Nerf to Advanced Beams from Disco Enterprise compensation!

lexusk19 · August 2019

The devs have said they are going to nerf the advanced beams on the Disco Enterprise. The same beams they advertised as being so good and having this great new proc where the more you had, the better they were. Now after they have peoples money, they are nerfing the beams...

I know they dont even care, but this is BS. I invested a lot of money into this ship and then again into the beams, now it sounds like its being destroyed and my money stolen. All because SOME people apparently got high numbers out of them. Never mind the people who have millions of DPS with other weapons, lets nerf the beams we bragged about to sell more ships!

Seriously not cool Cryptic... And I will for sure be thinking twice before opening my wallet again to you.

And for the record, I am not one of those people with millions of DPS. These beams bumped me from 40k to about 45 ~ 50k range... I have a friend that does 1million on another ship... This decision makes no sense...

Edit: Compensate us for our investment or reverse your decision to nerf these beams!

srbin666 · August 2019

i hope the sh**st*rm will get high enough to reverse it but they will sit it out like the sh**st*rm previously when they announced it to be R&D lotto box reward ... a sad day for the community

lexusk19 · August 2019

100% agree, but a mod will redact your post for swearing. I would edit it quick. :S

thevampinator · August 2019

Its there game, they do what they want with it. I'm personally against the r&d gamble. The Lockbox is one thing. But the R&d type is far worse is very exploitative and I don't know the chances but I imagine they are the same as the lockbox making this very exploited. I'd rather have the ships set into the zen store for three hundred dollars if that is what it has to take to satisfy cbs then the method they have been doing. Even if you would like to have the ship. Unless you buy it with ec its just not worth it. The ec price is not even worth it. They did explain why they were doing it in the livestream or podcast or whatever its called. They wanted to keep the weapons in a more balanced state is the impression i'm getting from the live stream. One thing they did talk about buffing the other weapons. So anything can happen. But if your just getting the ship for the weapons well. Really a waste of money or in game currency. Many ways to do dps in the game.

szim · August 2019

It happened numerous times before, and it will happen again. I've gotten used to "featured overpoweredness".

And no, there will be no compensation of any kind.

lexusk19 · August 2019

reyan01 wrote: »

thevampinator wrote: »

Its there game, they do what they want with it. I'm personally against the r&d gamble. The Lockbox is one thing. But the R&d is very exploitative and I don't know the chances but I imagine they are the same as the lockbox making this very exploited. I'd rather have the ships set into the zen store for three hundred dollars if that is what it has to take to satisfy cbs then the method they have been doing. Even if you would like to have the ship. Unless you buy it with ec its just not worth it. The ec price is not even worth it. They did explain why they were doing it in the livestream or podcast or whatever its called. They wanted many choices and they did talk about buffing the other weapons. So anything can happen. BUt if your just getting the ship for the weapons well. Really a waste of money or in game currency. Many ways to do dps in the game.

That isn't really the point. Like it or not, the weapons were 'A' selling point of the ship.

The fact that they're nerfing them is only half the story - its also the fact that they waited until AFTER everyone threw money at them/the promotion ended to do this.

Exactly, thats the main thing thats pissing me off. Im not sad I got the ship, im pissed they are nerfing one of the selling points after they have gotten all the money they can...

seaofsorrows · August 2019

1. Don't blame high DPS'ers for this one.

crypticspartan#0627 wrote: »

I want to clarify this and expand on it because this is an important subject - it's the opposite of what you described here. Before release, we specifically talked about high-end players and looked at the data on how these beams performed relative to other players in high-end setups. The data we have showed and continues to show that these weapons are at least in the range of reasonable on the high end, especially compared to Spiral Waves. We specifically looked at that group of players because things that overperform tend to do so very obviously on high-end characters, and may not be nearly as obvious on lower end characters.

These beams were an exception to that; they currently look to be relatively fine for high-end players, and more problematic the less dps optimized your build is. Since many players at the high end aren't using beams right now (and the very high end is not, by definition, the majority of our players), the overwhelming majority of the feedback on these beams was coming from players not running optimized DPS setups, and for whom the current state of these beams is problematic.

