People shouldn't be playing on advanced when they are not even cutting it on normal. Maybe its cryptics fault for not given the token on normal but if i see people in my team have a ton of injuries and don't even have the courtesy to repair themselfs, yeah you can see me making a free spot for somebody who wants to play with guys like that. The sad part about it is i get the 30 minutes penalty, not that i care much with 50+ chars.
Here's the thing though... it doesn't always open a free slot for someone else. Get far enough in... you don't get someone to replace someone who drops out. There is no way to join an in progress TFO anymore.
As for the injuries... if they have so many that all you have to do is look at them and they explode... 9 times out of 10 I'd say that is a Troll. The last remaining 1 is either someone who doesn't know how to heal injuries at all or they are a HARDCORE RPer who feels that they need these to show an extended deployment, but mostly just someone who doesn't know.
Yeah but to be honest here, that's up on Cryptic to fix and nothing i should have nor do i care about. I'm easy to play with if you actually want to play but yeah if are a damage accolade collector, I'm not your guy. Honestly i also don't care if that person is a troll or a product of unfortunate events. I'm playing to have fun in this game and if that isn't given I do something about it, which in that instance would be going out change char and try again. I would say it happens every 1 - 2 times out of 10 rounds.
So yeah Cryptic should do something with stocking up the TFO's when somebody leaves. I had people leave in tfo's and most of the time they gave us another player but I think the difference lays in how you go about it. If you change char while in the tfo they keep your spot reserved if you warp out / beam up that spot is free. So i guess it depends on how you leave.
C-Store Inc. is still looking for active members on the fed side. If you don't have a fleet feel free to contact me in game @stegi.
You failed to do your due diligence, Az. After I read sea's post, I wanted to ensure that @xyquarze actually said what was quoted because frankly I couldn't believe that someone would so brazenly make that statement. That's why I went back and read his entire post before going off half-cocked and blasting him. Even after I provided the ENTIRE quote for you, you still ignored it and continued to post out of context information so you are completely at fault here. Stop blaming others for your own short comings. Make sure you read EVERYTHING so you don't make such an embarrassing mistake again.
I have done no such thing. I responded to the quote of another person who quoted that. I did not see any other quotes that even involved that statement. I have no interest in straw man TRIBBLE. I responded to the only quote I saw, I cherry picked nothing. If anyone cherry picked a damn thing it was the poster who I got the quote from. Which was seaofsorrows, so take up any discussion of cherry picking with him.
He's right, it was my fault, which is why I apologized. No need to pile on Az here, this wasn't his fault.. even after the explanation, I still don't really understand the original post so I should not have replied to what I thought it said. I should have instead asked for clarification before responding.
What he did or didn't say after I incorrectly responded is irrelevant because I started it. I admit when I am wrong, and this is one of those times.
And in the end it is my fault, since I failed to make it clear that I wasn't making an asinine statement myself but was only quoting an asinine statement within a certain context. Admittedly in an asinine way. Can we all put the blame on me (for the confusion, please not for the statement itself) and go shooting borg again?
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
With the introduction of the random RTFO boxes cryptic had an easy opportunity to hand out the level of additional rewards one gets depending on the annoyingness factor of the respective maps one ends up in instead of making them random.
It’s not as if they wouldn’t have access to metrics showing them which maps are played how often.
Sadly for as long as they don’t tend to some of the factors on PvE maps leading to such player reactions as in leaving the whole RTFO concept will dry up more and more. Simply put, bad maps are basically so bad that they drag good maps down with them here.
Cryptic is the one who needs to act here. Not us judging what player behavior is right and which is wrong.
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With the introduction of the random RTFO boxes cryptic had an easy opportunity to hand out the level of additional rewards one gets depending on the annoyingness factor of the respective maps one ends up in instead of making them random.
It’s not as if they wouldn’t have access to metrics showing them which maps are played how often.
Sadly for as long as they don’t tend to some of the factors on PvE maps leading to such player reactions as in leaving the whole RTFO concept will dry up more and more. Simply put, bad maps are basically so bad that they drag good maps down with them here.
Cryptic is the one who needs to act here. Not us judging what player behavior is right and which is wrong.
This is true but sadly that wont happen look at there history also may of the missions and maps need a major work on and player level and play time amount in total need be taken into account also. But mainly for me reward vs work if the work is harder than the reward conversation is mute.
Yo.
I also don’t think it will happen though I’d judge some of changes needed to not be very time consuming for the respective devs. The work of the devs who design ground maps feel also a whole lot more motivating here. My first set of hot fixes for space would be:
Gravity kills:
- Reduce # of hawking particles to transport from 3x10 to 3x3
- Remove all “stop interaction mechanic” while shooting
Counterpoint:
- Remove all time-gates and turn them into timer for optional directives for normal and fail criteria for advanced.
- Close 5 portals in phase 1 to trigger the start of the next phase
- Transport 15 troops to trigger the boss fight
Days of Doom:
- Remove all time-gates and turn them into timer for optional directives for normal and fail criteria for advanced.
- Transport 9 warp cores in the way of the planet killer to trigger the final warp core.
Storming the Spire:
- Remove all time-gates and turn them into timer for optional directives for normal and fail criteria for advanced.
- Terminate 15 Voth landing parties and secure 15 federation landing parties to trigger the next phase
- Terminate 9 shuttles escapes to conclude the map in the final phase
Battle of Procyon 5:
- Remove all “stop interaction mechanic” while being shot at or reduce the number of critter re-spawns to 1 respawn from/around each gate to close.
