Well, I don't play STO at high level, but I do play Neverwinter almost every day. The system is there, it works, it generally keeps people sorted into doing content that they are capable of doing, and I almost never hear anyone complaining about it or saying it is ineffective.
I'm not saying it doesn't work in NW, just that ship builds in STO are a lot more complex than character builds in NW.
In part this is because any character class can fly any ship. In NW a wizard does wizard stuff they don't hack people apart with a sword...
With respect, you are simply incorrect. It was already pointed out above that NW builds are more detailed than STO builds, and that doesn't even take into account feat trees and specializations, balancing 6 primary attributes with 8 performance stats, etc.
STO has similar things to these, of course, which is why it is, overall, similarly complex. In NW, every class has access to damage, heals, defense, buffs, debuffs etc. These are standard game mechanics, same as the game mechanics of STO. It is irrelevant if you cast your spells with a wand or a deflector dish.
Personally I don't see why people who self-describe as being at the high end of the game are so massively afraid of letting people who are at the lower end play Red Alerts with other people at the low end, rather than having some 300k DPSer zoom around and vape everything before they get there.
I don't see anybody calling for nerfs here. I don't see anybody calling for "give me great stuff". I don't see anyone saying "You have to carry me". All I see is a request to put roughly equivalent people into roughly do-able content... something we have had in Neverwinter for years.
Most of the objections I see are made-up issues and made-up numbers about things that nobody was asking for. Personally I'm fine with it as it is. I guess I'd have to start someone new in the game to see how they feel about it, if I wanted to see what the reality of the issue is.
Is there some in-game feature that I've missed where I can figure my DPS or are you guys using some 3rd party application? Just using the Endeavours to estimate, I must b somewhere north of 50K
Is there some in-game feature that I've missed where I can figure my DPS or are you guys using some 3rd party application? Just using the Endeavours to estimate, I must b somewhere north of 50K
That's actually pretty solid.
The parsers are not 3rd party, they simply access the ingame logs and based on that data, crunch some numbers and give you something to work with.
I'll also answer to the guy who says "We should discriminate people by performance" or "Let's let low performance people play only with low performance users."
Making it simple:
1. The waiting times would be very high and given the fact that this game is very team-dependant to start the TFOs, most of us accept the idea of carrying a deadweight just to make the event start.
2. Just low performers would fail and fail and... fail. And then leave. No fun, no improvement, no rewards. Just a bad idea that luckily, nobody will take seriously.
3. Nobody cares about your narcissistic injuries. You need to accept that you can't be the best, the Mary Sue or the special kid every time.
4. The endeavors are just fine, as long as you get the idea of "having something to do daily that's not the same whilst participating into the progress of the newer guys".
5. I don't understand why these people keep coiling towards a fetal position when called upon their b-sheite instead of admitting that they're wrong and... That's that. We all make mistakes.
Is there some in-game feature that I've missed where I can figure my DPS or are you guys using some 3rd party application? Just using the Endeavours to estimate, I must b somewhere north of 50K
STO itself doesn't include a DPS meter. There is a combat log you can turn on with /combatlog 1 and off with /combatlog 0 (as a chat box command).
1. A guy who tries to undermine other's performance and (involuntarely) ruin a good product that most of us play and support is not a community-friendly individual.
2. Taking the victim stance because you have been called on your cow-drop is bad.
3. The amount of how much of a scrub a player is .... Is not related TO THE GEAR. It's simply related to the attitude. If you're completely freebie user and you put your stuff together in a free ship and you contribute to the effort of your team in TFO's, you are a proud contributor.
4. The "scrub" or deadweights are people who come and expect to be carried without making those efforts that all of us do. It's about the effort, not about if you're a 300k dps runner.
5. The community managers are not your tutors that should defend your opinions or guzzle others' opinions to help you feel important. They're here to ensure that the forum is used properly. Name calling presumes that you say specifically "Joe is a piece of gum". So take things as they are, at face value.
6. Adding those things will result in Cat1 buffs or Cat2 buffs that are facing diminishing returns. The bonuses overall are not that heavy, regardless of how hard you wanna smash feature-socialism over successful users who farm and do these.
7. When you people complain about people who put money in a game and people who got lots of stuff... What is going on through your head? If those guys who fire up 100 keys at least each weekend wouldn't be doing this, you wouldn't have a functional exchange and market ingame. Any item you'd need would be so rare and expensive that you'd be using minimal gear and would be unable to complete any advanced content. These people support the game financially and offer supply and affordable ingame prices.
8. Nobody cares that you compare yourself with guys who play this for a few years and expect to perform identically. This is not Battle Royale. This is something else.
9. This community has a bunch of friendly people who help anyone who wishes to improve. And there are generous ingame people also.
Unless this is supposed to turn into a slander-fest, I think that this topic is already solved and keeping this topic open is only asking for flaming further.
I'd respectfully ask for the moderators to close this after weighing in if this is a worth-keeping topic open.
And I would like to salute the respectful, active and friendly community of STO.
