore not cause serious problems.
Agreed.
So far, these changes will only really effect the high end DPSers.
Casual players won't notice much of anything.
Exactly. "Casual players will lose the most!" is code talk for "Please don't take my sploitz!".
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."
- Engineering will be getting a bump in damage potential, and probably a major bump in resists and healing, since its inherent specialties have been given away to everyone else (power management via Intelligence/OSS, and healing/tanking via Strategist, Pilot, GDF, Kobali console, etc.) but has thus far received nothing in return.
I strongly question that engineering will get buffed given the current nerf to already underperforming fabrications on tribble.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
- Engineering will be getting a bump in damage potential, and probably a major bump in resists and healing, since its inherent specialties have been given away to everyone else (power management via Intelligence/OSS, and healing/tanking via Strategist, Pilot, GDF, Kobali console, etc.) but has thus far received nothing in return.
I strongly question that engineering will get buffed given the current nerf to already underperforming fabrications on tribble.
Min/maxing and exploiting aren't the same thing, just as fixing an unintended consequence and nerfing isn't the same thing.
Fabrications aren't getting "nerfed". Multiple engineers spawning multiple shield and medical generators should not be granting multiplicative/stacking benefits to everyone when those fabrications interact. That is unintended.
We all can't cry out of one side of our mouths about things being too easy/going too quickly then cry out of the other side when what is broken gets fixed. You can't have it both ways, and you shouldn't.
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."
- Engineering will be getting a bump in damage potential, and probably a major bump in resists and healing, since its inherent specialties have been given away to everyone else (power management via Intelligence/OSS, and healing/tanking via Strategist, Pilot, GDF, Kobali console, etc.) but has thus far received nothing in return.
I strongly question that engineering will get buffed given the current nerf to already underperforming fabrications on tribble.
Min/maxing and exploiting aren't the same thing, just as fixing an unintended consequence and nerfing isn't the same thing.
Fabrications aren't getting "nerfed". Multiple engineers spawning multiple shield and medical generators should not be granting multiplicative/stacking benefits to everyone when those fabrications interact. That is unintended.
We all can't cry out of one side of our mouths about things being too easy/going too quickly then cry out of the other side when what is broken gets fixed. You can't have it both ways, and you shouldn't.
dude, do you even run ground? Typical ground run, say, Dyson.
by the time offensive items are put in place, the run has already moved out of range.
by the time defensive items (Heal, shield, etc. generators) are in place, the Tacticals have already cleared most of the mobs, and the run is moving away again.
in the RARE boss-fight where the Tacs with their Kligats haven't already dropped the boss unit/monster, items like heal and shield gennies are targeted and dead in seconds-usually long time before they're off cooldown.
This is how it ends up currently in Multiplayer.
the changes ONLY make sense in the single-player leveling mode.
I "ground" all the time. I'm a fabrications engineer in fact, and my favorite thing to run is Mining Instabilities Elite.
Everything you pointed out highlights the fact that Tac captains are overpowered.
The answer is reigning in Tac, not filling every other profession with exploits. Do you want elite runs to last 30 seconds? Games are fun when they're a challenge, not when you press a button that says "I win, yay!".
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."
I agree with the notion that Fabrications could use a buff. It's far behind Demolitions at the moment.
But I still think that the corrections that are coming to Tribble are good - you shouldn't benefit from two medical generators for example. If you're a single engineer, it won't help you much anyway so other buffs are needed.
This of course also depends on what happens to Tacs and Scis, the latter also being very powerful on the ground. If at least Tac damage is toned down a bit, then there could be more need for Fabrications that support the team, which would automatically make them more useful.
- Engineering will be getting a bump in damage potential, and probably a major bump in resists and healing, since its inherent specialties have been given away to everyone else (power management via Intelligence/OSS, and healing/tanking via Strategist, Pilot, GDF, Kobali console, etc.) but has thus far received nothing in return.
I strongly question that engineering will get buffed given the current nerf to already underperforming fabrications on tribble.
Min/maxing and exploiting aren't the same thing, just as fixing an unintended consequence and nerfing isn't the same thing.
