Cryptic should take a page out of Blizzard and Jagex playbook and release a "Classic" server, before all the power-creep happened.
I'm thinking a Season 5 server would be great, STF revamp and Doff system introduction, but before Legacy of Romulus and the beginning of the reputation and trait system.
It was a time when content actually was truly "challenging" and PvP was fun.
The main thing I'd see people complaining about with this though is the following question, "Why do we only get 15 traits total?"
Back when you had to pick half you traits for ground and half for space, and you could atually point in to threat generation. Which was helpful for those that could tank Aramek, Manus, and such.
Actually that trait system didn't come until much later. Back then you were still stuck with the traits you had chosen when you created your character, and were more like minor bonuses than build defining buffs.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
Cryptic should take a page out of Blizzard and Jagex playbook and release a "Classic" server, before all the power-creep happened.
I'm thinking a Season 5 server would be great, STF revamp and Doff system introduction, but before Legacy of Romulus and the beginning of the reputation and trait system.
It was a time when content actually was truly "challenging" and PvP was fun.
The main thing I'd see people complaining about with this though is the following question, "Why do we only get 15 traits total?"
Back when you had to pick half you traits for ground and half for space, and you could atually point in to threat generation. Which was helpful for those that could tank Aramek, Manus, and such.
Actually that trait system didn't come until much later. Back then you were still stuck with the traits you had chosen when you created your character, and were more like minor bonuses than build defining buffs.
Right, keep forgetting that. I just remember as back when you actually had to buy a retrain token to change any part of you characters build.
If you keep up with the insane powercreep, most bosses will be too easy. And Cryptic can't balance the powercreep, because a lot of the people who depend on it will have massive tantrums, with rants and "I quit" posts.
That last balance pass? Barely scratched the surface. It barely dropped a lot of peoples DPS who didn't rely on something that was obviously OP (embassy consoles). Yet we had screaming raging tantrums.
What's funny is that some (if not most) of the higher DPSers recognised there was an issue and something had to be done about it.
You want a challenge? Do things in T1 ships...or using mark II gear. And when you mastered every mission in this game with each of those limitations...do it with BOTH. Than you have mastered this game and you can start to demand how things should be. Until than, you are just another whiney wannabe who wants to prove that they are "hardcore" by demanding the game be made harder...but only to their own taste. Heaven forbid the game actually gets hard like in fez...and that doesn't count because you said so...right.
I'll bet you fill all the weapon slots with that Mk II gear, instead of just using one white beam array.
Actually turrets are quite viable as are single cannons, but it requires a different focus. Think spamming plasma explosion.
Everything is quite viable honestly. And plasma explosion is no longer the way to make an all turret build viable anymore because they are nerfed into oblivion with the proc being per cycle instead of per shot. The omega rep trait on the other hand is still per shot so that is a good way to boost such a ship build's DPS.
There are still other options beside the plasma explosion. I merely used that as an example because it is the best known.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,601Community Moderator
If it were up to some people, all damage types besides Disruptor and Antiproton would be removed from the game because "THEY ARE BAD FOR DPS!" Same goes for any ships that aren't best for getting the highest possible DPS.
I got a fleetmate who says anything that isn't Antiproton is garbage.
I got another fleetmate who kick his butt with Tetryon, a damage type that is generally viewed as garbage by many because "its proc is useless ones the shields are down".
Here the thing though. Antiproton has no proc. Just a higher crit chance. If you take two ships, one with an optimized Antiproton Build, and one with the same build but for Tetryon... there's a pretty good chance the Tetryon boat will burn through shields faster than the Antiproton boat, thus allowing for direct damage to the hull faster. Yet people are so against anything different as "it can't hurt you if its already dead" is the mentality, and thus demands meta builds focused on vaping everything in sight in two seconds, and anything that doesn't do that is instantly ostricized and anyone who doesn't follow the meta is instantly declared a worthless, inexperienced loser who has no hope and should quit the game on the extreme side of the mentality.
ANY damage type can be made to work, and each one has their strengths and weaknesses. And honestly if someone can take a "garbage" damage type and outdo one of the meta builds... THAT is a master of the craft of ship builds and deserves praise. Not venom for using a non meta damage type.
If it were up to some people, all damage types besides Disruptor and Antiproton would be removed from the game because "THEY ARE BAD FOR DPS!" Same goes for any ships that aren't best for getting the highest possible DPS.
I got a fleetmate who says anything that isn't Antiproton is garbage.
I got another fleetmate who kick his butt with Tetryon, a damage type that is generally viewed as garbage by many because "its proc is useless ones the shields are down".
Here the thing though. Antiproton has no proc. Just a higher crit chance. If you take two ships, one with an optimized Antiproton Build, and one with the same build but for Tetryon... there's a pretty good chance the Tetryon boat will burn through shields faster than the Antiproton boat, thus allowing for direct damage to the hull faster. Yet people are so against anything different as "it can't hurt you if its already dead" is the mentality, and thus demands meta builds focused on vaping everything in sight in two seconds, and anything that doesn't do that is instantly ostricized and anyone who doesn't follow the meta is instantly declared a worthless, inexperienced loser who has no hope and should quit the game on the extreme side of the mentality.
ANY damage type can be made to work, and each one has their strengths and weaknesses. And honestly if someone can take a "garbage" damage type and outdo one of the meta builds... THAT is a master of the craft of ship builds and deserves praise. Not venom for using a non meta damage type.
Sometimes... you just gotta go against the grain.
I don't follow the meta, simply because I refuse to be a cardboard cutout zombie of someone else. Which is why you have to overlook the meta crowd. They're all the same and can't think outside the box to save their life.
