@darkbladejk
Cmon man, you do unjustice to me when you keep misrepresenting what i am communicating here, you keep saying its my personal opinion and i have to deal with it, where i clearly explained that the problems themselves are not my personal problem or opinion, only the solutions i proposed are. Everyone is suffering from these problems and many pvp players actually DO NOT pvp anyone because the said problems IN PARTICULAR are cancer.
If dividing the code between pve and pvp players is very difficult to do, just write a code that cancels your evade target lock or surge or intel team buff the moment you activate your weapons on another player this is very easy coding.
YES! fix the surge! Many can confirm the tooltip is misleading and its full 10 seconds for pvp, batter yet, if you can extend that solution with a copy/paste it into evade target lock and intel team, you have done the pvp community a service!
Now that you mention immunities, Ingenious tanacity doesn't seem to have 30seconds lock, you can activate it every 10 seconds or so, is this intended ?
You seems to agree that endeavours levels are obstacle for new players. I have a friend who can't pvp because he is new to the game and the endeavours are too much of a wall to overcome. Forward this too ?
I am not expecting things to get fixed just because i wrote a comment, but any improvement is welcome.
You thinking something is a problem doesn't automatically make it a problem. Once again you are not the arbiter of what is good or bad. You having a preference for how things should be in pvp doesn't make you correct, it's pvp existing and you having an opinion. Same goes for the rest of the pvp crowd. None of them are arbiters of what is good or bad either.
Temporal Surge was fixed. As I said previously, get me evidence of something that isn't working correctly and I will forward it up the chain. You not liking how something functions doesn't make it broken. What makes it broken is if the tooltip says a buff lasts for 10 seconds, but you're only getting 5 seconds out of it as one example.
As to immunities, Ingenious Tenacity is NOT an immunity, but is akin to having reverse shield polarity up on that one particular shield facing. Even with reverse shield polarity active, you can still take damage and are not completely immune, it just makes it harder to kill something using that effect. So yes barring a statement from a dev to the contrary that is absolutely working as intended.
For endeavors I said they can make a power difference, I never said they made it impossible. You are the one asserting your friend can't pvp because he is new and doesn't have the endeavor points you and some of the others do. That isn't a bug but working as intended. People who have kept up with endeavors will have more bonuses than people who didn't or haven't worked the system as much. That's by design. If your friend can't pvp because of endeavors this tells me he has more going on than just that. I'm not opposed to them giving people the ability to turn endeavors off on certain maps or scaling everyone to have max endeavors, but beyond that, the current system is working as intended.
Other things have been separated into does X, but Y versus other players. It could be less difficult than adding a costume to the tailor.
Those were coded that way from the beginning. Recoding every old ability in the game isn't just a matter of running a global search-and-replace. And until someone complains, you have no idea which of the old abilities might need to be modified in this way - there are a lot of them.
Wouldn't it be funny if the dev time for something like adjusting the 2 or 3 abilities in question to work differently versus other players was actually far less than thought and really was less work than adding an outfit to the tailor ?
Something like this could be potentially be measured in dev-minutes or even dev-seconds as it's something they've recently done for other things.
As another already pointed out, those abilities were made that way from the start, and still required extra coding to get the separate effects. So whether it's done from the start or long after the fact, it's still extra coding that would need to be done. In order to change all other abilities after the fact now would require them to go back and change a mountain of different items. Can it be done, yes it can. There is always the ability to make such a change. Whether it's cost effective or worthwhile to do so is another debate entirely. They can do practically anything they want, whether it's practical to do so is another thing entirely.
OK, if it's "another thing entirely" then lets not debate it or even speak of it again. None of us are arbiters of what is good or bad for the game after all.
When you're writing an ability that can have more than one effect, such as effect X and effect Y, the code for both effects must be present at all times even if only half of it is being used. When such an ability is activated the game performs a check to determine if the target is a player or NPC and then applies the appropriate effect. That's an extra calculation that's not there with static abilities that don't differentiate. Computers read every line of code put in front of them unless they're instructed to skip lines or not to do so. In this case, the computer still has to be aware of both effects even if it only applies one of them. The more code you add, the larger the database which can potentially slow things down. Again a single one of zero out of place can bring the entire thing crashing down. The more complex the code, the more chances for something to break and go wrong.