One of the better posts on this board so far this year.
I have played MMOs since they were MUDs we had to write ourselves and PnP games for years before that.
Gamers who want to ridicule other gamers and suck the fun out of the game just to make all other players act like high-damage pets are the main reasom, IMO, people think gamers suck and often the reason MMO communities fail.
The prevailing idea that to be the best at this game means to have the highest DPS meter rating is truly laughable.
It is a game, to entertain us and allow some fun relaxation.
If making the game a job is 'fun' for someone, I will not stand in the way, but I will block them from sucking the fun away from others through intimidation and peer pressure.
Too many players seem to think we all have to play thier way, spend our money thier way, and often these same players are trying to tell people not to spend money, out of thier own FUD, which will ruin the thing they say they love - they love it but don't want to pay anyone for it, because they do not understand how the world actually works.
Too many rules-lawyering, fun removing players already exist in the MMO channel, lets not make anymore.
Thankfully, the STO community IME typically very supportive and the number of effective peer-pressuring rules-lawyers is low, but they can still make a big dent if not countered.
1. A guy who tries to undermine other's performance and (involuntarely) ruin a good product that most of us play and support is not a community-friendly individual.
2. Taking the victim stance because you have been called on your cow-drop is bad.
3. The amount of how much of a scrub a player is .... Is not related TO THE GEAR. It's simply related to the attitude. If you're completely freebie user and you put your stuff together in a free ship and you contribute to the effort of your team in TFO's, you are a proud contributor.
4. The "scrub" or deadweights are people who come and expect to be carried without making those efforts that all of us do. It's about the effort, not about if you're a 300k dps runner.
5. The community managers are not your tutors that should defend your opinions or guzzle others' opinions to help you feel important. They're here to ensure that the forum is used properly. Name calling presumes that you say specifically "Joe is a piece of gum". So take things as they are, at face value.
6. Adding those things will result in Cat1 buffs or Cat2 buffs that are facing diminishing returns. The bonuses overall are not that heavy, regardless of how hard you wanna smash feature-socialism over successful users who farm and do these.
7. When you people complain about people who put money in a game and people who got lots of stuff... What is going on through your head? If those guys who fire up 100 keys at least each weekend wouldn't be doing this, you wouldn't have a functional exchange and market ingame. Any item you'd need would be so rare and expensive that you'd be using minimal gear and would be unable to complete any advanced content. These people support the game financially and offer supply and affordable ingame prices.
8. Nobody cares that you compare yourself with guys who play this for a few years and expect to perform identically. This is not Battle Royale. This is something else.
9. This community has a bunch of friendly people who help anyone who wishes to improve. And there are generous ingame people also.
Unless this is supposed to turn into a slander-fest, I think that this topic is already solved and keeping this topic open is only asking for flaming further.
I'd respectfully ask for the moderators to close this after weighing in if this is a worth-keeping topic open.
And I would like to salute the respectful, active and friendly community of STO.
Well, I don't play STO at high level, but I do play Neverwinter almost every day. The system is there, it works, it generally keeps people sorted into doing content that they are capable of doing, and I almost never hear anyone complaining about it or saying it is ineffective.
I'm not saying it doesn't work in NW, just that ship builds in STO are a lot more complex than character builds in NW.
In part this is because any character class can fly any ship. In NW a wizard does wizard stuff they don't hack people apart with a sword...
With respect, you are simply incorrect. It was already pointed out above that NW builds are more detailed than STO builds, and that doesn't even take into account feat trees and specializations, balancing 6 primary attributes with 8 performance stats, etc.
STO has similar things to these, of course, which is why it is, overall, similarly complex. In NW, every class has access to damage, heals, defense, buffs, debuffs etc. These are standard game mechanics, same as the game mechanics of STO. It is irrelevant if you cast your spells with a wand or a deflector dish.
Personally I don't see why people who self-describe as being at the high end of the game are so massively afraid of letting people who are at the lower end play Red Alerts with other people at the low end, rather than having some 300k DPSer zoom around and vape everything before they get there.
I don't see anybody calling for nerfs here. I don't see anybody calling for "give me great stuff". I don't see anyone saying "You have to carry me". All I see is a request to put roughly equivalent people into roughly do-able content... something we have had in Neverwinter for years.
Most of the objections I see are made-up issues and made-up numbers about things that nobody was asking for. Personally I'm fine with it as it is. I guess I'd have to start someone new in the game to see how they feel about it, if I wanted to see what the reality of the issue is.
I think maybe we have some differing perspectives hear that are causing unnecessary disagreement.
I don't have much experience of NWN as I got bored before reaching end game, so I don't know much about how its gear works or how complex its builds can be. But I do know a lot about STO, which I have been playing since release. I used to test builds and abilities with a stop watch back in the day, before the DPS monkeys helpfully produced some very handy parsers.
In STO I have been funneling all me resources into the same character for nine years. I can stack CtrlX, EPG, and exotic damage boosts in combination with traits, doffs and boffs that reduce cooldowns and put out 80k to 110k reliably(some times a bit more some times less depending on content, but that range is fairly consistent).
