The FaW accuracy nerf from most tribble testers doesn't seem too bad, but it could still be adjusted further which could mean a shift in mods and in that case people may need to replace their entire weapon loadout. That could be quite costly. We won't really know the total cost for gear until they finalize the balance pass.
Even if the shift is enough to actually change the mods meta (which as you say, seems not to be the case) your current weapons don't suddenly become garbage. They're just a couple of percent off of absolute max. If we were looking at content where you're in dire risk of failing and that couple of percent were genuinely crucial, the yeah, there might be a case to be made that we should have some sort of way (probably through the crafting system) to go in and alter/swap mods on existing items (wouldn't that be nice?). But since that's not the case, it's mostly given you an new "to-do list" item of "Slowly cycle out really good guns with absolutely perfect ones" as a thing to work on at your leisure for a while.
Indeed. The very idea of striving for certain mods, despite ridiculous costs, is something that would only come up in the mind of players who are not average. Players who are aiming for this will be fine, since they are not average players.
And it may be costly, but I've always maintained that it's a choice to spend so much on unnecessary small/marginal improvements. Maybe I should feel sorry for people who lost their mind, but at this moment I'm not really feeling it. Everyone could have known that specific mods might become more or less interesting one day.
I've noticed quite a few people here making assertions about the playerbase at large. Your claiming that average players don't care about mods, but I know this to be untrue. I know several "average" players that aim for the perfect or close to perfect mods. It just seems to take them a lot longer to get there then it does the hardcore player. Additionally, I am of the opinion that most players do want the small/marginal improvements from epic weapons. They just don't have the resources to get their quickly if at all. That is of course the nature of the game though. If you play a lot or pay a lot you can get the stuff you want faster.
Someone who strives to get the best gear, with the best mods, at epic quality, is not an average player in my book. If they are indeed still average players with all that taken into account, then no amount of buffing or nerfing/correcting their items would ever make a difference.
It is quite contradictory to claim that 'average' players will be interested in these small percentages of a difference that the 'perfect' mods make. If they are indeed still average after spending millions of in-game resources, then that is only further proof that they're doing the wrong thing - and that it is thus completely unnecessary to do it.
Pugs will still be the same as before, just as they were the same after DR and everyone has a chance to adapt to the HP sponges.
There will always be low DPS people who might not be in the right difficulty and can't kill things fast enough.
And there will still be plenty of elitists who have 100K+ DPS who think they are a god and can solo a side in ISA and overestimate their abilities failing the mission.
Nothing will change once the initial tears have dried up and the flames have been put out. Might possibly need more thought when engaging the enemy but the same old queues will follow the same old story.
Doing more DPS than everyone else does not make you a better player, having your DPS reduced does not make you worse.
Until my main has been recopied, I've had to use an older version that's a year old. Here's a quick snap shot of my main ability DPS comparison:-
Energy Weapons DPS (Baseline DPS @125 Power) is down between 10-15%. This is without any ability modifiers (BFAW, EPtW et all).
Torps seem unaffected.
Tac Beam I (@ 75 Power) up at around 10%
Grav Well I ('75 Power) up at around 15%
So at the moment, it's a balanced out-look.
Once I've had my latest version imported, I can do a true baseline comparison for DPS.
"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.
The FaW accuracy nerf from most tribble testers doesn't seem too bad, but it could still be adjusted further which could mean a shift in mods and in that case people may need to replace their entire weapon loadout. That could be quite costly. We won't really know the total cost for gear until they finalize the balance pass.
Even if the shift is enough to actually change the mods meta (which as you say, seems not to be the case) your current weapons don't suddenly become garbage. They're just a couple of percent off of absolute max. If we were looking at content where you're in dire risk of failing and that couple of percent were genuinely crucial, the yeah, there might be a case to be made that we should have some sort of way (probably through the crafting system) to go in and alter/swap mods on existing items (wouldn't that be nice?). But since that's not the case, it's mostly given you an new "to-do list" item of "Slowly cycle out really good guns with absolutely perfect ones" as a thing to work on at your leisure for a while.