If there is so much risk in increasing computational overhead and that having a SINGLE ZERO out of place can cause the ENTIRE THING to crash, the only "safe bet" is NOT to touch anything at all. Why risk slowing down or crashing the entire game? It just doesn't make any sense 🙄
Other things have been separated into does X, but Y versus other players. It could be less difficult than adding a costume to the tailor.
Those were coded that way from the beginning. Recoding every old ability in the game isn't just a matter of running a global search-and-replace. And until someone complains, you have no idea which of the old abilities might need to be modified in this way - there are a lot of them.
There really are not that many of them. Also many of them already have PvP cut outs added. I don't know how easy it would be to go into the code and change things.
Having said that Cryptic has been updating the specialty skills. They just did Intel... in fact one of their recent changes is part of the problem. A skill that frankly has basically zero use in PvE still became too good and actually annoying PvP. Cryptic as much as they say they don't care about PvP seem to do a lot of things that seem aimed at either selling to PvPers or just plain messing the game up some more.
The intel changes were done by Bort on his spare time because he wanted to see the intel abilities updated for the modern game as they were vastly outdated and underpowered compared to many of the modern specs and powers, such as miracle worker being just one prime example. If it effected pvp (as it clearly did) then that's a side effect of the changes. Which actually proves my earlier point that changes made for one side of the game will effect the other unless there is a separation between pvp and pve made. Whether that's splitting abilities into effect X and effect Y, or doing a full on pvp server. You can't run the exact same code twice and expect a different result in this instance as that's the literal definition of insanity.
Some would say having a budget of such a size that devs need to do updates in "their spare time" is the definition of insanity. Others might say having casual, not so casual, and other communities arguing over scraps of dev time would be a better fit.
Other things have been separated into does X, but Y versus other players. It could be less difficult than adding a costume to the tailor.
Those were coded that way from the beginning. Recoding every old ability in the game isn't just a matter of running a global search-and-replace. And until someone complains, you have no idea which of the old abilities might need to be modified in this way - there are a lot of them.
Wouldn't it be funny if the dev time for something like adjusting the 2 or 3 abilities in question to work differently versus other players was actually far less than thought and really was less work than adding an outfit to the tailor ?
Wouldn't it be funny if I could pick gold from between my toes? I mean, as long as we're going with ludicrous hypotheticals...
My points are feedback, as a consumer of a product. Feedback should be welcomed by the devs who i assume should want to improve and expand their product (unless they don't) PvP could have been much larger community, if it wasn't so neglected, just a small amount of time to clean whatever is clotting the artery and killing the system.
reporting bugs is cool too, but you only pass on bug reports and nothing else ?
Other things have been separated into does X, but Y versus other players. It could be less difficult than adding a costume to the tailor.
Those were coded that way from the beginning. Recoding every old ability in the game isn't just a matter of running a global search-and-replace. And until someone complains, you have no idea which of the old abilities might need to be modified in this way - there are a lot of them.
Wouldn't it be funny if the dev time for something like adjusting the 2 or 3 abilities in question to work differently versus other players was actually far less than thought and really was less work than adding an outfit to the tailor ?
Wouldn't it be funny if I could pick gold from between my toes? I mean, as long as we're going with ludicrous hypotheticals...
Since nobody really knows how much it time or effort it would take to retool three boff abilities to work differently versus players or have any similar information about adding a costume to the tailor isn't everybody here speaking hypothetically ? Glad you found the comparison thought provoking.
Other things have been separated into does X, but Y versus other players. It could be less difficult than adding a costume to the tailor.
Those were coded that way from the beginning. Recoding every old ability in the game isn't just a matter of running a global search-and-replace. And until someone complains, you have no idea which of the old abilities might need to be modified in this way - there are a lot of them.
Wouldn't it be funny if the dev time for something like adjusting the 2 or 3 abilities in question to work differently versus other players was actually far less than thought and really was less work than adding an outfit to the tailor ?