It's not the high crit chance from AP they're really after. It's the CritD. All their builds are reliant on Crit Chance and Crit Damage. If I were a Dev, I'd make NPC's directly opposed to that. With high AP and CritRes.. just to make NPC's that roflstomped their meta. But that's just me with the understanding, "If I can think of it, so can the enemy."
Cryptic is approaching things from the mentality of the player. "The players should be stronger than the enemy." When if fact, it should be the exact opposite. The enemies should be stronger than the player. Which we use to have NPCs that were stronger than the players, pre-Delta Rising. But that went away with the loud cries of, "WAAAHH!!! IT'S TO HARD!"
But, sadly, this is not something Cryptic can really do anything about. The player being stronger than the enemy, thus making for easy mode games, is the standard game setup for any game owned by Preferred Wallet Entertainment. They're all setup to be so easy, that you intentionally have to do something stupid in order to die in them.
Which is not a bad business model. The problem that Cryptic has with it, is that the business model has two requirements to be highly profitable. The game has to have a strong PvE Community and a strong PvP community. Which we all know Cryptic has weakness is PvP, they just can't handle it right in any of their games.
But you do make a point about the meta crowd there. It's their way or no way. And generally anything outside of their way is met with highly toxic behavior. There are a few in the meta crowd that don't do that. But in general they won't hear none of that. By their reckoning only the PvPers that remain in the game are the highly toxic crowd.
To those that go against the meta. Cheers! You're the real MVPs of STO!
I use phasers, photons, Martok transphasic and quantums my self. The whole if it's not AP it's trash argument is kinda moot as other posters have said other energy types can achieve good results in this thread. On the subject of bosses, they do need to be harder I agree but on both ground and space.
The secret of a good boss fight is to challenge the player, STO bosses have the nasty habit of minion spamming as their way of making it hard. My proposal is make bosses more intelligent and able to counter a player's style.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I use phasers, photons, Martok transphasic and quantums my self. The whole if it's not AP it's trash argument is kinda moot as other posters have said other energy types can achieve good results in this thread. On the subject of bosses, they do need to be harder I agree but on both ground and space.
The secret of a good boss fight is to challenge the player, STO bosses have the nasty habit of minion spamming as their way of making it hard. My proposal is make bosses more intelligent and able to counter a player's style.
Same, I use polaron on a couple chars, tetryon on another. Mt Sci chars are actually my blank ones at the moment. As I look for what I want to set them up as. I'm leaning toward the EPG side of it, though, thinking more CC/Healer than straight up damage. My Engi toon, which is also my AoY char, is another somewhat blank space for me. Still really waiting for me to figure out what I'm doing there.
Right now though, only one of my chars has an almost complete epic ship. I still have the weapon left to go there. All my other characters are still down at the VR Mk XII level. But that's dues to the afore mentioned hiatus of me figuring out what I'm doing with them.
Aramek and Manus are two good examples of what you mean with bosses. Neither of them uses minion spam. Though Manus does have that annoyance of the rooms mobs respawning during the fight. Well all the old borg stfs work for this. None of the bosses there actually used minion spam. Of the three, Aramek use to be the hardest. Well, that is before the current state of the game.
I think this falls on the dev's though. While they're giving the players all the power creep, they aren't bothering to do it for the NPCs. All they do there is buff the static stats for them, HP/Shield/Resistances/Damage. They've never moved the NPCs past what they could use in Season 1- 5. Which means for the majority of them, they're still using the old pre-LoR core setup. With UR Mk XII gear, 15 traits, and the skill tree. So this is on the Dev's, they made the players stronger on one hand. But on the other hand they have done nothing to make the NPCs stronger, other than just upping their static stats.
It was one of my suggestions to open up the NPCs to be able to use everything that the players can use. This is mainly for abilities, consoles, and specializations. I'd also open them up to the same number of personal traits that a player can have. So 15 space, 15 ground traits and 5 starship traits. This way they're on par with the player, aside from the reputation traits. Which they could also have. But, I'd leave that as player only. Though one could replace the active reputation traits with the ground rep traits. Thus allowing the NPC ships to have 15 space traits and 5 starship traits and ground NPCs to have 15 ground traits and 5 Ground Reputation Traits. The 5 starship and ground traits could just be preset traits per NPC career, that never change.
As for bosses, well they can have everything the player can have. This way that boss has, 15 space/ground traits, 5 Starship traits, 5 space reputation traits, 5 active reputation traits. The same can apply on ground. These can be hard coded to the boss, along with specializations and abilities, that come from a selection of everything we have, not just the basic list. They should also be outfitted with at least UR MK XII or better gear.
One of the main problem here is the queue themselves. They're still set for 50-60 in level. What they need to do is separate this. Have the queues scale from 50-59 with 60 being its own level. This way, NPCS are not being scaled back from level 60 to a lower level, because there's a lower level or two in the party.
If you can beat Omega Weapon on FF8 (I've beaten him twice and it was a hour long fight, die and you have to reload and start again) then STO bosses are really soft in comparison. FF8 also scaled bosses and enemies to the player's level as well
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
If you can beat Omega Weapon on FF8 (I've beaten him twice and it was a hour long fight, die and you have to reload and start again) then STO bosses are really soft in comparison. FF8 also scaled bosses and enemies to the player's level as well
One thing we can all agree on is that STO =/= FF8
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
I was using FF8 as an example of good boss design, bosses should take thinking and strategy to defeat. My rule of thumb is that you prepare for boss fights accordingly.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I was using FF8 as an example of good boss design, bosses should take thinking and strategy to defeat. My rule of thumb is that you prepare for boss fights accordingly.