Indeed. The very idea of striving for certain mods, despite ridiculous costs, is something that would only come up in the mind of players who are not average. Players who are aiming for this will be fine, since they are not average players.
And it may be costly, but I've always maintained that it's a choice to spend so much on unnecessary small/marginal improvements. Maybe I should feel sorry for people who lost their mind, but at this moment I'm not really feeling it. Everyone could have known that specific mods might become more or less interesting one day.
I've noticed quite a few people here making assertions about the playerbase at large. Your claiming that average players don't care about mods, but I know this to be untrue. I know several "average" players that aim for the perfect or close to perfect mods. It just seems to take them a lot longer to get there then it does the hardcore player. Additionally, I am of the opinion that most players do want the small/marginal improvements from epic weapons. They just don't have the resources to get their quickly if at all. That is of course the nature of the game though. If you play a lot or pay a lot you can get the stuff you want faster.
Someone who strives to get the best gear, with the best mods, at epic quality, is not an average player in my book. If they are indeed still average players with all that taken into account, then no amount of buffing or nerfing/correcting their items would ever make a difference.
It is quite contradictory to claim that 'average' players will be interested in these small percentages of a difference that the 'perfect' mods make. If they are indeed still average after spending millions of in-game resources, then that is only further proof that they're doing the wrong thing - and that it is thus completely unnecessary to do it.
Well you can disagree of course, but I have a lot of fleetmates that I play with and many are average players. They range in dps from 6-20k, but they have asked for and taken the advice of players in the 100+ dps range and they strive to get there themselves, but because they don't play enough or pay enough they will never get there, but they do want all these things. It's just very costly. That doesn't mean they are doing it wrong, but think for a moment about all the little things that boost your ships damage and make your character "elite". Vulnerability locators, starship traits, personal traits, duty officers, bridge officers, rep consoles, enhanced traits from fleet holdings, ...etc.
Currently pug groups for most advanced ques are brutal. Most do not move for the objectives, dps is terrible, and most die multiple times (no gear check or dps check to keep sub par players from queuing). I pug a lot relatively speaking and the overall efficiency of those runs is already abysmal. Maybe 1 in 7 runs if that gets a coordinated team that completes the run in what pc considers "normal"
These overall dps nerfs, which is flat or what they are, will disportianetely effect the console compared to PC because I have yet to see anyone address the elephant in the room of this balance pass. A fledgling game is receiving a "mature" games update.
IMO, we may have similar content and balances but console and PC are NOT the same game and to be treated as such Is disheartening to say the least
Well you can disagree of course, but I have a lot of fleetmates that I play with and many are average players. They range in dps from 6-20k, but they have asked for and taken the advice of players in the 100+ dps range and they strive to get there themselves, but because they don't play enough or pay enough they will never get there, but they do want all these things. It's just very costly. That doesn't mean they are doing it wrong, but think for a moment about all the little things that boost your ships damage and make your character "elite". Vulnerability locators, starship traits, personal traits, duty officers, bridge officers, rep consoles, enhanced traits from fleet holdings, ...etc.
In some respects they're being misled then. Because perfect mods is a long term goal with terrible performance-to-cost return on investment. Getting any weapon to level XIV right now is better than saving up for a perfect mods weapon over 3 months. Its virtually the single last thing you should be sweating in the march to apex predator.
Way earlier in the process are the big questions like "What ship do I want to fly, and am I willing to spend money to get it?"
Then you need to ask "do I want to kill with beams, cannons, torps, death magic, or some combination?" Because all of those can be made to work satisfactorily, but it'll guide where and how to spend your time and resources.
Unless you're pure torpedo, you need to decide "what energy type am I going to use?" Consequences follow. Particularly, it sets what missions you might wan to go run 3 times for the related flavor of gear.