Wouldn't it be funny if I could pick gold from between my toes? I mean, as long as we're going with ludicrous hypotheticals...
Its true it is hypothetical. It is true though adjusting skills already in game is a lot less work then hiring artists to create content. The required vs players modifier is already in game. Heck some of the items/skills in question already use it... its a matter of a dev sitting down and adjusting some numbers. Its really not rocket science. I am not suggesting they go in there and just willy nilly change numbers. Having said that at least one person at Cryptic should have some idea how their game is balanced in general not just PvP... if not perhaps that is 95% of the issue.
The state of STO's PVP is an absolute embarrassment. No one wants to play when some escort is racing around at warp 300 and one shotting dreadnoughts. It's so imbalanced the only way I could see them ever fixing this is limiting all the abilities in pvp so that people who don't have access to every console and trait in the game have a semblance of a chance against the same five people that have been there for like over 6 years locking pvp down.
Other things have been separated into does X, but Y versus other players. It could be less difficult than adding a costume to the tailor.
Those were coded that way from the beginning. Recoding every old ability in the game isn't just a matter of running a global search-and-replace. And until someone complains, you have no idea which of the old abilities might need to be modified in this way - there are a lot of them.
Wouldn't it be funny if the dev time for something like adjusting the 2 or 3 abilities in question to work differently versus other players was actually far less than thought and really was less work than adding an outfit to the tailor ?
Wouldn't it be funny if I could pick gold from between my toes? I mean, as long as we're going with ludicrous hypotheticals...
Its true it is hypothetical. It is true though adjusting skills already in game is a lot less work then hiring artists to create content. The required vs players modifier is already in game. Heck some of the items/skills in question already use it... its a matter of a dev sitting down and adjusting some numbers. Its really not rocket science. I am not suggesting they go in there and just willy nilly change numbers. Having said that at least one person at Cryptic should have some idea how their game is balanced in general not just PvP... if not perhaps that is 95% of the issue.
You've never coded software, have you? Especially spaghetti code that was hastily adapted from a completely different game because some other studio farting around for two years meant that Cryptic had a nearly impossible deadline to complete the beta version of this game from scratch. "She's bypassed like a Christmas tree, captain, so don't give me too many bumps."
If they "just go in and adjust a few numbers", we'll wind up with ship phasers doing the same damage as handheld phasers and ESD traveling at Warp 30 or something.
Other things have been separated into does X, but Y versus other players. It could be less difficult than adding a costume to the tailor.
Those were coded that way from the beginning. Recoding every old ability in the game isn't just a matter of running a global search-and-replace. And until someone complains, you have no idea which of the old abilities might need to be modified in this way - there are a lot of them.
Wouldn't it be funny if the dev time for something like adjusting the 2 or 3 abilities in question to work differently versus other players was actually far less than thought and really was less work than adding an outfit to the tailor ?
Wouldn't it be funny if I could pick gold from between my toes? I mean, as long as we're going with ludicrous hypotheticals...
Its true it is hypothetical. It is true though adjusting skills already in game is a lot less work then hiring artists to create content. The required vs players modifier is already in game. Heck some of the items/skills in question already use it... its a matter of a dev sitting down and adjusting some numbers. Its really not rocket science. I am not suggesting they go in there and just willy nilly change numbers. Having said that at least one person at Cryptic should have some idea how their game is balanced in general not just PvP... if not perhaps that is 95% of the issue.
You've never coded software, have you? Especially spaghetti code that was hastily adapted from a completely different game because some other studio farting around for two years meant that Cryptic had a nearly impossible deadline to complete the beta version of this game from scratch. "She's bypassed like a Christmas tree, captain, so don't give me too many bumps."
If they "just go in and adjust a few numbers", we'll wind up with ship phasers doing the same damage as handheld phasers and ESD traveling at Warp 30 or something.
I have... and rumors of Cryptics spaghetti diner are greatly exaggerated.
Going back to the pre history of the game is now 13-14 years back. The games systems have had more then a few over hauls since then. Not to mention a lot of carry over from work done on the engine for Neverwinter and console ports.
I have no doubt its not the cleanest code in history. However the idea that Cryptic is still carrying a ton of core code from a decade or more ago is just not the case.