You mean like the hours of materia gathering and leveling, like in FF VII. Hours, upon hours, upon hours of working to defeat Emerald Weapon. But this is for the insane, like me, that will take the time to prep up to where you can solo farm Emerald weapon to level materia.
Then FF X and the sphere grid and blitz ball. I think in both those games I've logged thousands of hours. I should have a memory card around here for PS1 with my save of FF VII at the time spent in it at 999 hours. But then I am crazy like that. I could take just one party member in and defeat Sephiroth.
For puzzles.. well.. to this day.. if I ever meet the person that came up with the games Light Crusader and Light Crusader II, I'm not sure if I'd punch them in the face or shake their hands. The puzzles in those two games could drive you nuts as you tried to solve them.
If I had to rate STO on difficulty. I'd rate it at the same difficulty I'd rate a side scroll browser game. In other words, just click your way through it without having to apply any thought.
Graphics, above average. It looks pretty, but with the clipping issues for outfits and the glaringly painful amount of ability effects. I'd rate it higher if there was a way to disable that gunk.
Game play, poor. As there is no learning curve, there really is no true game play.
Story, below average. It's linear and one-sided. For a game that has multiple factions, the story itself does not reflect that. The story revolves around, "Ohh.. new kid in our sand box, with a new toy. Go take it. Then use it to make them our "ally." It's little more than the Federation being the school yard bully and violently forcing everyone to live by their rules. Then if that doesn't work, time travel until it does.
Overall in it's current state, I'd give STO a 4 out of 10 star rating. Pre-Delta Rising, I would have rated STO up around 8 or 9 out of 10.
I was using FF8 as an example of good boss design, bosses should take thinking and strategy to defeat. My rule of thumb is that you prepare for boss fights accordingly.
You mean like the hours of materia gathering and leveling, like in FF VII. Hours, upon hours, upon hours of working to defeat Emerald Weapon. But this is for the insane, like me, that will take the time to prep up to where you can solo farm Emerald weapon to level materia.
Then FF X and the sphere grid and blitz ball. I think in both those games I've logged thousands of hours. I should have a memory card around here for PS1 with my save of FF VII at the time spent in it at 999 hours. But then I am crazy like that. I could take just one party member in and defeat Sephiroth.
For puzzles.. well.. to this day.. if I ever meet the person that came up with the games Light Crusader and Light Crusader II, I'm not sure if I'd punch them in the face or shake their hands. The puzzles in those two games could drive you nuts as you tried to solve them.
If I had to rate STO on difficulty. I'd rate it at the same difficulty I'd rate a side scroll browser game. In other words, just click your way through it without having to apply any thought.
Graphics, above average. It looks pretty, but with the clipping issues for outfits and the glaringly painful amount of ability effects. I'd rate it higher if there was a way to disable that gunk.
Game play, poor. As there is no learning curve, there really is no true game play.
Story, below average. It's linear and one-sided. For a game that has multiple factions, the story itself does not reflect that. The story revolves around, "Ohh.. new kid in our sand box, with a new toy. Go take it. Then use it to make them our "ally." It's little more than the Federation being the school yard bully and violently forcing everyone to live by their rules. Then if that doesn't work, time travel until it does.
Overall in it's current state, I'd give STO a 4 out of 10 star rating. Pre-Delta Rising, I would have rated STO up around 8 or 9 out of 10.
With FF8, it was grinding the spells for your junctioning. Each boss needed a different tactic to defeat, for example one fight made using AOE impossible because it could kill a story specific character attached to the boss. Other boss fights you had to do without any or little abilities as you had to unlock them the further you got, STO bosses need buffing to the point that players have to be prepared in advance in how to deal with them.
On boss mechanics, STO leaves a lot to be desired.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I always love it how peeps around here keep on asking for more engaging content but those good PvE fights that are offered have 0 players lined up for them. In case anybody is wondering they aren’t run in private performance channels often either.
I’m uncertain if this game should balance around some idealistic forum heroes who a no way near a critical number to offer a healthy PvE population.
We have enough dead maps. Like 90% of the elite space ones…
After 5 years this game still holds enough challenges for me. Any difficulty setting is easily adjusted by the players you face them with.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I always love it how peeps around here keep on asking for more engaging content but those good PvE fights that are offered have 0 players lined up for them. In case anybody is wondering they aren’t run in private performance channels often either.
I’m uncertain if this game should balance around some idealistic forum heroes who a no way near a critical number to offer a healthy PvE population.
We have enough dead maps. Like 90% of the elite space ones…
After 5 years this game still holds enough challenges for me. Any difficulty setting is easily adjusted by the players you face them with.
No, I'll still queue up for them. Well, when I'm actually playing the game. Which I don't do much of any more, because of the lack of engaging content. I play a game to you know, not be bored. STO is great for boring you. It's like playing a game on facebook.
So for now I do do the real end game of STO of sign in, doff, adm, refine dil, alt, rinse, repeat, sign out and find a more engaging game to go play.
I do farm fleet marks on occasion. But that's because I'm solo leveling a fleet. It's the last real challenge left in STO. I'm not even doing it for the gear either. I'm just doing to do it. Fleets serve absolutely no purpose to the game. All they do is provide more power creep and a distraction from the rest of the game.
Right now the hardest queues we have are Khitomer Ground and Undine Infiltration. These are because they both have mechanics that require you to do more than pewpew your way through. That and their reward sucks. Personally with as easy as CCA is.. I'd redo its reward to give 5 marks, not have it be one of the highest paying queues. The hardest part of all the popular queues is just waiting for the 30 minute lockout to expire.
