If memory serves, I believe the reason for the removal of Advanced and Elite from Events was that Normal level and newbie players were accidentally queuing up for those instead of the Normal level Event, and they weren't receiving participation credit and generally not having a good time. They complained. And so, Cryptic removed Advanced and Elite, leaving Normal for Event runs to minimize/eliminate any confusion since Normal is the least common denominator. So, unless you can remove user error from queuing for the wrong Event level, I don't see how Cryptic can reintroduce Advanced and Elite. 🤷🏼♀️
This is 100% a UI/UX issue. No doubt it was much less an effort in time and money to just remove Advanced events than it is to rework the UI.
The game does an extremely poor job educating the player of the difference between Normal, Advanced and Elite settings for content, in addition to informing the player about the functionality of the TFO UI.
IMO the mission that sends you over to see D'Vak in DS9 to introduce you to TFOs should be overhauled to be much, much more informative in this regard.
The other problem is that some of the event content takes place in Battlezones which were never designed for high performing builds. This is akin to other MMORPGS sending max level players into the starter zones for quests. New and lower level players will never be able to compete.
On battlezones, 100% they need an advanced, not sure if an elite difficulty would work(how many players really are suited for that to participate regularly and progress, even with extreme high end performers?) but definently advanced is needed.
On the difficulty I agree though, the game still does a poor job of explaining things such as buff stacking and yeah, GUI needs to warn people of the differences between normal, advanced and elite, I mean it needs to be clear, some players may just even be assuming elite is only marginally harder than normal only to find out enemies have millions of HP to drill through and inflict a ton of damage.
And I think it should warn of the kind of players who tend to favor those difficulties are not only highly equipped but also very skilled and consistently equip high speed impulse, often such newer players don't even get to the fighting and get the lockout penalty for "idling"(even if they really werent, just not getting to fights in time).
I'd even state the game should do like the original doom does with nightmare mode: Warn the player when they first pick a higher difficulty, more-so if they have like low reps(no reps at tier 4 I think would be fine). Like, ahem, included descriptions;
Normal: Fine for players starting out who have not developed reputations. No heads up/warning given.
Advanced: For players who have either well developed reputations or know what they are doing. Warning given to players with undeveloped reputations(same warning applies to elite).
Elite: For maxed out players and experts only.
Many games do this why not STO?
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,442Community Moderator
DPS counter will not, I repeat, will not work. It measures DPS in it's entirety, not on a per player basis. It measures what everyone is applying to everyone else, which ups individual measures of DPS. They could do a 'battle power' measure like in PSO2:NGS where gear has a score though.
The problem with that road is that we start having discrimination based on Gear Score like in WoW. I have a friend who used to play WoW, and they saw toxic behavior over there over gear score that it makes the less desireable memebers of DPS League look like kittens. "You must have X Gear Score to run with us or else", "You must have X rating on OUR site to run with us or else"... it got pretty toxic. And it didn't matter if you knew the content and were running on an alt that did meet at least the minimum required gear score, if you got saddled with those kinds of players you got the boot for not conforming.
I don't know if that is the case with PSO2, but that was with WoW. A Gear Score would just give the toxic types more ammunition to use.
DPS counter will not, I repeat, will not work. It measures DPS in it's entirety, not on a per player basis. It measures what everyone is applying to everyone else, which ups individual measures of DPS. They could do a 'battle power' measure like in PSO2:NGS where gear has a score though.
The problem with that road is that we start having discrimination based on Gear Score like in WoW. I have a friend who used to play WoW, and they saw toxic behavior over there over gear score that it makes the less desireable memebers of DPS League look like kittens. "You must have X Gear Score to run with us or else", "You must have X rating on OUR site to run with us or else"... it got pretty toxic. And it didn't matter if you knew the content and were running on an alt that did meet at least the minimum required gear score, if you got saddled with those kinds of players you got the boot for not conforming.
I don't know if that is the case with PSO2, but that was with WoW. A Gear Score would just give the toxic types more ammunition to use.
