if you can solo the Vrex bump your dificulty to elite. if you can do it on elite, then make the thread about increasing the difficulty on THAT level.
Yeah... you do realize battlezones don't work like that, right!? It's One Level to Rule Them All, akin to Normal (and at lv 50, for most of these zones).
Soloing the V-Rex often means you neglected the Voth at the Silo.
'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.'
if you can solo the Vrex bump your dificulty to elite. if you can do it on elite, then make the thread about increasing the difficulty on THAT level.
Yeah... you do realize battlezones don't work like that, right!? It's One Level to Rule Them All, akin to Normal (and at lv 50, for most of these zones).
Oh sweetie...you missed the point entirely. The problem isn't that the low end players in this game has no skills and can't figure out and take out things even a 10 year old could do. The problem is the filthy DPSers. How dare they be good at this game. I have seen people copy builds that the "DPSers" can do 200k DPS in ISA in and fail to do even 1% of that. You know what that means? The skill gap in this game isn't a matter of the gear or system mastery...it's actually in the SKILL of the players in this game. Yeah that is something the anti-DPSers don't want to admit. There are people in this game who can't muster even 1% of the skill of somebody in the high side of a DPSer...much less the TOP players. Hell, I have had people copy my build and fail to do even 5% of what I do...and I SUCK at playing games. You can't balance a game when you have factors of more than 10000% between your good and bad players and god knows what between the best and worst. And that isn't even talking gear. Just shear ability to push buttons correctly. Seriously, as much as I think we should have harder bosses...this is why we can't. When you have players who can't even have 5% the skill ability of somebody who needed to pick easy mode for a TUTORIAL of a game...yeah. In fact the average player in this game in the ships I like to fly will do fractions of what I do. Hell above average players in this game will do less than what I do. That means a vast majority of players in this game have gaming skills so bad, that they will struggle with TUTORIALS in other game. And try to balance that with somebody like Sea or Peter or Reyan...or heaven forbid Fel or Hellspawny.
O, I missed something alright: how your post relates to my comment. I replied to the person saying those 'filthy DPSers' (your words) should try the Voth battlezone on Elite first, before complaining. And battlezones simply don't come in difficulty gradations, is all.
Battlezones with different difficulty levels was actually not a horribad idea, except that the player base has thinned out already so much, that, at some hours of the day, it's hard to find even a single fully populated zone instance to begin with.
That means a vast majority of players in this game have gaming skills so bad, that they will struggle with TUTORIALS in other game. And try to balance that with somebody like Sea or Peter or Reyan...or heaven forbid Fel or Hellspawny.
N.B. Yeah, reyan01 is an Elite player now. Funny how that works, for years he was all about support in a Science vessel, while I was still chasing the old DPS meta; and now, as a noteworthy role-reversal, I love flying my Iktomi, doing Science, and he has become an ueberplayer. Good on him, of course. But these days, I've decided to just have fun making creative (but still good) builds, but aren't necessarily meant to squeeze every bit of DPS out of the ship's potential (or mine, for that matter).
I haven't read this whole thread, but, I just wanted to say that I do not want to see all bosses get tougher. Maybe some things need to be tweaked, or maybe a better way for an individual to select difficulty setting.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,577Community Moderator
N.B. Yeah, reyan01 is an Elite player now. Funny how that works, for years he was all about support in a Science vessel, while I was still chasing the old DPS meta; and now, as a noteworthy role-reversal, I love flying my Iktomi, doing Science, and he has become an ueberplayer. Good on him, of course. But these days, I've decided to just have fun making creative (but still good) builds, but aren't necessarily meant to squeeze every bit of DPS out of the ship's potential (or mine, for that matter).
Yea... the biggest fun in game beside Space Barbie is coming up with creative, yet effective builds that aren't cookie cutter meta. I came up with a pretty fun Gas Master build with almost every gas venting ability I could get my hands on. Not gonna win any DPS races, but it was entertaining.
That means a vast majority of players in this game have gaming skills so bad, that they will struggle with TUTORIALS in other game. And try to balance that with somebody like Sea or Peter or Reyan...or heaven forbid Fel or Hellspawny.
N.B. Yeah, reyan01 is an Elite player now. Funny how that works, for years he was all about support in a Science vessel, while I was still chasing the old DPS meta; and now, as a noteworthy role-reversal, I love flying my Iktomi, doing Science, and he has become an ueberplayer. Good on him, of course. But these days, I've decided to just have fun making creative (but still good) builds, but aren't necessarily meant to squeeze every bit of DPS out of the ship's potential (or mine, for that matter).
So reyan has joined the dark side huh?
I guess I'm going to need more cookies to keep up the battle against filthy DPS'ers!
That means a vast majority of players in this game have gaming skills so bad, that they will struggle with TUTORIALS in other game. And try to balance that with somebody like Sea or Peter or Reyan...or heaven forbid Fel or Hellspawny.
N.B. Yeah, reyan01 is an Elite player now. Funny how that works, for years he was all about support in a Science vessel, while I was still chasing the old DPS meta; and now, as a noteworthy role-reversal, I love flying my Iktomi, doing Science, and he has become an ueberplayer. Good on him, of course. But these days, I've decided to just have fun making creative (but still good) builds, but aren't necessarily meant to squeeze every bit of DPS out of the ship's potential (or mine, for that matter).
So reyan has joined the dark side huh?
I guess I'm going to need more cookies to keep up the battle against filthy DPS'ers!
We all know the sith are the good guys and the jedi are evil. And the dark side has cookies too...and we have dental too to cover the cavities. See, we care on the dark side.
Oh dear...
(No, don't add leader there )
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,577Community Moderator
Not going to say much because this is one of those conversations where I risk getting branded as an 'eliteist,' but basically.. what Napalm and others have said is true. You can't buff anything outside of Elite content because the skill differential in this game is just too massive. As it is, there are people that already heavily struggle with things at the current level, a buff to enemies would put the game out of reach for them.
My suggestion to the OP would be start building for Elites and find yourself a group to fly with. That's where most people go when they want more of a challenge, and outside of that we play STO for the casual fun and to enjoy the Star Trek Universe. The standard has been established, and frankly, it's too late to try and turn this game into anything that even remotely resembles a challenge. That ship sailed years ago.
And yes.. the Sith are obviously the good guys.. if you have a chance to join the dark side, you take it every time, always.
could you make all the bosses more difficult to destroy/kill. I mean the v-rex, voth citadel, bio-engineering dino, voth commander, vaadwaur commander, borg elite-tactical, borg queen, borg queen's ship etc.
none of these bosses sould be destroyed/killed by 1 player. The v-rex is one of the worst, some players are able to kill it in a couple of seconds; these players are maybe happy, but there is no fun to run for nothing. same thing for the voth citadel.
I'm myself able to kill most of them alone, and it is not funny at all; and i'm not a ground player.