Dranuur Gauntlet and Poopoo erm… Peril over Pahvo:
- I have no idea how to salvage those maps and would consider removing them from the RTFO system altogether.
@tunebreaker recommended something similar a while ago but the respective thread lead to nowhere. There are usually a handful of peeps turning up in those threads insisting on having “longer battles” while at the end of the day they just spend time on a map watching timer’s elapse during their exiting engagements.
Besides if the maps would give the option to be concluded faster nothing would stop them from simply playing them twice. Works wonders in ISA for years.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
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In my opinion the Advanced TFO are in general too easy, not too hard.
Having said that, i do notice an increasing amount of "disco warriors" who seem to have little to no idea about ship building or even objectives in various TFO. This is something of all times, but with everyone and the kitchen sink in Random TFO it often warrants a facepalm.
I would argue for the complete removal of the elite marks so that new players are less pushed into advanced content for which they are often not yet ready.
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.
[...]
Cryptic is the one who needs to act here. Not us judging what player behavior is right and which is wrong.
Quoted for truth.
Sadly cryptic loves their timegates. Ever since mirror hell.
---snip---
Fail conditions are a trap though. Just take a look at the borg ground queues with their 'soft' fail conditions. One was already pulled from the rTFOs and the other two aren't really 'easier'. Ever played KGA with a team where you are the only one who knows what 'room' and 'a1 to b3' means?
---snap---
And yes people troll the rTFOs by seeding crappy queues. I played a 'lot' of them in the weeks since DISCO LEGENDS and this is how I 'recognize' them.
First warning sign is when the time between you hitting the accept button and the queue actually starting takes extraordinarily long.
Now when you enter the map as one of the first players and only see three others in various map transitions and one ominously empty team spot that either means your missing team mate had a client crash or hit decline.
If you are now stuck on one of the 'fun' maps it is quite a coincidence.
If you then eat the leaver penalty, move on to your next alt and end up with him and three new people in the 'same' TRIBBLE map it still is quite a 'coincidence' right? RIGHT?
Cryptic is the one who needs to act here. Not us judging what player behavior is right and which is wrong.
But judging other players is a god given right to gamers everywhere and a time honored tradition going back to Pong.
Most likely.
Unfortunately I remain unable to form a universal or general opinion on the matter of leaving a team under certain circumstances. I have been in every position here myself in a felt million times.
I also dislike the concept of having to evaluate my fleet-mates and friends regularly so I decided to rather hide myself behind a “don’t worry too much as I have enough DPS for both of us” mentality. Something I have learned from fleet holding's contributions.
I have absolute no problem with others who asses or judge other players more than I do by the way either as I know at the end of the day it remains a very natural and probably unavoidable thing to do. 300k+ in pug runs don't let me forget where I come from.
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remove all the "auto win" features from all queues would be a start and to add the actual possibility to fail a queue
Although not totally against the idea it was tried and failed with the Delta Rising expansion. Very easy to troll all it takes if implemented in the same way is for someone in say ISA to fly to the other side pop the spheres let them approach transformer shoot transformer for it to trigger nanites to heal and boom game over man game over
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.
remove all the "auto win" features from all queues would be a start and to add the actual possibility to fail a queue
Although not totally against the idea it was tried and failed with the Delta Rising expansion. Very easy to troll all it takes if implemented in the same way is for someone in say ISA to fly to the other side pop the spheres let them approach transformer shoot transformer for it to trigger nanites to heal and boom game over man game over
ISA was literally the only place where that worked, and only as a combination of the nonsense objective and players who assume everyone will always go left.
While I got used to the concept of "hard" fail criteria on Elite maps I recall they had a devastating impact on the overall public PvE situation with Delta Rising when they were introduced for Advanced.
“Soft” fail criteria (as in elapsing mission timers for example) for teams that don’t do a thing on Advanced maps are something I doubt anybody will have an issue with except those who expect AFK scenarios.
Turning current time gates into such soft-fails would down-class this AFK mentality to Normal difficulty without hindering Advanced teams at the attempt to play in public here.
-> Elite: Hard fails for missing out anything important.
-> Advanced: Soft fails in form of overall mission timer with anything important being optional.
-> Normal: Time-gated autowin without any fails but the chance to do better via overall mission timer being optional.
That would be a compromise for anybody if rewards would ever start to reflect that.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
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I feel like brain cancer is approaching me with ridiculous speeds with me just trying to write a coherent answer, so I just won't. But thanks for the tag Pete, made me feel nostalgic.
While I got used to the concept of "hard" fail criteria on Elite maps I recall they had a devastating impact on the overall public PvE situation with Delta Rising when they were introduced for Advanced.
“Soft” fail criteria (as in elapsing mission timers for example) for teams that don’t do a thing on Advanced maps are something I doubt anybody will have an issue with except those who expect AFK scenarios.
Turning current time gates into such soft-fails would down-class this AFK mentality to Normal difficulty without hindering Advanced teams at the attempt to play in public here.
-> Elite: Hard fails for missing out anything important.
-> Advanced: Soft fails in form of overall mission timer with anything important being optional.
-> Normal: Time-gated autowin without any fails but the chance to do better via overall mission timer being optional.
That would be a compromise for anybody if rewards would ever start to reflect that.
What's "soft" about time limits as opposed to other conditions? A fail is a fail is a fail.
The thing is, "anything important being optional" IS auto-win. It's what we have now. With nothing the players are actually required do, the timer is a guaranteed victory coundown.