I can then take that build(gear doffs boff abilities and all), and transfer it to an escort, (which is most certainly not meant to do science) and with only a couple of minor changes to account for the loss of commander seating and a science console slot I can reliably do 50k to 80k.
I could also put MK XII common quality gear on a standard cannon escort and do 20k. With the best gear I could pump that up to the 30k to 50k range. (I play fed sci so I am by no means the best at this).
I could also put all MK XV epic gear on a ship and, through lack of synergy struggle to break 15k.
So gear really does make a difference in STO. It can push a build with synergy in the hands of a competent player far beyond the capabilities of a player building less efficiently.
But hear is the thing. 15k is adequate for most continent. Hive elite and and battle of korfez aside, a team of people doing 15k each can beat most things. As a person with cheep gear can do 20k if they know what they are doing that leaves me wondering what a gear system achieves?
The only thing I can think of is that it locks people out of content and reduces the frequency of ques popping. I have no objection to playing the battle of korfez and loosing, or playing anything else and doing all the work myself.
So hear is where I am coming from:
Its ok to fail an STF from time to time.
Its ok to fly with people who don't pull their weight.
Its ok to be carried.
If these points are not true for you then I can see why you might want a system to gate content. But then, given the exemplums I have provided, how would you make it work in STO?
I dont think its possible with a gear score system. If you must gate content the only way I can think of that might work is a 'qualifying exam'. A mission people must complete to unlock STFs which has a time requirement and a group of ships to kill that have equivalent difficulty to one persons portion of the ships in an STF.
I don't like the above suggestion. It discounts the contribution of force multipliers, utility abilities and tanking. but as those things are irrelevant to the completion odds of most (not all) STFS they could be excluded and still achieve the goal of gating content adequately.
Well, I don't play STO at high level, but I do play Neverwinter almost every day. The system is there, it works, it generally keeps people sorted into doing content that they are capable of doing, and I almost never hear anyone complaining about it or saying it is ineffective.
I'm not saying it doesn't work in NW, just that ship builds in STO are a lot more complex than character builds in NW.
In part this is because any character class can fly any ship. In NW a wizard does wizard stuff they don't hack people apart with a sword...
With respect, you are simply incorrect. It was already pointed out above that NW builds are more detailed than STO builds, and that doesn't even take into account feat trees and specializations, balancing 6 primary attributes with 8 performance stats, etc.
STO has similar things to these, of course, which is why it is, overall, similarly complex. In NW, every class has access to damage, heals, defense, buffs, debuffs etc. These are standard game mechanics, same as the game mechanics of STO. It is irrelevant if you cast your spells with a wand or a deflector dish.
Personally I don't see why people who self-describe as being at the high end of the game are so massively afraid of letting people who are at the lower end play Red Alerts with other people at the low end, rather than having some 300k DPSer zoom around and vape everything before they get there.
I don't see anybody calling for nerfs here. I don't see anybody calling for "give me great stuff". I don't see anyone saying "You have to carry me". All I see is a request to put roughly equivalent people into roughly do-able content... something we have had in Neverwinter for years.
Most of the objections I see are made-up issues and made-up numbers about things that nobody was asking for. Personally I'm fine with it as it is. I guess I'd have to start someone new in the game to see how they feel about it, if I wanted to see what the reality of the issue is.
I think maybe we have some differing perspectives hear that are causing unnecessary disagreement.
<snip>
In STO I have been funneling all me resources into the same character for nine years. I can stack CtrlX, EPG, and exotic damage boosts in combination with traits, doffs and boffs that reduce cooldowns and put out 80k to 110k reliably(some times a bit more some times less depending on content, but that range is fairly consistent).
<snip>
The only thing I can think of is that it locks people out of content and reduces the frequency of ques popping. I have no objection to playing the battle of korfez and loosing, or playing anything else and doing all the work myself.
So hear is where I am coming from:
Its ok to fail an STF from time to time.
Its ok to fly with people who don't pull their weight.
Its ok to be carried.
If these points are not true for you then I can see why you might want a system to gate content. But then, given the exemplums I have provided, how would you make it work in STO?
I dont think its possible with a gear score system. If you must gate content the only way I can think of that might work is a 'qualifying exam'. <snip>
A gateway mission is one of the potential approaches I mentioned. It's not really my favorite either, but it has worked in other games. A gear score isn't my favorite system either, I mostly mention it because Cryptic already has one in Neverwinter and it mostly-sorta works.
I find it interesting that so many people say "I am at the upper or at least decent end of the power distribution in STO, and the power gap isn't a problem for me. Therefore, it simply isn't a problem." If someone at the lower end of the spectrum says it's an issue, he gets told he's just bad at STO and needs to learn to play. Can you see why that might discourage lower performing players from saying much about it?
I do note the several comments that indicate "Queues would pop slower if lowbies weren't there to fill them", so I guess I can see the self-interest in making sure that lower performing players can be used to speed ones' TFO/event/endeavor pops.