It is really fascinating that in this game one has to play, grind (almost work) hard to be allowed to encounter a challenge.
In ISA the past few years one had to be almost as good as the rest of your team in sum to feel some pressure (if you do not carry 3-4 others there the map is easy as poo) and now with the elite mode we get something which is not just twice but rather ten times as tough.
Yea, it is quite a journey getting from advanced to elite now but it’s worth it. When occasionally failing Elite maps I often feel like the DEVs pushed it a bit too far or we could use some in between setting. Then I notice the pool of available players is just not there to support such a thing in STO (almost nobody plays anymore).
What I try to tell you is you don’t need the DEVs to change the game for you. You can to do it yourself. Either grind the poo out of the game and get yourself elite ready or learn to carry pugs through advanced and laugh at them in forums when they say ISA is too easy. Yea, it is because you played the map for them then. You had fun, you had the challenge. True, you might have had it all at their expense but nothing stops them from doing the same so all is fair in love and pugs...
Not going to say much because this is one of those conversations where I risk getting branded as an 'eliteist,' but basically.. what Napalm and others have said is true. You can't buff anything outside of Elite content because the skill differential in this game is just too massive. As it is, there are people that already heavily struggle with things at the current level, a buff to enemies would put the game out of reach for them.
My suggestion to the OP would be start building for Elites and find yourself a group to fly with. That's where most people go when they want more of a challenge, and outside of that we play STO for the casual fun and to enjoy the Star Trek Universe. The standard has been established, and frankly, it's too late to try and turn this game into anything that even remotely resembles a challenge. That ship sailed years ago.
And yes.. the Sith are obviously the good guys.. if you have a chance to join the dark side, you take it every time, always.
Everyone knows that.
Elitist!
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
if you can solo the Vrex bump your dificulty to elite. if you can do it on elite, then make the thread about increasing the difficulty on THAT level.
Yeah... you do realize battlezones don't work like that, right!? It's One Level to Rule Them All, akin to Normal (and at lv 50, for most of these zones).
Oh sweetie...you missed the point entirely. The problem isn't that the low end players in this game has no skills and can't figure out and take out things even a 10 year old could do. The problem is the filthy DPSers. How dare they be good at this game. I have seen people copy builds that the "DPSers" can do 200k DPS in ISA in and fail to do even 1% of that. You know what that means? The skill gap in this game isn't a matter of the gear or system mastery...it's actually in the SKILL of the players in this game. Yeah that is something the anti-DPSers don't want to admit. There are people in this game who can't muster even 1% of the skill of somebody in the high side of a DPSer...much less the TOP players. Hell, I have had people copy my build and fail to do even 5% of what I do...and I SUCK at playing games. You can't balance a game when you have factors of more than 10000% between your good and bad players and god knows what between the best and worst. And that isn't even talking gear. Just shear ability to push buttons correctly. Seriously, as much as I think we should have harder bosses...this is why we can't. When you have players who can't even have 5% the skill ability of somebody who needed to pick easy mode for a TUTORIAL of a game...yeah. In fact the average player in this game in the ships I like to fly will do fractions of what I do. Hell above average players in this game will do less than what I do. That means a vast majority of players in this game have gaming skills so bad, that they will struggle with TUTORIALS in other game. And try to balance that with somebody like Sea or Peter or Reyan...or heaven forbid Fel or Hellspawny.
Most games easily balance that simply by having content of different level. There are your newbie zones and average player stuff and then hard content for those who can handle it. STO's problem relating to bad players is that Cryptic insists on using the bad players as the yardstick for everything.
Sure, STO has some harder content, but there are no reward incentives to play them so even the top players are often found playing content rated N for newbie.
could you make all the bosses more difficult to destroy/kill. I mean the v-rex, voth citadel, bio-engineering dino, voth commander, vaadwaur commander, borg elite-tactical, borg queen, borg queen's ship etc.
none of these bosses sould be destroyed/killed by 1 player. The v-rex is one of the worst, some players are able to kill it in a couple of seconds; these players are maybe happy, but there is no fun to run for nothing. same thing for the voth citadel.
I'm myself able to kill most of them alone, and it is not funny at all; and i'm not a ground player.
What I try to tell you is you don’t need the DEVs to change the game for you. You can to do it yourself. Either grind the poo out of the game and get yourself elite ready or learn to carry pugs through advanced and laugh at them in forums when they say ISA is too easy. Yea, it is because you played the map for them then. You had fun, you had the challenge. True, you might have had it all at their expense but nothing stops them from doing the same so all is fair in love and pugs...
I can't tell you how unfun ISA is when some superDPSer comes in and plays the whole map for us. Now I don't know if any of my builds are elite ready, but I do know that ISA is rarely a cakewalk if I am apparently leading the team in capabilities. I can recognize when we have a star player, others don't necessarily know that.
I sympathize with people wanting more challenge, but if you're an elite capable DPSer slumming in ISA you've got no right to complain, and you're probably just making the game less enjoyable for others when you do have other options. It also does nothing to help them get better at the game, because many of them may think they can handle ISA just fine, because they constantly get exceptional players blasting through it for them.
Still, it seems like some people aren't willing to try nonstandard builds and deal with significantly lower performance cap that they might bring, and the challenge of optimizing an oddball build with a different focus than max DPS. One of the reasons player performance is so wide is that the difference between builds is also wide. That weird argument in the thread on the Vizier last month when someone brought up the concept of an exotic damage build and got a lot of other people telling them that was a terrible idea is a symptom of this problem. I saw this myself when I was looking for advice on a minelayer using the aux cannons, people telling me its a terrible idea to use those cannons, yet it is a very fun and surprisingly effective build.
the problem is not ISA, I am able to clean alone the map with my main (she don't have a meta build); but I don't do it because I hate this map, and I hate to fight these dumb borg. My main concern is the ground boss (voth, vaadwaur etc), and the other space bosses (voth citadel, etc).
I did last week, viscious cycles advanced, and this tfo is so easy now, I remember that in the past the undine ships were hard hitter, now they are just pitiful. btw, I did this tfo with 1 of my characters who uses an average build.
I don't want bosses with billions of hp like during delta rising, but bosses smarter, able to move or move faster, cloak (for the klink and rom), able to use more skills (why they can't use gravity well, etc).
I try also a lot of things: tetryon builds (cannons, beams), different tac/eng/sci builds, I modified some of my toons to be eng-sci or tac-sci; currently I work on a sci/quantum torp/tetryon build. But even with an average build most of the content in advanced is just boring, just because the foes are dumb and without interest.
btw, on ground I don't try to be super über powerful, my pleasure comes from the fact of playing with my boffs. this is one of the features that I like in STO.
I don't know about other enemies, but some Voth use GW and TR.
I think it depends on the enemy what offensive abilities they use.