Additionally, another problem with gear score is that while you may have the necessary gear, doesnt mean you know how to use it effectively.
DPS counter will not, I repeat, will not work. It measures DPS in it's entirety, not on a per player basis. It measures what everyone is applying to everyone else, which ups individual measures of DPS. They could do a 'battle power' measure like in PSO2:NGS where gear has a score though.
The problem with that road is that we start having discrimination based on Gear Score like in WoW. I have a friend who used to play WoW, and they saw toxic behavior over there over gear score that it makes the less desireable memebers of DPS League look like kittens. "You must have X Gear Score to run with us or else", "You must have X rating on OUR site to run with us or else"... it got pretty toxic. And it didn't matter if you knew the content and were running on an alt that did meet at least the minimum required gear score, if you got saddled with those kinds of players you got the boot for not conforming.
I don't know if that is the case with PSO2, but that was with WoW. A Gear Score would just give the toxic types more ammunition to use.
I know exactly what you mean. It's not as big a problem in PSO2 because it has a lower population and the battlescore for content is pretty tight on minimums.....and alliances aren't worth anything at the moment because the game was released 2 years too early Literally less than 8 hours of story content after 2 years.
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
I suppose since gear score problem came up I should clarify since I figure someone probably will, on my "difficulty recommendations" thats something that I'd say would be client side, other players wouldn't see that.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
I hear and feel the same DPS issues as others. i have a build that is good, balanced, and not just a massive glass cannon.
the problem is that it's "DPS" as everything. And in one area, the game's gone backwards. In the mission S'harien's Swords, there was a warbird that adapted, you could only hurt it with beams to a point, then only torpedoes. and so on. So the ability to have it was there, but this was removed back in 2015.
Basically, we need TFP content that has 5 players and so needs 5 players, and ideally 5 players not running identical builds of ship. The boss triggers in both the Undine and Tzinkethi battlezones start that way, but its only really apparent in the Competitive TFOs, where players DPS is less relevant than their ability to work together. And that stuff gets marked down by many (well, some) because it does take more than just DPS to do. But it is the starfleet way to work as a team, and it's a matter of Klingon honor to be smart and not just be an overpowering bully (hence all the jokes about the great tribble hunt, and how 'glorious those battles must be')
The only way to deal with the DPS creep is to moderate it so that just having big DPS alone can't solve things, and certainly that you can't solo a mission eventually (else you don't have a 5 player TFO, you have a 1-to-5-player TFO)
And that's the only way you're going to get away from the powercreep, not by trying to nerf the DPS, because that'll just change the makeup of the min-max build. It's where you need to use all the players (or most of them, 4 say) and they need some secondary quality, like actually being able to survive.
It should say something about the DPS state in the game, where I've seen people say 'don't bother tweaking shields, they're irrelevant and just go down anyway, you just blow them up before they can deal you enough DPS to blow up your hull.
Until DPS isn't the answer to every single bit of content in the game, there's going to be people pushing the powercreep, and right now there's no other viable path.
If you want a parallel, look at the TV show BattleBots (a show I used to work on as one of the safety/tech inspection crew). There used to be 3 main bot types. High KE Spinners (horizontal, vertical and drum), control bots (ones with clamps/lifts/flippers) and wedges (that used drive power alone). Generally spinners beat control bots, control bots beat wedges, and wedges beat spinners. Few years ago, when going to ABC tv, they put in a rule of 'no wedges', because two wedges fighting each other is dull. Well, then every bot became a spinner, because controls don't have anyone to beat, and spinners don't have anyone to lose to. They changed the meta, to try and eliminate the boring (wedge on wedge) and ended up making one design philosphy key. it's deal out as much damage as you can, and kill them before they can kill you. And sure it can look spectacular, but it also gets kinda boring, because you lose all the variety.
