This is the first MMO I ever played...so, I guess, I had more basic and different issues than most... but here is my list....
Where the Powers/ability in the tray comes from.
As in the Powers/abilities interface that is default keybind to the letter "P". You may want to show how you can move things around...between the list and tray and around to different boxes in the tray itself.
Where the BOFF Candidates roster is. It is kinda hidden. Even having played this game a long time, that wackiness with K'gan during the KDF Tutorial threw me for a loop.
Gear improvements in Mark and Rarity. How it correlates to improving your character...and to Level of your character.
Oh and Device slots....on ground and space. And how different those can be.
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
There is no right way to spend skill points. You do whatever suits your style and learn from mistakes. Of course it would help if respecs weren’t so expensive as I think that prohibits a lot of messing around to find your happy place but that’s a money thing, not a mechanics thing.
There is no right way to spend skill points. You do whatever suits your style and learn from mistakes. Of course it would help if respecs weren’t so expensive as I think that prohibits a lot of messing around to find your happy place but that’s a money thing, not a mechanics thing.
yeah there's no "you should use this build and only this build" builds in STO, so there's really no right way to spend your skill points, at best Cryptic can give example builds that they think work not in "you must use this" but rather "if you're confused here's something we think works so you can use it while you figure out the system".
With builds Cryptic should be vary of giving anything too definate and focus on general advice, just not too cryptic (excuse the pun) about it.
Maybe have a database people can reference to look up ships and captains like the armory in WoW lets you look up people. That way people can see how other people are doing things and get a better feel for how they should go with their character.
They kinda tried that with the STO Gateway. Never worked, and was eventually dropped. On top of that, it would be unfeasable now with having 3 platforms with different frameworks to try and draw from.
That's down to the dil farmers, newer players hear that Dyson ground is one of the best places to get dil, and it's from shooting V-Rex, what they don't find out until later is that they don't get anything if they fail to secure the silo.
Having an instance full of bots doesn't help either.
actually I've ran into a silo on the brink of failing numerous times and seen players all active and shooting the V-Rex, no bots standing around doing nothing or just standing still shooting, these players were all moving avoiding the v-rex bombs but shooting at it whilst at full health and the ignoring the Engineers.
This zone basically holds your hand during this fight and shows clearly and tell you clearly what the objective is and what will cause it to fail but still people fail it.
So its nice Cryptic are taking an interest in and asking us how to improve our understanding of the games workings but its only a small minority that will benefit as the majority are to lazy to read the instructions and end up not learning and repeating the same mistakes.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
This absolutely has to change, it's responsible for the vast majority of player struggles and it badly needs to be fixed. Stop having ships come with a Single Beam, Dual Beam, Torpedo and a cannon in the front.. you're teaching players bad habits. When players see this they think 'that's how I am supposed to do it,' and it gets them in big trouble.
Also, as pointed out earlier, a tutorial on the most effective ways to use Bridge Officer Abilities would be a HUGE help. It was suggested that an exercise be implemented where players have to activate a couple of buffs like an Attack Pattern and Power to Weapons and then activate their Fire At Will/Scatter Volley/Rapid Fire/Surgical Strikes.. this would be an amazing idea and a tremendous help.
The biggest hurdle that new players have to get over is unlearning what the game has incorrectly taught them. Don't mix Beams and Cannons, don't put 2 or 3 Torpedo Launchers fore and aft, and use bridge officer powers that match your weapons.
Players often don't know that things like Fire At Will and Scatter Volley share a cooldown so they slot both thinking they can use them together. The only places you learn this are forums/reddit or the Wiki.. there is nothing in game that tells you what shares a cooldown with what.
There is also nothing in game that tells you about slotting space and ground duty officers to enhance abilities. Teaching players this would help as well.
Priority #1 has to be ship builds though.. please.. please STOP building ships like 'A Step Between Stars' and fix that mission. It's unbearable for veteran players and it sends new players down a path of frustration.. please please fix this.
Players often don't know that things like Fire At Will and Scatter Volley share a cooldown so they slot both thinking they can use them together
They don't and you can. Not that this is a generally good idea, but FAW is on the Beam circuit and CSV is on the Cannon circuit.