You need to do your dailies to start filling in reputations so you can get the Rep traits you're going to do, and in most cases Rep is also going to be the answer to you ship gear (deflector, impulse, core, shield).
Find a fleet (which is generally no harder than stand in your faction's home map and wait 30 seconds for a blind invite...), start contributing anything and everything you can to every project for fleet cred. You've got a couple of highly desirable consoles and your extra trait slot unlocks to buy. You may also need to be in a fleet if you've decided the ship you want to fly is a fleet-upgrade.
Examine your traits and fill your slots. Examine the genetic resequencers and see if there's any that look good AND cost very little. If your fleet has the K-13 up and running you may also want to examine the traits being sold there.
Learn about you Doff options... which usually you can do by going to the exchange and looking at each category, sorting most expensive to least. The most expensive are usually the most expensive for a reason.
About 35 more important questions/resulting to-do list items later, you'll finally get to "grind out hundreds of millions of Ec or max out crafting and start fussing over the 2% advantage to be gained from perfect mods."
Well you can disagree of course, but I have a lot of fleetmates that I play with and many are average players. They range in dps from 6-20k, but they have asked for and taken the advice of players in the 100+ dps range and they strive to get there themselves, but because they don't play enough or pay enough they will never get there, but they do want all these things. It's just very costly. That doesn't mean they are doing it wrong, but think for a moment about all the little things that boost your ships damage and make your character "elite". Vulnerability locators, starship traits, personal traits, duty officers, bridge officers, rep consoles, enhanced traits from fleet holdings, ...etc.
In some respects they're being misled then. Because perfect mods is a long term goal with terrible performance-to-cost return on investment. Getting any weapon to level XIV right now is better than saving up for a perfect mods weapon over 3 months. Its virtually the single last thing you should be sweating in the march to apex predator.
Way earlier in the process are the big questions like "What ship do I want to fly, and am I willing to spend money to get it?"
Then you need to ask "do I want to kill with beams, cannons, torps, death magic, or some combination?" Because all of those can be made to work satisfactorily, but it'll guide where and how to spend your time and resources.
Unless you're pure torpedo, you need to decide "what energy type am I going to use?" Consequences follow. Particularly, it sets what missions you might wan to go run 3 times for the related flavor of gear.
You need to do your dailies to start filling in reputations so you can get the Rep traits you're going to do, and in most cases Rep is also going to be the answer to you ship gear (deflector, impulse, core, shield).
Find a fleet (which is generally no harder than stand in your faction's home map and wait 30 seconds for a blind invite...), start contributing anything and everything you can to every project for fleet cred. You've got a couple of highly desirable consoles and your extra trait slot unlocks to buy. You may also need to be in a fleet if you've decided the ship you want to fly is a fleet-upgrade.
Examine your traits and fill your slots. Examine the genetic resequencers and see if there's any that look good AND cost very little. If your fleet has the K-13 up and running you may also want to examine the traits being sold there.
Learn about you Doff options... which usually you can do by going to the exchange and looking at each category, sorting most expensive to least. The most expensive are usually the most expensive for a reason.
About 35 more important questions/resulting to-do list items later, you'll finally get to "grind out hundreds of millions of Ec or max out crafting and start fussing over the 2% advantage to be gained from perfect mods."
Not taking anything away from that well though out and cogent post, but yeah, if you use a leech you should be sweating that FIRST. If you use beams you should be thinking about if you'd like to continue to play the game without them. Then everything else in order. above.
Well you can disagree of course, but I have a lot of fleetmates that I play with and many are average players. They range in dps from 6-20k, but they have asked for and taken the advice of players in the 100+ dps range and they strive to get there themselves, but because they don't play enough or pay enough they will never get there, but they do want all these things. It's just very costly. That doesn't mean they are doing it wrong, but think for a moment about all the little things that boost your ships damage and make your character "elite". Vulnerability locators, starship traits, personal traits, duty officers, bridge officers, rep consoles, enhanced traits from fleet holdings, ...etc.