After 5 years, the game is exactly where I thought it would be when they first instituted the fleet power creep. I was online for that time and the birth of the DPS League. I do miss those days, when the DPS League's salty cries of it's to hard, were sweet music in zone chats.
I was on the day that CaptainGeko's precious Excelsior was popped like a zit in pvp the day after its release. This lead to the subsequent KDF drought and PvP being becoming the other red-headed step-child of STO.
The only content release I have missed was the initial Delta Rising one. But, I couldn't help that. I was busy with the Army at the time. I've been with STO since it went free to play on January 17, 2012.
Now don't get me wrong, I am a Star Trek fan. I grew up on the reruns of TOS and all the movies. But, since the switch to more power creep pew, playing STO is like watching a train wreck. You know you shouldn't, but you just can't help it. For some the power creep is fine. But with the fact that it's severely imbalanced, coupled with the fact new content is centered around it. This actually serves to keep a minimal player base. But in the long run, it runs off more players than it retains.
To put it bluntly. The switch to the power creep play style in Delta Rising, and the subsequent mass exodus of players that it caused. Is something that STO hasn't recovered from.
Now, as it has been pointed out in a few threads of late. There are a lot of player out there that want the content itself to be engaging and challenging. STO is an MMORPG after all, not a facebook clicker.
Right now, content wise. I'd say that as far as difficulty and engaging content go. It's on par with Farmville or Dark Orbit.
If you don't find those bosses challenging on a Elite difficulty, you are entitled to talk. Given the actual situation and the pug element of surprise (few premade teams, only dps frenzy people -because why use buffs or debuffs when you can paste in a build and try to epeen measure up).
The game currently would kill the pugs if the difficulty became more for the same rewards. Most people dont challenge themselves on those borg ground queues with targets like Armek or Manus because the bosses are outdated, it requires reading the objectives and the reward compared to the effort doesn't size up.
If you don't find those bosses challenging on a Elite difficulty, you are entitled to talk. Given the actual situation and the pug element of surprise (few premade teams, only dps frenzy people -because why use buffs or debuffs when you can paste in a build and try to epeen measure up).
The game currently would kill the pugs if the difficulty became more for the same rewards. Most people dont challenge themselves on those borg ground queues with targets like Armek or Manus because the bosses are outdated, it requires reading the objectives and the reward compared to the effort doesn't size up.
Unless you've ran Cure/Manus ground enough for them to still be second nature. I remember that coming back right before Delta Recruit and going.. I want to run the Borg queues, and remembering how to do everything, after not having played them for about a year.
Or going in to KSA or ISA on my Sci officers and using my grav wells to CC the nanite probes.
You know, the things you don't have to really worry about now, because you can DPS everything down fast enough to not need it.
I honestly not that worried about bosses in the game, as first I would want to see alot of other things addressed that compounded make bosses in sto much less than they could be. First is that well outside of what kind of weapon proc an ability set-up enemy factions uses, they are quite similar honestly which to me is quite weird in that so many different races could be used to create alot of variance in playstyles. Like for me I would love to see just a fundamental mechanic that is shared within the race, we do see this happening like with the Tzenkethi in the way their shields function, and even in the idea of how you could use the adaption concept of the Borg to just make fighting them more engaging.
It has been talked about in threads why so many stfs of all difficulties are well dead, and it is not that really there are not enough players interested in them though. One part of the reason is the reward structure that is used for stf being really static, there is also the fact that some mechanics in stf make it feel unrewarding to take part in them (see static time-gating), and the sheer number of stf I am sure can have an affect on what stf are played too. I mean having 30+ stfs you can choose from for an example that shows only five of them with people uqued would make many players want to go into those stfs with players qued up in, while in a much smaller example of 10-15 stfs players might be more apt to branch out into other less populated stfs.
I always love it how peeps around here keep on asking for more engaging content but those good PvE fights that are offered have 0 players lined up for them. In case anybody is wondering they aren’t run in private performance channels often either.
I’m uncertain if this game should balance around some idealistic forum heroes who a no way near a critical number to offer a healthy PvE population.
We have enough dead maps. Like 90% of the elite space ones…
After 5 years this game still holds enough challenges for me. Any difficulty setting is easily adjusted by the players you face them with.
There would be a healthy PvE population if there was a healthy PvE reward structure. There's little point in playing the "good PvE fights" when Easy Mode pays 10x more.
You know its funny, but CCA isn't just popular because of the marks and dil payout, but because its also one of the few Queues in the entire game where you can actually get RNG loot drops that are actually worth something! In fact I'll admit it right here and now, I farm CCA for the energy credits, because when I'm lucky enough to get a good drop it is literally worth anywhere from 1-5 million EC's on the exchange!
I can't for the life of me understand why Cryptic thought it was a good idea to remove the loot drop rewards from the other queues and have them reward dil and marks only.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,601Community Moderator
But you do make a point about the meta crowd there. It's their way or no way. And generally anything outside of their way is met with highly toxic behavior. There are a few in the meta crowd that don't do that. But in general they won't hear none of that. By their reckoning only the PvPers that remain in the game are the highly toxic crowd.
Yup. Very true.
To those that go against the meta. Cheers! You're the real MVPs of STO!
I'll drink to that!
My main has a Tetryon, Phaser, Polaron, and "Chroniton" build. My Romulan uses Chronoplasma and even Coalition Disruptors, and had used Nanite Disruptors and Elachi Crescent Cannons in the past. The Chroniton build is on a Pilot Escort named USS Rainbow Dash. It was a case of "It just had to be done".