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.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,577Community Moderator
Voth Citadel Dreads can use Grav Well. However for most players we've probably got enough ControlX to fight our way out of it. Again its power creep and not the content.
The Voth have been out for years. The only new content with the Voth have been those new patrols in Delta.
If you look at the various enemy groups we have in game, the ones we've had the longest tend to be the ones with less abilities, except for Fed, Klingon, and Terran. They seem to have access to many of the abilities we have. I esxpecially hate enemy Armatage Escorts because of the Torpedo Point Defense being nasty.
With the Voth we start seeing the need for positioning as well as a few abilities, and farther up the chain we have the Mo'Kai Klingons with Intel abilities and Heralds with specialist abilites.
But again, the ulitmate issue is player power creep. When the Voth were first introduced they were nasty pieces of work because no one knew how to fight them. Now pretty much everyone knows how to fight them, and has the power to mow them down. The biggest challenge is when we're LEARNING how to fight a new enemy group. Give it a couple years, and power creep comes into play on the new group.
The HP Sponges of Delta Rising was a failed attempt to address Power Creep.
But if you want ability spam... probably gonna have to look at the Borg Diamond or the Juggernaught in Korfez.
could you make all the bosses more difficult to destroy/kill. I mean the v-rex, voth citadel, bio-engineering dino, voth commander, vaadwaur commander, borg elite-tactical, borg queen, borg queen's ship etc.
none of these bosses sould be destroyed/killed by 1 player. The v-rex is one of the worst, some players are able to kill it in a couple of seconds; these players are maybe happy, but there is no fun to run for nothing. same thing for the voth citadel.
I'm myself able to kill most of them alone, and it is not funny at all; and i'm not a ground player.
What I try to tell you is you don’t need the DEVs to change the game for you. You can to do it yourself. Either grind the poo out of the game and get yourself elite ready or learn to carry pugs through advanced and laugh at them in forums when they say ISA is too easy. Yea, it is because you played the map for them then. You had fun, you had the challenge. True, you might have had it all at their expense but nothing stops them from doing the same so all is fair in love and pugs...
I can't tell you how unfun ISA is when some superDPSer comes in and plays the whole map for us. Now I don't know if any of my builds are elite ready, but I do know that ISA is rarely a cakewalk if I am apparently leading the team in capabilities. I can recognize when we have a star player, others don't necessarily know that.
I sympathize with people wanting more challenge, but if you're an elite capable DPSer slumming in ISA you've got no right to complain, and you're probably just making the game less enjoyable for others when you do have other options. It also does nothing to help them get better at the game, because many of them may think they can handle ISA just fine, because they constantly get exceptional players blasting through it for them.
Still, it seems like some people aren't willing to try nonstandard builds and deal with significantly lower performance cap that they might bring, and the challenge of optimizing an oddball build with a different focus than max DPS. One of the reasons player performance is so wide is that the difference between builds is also wide. That weird argument in the thread on the Vizier last month when someone brought up the concept of an exotic damage build and got a lot of other people telling them that was a terrible idea is a symptom of this problem. I saw this myself when I was looking for advice on a minelayer using the aux cannons, people telling me its a terrible idea to use those cannons, yet it is a very fun and surprisingly effective build.
My chosen words you quoted were probably a bit harsh. After years I just grew sick and tired of people complaining about the easiness of ISA and every time I look up their DPS scores in our databank I found them only *taking it easy* in ISA while letting others conclude the map for them. Yea, thats easy.
Thankfully with the release of elite mode those problems are behind us. After a few weeks into it the other side of the coin is really as funny however: As expected countless unsuited "challange seeker" with their "weak" 30k, 50k and 80k builds get lost in there in public matches. I don’t care about that with my 300k builds you know, I don't judge. The same way I don’t care about when “I shoot away other’s targets” on maps where we lack an elite mode with them. I'm happy for each and everybody who gets a match started in this crippled PvE game.
Fairness works in two directions but peeps have a habit to only pick the one that fits their respective agenda. Everything is fair in love and pugs. If you sign up for public you should be able to take them as they come or you are doing it wrong.
Especialy at a day and age where almost nobody plays PvE anymore.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
The issue with the Vrex dinos in the Dyson Zone can easily be solved by teleporting everyone back to the command center the moment they spawn. The problem with the Vrex isn't per say that he's too weak, the problem is that people can camp the spawns and nuke them the moment they come in, all without ever having to contribute to spawning them in the first place. I've suggested before that a minimum amount of contribution be required before folks are eligible for rewards from the Vrex. I've also suggested teleporting folks back to the command center the moment they spawn as a "regrouping" so campers can't just nuke them in less than 10 seconds. I wouldn't mind seeing a slight buff to the health of the Vrex but I think ultimately there are better ways to solve that little issue.
As for everything else in terms of difficulty, everything in this game can be defeated with proper tactics, setup, and teamwork. One doesn't need a ship of full mk xv golds to succeed in game, although it definitely does help. Personally I'm glad we have the new Borg elites and wish there were more queues like them out there. Personally I absolutely hate the stigma of "just spacebar through it" and the "zerg it" mentality present in game, and wish they would burn in the fires of Grethor already. If folks like to squeeze every one and zero from their ship as possible I don't fault them for playing how they like. I do however fault the "DPS is all that matters" mentality and how I've noticed some complain when they can't simply zerg it.
For the health of the game I have been pushing for changes to things similar to how WoW has been doing it for awhile. WoW hit a point where it was constant nerfs to anything that couldn't simply be zerged through. Finally their devs put their foot down and said "we're not nerfing it anymore, if you want to clear the content, here's what you're going to do."
First they implemented a dungeon journal that told you where you can get certain bits of loot for your toon. In that journal they also gave a basic overview of what each mob and boss did so you could see what abilities they had. It gave you just enough information to formulate a strategy of your own without outright saying "do A B C then D". Now these next 2 things are where I typically get called an elitist for wanting something similar in STO.
The next thing they did was institute the proving grounds. The proving grounds had 4 difficulties, bronze, silver, gold, endless. Endless would go until you couldn't keep fighting or until you gave up, whatever happened first. If for example one wanted to join the raid finder as a Tank, you were required to complete at least the silver level of the proving grounds for tanks. It was simple stuff in the proving grounds that any tank may encounter. "Face this mob away from the group, hit a damage reducer when you're about to get hit really hard, taunt this foe off your teammates," and just basic stuff. DPS, Tank, and Healer all had proving grounds requirements that pit you against situations you would likely encounter in each of the 3 roles respectively. All you needed was a basic cohesive set of gear, and a rudimentary understanding of your class. By basic cohesive set, in STO terms think a full set of mk x purples or better. If someone could do this, there was no reason they couldn't learn and adapt to the fights in front of them, even if they did it a bit slower than they might like. This also meant folks couldn't just purchase a TRIBBLE ton of gear and slap it on to get free loot off the backs of their friends and/or teammates. They actually had to contribute to the run.