Interesting.. I could swear that all 'Energy Weapon' skills shared a cool down. If I am incorrect, then I apologize for the error. Thank you for pointing it out.
Again though, either way.. this isn't taught in game and probably should be.
A. Gameplay styles (and their focuses, based on the styles).
B. Space Builds (Ship Building, Utility and DPS, etc).
C. Ground Builds (Captain Building, Utility and DPS, etc).
D. Normal Content/Advanced Content and Reputations.
E. Elite Content (Optional).
F. Parsing and performing.
Guess this encompasses all of the areas that make STO "great again".
STO has a ton of systems in the game, and we're looking to revitalize how we teach them to you. What do you think would be the most important part of STO to teach to a new player, that we don't currently show off well?
I'm talking about the kind of things that you need to know to succeed in the game, but players generally find out by, say, coming here rather than learning organically through gameplay.
1. How to communicate
2. How to heal injuries to ship and character.
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.
Existing ones do need looked at in terms of what triggers them to appear
The game does do a tutorial about reps but it can often appear way before you're actually level 50 and have the reps open, such as someone on their way to the home FE and happened to wonder if they could join a gamma waiting zone on a level 10 will get half the blurb then and nothing when they actually need to be seeing it.
R&D, doffing and admiralty could use some work since the "tutorial" only serves to highlight how much of an offline non-gameplay mechanic it is barring the token nod during a trip to the nimbus bar. Nothing is done to suggest that specific doffs are needed to craft things like the omni's or where one might go to obtain them.
Ship building could be aided by having a better set of gear when a ship is claimed, at the moment its junk folk see and instantly trash in favour of their current mismatched items got from missions and drops because levelling is so fast its almost impossible to fit out a ship before the next tier can be got.
Likewise the game needs more chances for folk to get kits, frame and modules while levelling. There's barely any from mission rewards and for sci's in particular the options are nothing interesting or fun until you get into the spec and rep sides.
Is there a tutorial for upgrading gear? How many folk know that FE gear from newer missions can be upgraded to mk12 for free if you obtained it on a lowbie or that rerunning an episode at a higher rank will reward higher mk items. Then waters get muddied by events like the new CC rewarding MK10 for a run that scales you to 64.
Likewise with salvaging, there's nothing in game other than an entry under the rclick menu that says you can maybe salvage something.
Those last two might be an pain to get done because of the way some items are locked from upgrade and salvage for no particular reason.
This absolutely has to change, it's responsible for the vast majority of player struggles and it badly needs to be fixed. Stop having ships come with a Single Beam, Dual Beam, Torpedo and a cannon in the front.. you're teaching players bad habits. When players see this they think 'that's how I am supposed to do it,' and it gets them in big trouble.
...
The biggest hurdle that new players have to get over is unlearning what the game has incorrectly taught them. Don't mix Beams and Cannons, don't put 2 or 3 Torpedo Launchers fore and aft, and use bridge officer powers that match your weapons.
This is (again) incorrectly assuming that there are "right" builds and "wrong" builds.
In my personal experience, I don't know of anyone who was unable to organically figure out what types of weapons worked best for their style of play, so the "stock" selection of weapons that came with a new ship were never an issue. I've also seen people who are quite effective with single and dual beam, torp and cannon setup.
If I truly had a preference on where Dev time could be spent to improve a system, I'd much rather see a much, much, much easier method for claiming admiralty cards. That system alone is hugely tedious and time consuming if you have a large selection of ships.
There might not be "right" and "wrong" builds, but there certainly are "effective" and "ineffective" ones. If the absolute DPS-ceiling of the mish-mash you throw together is 30k, then yes, such a build is ineffective (or well, actually a word that would turn into 4 asterisks would be more suitable). I did 20k with an absolute trash just thrown together on a ship, I guess that would count to be "quite effective", yet my vehement opinion is that the build I made was horrible and should never be recommended to anyone, unless they want to be bad on purpose.
