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ground gameplay needs an overhaul
telbasta7386
Member Posts: 761 Arc User
Even for as old as this game is, space content is pretty good and feels "current" for gaming, but the ground content in sto has always been severely lacking, and combat can be almost unbearable.
Ground content is plagued with sever "rubber-banding" and latency issues. Numerous bugs and glitches, poorly designed combat, and the whole thing just feels very clumsy and frustrating.
Whenever i end up doing any ground content in this game, it pretty much just becomes an auto attack and ability mashing fest because you can rarely see the enemy through all of the flashy effects. the whole flanking system seems unreliable and ends up being more of a random chance boost to damage or reduction to defense as you struggle to feel your way through smoke clouds and random enemy spawns.
Many abilities have "cast time" or non instant animations which, when used in the middle of combat, lock you out of doing anything else, even moving, which ends up feeling more like a bug than a feature. Dodging almost never works quickly enough to avoid aoe damage like grenades, because your character always seems to be on a delay.
Movement is often glitchy feeling, especially trying to get around quickly during combat thanks to the whole 2 seconds of sprint meter you get. If Starfleet is a military organization, they need to rethink their physical training.
I think its long past time that ground content be gone over and smoothed out.
Ground content is plagued with sever "rubber-banding" and latency issues. Numerous bugs and glitches, poorly designed combat, and the whole thing just feels very clumsy and frustrating.
Whenever i end up doing any ground content in this game, it pretty much just becomes an auto attack and ability mashing fest because you can rarely see the enemy through all of the flashy effects. the whole flanking system seems unreliable and ends up being more of a random chance boost to damage or reduction to defense as you struggle to feel your way through smoke clouds and random enemy spawns.
Many abilities have "cast time" or non instant animations which, when used in the middle of combat, lock you out of doing anything else, even moving, which ends up feeling more like a bug than a feature. Dodging almost never works quickly enough to avoid aoe damage like grenades, because your character always seems to be on a delay.
Movement is often glitchy feeling, especially trying to get around quickly during combat thanks to the whole 2 seconds of sprint meter you get. If Starfleet is a military organization, they need to rethink their physical training.
I think its long past time that ground content be gone over and smoothed out.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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In space at least one can keybind a bunch of stuff for simpler ships, but for complex combos like science it gets really annoying cause you're waiting on each to make sure it enables in sequence, which of course doesn't happen, breaking the timing, and ruining everything.
Ground, sure, it's also possible to keybind and spam, but again that works on some tactical captain setups more than engineers or science.
Another aspect of ground: why is there a 'cooldown' before you can walk after performing certain actions. It's this little loading bar that comes out of nowhere and just stalls you.
Lag and rubberbanding is pretty bad too. This is arcade instanced-based mostly (except for battle zones which even those are fairly limited in player count) that plays much worse than a massive scale open world MMO.
I've long moved on to other games for actual gameplay, where every single ability toggles 100% of the time instantly even on laggy servers, the player or vehicles does not rubberband all over the place at all, weapons always fire accordingly, and there's no redundant cooldowns except those in place to keep the gameplay from becoming chaotic.
I literally disagree with every single word of this post.
I actually find ground combat to be pretty fun and overall far less laggy then space combat.. especially over the course of the last couple weeks now that server Lag seems to be getting progressively worse.
Is ground combat perfect? Not by a mile.. but in my observation, this post is a horribly inaccurate description of STO's ground combat.
I have to disagree with most things here.
I do not experience rubber-banding or latency (I'm in the UK and if this was a server issue, I'd get it far worse!).
I rarely ever see bugs or glitches.
Ground combat on keyboard can be clumsy on the PC, but on Console (with it's auto-triggers) is a dream.
The delays you see when activating abilities is what should be happening. You're using and activating devices, not casting spells or super-powers.
I find flanking works correctly, but you really should be behind the victim for this to happen if you take into account peripheral vision would alert someone.
Dodging would rarely affect AoE effects regardless in reality. You're still going to get damage!
There are two modes of running. The standard sprint is slower than the combat sprint, so I can see why there is a stamina bar.
As for not effecting everyone the same... don't forget that we're not linked directly to the server. There's a lot of places between us and the server. It could be any number of things. Hell... I had a fleetmate who refused to do ground because his computer didn't like it, yet could do space just fine.