If i've not been called an elitist by now, this is typically where it kicks in. The last thing they did was institute a gear check to be able to get into the raid finder in addition to the proving grounds requirement. This gear check required that you have a certain average level of gear equipped before it would let you in the door. This served 2 purposes. First it prevented people from simply buying one single massive item level piece of gear and cheesing that item to get in the door. Second, it prevented people who had just hit max level and only had a basic set of quest greens from entering the raids before they were ready. This helped to ensure they had at least a basic level of stats that should allow them to survive the encounter, but also contribute to its completion. That's on paper at least. In STO terms I would say a minimum of Mk XII blues or equivalent. So nothing that couldn't be obtained easily through the story. So it served the purpose of making sure folks had the stats on paper to survive, and contribute to the run.
When the dungeon journal was paired with the gear requirements, and the proving grounds, it gave people a clear path to get into more and more difficult content, while also giving them a place they could practice different mechanics and such. While the requirements seemed harsh to some, it was a massive success. While it didn't solve all of the issues, it greatly improved the quality of groups overall. It gave newer players resources to know where to get the gear they wanted, and a briefing of sorts on the mobs they may encounter, so they don't have to go in completely blind. The proving grounds also gave the new players a place to learn and train without fear of judgement. It also gave veteran players a means to help new members prepare themselves and learn, as you could go into the proving grounds with friends.
I firmly believe Jette's tribble map could be that proving grounds once she has had some time to properly update it and work a few of the issues out better. Overall I don't see it purely as the bosses being too hard or too easy and think many are fine where they are.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
if you can solo the Vrex bump your dificulty to elite. if you can do it on elite, then make the thread about increasing the difficulty on THAT level.
Yeah... you do realize battlezones don't work like that, right!? It's One Level to Rule Them All, akin to Normal (and at lv 50, for most of these zones).
Oh sweetie...you missed the point entirely. The problem isn't that the low end players in this game has no skills and can't figure out and take out things even a 10 year old could do. The problem is the filthy DPSers. How dare they be good at this game. I have seen people copy builds that the "DPSers" can do 200k DPS in ISA in and fail to do even 1% of that. You know what that means? The skill gap in this game isn't a matter of the gear or system mastery...it's actually in the SKILL of the players in this game. Yeah that is something the anti-DPSers don't want to admit. There are people in this game who can't muster even 1% of the skill of somebody in the high side of a DPSer...much less the TOP players. Hell, I have had people copy my build and fail to do even 5% of what I do...and I SUCK at playing games. You can't balance a game when you have factors of more than 10000% between your good and bad players and god knows what between the best and worst. And that isn't even talking gear. Just shear ability to push buttons correctly. Seriously, as much as I think we should have harder bosses...this is why we can't. When you have players who can't even have 5% the skill ability of somebody who needed to pick easy mode for a TUTORIAL of a game...yeah. In fact the average player in this game in the ships I like to fly will do fractions of what I do. Hell above average players in this game will do less than what I do. That means a vast majority of players in this game have gaming skills so bad, that they will struggle with TUTORIALS in other game. And try to balance that with somebody like Sea or Peter or Reyan...or heaven forbid Fel or Hellspawny.
Most games easily balance that simply by having content of different level. There are your newbie zones and average player stuff and then hard content for those who can handle it. STO's problem relating to bad players is that Cryptic insists on using the bad players as the yardstick for everything.
Sure, STO has some harder content, but there are no reward incentives to play them so even the top players are often found playing content rated N for newbie.
Most games don't have an issue of the gap between their good players and noobs being a factor of 10k% WITH THE SAME GEAR. No seriously. That skill gap is on an entirely different level that what any other game has to deal with. Most games also don't have so much of their player base on the low end of the skill gap. People in most games WANT to get better at it. This game, people wear the fact that they don't want to get better as a badge of freaking honor and those who do are reviled.
Because that's what Cryptic encourages. In most games, there is a reason to get better at it. In STO everything is handed out on a silver platter as soon as you make your first toon.
A business gets the customers it serves. They've made an MMORPG in which players have more to gain by lazily coasting through auto-win content than learning to play, so no surprise what kind of players it attracts.
Even I don't care to get better at this anymore. There's just no point when I can just login once a day to pick up the event-of-the-moment no requirements.
you want powerful bosses ? chance the game to hard mode ...we don't have all legendary gear and wep like you have.... or T6 ships...
Some of the bosses don't have a harder mode, as was already stated. In the Dyson ground, the level is always normal and you're demoted to lvl 50.
So changing your difficulty won't make a bit of difference there.
And as napalm said, this game can be steamrolled in a T3 ship by people who know what they're doing. (I am not one of them, I'll probably be stuck at DPS Bronze for my time here ).
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.
The issue with the Vrex dinos in the Dyson Zone can easily be solved by teleporting everyone back to the command center the moment they spawn. The problem with the Vrex isn't per say that he's too weak, the problem is that people can camp the spawns and nuke them the moment they come in, all without ever having to contribute to spawning them in the first place. I've suggested before that a minimum amount of contribution be required before folks are eligible for rewards from the Vrex. I've also suggested teleporting folks back to the command center the moment they spawn as a "regrouping" so campers can't just nuke them in less than 10 seconds. I wouldn't mind seeing a slight buff to the health of the Vrex but I think ultimately there are better ways to solve that little issue.
it would be a great solution. the dyson bz is 1 of my favorite places in game, because I can play with my boffs, and I'm really pissed off by all these campers.
I don't want a buff to their health, but the bosses could have more abilities.
I don't know about other enemies, but some Voth use GW and TR.
I think it depends on the enemy what offensive abilities they use.
The issue with the Vrex dinos in the Dyson Zone can easily be solved by teleporting everyone back to the command center the moment they spawn. The problem with the Vrex isn't per say that he's too weak, the problem is that people can camp the spawns and nuke them the moment they come in, all without ever having to contribute to spawning them in the first place. I've suggested before that a minimum amount of contribution be required before folks are eligible for rewards from the Vrex. I've also suggested teleporting folks back to the command center the moment they spawn as a "regrouping" so campers can't just nuke them in less than 10 seconds. I wouldn't mind seeing a slight buff to the health of the Vrex but I think ultimately there are better ways to solve that little issue.
Seems like a whole lot of work just to avoid solving the actual issue, which is players wanting to nuke a newbie boss in the first place, instead of picking on something their own size. This comes down to the lack of something their own size to pick on and/or the bass-ackwards reward incentives that make challenging content (relatively) less rewarding than easy content when it should be the opposite.