With everything that actually can synergize with Tetryon, I'm surprised we're not seeing more experimentation with things like the new Preemenant set from the recent FE combined with the Krenim set and Nukara weapons set. Hell... the Vorgon stuff would be added on TOP of that.
And Pulse Phasers (When they aren't bugged) are pretty awesome weapons. And the Kelvin phasers are also very good.
I always love it how peeps around here keep on asking for more engaging content but those good PvE fights that are offered have 0 players lined up for them. In case anybody is wondering they aren’t run in private performance channels often either.
I’m uncertain if this game should balance around some idealistic forum heroes who a no way near a critical number to offer a healthy PvE population.
We have enough dead maps. Like 90% of the elite space ones…
After 5 years this game still holds enough challenges for me. Any difficulty setting is easily adjusted by the players you face them with.
There would be a healthy PvE population if there was a healthy PvE reward structure. There's little point in playing the "good PvE fights" when Easy Mode pays 10x more.
I thought this thread was about players wanting challenges and all, not optimized effort/reward ratios.
It should also be noted that with most elite space maps being time gated the same way as their respective advanced counterparts it’s clearly the lack of skill & DPS which hinders most to go for them. Then there is the risk to fail just because the lack of DPS…
Challenges are already there but for as long as peeps claim KAGA to be the hardest ground map we clearly seem to leave out most of the options that are already available to us.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I always love it how peeps around here keep on asking for more engaging content but those good PvE fights that are offered have 0 players lined up for them. In case anybody is wondering they aren’t run in private performance channels often either.
I’m uncertain if this game should balance around some idealistic forum heroes who a no way near a critical number to offer a healthy PvE population.
We have enough dead maps. Like 90% of the elite space ones…
After 5 years this game still holds enough challenges for me. Any difficulty setting is easily adjusted by the players you face them with.
There would be a healthy PvE population if there was a healthy PvE reward structure. There's little point in playing the "good PvE fights" when Easy Mode pays 10x more.
I thought this thread was about players wanting challenges and all, not optimized effort/reward ratios.
It should also be noted that with most elite space maps being time gated the same way as their respective advanced counterparts it’s clearly the lack of skill & DPS which hinders most to go for them. Then there is the risk to fail just because the lack of DPS…
Challenges are already there but for as long as peeps claim KAGA to be the hardest ground map we clearly seem to leave out most of the options that are already available to us.
Yeah, sure. Doing HSE solo in a Miranda is hard. So what? Not like the game recognizes that in any way. Most people are after more than bragging rights.
IMO it's "clearly" the lack of proportional rewards that stops most people from going for pretty much anything. Me, for sure. Why spend time getting ready for something hard, when CCA pays 10x more with no requirements. Or Admiralty. It's not like the bazillion autowin queues are full, either.
I mean, sure if you got a T6 ship will all epic Mk 14s, things might not be as hard as you like.
You could always go equip Mk X common stuff on your ship. That might make things a bit harder.
Or go use that T3 or T4 ship with Mk VIII commons.
TLDR
To make the game slightly harder for me what I do is lower my weapon power level (and add that to speed for more fun) and I don't equip any consoles that add to DPS, I then use them emtpy slots for fun things like Metron Gas Cannisters or Deploy Spacial Charges. I have at least 4 or 5 added. That way the enemies remain tougher, and I also get more abilities to play with (consoles that actually add visual attack abilities instead of just invisible buffs).
I only play on 'Normal' for a couple of reasons,
1. Because I really really don't like ground damage sponges, it's not fun and gets tiresome
2. Because I don't wanna be playing Advanced Missions but then go to places like Voth Battle Zone where it's set to Normal.
With the changes they made with S14 I think it made me stronger so I've had to drop more DPS (except for my Queue Build) and I've set my weapon power as low as it will go (about 65/15) but sometimes that still feels too strong so I might use a lower class of weapon as you've mentioned
If it were up to some people, all damage types besides Disruptor and Antiproton would be removed from the game because "THEY ARE BAD FOR DPS!" Same goes for any ships that aren't best for getting the highest possible DPS.
I got a fleetmate who says anything that isn't Antiproton is garbage.
I got another fleetmate who kick his butt with Tetryon, a damage type that is generally viewed as garbage by many because "its proc is useless ones the shields are down".
Here the thing though. Antiproton has no proc. Just a higher crit chance. If you take two ships, one with an optimized Antiproton Build, and one with the same build but for Tetryon... there's a pretty good chance the Tetryon boat will burn through shields faster than the Antiproton boat, thus allowing for direct damage to the hull faster. Yet people are so against anything different as "it can't hurt you if its already dead" is the mentality, and thus demands meta builds focused on vaping everything in sight in two seconds, and anything that doesn't do that is instantly ostricized and anyone who doesn't follow the meta is instantly declared a worthless, inexperienced loser who has no hope and should quit the game on the extreme side of the mentality.
ANY damage type can be made to work, and each one has their strengths and weaknesses. And honestly if someone can take a "garbage" damage type and outdo one of the meta builds... THAT is a master of the craft of ship builds and deserves praise. Not venom for using a non meta damage type.
Sometimes... you just gotta go against the grain.
I don't follow the meta, simply because I refuse to be a cardboard cutout zombie of someone else. Which is why you have to overlook the meta crowd. They're all the same and can't think outside the box to save their life.
It's not the high crit chance from AP they're really after. It's the CritD. All their builds are reliant on Crit Chance and Crit Damage. If I were a Dev, I'd make NPC's directly opposed to that. With high AP and CritRes.. just to make NPC's that roflstomped their meta. But that's just me with the understanding, "If I can think of it, so can the enemy."
Cryptic is approaching things from the mentality of the player. "The players should be stronger than the enemy." When if fact, it should be the exact opposite. The enemies should be stronger than the player. Which we use to have NPCs that were stronger than the players, pre-Delta Rising. But that went away with the loud cries of, "WAAAHH!!! IT'S TO HARD!"
But, sadly, this is not something Cryptic can really do anything about. The player being stronger than the enemy, thus making for easy mode games, is the standard game setup for any game owned by Preferred Wallet Entertainment. They're all setup to be so easy, that you intentionally have to do something stupid in order to die in them.
Which is not a bad business model. The problem that Cryptic has with it, is that the business model has two requirements to be highly profitable. The game has to have a strong PvE Community and a strong PvP community. Which we all know Cryptic has weakness is PvP, they just can't handle it right in any of their games.
But you do make a point about the meta crowd there. It's their way or no way. And generally anything outside of their way is met with highly toxic behavior. There are a few in the meta crowd that don't do that. But in general they won't hear none of that. By their reckoning only the PvPers that remain in the game are the highly toxic crowd.
To those that go against the meta. Cheers! You're the real MVPs of STO!
I think you're wrong there. (Bolded)
The hero is normally the hero because something makes the hero stand out, whether that be more strength, more speed, better trained, wisdom or even just lucky.
The hero(s) should always be better than the average grunt/ship. It's one of the main reasons small groups are sent against overwhelming odds (Seal Teams etc) because they are better trained than the none trained/poorly trained enemy they go up against.
I'm not saying the hero should be more powerful than a whole Squadron or even the boss but the hero beating them odds (outnumbered or beating a superior opponent) is what makes the hero a hero.
IMO I really, really prefer games that increase enemy numbers when the difficulty is raised (instead of just making them damage sponges, excluding boss fights) to me that is a lot more fun (though I don't mind ships being damage sponges as much as it seems more plausible).
Comments
Actually that trait system didn't come until much later. Back then you were still stuck with the traits you had chosen when you created your character, and were more like minor bonuses than build defining buffs.
Right, keep forgetting that. I just remember as back when you actually had to buy a retrain token to change any part of you characters build.
That last balance pass? Barely scratched the surface. It barely dropped a lot of peoples DPS who didn't rely on something that was obviously OP (embassy consoles). Yet we had screaming raging tantrums.
What's funny is that some (if not most) of the higher DPSers recognised there was an issue and something had to be done about it.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
There are still other options beside the plasma explosion. I merely used that as an example because it is the best known.
I got a fleetmate who says anything that isn't Antiproton is garbage.
I got another fleetmate who kick his butt with Tetryon, a damage type that is generally viewed as garbage by many because "its proc is useless ones the shields are down".
Here the thing though. Antiproton has no proc. Just a higher crit chance. If you take two ships, one with an optimized Antiproton Build, and one with the same build but for Tetryon... there's a pretty good chance the Tetryon boat will burn through shields faster than the Antiproton boat, thus allowing for direct damage to the hull faster. Yet people are so against anything different as "it can't hurt you if its already dead" is the mentality, and thus demands meta builds focused on vaping everything in sight in two seconds, and anything that doesn't do that is instantly ostricized and anyone who doesn't follow the meta is instantly declared a worthless, inexperienced loser who has no hope and should quit the game on the extreme side of the mentality.
ANY damage type can be made to work, and each one has their strengths and weaknesses. And honestly if someone can take a "garbage" damage type and outdo one of the meta builds... THAT is a master of the craft of ship builds and deserves praise. Not venom for using a non meta damage type.
Sometimes... you just gotta go against the grain.
I don't follow the meta, simply because I refuse to be a cardboard cutout zombie of someone else. Which is why you have to overlook the meta crowd. They're all the same and can't think outside the box to save their life.
It's not the high crit chance from AP they're really after. It's the CritD. All their builds are reliant on Crit Chance and Crit Damage. If I were a Dev, I'd make NPC's directly opposed to that. With high AP and CritRes.. just to make NPC's that roflstomped their meta. But that's just me with the understanding, "If I can think of it, so can the enemy."
Cryptic is approaching things from the mentality of the player. "The players should be stronger than the enemy." When if fact, it should be the exact opposite. The enemies should be stronger than the player. Which we use to have NPCs that were stronger than the players, pre-Delta Rising. But that went away with the loud cries of, "WAAAHH!!! IT'S TO HARD!"
But, sadly, this is not something Cryptic can really do anything about. The player being stronger than the enemy, thus making for easy mode games, is the standard game setup for any game owned by Preferred Wallet Entertainment. They're all setup to be so easy, that you intentionally have to do something stupid in order to die in them.
Which is not a bad business model. The problem that Cryptic has with it, is that the business model has two requirements to be highly profitable. The game has to have a strong PvE Community and a strong PvP community. Which we all know Cryptic has weakness is PvP, they just can't handle it right in any of their games.
But you do make a point about the meta crowd there. It's their way or no way. And generally anything outside of their way is met with highly toxic behavior. There are a few in the meta crowd that don't do that. But in general they won't hear none of that. By their reckoning only the PvPers that remain in the game are the highly toxic crowd.
To those that go against the meta. Cheers! You're the real MVPs of STO!
The secret of a good boss fight is to challenge the player, STO bosses have the nasty habit of minion spamming as their way of making it hard. My proposal is make bosses more intelligent and able to counter a player's style.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Same, I use polaron on a couple chars, tetryon on another. Mt Sci chars are actually my blank ones at the moment. As I look for what I want to set them up as. I'm leaning toward the EPG side of it, though, thinking more CC/Healer than straight up damage. My Engi toon, which is also my AoY char, is another somewhat blank space for me. Still really waiting for me to figure out what I'm doing there.
Right now though, only one of my chars has an almost complete epic ship. I still have the weapon left to go there. All my other characters are still down at the VR Mk XII level. But that's dues to the afore mentioned hiatus of me figuring out what I'm doing with them.
Aramek and Manus are two good examples of what you mean with bosses. Neither of them uses minion spam. Though Manus does have that annoyance of the rooms mobs respawning during the fight. Well all the old borg stfs work for this. None of the bosses there actually used minion spam. Of the three, Aramek use to be the hardest. Well, that is before the current state of the game.
I think this falls on the dev's though. While they're giving the players all the power creep, they aren't bothering to do it for the NPCs. All they do there is buff the static stats for them, HP/Shield/Resistances/Damage. They've never moved the NPCs past what they could use in Season 1- 5. Which means for the majority of them, they're still using the old pre-LoR core setup. With UR Mk XII gear, 15 traits, and the skill tree. So this is on the Dev's, they made the players stronger on one hand. But on the other hand they have done nothing to make the NPCs stronger, other than just upping their static stats.
It was one of my suggestions to open up the NPCs to be able to use everything that the players can use. This is mainly for abilities, consoles, and specializations. I'd also open them up to the same number of personal traits that a player can have. So 15 space, 15 ground traits and 5 starship traits. This way they're on par with the player, aside from the reputation traits. Which they could also have. But, I'd leave that as player only. Though one could replace the active reputation traits with the ground rep traits. Thus allowing the NPC ships to have 15 space traits and 5 starship traits and ground NPCs to have 15 ground traits and 5 Ground Reputation Traits. The 5 starship and ground traits could just be preset traits per NPC career, that never change.
As for bosses, well they can have everything the player can have. This way that boss has, 15 space/ground traits, 5 Starship traits, 5 space reputation traits, 5 active reputation traits. The same can apply on ground. These can be hard coded to the boss, along with specializations and abilities, that come from a selection of everything we have, not just the basic list. They should also be outfitted with at least UR MK XII or better gear.
One of the main problem here is the queue themselves. They're still set for 50-60 in level. What they need to do is separate this. Have the queues scale from 50-59 with 60 being its own level. This way, NPCS are not being scaled back from level 60 to a lower level, because there's a lower level or two in the party.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
One thing we can all agree on is that STO =/= FF8
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
You mean like the hours of materia gathering and leveling, like in FF VII. Hours, upon hours, upon hours of working to defeat Emerald Weapon. But this is for the insane, like me, that will take the time to prep up to where you can solo farm Emerald weapon to level materia.
Then FF X and the sphere grid and blitz ball. I think in both those games I've logged thousands of hours. I should have a memory card around here for PS1 with my save of FF VII at the time spent in it at 999 hours. But then I am crazy like that. I could take just one party member in and defeat Sephiroth.
For puzzles.. well.. to this day.. if I ever meet the person that came up with the games Light Crusader and Light Crusader II, I'm not sure if I'd punch them in the face or shake their hands. The puzzles in those two games could drive you nuts as you tried to solve them.
If I had to rate STO on difficulty. I'd rate it at the same difficulty I'd rate a side scroll browser game. In other words, just click your way through it without having to apply any thought.
Graphics, above average. It looks pretty, but with the clipping issues for outfits and the glaringly painful amount of ability effects. I'd rate it higher if there was a way to disable that gunk.
Game play, poor. As there is no learning curve, there really is no true game play.
Story, below average. It's linear and one-sided. For a game that has multiple factions, the story itself does not reflect that. The story revolves around, "Ohh.. new kid in our sand box, with a new toy. Go take it. Then use it to make them our "ally." It's little more than the Federation being the school yard bully and violently forcing everyone to live by their rules. Then if that doesn't work, time travel until it does.
Overall in it's current state, I'd give STO a 4 out of 10 star rating. Pre-Delta Rising, I would have rated STO up around 8 or 9 out of 10.
With FF8, it was grinding the spells for your junctioning. Each boss needed a different tactic to defeat, for example one fight made using AOE impossible because it could kill a story specific character attached to the boss. Other boss fights you had to do without any or little abilities as you had to unlock them the further you got, STO bosses need buffing to the point that players have to be prepared in advance in how to deal with them.
On boss mechanics, STO leaves a lot to be desired.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I’m uncertain if this game should balance around some idealistic forum heroes who a no way near a critical number to offer a healthy PvE population.
We have enough dead maps. Like 90% of the elite space ones…
After 5 years this game still holds enough challenges for me. Any difficulty setting is easily adjusted by the players you face them with.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
No, I'll still queue up for them. Well, when I'm actually playing the game. Which I don't do much of any more, because of the lack of engaging content. I play a game to you know, not be bored. STO is great for boring you. It's like playing a game on facebook.
So for now I do do the real end game of STO of sign in, doff, adm, refine dil, alt, rinse, repeat, sign out and find a more engaging game to go play.
I do farm fleet marks on occasion. But that's because I'm solo leveling a fleet. It's the last real challenge left in STO. I'm not even doing it for the gear either. I'm just doing to do it. Fleets serve absolutely no purpose to the game. All they do is provide more power creep and a distraction from the rest of the game.
Right now the hardest queues we have are Khitomer Ground and Undine Infiltration. These are because they both have mechanics that require you to do more than pewpew your way through. That and their reward sucks. Personally with as easy as CCA is.. I'd redo its reward to give 5 marks, not have it be one of the highest paying queues. The hardest part of all the popular queues is just waiting for the 30 minute lockout to expire.
After 5 years, the game is exactly where I thought it would be when they first instituted the fleet power creep. I was online for that time and the birth of the DPS League. I do miss those days, when the DPS League's salty cries of it's to hard, were sweet music in zone chats.
I was on the day that CaptainGeko's precious Excelsior was popped like a zit in pvp the day after its release. This lead to the subsequent KDF drought and PvP being becoming the other red-headed step-child of STO.
The only content release I have missed was the initial Delta Rising one. But, I couldn't help that. I was busy with the Army at the time. I've been with STO since it went free to play on January 17, 2012.
Now don't get me wrong, I am a Star Trek fan. I grew up on the reruns of TOS and all the movies. But, since the switch to more power creep pew, playing STO is like watching a train wreck. You know you shouldn't, but you just can't help it. For some the power creep is fine. But with the fact that it's severely imbalanced, coupled with the fact new content is centered around it. This actually serves to keep a minimal player base. But in the long run, it runs off more players than it retains.
To put it bluntly. The switch to the power creep play style in Delta Rising, and the subsequent mass exodus of players that it caused. Is something that STO hasn't recovered from.
Now, as it has been pointed out in a few threads of late. There are a lot of player out there that want the content itself to be engaging and challenging. STO is an MMORPG after all, not a facebook clicker.
Right now, content wise. I'd say that as far as difficulty and engaging content go. It's on par with Farmville or Dark Orbit.
The game currently would kill the pugs if the difficulty became more for the same rewards. Most people dont challenge themselves on those borg ground queues with targets like Armek or Manus because the bosses are outdated, it requires reading the objectives and the reward compared to the effort doesn't size up.
Unless you've ran Cure/Manus ground enough for them to still be second nature. I remember that coming back right before Delta Recruit and going.. I want to run the Borg queues, and remembering how to do everything, after not having played them for about a year.
Or going in to KSA or ISA on my Sci officers and using my grav wells to CC the nanite probes.
You know, the things you don't have to really worry about now, because you can DPS everything down fast enough to not need it.
It has been talked about in threads why so many stfs of all difficulties are well dead, and it is not that really there are not enough players interested in them though. One part of the reason is the reward structure that is used for stf being really static, there is also the fact that some mechanics in stf make it feel unrewarding to take part in them (see static time-gating), and the sheer number of stf I am sure can have an affect on what stf are played too. I mean having 30+ stfs you can choose from for an example that shows only five of them with people uqued would make many players want to go into those stfs with players qued up in, while in a much smaller example of 10-15 stfs players might be more apt to branch out into other less populated stfs.
My character Tsin'xing
I can't for the life of me understand why Cryptic thought it was a good idea to remove the loot drop rewards from the other queues and have them reward dil and marks only.
Yup. Very true.
I'll drink to that!
My main has a Tetryon, Phaser, Polaron, and "Chroniton" build. My Romulan uses Chronoplasma and even Coalition Disruptors, and had used Nanite Disruptors and Elachi Crescent Cannons in the past. The Chroniton build is on a Pilot Escort named USS Rainbow Dash. It was a case of "It just had to be done".
With everything that actually can synergize with Tetryon, I'm surprised we're not seeing more experimentation with things like the new Preemenant set from the recent FE combined with the Krenim set and Nukara weapons set. Hell... the Vorgon stuff would be added on TOP of that.
And Pulse Phasers (When they aren't bugged) are pretty awesome weapons. And the Kelvin phasers are also very good.
I thought this thread was about players wanting challenges and all, not optimized effort/reward ratios.
It should also be noted that with most elite space maps being time gated the same way as their respective advanced counterparts it’s clearly the lack of skill & DPS which hinders most to go for them. Then there is the risk to fail just because the lack of DPS…
Challenges are already there but for as long as peeps claim KAGA to be the hardest ground map we clearly seem to leave out most of the options that are already available to us.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
IMO it's "clearly" the lack of proportional rewards that stops most people from going for pretty much anything. Me, for sure. Why spend time getting ready for something hard, when CCA pays 10x more with no requirements. Or Admiralty. It's not like the bazillion autowin queues are full, either.
TLDR
To make the game slightly harder for me what I do is lower my weapon power level (and add that to speed for more fun) and I don't equip any consoles that add to DPS, I then use them emtpy slots for fun things like Metron Gas Cannisters or Deploy Spacial Charges. I have at least 4 or 5 added. That way the enemies remain tougher, and I also get more abilities to play with (consoles that actually add visual attack abilities instead of just invisible buffs).
I only play on 'Normal' for a couple of reasons,
1. Because I really really don't like ground damage sponges, it's not fun and gets tiresome
2. Because I don't wanna be playing Advanced Missions but then go to places like Voth Battle Zone where it's set to Normal.
With the changes they made with S14 I think it made me stronger so I've had to drop more DPS (except for my Queue Build) and I've set my weapon power as low as it will go (about 65/15) but sometimes that still feels too strong so I might use a lower class of weapon as you've mentioned
I think you're wrong there. (Bolded)
The hero is normally the hero because something makes the hero stand out, whether that be more strength, more speed, better trained, wisdom or even just lucky.
The hero(s) should always be better than the average grunt/ship. It's one of the main reasons small groups are sent against overwhelming odds (Seal Teams etc) because they are better trained than the none trained/poorly trained enemy they go up against.
I'm not saying the hero should be more powerful than a whole Squadron or even the boss but the hero beating them odds (outnumbered or beating a superior opponent) is what makes the hero a hero.
IMO I really, really prefer games that increase enemy numbers when the difficulty is raised (instead of just making them damage sponges, excluding boss fights) to me that is a lot more fun (though I don't mind ships being damage sponges as much as it seems more plausible).