Sure theres a Beam build, and a cannon build, and a EPG build and a carrier build, But they're all built around making a big alpha-strike and done. We need ways where everyone has to be involved in a mission to progress, and the "DPS guy" needs the cooperation of others, or their glass cannon is going to be shattered. For this reason, the Voth are some of the hardest ships to destroy, because they have that 180 shield, and sometimes reflection (just got my ship blown up twice in the contested zone when a citadel on the event used the reflective immunity matrix on me)
Is it any surprise then, that my favourite TFO is Binary circuit (only seem to be able to do that when its the universal) and the now removed Mine Trap (although it was great for the nearly 3 years it was in, between seasons 7 and 11)
DPS counter will not, I repeat, will not work. It measures DPS in it's entirety, not on a per player basis. It measures what everyone is applying to everyone else, which ups individual measures of DPS. They could do a 'battle power' measure like in PSO2:NGS where gear has a score though.
the database probably is not tracking the average DPS of each toon. If it were it would be very simple for the server to scan the queue ad match palyers with brackets of 2,5,8,10K damage, that way the 10,000 DPS player will never be matched with the 1M dps l33ts. so yes, if they did add a field to the toon database of average DPS for matching purposes it would work very well
To piggyback off the discussions around gear score, I have long advocated for a clear path of progression for people so they can know what content they're ready for, and more importantly what they're not. One thing STO lacks is a clear progression path that tells people how to get ready for the next tiers of content. A progression path can be set and measures put in place to know who is ready for what content, but I don't think some folks are going to like what it would take. To use the WoW comparison it can be done and WoW solved alot of their group content issues with 3 things.
1: Gear check
2: minimum DPS/Healing/Tanking check
3: dungeon journal so folks know where to get things
First up is a gear check. When used PROPERLY a gear check/gear score tells you if a person has the stats ON PAPER to contribute to the team and survive the content. That's the only thing gear score is good for is to tell you if someone should have the stats on paper to survive and contribute. It's a valid measure, but needs to be paired with other things to matter.
Wow paired the gear check with the minimum DPS/healing/tank check in order to tell if people were ready. They did this by the proving grounds which was sort of a training map. It had 4 difficulties. bronze, silver, gold, and endless. In order to get into the door for random content you had to have the minimum gear, and complete the silver level difficulty. If for example I wanted to tank it would recognize I'm a tank and have me complete certain tests that a tank would face. Such as keeping threat against a group of foes while a healer NPC keeps everyone alive, and some DPS NPCs wiped the group. The test would include taunting foes that break off, positioning the boss/foes based on mechanics, knowing when to hit a defensive cooldown and the like. Similarly for healers they had to keep certain people alive, knowing when to purge debuffs from people and the like. It didn't prepare you for everything but it prepared for the basics.
Then finally they gave people a dungeon journal that told where to get certain bits of equipment. Such as if you wanted polaron gear for a jem'hadar ship, it would tell you where you got certain polaron drops. The other big deal was that it would give you a basic rundown as to what you can expect from certain foes. It didn't outright say "do X Y Z to beat this boss." It would however tell you for example if fighting a borg pickle ship, "it has abilities x y z that deal damage type A and can be interrupted." It gave you enough info to formulate your own plans. You could have myself leading a group, BMR leading a group, Rattler leading a 3rd group, all of us using 3 different strats, and all 3 of them working.
With those 3 things WoW gave people a clear progression path so they know where to get certain gear, and had a goal to meet to get into random instances. This ensured that people had the stats on paper to survive the encounter and contribute to the team via gear check. Then ensured they're at least competent enough to contribute via the DPS/Tank/Healing check. If folks could get the gear, and complete the silver proving grounds, yet still couldn't compete in the actual instances, you knew one of a few things was going on. Either the person was having technical problems, a mechanic is tripping them up, or they're straight up not trying. Yes some people got locked out of higher difficulties they weren't ready for, but overall the group quality improved.