Fabrications aren't getting "nerfed". Multiple engineers spawning multiple shield and medical generators should not be granting multiplicative/stacking benefits to everyone when those fabrications interact. That is unintended.
We all can't cry out of one side of our mouths about things being too easy/going too quickly then cry out of the other side when what is broken gets fixed. You can't have it both ways, and you shouldn't.
dude, do you even run ground? Typical ground run, say, Dyson.
by the time offensive items are put in place, the run has already moved out of range.
by the time defensive items (Heal, shield, etc. generators) are in place, the Tacticals have already cleared most of the mobs, and the run is moving away again.
in the RARE boss-fight where the Tacs with their Kligats haven't already dropped the boss unit/monster, items like heal and shield gennies are targeted and dead in seconds-usually long time before they're off cooldown.
This is how it ends up currently in Multiplayer.
the changes ONLY make sense in the single-player leveling mode.
I "ground" all the time. I'm a fabrications engineer in fact, and my favorite thing to run is Mining Instabilities Elite.
Everything you pointed out highlights the fact that Tac captains are overpowered.
The answer is reigning in Tac, not filling every other profession with exploits. Do you want elite runs to last 30 seconds? Games are fun when they're a challenge, not when you press a button that says "I win, yay!".
Nerf Tacs? are you insane? Why, tha'ts the only kind of Captain anyone at Cryptic would lower themselves to PLAY!! Tacs, with "I-win-buttons" are critical to the business model!
(tongue-firmly-in-cheek there.)
after all, this IS "Starfleet Tactical Online" right?? (if you look at the notions of 'balance' and 'fun' they're operating from, it can't be anything else.)
Indeed. All the moaning is coming from one direction, which means the nerfs are heading in the right direction.
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."
Other than the security escort, they sound like buffs.
We'll see what they do with space, the ground stuff is always pretty mild. My guess is that they're finally going to bend to those that cry about beam builds and fire at will. If so, fine.. it will just push something else to the top, we'll all adapt and they will cry about the new thing.
It's not the first time something like this has happened. Cryptic has been consistent in it's methodology over the years, 'balance changes' always just means blanket nerfs.
Call it "nerf" or call it "balance" but I for one welcome any nerf/balance that brings other builds (torp boats, cannon escorts, etc.) into a more balanced/consistent DPS with beam/FAW boats.
As it is today, I will "sometimes" switch to a build with torps, dual cannons, turrets, or whatever else, but I will ALWAYS end up coming back to a beam array/FAW build because that is what will "consistently" produce the highest DPS numbers for me.
That is BORING. I don't want my beam array/FAW builds to be worse than other builds, but FAW boats shouldn't ALWAYS beat other builds when you're trying to turn out the highest DPS numbers.
Whenever I get bored with this game I leave for a few months ... and that means PWE isn't making any money from me. If the devs can keep players like me from getting bored then STO makes more money and the game continues to thrive.
The trick is to find "balance" without making it feel like a totally lopsided nerf.
The only problem is that these balance passes always seem to only hurt the ... will call them casual players. The ones you end up with a pug that are doing about 3-5k dps. They will find themselves doing even less damage and contributing even less to the mission while those at the top will continue doing upwards of 100k dps and far beyond. I'm not totally against the idea of a balance pass it's just that cryptic has proven in the past that these passes generally hurt weak players or in the case of the great science nerf neutered an entire class.
I don't think hurting the weaker players will happen now though.
Take a look at the Tribble patch notes. Most changes are either bug fixes (meaning some things actually get buffed btw) or establishing hard cooldowns and removing stacking of multiple buffs like Medical generators.
And then there's some slight nerfs to very powerful items like the Kligat, armour with up to 80% CritD bonus and some other small things.
Who's benefitting the most from these things at the moment? Surely not the casual player with episode or reputation gear, who joins a PUG, but rather the more advanced player who knows all these generators can enhance each other, who knows how to stack all the cooldown reducing powers, and who knows there's such a thing as 80% CritD buffing armour or kit modules from a fleet holding that always crits, ignores shields and such.