In some respects they're being misled then. Because perfect mods is a long term goal with terrible performance-to-cost return on investment. Getting any weapon to level XIV right now is better than saving up for a perfect mods weapon over 3 months. Its virtually the single last thing you should be sweating in the march to apex predator.
Way earlier in the process are the big questions like "What ship do I want to fly, and am I willing to spend money to get it?"
Then you need to ask "do I want to kill with beams, cannons, torps, death magic, or some combination?" Because all of those can be made to work satisfactorily, but it'll guide where and how to spend your time and resources.
Unless you're pure torpedo, you need to decide "what energy type am I going to use?" Consequences follow. Particularly, it sets what missions you might wan to go run 3 times for the related flavor of gear.
You need to do your dailies to start filling in reputations so you can get the Rep traits you're going to do, and in most cases Rep is also going to be the answer to you ship gear (deflector, impulse, core, shield).
Find a fleet (which is generally no harder than stand in your faction's home map and wait 30 seconds for a blind invite...), start contributing anything and everything you can to every project for fleet cred. You've got a couple of highly desirable consoles and your extra trait slot unlocks to buy. You may also need to be in a fleet if you've decided the ship you want to fly is a fleet-upgrade.
Examine your traits and fill your slots. Examine the genetic resequencers and see if there's any that look good AND cost very little. If your fleet has the K-13 up and running you may also want to examine the traits being sold there.
Learn about you Doff options... which usually you can do by going to the exchange and looking at each category, sorting most expensive to least. The most expensive are usually the most expensive for a reason.
About 35 more important questions/resulting to-do list items later, you'll finally get to "grind out hundreds of millions of Ec or max out crafting and start fussing over the 2% advantage to be gained from perfect mods."
Well the advice given by the higher dps players isn't get [dmg]x3/[crtd] [pen] epic weapons and work on other things later. The players that want higher dps have everything laid out for them and given advice on what is cheapest and will provide the greatest gains, but the point of my post wasn't about the advice given, but that the average type player, in general, wants to improve their build as much as possible in most cases.
Heh... Then the distinction that may need to be made here is that the average gamer may want to improve but the average STO player is not a gamer. Most folks wont dispute that this game would be deader than a doornail if it had to get by on technical merits alone and wasn't riding a powerhouse intellectual property. Which attracts an audience that's not all that into fine details like having abilities that work with the weapons you actually have equipped .
Heh... Then the distinction that may need to be made here is that the average gamer may want to improve but the average STO player is not a gamer. Most folks wont dispute that this game would be deader than a doornail if it had to get by on technical merits alone and wasn't riding a powerhouse intellectual property. Which attracts an audience that's not all that into fine details like having abilities that work with the weapons you actually have equipped .
^^ This is what I'm talking about.
The gamers left this game a long time ago when it launched in horrific shape. The only reason I, and many many others like me still play it is because it's Star Trek....period.
Heh... Then the distinction that may need to be made here is that the average gamer may want to improve but the average STO player is not a gamer. Most folks wont dispute that this game would be deader than a doornail if it had to get by on technical merits alone and wasn't riding a powerhouse intellectual property. Which attracts an audience that's not all that into fine details like having abilities that work with the weapons you actually have equipped .
and it doesn't help when the game saddles the player with messes like the ship in A Step Between Stars which makes the average player think that's an acceptable way to build (and which unlike the messes in Temporal Ambassador and Sphere of Influence, doesn't have the advantage of being literally immortal in the former case and having abilities that are absolutely overpowered in the latter, even on the steaming pile of droppings that is the obelisk near the end)
oh, and let's not forget the little gem of the bortasqu' in the First Contact event mini-mission that has a cannon enhancement power...and NOT A SINGLE DAMN CANNON ON THE SHIP!
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Heh... Then the distinction that may need to be made here is that the average gamer may want to improve but the average STO player is not a gamer. Most folks wont dispute that this game would be deader than a doornail if it had to get by on technical merits alone and wasn't riding a powerhouse intellectual property. Which attracts an audience that's not all that into fine details like having abilities that work with the weapons you actually have equipped .
^^ This is what I'm talking about.
The gamers left this game a long time ago when it launched in horrific shape. The only reason I, and many many others like me still play it is because it's Star Trek....period.
Well yah that's the only reason I'm still here. I love Star Trek. If this was just Starships Online I probably would have left a long time ago.
No, literally changes haven't happened like this before....and moreover this scale hasn't even been approached before.
While we probably haven't the same volume of space balance changes included in any one patch before, we've had much greater balance shifts over relatively short periods of time (ex. the introduction of T6, specializations, and kemocite) and plenty of these kinds of balance changes within smaller patches (far exceeding the impact of this patch through time). The difference between that more gradual change and now is in making a big single effort, Cryptic can consider the big picture. Large scale tweaking means large scale thinking. How on earth is that a bad thing?
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
DPS goes down in general, while the number of cannon-armed battle spoons remains the same. Yeah, the queues are going to take a bit of a hit until the new meta is sorted out.
Those awful, offal players you so dread getting into a pug with? They didn't change their energy distribution settings settings from the default 50-to-everything. Now that the Weapon Power curve is getting flattened, they'll actually be doing more damage than they were before.
Or sci's who now have at least 1 guaranteed decent boost to a variety of skills. Or engineers who get some survival and power management improvements. This may be taking down the ceiling, but it's bringing up the floor.
Those awful, offal players you so dread getting into a pug with? They didn't change their energy distribution settings settings from the default 50-to-everything. Now that the Weapon Power curve is getting flattened, they'll actually be doing more damage than they were before.
Or sci's who now have at least 1 guaranteed decent boost to a variety of skills. Or engineers who get some survival and power management improvements. This may be taking down the ceiling, but it's bringing up the floor.
...cause if engineers needed anything it was more survival improvements.
Pugs failing because of damage is more like a myth. While it's not impossible that it could be a reason, the problem is that people just play horribad, never read anything, don't play as a team and such.
I remember back in the day when people popped up in elite infected runs with rainbow boats because they couldn't figure out that the content was meant to be challenging and of course they never listened and scrwed up the whole mission. But that's on the players, not the game.
10% rule, anybody? Or, dedicating someone to guard the Kang? Or paying attention to your distance from Donatra, so it didn't take 90+ mins to finish (true story, one person had an injury list longer than their buff bar)? Trigger points in IGE, questions and answers in UIE, etc. Failures from not reading or not listening, not a lack of damage. Too much damage can lead to an 'everything looks like a nail' situation.
Coming soon to a theater near you. Not only will you fail them, but virtually every time.
No, you won't.
Okay, lets put this another way. Methods of failing ISA:
Player(s) quit because it was taking too long.
Player(s) quit because they found it too difficult
Player(s) quit because optional failed.
None of the above is a GAME fail condition. ISA in itself has no fail condition. It will continue until either one of two things happens:
1: The team completes it, however long that might take, and collect a reduced reward.
2: Players quit.
Failing the OPTIONAL does not equate to failing the entire mission.
Trying to reason with someone whose goal it is to incite...eminently futile.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,559Community Moderator
No, pugs will still be ok
We'll have an adjustment period. But PUGs won't be instafail like some people seem to believe. Once upon a time, this was basically Escorts Online, where the top dogs all flew escorts. Then I believe Romulans came out, with Superior Romulan Operative traits. Now its Beams Online, where you can spam FAW for epic DEEPS.
As a casual player who doesn't min/max my numbers to the extreme, I'm not that concerned with the changes. I average at least 10k on most of my builds, generally use FAW 1 because I want other abilities higher up the food chain, and use non meta damage types like Tetryon and Phaser. I have never used A2B builds. I have never used cookie cutter builds. I've always flown my own way, and have enjoyed it. While I do use a Megawell build on one alt, that's only on one ship and I'm a bit of a Jack of All Trades.