As for everything else in terms of difficulty, everything in this game can be defeated with proper tactics, setup, and teamwork. One doesn't need a ship of full mk xv golds to succeed in game, although it definitely does help. Personally I'm glad we have the new Borg elites and wish there were more queues like them out there. Personally I absolutely hate the stigma of "just spacebar through it" and the "zerg it" mentality present in game, and wish they would burn in the fires of Grethor already. If folks like to squeeze every one and zero from their ship as possible I don't fault them for playing how they like. I do however fault the "DPS is all that matters" mentality and how I've noticed some complain when they can't simply zerg it.
"DPS is all that matters" is an observable fact. In most STO content, there are no fail conditions and the enemies aren't very dangerous, so factors such as defense and healing don't matter much as the enemy can't stop the players anyway. But as long as the players still have to kill the enemy to proceed, their ability to do damage matters. DPS is the last stat that will matter as relative difficulty is reduced toward zero.
That's not to say a lot of DPS is required for victory. As enemies also tend to have barely any healing, even low DPS will eventualy kill them. But it does have an effect on the time taken.
Of course, then we get to the content that's timed to auto-win. When players don't have to kill the enemies to proceed, even DPS no longer matters. But I don't think that's an improvement.
For the health of the game I have been pushing for changes to things similar to how WoW has been doing it for awhile. WoW hit a point where it was constant nerfs to anything that couldn't simply be zerged through. Finally their devs put their foot down and said "we're not nerfing it anymore, if you want to clear the content, here's what you're going to do."
Oh, how I wish Cryptic would say that.
First they implemented a dungeon journal that told you where you can get certain bits of loot for your toon. In that journal they also gave a basic overview of what each mob and boss did so you could see what abilities they had. It gave you just enough information to formulate a strategy of your own without outright saying "do A B C then D". Now these next 2 things are where I typically get called an elitist for wanting something similar in STO.
That would be nice. Especially as mob info can easily be arranged into a fun collection sidequest, a challenge to find every type of enemy and unlock their pages.
The next thing they did was institute the proving grounds. The proving grounds had 4 difficulties, bronze, silver, gold, endless. Endless would go until you couldn't keep fighting or until you gave up, whatever happened first. If for example one wanted to join the raid finder as a Tank, you were required to complete at least the silver level of the proving grounds for tanks. It was simple stuff in the proving grounds that any tank may encounter. "Face this mob away from the group, hit a damage reducer when you're about to get hit really hard, taunt this foe off your teammates," and just basic stuff. DPS, Tank, and Healer all had proving grounds requirements that pit you against situations you would likely encounter in each of the 3 roles respectively. All you needed was a basic cohesive set of gear, and a rudimentary understanding of your class. By basic cohesive set, in STO terms think a full set of mk x purples or better. If someone could do this, there was no reason they couldn't learn and adapt to the fights in front of them, even if they did it a bit slower than they might like. This also meant folks couldn't just purchase a TRIBBLE ton of gear and slap it on to get free loot off the backs of their friends and/or teammates. They actually had to contribute to the run.
That would've been useful back in 2015 when the great fail condition cry-a-thon was up. Now, the game is already nerfed to the point where such a feature would be superflous. In the majority of content, anything beyond running around shooting the red blips is optional.
If i've not been called an elitist by now, this is typically where it kicks in. The last thing they did was institute a gear check to be able to get into the raid finder in addition to the proving grounds requirement. This gear check required that you have a certain average level of gear equipped before it would let you in the door. This served 2 purposes. First it prevented people from simply buying one single massive item level piece of gear and cheesing that item to get in the door. Second, it prevented people who had just hit max level and only had a basic set of quest greens from entering the raids before they were ready. This helped to ensure they had at least a basic level of stats that should allow them to survive the encounter, but also contribute to its completion. That's on paper at least. In STO terms I would say a minimum of Mk XII blues or equivalent. So nothing that couldn't be obtained easily through the story. So it served the purpose of making sure folks had the stats on paper to survive, and contribute to the run.
Again, would've been useful before but hardly needed anymore.
When the dungeon journal was paired with the gear requirements, and the proving grounds, it gave people a clear path to get into more and more difficult content, while also giving them a place they could practice different mechanics and such. While the requirements seemed harsh to some, it was a massive success. While it didn't solve all of the issues, it greatly improved the quality of groups overall. It gave newer players resources to know where to get the gear they wanted, and a briefing of sorts on the mobs they may encounter, so they don't have to go in completely blind. The proving grounds also gave the new players a place to learn and train without fear of judgement. It also gave veteran players a means to help new members prepare themselves and learn, as you could go into the proving grounds with friends.
I firmly believe Jette's tribble map could be that proving grounds once she has had some time to properly update it and work a few of the issues out better. Overall I don't see it purely as the bosses being too hard or too easy and think many are fine where they are.
I agree in theory, but the problem STO has with this is that there is generally no reason for players to want to play more difficult content, because the easy content gives all the same rewards for zero effort.
If they'd restore fail conditions, add unique drops on Advanced/Elite...sure, that all sounds great. Until then, new players do know where to get the gear they want...spamgrinding the easiest content.
[quote="warpangel;c-13567012"
Seems like a whole lot of work just to avoid solving the actual issue, which is players wanting to nuke a newbie boss in the first place, instead of picking on something their own size. This comes down to the lack of something their own size to pick on and/or the bass-ackwards reward incentives that make challenging content (relatively) less rewarding than easy content when it should be the opposite.
[/quote]
The battlezones are meant to appeal to people of all gear levels and are an alternative to having to spam TFOs to get the same stuff. As is the Dyson BZ is one of the easiest places to get dilithium. I don't see why we can't have both, higher difficulty content and some lesser difficult bits. So it's not a "newbie boss" but meant to be an alternative to having to spam TFOs. The issue arrives when you get campers that want to sit there and leech the rewards of the Vrex while doing nothing to contribute to their having spawned. Hence why I say they either shouldn't qualify for rewards if they haven't contributed to their having spawned, and all folks should be teleported back to the command center to "regroup" when they do spawn. I personally think it's ridiculous that someone who contributes nothing to spawning the Vrex should be allowed to benefit from them at all. In the process of this the campers leech rewards away from those that did all the work of spawning the dinos to start with.
"DPS is all that matters" is an observable fact. In most STO content, there are no fail conditions and the enemies aren't very dangerous, so factors such as defense and healing don't matter much as the enemy can't stop the players anyway. But as long as the players still have to kill the enemy to proceed, their ability to do damage matters. DPS is the last stat that will matter as relative difficulty is reduced toward zero.
No it's not, but you're welcome to believe that. The Borg ground TFOs as well as Voth would love to have a word with you on why that's not true, as well as the new Borg Elites. You can't DPS if you're dead, and while DPS is important, it's not the only thing that matters. Also you proved my point on this one that folks being too focused on spamming spacebar.