And since in my personal experience, there are plenty of people who haven't organically found their way towards effective builds, then Cryptic should really try to point players to something that actually works well and don't require a seasoned player to become "quite effective".
Existing ones do need looked at in terms of what triggers them to appear
The game does do a tutorial about reps but it can often appear way before you're actually level 50 and have the reps open...<snip>
Yes, my new characters unleashed the Rep tutorial when on Risa. Because the Event unlocks are in the Rep window and, thinking on it, the prizes from DOFFing on Risa is Rep marks from birds and monkeys.
DOFFing just got unlocked on them as those characters are at Level 11...not even close to unlocking anything else in the Reputation system. But, then, some folks level up much faster than I am doing, especially on bonus XP weekends.
For Cryptic...it would depend on what you want the Rep Tutorial to be about. If it is to explain using the Rep window UI, at which point it is OK for the tutorial to run during events. OR if you want the Rep Tutorial to explain the Rep System which is part of building your character up (traits, gear, etc).
Either way, something needs added about collecting the tokens so it can be used IN THE REP STORES.
1. How to communicate
2. How to heal injuries to ship and character.
Not just how to communicate...that chat window is so dated....do something about that.
I still don't know how it works. (I have figured out how to turn it off, though.)
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
The kits and modules have been a sticking point since they changed the system from needing a single item to the modular setup we have now. Nothing in the game points you to the bloke who sells additional modules.
Basic audio instructions would really help for a lot of the BZ's I was in a badlands earlier and flew over to empok nor only to find some numpty sat beside the portal generator doing nothing, they'd killed the ships and were out of combat so the F button must surely have been visible.
Ideally the knowledge of the F would be drummed in sooner but sometimes its a wonder how folk get through solo missions.
Maybe have a database people can reference to look up ships and captains like the armory in WoW lets you look up people. That way people can see how other people are doing things and get a better feel for how they should go with their character.
They kinda tried that with the STO Gateway. Never worked, and was eventually dropped. On top of that, it would be unfeasable now with having 3 platforms with different frameworks to try and draw from.
Not entirely, set up a common web service on each platform and feed those in to a central site that pulls and filters the data based on platform. As for the Gateway site I do miss that. It was nice to look at other peoples builds and see where they are going with things to help me learn how to do things more. Now I have to rely on more dated sources that reference third party databases to look up builds.
However if they don't want to do a site then put the look up database in game and bring back Memory Alpha as a place to go look up builds, tutorials, ship trials, and other testing facilities. That will keep the material restricted to the platform and give players another place to do something with learning.
So in essence you're saying there are "right and wrong" ways to build a ship, which isn't true.
No, that's just not true. Again, if someone wants to be weak on purpose and has somehow fun doing so, it's not my place to say they are building their ship wrong.
But if a player builds their ship in a way that doesn't actually support their intent, they are making a very inefficient build. Some examples:
Using aux2bat on science power-heavy build.
Using low weapons power on an energy weapon build.
Not using any +energy weapon buffs on an energy weapon build.
Not using any respective weapon enhancements (unless it's very sci-heavy build).
Not using any heals (especially on tank/healer).
Not being able to draw aggro on tank.
Using Feedback Pulse/Reciprocity on a build that does not generate much aggro.
The list just goes on. There are certain things that work and some that just don't. And if you try to put together a ship that uses powers/equipment that won't simply work together because of obvious game mechanics, you'll end up with an inefficient build. It's as simple as that.
DPS isn't for everyone. If they individual players goal is to have fun and enjoy the story content, then DPS doesn't really matter. Chasing DPS is something that will constantly change as well as the game grows and changes are made. What was once an "effective DPS build" in one update may become near useless in another. Would Cryptic have to redo their tutorials again each time?
Pretty much everything in game requires you to kill the enemy. You need damage for that. I have heard several pleas from new players how they simply can't beat some story mission. I arrive and try to analyze what the newbie is missing. Most often it's... surprise surprise... lack of sufficient DPS. And why does that player have insufficient damage output? Because of inefficient build discussed in my previous paragraph.