Yes they are capable of tweaking skills. All of the skills. They just did a complete Intel overhaul, or have you not been playing ? Two of the offending skills are INTEL skills. It should be trivial to back and modify skills they just updated a few months ago.
Unless you suggesting Cryptic somehow lost the Intel skill code from March of this year. lol
Actually... we ARE the arbiters of what is good or bad about not only PVP, but about the whole game. We are the ones who consume the content that is deployed. We are the ones buying the Zen, be it for C-store usage or for keys to gamble with. Everything that gives Cryptic any sort of incentive to do any sort of work comes from US. If all of us quit playing STO today, and it did not get a new wave of players, there would be no Zen sales. Do you think Gearbox would continue paying Cryptic to work on a dead game? They would lose their jobs. Gearbox won't just reassign them. They'll cut their losses and keep their other games running with the current skeleton crews they have. Money not spent is money saved, after all. A plus for their bottom line.
I am not saying that Cryptic needs to take every idea we put forth and run with it. But we ARE the ones who decide what is good or bad. And we play the game accordingly.
If PvP is neglected by Cryptic due to lack of player interest, keep in mind that that lack of interestcomes from people who live to PvP, and if they aren't interested, then there is a bloody reason why, and it has been voiced on these forums for years. But hey. Cryptic does not engage with us.
There is no meeting in the middle, therefore no meeting of the minds. Ultimately, what we think is good or bad about anything doesn't matter. Except to us as players. Let's face it. If it weren't for the Star Trek NAME, this game would not have the players... or payers that it does. I have said it many times. it is a mediocre MMO at best. Cryptic is not given the resources they need to make, But they can at least actually take our feedback to heart and act on it. Where it makes sense.
No actually you are not the arbiter of what is good or bad for the game. You are only the arbiter of what you think is good or bad for the game. Once again you are one person with one opinion in a sea of players about how things should be. You liking or disliking something doesn't make it good or bad for the game. I dislike pvp in this game, so I guess that automatically means it should be removed then right? See how foolish it sounds now? Games like STO do not need pvp to succeed and have never needed pvp to succeed.
With that said, it seems the rest of the playerbase generally disagrees with you as to the value of pvp in this game and are not interested. So by the logic you're using, your fellow "arbiters" have decided pvp is a bad investment for this game. Is 99% of the playerbase suddenly wrong now and you the only one correct? Cryptic does engage with people, perhaps not as often as we would sometimes like but they do. Simply because they don't engage in the way you want them to and they don't cater to the pvp crowd doesn't mean they sit on their rear ends doing nothing all day.
If you think this game is mediocre at best, why are you still here instead of heading for greener pastures? If you want better pvp and you think Cryptic isn't delivering, why are you not heading to games with better pvp? As for feedback, they do listen to people. It just so happens that you are not the only player giving them feedback and more people have told them they have no interest in pvp vs those that do have an interest in it. If 95% of your customer base is telling you that they have no interest in pvp, and the other 5% are hardcore pvp players, which side do you think they're more inclined to listen to on average or create things for? To tie this into the feedback portion, Cryptic does listen to feedback, and simply because they didn't make the decision you wanted them to make, it doesn't mean they refused to listen to you.
My points are feedback, as a consumer of a product. Feedback should be welcomed by the devs who i assume should want to improve and expand their product (unless they don't) PvP could have been much larger community, if it wasn't so neglected, just a small amount of time to clean whatever is clotting the artery and killing the system.
reporting bugs is cool too, but you only pass on bug reports and nothing else ?
Feedback is welcomed by Cryptic and always has been. The only things they don't accept are ranting demands. As to what could have been, we can speculate all day long, but it ultimately gets us nowhere and is irrelevant to the here and now. What you need to understand is that yes you can give feedback, but you are not the only person giving them feedback. If they have 95% of people telling them they don't want a certain thing to happen and only 5% of people saying they do, which do you think they're more inclined to listen to? Your problem is that most people in this game have no interest in pvp and you are refusing to accept this. You're certainly free to make requests related to pvp, but you also need to accept that because it's the minority it may not be granted the same priority as other more popular parts of the game.