Most of the lower end players will probably not even be aware of the existence of many of these things, it's even less likely that they are using it that much. No, these changes are aimed at reducing the highly optimised builds that stack multiple things upon other things to reach effects that combined are leading to effects of greater magnitude than was ever intended.
I'm fairly certain that these changes will therefore not cause serious problems.
I'm fairly certain it will hurt the weaker players. Every balance pass in the past has hurt the casual players while the good players adjust quickly and continue climbing the dps ladder. Though admittedly the science nerf back in the day managed to kill both casual and good players.
The medical generators fix won't do anything. Engineers are already a laughing stock in sto. They are basically useless in the overall meta and are only good if you find it fun using turrets and generators.
Lots of noobs in my fleet use the kligat and the fleet armor. Mostly cause both are easy to obtain and they are widely talked about even in zone chat.
As for the cooldown reductions I'm kind of on the fence with those nerfs. Cryptic introduced a bunch of ways to reduce cooldowns and now they want to nerf that into the ground. Personally, I'd rather be able to reduce cooldowns so that I can actually use skills sometimes rather then just auto-attack. Overall though I don't see this really affecting my character all that much.
Will see how it goes., but I know that as a player that has been around for 5 years these kind of game adjustments always end up hurting the little guy and it's only a momentary reprieve until they introduce the next round of power creep that will push players even further up then before.
The irony with most blogs like this for instance investment in doff system especially for the KDF where our contraband has just one turn in every 20 hours. I could see if this was a project that us gain dilithium in 20 hours and reward based on how much we turn in. So yes what it tells us is the *fun* as they put it will just mean adding new currencies and sinkholes along with nerfs and more grinding. So to say that honoring player investment is a high priority it simply is not a true statement.
Another issue is it was actually around 5 years ago they made some fundamental breaking of science and more importantly the b'rel at the near ending of the atari era. So many who still played whined about how the b'rel was too OP and that sci was too OP. So they simply broke both of them to try to retain those players. Up until recently with the iconian-present arc changes the science corner and the b'rel have been brought up to par with the rest of the game. Although I can expect to see both getting another hard nerf once the science ship sales dwindle down.
However I do support a balancing in a matter of doing it professionally. The first thing is polish ground combat compared to many games that appear like what we call ground now(away team content replaced by player made names) the skill activations and movements especially like dodgeroll are too sluggish and take too long with the pace of the mission being done. As for space the spam needs to be toned down a lot. Personally what I would do with FAW is not nerf it but make it follow a specific unspoken communication between players. Depending on how many people in a map allow players or one player to become the fleet captain or admiral of the mission where they cal call primary and secondary targets and then what faw would do is rapid attack the primary but as well do some substantial damage to specific secondary targets. Make it look good without so much spam but still be useful or even better than it is now.
The last thing to make it seem more fun and not wrong start converting the game into a game instead of an online star trek casino lol.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
1. A shift in the meta has changed multiple times in this game. This game was once called "Escorts Online" and I remember it was "DHCs or GTFO." I do remember people getting ridiculed long ago for slotting anything but a DHC if the ship was capable of doing DC/DHC. The population simply shifts to what works.
2. Good players will always find a way to get better no matter what. When the game, "meta" shifts again, there will be a readjustment period and then the Good players will go back to crushing things as they always have.
3. Bad players will always be bad, no matter what.
1. A shift in the meta has changed multiple times in this game. This game was once called "Escorts Online" and I remember it was "DHCs or GTFO." I do remember people getting ridiculed long ago for slotting anything but a DHC if the ship was capable of doing DC/DHC. The population simply shifts to what works.
2. Good players will always find a way to get better no matter what. When the game, "meta" shifts again, there will be a readjustment period and then the Good players will go back to crushing things as they always have.
3. Bad players will always be bad, no matter what.
If you think "getting rid of all metagaming" is the point, then naturally you're going to be disappointed. And maybe a little jaded.
If you thank that balancing is about closing the gap between Apex Predator and Joe Average, or vastly increasing the number of builds that are within 10% of the next 'one true way' to emerge, then you can actually sit down to the task and SUCCEED.
Fabrications aren't getting "nerfed". Multiple engineers spawning multiple shield and medical generators should not be granting multiplicative/stacking benefits to everyone when those fabrications interact. That is unintended.