And no, I don't expect Cryptic to put out their own cookie cutter builds using latest meta that players should follow. But some basic stuff, such as not encouraging to mix beams and cannons, would be very welcome. Can the players succeed mixing them? Absolutely. But is it easier to succeed NOT doing it? Also - absolutely.
I mix beams, cannons, and torps with merry abandon. I've even been known to throw 360-degree beams and mines into the mix! And I've only run across an "insufficient DPS" issue twice. And both times, I was able to solve it by learning a little bit more about how to fly my ship to best effect.
Substituting your "cookie cutter" for theirs isn't "learning how to build a ship"; it's learning how to build your ship.
The thing with builds is that I can see why Cryptic slot all that random stuff on the ships, they are trying to imitate what the ship would be armed/geared with in canon. I mean most ships in the shows/movies are actually armed with a mix of arrays, beam banks, cannons and torpedo launchers. So although we can't slot all of the 10+ weapons a Galaxy class is armed with, we have an number which allows us to simulate that layout in combination with hardpoints and what fires from where.
Take the Miranda for example, slot beam array and she shoots like most other ships, but slot a DBB and she fires from those strut mounted phaser pods just like in WoK.
All that said i think the builds trying to imitate canon don't really work right off the bat on freshly bought ships. They do work at least reasonably well but you need to tweak things and seek out the gear that will boost them the right way.
I'd personally say it's actually a failing in the game design and mechanics that things like slotting a single torp fore/aft is not as efficient as slotting all beams, or all cannons/turrets. The shows clearly display ship using mixed armaments but often in the game it's not as effective as simply ignoring that and going with set ups you'd never seen onscreen.
But half the fun of the game is tweaking your build and finding a happy place you enjoy, be it all beams, kinetic boat, science vessel, DPS monster, tank, cloaked vape build or whatever.
I think although tutorials on how to build would possibly be useful i think it's better players learn what works and what doesn't work for themselves with experimentation and testing things. The missions up to Lvl 50 give ample time to fiddle with builds, try out all the different classes of ships and find a style you find fits that toon.
Personally, i feel a better use of a "tutorial" would be an explanation of what each piece of gear a ship needs does, how it affects the ship's performance, alternatives you can find later on in the game etc.
That way players might not go into STF's slotting those basic beam tac consoles of things like shield gens when they know other better things are at the fleet spire or on the exchange.
And maybe a listing of the places to get gear might help, exchange, fleets, lobi store, mission rewards etc.
they are trying to imitate what the ship would be armed/geared with in canon
Galaxy Class listed on memory alpha has it carrying 12-14 phaser arrays, 2 torpedo launchers, and 1 antimatter mine launcher. STO has it carrying 5 beam arrays and 3 torpedos. It's not to far off if you ignore the missing phaser arrays. Can you imagine STO scimitars carrying 52 pulse disruptor cannons, 27 photon torpedos, and the green space wizard magic weapon? The tears!
There might not be "right" and "wrong" builds, but there certainly are "effective" and "ineffective" ones. If the absolute DPS-ceiling of the mish-mash you throw together is 30k, then yes, such a build is ineffective (or well, actually a word that would turn into 4 asterisks would be more suitable). I did 20k with an absolute trash just thrown together on a ship, I guess that would count to be "quite effective", yet my vehement opinion is that the build I made was horrible and should never be recommended to anyone, unless they want to be bad on purpose.
And since in my personal experience, there are plenty of people who haven't organically found their way towards effective builds, then Cryptic should really try to point players to something that actually works well and don't require a seasoned player to become "quite effective".
In my experience a lot of this is due to the game not actually telling you what all the numbers on your ship gear stats actually mean. For example, the old discussion about how tac consoles work... it's not something a new player can figure out quickly or easily. This is because the only way is a LOT of experimentation.
I am sorry...whether one plays as a solo artist or wants to team up...or wants to play DPS or Science or Tank...should have no bearing on strong basic information being available for players during a tutorial.
We all need to know: How rarity and mark work on gear, how power levels can change and why, how skills points effect the us, how traits interact with everything, how BOFF abilities go together....because ALL of it goes toward building your character.