I enjoy the ground combat on the PC.. I didn't used to.. it took a while for me to find a rhythm and start to enjoy it.
I used to hate it.
I'm on both PC (over 8 years) and Xbox (over a year) virtually every day. PC is alot more work than the Console version despite being almost indentical, but the PC you have better DPS due to being able to activate powers more efficiently.
Your lag problems are most like one of a dozen reasons that are not related to Cryptic. Whether it be a line-quality issue, Interconnection issue, ISP issue, the weather, the list goes on. Typically, over the years a Server issue happens once every 3 months, if that, for me.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
However, while I do have some latency/lag/rubberbanding issues lately (which usually disappear 30 seconds or so after a map is loaded the latest) I cannot say that this is worse or better in ground.
As for flashing effects, I find space way worse, especially with larger enemy groups (as with the final battle of Riposte). But not only the effects, the lack of abilities actually makes me appreciate ground more. Not perma-activating all kinds of combos but making do with more basic stuff can be refreshing. Even though I like my click-a-toy build on my Sci main, difference is what rules.
My character Tsin'xing
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I can live with it, actually, but I still like space much better. I won't even do ground TFOs because I don't want to hold back the rest of the team with my inexperience and tendency to make mistakes down there. I'm letting the Empok Nor global TFO just run out and reset tomorrow because of that.
Though I have tried some of the space TFOs I hadn't before and found I can hold my own in the normal ones, though I will venture into advanced if normal isn't popping. I can hold my own in those too, without too many problems and haven't scored an AFK yet.
I don't mind ground combat and I've not had lag in ground combat (more then anywhere else that is) and yeah more control for boffs would be nice.
I can agree that adding a form of boff formation, or micro management aspect to ground would be interesting. Though I think that would work better as a feature of a ground/space based spec that is focused on tactics an coordination, which could be also something that focuses on both the control of your boff an your carrier-pets as well. Add in like how other specs have some special features on their ships maybe this spec would have instead a standard improvement to your existing boff an hanger/carrier-pet's ui, while using the spec-ship might add additional features too.
If you use the shooter mode, it is okay until you try some of the secondary fire buttons. For example the one for miniguns. That needs to be fixed. But I doubt they will redo the ground combat, since it is basically the same system as the one for space.
I do admit that I would rather a first person view (but am okay with 3rd). And instead of targeting, skill activating, then spamming, I would rather be able to play ground combat like most FPS games. Even the combat in Mass Effect was better. I just want to be able to point ad shoot, and needing skill to win. But, I know that will make ground combat more complicated. That's will turn a lot of people away from the game.
Besides, there are other thing I think need to be worked on first. Things that will improve overall game play better.
Razar.
But that's just me. Not everyone likes the same things.
I had more or less the same situation, compounded by the fact that I knew most of the space TFOs but not ground. But don't let the forums give you a wrong impression: if you actually play it there will be players even more "holding the team back" than you, and they still help. Of course also better ones who can almost solo it, but if you read the objectives and run in the correct general direction, you are already an asset.
If you don't want to play ground TFOs, that's fine. But don't let perceived inadequacy stop you from playing something you'd like to do. Forum users are probably more knowledgeable than the average player and tend to boast a bit as well, what you read here is not a good guide to what you actually find out there.
Most other ground combat I find works pretty well
Space and ground combat aren't "pretty much the same" they're literally the same mechanics with different skins, with the ship skins having special attribute that allows them to have "space movement", there used to be bug in the Foundry (before it was removed) that the system sometimes forgot to enable that space movement causing the player ship to fall to the bottom of the map.
EDIT:This also why you shouldn't expect drastic changes in ground combat without there being similar changes in space.
There are gap closers, and the new ground set has a root ability but the problem is you get a swing, maybe 2 and the mobs are fleeing again. It's not like a normal MMO where you gap close and start going to town on them. It also makes certain ground weapons totally pointless with their long time roots.
Like I said we don't have mobs trying to keep you at range since they have sniper rifles so you have to chase them constantly with your full auto. We don't have shotgun guys hiding behind rocks and playing ring around the rosie so you can't shoot them till you get point blank and they vape you. So why make melee a total PITA in PVE. I can't think of any other MMO that has their mobs constantly fleeing melee range
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Also, every game with enemies that are ranged specialists will typically have the enemies that don't use melee avoid melee range.
My character Tsin'xing