That would be nice. Especially as mob info can easily be arranged into a fun collection sidequest, a challenge to find every type of enemy and unlock their pages.
in WoW the basic info was already unlocked, so you didn't need to fight them to unlock the page on them. If one wanted a sidequest type of thing, then they could borrow from SWTOR's book and allow folks to unlock additional lore pages after fighting each mob or encountering them. You get the basic boss info, then additional lore to go with them. They also could tie some cheap vanity items to completing sets of lore and such. Or perhaps give decent ground/space gear for completing sets. Give folks a reason to want to explore the other queues.
That would've been useful back in 2015 when the great fail condition cry-a-thon was up. Now, the game is already nerfed to the point where such a feature would be superflous. In the majority of content, anything beyond running around shooting the red blips is optional.
A chief reason things were "nerfed" in Delta Rising was that the health scaling of mobs was way way off. Even with full sets of mk xiv golds it took forever to kill things because the health was scaled to ridiculous levels. It never added any real difficulty and it was just grind for the sake of grind. Because it took forever to kill things many TFOs were failing as a result through no fault of their own. So it was in fact a balancing issue. I don't think they should have removed the fail conditions and in that point I think the solution was too heavy handed when simply reducing the HP of foes would've been sufficient, but it is what it is at this point. For advanced and especially normal, folks may be able to get away with spacebar spam, but in elite that will never fly. Also even in the "nerfed" state the game is today, you would be surprised how many times I go into a run and it's obvious other members of the group are woefully unprepared or don't know the queue. The good thing about the proving ground requirement in WoW is it let you know 3 things, who was trying, who was new, and who simply refused to try and wanted a free ride while making it extremely obvious. If someone was trying they typically did well. If they were new, they learned and grew as they went thus improving. Then the last bunch that didn't want to try and wanted a free ride stagnated and never improved. Having the proving grounds, the gear requirement, and the dungeon journal removed all excuses from the people in category 3. If they could complete the proving grounds, farm out the gear, and had the dungeon journal, they had no excuse for poor performance. Folks who stagnated and just wanted a free ride soon found themselves unable to get very far in raids since they were commonly ejected from groups as a result.
Again, would've been useful before but hardly needed anymore.
I can't tell you the number of times I've gone into a run in this game and from the parser I can tell someone is using a bad rainbow build that contributes nothing to the team. By that I mean it's smattering of energy types, and a bad mix of cannon, beam, and kinetic, and looks like someone hurled on the equipment screen. Folks like that are not YET ready for advanced and elite content and imo don't need to be there. It would simply be a miserable experience for all. This helps guarantee some bit of cohesiveness and a bit of time has been invested to work on the build.
I agree in theory, but the problem STO has with this is that there is generally no reason for players to want to play more difficult content, because the easy content gives all the same rewards for zero effort.
If they'd restore fail conditions, add unique drops on Advanced/Elite...sure, that all sounds great. Until then, new players do know where to get the gear they want...spamgrinding the easiest content.
Generally folks want into advanced content so they can get the elite marks. Giving these tools provides a path to push folks to do better. I would also like to see perhaps some vanity items drop at the end and have a chance for folks to pick it up. Do what SWTOR does and give folks a crate of goods at the end of each run. This crate could contain a piece or two of gear appropriate to the character's level. The Advanced version would have a bit more to it and could have a chance at additional stuff such as a 3rd piece of gear and perhaps vanity items. The elite versions could have a chance to drop a mk xii very rare or mk xiii ultra rare piece of reputation equipment so folks don't have to craft it. Far as the exact contents of the box would be up for debate, but there's your incentive to grow and do better. It doesn't need much.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
Comments
Yeah... you do realize battlezones don't work like that, right!? It's One Level to Rule Them All, akin to Normal (and at lv 50, for most of these zones).
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.'
And weak player or strong, the only reason you fail to kill V-rex is some camper(s) killed it before you could get there. Because they are too easy.
O, I missed something alright: how your post relates to my comment.
Battlezones with different difficulty levels was actually not a horribad idea, except that the player base has thinned out already so much, that, at some hours of the day, it's hard to find even a single fully populated zone instance to begin with.
finally, a little love in this forum!
N.B. Yeah, reyan01 is an Elite player now. Funny how that works, for years he was all about support in a Science vessel, while I was still chasing the old DPS meta; and now, as a noteworthy role-reversal, I love flying my Iktomi, doing Science, and he has become an ueberplayer.
Yea... the biggest fun in game beside Space Barbie is coming up with creative, yet effective builds that aren't cookie cutter meta. I came up with a pretty fun Gas Master build with almost every gas venting ability I could get my hands on. Not gonna win any DPS races, but it was entertaining.
So reyan has joined the dark side huh?
I guess I'm going to need more cookies to keep up the battle against filthy DPS'ers!
Oh dear...
(No, don't add leader there
My suggestion to the OP would be start building for Elites and find yourself a group to fly with. That's where most people go when they want more of a challenge, and outside of that we play STO for the casual fun and to enjoy the Star Trek Universe. The standard has been established, and frankly, it's too late to try and turn this game into anything that even remotely resembles a challenge. That ship sailed years ago.
And yes.. the Sith are obviously the good guys.. if you have a chance to join the dark side, you take it every time, always.
Everyone knows that.
It is really fascinating that in this game one has to play, grind (almost work) hard to be allowed to encounter a challenge.
In ISA the past few years one had to be almost as good as the rest of your team in sum to feel some pressure (if you do not carry 3-4 others there the map is easy as poo) and now with the elite mode we get something which is not just twice but rather ten times as tough.
Yea, it is quite a journey getting from advanced to elite now but it’s worth it. When occasionally failing Elite maps I often feel like the DEVs pushed it a bit too far or we could use some in between setting. Then I notice the pool of available players is just not there to support such a thing in STO (almost nobody plays anymore).
What I try to tell you is you don’t need the DEVs to change the game for you. You can to do it yourself. Either grind the poo out of the game and get yourself elite ready or learn to carry pugs through advanced and laugh at them in forums when they say ISA is too easy. Yea, it is because you played the map for them then. You had fun, you had the challenge. True, you might have had it all at their expense but nothing stops them from doing the same so all is fair in love and pugs...
Elitist!
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Sure, STO has some harder content, but there are no reward incentives to play them so even the top players are often found playing content rated N for newbie.
I can't tell you how unfun ISA is when some superDPSer comes in and plays the whole map for us. Now I don't know if any of my builds are elite ready, but I do know that ISA is rarely a cakewalk if I am apparently leading the team in capabilities. I can recognize when we have a star player, others don't necessarily know that.
I sympathize with people wanting more challenge, but if you're an elite capable DPSer slumming in ISA you've got no right to complain, and you're probably just making the game less enjoyable for others when you do have other options. It also does nothing to help them get better at the game, because many of them may think they can handle ISA just fine, because they constantly get exceptional players blasting through it for them.