OK, if it's "another thing entirely" then lets not debate it or even speak of it again. None of us are arbiters of what is good or bad for the game after all.
Glad to see this admission finally. Folks are entitled to their opinions, but their opinion isn't fact simply because they have said opinion.
If there is so much risk in increasing computational overhead and that having a SINGLE ZERO out of place can cause the ENTIRE THING to crash, the only "safe bet" is NOT to touch anything at all. Why risk slowing down or crashing the entire game? It just doesn't make any sense 🙄
Convenient that you left out the previous part of my quote showcasing why I brought up the additional computations. You're basically asking them to go back and double the size of every ability's code and add an additional computation all for something that very few people in this game will ever see. The additional code doesn't magically go away because it's not being used, it's still there because it has to be there, and that check of "is it npc or player target" has to be done every time. If the abilities were coded like this from the start this wouldn't be that huge of an issue. However you're basically asking them to double the size of the ability code this late in the game's life for very little return. The competitive reputation was a major flop showcasing people had very little interest in pvp or even being associated with pvp.
Code is a tricky thing at times and it doesn't even have to be the ability itself that causes issues, but two abilities interacting with each other. Even if it doesn't crash it can still lead to other issues. At this point in the game's life it's simply not practical to do this massive of an overhaul like you're wanting them to do. They would see far far bigger returns by revamping the crafting system than they ever would what's being proposed here.
Some would say having a budget of such a size that devs need to do updates in "their spare time" is the definition of insanity. Others might say having casual, not so casual, and other communities arguing over scraps of dev time would be a better fit.
This tells me you've not done very much game development and haven't been paying attention when they've said multiple times on stream and elsewhere they work in development cycles. During development they have certain priorities and certain deadlines they have to meet to get stuff out. If something happens super late in a development cycle, they sometimes have to wait until they start the next cycle to implement a fix. Game busting bugs resulting in crashes, new content, and similar items are going to be priority items over changing abilities purely for the 1% of the playerbase that does pvp. You don't have to like it but that's just the reality of it.
Borticus redid the Intel abilities on his spare time because again, he didn't have enough spare time with the current development cycles to do so. The abilities functioned, and they worked for what they were at the time. Thus lower on the priority list. He knew people wanted to see it revamped and he wanted to see it revamped. Borticus put in extra time to give people a revamp of abilities and people STILL complained because they couldn't do infinite DPS with the abilities like they were hoping and wanted him to do more. He chose to do that as a favor to players and people STILL complained. I know you don't like hearing it, but they have jobs to do aside from just fixing certain items. Sometimes that job eats up all their time at work and they have to do things on their spare time. that's just the reality of it whether you like it or not.
Since nobody really knows how much it time or effort it would take to retool three boff abilities to work differently versus players or have any similar information about adding a costume to the tailor isn't everybody here speaking hypothetically ? Glad you found the comparison thought provoking.
Believe it or not some of us here have done some coding before and have developed bits of software or created content for other games. So yes some people here actually do have an idea of how much time and effort it takes to create certain items and abilities. Even the things that aren't super hard can take time simply because of what's required to create the item. I created a mod for Space Engineers that redid the armor system, redid the weapons, power systems, and basically recreated every block in game for a new era while also introducing a few new blocks. Even recycling some of the vanilla models and doing some bits of copy paste for certain items, it took me 8 weeks as a one man team to get it done. Time it takes to complete something also depends on how complex the item is along with its code. Simply because you think it should be relatively quick doesn't make it so. It's not as simple as flipping switches as much as we all wish it was.
I have... and rumors of Cryptics spaghetti diner are greatly exaggerated.
Going back to the pre history of the game is now 13-14 years back. The games systems have had more then a few over hauls since then. Not to mention a lot of carry over from work done on the engine for Neverwinter and console ports.
I have no doubt its not the cleanest code in history. However the idea that Cryptic is still carrying a ton of core code from a decade or more ago is just not the case.
Yes they are capable of tweaking skills. All of the skills. They just did a complete Intel overhaul, or have you not been playing ? Two of the offending skills are INTEL skills. It should be trivial to back and modify skills they just updated a few months ago.
Unless you suggesting Cryptic somehow lost the Intel skill code from March of this year. lol
Have you actually seen their code, even a small bit of it? Unless you have seen the code you have no basis for saying it's exaggerated. You only think it's exaggerated.
What you fail to understand with the code is that you can only change so much before you require a complete rebuild of core elements. Certain core elements are going to stay the same because they have to. Otherwise you're looking at having to create STO 2 which would be a completely different animal. They're probably carrying far less old code than they were before and I'm sure they've cleaned up their code quite a bit over the years. However some things still do not change. The skills you think are trivial to change may in fact not be trivial at all. Simply wishing it to be doesn't make it so.
"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
The state of STO's PVP is an absolute embarrassment. No one wants to play when some escort is racing around at warp 300 and one shotting dreadnoughts. It's so imbalanced the only way I could see them ever fixing this is limiting all the abilities in pvp so that people who don't have access to every console and trait in the game have a semblance of a chance against the same five people that have been there for like over 6 years locking pvp down.
You are doing something wrong, if you are interested i could help you prepare one of your dreadnought ships for pvp.
I have... and rumors of Cryptics spaghetti diner are greatly exaggerated.
Going back to the pre history of the game is now 13-14 years back. The games systems have had more then a few over hauls since then. Not to mention a lot of carry over from work done on the engine for Neverwinter and console ports.
I have no doubt its not the cleanest code in history. However the idea that Cryptic is still carrying a ton of core code from a decade or more ago is just not the case.
Yes they are capable of tweaking skills. All of the skills. They just did a complete Intel overhaul, or have you not been playing ? Two of the offending skills are INTEL skills. It should be trivial to back and modify skills they just updated a few months ago.
Unless you suggesting Cryptic somehow lost the Intel skill code from March of this year. lol
Have you actually seen their code, even a small bit of it? Unless you have seen the code you have no basis for saying it's exaggerated. You only think it's exaggerated.
What you fail to understand with the code is that you can only change so much before you require a complete rebuild of core elements. Certain core elements are going to stay the same because they have to. Otherwise you're looking at having to create STO 2 which would be a completely different animal. They're probably carrying far less old code than they were before and I'm sure they've cleaned up their code quite a bit over the years. However some things still do not change. The skills you think are trivial to change may in fact not be trivial at all. Simply wishing it to be doesn't make it so.
I don't have to see their code to know they updated the shader model a few times... they ported the engine to console... they have added new systems. Again I doubt they have the cleanest code anyone has ever seen... but its obviously not as spaghettified as much as we some times joke about either.
Also again... I'm not crazy right. Cryptic just updated all the Intel skills 5 months ago right ? ?
I'm not saying they should or could or are inclined in anyway to do a massive overhaul of every console every skill every trait. However they JUST changed one of the Intel skills no one playing the game ever used... and no one in PvE land does now either. But its super annoying in PvP... and they could easily change it cause they JUST DID. They also tweaked Intel team and it would not be a bit deal to slightly tweak it either.
Also they have said they want to update the other specially skills soon... Pilot would be the next logical bunch of skill for them to go through. If they are going to be making changes to Attack Pattern Lambda anyway. I think the PvP crowd would like them to hear a little feedback before they buff it and make the game even more unplayable.
Probably wasting time here, darkblade clearly stated he wished pvp doesn't exist, he wont be bothered to forward any pvp feedback to the devs unless its "bugs".
Probably wasting time here, darkblade clearly stated he wished pvp doesn't exist, he wont be bothered to forward any pvp feedback to the devs unless its "bugs".
Expressing a dislike for pvp is not the same as wishing it didn't exist.
Comments
Good grief another wall of text.
OK, if it's "another thing entirely" then lets not debate it or even speak of it again. None of us are arbiters of what is good or bad for the game after all.
If there is so much risk in increasing computational overhead and that having a SINGLE ZERO out of place can cause the ENTIRE THING to crash, the only "safe bet" is NOT to touch anything at all. Why risk slowing down or crashing the entire game? It just doesn't make any sense 🙄
Some would say having a budget of such a size that devs need to do updates in "their spare time" is the definition of insanity. Others might say having casual, not so casual, and other communities arguing over scraps of dev time would be a better fit.
My points are feedback, as a consumer of a product. Feedback should be welcomed by the devs who i assume should want to improve and expand their product (unless they don't) PvP could have been much larger community, if it wasn't so neglected, just a small amount of time to clean whatever is clotting the artery and killing the system.
reporting bugs is cool too, but you only pass on bug reports and nothing else ?
Since nobody really knows how much it time or effort it would take to retool three boff abilities to work differently versus players or have any similar information about adding a costume to the tailor isn't everybody here speaking hypothetically ? Glad you found the comparison thought provoking.
Its true it is hypothetical. It is true though adjusting skills already in game is a lot less work then hiring artists to create content. The required vs players modifier is already in game. Heck some of the items/skills in question already use it... its a matter of a dev sitting down and adjusting some numbers. Its really not rocket science. I am not suggesting they go in there and just willy nilly change numbers. Having said that at least one person at Cryptic should have some idea how their game is balanced in general not just PvP... if not perhaps that is 95% of the issue.
If they "just go in and adjust a few numbers", we'll wind up with ship phasers doing the same damage as handheld phasers and ESD traveling at Warp 30 or something.
I have... and rumors of Cryptics spaghetti diner are greatly exaggerated.
Going back to the pre history of the game is now 13-14 years back. The games systems have had more then a few over hauls since then. Not to mention a lot of carry over from work done on the engine for Neverwinter and console ports.
I have no doubt its not the cleanest code in history. However the idea that Cryptic is still carrying a ton of core code from a decade or more ago is just not the case.
Yes they are capable of tweaking skills. All of the skills. They just did a complete Intel overhaul, or have you not been playing ? Two of the offending skills are INTEL skills. It should be trivial to back and modify skills they just updated a few months ago.
Unless you suggesting Cryptic somehow lost the Intel skill code from March of this year. lol
With that said, it seems the rest of the playerbase generally disagrees with you as to the value of pvp in this game and are not interested. So by the logic you're using, your fellow "arbiters" have decided pvp is a bad investment for this game. Is 99% of the playerbase suddenly wrong now and you the only one correct? Cryptic does engage with people, perhaps not as often as we would sometimes like but they do. Simply because they don't engage in the way you want them to and they don't cater to the pvp crowd doesn't mean they sit on their rear ends doing nothing all day.
If you think this game is mediocre at best, why are you still here instead of heading for greener pastures? If you want better pvp and you think Cryptic isn't delivering, why are you not heading to games with better pvp? As for feedback, they do listen to people. It just so happens that you are not the only player giving them feedback and more people have told them they have no interest in pvp vs those that do have an interest in it. If 95% of your customer base is telling you that they have no interest in pvp, and the other 5% are hardcore pvp players, which side do you think they're more inclined to listen to on average or create things for? To tie this into the feedback portion, Cryptic does listen to feedback, and simply because they didn't make the decision you wanted them to make, it doesn't mean they refused to listen to you.
Feedback is welcomed by Cryptic and always has been. The only things they don't accept are ranting demands. As to what could have been, we can speculate all day long, but it ultimately gets us nowhere and is irrelevant to the here and now. What you need to understand is that yes you can give feedback, but you are not the only person giving them feedback. If they have 95% of people telling them they don't want a certain thing to happen and only 5% of people saying they do, which do you think they're more inclined to listen to? Your problem is that most people in this game have no interest in pvp and you are refusing to accept this. You're certainly free to make requests related to pvp, but you also need to accept that because it's the minority it may not be granted the same priority as other more popular parts of the game.
Glad to see this admission finally. Folks are entitled to their opinions, but their opinion isn't fact simply because they have said opinion.
Convenient that you left out the previous part of my quote showcasing why I brought up the additional computations. You're basically asking them to go back and double the size of every ability's code and add an additional computation all for something that very few people in this game will ever see. The additional code doesn't magically go away because it's not being used, it's still there because it has to be there, and that check of "is it npc or player target" has to be done every time. If the abilities were coded like this from the start this wouldn't be that huge of an issue. However you're basically asking them to double the size of the ability code this late in the game's life for very little return. The competitive reputation was a major flop showcasing people had very little interest in pvp or even being associated with pvp.