And that is what the Tutorials need added: how your character is built up....not just how to interact with the user interfaces.
And I know most people think: SHIPS...but you you it is twice as crazy on Ground...where you build your character AND your AWAY TEAM.
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
DPS isn't for everyone. If they individual players goal is to have fun and enjoy the story content, then DPS doesn't really matter. Chasing DPS is something that will constantly change as well as the game grows and changes are made. What was once an "effective DPS build" in one update may become near useless in another. Would Cryptic have to redo their tutorials again each time?
The basics of ship building haven’t changed since day one. Using matching energy types, not mixing cannons and beams, using bridge officer powers that work with your build.. these things don’t change. Lack of this knowledge leads to the vast majority of new player struggles.
This thread was not started for debates, they asked for suggestions, I made mine. I am happy to debate the merits with you someplace else, otherwise I am done with you in this thread. You're just trying to take it off topic.
Comments
Where the Powers/ability in the tray comes from.
As in the Powers/abilities interface that is default keybind to the letter "P". You may want to show how you can move things around...between the list and tray and around to different boxes in the tray itself.
Where the BOFF Candidates roster is. It is kinda hidden. Even having played this game a long time, that wackiness with K'gan during the KDF Tutorial threw me for a loop.
Gear improvements in Mark and Rarity. How it correlates to improving your character...and to Level of your character.
Oh and Device slots....on ground and space. And how different those can be.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
yeah there's no "you should use this build and only this build" builds in STO, so there's really no right way to spend your skill points, at best Cryptic can give example builds that they think work not in "you must use this" but rather "if you're confused here's something we think works so you can use it while you figure out the system".
With builds Cryptic should be vary of giving anything too definate and focus on general advice, just not too cryptic (excuse the pun) about it.
They kinda tried that with the STO Gateway. Never worked, and was eventually dropped. On top of that, it would be unfeasable now with having 3 platforms with different frameworks to try and draw from.
actually I've ran into a silo on the brink of failing numerous times and seen players all active and shooting the V-Rex, no bots standing around doing nothing or just standing still shooting, these players were all moving avoiding the v-rex bombs but shooting at it whilst at full health and the ignoring the Engineers.
This zone basically holds your hand during this fight and shows clearly and tell you clearly what the objective is and what will cause it to fail but still people fail it.
So its nice Cryptic are taking an interest in and asking us how to improve our understanding of the games workings but its only a small minority that will benefit as the majority are to lazy to read the instructions and end up not learning and repeating the same mistakes.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
This absolutely has to change, it's responsible for the vast majority of player struggles and it badly needs to be fixed. Stop having ships come with a Single Beam, Dual Beam, Torpedo and a cannon in the front.. you're teaching players bad habits. When players see this they think 'that's how I am supposed to do it,' and it gets them in big trouble.
Also, as pointed out earlier, a tutorial on the most effective ways to use Bridge Officer Abilities would be a HUGE help. It was suggested that an exercise be implemented where players have to activate a couple of buffs like an Attack Pattern and Power to Weapons and then activate their Fire At Will/Scatter Volley/Rapid Fire/Surgical Strikes.. this would be an amazing idea and a tremendous help.
The biggest hurdle that new players have to get over is unlearning what the game has incorrectly taught them. Don't mix Beams and Cannons, don't put 2 or 3 Torpedo Launchers fore and aft, and use bridge officer powers that match your weapons.
Players often don't know that things like Fire At Will and Scatter Volley share a cooldown so they slot both thinking they can use them together. The only places you learn this are forums/reddit or the Wiki.. there is nothing in game that tells you what shares a cooldown with what.
There is also nothing in game that tells you about slotting space and ground duty officers to enhance abilities. Teaching players this would help as well.
Priority #1 has to be ship builds though.. please.. please STOP building ships like 'A Step Between Stars' and fix that mission. It's unbearable for veteran players and it sends new players down a path of frustration.. please please fix this.
Interesting.. I could swear that all 'Energy Weapon' skills shared a cool down. If I am incorrect, then I apologize for the error. Thank you for pointing it out.
Again though, either way.. this isn't taught in game and probably should be.