Personally I very rarely wait long for anything to pop, at least since they started the random TFO system. I find zones like Badlands, Voth/Undine BZs etc. fairly active these days as well. Tzenkethi/Gon'cra a little less active, but that is more due to issues with the battlezone design.
Despite @casualsto's persistent attempts to label me as a jealous scrub who wants to ruin other people's game and have everything handed to me; as stated multiple times, I do just fine, have all the stuff I want/need, can compete and get rewards at any level required of me. I haven't asked for nerfs or changes to the PE system, or to any players performance.
The primary difference is that I've encouraged 3 new players into STO over the past 4 years or so, and plan to start another one later this year. I also level all my own characters from scratch to 60, barring a few million EC to start out with. I think I'm probably somewhat more familiar with the levelling/new player process than many of the people replying "Power gap is not a problem".
I also think doing something to reduce the size of a problem by 50% is worth doing, even if it isn't a perfect solution.
Power gap is a fact. Low powered players being put into the same content (Red Alerts, TFOs, Endeavors, Battle Zones) and trying to compete with vastly higher performing players to deal damage, get kills, get XP, get rewards, and just generally feel like they are actually enjoying the same opportunities to feel like a Starship captain as more powerful players... that's a demonstrable fact.
The primary question that I see, really, is not "is this an issue"? It's "is this issue big enough to do anything about it?" And "is it more important to funnel lower players into queues/events so they pop faster for the higher players, than it is to give a decent Star Trek gaming experience to the lower players?"
Power gap is a fact. Low powered players being put into the same content (Red Alerts, TFOs, Endeavors, Battle Zones) and trying to compete with vastly higher performing players to deal damage, get kills, get XP, get rewards, and just generally feel like they are actually enjoying the same opportunities to feel like a Starship captain as more powerful players... that's a demonstrable fact.
This is why my original 'on topic' response to this thread was:
The best fix I can think of, that allows us to keep the positives of the endever system is to add an 'IF' to the endeavor buffs.
IF my stats don't already meet or exceed those provided by my endeavor points. THAN set those stats to the unlocked endeavor level. ELSE IF my stats do exceed those provided by my endeavor points THAN ignore the stats provided by my endeavor points.
This way the endeavor system will raise the low end of player performance without raising the high end and reduce the power disparency instead of worsening it. I believe this would be better for everyone.
I think locking people out of content is a notion intended to support the players in the lower middle bracket of the power scale.
If a player is at the low end of the power scale then they should be able to self identify and can chose to run content on easy difficulty. If they still want to run advanced and elite then its the lower middle players that deal with the consequence most.
What I mean is, if a STF requires players bring an average level of dps of 15k each, and one person brings 10k and every one else meets but does not exceed the 15k requirement in that circumstance those people will lose the STF as a consequence of the low DPS player. (this is very rare senario, 30k DPsers are very common in advanced pugs)
These are the people with a reason to want gating, but they don't need it. By building differently they could have made up the differance, The difference between 15k DPS and 20k isn't gear quality, its gear selection.
Vendood is completely right that high end builders don't cry out for gating content, they have zero need to. But I think the low end people have no need to either. There are more 'easy' level STFs then elite and advanced versions and they are right there for them to que for. If anything should be gated then high enders should be prevented from joining those and giving the lowbies afk penalties.
So if we agree that there are people who would benefit from gating, then we are left with Vendood's question. "Is this issue big enough to do anything about it?"
Maybe it is.
But I believe that a gear score system will just further distract players from the importance of build synergy and push them towards spending money and dilithium, only to still fail the STFs. People I parse doing less then 20k are very often flying $30, lobi or lockbox ships. Presumably their budget also extends to better then common gear, at yet their contributions do not come close to their potential.
If we want to improve the quality of pugs, then I think that the best way to do it is to either raise the lower performance bar, better educate the player base or lower the requirements bar. Locking people out of content just limits are ability to do crazy fun things... I miss running infected in shuttles.
Back before they introduced the upgrade system, I was suggesting that they have a proficiency system instead. Then it would help them to regulate the power creep better than just jumping from MK to MK. It would work by letting players get very small gains as they used stuff. Want to increase acc, crtd, crth, base dmg of energy types, or weapon types, then you just need to use them more.
Doing this would have meant a small increase in power creep that was able to be managed easily, and could have diminishing returns to help regulate it. And then, the "End game content" could have been scaled little by little with what level most players should be at by that time.
This is the closest thing to a proficiency system they can do now. They crossed that line when they added the upgrade system, and it's cost. Then they increased the MK level to MK XV. This is a way to keep adding power creep so players will keep playing. But they can't do small increments now, because the player base is used to getting big boost quick. Doing a long, slow, and easily regulated increase in power creep will lose most players interest now.
The good news is that they are at least still trying to add power creep to the game, to keep players that chase it coming back. And they are adding new episodes to keep players interested in that coming back too. So the game isn't dead. They are still breathing life into it any way they can come up with. And while some of the decisions are not the best, seeing the effort is good.