I'm not talking about that fix I'm talking about "Fabs can no longer buff or heal one another" that was literally the only reason fabs were surviving more than a few seconds in queues.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Comments
Secondly, the whole balance revamp is nerfing tactical class. This is confirmed and you should not expect any changes beside of nerfing tacs to death and the entire combat mechanic of tac abilities. In anticipation of 17 times better game balance, you must know: nobody cares for buffing anything for the rest or making it less subpar to tactical. In other words, the easiest way for cryptic has always been a nerf. Enjoy. 7 years have been enough to understand this.
Sounds like someone is upset he's going to have to actually work a little bit more for ground combat damage and is scared there might be an even more sizable space nerf to the BFAW/Embassy console stacking/Coalition Disruptor cheese he's been having to rely on instead of any type of skill. I hope the nerf to space tac are EPIC in scale just to see you have a full on meltdown over not having ridiculous damage numbers anymore from almost no work.
The only problem is that these balance passes always seem to only hurt the ... will call them casual players. The ones you end up with a pug that are doing about 3-5k dps. They will find themselves doing even less damage and contributing even less to the mission while those at the top will continue doing upwards of 100k dps and far beyond. I'm not totally against the idea of a balance pass it's just that cryptic has proven in the past that these passes generally hurt weak players or in the case of the great science nerf neutered an entire class.
If there's any logical method to Cryptic's madness, I predict:
- Science is basically going to be left alone, as it seems to be sitting in a sweet spot.
- Engineering will be getting a bump in damage potential, and probably a major bump in resists and healing, since its inherent specialties have been given away to everyone else (power management via Intelligence/OSS, and healing/tanking via Strategist, Pilot, GDF, Kobali console, etc.) but has thus far received nothing in return.
- Tac is going to get reigned it, sensibly. The ground escort thing is already confirmed to be fixed. In space, APA is only going to buff Tac damage/abilities, GDF will have its tanking ability gutted and its duration put on a cooldown longer and harder than Ron Jeremy.
In general, I'm sure FAW/BO/CSV/CRF abilities will get adjusted so there's more of a reason to switch between them.
Of course, I could be wrong and Cryptic could go Full TRIBBLE, but I strongly doubt it as they seem to be on a continuous upward swing since learning lessons the hard way from the unmitigated disaster that was Delta Rising.
Anyone who is currently "the best" will still be "the best", and the whiners who are terrible will still need to "git gud". Nothing to worry about.
I strongly question the logic of this.
Casual players don't know enough to even try to exploit the cheese that's currently out of control. They'll be affected the least.
I don't think hurting the weaker players will happen now though.
Take a look at the Tribble patch notes. Most changes are either bug fixes (meaning some things actually get buffed btw) or establishing hard cooldowns and removing stacking of multiple buffs like Medical generators.
And then there's some slight nerfs to very powerful items like the Kligat, armour with up to 80% CritD bonus and some other small things.
Who's benefitting the most from these things at the moment? Surely not the casual player with episode or reputation gear, who joins a PUG, but rather the more advanced player who knows all these generators can enhance each other, who knows how to stack all the cooldown reducing powers, and who knows there's such a thing as 80% CritD buffing armour or kit modules from a fleet holding that always crits, ignores shields and such.
Most of the lower end players will probably not even be aware of the existence of many of these things, it's even less likely that they are using it that much. No, these changes are aimed at reducing the highly optimised builds that stack multiple things upon other things to reach effects that combined are leading to effects of greater magnitude than was ever intended.
I'm fairly certain that these changes will therefore not cause serious problems.
Or this... I need to learn not to write walls of text when three sentences can be enough lol.
Exactly. "Casual players will lose the most!" is code talk for "Please don't take my sploitz!".
I strongly question that engineering will get buffed given the current nerf to already underperforming fabrications on tribble.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Min/maxing and exploiting aren't the same thing, just as fixing an unintended consequence and nerfing isn't the same thing.
Fabrications aren't getting "nerfed". Multiple engineers spawning multiple shield and medical generators should not be granting multiplicative/stacking benefits to everyone when those fabrications interact. That is unintended.