In terms of how it could work for STO, it would give minimum standards to shoot for so folks know if they're ready for advanced and elite content. If they're not ready it can give them an idea of what they need to get ready. Personally I don't play on normal mode unless I'm forced to do so purely because I might AFK someone. However at the same time it's also incumbent on people to mitigate their chances of getting AFKed as well. If you know you're joining a pool of players with higher DPS people and you're running a build that's not as potent be it by choice or not yet having access to the higher level gear, you bear some responsibility for that choice. If you go into a run with 4 pilot ships zipping across the map with high DPS and you're in a cruiser that moves at the speed of smell doesn't have the damage output those ships do and you get an AFK penalty, then that's on you in part.
"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
No thank you to gear checks/scores and no thank you to gear progression and all of the poor behavior it brings with it. Leave all of that in WoW where it belongs.
Gear progression already exists in this game in the form of upgrades, so that ship has sailed. It may not take the form WoW or SWTOR use, but it does exist.
Now with that said, if you're opposed to what I have said above, then what is your solution that allows people to know if they are ready for advanced and/or elite content or not? How do you propose people improve their equipment and improve their builds to be able to contribute to the team, be it a "canon" build or full min/max build?
"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
When it comes down to it, it's about letting the player know two things...
1: Are they ready for Advanced/Elite
2: How can they improve
As long as those two questions remain unanswered or theres a big Adobe Gaussian blur ontop of it, this problem will continue. From a standpoint of making it as "easy" as possible for the player and as easy as possible for the devs....
In Star Trek there are cadet and officer reviews, we've seen it in the show.
How about a Captains Review?
When the player is ready to take part in TFO's, or, when the player is jumping into their first random a "Scenario" for the Captain is played out in the holodeck with their current ship, this is the Gatekeeping part. It can be based off of part of ISE so the player goes into a "cut down" ISE on normal setting. There's only one generator active, no probes come in to heal and only two spheres above. That player has to take out that generator and the two spheres.
Yes, its over simplified, but a generator with only two sphere's guarding it and no probes healing it means the playing field is levelled for the new people coming into TFO's. If they end up taking too long, or they end up being killed by the two spheres, then the player will have a recommendation not to take part in Adv/Elite TFO content because their ship is simply not up to scratch to take part in them and they will die...a lot.
If they end up being recommended not to take part in Adv and Elite, a PADD is given to them with tips on how to increase damage, general tips on how to increase health.
The gatekeeping "Captain's Review" can be taken anytime by the player as they overhaul their ship. Encouraging the newer players to push their ship further up the ladder to get into those Adv TFO's by at least increasing damage and survivability is at least one part of the puzzle. The big problem is a lot of new players go into these TFO's and have no idea just how much of a DPS centric mess they are currently in.
You cant limit the high end players, the only way around it is to encourage the new or casual player to put a bit more time into kitting out their ship so they at least have a chance to get in and get damage done. If the bottom rungs of the player ladder are not being given some sort of advice on how to keep climbing, then the gap between the DPS chasers and the general casual playing public is just going to get increasingly worse within the random TFO's.
Personally, and from a former game dev standpoint, i would enlist the help of some of the YouTube STO creators as well. Have them make a "Beginners Guide to Adv/Elite TFO's" video, with their own standpoint of making a beam based and canon based build using only mission rewards or reputation bought ship parts. Once the creators have made those videos, blast them all out on the STO website and possibly even mention them on the PADD that's given to the player telling them that its recommended they don't take part in the Adv/Elite content.
Anything to give the casual/new TFO players that helping hand up to the next rung on the ladder is a good thing, it means they are happy having a better ship, and they see the results of that little bit of extra time they have put in.
"You know when that shark bites, with its teeth dear... scarlet billows start to spread..."
I never played WOW, but I had played guild wars, and I remember all to well the heroes ascent catch 22 "requirement" its community shoved down everyones throats for that;
To participate in heroes ascent, players required you to have at least hero title rank 3.
To get any progression towards that title requiresd participation in heroes ascent. Anyone without rank 3 thus cannot ever participate, ever.
(Edit: As player base thinned apparently, they dropped that catch 22, simply, no one left to play who had the "requirements".)