Code is a tricky thing at times and it doesn't even have to be the ability itself that causes issues, but two abilities interacting with each other. Even if it doesn't crash it can still lead to other issues. At this point in the game's life it's simply not practical to do this massive of an overhaul like you're wanting them to do. They would see far far bigger returns by revamping the crafting system than they ever would what's being proposed here.
This tells me you've not done very much game development and haven't been paying attention when they've said multiple times on stream and elsewhere they work in development cycles. During development they have certain priorities and certain deadlines they have to meet to get stuff out. If something happens super late in a development cycle, they sometimes have to wait until they start the next cycle to implement a fix. Game busting bugs resulting in crashes, new content, and similar items are going to be priority items over changing abilities purely for the 1% of the playerbase that does pvp. You don't have to like it but that's just the reality of it.
Borticus redid the Intel abilities on his spare time because again, he didn't have enough spare time with the current development cycles to do so. The abilities functioned, and they worked for what they were at the time. Thus lower on the priority list. He knew people wanted to see it revamped and he wanted to see it revamped. Borticus put in extra time to give people a revamp of abilities and people STILL complained because they couldn't do infinite DPS with the abilities like they were hoping and wanted him to do more. He chose to do that as a favor to players and people STILL complained. I know you don't like hearing it, but they have jobs to do aside from just fixing certain items. Sometimes that job eats up all their time at work and they have to do things on their spare time. that's just the reality of it whether you like it or not.
Believe it or not some of us here have done some coding before and have developed bits of software or created content for other games. So yes some people here actually do have an idea of how much time and effort it takes to create certain items and abilities. Even the things that aren't super hard can take time simply because of what's required to create the item. I created a mod for Space Engineers that redid the armor system, redid the weapons, power systems, and basically recreated every block in game for a new era while also introducing a few new blocks. Even recycling some of the vanilla models and doing some bits of copy paste for certain items, it took me 8 weeks as a one man team to get it done. Time it takes to complete something also depends on how complex the item is along with its code. Simply because you think it should be relatively quick doesn't make it so. It's not as simple as flipping switches as much as we all wish it was.
Have you actually seen their code, even a small bit of it? Unless you have seen the code you have no basis for saying it's exaggerated. You only think it's exaggerated.
What you fail to understand with the code is that you can only change so much before you require a complete rebuild of core elements. Certain core elements are going to stay the same because they have to. Otherwise you're looking at having to create STO 2 which would be a completely different animal. They're probably carrying far less old code than they were before and I'm sure they've cleaned up their code quite a bit over the years. However some things still do not change. The skills you think are trivial to change may in fact not be trivial at all. Simply wishing it to be doesn't make it so.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
You are doing something wrong, if you are interested i could help you prepare one of your dreadnought ships for pvp.
I don't have to see their code to know they updated the shader model a few times... they ported the engine to console... they have added new systems. Again I doubt they have the cleanest code anyone has ever seen... but its obviously not as spaghettified as much as we some times joke about either.
Also again... I'm not crazy right. Cryptic just updated all the Intel skills 5 months ago right ? ?
I'm not saying they should or could or are inclined in anyway to do a massive overhaul of every console every skill every trait. However they JUST changed one of the Intel skills no one playing the game ever used... and no one in PvE land does now either. But its super annoying in PvP... and they could easily change it cause they JUST DID. They also tweaked Intel team and it would not be a bit deal to slightly tweak it either.
Also they have said they want to update the other specially skills soon... Pilot would be the next logical bunch of skill for them to go through. If they are going to be making changes to Attack Pattern Lambda anyway. I think the PvP crowd would like them to hear a little feedback before they buff it and make the game even more unplayable.
Probably wasting time here, darkblade clearly stated he wished pvp doesn't exist, he wont be bothered to forward any pvp feedback to the devs unless its "bugs".
Expressing a dislike for pvp is not the same as wishing it didn't exist.