Razar.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
Power gap is a fact. Low powered players being put into the same content (Red Alerts, TFOs, Endeavors, Battle Zones) and trying to compete with vastly higher performing players to deal damage, get kills, get XP, get rewards, and just generally feel like they are actually enjoying the same opportunities to feel like a Starship captain as more powerful players... that's a demonstrable fact.
This is why my original 'on topic' response to this thread was:
The best fix I can think of, that allows us to keep the positives of the endever system is to add an 'IF' to the endeavor buffs.
IF my stats don't already meet or exceed those provided by my endeavor points. THAN set those stats to the unlocked endeavor level. ELSE IF my stats do exceed those provided by my endeavor points THAN ignore the stats provided by my endeavor points.
This way the endeavor system will raise the low end of player performance without raising the high end and reduce the power disparency instead of worsening it. I believe this would be better for everyone.
I think locking people out of content is a notion intended to support the players in the lower middle bracket of the power scale.
If a player is at the low end of the power scale then they should be able to self identify and can chose to run content on easy difficulty. If they still want to run advanced and elite then its the lower middle players that deal with the consequence most.
What I mean is, if a STF requires players bring an average level of dps of 15k each, and one person brings 10k and every one else meets but does not exceed the 15k requirement in that circumstance those people will lose the STF as a consequence of the low DPS player. (this is very rare senario, 30k DPsers are very common in advanced pugs)
These are the people with a reason to want gating, but they don't need it. By building differently they could have made up the differance, The difference between 15k DPS and 20k isn't gear quality, its gear selection.
Vendood is completely right that high end builders don't cry out for gating content, they have zero need to. But I think the low end people have no need to either. There are more 'easy' level STFs then elite and advanced versions and they are right there for them to que for. If anything should be gated then high enders should be prevented from joining those and giving the lowbies afk penalties.
So if we agree that there are people who would benefit from gating, then we are left with Vendood's question. "Is this issue big enough to do anything about it?"
Maybe it is.
But I believe that a gear score system will just further distract players from the importance of build synergy and push them towards spending money and dilithium, only to still fail the STFs. People I parse doing less then 20k are very often flying $30, lobi or lockbox ships. Presumably their budget also extends to better then common gear, at yet their contributions do not come close to their potential.
If we want to improve the quality of pugs, then I think that the best way to do it is to either raise the lower performance bar, better educate the player base or lower the requirements bar. Locking people out of content just limits are ability to do crazy fun things... I miss running infected in shuttles.
I did see and consider your idea of if-then'ing of PE boosts. My problem with that is, that it gives high end players no reward and no reason to participate in the PE system (for the most part). I mean, everybody likes upward progression, and high end players have already gotten pretty much all they can get... why shouldn't they be able to climb a tree of boosts too?
I have no problem with uber-powerful players as such. Although nobody wants a repeat of Season 13... where (perhaps unintended) power synergies got to the point where Cryptic felt the need to decimate the current meta and 'rebalance' a wide swath of things. And I have no problem with newer players seeing that they have 2-3 years of solid play ahead of them in order to reach high end... or to speed it up with judicious use of wallet-fu. That's all fine.
I applaud Cryptic's putting in a system that isn't too crazy, exposes people to a lot of content they wouldn't normally run, and is in fact accessible and useful to all players, low and high alike.
Queue/event wait times is an important and valid issue. I think there are currently enough players to support the queues even if we divided them into, say, Under 10k DPS >> Normal queue, Over 20K DPS >> Advanced queue, 10-20K DPS goes into either. Pick whatever dividing numbers you like. Of course then we have to guesstimate/calculate who does how much DPS etc.
There is honestly no one good, perfect, works-for-everyone answer. The problem might not even be big enough to worry about. I didn't ask for any changes at all in the OP... I just said "Let's put some thought into this before it becomes a problem".
There is honestly no one good, perfect, works-for-everyone answer. The problem might not even be big enough to worry about. I didn't ask for any changes at all in the OP... I just said "Let's put some thought into this before it becomes a problem".
And here we get to the heart of the "problem". Is there a problem at all? Truth is this type of discussion has been had many times in the past. It wasn't that big a deal 3 years ago either.
There is honestly no one good, perfect, works-for-everyone answer. The problem might not even be big enough to worry about. I didn't ask for any changes at all in the OP... I just said "Let's put some thought into this before it becomes a problem".
And here we get to the heart of the "problem". Is there a problem at all? Truth is this type of discussion has been had many times in the past. It wasn't that big a deal 3 years ago either.
Right. Power issues are such a non-problem that, for some reason, Cryptic decided to do season 13 and wipe out over half the 'power' builds in the game, losing tons of players in the process, because power and balance has never been an actual issue. Gotcha.
As for @coldnapalm, it's unfortunate that you can't see the difference between a notion tossed out as an example in literally half a sentence, and a complete and detailed description of a potential solution, showing off one's grasp of every aspect of a situation. There's no need for me to toss out complete descriptions here, it's pretty clear that any change at all will be shouted down by the people who already have full powerbuilds, because they need those lowbies to fill their queues.