We all can't cry out of one side of our mouths about things being too easy/going too quickly then cry out of the other side when what is broken gets fixed. You can't have it both ways, and you shouldn't.
I "ground" all the time. I'm a fabrications engineer in fact, and my favorite thing to run is Mining Instabilities Elite.
Everything you pointed out highlights the fact that Tac captains are overpowered.
The answer is reigning in Tac, not filling every other profession with exploits. Do you want elite runs to last 30 seconds? Games are fun when they're a challenge, not when you press a button that says "I win, yay!".
But I still think that the corrections that are coming to Tribble are good - you shouldn't benefit from two medical generators for example. If you're a single engineer, it won't help you much anyway so other buffs are needed.
This of course also depends on what happens to Tacs and Scis, the latter also being very powerful on the ground. If at least Tac damage is toned down a bit, then there could be more need for Fabrications that support the team, which would automatically make them more useful.
Indeed. All the moaning is coming from one direction, which means the nerfs are heading in the right direction.
I'm fairly certain it will hurt the weaker players. Every balance pass in the past has hurt the casual players while the good players adjust quickly and continue climbing the dps ladder. Though admittedly the science nerf back in the day managed to kill both casual and good players.
The medical generators fix won't do anything. Engineers are already a laughing stock in sto. They are basically useless in the overall meta and are only good if you find it fun using turrets and generators.
Lots of noobs in my fleet use the kligat and the fleet armor. Mostly cause both are easy to obtain and they are widely talked about even in zone chat.
As for the cooldown reductions I'm kind of on the fence with those nerfs. Cryptic introduced a bunch of ways to reduce cooldowns and now they want to nerf that into the ground. Personally, I'd rather be able to reduce cooldowns so that I can actually use skills sometimes rather then just auto-attack. Overall though I don't see this really affecting my character all that much.
Will see how it goes., but I know that as a player that has been around for 5 years these kind of game adjustments always end up hurting the little guy and it's only a momentary reprieve until they introduce the next round of power creep that will push players even further up then before.
Another issue is it was actually around 5 years ago they made some fundamental breaking of science and more importantly the b'rel at the near ending of the atari era. So many who still played whined about how the b'rel was too OP and that sci was too OP. So they simply broke both of them to try to retain those players. Up until recently with the iconian-present arc changes the science corner and the b'rel have been brought up to par with the rest of the game. Although I can expect to see both getting another hard nerf once the science ship sales dwindle down.
However I do support a balancing in a matter of doing it professionally. The first thing is polish ground combat compared to many games that appear like what we call ground now(away team content replaced by player made names) the skill activations and movements especially like dodgeroll are too sluggish and take too long with the pace of the mission being done. As for space the spam needs to be toned down a lot. Personally what I would do with FAW is not nerf it but make it follow a specific unspoken communication between players. Depending on how many people in a map allow players or one player to become the fleet captain or admiral of the mission where they cal call primary and secondary targets and then what faw would do is rapid attack the primary but as well do some substantial damage to specific secondary targets. Make it look good without so much spam but still be useful or even better than it is now.
The last thing to make it seem more fun and not wrong start converting the game into a game instead of an online star trek casino lol.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
1. A shift in the meta has changed multiple times in this game. This game was once called "Escorts Online" and I remember it was "DHCs or GTFO." I do remember people getting ridiculed long ago for slotting anything but a DHC if the ship was capable of doing DC/DHC. The population simply shifts to what works.
2. Good players will always find a way to get better no matter what. When the game, "meta" shifts again, there will be a readjustment period and then the Good players will go back to crushing things as they always have.
3. Bad players will always be bad, no matter what.
If you think "getting rid of all metagaming" is the point, then naturally you're going to be disappointed. And maybe a little jaded.
If you thank that balancing is about closing the gap between Apex Predator and Joe Average, or vastly increasing the number of builds that are within 10% of the next 'one true way' to emerge, then you can actually sit down to the task and SUCCEED.
I'm not talking about that fix I'm talking about "Fabs can no longer buff or heal one another" that was literally the only reason fabs were surviving more than a few seconds in queues.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'