The problematic fail conditions were the ones that had no logical reason to be fail conditions, like ISA's "don't let them heal the transformers." The transformers being healed does not prevent the mission objective ("destroy the gateway") from being completed, just means the team needs to damage them again. While it's plausible for the team to score optional brownie points for avoiding that bit of inefficiency, there's no logical reason to abort the mission over it.
But if the mission objective is to defend X, then X being killed does prevent the mission objective from being completed and therefore the mission should obviously fail.
Gravity kills:
- Reduce # of hawking particles to transport from 3x10 to 3x3
- Remove all “stop interaction mechanic” while shooting
Or reinstate the fact that the gravity also affects the Tzenkethi. When it first came out it actually was fun to just throw them in the black hole as it was less pew pew and more creative.
Counterpoint:
- Remove all time-gates and turn them into timer for optional directives for normal and fail criteria for advanced.
- Close 5 portals in phase 1 to trigger the start of the next phase
- Transport 15 troops to trigger the boss fight
Only fail condition I can think of is if DS9 goes boom.
Days of Doom:
- Remove all time-gates and turn them into timer for optional directives for normal and fail criteria for advanced.
- Transport 9 warp cores in the way of the planet killer to trigger the final warp core.
Again... only fail condition I can think of is of the station goes boom.
Storming the Spire:
- Remove all time-gates and turn them into timer for optional directives for normal and fail criteria for advanced.
- Terminate 15 Voth landing parties and secure 15 federation landing parties to trigger the next phase
- Terminate 9 shuttles escapes to conclude the map in the final phase
Main issue with this one is how squishy the allied transports are.
Battle of Procyon 5:
- Remove all “stop interaction mechanic” while being shot at or reduce the number of critter re-spawns to 1 respawn from/around each gate to close.
*insert VERY colorful language about Krenim Frigates here*
Dranuur Gauntlet and Poopoo erm… Peril over Pahvo:
- I have no idea how to salvage those maps and would consider removing them from the RTFO system altogether.
I have no problem with Peril over Pahvo. In fact I feel its superior over Dranuur because Dranuur has the chance of having some REALLY ANNOYING enemy groups come up. I mean... would you rather chance Terrans and Klingons or chance just about everything including Heralds, Voth, Vaadwaur...
Besides if the maps would give the option to be concluded faster nothing would stop them from simply playing them twice. Works wonders in ISA for years.
Yea... but ISA gets stale after the 1 millionth run. Can do it in my sleep probably by now.
> @doctorstegi said: > ucgsquawk#5883 wrote: » > > > As far as I'm concerned if you feel that you can simply bail on a tfo because you judge others unworthy at the start or it's not your optimal time/reward match then you shouldn't be playing...I'd rather have some new player in starter gear at my side because at least they might try. > > > > > People shouldn't be playing on advanced when they are not even cutting it on normal. Maybe its cryptics fault for not given the token on normal but if i see people in my team have a ton of injuries and don't even have the courtesy to repair themselfs, yeah you can see me making a free spot for somebody who wants to play with guys like that. The sad part about it is i get the 30 minutes penalty, not that i care much with 50+ chars. > > On ground somebody had 29 injuries i asked him why he doesn't go to see the doctor he said he didn't choose to play ground. We waited so before we started the mission until he left cause the 4 of us did refuse to play with this guy. I don't invest time and money to accommodate other random players, especially if they are to lazy to figure out how this game works. There is plenty of material out there, invest 30 minutes of reading and you most of what you need to know. > > Which fun is more worth the random dudes fun who doesn't invest time in order to be able to play on advanced or the fun of a player who actually invested alot of time and research in order to get where he is. There is not good solution for this problem unless we go back to the good old days and have people get gear checked by the system in order to play on advanced.
I'm going to reply to your post but also cover another one replying to me above so bear with me. I at no point excuse moochers, if a player is outright not trying or playing abive their level then they are just as at fault as anyone, and I certainly don't blame experienced players (I've been playing a few years on console and consider myself experienced but certainly not expert). My rant if you will, was directed entirely at the fellow who admitted to joining random queues and just leaving if he didn't think it was efficient enough for his time or his estimation suggested they weren't good enough. Players like that are just selfish and useless and I'd rather play with a new player who would try then this kind of expert anytime. I don't think it's right for players to be playing at levels they can't handle like advanced UNLESS they're at a point where they think they can handle it and are just stepping up to try it out...that I don't think is a bad thing.
So please don't think I'm laying blame or issues on expert players or forgiving players that aren't trying or are mooching. I am just trying to vent against egotistical players who believe themselves far above others and abandon missions because it or the players are beneath them.
Btw, it happened to me last night. Started a tfo, two players immediately bailed and the rest of us played through, got to the mid point and a third bailed so myself and a much lower leveled player stuck it out and finished it...with many lost objectives of course but by heck we did it. Perhaps we need a mechanic that gives higher rewards to the rest of the team if someone bails? Split the total rewards by number of players who finish?
My rant if you will, was directed entirely at the fellow who admitted to joining random queues and just leaving if he didn't think it was efficient enough for his time or his estimation suggested they weren't good enough. Players like that are just selfish and useless and I'd rather play with a new player who would try then this kind of expert anytime.
I don't think it's right for players to be playing at levels they can't handle like advanced UNLESS they're at a point where they think they can handle it and are just stepping up to try it out...that I don't think is a bad thing.
I agree with this. I don't see people who try as a bad thing. However people who just decide "you're not worth my effort" and leave... that is total BS.