As said before, there are those who don't consider any idea at all, they just look for the first potential flaw they can find so they can scream "There see! You didn't cover every situation in half a sentence, and are therefore you know nothing!".
The thread is about consideration of the effects of a new power curve on newer players. It isn't about high end players yelling and waving their arms to protect their territory.
There is honestly no one good, perfect, works-for-everyone answer. The problem might not even be big enough to worry about. I didn't ask for any changes at all in the OP... I just said "Let's put some thought into this before it becomes a problem".
And here we get to the heart of the "problem". Is there a problem at all? Truth is this type of discussion has been had many times in the past. It wasn't that big a deal 3 years ago either.
The only actual problem related to players of different level playing together is the poorly-designed AFK penalty that can punish newbies for being randomly teamed with players they can't keep up with. That's not a cause for setting up player performance discrimination, it's cause for fixing the system.
While I did support unlock conditions for Advanced with Delta Rising, there is no longer any point. Since they removed the fail conditions, it's practically the same as Normal. And nobody pugs Elite anymore, except the competitives which also have no fail conditions.
Let people get carried if they want. Most queues are more or less timed to win anyway.
The vast difference in player abilities, whether that comes from gear, from experience or whether you can type using the 10 finger system, or whether or not you have a real life disability, is not a problem if those who have superior abilities use those abilities to help players who don't have them. Players who do 150k dps should be able to monitor what the team does, give some good advice, and help out with a one-shot-nuke when necessary. Having an experienced veteran on a team is a good thing! It's a bit like in real life - not everyone has the same abilities. Some people are nice and cooperative, some aren't. Some don't want you on the bus and complain to the driver. Been there, done that, still no t-shirt
Caveat: I'm just thinking of PvE, here. In PvP events, this I can imagine this being a much different issue.
Yall, that comment about not calling names and such wasn't a suggestion. I tried to leave this post open in the spirit of debate, but since certain folks didn't want to be civil about it, this thread is now /closed.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
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With respect, you are simply incorrect. It was already pointed out above that NW builds are more detailed than STO builds, and that doesn't even take into account feat trees and specializations, balancing 6 primary attributes with 8 performance stats, etc.
STO has similar things to these, of course, which is why it is, overall, similarly complex. In NW, every class has access to damage, heals, defense, buffs, debuffs etc. These are standard game mechanics, same as the game mechanics of STO. It is irrelevant if you cast your spells with a wand or a deflector dish.
Personally I don't see why people who self-describe as being at the high end of the game are so massively afraid of letting people who are at the lower end play Red Alerts with other people at the low end, rather than having some 300k DPSer zoom around and vape everything before they get there.
I don't see anybody calling for nerfs here. I don't see anybody calling for "give me great stuff". I don't see anyone saying "You have to carry me". All I see is a request to put roughly equivalent people into roughly do-able content... something we have had in Neverwinter for years.
Most of the objections I see are made-up issues and made-up numbers about things that nobody was asking for. Personally I'm fine with it as it is. I guess I'd have to start someone new in the game to see how they feel about it, if I wanted to see what the reality of the issue is.
That's actually pretty solid.
The parsers are not 3rd party, they simply access the ingame logs and based on that data, crunch some numbers and give you something to work with.
I'll also answer to the guy who says "We should discriminate people by performance" or "Let's let low performance people play only with low performance users."
Making it simple:
1. The waiting times would be very high and given the fact that this game is very team-dependant to start the TFOs, most of us accept the idea of carrying a deadweight just to make the event start.
2. Just low performers would fail and fail and... fail. And then leave. No fun, no improvement, no rewards. Just a bad idea that luckily, nobody will take seriously.
3. Nobody cares about your narcissistic injuries. You need to accept that you can't be the best, the Mary Sue or the special kid every time.
4. The endeavors are just fine, as long as you get the idea of "having something to do daily that's not the same whilst participating into the progress of the newer guys".
5. I don't understand why these people keep coiling towards a fetal position when called upon their b-sheite instead of admitting that they're wrong and... That's that. We all make mistakes.
STO itself doesn't include a DPS meter. There is a combat log you can turn on with /combatlog 1 and off with /combatlog 0 (as a chat box command).
The various parsers use that info to show you DPS, combat statistics etc. A bit of a review can be found here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/8refok/whats_the_goto_parsing_tool_right_now/
One of the better posts on this board so far this year.
Well done and agreed!
Gamers who want to ridicule other gamers and suck the fun out of the game just to make all other players act like high-damage pets are the main reasom, IMO, people think gamers suck and often the reason MMO communities fail.
The prevailing idea that to be the best at this game means to have the highest DPS meter rating is truly laughable.
It is a game, to entertain us and allow some fun relaxation.
If making the game a job is 'fun' for someone, I will not stand in the way, but I will block them from sucking the fun away from others through intimidation and peer pressure.