Still, it seems like some people aren't willing to try nonstandard builds and deal with significantly lower performance cap that they might bring, and the challenge of optimizing an oddball build with a different focus than max DPS. One of the reasons player performance is so wide is that the difference between builds is also wide. That weird argument in the thread on the Vizier last month when someone brought up the concept of an exotic damage build and got a lot of other people telling them that was a terrible idea is a symptom of this problem. I saw this myself when I was looking for advice on a minelayer using the aux cannons, people telling me its a terrible idea to use those cannons, yet it is a very fun and surprisingly effective build.
I did last week, viscious cycles advanced, and this tfo is so easy now, I remember that in the past the undine ships were hard hitter, now they are just pitiful. btw, I did this tfo with 1 of my characters who uses an average build.
I don't want bosses with billions of hp like during delta rising, but bosses smarter, able to move or move faster, cloak (for the klink and rom), able to use more skills (why they can't use gravity well, etc).
I try also a lot of things: tetryon builds (cannons, beams), different tac/eng/sci builds, I modified some of my toons to be eng-sci or tac-sci; currently I work on a sci/quantum torp/tetryon build. But even with an average build most of the content in advanced is just boring, just because the foes are dumb and without interest.
btw, on ground I don't try to be super über powerful, my pleasure comes from the fact of playing with my boffs. this is one of the features that I like in STO.
I think it depends on the enemy what offensive abilities they use.
The Voth have been out for years. The only new content with the Voth have been those new patrols in Delta.
If you look at the various enemy groups we have in game, the ones we've had the longest tend to be the ones with less abilities, except for Fed, Klingon, and Terran. They seem to have access to many of the abilities we have. I esxpecially hate enemy Armatage Escorts because of the Torpedo Point Defense being nasty.
With the Voth we start seeing the need for positioning as well as a few abilities, and farther up the chain we have the Mo'Kai Klingons with Intel abilities and Heralds with specialist abilites.
But again, the ulitmate issue is player power creep. When the Voth were first introduced they were nasty pieces of work because no one knew how to fight them. Now pretty much everyone knows how to fight them, and has the power to mow them down. The biggest challenge is when we're LEARNING how to fight a new enemy group. Give it a couple years, and power creep comes into play on the new group.
The HP Sponges of Delta Rising was a failed attempt to address Power Creep.
But if you want ability spam... probably gonna have to look at the Borg Diamond or the Juggernaught in Korfez.
My chosen words you quoted were probably a bit harsh. After years I just grew sick and tired of people complaining about the easiness of ISA and every time I look up their DPS scores in our databank I found them only *taking it easy* in ISA while letting others conclude the map for them. Yea, thats easy.
Thankfully with the release of elite mode those problems are behind us. After a few weeks into it the other side of the coin is really as funny however: As expected countless unsuited "challange seeker" with their "weak" 30k, 50k and 80k builds get lost in there in public matches. I don’t care about that with my 300k builds you know, I don't judge. The same way I don’t care about when “I shoot away other’s targets” on maps where we lack an elite mode with them. I'm happy for each and everybody who gets a match started in this crippled PvE game.
Fairness works in two directions but peeps have a habit to only pick the one that fits their respective agenda. Everything is fair in love and pugs. If you sign up for public you should be able to take them as they come or you are doing it wrong.
Especialy at a day and age where almost nobody plays PvE anymore.
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As for everything else in terms of difficulty, everything in this game can be defeated with proper tactics, setup, and teamwork. One doesn't need a ship of full mk xv golds to succeed in game, although it definitely does help. Personally I'm glad we have the new Borg elites and wish there were more queues like them out there. Personally I absolutely hate the stigma of "just spacebar through it" and the "zerg it" mentality present in game, and wish they would burn in the fires of Grethor already. If folks like to squeeze every one and zero from their ship as possible I don't fault them for playing how they like. I do however fault the "DPS is all that matters" mentality and how I've noticed some complain when they can't simply zerg it.
For the health of the game I have been pushing for changes to things similar to how WoW has been doing it for awhile. WoW hit a point where it was constant nerfs to anything that couldn't simply be zerged through. Finally their devs put their foot down and said "we're not nerfing it anymore, if you want to clear the content, here's what you're going to do."
First they implemented a dungeon journal that told you where you can get certain bits of loot for your toon. In that journal they also gave a basic overview of what each mob and boss did so you could see what abilities they had. It gave you just enough information to formulate a strategy of your own without outright saying "do A B C then D". Now these next 2 things are where I typically get called an elitist for wanting something similar in STO.
The next thing they did was institute the proving grounds. The proving grounds had 4 difficulties, bronze, silver, gold, endless. Endless would go until you couldn't keep fighting or until you gave up, whatever happened first. If for example one wanted to join the raid finder as a Tank, you were required to complete at least the silver level of the proving grounds for tanks. It was simple stuff in the proving grounds that any tank may encounter. "Face this mob away from the group, hit a damage reducer when you're about to get hit really hard, taunt this foe off your teammates," and just basic stuff. DPS, Tank, and Healer all had proving grounds requirements that pit you against situations you would likely encounter in each of the 3 roles respectively. All you needed was a basic cohesive set of gear, and a rudimentary understanding of your class. By basic cohesive set, in STO terms think a full set of mk x purples or better. If someone could do this, there was no reason they couldn't learn and adapt to the fights in front of them, even if they did it a bit slower than they might like. This also meant folks couldn't just purchase a TRIBBLE ton of gear and slap it on to get free loot off the backs of their friends and/or teammates. They actually had to contribute to the run.
If i've not been called an elitist by now, this is typically where it kicks in. The last thing they did was institute a gear check to be able to get into the raid finder in addition to the proving grounds requirement. This gear check required that you have a certain average level of gear equipped before it would let you in the door. This served 2 purposes. First it prevented people from simply buying one single massive item level piece of gear and cheesing that item to get in the door. Second, it prevented people who had just hit max level and only had a basic set of quest greens from entering the raids before they were ready. This helped to ensure they had at least a basic level of stats that should allow them to survive the encounter, but also contribute to its completion. That's on paper at least. In STO terms I would say a minimum of Mk XII blues or equivalent. So nothing that couldn't be obtained easily through the story. So it served the purpose of making sure folks had the stats on paper to survive, and contribute to the run.
When the dungeon journal was paired with the gear requirements, and the proving grounds, it gave people a clear path to get into more and more difficult content, while also giving them a place they could practice different mechanics and such. While the requirements seemed harsh to some, it was a massive success. While it didn't solve all of the issues, it greatly improved the quality of groups overall. It gave newer players resources to know where to get the gear they wanted, and a briefing of sorts on the mobs they may encounter, so they don't have to go in completely blind. The proving grounds also gave the new players a place to learn and train without fear of judgement. It also gave veteran players a means to help new members prepare themselves and learn, as you could go into the proving grounds with friends.