One time I had to try and take charge of a bad Infected PUG. Our top player decided we were all failures and bailed on us, basically insulting our ability to do ANYTHING, including breath, because we didn't measure up to his perceived standards.. I admit we were sub DPS for the time, but you know what? We STILL eventually won through coordination. Most of the time it was just me doing the talking, but I could see that we were getting more effective because of it. And when we got the victory without the hardcore guy, it was a victory well earned.
So no. I do not believe PUGs will become a lost cause. We'll just have to adapt new tactics. Which in this environment seems to be a bit of a foreign concept. Actually THINKING about how to fight rather than going on autopilot with FAW.
Heh... Then the distinction that may need to be made here is that the average gamer may want to improve but the average STO player is not a gamer. Most folks wont dispute that this game would be deader than a doornail if it had to get by on technical merits alone and wasn't riding a powerhouse intellectual property. Which attracts an audience that's not all that into fine details like having abilities that work with the weapons you actually have equipped .
and it doesn't help when the game saddles the player with messes like the ship in A Step Between Stars which makes the average player think that's an acceptable way to build (and which unlike the messes in Temporal Ambassador and Sphere of Influence, doesn't have the advantage of being literally immortal in the former case and having abilities that are absolutely overpowered in the latter, even on the steaming pile of droppings that is the obelisk near the end)
oh, and let's not forget the little gem of the bortasqu' in the First Contact event mini-mission that has a cannon enhancement power...and NOT A SINGLE DAMN CANNON ON THE SHIP!
With the exception of Temporal Ambassador, it's more likely newer players are influenced by the way ships come equipped from the shipyard than a level 50+ mission. The Bortasqu actually does have a auto-cannon which might explain the enhancement.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Coming soon to a theater near you. Not only will you fail them, but virtually every time.
No, you won't.
Okay, lets put this another way. Methods of failing ISA:
Player(s) quit because it was taking too long.
Player(s) quit because they found it too difficult
Player(s) quit because optional failed.
None of the above is a GAME fail condition. ISA in itself has no fail condition. It will continue until either one of two things happens:
1: The team completes it, however long that might take, and collect a reduced reward.
2: Players quit.
Failing the OPTIONAL does not equate to failing the entire mission.
Trying to reason with someone whose goal it is to incite...eminently futile.
Yeah, in hindsight I should have picked up on that sooner really.
Some of us do have personal "success" criteria too. For me personally, I consider an STF as "failed" if an optional was missed (excluding optionals that are impossible to succeed). I'm still stuck in the days when failing an optional booted you out of the STFs (which were better in my opinion).
Coming soon to a theater near you. Not only will you fail them, but virtually every time.
No, you won't.
Okay, lets put this another way. Methods of failing ISA:
Player(s) quit because it was taking too long.
Player(s) quit because they found it too difficult
Player(s) quit because optional failed.
None of the above is a GAME fail condition. ISA in itself has no fail condition. It will continue until either one of two things happens:
1: The team completes it, however long that might take, and collect a reduced reward.
2: Players quit.
Failing the OPTIONAL does not equate to failing the entire mission.
Trying to reason with someone whose goal it is to incite...eminently futile.
Yeah, in hindsight I should have picked up on that sooner really.
Some of us do have personal "success" criteria too. For me personally, I consider an STF as "failed" if an optional was missed (excluding optionals that are impossible to succeed). I'm still stuck in the days when failing an optional booted you out of the STFs (which were better in my opinion).
Yeah, the period just after Delta Rising when even ISA could fail. I remember the chaos of that change brought to both public and private queues of ISA. Interesting times
Comments
Someone who strives to get the best gear, with the best mods, at epic quality, is not an average player in my book. If they are indeed still average players with all that taken into account, then no amount of buffing or nerfing/correcting their items would ever make a difference.
It is quite contradictory to claim that 'average' players will be interested in these small percentages of a difference that the 'perfect' mods make. If they are indeed still average after spending millions of in-game resources, then that is only further proof that they're doing the wrong thing - and that it is thus completely unnecessary to do it.