Btw, it happened to me last night. Started a tfo, two players immediately bailed and the rest of us played through, got to the mid point and a third bailed so myself and a much lower leveled player stuck it out and finished it...with many lost objectives of course but by heck we did it.
Perhaps we need a mechanic that gives higher rewards to the rest of the team if someone bails? Split the total rewards by number of players who finish?
I once had to try and coordinate a lower DPS group after someone decided to badmouth us for not measuring up to his expectations and bailing on us in Infected years ago. Guess what? Coordination actually made the difference and we were able to complete it without him. Sometimes teamwork can mitigate individual DPS values. Combined it was enough. Was rough but doable.
The problem though is that not enough people actually try to coordinate or communicate when things start going south.
That is one thing I won't do is bail on a TFO. I only tried random once for the Endeavor and got Bug Hunt, which I'd not done before (I usually don't do ground). Still, I played on and at the end fell down a chasm and couldn't respawn (the respawn button was there, but no matter how much I clicked it, it wouldn't respawn me). I guess I did enough before to not get a AFK and got the rewards. But I did not bail on them.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
Perhaps we need a mechanic that gives higher rewards to the rest of the team if someone bails? Split the total rewards by number of players who finish?
That doesn't sound too bad at first glance. Normally everybody gets 60 marks, 2 players bail but the game still gives out the full 300, making 100 per.
I see one or two ways to exploit this at first glance as well, but maybe there are ways stopping it. This line of thought seems like it's worth examining.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
I agree. The idea of actually redistributing rewards based on the number of players remaining is interesting. However... one way I can think of to exploit that would be to create the ultimate DPS machine and FORCE everyone to take an AFK penalty, thus giving the DPS Machine all the rewards. On the other hand, the effort to do that is probably well beyond the reward you'd get, so probably not even worth the effort.
The only time I would bail on a TFO is if I know for a fact it cannot be done, be it bug or we just don't have the firepower to do brute force it after some people already bailed.
In regards to fail conditions, you gotta do it in a way that cannot be trolled easily, like their first attempt back in Delta Rising. Too easy to fail a group on purpose. Been there, victimized by that. Got angry because of it.
Gravity Kills is one that does kinda require more coordination and knowing what to focus on and what to ignore, and with the added fact you're fighting a black hole... I can see that being pretty rough in a PUG run. But Infected space? The only way for that one to go downhill is if either someone purposefully sabotaged it or you had an incredably low DPS group. Sounds like you ended up with the latter for Infected. Its rare, but it happens.
You'd be surprised how often people TRIBBLE up ISA these days, more than ever before. Which is funny because this gets screwed up despite all the power creep in today's game. Even worse, guys that do know how to do damage that don't know how to do an ISA.
I've never held the general population in STO in high regard in terms of competence, but these days, it's sunk to depths I never thought possible, despite all the power creep.
While I got used to the concept of "hard" fail criteria on Elite maps I recall they had a devastating impact on the overall public PvE situation with Delta Rising when they were introduced for Advanced.
“Soft” fail criteria (as in elapsing mission timers for example) for teams that don’t do a thing on Advanced maps are something I doubt anybody will have an issue with except those who expect AFK scenarios.
Turning current time gates into such soft-fails would down-class this AFK mentality to Normal difficulty without hindering Advanced teams at the attempt to play in public here.
-> Elite: Hard fails for missing out anything important.
-> Advanced: Soft fails in form of overall mission timer with anything important being optional.
-> Normal: Time-gated autowin without any fails but the chance to do better via overall mission timer being optional.
That would be a compromise for anybody if rewards would ever start to reflect that.
What's "soft" about time limits as opposed to other conditions? A fail is a fail is a fail.
The thing is, "anything important being optional" IS auto-win. It's what we have now. With nothing the players are actually required do, the timer is a guaranteed victory coundown.
The problematic fail conditions were the ones that had no logical reason to be fail conditions, like ISA's "don't let them heal the transformers." The transformers being healed does not prevent the mission objective ("destroy the gateway") from being completed, just means the team needs to damage them again. While it's plausible for the team to score optional brownie points for avoiding that bit of inefficiency, there's no logical reason to abort the mission over it.
But if the mission objective is to defend X, then X being killed does prevent the mission objective from being completed and therefore the mission should obviously fail.
Hehe, I remember having a similar reaction when my boss introduced the concept of “soft”-deadlines at work so I’m with you.
My idea here was motivated to end the AFK concept for a map by simply forcing a team to interact or it won’t conclude. In your ISA example we do have a very long 15 minutes or so overall mission timer. If you don’t remove the critters in this timeframe you wasted your time and unlike so many other maps you don’t get an auto reward. The result is nobody will invite you to ISA afk runs right?
Hard fail criteria would be the nanite spheres healing the generator before it is destroyed. In my experience such rather brief windows do not sit well with teams consisting of random players and are therefore better left for elite difficulty settings.
So in short my proposed concept of soft fails does not pose a problem for anybody but those who either want to start AFK parties or for teams that are so bad that they clearly should not have started an advanced match anyway.
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one way I can think of to exploit that would be to create the ultimate DPS machine and FORCE everyone to take an AFK penalty, thus giving the DPS Machine all the rewards. On the other hand, the effort to do that is probably well beyond the reward you'd get, so probably not even worth the effort.
Easier: when you got a DPS machine that can solo or duo a queue, get fleetmates to sign up with you and bail, that way some will get way better rewards while the others can sit out their penalty during admiralty (or with toon swap didn't get a penalty in the first place).
