Before I get to the point; I've been playing STO off and on since it was subscription only, and I've seen it change drastically over all those years. Some changes were great, others... not so much. I've been away from the game for about a year~ now, and just returned a few days ago when some old fleet members mentioned the current event on discord.
Back when I played a year+ ago, I put a ton of work into my character builds, and at the time they were considered pretty strong (not the best, but as close as I could get being a sporadic player). After returning, and doing red alerts and TFO's and endeavors for a few days, the sheer amount of power creep that has taken hold of this game is blindingly apparent.
Back in the day, you'd be worried about finishing a tholian red alert before the time limit was up. Now you have to wonder if it will even last more than a minute. TFOs are being completed faster than some ability cooldowns. When borg tactical cubes in advanced/elite TFOs are being yeeted into oblivion in mere seconds... yea, something has gone horribly wrong here.
There's no challenge anymore, everyone's got a god-ship that can just will enemies out of existence. How does anyone find this fun? If there's no challenge, there's no satisfaction in accomplishing anything. I get that STO panders to people who want to live out their power fantasies as their favorite captains or in their favorite ships, but do you really feel powerful, or does it just make all of the enemies feel mind numbingly, pathetically weak by comparison?
It used to be that ship combat was slower, and more strategic. You had to work to take down an enemy shield facing, and then try to hit that facing with torpedoes before they could maneuver or get the shield up again. Missions could be intense, trying to whittle down powerful enemies while barely keeping yourself alive as fast as your hull and shield healing abilities could cooldown. Back then, even gravity well on a science build was more for control and support, so that you could group up enemy ships for your escorts to torp spread on, instead of being a 2 second death sentence to all but the toughest ships. Cruisers were actually used for tanking, drawing fire and requiring healing so that your escorts didn't get instagibbed by hostiles. We have none of that anymore, and it feels like the soul of the game is long gone.
On a semi-related note, remember when you could warp to earth spacedock and every ship in orbit was a federation ship? Or to Qo'NoS and at least most of the ships were klingon, with a few rare standouts being nausicaan or orion or gorn? It felt like faction unity, at least to a small degree. Now? Disco balls and weird alien ships everywhere, with actual faction ships few and far between.
It seems pretty balanced to me, I still keep getting my TRIBBLE handed to me on a silver platter, maybe I built my ship wrong, might just be me but having my ship constantly blow up is the reason why I prefer ground combat over space any day.
It just takes time.
As a new player approaching Level 60-65 try to acquire Upgrades, be they Superior, Experimental, & Phoenix are great (especially if you wait for a 2x Event once every 3 months) and with Anniversary coming up very soon; the Omega Upgrades are another great way to earn free upgrades during Anniversary, aside from one of the Admiralty Campaigns (Romulan) that Provides some every 10th Tour of Duty.
This game's entire balance point is way off, and I have no idea what to even suggest to begin to fix it, but will put out some ideas:
- DPS and Tacs take too much focus as the game involves erasing HP sponges of mostly stationary trash mobs with worthless A.I.
- Endless enemies, immune enemies, time gated non-engaging (boring) mission objectives need to go
- Sci & Engi need more of a role and provide greater contribution to a team than just bring more DPS or GTFO
- As above, non-DPS focused abilities have to be meaningful: stronger more competent enemies where Engi & Sci can shine too in a team and solo beyond 'kill more dead faster with EPG on a DPS timer or GTFO'
- dynamic scaling mission objectives and enemy difficulty: again, more competent enemies so high DPS ships can't just sit still and kill without drawing big aggro
- boost tank aggro drawing ability beyond 'DPS more'
- ranking lockouts: if you consistently perform too well for TFOs based on individual objectives, tanking, healing, damage, support, etc., lock out normal and advanced, but introduce a dynamic difficulty hard-advanced which responds to player performance by bringing in tougher smarter enemies
- balance out consoles and other powers to prevent the landfill of worthless stuff: eg. boarding party should provide a big meaningful impact; all ship consoles should be worth slotting too, etc.
Devs: Provide the option to Turn OFF full screen flashes from enemy ship explosions
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As a new player approaching Level 60-65 try to acquire Upgrades, be they Superior, Experimental, & Phoenix are great (especially if you wait for a 2x Event once every 3 months) and with Anniversary coming up very soon; the Omega Upgrades are another great way to earn free upgrades during Anniversary, aside from one of the Admiralty Campaigns (Romulan) that Provides some every 10th Tour of Duty.
I've been playing STO for years, I switched from PC back in 2017 when my computer couldn't run the game anymore.
Not all of us have god ships. Mine still manage to get there and do enough damage to avoid a AFK penalty.
"Quality Passes" don't usually go over well around here.
I generally just run in and do what I can whenever I do TFOs and not worry if there's god ships around. They took the time to tweak their builds, I don't think we need to nerf them just because we don't have what they have.
Same here, not the power smash type... myself. I like the fight to be at least, challenging.
For the last rebalance, Delta Rising, Cryptic had top-end PvP and PvE players offering to help out with how to revamp NPC ships to make space more interesting and balanced, both on these forums and on Reddit. Instead, they made the enemies into hitpoint sinks and increased their damage a bit. As a result, all the content for the difficulty revamp got beaten by T5 ships using Mk XII gear while it was still on Tribble. Think about that for a moment.
The other side of it has already been mentioned; the gaps between players are so great that you can carbon-copy the best possible build in the game and there will genuinely be players who can't do even 10% of what the best player can. You can't balance difficulties in a game with such a large mismatch between players.
No, no, no. Do not change a thing. Group content is in most games boring and STO is no exception. Beat a bunch of trash mobs, beat a boss, rinse and repeat. The faster it is over, the better. People that want a different experience, make your own group, tweak, twink, I don't know what, but leave things for the pugs as it is.
Comments
It just takes time.
As a new player approaching Level 60-65 try to acquire Upgrades, be they Superior, Experimental, & Phoenix are great (especially if you wait for a 2x Event once every 3 months) and with Anniversary coming up very soon; the Omega Upgrades are another great way to earn free upgrades during Anniversary, aside from one of the Admiralty Campaigns (Romulan) that Provides some every 10th Tour of Duty.
- DPS and Tacs take too much focus as the game involves erasing HP sponges of mostly stationary trash mobs with worthless A.I.
- Endless enemies, immune enemies, time gated non-engaging (boring) mission objectives need to go
- Sci & Engi need more of a role and provide greater contribution to a team than just bring more DPS or GTFO
- As above, non-DPS focused abilities have to be meaningful: stronger more competent enemies where Engi & Sci can shine too in a team and solo beyond 'kill more dead faster with EPG on a DPS timer or GTFO'
- dynamic scaling mission objectives and enemy difficulty: again, more competent enemies so high DPS ships can't just sit still and kill without drawing big aggro
- boost tank aggro drawing ability beyond 'DPS more'
- ranking lockouts: if you consistently perform too well for TFOs based on individual objectives, tanking, healing, damage, support, etc., lock out normal and advanced, but introduce a dynamic difficulty hard-advanced which responds to player performance by bringing in tougher smarter enemies
- balance out consoles and other powers to prevent the landfill of worthless stuff: eg. boarding party should provide a big meaningful impact; all ship consoles should be worth slotting too, etc.
I've been playing STO for years, I switched from PC back in 2017 when my computer couldn't run the game anymore.
Same here, not the power smash type... myself. I like the fight to be at least, challenging.
The other side of it has already been mentioned; the gaps between players are so great that you can carbon-copy the best possible build in the game and there will genuinely be players who can't do even 10% of what the best player can. You can't balance difficulties in a game with such a large mismatch between players.