B. Space Builds (Ship Building, Utility and DPS, etc).
C. Ground Builds (Captain Building, Utility and DPS, etc).
D. Normal Content/Advanced Content and Reputations.
E. Elite Content (Optional).
F. Parsing and performing.
Guess this encompasses all of the areas that make STO "great again".
1. How to communicate
2. How to heal injuries to ship and character.
The game does do a tutorial about reps but it can often appear way before you're actually level 50 and have the reps open, such as someone on their way to the home FE and happened to wonder if they could join a gamma waiting zone on a level 10 will get half the blurb then and nothing when they actually need to be seeing it.
R&D, doffing and admiralty could use some work since the "tutorial" only serves to highlight how much of an offline non-gameplay mechanic it is barring the token nod during a trip to the nimbus bar. Nothing is done to suggest that specific doffs are needed to craft things like the omni's or where one might go to obtain them.
Ship building could be aided by having a better set of gear when a ship is claimed, at the moment its junk folk see and instantly trash in favour of their current mismatched items got from missions and drops because levelling is so fast its almost impossible to fit out a ship before the next tier can be got.
Likewise the game needs more chances for folk to get kits, frame and modules while levelling. There's barely any from mission rewards and for sci's in particular the options are nothing interesting or fun until you get into the spec and rep sides.
Is there a tutorial for upgrading gear? How many folk know that FE gear from newer missions can be upgraded to mk12 for free if you obtained it on a lowbie or that rerunning an episode at a higher rank will reward higher mk items. Then waters get muddied by events like the new CC rewarding MK10 for a run that scales you to 64.
Likewise with salvaging, there's nothing in game other than an entry under the rclick menu that says you can maybe salvage something.
Those last two might be an pain to get done because of the way some items are locked from upgrade and salvage for no particular reason.
There might not be "right" and "wrong" builds, but there certainly are "effective" and "ineffective" ones. If the absolute DPS-ceiling of the mish-mash you throw together is 30k, then yes, such a build is ineffective (or well, actually a word that would turn into 4 asterisks would be more suitable). I did 20k with an absolute trash just thrown together on a ship, I guess that would count to be "quite effective", yet my vehement opinion is that the build I made was horrible and should never be recommended to anyone, unless they want to be bad on purpose.
And since in my personal experience, there are plenty of people who haven't organically found their way towards effective builds, then Cryptic should really try to point players to something that actually works well and don't require a seasoned player to become "quite effective".
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Yes, my new characters unleashed the Rep tutorial when on Risa. Because the Event unlocks are in the Rep window and, thinking on it, the prizes from DOFFing on Risa is Rep marks from birds and monkeys.
DOFFing just got unlocked on them as those characters are at Level 11...not even close to unlocking anything else in the Reputation system. But, then, some folks level up much faster than I am doing, especially on bonus XP weekends.
For Cryptic...it would depend on what you want the Rep Tutorial to be about. If it is to explain using the Rep window UI, at which point it is OK for the tutorial to run during events. OR if you want the Rep Tutorial to explain the Rep System which is part of building your character up (traits, gear, etc).
Either way, something needs added about collecting the tokens so it can be used IN THE REP STORES.
++++++++++++++
Not just how to communicate...that chat window is so dated....do something about that.
I still don't know how it works. (I have figured out how to turn it off, though.)
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Basic audio instructions would really help for a lot of the BZ's I was in a badlands earlier and flew over to empok nor only to find some numpty sat beside the portal generator doing nothing, they'd killed the ships and were out of combat so the F button must surely have been visible.
Ideally the knowledge of the F would be drummed in sooner but sometimes its a wonder how folk get through solo missions.
Not entirely, set up a common web service on each platform and feed those in to a central site that pulls and filters the data based on platform. As for the Gateway site I do miss that. It was nice to look at other peoples builds and see where they are going with things to help me learn how to do things more. Now I have to rely on more dated sources that reference third party databases to look up builds.
However if they don't want to do a site then put the look up database in game and bring back Memory Alpha as a place to go look up builds, tutorials, ship trials, and other testing facilities. That will keep the material restricted to the platform and give players another place to do something with learning.
But if a player builds their ship in a way that doesn't actually support their intent, they are making a very inefficient build. Some examples:
Using aux2bat on science power-heavy build.
Using low weapons power on an energy weapon build.
Not using any +energy weapon buffs on an energy weapon build.
Not using any respective weapon enhancements (unless it's very sci-heavy build).
Not using any heals (especially on tank/healer).
Not being able to draw aggro on tank.
Using Feedback Pulse/Reciprocity on a build that does not generate much aggro.
The list just goes on. There are certain things that work and some that just don't. And if you try to put together a ship that uses powers/equipment that won't simply work together because of obvious game mechanics, you'll end up with an inefficient build. It's as simple as that.
Pretty much everything in game requires you to kill the enemy. You need damage for that. I have heard several pleas from new players how they simply can't beat some story mission. I arrive and try to analyze what the newbie is missing. Most often it's... surprise surprise... lack of sufficient DPS. And why does that player have insufficient damage output? Because of inefficient build discussed in my previous paragraph.
And no, I don't expect Cryptic to put out their own cookie cutter builds using latest meta that players should follow. But some basic stuff, such as not encouraging to mix beams and cannons, would be very welcome. Can the players succeed mixing them? Absolutely. But is it easier to succeed NOT doing it? Also - absolutely.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Substituting your "cookie cutter" for theirs isn't "learning how to build a ship"; it's learning how to build your ship.
Take the Miranda for example, slot beam array and she shoots like most other ships, but slot a DBB and she fires from those strut mounted phaser pods just like in WoK.
All that said i think the builds trying to imitate canon don't really work right off the bat on freshly bought ships. They do work at least reasonably well but you need to tweak things and seek out the gear that will boost them the right way.
I'd personally say it's actually a failing in the game design and mechanics that things like slotting a single torp fore/aft is not as efficient as slotting all beams, or all cannons/turrets. The shows clearly display ship using mixed armaments but often in the game it's not as effective as simply ignoring that and going with set ups you'd never seen onscreen.
But half the fun of the game is tweaking your build and finding a happy place you enjoy, be it all beams, kinetic boat, science vessel, DPS monster, tank, cloaked vape build or whatever.
I think although tutorials on how to build would possibly be useful i think it's better players learn what works and what doesn't work for themselves with experimentation and testing things. The missions up to Lvl 50 give ample time to fiddle with builds, try out all the different classes of ships and find a style you find fits that toon.
Personally, i feel a better use of a "tutorial" would be an explanation of what each piece of gear a ship needs does, how it affects the ship's performance, alternatives you can find later on in the game etc.
That way players might not go into STF's slotting those basic beam tac consoles of things like shield gens when they know other better things are at the fleet spire or on the exchange.
And maybe a listing of the places to get gear might help, exchange, fleets, lobi store, mission rewards etc.
Galaxy Class listed on memory alpha has it carrying 12-14 phaser arrays, 2 torpedo launchers, and 1 antimatter mine launcher. STO has it carrying 5 beam arrays and 3 torpedos. It's not to far off if you ignore the missing phaser arrays. Can you imagine STO scimitars carrying 52 pulse disruptor cannons, 27 photon torpedos, and the green space wizard magic weapon? The tears!
My character Tsin'xing
We all need to know: How rarity and mark work on gear, how power levels can change and why, how skills points effect the us, how traits interact with everything, how BOFF abilities go together....because ALL of it goes toward building your character.
And that is what the Tutorials need added: how your character is built up....not just how to interact with the user interfaces.
And I know most people think: SHIPS...but you you it is twice as crazy on Ground...where you build your character AND your AWAY TEAM.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
The basics of ship building haven’t changed since day one. Using matching energy types, not mixing cannons and beams, using bridge officer powers that work with your build.. these things don’t change. Lack of this knowledge leads to the vast majority of new player struggles.
This thread was not started for debates, they asked for suggestions, I made mine. I am happy to debate the merits with you someplace else, otherwise I am done with you in this thread. You're just trying to take it off topic.