I firmly believe Jette's tribble map could be that proving grounds once she has had some time to properly update it and work a few of the issues out better. Overall I don't see it purely as the bosses being too hard or too easy and think many are fine where they are.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
A business gets the customers it serves. They've made an MMORPG in which players have more to gain by lazily coasting through auto-win content than learning to play, so no surprise what kind of players it attracts.
Even I don't care to get better at this anymore. There's just no point when I can just login once a day to pick up the event-of-the-moment no requirements.
Some of the bosses don't have a harder mode, as was already stated. In the Dyson ground, the level is always normal and you're demoted to lvl 50.
So changing your difficulty won't make a bit of difference there.
And as napalm said, this game can be steamrolled in a T3 ship by people who know what they're doing. (I am not one of them, I'll probably be stuck at DPS Bronze for my time here
it would be a great solution. the dyson bz is 1 of my favorite places in game, because I can play with my boffs, and I'm really pissed off by all these campers.
I don't want a buff to their health, but the bosses could have more abilities.
Not enough powerful to be a threat.
"DPS is all that matters" is an observable fact. In most STO content, there are no fail conditions and the enemies aren't very dangerous, so factors such as defense and healing don't matter much as the enemy can't stop the players anyway. But as long as the players still have to kill the enemy to proceed, their ability to do damage matters. DPS is the last stat that will matter as relative difficulty is reduced toward zero.
That's not to say a lot of DPS is required for victory. As enemies also tend to have barely any healing, even low DPS will eventualy kill them. But it does have an effect on the time taken.
Of course, then we get to the content that's timed to auto-win. When players don't have to kill the enemies to proceed, even DPS no longer matters. But I don't think that's an improvement.
Oh, how I wish Cryptic would say that.
That would be nice. Especially as mob info can easily be arranged into a fun collection sidequest, a challenge to find every type of enemy and unlock their pages.
That would've been useful back in 2015 when the great fail condition cry-a-thon was up. Now, the game is already nerfed to the point where such a feature would be superflous. In the majority of content, anything beyond running around shooting the red blips is optional.
Again, would've been useful before but hardly needed anymore.
I agree in theory, but the problem STO has with this is that there is generally no reason for players to want to play more difficult content, because the easy content gives all the same rewards for zero effort.
If they'd restore fail conditions, add unique drops on Advanced/Elite...sure, that all sounds great. Until then, new players do know where to get the gear they want...spamgrinding the easiest content.
Seems like a whole lot of work just to avoid solving the actual issue, which is players wanting to nuke a newbie boss in the first place, instead of picking on something their own size. This comes down to the lack of something their own size to pick on and/or the bass-ackwards reward incentives that make challenging content (relatively) less rewarding than easy content when it should be the opposite.
[/quote]
The battlezones are meant to appeal to people of all gear levels and are an alternative to having to spam TFOs to get the same stuff. As is the Dyson BZ is one of the easiest places to get dilithium. I don't see why we can't have both, higher difficulty content and some lesser difficult bits. So it's not a "newbie boss" but meant to be an alternative to having to spam TFOs. The issue arrives when you get campers that want to sit there and leech the rewards of the Vrex while doing nothing to contribute to their having spawned. Hence why I say they either shouldn't qualify for rewards if they haven't contributed to their having spawned, and all folks should be teleported back to the command center to "regroup" when they do spawn. I personally think it's ridiculous that someone who contributes nothing to spawning the Vrex should be allowed to benefit from them at all. In the process of this the campers leech rewards away from those that did all the work of spawning the dinos to start with.
No it's not, but you're welcome to believe that. The Borg ground TFOs as well as Voth would love to have a word with you on why that's not true, as well as the new Borg Elites. You can't DPS if you're dead, and while DPS is important, it's not the only thing that matters. Also you proved my point on this one that folks being too focused on spamming spacebar.
We agree on this point it seems.
in WoW the basic info was already unlocked, so you didn't need to fight them to unlock the page on them. If one wanted a sidequest type of thing, then they could borrow from SWTOR's book and allow folks to unlock additional lore pages after fighting each mob or encountering them. You get the basic boss info, then additional lore to go with them. They also could tie some cheap vanity items to completing sets of lore and such. Or perhaps give decent ground/space gear for completing sets. Give folks a reason to want to explore the other queues.
A chief reason things were "nerfed" in Delta Rising was that the health scaling of mobs was way way off. Even with full sets of mk xiv golds it took forever to kill things because the health was scaled to ridiculous levels. It never added any real difficulty and it was just grind for the sake of grind. Because it took forever to kill things many TFOs were failing as a result through no fault of their own. So it was in fact a balancing issue. I don't think they should have removed the fail conditions and in that point I think the solution was too heavy handed when simply reducing the HP of foes would've been sufficient, but it is what it is at this point. For advanced and especially normal, folks may be able to get away with spacebar spam, but in elite that will never fly. Also even in the "nerfed" state the game is today, you would be surprised how many times I go into a run and it's obvious other members of the group are woefully unprepared or don't know the queue. The good thing about the proving ground requirement in WoW is it let you know 3 things, who was trying, who was new, and who simply refused to try and wanted a free ride while making it extremely obvious. If someone was trying they typically did well. If they were new, they learned and grew as they went thus improving. Then the last bunch that didn't want to try and wanted a free ride stagnated and never improved. Having the proving grounds, the gear requirement, and the dungeon journal removed all excuses from the people in category 3. If they could complete the proving grounds, farm out the gear, and had the dungeon journal, they had no excuse for poor performance. Folks who stagnated and just wanted a free ride soon found themselves unable to get very far in raids since they were commonly ejected from groups as a result.
I can't tell you the number of times I've gone into a run in this game and from the parser I can tell someone is using a bad rainbow build that contributes nothing to the team. By that I mean it's smattering of energy types, and a bad mix of cannon, beam, and kinetic, and looks like someone hurled on the equipment screen. Folks like that are not YET ready for advanced and elite content and imo don't need to be there. It would simply be a miserable experience for all. This helps guarantee some bit of cohesiveness and a bit of time has been invested to work on the build.
Generally folks want into advanced content so they can get the elite marks. Giving these tools provides a path to push folks to do better. I would also like to see perhaps some vanity items drop at the end and have a chance for folks to pick it up. Do what SWTOR does and give folks a crate of goods at the end of each run. This crate could contain a piece or two of gear appropriate to the character's level. The Advanced version would have a bit more to it and could have a chance at additional stuff such as a 3rd piece of gear and perhaps vanity items. The elite versions could have a chance to drop a mk xii very rare or mk xiii ultra rare piece of reputation equipment so folks don't have to craft it. Far as the exact contents of the box would be up for debate, but there's your incentive to grow and do better. It doesn't need much.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator