Positive or negative feedback is fine, and if y'all want to discuss the changes to the Advanced Beams WITHOUT flaming, trolling, making accusations/demands/threats, or being generally disruptive, that's fine. But if you're going to do all or any of that, then you will get moderated. Next warnings you can find in your inbox. Thanks.
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'Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays
The Miracle Worker Flight Deck Cruiser comes standard with six Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays and unlocks the purchase of additional Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays in the Dilithium store. These all new Beam Arrays have the unique visuals seen in the Season 2 finale of Star Trek: Discovery, and come with a special new proc that increases the damage of your Advanced Phaser Beam arrays. This buff scales in effectiveness with the number of Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays you have equipped.'
Yep. They have never marketed a ship implying it was just a space Barbie. The Disco Enterprise's stats aside, its selling points included -
Console – Universal – Reinforcing Squadrons,Starship Trait – Polarized Lattice-Optimized Tritanium Armor,Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays,Hangar Pets: Tactical Flyers
But they have always marketed ships (and everything else for that matter) with: "The above stats and systems are subject to change."
'Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays
The Miracle Worker Flight Deck Cruiser comes standard with six Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays and unlocks the purchase of additional Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays in the Dilithium store. These all new Beam Arrays have the unique visuals seen in the Season 2 finale of Star Trek: Discovery, and come with a special new proc that increases the damage of your Advanced Phaser Beam arrays. This buff scales in effectiveness with the number of Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays you have equipped.'
Yep. They have never marketed a ship implying it was just a space Barbie. The Disco Enterprise's stats aside, its selling points included -
Console – Universal – Reinforcing Squadrons,Starship Trait – Polarized Lattice-Optimized Tritanium Armor,Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays,Hangar Pets: Tactical Flyers
But they have always marketed ships (and everything else for that matter) with: "The above stats and systems are subject to change."
Pre release of the ships yes. but the ship stats stayed the same, how the equipment functioned got changed. Changing the stat of the weapon would be the level of bonus\effect instead of the type of bonus\effect. A big issue with these arrays additionally is now they also do not work with any Beam Overload. So, these phasers -as of right now- are duds to use.
editing. I thought of a better way to explain after I posted.
If an Advanced Phaser array is defined as a type of phaser array that gives bones damage and its stat is scaling damage per number of arrays up to max equip of 6. Changing the arrays to a type of phaser array that gives bonus critical severity and its stat is scaling severity per number up arrays up to max equip of 6 is actually redefining the weapon instead of changing its stats. Much like a Fleet Spire Tactical Vulnerability Exploiter by definition is a console that gives bonus critical severity and listed modifier damage with their stats being what percentages of benefits they apply vs. A Fleet Spire Tactical Vulnerability Locator by definition is a console that gives bonus critical chance and listed modifier damage with their stats being what percentages of benefits they apply. If a Vulnerability Exploiter suddenly gave bonus critical chance instead of critical severity then the definitions of the item types changed.
Did it used to be automatic 10% damage stacking to 60%, or was it 5% chance of that? The new one is 5% chance of 10% critical stacking to 60%.
Without an Upgrade Weekend and their intimations that they were going to look at them and make changes, I immediately stored them on another ship. I'll look to see about upgrading and using after the next Upgrade Weekend later in the month.
Values are the same. It was a 5% chance of a DIRECT buff. Now its 5% chance for that buff to apply ONLY during a critical score hit. Thus massive nerfing the beams to their 10%-30% of their former effectiveness. This hits really hard the nerf intended targets, the low DPS average peeps. Most struggle to get barely 10-15% crit chance, while DPSers may get 30% crit chance or more. This nerf I would say it even punish players not only by their gameplay choice, but also by their ship, and even race and career/profession choices. Like I have the beams on a D7 non tac orion, so pure KDF. Now lets say someone is using them on a Romulan tactical captain using a 5 tac console ship. This will double the crit rate thus double the effectiveness of the beams on that toon...
Did it used to be automatic 10% damage stacking to 60%, or was it 5% chance of that? The new one is 5% chance of 10% critical stacking to 60%.
Without an Upgrade Weekend and their intimations that they were going to look at them and make changes, I immediately stored them on another ship. I'll look to see about upgrading and using after the next Upgrade Weekend later in the month.