Too many players seem to think we all have to play thier way, spend our money thier way, and often these same players are trying to tell people not to spend money, out of thier own FUD, which will ruin the thing they say they love - they love it but don't want to pay anyone for it, because they do not understand how the world actually works.
Too many rules-lawyering, fun removing players already exist in the MMO channel, lets not make anymore.
Thankfully, the STO community IME typically very supportive and the number of effective peer-pressuring rules-lawyers is low, but they can still make a big dent if not countered.
This quote should be an in-game pop-up.
I think maybe we have some differing perspectives hear that are causing unnecessary disagreement.
I don't have much experience of NWN as I got bored before reaching end game, so I don't know much about how its gear works or how complex its builds can be. But I do know a lot about STO, which I have been playing since release. I used to test builds and abilities with a stop watch back in the day, before the DPS monkeys helpfully produced some very handy parsers.
In STO I have been funneling all me resources into the same character for nine years. I can stack CtrlX, EPG, and exotic damage boosts in combination with traits, doffs and boffs that reduce cooldowns and put out 80k to 110k reliably(some times a bit more some times less depending on content, but that range is fairly consistent).
I can then take that build(gear doffs boff abilities and all), and transfer it to an escort, (which is most certainly not meant to do science) and with only a couple of minor changes to account for the loss of commander seating and a science console slot I can reliably do 50k to 80k.
I could also put MK XII common quality gear on a standard cannon escort and do 20k. With the best gear I could pump that up to the 30k to 50k range. (I play fed sci so I am by no means the best at this).
I could also put all MK XV epic gear on a ship and, through lack of synergy struggle to break 15k.
So gear really does make a difference in STO. It can push a build with synergy in the hands of a competent player far beyond the capabilities of a player building less efficiently.
But hear is the thing. 15k is adequate for most continent. Hive elite and and battle of korfez aside, a team of people doing 15k each can beat most things. As a person with cheep gear can do 20k if they know what they are doing that leaves me wondering what a gear system achieves?
The only thing I can think of is that it locks people out of content and reduces the frequency of ques popping. I have no objection to playing the battle of korfez and loosing, or playing anything else and doing all the work myself.
So hear is where I am coming from:
If these points are not true for you then I can see why you might want a system to gate content. But then, given the exemplums I have provided, how would you make it work in STO?
I dont think its possible with a gear score system. If you must gate content the only way I can think of that might work is a 'qualifying exam'. A mission people must complete to unlock STFs which has a time requirement and a group of ships to kill that have equivalent difficulty to one persons portion of the ships in an STF.
I don't like the above suggestion. It discounts the contribution of force multipliers, utility abilities and tanking. but as those things are irrelevant to the completion odds of most (not all) STFS they could be excluded and still achieve the goal of gating content adequately.
A gateway mission is one of the potential approaches I mentioned. It's not really my favorite either, but it has worked in other games. A gear score isn't my favorite system either, I mostly mention it because Cryptic already has one in Neverwinter and it mostly-sorta works.
I find it interesting that so many people say "I am at the upper or at least decent end of the power distribution in STO, and the power gap isn't a problem for me. Therefore, it simply isn't a problem." If someone at the lower end of the spectrum says it's an issue, he gets told he's just bad at STO and needs to learn to play. Can you see why that might discourage lower performing players from saying much about it?
I do note the several comments that indicate "Queues would pop slower if lowbies weren't there to fill them", so I guess I can see the self-interest in making sure that lower performing players can be used to speed ones' TFO/event/endeavor pops.
Personally I very rarely wait long for anything to pop, at least since they started the random TFO system. I find zones like Badlands, Voth/Undine BZs etc. fairly active these days as well. Tzenkethi/Gon'cra a little less active, but that is more due to issues with the battlezone design.
Despite @casualsto's persistent attempts to label me as a jealous scrub who wants to ruin other people's game and have everything handed to me; as stated multiple times, I do just fine, have all the stuff I want/need, can compete and get rewards at any level required of me. I haven't asked for nerfs or changes to the PE system, or to any players performance.
The primary difference is that I've encouraged 3 new players into STO over the past 4 years or so, and plan to start another one later this year. I also level all my own characters from scratch to 60, barring a few million EC to start out with. I think I'm probably somewhat more familiar with the levelling/new player process than many of the people replying "Power gap is not a problem".
I also think doing something to reduce the size of a problem by 50% is worth doing, even if it isn't a perfect solution.
Power gap is a fact. Low powered players being put into the same content (Red Alerts, TFOs, Endeavors, Battle Zones) and trying to compete with vastly higher performing players to deal damage, get kills, get XP, get rewards, and just generally feel like they are actually enjoying the same opportunities to feel like a Starship captain as more powerful players... that's a demonstrable fact.
The primary question that I see, really, is not "is this an issue"? It's "is this issue big enough to do anything about it?" And "is it more important to funnel lower players into queues/events so they pop faster for the higher players, than it is to give a decent Star Trek gaming experience to the lower players?"