There will always be low DPS people who might not be in the right difficulty and can't kill things fast enough.
And there will still be plenty of elitists who have 100K+ DPS who think they are a god and can solo a side in ISA and overestimate their abilities failing the mission.
Nothing will change once the initial tears have dried up and the flames have been put out. Might possibly need more thought when engaging the enemy but the same old queues will follow the same old story.
Doing more DPS than everyone else does not make you a better player, having your DPS reduced does not make you worse.
Energy Weapons DPS (Baseline DPS @125 Power) is down between 10-15%. This is without any ability modifiers (BFAW, EPtW et all).
Torps seem unaffected.
Tac Beam I (@ 75 Power) up at around 10%
Grav Well I ('75 Power) up at around 15%
So at the moment, it's a balanced out-look.
Once I've had my latest version imported, I can do a true baseline comparison for DPS.
Well you can disagree of course, but I have a lot of fleetmates that I play with and many are average players. They range in dps from 6-20k, but they have asked for and taken the advice of players in the 100+ dps range and they strive to get there themselves, but because they don't play enough or pay enough they will never get there, but they do want all these things. It's just very costly. That doesn't mean they are doing it wrong, but think for a moment about all the little things that boost your ships damage and make your character "elite". Vulnerability locators, starship traits, personal traits, duty officers, bridge officers, rep consoles, enhanced traits from fleet holdings, ...etc.
Currently pug groups for most advanced ques are brutal. Most do not move for the objectives, dps is terrible, and most die multiple times (no gear check or dps check to keep sub par players from queuing). I pug a lot relatively speaking and the overall efficiency of those runs is already abysmal. Maybe 1 in 7 runs if that gets a coordinated team that completes the run in what pc considers "normal"
These overall dps nerfs, which is flat or what they are, will disportianetely effect the console compared to PC because I have yet to see anyone address the elephant in the room of this balance pass. A fledgling game is receiving a "mature" games update.
IMO, we may have similar content and balances but console and PC are NOT the same game and to be treated as such Is disheartening to say the least
In some respects they're being misled then. Because perfect mods is a long term goal with terrible performance-to-cost return on investment. Getting any weapon to level XIV right now is better than saving up for a perfect mods weapon over 3 months. Its virtually the single last thing you should be sweating in the march to apex predator.
Way earlier in the process are the big questions like "What ship do I want to fly, and am I willing to spend money to get it?"
Then you need to ask "do I want to kill with beams, cannons, torps, death magic, or some combination?" Because all of those can be made to work satisfactorily, but it'll guide where and how to spend your time and resources.
Unless you're pure torpedo, you need to decide "what energy type am I going to use?" Consequences follow. Particularly, it sets what missions you might wan to go run 3 times for the related flavor of gear.
You need to do your dailies to start filling in reputations so you can get the Rep traits you're going to do, and in most cases Rep is also going to be the answer to you ship gear (deflector, impulse, core, shield).
Find a fleet (which is generally no harder than stand in your faction's home map and wait 30 seconds for a blind invite...), start contributing anything and everything you can to every project for fleet cred. You've got a couple of highly desirable consoles and your extra trait slot unlocks to buy. You may also need to be in a fleet if you've decided the ship you want to fly is a fleet-upgrade.
Examine your traits and fill your slots. Examine the genetic resequencers and see if there's any that look good AND cost very little. If your fleet has the K-13 up and running you may also want to examine the traits being sold there.
Learn about you Doff options... which usually you can do by going to the exchange and looking at each category, sorting most expensive to least. The most expensive are usually the most expensive for a reason.
About 35 more important questions/resulting to-do list items later, you'll finally get to "grind out hundreds of millions of Ec or max out crafting and start fussing over the 2% advantage to be gained from perfect mods."
Not taking anything away from that well though out and cogent post, but yeah, if you use a leech you should be sweating that FIRST. If you use beams you should be thinking about if you'd like to continue to play the game without them. Then everything else in order. above.