Values are the same. It was a 5% chance of a DIRECT buff. Now its 5% chance for that buff to apply ONLY during a critical score hit. Thus massive nerfing the beams to their 10%-30% of their former effectiveness. This hits really hard the nerf intended targets, the low DPS average peeps. Most struggle to get barely 10-15% crit chance, while DPSers may get 30% crit chance or more. This nerf I would say it even punish players not only by their gameplay choice, but also by their ship, and even race and career/profession choices. Like I have the beams on a D7 non tac orion, so pure KDF. Now lets say someone is using them on a Romulan tactical captain using a 5 tac console ship. This will double the crit rate thus double the effectiveness of the beams on that toon...
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.
Jette, thanks for the changes to Beam Overload, now finaly is worth to have it sloted!, feels like a beam "rapid fire" (about the DMG), it's very satisfing using it and do some damage!
Honestly they should start posting on the news portion of Arc a list of bullet points of what was discussed during the livestreams. I can guarantee you far more people read those news posts than watch the livestreams or read the forums since the news tab is easier to access than either of those two. It would help clear up any confusion like this(though I agree the nerf to the beams is rather crummy, beams need all the love they can get not all the hate you can give them devs) and would lead to better communication in general. Or at the very least like link the livestream to the news page.
In August/September they usually have their yearly giveaways.
'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.'
In August/September they usually have their yearly giveaways.
The only reason they had a giveaway in September 2017 was because of the 'Star Trek: Discovery' premiere.
They usually do giveaways if:
- There's some sort of Star Trek media event (TV/Steaming series launch; new film opening; TV series experiencing a 'milestone date: Ex. "TNG premiered 30 years ago today..." ).
- Leading up to a new STO Expansion launch or 'special ship/item' being added to the game.
- STO launch Anniversary (either the actual game launch date/the date STO F2P launched.)
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 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..."
There were other Ship Giveaways that I wasn't eligible to partake in.
'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.'
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Pre release of the ships yes. but the ship stats stayed the same, how the equipment functioned got changed. Changing the stat of the weapon would be the level of bonus\effect instead of the type of bonus\effect. A big issue with these arrays additionally is now they also do not work with any Beam Overload. So, these phasers -as of right now- are duds to use.
editing. I thought of a better way to explain after I posted.
If an Advanced Phaser array is defined as a type of phaser array that gives bones damage and its stat is scaling damage per number of arrays up to max equip of 6. Changing the arrays to a type of phaser array that gives bonus critical severity and its stat is scaling severity per number up arrays up to max equip of 6 is actually redefining the weapon instead of changing its stats. Much like a Fleet Spire Tactical Vulnerability Exploiter by definition is a console that gives bonus critical severity and listed modifier damage with their stats being what percentages of benefits they apply vs. A Fleet Spire Tactical Vulnerability Locator by definition is a console that gives bonus critical chance and listed modifier damage with their stats being what percentages of benefits they apply. If a Vulnerability Exploiter suddenly gave bonus critical chance instead of critical severity then the definitions of the item types changed.
Values are the same. It was a 5% chance of a DIRECT buff. Now its 5% chance for that buff to apply ONLY during a critical score hit. Thus massive nerfing the beams to their 10%-30% of their former effectiveness. This hits really hard the nerf intended targets, the low DPS average peeps. Most struggle to get barely 10-15% crit chance, while DPSers may get 30% crit chance or more. This nerf I would say it even punish players not only by their gameplay choice, but also by their ship, and even race and career/profession choices. Like I have the beams on a D7 non tac orion, so pure KDF. Now lets say someone is using them on a Romulan tactical captain using a 5 tac console ship. This will double the crit rate thus double the effectiveness of the beams on that toon...
And ROMs can use all SRO boffs
Jette, thanks for the changes to Beam Overload, now finaly is worth to have it sloted!, feels like a beam "rapid fire" (about the DMG), it's very satisfing using it and do some damage!
if you give the item for free or a very rare token then this is ok
if you sell it on the zen store then there is no need for "exclusivity" period...
add to this Pre-Order and Retail Exclusives ... too plz
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.'
The only reason they had a giveaway in September 2017 was because of the 'Star Trek: Discovery' premiere.
They usually do giveaways if:
- There's some sort of Star Trek media event (TV/Steaming series launch; new film opening; TV series experiencing a 'milestone date: Ex. "TNG premiered 30 years ago today..." ).
- Leading up to a new STO Expansion launch or 'special ship/item' being added to the game.
- STO launch Anniversary (either the actual game launch date/the date STO F2P launched.)
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..."
8/30-8/31/2014 Bridges, Uniforms
8/16/2015 Spec Point Bundles
9/8/2016 23rd Century Bundle
9/28/2017 TNG Stuff
There were other Ship Giveaways that I wasn't eligible to partake in.
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.'