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
My idea here was motivated to end the AFK concept for a map by simply forcing a team to interact or it won’t conclude. In your ISA example we do have a very long 15 minutes or so overall mission timer. If you don’t remove the critters in this timeframe you wasted your time and unlike so many other maps you don’t get an auto reward. The result is nobody will invite you to ISA afk runs right?
The new TFOs do something similar by having mop up phases where your task is to wipe the enemies from the map to make the mission progress. It won't reset mission completion, but it does mean oyu need to actually do stuff or the mission stalls.
At any rate, I've been around long enough to have seen some truly stupid statements about how to play missions. I think the dumbest ever was someone saying that the Borg enemies actually use the color you wear to determine aggro priority.
Gravity Kills is one that does kinda require more coordination and knowing what to focus on and what to ignore, and with the added fact you're fighting a black hole... I can see that being pretty rough in a PUG run. But Infected space? The only way for that one to go downhill is if either someone purposefully sabotaged it or you had an incredably low DPS group. Sounds like you ended up with the latter for Infected. Its rare, but it happens.
You'd be surprised how often people TRIBBLE up ISA these days, more than ever before. Which is funny because this gets screwed up despite all the power creep in today's game. Even worse, guys that do know how to do damage that don't know how to do an ISA.
I've never held the general population in STO in high regard in terms of competence, but these days, it's sunk to depths I never thought possible, despite all the power creep.
Totally agree! I mean, I guess the stupidity is nothing new to us - but nonetheless, you'd have thought people would realise that dropping a 'power' that is designed to pull enemy ships toward/into it (Gravity Well) atop something that we're supposed to prevent enemy ships from getting anywhere near, is stupid.
But but.. it provides a debuff doesn't it.. and it packs everything nicely together for our cannons..
Yeah, there is a significant and sadly growing group which still has to master basics of building and timing powers.
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.
> @questerius said: > reyan01 wrote: » > > warmaker001b wrote: » > > rattler2 wrote: » > > Gravity Kills is one that does kinda require more coordination and knowing what to focus on and what to ignore, and with the added fact you're fighting a black hole... I can see that being pretty rough in a PUG run. But Infected space? The only way for that one to go downhill is if either someone purposefully sabotaged it or you had an incredably low DPS group. Sounds like you ended up with the latter for Infected. Its rare, but it happens. > > > > > You'd be surprised how often people TRIBBLE up ISA these days, more than ever before. Which is funny because this gets screwed up despite all the power creep in today's game. Even worse, guys that do know how to do damage that don't know how to do an ISA. > > I've never held the general population in STO in high regard in terms of competence, but these days, it's sunk to depths I never thought possible, despite all the power creep. > > > > > Totally agree! I mean, I guess the stupidity is nothing new to us - but nonetheless, you'd have thought people would realise that dropping a 'power' that is designed to pull enemy ships toward/into it (Gravity Well) atop something that we're supposed to prevent enemy ships from getting anywhere near, is stupid. > > > > > But but.. it provides a debuff doesn't it.. and it packs everything nicely together for our cannons.. > Yeah, there is a significant and sadly growing group which still has to master basics of building and timing powers.
On console this is a bigger problem since most of our powers are actually set to auto execute on certain conditions...as soon as ready, x many seconds after start of a fight, if opponent is cruiser or larger etc. Most have some form of condition to auto execute since we don't have keybinds. So, players forget they have a GW set to go off, it ends it's cooldown timer and goes off against the target which happens to be beside the nanite etc.etc. It's an easy mistake to make but can be costly.
Totally agree! I mean, I guess the stupidity is nothing new to us - but nonetheless, you'd have thought people would realise that dropping a 'power' that is designed to pull enemy ships toward/into it (Gravity Well) atop something that we're supposed to prevent enemy ships from getting anywhere near, is stupid.
From experience the ability of a lot of the player base to strategize and use basic common sense is found wanting. Your example of popping a Gravity Well in ISA is a perfect example.
Other examples
1. KSA it is more tactically better to attack the transformers the opposite side of the portal 1st rather than the ones closet to the portal. This allows the attacker to then support the defender when additional probes are spawned.
2. KSA letting a probe escape via the portal and then suddenly you have 3 players decide to defend against anymore escaping despite allowing more through no longer matters
3. Dyson Battlezone. Having 1 or more persons attacking a V-Rex and allowing the medics to steal the Omega Particles and thus failing that silo. I've turned up to a silo a little to late before and seen 5 players there allowing it to fail.
4. KGA getting to the room where you need to blow up the 6 shielded targets and 1 person decides to go into the room and is randomly shutting off shields whilst the team are engaged Borg NPC's.
5. Dyson Battlezone. The capture point where you need to stand within the circle. I've been there and had players stand just outside the circle which generates extra mobs but their presence doesn't add to the progress of the capture or stop the bombardment that comes down if only 1 player is there.
6. 100% certain in Dyson Battlezone players ignore the Silo Level meter as I often see running back to the transporter in City or Park players running towards a long dead V-Rex.
7. Hugging the Scimitar in KSA forcing it to cloak immediately after decloaking.
I'm sure there's more but can't think at the moment.
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.
As far as standing outside the circle at the Comm Array Points in the Dyson BZ, that person may have a Hard Endeavor of killing 60 Voth in the BZ. The Comm Array Points are notoriously bad for spawning Endeavor counting Voth. Most of the times non-counting Turrets and the three large Battle-techs are the most. Spawning additional by standing outside the circle will yield Voth soldiers.