This is why my original 'on topic' response to this thread was:
I think locking people out of content is a notion intended to support the players in the lower middle bracket of the power scale.
If a player is at the low end of the power scale then they should be able to self identify and can chose to run content on easy difficulty. If they still want to run advanced and elite then its the lower middle players that deal with the consequence most.
What I mean is, if a STF requires players bring an average level of dps of 15k each, and one person brings 10k and every one else meets but does not exceed the 15k requirement in that circumstance those people will lose the STF as a consequence of the low DPS player. (this is very rare senario, 30k DPsers are very common in advanced pugs)
These are the people with a reason to want gating, but they don't need it. By building differently they could have made up the differance, The difference between 15k DPS and 20k isn't gear quality, its gear selection.
Vendood is completely right that high end builders don't cry out for gating content, they have zero need to. But I think the low end people have no need to either. There are more 'easy' level STFs then elite and advanced versions and they are right there for them to que for. If anything should be gated then high enders should be prevented from joining those and giving the lowbies afk penalties.
So if we agree that there are people who would benefit from gating, then we are left with Vendood's question. "Is this issue big enough to do anything about it?"
Maybe it is.
But I believe that a gear score system will just further distract players from the importance of build synergy and push them towards spending money and dilithium, only to still fail the STFs. People I parse doing less then 20k are very often flying $30, lobi or lockbox ships. Presumably their budget also extends to better then common gear, at yet their contributions do not come close to their potential.
If we want to improve the quality of pugs, then I think that the best way to do it is to either raise the lower performance bar, better educate the player base or lower the requirements bar. Locking people out of content just limits are ability to do crazy fun things... I miss running infected in shuttles.
Doing this would have meant a small increase in power creep that was able to be managed easily, and could have diminishing returns to help regulate it. And then, the "End game content" could have been scaled little by little with what level most players should be at by that time.
This is the closest thing to a proficiency system they can do now. They crossed that line when they added the upgrade system, and it's cost. Then they increased the MK level to MK XV. This is a way to keep adding power creep so players will keep playing. But they can't do small increments now, because the player base is used to getting big boost quick. Doing a long, slow, and easily regulated increase in power creep will lose most players interest now.
The good news is that they are at least still trying to add power creep to the game, to keep players that chase it coming back. And they are adding new episodes to keep players interested in that coming back too. So the game isn't dead. They are still breathing life into it any way they can come up with. And while some of the decisions are not the best, seeing the effort is good.
Razar.
I did see and consider your idea of if-then'ing of PE boosts. My problem with that is, that it gives high end players no reward and no reason to participate in the PE system (for the most part). I mean, everybody likes upward progression, and high end players have already gotten pretty much all they can get... why shouldn't they be able to climb a tree of boosts too?
I have no problem with uber-powerful players as such. Although nobody wants a repeat of Season 13... where (perhaps unintended) power synergies got to the point where Cryptic felt the need to decimate the current meta and 'rebalance' a wide swath of things. And I have no problem with newer players seeing that they have 2-3 years of solid play ahead of them in order to reach high end... or to speed it up with judicious use of wallet-fu. That's all fine.
I applaud Cryptic's putting in a system that isn't too crazy, exposes people to a lot of content they wouldn't normally run, and is in fact accessible and useful to all players, low and high alike.
Queue/event wait times is an important and valid issue. I think there are currently enough players to support the queues even if we divided them into, say, Under 10k DPS >> Normal queue, Over 20K DPS >> Advanced queue, 10-20K DPS goes into either. Pick whatever dividing numbers you like. Of course then we have to guesstimate/calculate who does how much DPS etc.
There is honestly no one good, perfect, works-for-everyone answer. The problem might not even be big enough to worry about. I didn't ask for any changes at all in the OP... I just said "Let's put some thought into this before it becomes a problem".
My character Tsin'xing
Right. Power issues are such a non-problem that, for some reason, Cryptic decided to do season 13 and wipe out over half the 'power' builds in the game, losing tons of players in the process, because power and balance has never been an actual issue. Gotcha.
As for @coldnapalm, it's unfortunate that you can't see the difference between a notion tossed out as an example in literally half a sentence, and a complete and detailed description of a potential solution, showing off one's grasp of every aspect of a situation. There's no need for me to toss out complete descriptions here, it's pretty clear that any change at all will be shouted down by the people who already have full powerbuilds, because they need those lowbies to fill their queues.
As said before, there are those who don't consider any idea at all, they just look for the first potential flaw they can find so they can scream "There see! You didn't cover every situation in half a sentence, and are therefore you know nothing!".
The thread is about consideration of the effects of a new power curve on newer players. It isn't about high end players yelling and waving their arms to protect their territory.
While I did support unlock conditions for Advanced with Delta Rising, there is no longer any point. Since they removed the fail conditions, it's practically the same as Normal. And nobody pugs Elite anymore, except the competitives which also have no fail conditions.
Let people get carried if they want. Most queues are more or less timed to win anyway.
Caveat: I'm just thinking of PvE, here. In PvP events, this I can imagine this being a much different issue.
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