Well the advice given by the higher dps players isn't get [dmg]x3/[crtd] [pen] epic weapons and work on other things later. The players that want higher dps have everything laid out for them and given advice on what is cheapest and will provide the greatest gains, but the point of my post wasn't about the advice given, but that the average type player, in general, wants to improve their build as much as possible in most cases.
^^ This is what I'm talking about.
The gamers left this game a long time ago when it launched in horrific shape. The only reason I, and many many others like me still play it is because it's Star Trek....period.
and it doesn't help when the game saddles the player with messes like the ship in A Step Between Stars which makes the average player think that's an acceptable way to build (and which unlike the messes in Temporal Ambassador and Sphere of Influence, doesn't have the advantage of being literally immortal in the former case and having abilities that are absolutely overpowered in the latter, even on the steaming pile of droppings that is the obelisk near the end)
oh, and let's not forget the little gem of the bortasqu' in the First Contact event mini-mission that has a cannon enhancement power...and NOT A SINGLE DAMN CANNON ON THE SHIP!
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Well yah that's the only reason I'm still here. I love Star Trek. If this was just Starships Online I probably would have left a long time ago.
While we probably haven't the same volume of space balance changes included in any one patch before, we've had much greater balance shifts over relatively short periods of time (ex. the introduction of T6, specializations, and kemocite) and plenty of these kinds of balance changes within smaller patches (far exceeding the impact of this patch through time). The difference between that more gradual change and now is in making a big single effort, Cryptic can consider the big picture. Large scale tweaking means large scale thinking. How on earth is that a bad thing?
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
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Or sci's who now have at least 1 guaranteed decent boost to a variety of skills. Or engineers who get some survival and power management improvements. This may be taking down the ceiling, but it's bringing up the floor.
...cause if engineers needed anything it was more survival improvements.
10% rule, anybody? Or, dedicating someone to guard the Kang? Or paying attention to your distance from Donatra, so it didn't take 90+ mins to finish (true story, one person had an injury list longer than their buff bar)? Trigger points in IGE, questions and answers in UIE, etc. Failures from not reading or not listening, not a lack of damage. Too much damage can lead to an 'everything looks like a nail' situation.
Trying to reason with someone whose goal it is to incite...eminently futile.
As a casual player who doesn't min/max my numbers to the extreme, I'm not that concerned with the changes. I average at least 10k on most of my builds, generally use FAW 1 because I want other abilities higher up the food chain, and use non meta damage types like Tetryon and Phaser. I have never used A2B builds. I have never used cookie cutter builds. I've always flown my own way, and have enjoyed it. While I do use a Megawell build on one alt, that's only on one ship and I'm a bit of a Jack of All Trades.
One time I had to try and take charge of a bad Infected PUG. Our top player decided we were all failures and bailed on us, basically insulting our ability to do ANYTHING, including breath, because we didn't measure up to his perceived standards.. I admit we were sub DPS for the time, but you know what? We STILL eventually won through coordination. Most of the time it was just me doing the talking, but I could see that we were getting more effective because of it. And when we got the victory without the hardcore guy, it was a victory well earned.
So no. I do not believe PUGs will become a lost cause. We'll just have to adapt new tactics. Which in this environment seems to be a bit of a foreign concept. Actually THINKING about how to fight rather than going on autopilot with FAW.
With the exception of Temporal Ambassador, it's more likely newer players are influenced by the way ships come equipped from the shipyard than a level 50+ mission. The Bortasqu actually does have a auto-cannon which might explain the enhancement.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Some of us do have personal "success" criteria too. For me personally, I consider an STF as "failed" if an optional was missed (excluding optionals that are impossible to succeed). I'm still stuck in the days when failing an optional booted you out of the STFs (which were better in my opinion).
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Yeah, the period just after Delta Rising when even ISA could fail. I remember the chaos of that change brought to both public and private queues of ISA. Interesting times