The change made was targeted at making the relative effectiveness of these beams not scale so wildly with where you are on the scale from a new character to a fully optimized Borg killer. As the images showed, the intent isn't to decrease their effectiveness at the high end, where we don't believe there was a significant problem. The intent of this change is to address the fact that they had unhealthy amounts of effectiveness on less dps focused builds, while ensuring they stay useful to higher-end characters.

We read a lot of community math and feedback before making this change, because we know these weapons represented a significant investment for many players, one that needs to remain valuable. That needs to be balanced against the needs to allow players who don't use these weapons, either because can't make that investment, they don't want to, they like the looks of a different weapon, or whatever other reason, to remain relevant in the gameplay space. Looking at this on a whole, we believe this change does a good job of balancing both factors, and will continue to listen to feedback on them.

This change is being targeted more at lower end builds.

Still, I don't like the change overall, those lower end players are actually the ones that needed help the most. These things will probably still parse better then 'normal' beams for me.. but even in high end builds I expect them to take a sizable hit.

2. You're not going to get compensated, I'm sorry. This has been the trend with Cryptic for a long time now and we all expected it. Their formula has been and always well be.. Sell Power, Get Money, Nerf Power, Sell More Power.. repeat. They have your money, they don't care what you think. This is why you never spend money for power. I personally got the ship for aesthetics and the pets, I'm still not happy, but I'm not surprised.

As usual, people cried about the beams.. most of them were people that didn't even have the ship and Cryptic reacted. While I don't like the change.. I'll do what I always do.. adapt and move on. They weren't providing as much benefit to me as they were to some, so I won't lose as much as others. Still, it's an overall negative change and one I don't think they needed to make.

Cryptic has a habit of 'overnerfing' things, which is why we're in this position with beams to begin with. We'll see how these beams parse after the update. For now, I am reserving judgement.

asardetemplari · August 2019

(Trolling comments moderated out. - BMR)

salazarraze · August 2019

thevampinator wrote: »

Its there game, they do what they want with it. I'm personally against the r&d gamble. The Lockbox is one thing. But the R&d type is far worse is very exploitative and I don't know the chances but I imagine they are the same as the lockbox making this very exploited.

Lockbox is supposedly about 0.5% to win per box while R&D is about 1.0% (double the chance) to win per pack.

thevampinator wrote: »

I'd rather have the ships set into the zen store for three hundred dollars if that is what it has to take to satisfy cbs then the method they have been doing.

If the ship were $300 straight up, they'd make less money. Not enough players would buy it to make up the difference in lost revenue from microtransactions. So that won't happen.

thevampinator wrote: »

They did explain why they were doing it in the livestream or podcast or whatever its called. They wanted to keep the weapons in a more balanced state is the impression i'm getting from the live stream. One thing they did talk about buffing the other weapons. So anything can happen. But if your just getting the ship for the weapons well. Really a waste of money or in game currency. Many ways to do dps in the game.

100% agreed with the last part here. You can easily do insane damage numbers with crafted weapons, fleet weapons, rep weapons and even mission weapons. There's tons of ways to do damage in STO.

warpangel · August 2019

reyan01 wrote: »

But as per usual Cryptic listen to the wrong people.

They have a habit of doing that. We can't have nice things, because jealous people will whine about it.

Oh well, the appearance is the most interesting thing about any weapon anyway. Game's too easy to care.

thevampinator · August 2019

salazarraze wrote: »

thevampinator wrote: »

Its there game, they do what they want with it. I'm personally against the r&d gamble. The Lockbox is one thing. But the R&d type is far worse is very exploitative and I don't know the chances but I imagine they are the same as the lockbox making this very exploited.

Lockbox is supposedly about 0.5% to win per box while R&D is about 1.0% (double the chance) to win per pack.

thevampinator wrote: »

I'd rather have the ships set into the zen store for three hundred dollars if that is what it has to take to satisfy cbs then the method they have been doing.

If the ship were $300 straight up, they'd make less money. Not enough players would buy it to make up the difference in lost revenue from microtransactions. So that won't happen.

thevampinator wrote: »

They did explain why they were doing it in the livestream or podcast or whatever its called. They wanted to keep the weapons in a more balanced state is the impression i'm getting from the live stream. One thing they did talk about buffing the other weapons. So anything can happen. But if your just getting the ship for the weapons well. Really a waste of money or in game currency. Many ways to do dps in the game.

100% agreed with the last part here. You can easily do insane damage numbers with crafted weapons, fleet weapons, rep weapons and even mission weapons. There's tons of ways to do damage in STO.

Well lootbox odds might actually be found out. I really would like to know offically their chances. Yeah I imagine its .5 or 1.0 odds of getting a jackbox ship. But Many companies sony, microsoft might actually require gaming companies disclose of these odds along with wizards of the coast another entity that cryptic personally works with. So I imagine cryptic/ perfect world if they have been managing to hide the true odds of getting these things. Would be forced to reveal or made available this information sometime in the future. With Neverwinter at least. If they can get away with not doing that with sto then what neverwinter will show will pretty much give a official conformation about the odds for sto too.
I do hope that this will be required for existing games on their platforms. As I think the player base has the right to know these odds. I would like to see them disclose the odds for Sto. I don't think they will like it. But I do think it will be a big win and hopefully improve chances for the player base in the future.
I actually think its a win for the player base and the step in the right direction.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/7/20758626/nintendo-microsoft-sony-loot-box-drop-rate-disclosure-video-games

lordmerc22 · August 2019

To be honest it feels a lot like Bait and Switch

Made them really good at start as one of the calling cards to drive sales for the already super-priced ships
and changed them after sales were done

thevampinator · August 2019

It could have been a mistake they made when they did the weapons. But it seems they want to keep weapons more in line with each other. So people won't just go to just one type of weapon for everything.

seaofsorrows · August 2019

thevampinator wrote: »

It could have been a mistake they made when they did the weapons. But it seems they want to keep weapons more in line with each other. So people won't just go to just one type of weapon for everything.

If you say too much, it will get moderated, so I'll try and say this within the rules..

I find it.. odd.. that the ship was released over 2 months ago and wasn't 'adjusted' until not only was the promo over with.. but after it was even re-run for an additional weekend for more sales.

I can't say what I really think of this, I'll just say the timing of this change is.. not ideal, but pretty much exactly what I expected.

thevampinator · August 2019

seaofsorrows wrote: »

thevampinator wrote: »

It could have been a mistake they made when they did the weapons. But it seems they want to keep weapons more in line with each other. So people won't just go to just one type of weapon for everything.

If you say too much, it will get moderated, so I'll try and say this within the rules..

I find it.. odd.. that the ship was released over 2 months ago and wasn't 'adjusted' until not only was the promo over with.. but after it was even re-run for an additional weekend for more sales.

I can't say what I really think of this, I'll just say the timing of this change is.. not ideal, but pretty much exactly what I expected.

They did explain it in the live stream. Its do to the scaling of the weapons if you have a less effective dps build. The weapons can basically make you a lot better maybe top teir? Also changes do take time. They have so much to do like content and stuff. They don't have as big of a team to do things with. I kinda liked the devs that took part in the live stream. I found the holo hair thing kinda interesting and I'm sure it was amusing to people. Should have allowed the other guy/gal wear the green shirt or whatever. Show off romulan/irish pride. *Shrugs* Also someone forgot the put the windows on the voth ships. So the one person is working on that or had to work on it after the live stream but those might not be in the patch this week. Possibly next week or something.

leemwatson · August 2019

seaofsorrows wrote: »

thevampinator wrote: »

It could have been a mistake they made when they did the weapons. But it seems they want to keep weapons more in line with each other. So people won't just go to just one type of weapon for everything.

If you say too much, it will get moderated, so I'll try and say this within the rules..

I find it.. odd.. that the ship was released over 2 months ago and wasn't 'adjusted' until not only was the promo over with.. but after it was even re-run for an additional weekend for more sales.

I can't say what I really think of this, I'll just say the timing of this change is.. not ideal, but pretty much exactly what I expected.

To be frankly honest, they have altered stats on other weapons after the fact on many occasions, and considering they've collected the data and acted on that, I'd say this is in line with the norm. OP likes a rant, so I'm going to say this is an over-reaction, especially with the demand for compensation.

srbin666 · August 2019

how about spiral weapons overperforming since release and nothink ? .......

thevampinator · August 2019

One of the devs I think one in the live stream had this to say in another thread I quoted it and will post it right here.

crypticspartan#0627 wrote: »

I have a few comments to add onto some sections:

Sci ship's trait is supposed to exploit cloak, which is a thing for Voth too, but since some people can't use cloak they also tied trait to EtS, since shields are also a Voth thing.

In general, with starship traits, we tend to have a thematic thing traits activate from, and them a more generally available one. This is why you see traits that activate on "Any Command Bridge Officer Ability or Auxiliary to Structural" - some ships lack command seating, but no T6 ship can't use a Lieutenant rank Engineering ability.

(I wish Jette would've come to stream in that green shirt. That would've looked fun.)

It was really funny, but ultimately it's not great production value, and messing with Mike's hair was fun enough for us. Certainly a thing to remember for next time!

They're nerfing the advanced beams because great players were able to buff them TOO much. It'll be done by shuffling buff groups.

I want to clarify this and expand on it because this is an important subject - it's the opposite of what you described here. Before release, we specifically talked about high-end players and looked at the data on how these beams performed relative to other players in high-end setups. The data we have showed and continues to show that these weapons are at least in the range of reasonable on the high end, especially compared to Spiral Waves. We specifically looked at that group of players because things that overperform tend to do so very obviously on high-end characters, and may not be nearly as obvious on lower end characters.

These beams were an exception to that; they currently look to be relatively fine for high-end players, and more problematic the less dps optimized your build is. Since many players at the high end aren't using beams right now (and the very high end is not, by definition, the majority of our players), the overwhelming majority of the feedback on these beams was coming from players not running optimized DPS setups, and for whom the current state of these beams is problematic.

The change made was targeted at making the relative effectiveness of these beams not scale so wildly with where you are on the scale from a new character to a fully optimized Borg killer. As the images showed, the intent isn't to decrease their effectiveness at the high end, where we don't believe there was a significant problem. The intent of this change is to address the fact that they had unhealthy amounts of effectiveness on less dps focused builds, while ensuring they stay useful to higher-end characters.

We read a lot of community math and feedback before making this change, because we know these weapons represented a significant investment for many players, one that needs to remain valuable. That needs to be balanced against the needs to allow players who don't use these weapons, either because can't make that investment, they don't want to, they like the looks of a different weapon, or whatever other reason, to remain relevant in the gameplay space. Looking at this on a whole, we believe this change does a good job of balancing both factors, and will continue to listen to feedback on them.

They're buffing beams in general and beam overload specifically. Instead if one huge beam it'll be more like surgical strikes: less RoF, bigger flat damage (2 times less RoF, but 3~4 times more damage).

Tomorrow's patch just buffs beam overload. We're keeping an eye on beams, like we keep an eye on other things, so as I said on the stream, feel free to give feedback on Beam Overload, Fire at Will, Torpedoes, science vessels, carriers, whatever else you have feedback on.

mosul33 · August 2019

This is just disgusting. Nerfing the beams because god forbid the lowly non-dps players actually found them usefull. But if the change doesnt hurt the allmighty dpsers, who cares... Nerf all the way! Its even hypocritical, since the starship trait from the D7, wich can be aquired by feds for as low as 80-100m, is far more powerfull then the beams. I've seen it even doubling a weapon damage. While the beams were giving around 20% actual increase... Totally disgusting...

foxman00 · August 2019

thevampinator wrote: »

One of the devs I think one in the live stream had this to say in another thread I quoted it and will post it right here.

crypticspartan#0627 wrote: »

I have a few comments to add onto some sections:

Sci ship's trait is supposed to exploit cloak, which is a thing for Voth too, but since some people can't use cloak they also tied trait to EtS, since shields are also a Voth thing.

In general, with starship traits, we tend to have a thematic thing traits activate from, and them a more generally available one. This is why you see traits that activate on "Any Command Bridge Officer Ability or Auxiliary to Structural" - some ships lack command seating, but no T6 ship can't use a Lieutenant rank Engineering ability.

(I wish Jette would've come to stream in that green shirt. That would've looked fun.)

It was really funny, but ultimately it's not great production value, and messing with Mike's hair was fun enough for us. Certainly a thing to remember for next time!

They're nerfing the advanced beams because great players were able to buff them TOO much. It'll be done by shuffling buff groups.

I want to clarify this and expand on it because this is an important subject - it's the opposite of what you described here. Before release, we specifically talked about high-end players and looked at the data on how these beams performed relative to other players in high-end setups. The data we have showed and continues to show that these weapons are at least in the range of reasonable on the high end, especially compared to Spiral Waves. We specifically looked at that group of players because things that overperform tend to do so very obviously on high-end characters, and may not be nearly as obvious on lower end characters.

These beams were an exception to that; they currently look to be relatively fine for high-end players, and more problematic the less dps optimized your build is. Since many players at the high end aren't using beams right now (and the very high end is not, by definition, the majority of our players), the overwhelming majority of the feedback on these beams was coming from players not running optimized DPS setups, and for whom the current state of these beams is problematic.

The change made was targeted at making the relative effectiveness of these beams not scale so wildly with where you are on the scale from a new character to a fully optimized Borg killer. As the images showed, the intent isn't to decrease their effectiveness at the high end, where we don't believe there was a significant problem. The intent of this change is to address the fact that they had unhealthy amounts of effectiveness on less dps focused builds, while ensuring they stay useful to higher-end characters.

We read a lot of community math and feedback before making this change, because we know these weapons represented a significant investment for many players, one that needs to remain valuable. That needs to be balanced against the needs to allow players who don't use these weapons, either because can't make that investment, they don't want to, they like the looks of a different weapon, or whatever other reason, to remain relevant in the gameplay space. Looking at this on a whole, we believe this change does a good job of balancing both factors, and will continue to listen to feedback on them.

They're buffing beams in general and beam overload specifically. Instead if one huge beam it'll be more like surgical strikes: less RoF, bigger flat damage (2 times less RoF, but 3~4 times more damage).

Tomorrow's patch just buffs beam overload. We're keeping an eye on beams, like we keep an eye on other things, so as I said on the stream, feel free to give feedback on Beam Overload, Fire at Will, Torpedoes, science vessels, carriers, whatever else you have feedback on.

Its very interesting how these beams math wise were outside the norm for identifying problem or OP devices, weapons or consoles. I would love to see the math behind it as I am genuinely curious.

Also, I do have the ship and the beams myself and I am perfectly happy with these change to them. When i first saw the "proc" and how it stacked I immeditately thought it was far too much of a boost. Looks like myt instincts were right on the money. Though, while i suspected a reduction i thought the bonus damage calculation and addition would be reduced. Did not expect a change to what their proc or boost was.

Though, all in all I got the ship for her sheer looks, beautiful model and decent BOFF layout and console stats. The pets and beams are still a nice little addition on top of a very nice cake. Though I am more interested in these Beam Overload changes, my curiosity is indeed high to see how this will change

lasonio · August 2019

(Flaming, trolling comments moderated out. - BMR)

seaofsorrows · August 2019

leemwatson wrote: »

seaofsorrows wrote: »

thevampinator wrote: »

It could have been a mistake they made when they did the weapons. But it seems they want to keep weapons more in line with each other. So people won't just go to just one type of weapon for everything.

If you say too much, it will get moderated, so I'll try and say this within the rules..

I find it.. odd.. that the ship was released over 2 months ago and wasn't 'adjusted' until not only was the promo over with.. but after it was even re-run for an additional weekend for more sales.

I can't say what I really think of this, I'll just say the timing of this change is.. not ideal, but pretty much exactly what I expected.

To be frankly honest, they have altered stats on other weapons after the fact on many occasions, and considering they've collected the data and acted on that, I'd say this is in line with the norm. OP likes a rant, so I'm going to say this is an over-reaction, especially with the demand for compensation.

Yes, it's in line with their normal practice. People can read into that what they wish, I already know what I think of it.

I agree that compensation will not be offered, it never has been in the past. It's not like they're going to make the beams awful, they'll still be among the best options for beam weapons, but they'll be on par with other high end beams and probably noticeably weaker then they are now.

darkbladejk · August 2019

This has gone on long enough and turned into nothing but dev bashing. It was said well in advance they were looking at possibly changing the ships so warning was given in advance. folks aren't obligated to like it but we're not going to go down this route. /thread

Nerf to Advanced Beams from Disco Enterprise compensation!

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