For that reason I gravitate to the Artillery Points and the Omega Generator Points for kill counting Voths, the latter being the best.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
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.'
At any rate, I've been around long enough to have seen some truly stupid statements about how to play missions. I think the dumbest ever was someone saying that the Borg enemies actually use the color you wear to determine aggro priority.
I heard something once that Scimitars prioritized Sovereigns.
7. Hugging the Scimitar in KSA forcing it to cloak immediately after decloaking.
There used to be a "5 kilometer rule", where you stayed OUT 5 km from Donatra to prevent her from cloaking at all. Cryptic changed that so she cloaks regardless of your distance. So it is pretty much no longer an issue. She will cloak no matter where you are. On top of her or almost out of weapons range. Some days she's more cloak happy than others. But she is still vulnerable to a Megawell.
Comments
Yeah but to be honest here, that's up on Cryptic to fix and nothing i should have nor do i care about. I'm easy to play with if you actually want to play but yeah if are a damage accolade collector, I'm not your guy. Honestly i also don't care if that person is a troll or a product of unfortunate events. I'm playing to have fun in this game and if that isn't given I do something about it, which in that instance would be going out change char and try again. I would say it happens every 1 - 2 times out of 10 rounds.
So yeah Cryptic should do something with stocking up the TFO's when somebody leaves. I had people leave in tfo's and most of the time they gave us another player but I think the difference lays in how you go about it. If you change char while in the tfo they keep your spot reserved if you warp out / beam up that spot is free. So i guess it depends on how you leave.
And in the end it is my fault, since I failed to make it clear that I wasn't making an asinine statement myself but was only quoting an asinine statement within a certain context. Admittedly in an asinine way. Can we all put the blame on me (for the confusion, please not for the statement itself) and go shooting borg again?
It’s not as if they wouldn’t have access to metrics showing them which maps are played how often.
Sadly for as long as they don’t tend to some of the factors on PvE maps leading to such player reactions as in leaving the whole RTFO concept will dry up more and more. Simply put, bad maps are basically so bad that they drag good maps down with them here.
Cryptic is the one who needs to act here. Not us judging what player behavior is right and which is wrong.
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Yo.
I also don’t think it will happen though I’d judge some of changes needed to not be very time consuming for the respective devs. The work of the devs who design ground maps feel also a whole lot more motivating here. My first set of hot fixes for space would be:
Gravity kills:
- Reduce # of hawking particles to transport from 3x10 to 3x3
- Remove all “stop interaction mechanic” while shooting
Counterpoint:
- Remove all time-gates and turn them into timer for optional directives for normal and fail criteria for advanced.
- Close 5 portals in phase 1 to trigger the start of the next phase
- Transport 15 troops to trigger the boss fight
Days of Doom:
- Remove all time-gates and turn them into timer for optional directives for normal and fail criteria for advanced.
- Transport 9 warp cores in the way of the planet killer to trigger the final warp core.
Storming the Spire:
- Remove all time-gates and turn them into timer for optional directives for normal and fail criteria for advanced.
- Terminate 15 Voth landing parties and secure 15 federation landing parties to trigger the next phase
- Terminate 9 shuttles escapes to conclude the map in the final phase
Battle of Procyon 5:
- Remove all “stop interaction mechanic” while being shot at or reduce the number of critter re-spawns to 1 respawn from/around each gate to close.
Dranuur Gauntlet and Poopoo erm… Peril over Pahvo:
- I have no idea how to salvage those maps and would consider removing them from the RTFO system altogether.
@tunebreaker recommended something similar a while ago but the respective thread lead to nowhere. There are usually a handful of peeps turning up in those threads insisting on having “longer battles” while at the end of the day they just spend time on a map watching timer’s elapse during their exiting engagements.
Besides if the maps would give the option to be concluded faster nothing would stop them from simply playing them twice. Works wonders in ISA for years.
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Having said that, i do notice an increasing amount of "disco warriors" who seem to have little to no idea about ship building or even objectives in various TFO. This is something of all times, but with everyone and the kitchen sink in Random TFO it often warrants a facepalm.
I would argue for the complete removal of the elite marks so that new players are less pushed into advanced content for which they are often not yet ready.
Quoted for truth.
Sadly cryptic loves their timegates. Ever since mirror hell.
---snip---
Fail conditions are a trap though. Just take a look at the borg ground queues with their 'soft' fail conditions. One was already pulled from the rTFOs and the other two aren't really 'easier'. Ever played KGA with a team where you are the only one who knows what 'room' and 'a1 to b3' means?
---snap---
And yes people troll the rTFOs by seeding crappy queues. I played a 'lot' of them in the weeks since DISCO LEGENDS and this is how I 'recognize' them.
First warning sign is when the time between you hitting the accept button and the queue actually starting takes extraordinarily long.
Now when you enter the map as one of the first players and only see three others in various map transitions and one ominously empty team spot that either means your missing team mate had a client crash or hit decline.
If you are now stuck on one of the 'fun' maps it is quite a coincidence.
If you then eat the leaver penalty, move on to your next alt and end up with him and three new people in the 'same' TRIBBLE map it still is quite a 'coincidence' right? RIGHT?
Most likely.
Unfortunately I remain unable to form a universal or general opinion on the matter of leaving a team under certain circumstances. I have been in every position here myself in a felt million times.
I also dislike the concept of having to evaluate my fleet-mates and friends regularly so I decided to rather hide myself behind a “don’t worry too much as I have enough DPS for both of us” mentality. Something I have learned from fleet holding's contributions.
I have absolute no problem with others who asses or judge other players more than I do by the way either as I know at the end of the day it remains a very natural and probably unavoidable thing to do. 300k+ in pug runs don't let me forget where I come from.
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ingame: @Felisean
Although not totally against the idea it was tried and failed with the Delta Rising expansion. Very easy to troll all it takes if implemented in the same way is for someone in say ISA to fly to the other side pop the spheres let them approach transformer shoot transformer for it to trigger nanites to heal and boom game over man game over
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.
“Soft” fail criteria (as in elapsing mission timers for example) for teams that don’t do a thing on Advanced maps are something I doubt anybody will have an issue with except those who expect AFK scenarios.
Turning current time gates into such soft-fails would down-class this AFK mentality to Normal difficulty without hindering Advanced teams at the attempt to play in public here.
-> Elite: Hard fails for missing out anything important.
-> Advanced: Soft fails in form of overall mission timer with anything important being optional.
-> Normal: Time-gated autowin without any fails but the chance to do better via overall mission timer being optional.
That would be a compromise for anybody if rewards would ever start to reflect that.
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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.
The thing is, "anything important being optional" IS auto-win. It's what we have now. With nothing the players are actually required do, the timer is a guaranteed victory coundown.
The problematic fail conditions were the ones that had no logical reason to be fail conditions, like ISA's "don't let them heal the transformers." The transformers being healed does not prevent the mission objective ("destroy the gateway") from being completed, just means the team needs to damage them again. While it's plausible for the team to score optional brownie points for avoiding that bit of inefficiency, there's no logical reason to abort the mission over it.
But if the mission objective is to defend X, then X being killed does prevent the mission objective from being completed and therefore the mission should obviously fail.
Only fail condition I can think of is if DS9 goes boom.
Again... only fail condition I can think of is of the station goes boom.
Main issue with this one is how squishy the allied transports are.
*insert VERY colorful language about Krenim Frigates here*
I have no problem with Peril over Pahvo. In fact I feel its superior over Dranuur because Dranuur has the chance of having some REALLY ANNOYING enemy groups come up. I mean... would you rather chance Terrans and Klingons or chance just about everything including Heralds, Voth, Vaadwaur...
Yea... but ISA gets stale after the 1 millionth run. Can do it in my sleep probably by now.
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> As far as I'm concerned if you feel that you can simply bail on a tfo because you judge others unworthy at the start or it's not your optimal time/reward match then you shouldn't be playing...I'd rather have some new player in starter gear at my side because at least they might try.
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> People shouldn't be playing on advanced when they are not even cutting it on normal. Maybe its cryptics fault for not given the token on normal but if i see people in my team have a ton of injuries and don't even have the courtesy to repair themselfs, yeah you can see me making a free spot for somebody who wants to play with guys like that. The sad part about it is i get the 30 minutes penalty, not that i care much with 50+ chars.
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> On ground somebody had 29 injuries i asked him why he doesn't go to see the doctor he said he didn't choose to play ground. We waited so before we started the mission until he left cause the 4 of us did refuse to play with this guy. I don't invest time and money to accommodate other random players, especially if they are to lazy to figure out how this game works. There is plenty of material out there, invest 30 minutes of reading and you most of what you need to know.
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> Which fun is more worth the random dudes fun who doesn't invest time in order to be able to play on advanced or the fun of a player who actually invested alot of time and research in order to get where he is. There is not good solution for this problem unless we go back to the good old days and have people get gear checked by the system in order to play on advanced.
I'm going to reply to your post but also cover another one replying to me above so bear with me.
I at no point excuse moochers, if a player is outright not trying or playing abive their level then they are just as at fault as anyone, and I certainly don't blame experienced players (I've been playing a few years on console and consider myself experienced but certainly not expert).
My rant if you will, was directed entirely at the fellow who admitted to joining random queues and just leaving if he didn't think it was efficient enough for his time or his estimation suggested they weren't good enough. Players like that are just selfish and useless and I'd rather play with a new player who would try then this kind of expert anytime.
I don't think it's right for players to be playing at levels they can't handle like advanced UNLESS they're at a point where they think they can handle it and are just stepping up to try it out...that I don't think is a bad thing.
So please don't think I'm laying blame or issues on expert players or forgiving players that aren't trying or are mooching. I am just trying to vent against egotistical players who believe themselves far above others and abandon missions because it or the players are beneath them.
Btw, it happened to me last night. Started a tfo, two players immediately bailed and the rest of us played through, got to the mid point and a third bailed so myself and a much lower leveled player stuck it out and finished it...with many lost objectives of course but by heck we did it.
Perhaps we need a mechanic that gives higher rewards to the rest of the team if someone bails? Split the total rewards by number of players who finish?
I agree with this. I don't see people who try as a bad thing. However people who just decide "you're not worth my effort" and leave... that is total BS.
I once had to try and coordinate a lower DPS group after someone decided to badmouth us for not measuring up to his expectations and bailing on us in Infected years ago. Guess what? Coordination actually made the difference and we were able to complete it without him. Sometimes teamwork can mitigate individual DPS values. Combined it was enough. Was rough but doable.
The problem though is that not enough people actually try to coordinate or communicate when things start going south.
That doesn't sound too bad at first glance. Normally everybody gets 60 marks, 2 players bail but the game still gives out the full 300, making 100 per.
I see one or two ways to exploit this at first glance as well, but maybe there are ways stopping it. This line of thought seems like it's worth examining.
The only time I would bail on a TFO is if I know for a fact it cannot be done, be it bug or we just don't have the firepower to do brute force it after some people already bailed.
In regards to fail conditions, you gotta do it in a way that cannot be trolled easily, like their first attempt back in Delta Rising. Too easy to fail a group on purpose. Been there, victimized by that. Got angry because of it.
You'd be surprised how often people TRIBBLE up ISA these days, more than ever before. Which is funny because this gets screwed up despite all the power creep in today's game. Even worse, guys that do know how to do damage that don't know how to do an ISA.
I've never held the general population in STO in high regard in terms of competence, but these days, it's sunk to depths I never thought possible, despite all the power creep.
Hehe, I remember having a similar reaction when my boss introduced the concept of “soft”-deadlines at work so I’m with you.
My idea here was motivated to end the AFK concept for a map by simply forcing a team to interact or it won’t conclude. In your ISA example we do have a very long 15 minutes or so overall mission timer. If you don’t remove the critters in this timeframe you wasted your time and unlike so many other maps you don’t get an auto reward. The result is nobody will invite you to ISA afk runs right?
Hard fail criteria would be the nanite spheres healing the generator before it is destroyed. In my experience such rather brief windows do not sit well with teams consisting of random players and are therefore better left for elite difficulty settings.
So in short my proposed concept of soft fails does not pose a problem for anybody but those who either want to start AFK parties or for teams that are so bad that they clearly should not have started an advanced match anyway.
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Easier: when you got a DPS machine that can solo or duo a queue, get fleetmates to sign up with you and bail, that way some will get way better rewards while the others can sit out their penalty during admiralty (or with toon swap didn't get a penalty in the first place).
At any rate, I've been around long enough to have seen some truly stupid statements about how to play missions. I think the dumbest ever was someone saying that the Borg enemies actually use the color you wear to determine aggro priority.
My character Tsin'xing
But but.. it provides a debuff doesn't it.. and it packs everything nicely together for our cannons..
Yeah, there is a significant and sadly growing group which still has to master basics of building and timing powers.
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> Gravity Kills is one that does kinda require more coordination and knowing what to focus on and what to ignore, and with the added fact you're fighting a black hole... I can see that being pretty rough in a PUG run. But Infected space? The only way for that one to go downhill is if either someone purposefully sabotaged it or you had an incredably low DPS group. Sounds like you ended up with the latter for Infected. Its rare, but it happens.
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> You'd be surprised how often people TRIBBLE up ISA these days, more than ever before. Which is funny because this gets screwed up despite all the power creep in today's game. Even worse, guys that do know how to do damage that don't know how to do an ISA.
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> Totally agree! I mean, I guess the stupidity is nothing new to us - but nonetheless, you'd have thought people would realise that dropping a 'power' that is designed to pull enemy ships toward/into it (Gravity Well) atop something that we're supposed to prevent enemy ships from getting anywhere near, is stupid.
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> But but.. it provides a debuff doesn't it.. and it packs everything nicely together for our cannons..
> Yeah, there is a significant and sadly growing group which still has to master basics of building and timing powers.
On console this is a bigger problem since most of our powers are actually set to auto execute on certain conditions...as soon as ready, x many seconds after start of a fight, if opponent is cruiser or larger etc. Most have some form of condition to auto execute since we don't have keybinds. So, players forget they have a GW set to go off, it ends it's cooldown timer and goes off against the target which happens to be beside the nanite etc.etc.
It's an easy mistake to make but can be costly.
From experience the ability of a lot of the player base to strategize and use basic common sense is found wanting. Your example of popping a Gravity Well in ISA is a perfect example.
Other examples
1. KSA it is more tactically better to attack the transformers the opposite side of the portal 1st rather than the ones closet to the portal. This allows the attacker to then support the defender when additional probes are spawned.
2. KSA letting a probe escape via the portal and then suddenly you have 3 players decide to defend against anymore escaping despite allowing more through no longer matters
3. Dyson Battlezone. Having 1 or more persons attacking a V-Rex and allowing the medics to steal the Omega Particles and thus failing that silo. I've turned up to a silo a little to late before and seen 5 players there allowing it to fail.
4. KGA getting to the room where you need to blow up the 6 shielded targets and 1 person decides to go into the room and is randomly shutting off shields whilst the team are engaged Borg NPC's.
5. Dyson Battlezone. The capture point where you need to stand within the circle. I've been there and had players stand just outside the circle which generates extra mobs but their presence doesn't add to the progress of the capture or stop the bombardment that comes down if only 1 player is there.
6. 100% certain in Dyson Battlezone players ignore the Silo Level meter as I often see running back to the transporter in City or Park players running towards a long dead V-Rex.
7. Hugging the Scimitar in KSA forcing it to cloak immediately after decloaking.
I'm sure there's more but can't think at the moment.
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.
For that reason I gravitate to the Artillery Points and the Omega Generator Points for kill counting Voths, the latter being the best.
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.'
I heard something once that Scimitars prioritized Sovereigns.
There used to be a "5 kilometer rule", where you stayed OUT 5 km from Donatra to prevent her from cloaking at all. Cryptic changed that so she cloaks regardless of your distance. So it is pretty much no longer an issue. She will cloak no matter where you are. On top of her or almost out of weapons range. Some days she's more cloak happy than others. But she is still vulnerable to a Megawell.