I feared that'd happen to city of heroes when it was live, and it partly did, with the incarnate trials, thankfully, it didn't get to such an absolute extreme like guild wars, or how gear checks apparently became in WoW. Thing is, elitist gamers love to manipulate communities into these kinds of systems to maximize there win %s, if due to how big a sore losers they universally are(and often not necessarily good at the game at all, why else do they require everyone else be perfect?).
All gear check/dps check ect, if displayed to others would do, is create that extreme level of elitism and exclusion that prevents progression entirely. Its why I stated for difficulties just recomendations for player expectations of those difficulties but thats all I advocate for, we shouldn't put in things that let elitists get intrusive on others and exclude others over not "being able to stomp the difficulty and having played the difficulty a few hundred times to even qualify for said difficulty setting to begin with".
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
Personally I don't play on normal mode unless I'm forced to do so purely because I might AFK someone. However at the same time it's also incumbent on people to mitigate their chances of getting AFKed as well. If you know you're joining a pool of players with higher DPS people and you're running a build that's not as potent be it by choice or not yet having access to the higher level gear, you bear some responsibility for that choice...
When it comes down to it, it's about letting the player know two things...
1: Are they ready for Advanced/Elite
2: How can they improve
These tools and resources already exist.
You cant limit the high end players, the only way around it is to encourage the new or casual player to put a bit more time into kitting out their ship so they at least have a chance to get in and get damage done.
This can be a delicate process. There is often active pushback against any form of self improvement or changes in play style. Try suggesting to a Starship Captain that perhaps they could equip or fly their ship a bit differently lol.
...i would enlist the help of some of the YouTube STO creators as well. Have them make a "Beginners Guide to Adv/Elite TFO's" video, with their own standpoint of making a beam based and canon based build using only mission rewards or reputation bought ship parts. Once the creators have made those videos, blast them all out on the STO website...
There are LOTS of very good guides out there from a variety of sources as well as places like "The Academy" here in this forum.
Anything to give the casual/new TFO players that helping hand up to the next rung on the ladder is a good thing, it means they are happy having a better ship, and they see the results of that little bit of extra time they have put in.
I think this should be left up to the individual player to learn in the way that best suits them. Let the individual make the choice of what content they want to run and at what difficulty they are comfortable with and find enjoyable. Individual players can try and fail and learn from their mistakes, or ask questions of other players, or search out builds on the internet or whatever other method they find works best for them. Your average player is intelligent enough to figure this out on their own. This game is not all that complicated to figure out.
So a couple of issues. First, how do you propose they know if they're improving or not? You say leave it up to the individual player but you don't cover how they're to measure their improvement or lack of. With what you've said you're also assuming that people want to improve as well which can be a very big assumption at times.
WoW instituting the gear check, dungeon journal, and role check served several purposes. First, it gave people a way to measure themselves and where they're at currently. If a person met the gear check and role checks, then they were good to go for group content. If they didn't meet the gear and role checks, they had the dungeon journal that told them where to get the things they needed to improve, and gave them information on various mechanics so they can formulate their own plans to counter those mechanics. It removed all excuses from people seeking to do group content. If they could meet those checks, then unless something happened that was out of their control, such as internet dropping or real life issues, they had zero excuses as to why they couldn't do things in group content. They had the gear, the had the basic mechanical knowledge, and had the information available to them via dungeon journal. The checks instituted gave folks a real time check on where they were and where they needed to advance.
Now this is where I see a misconception most people have. Just to make this clear, I am not saying you specifically, but speaking in general terms when I say this. Simply because in WoW I may have qualified to step into the highest tier raids or what have you, did NOT require me to play those higher tiers, only that I could. If I wanted to play the mid tier raids because I found them more fun, I could. All those checks did was ensure that if/when I did step into the higher tier raids, I was ready for them.
So again I have to ask. How do you propose people measure themselves to know if they need to improve or not? At what point do people take a little personal responsibility for their woes in game? If I go into TFO in a cruiser that moves at the speed of smell and I get grouped with 4 people in pilot ships who zip around and kill everything before I can get there, who's fault is it I didn't get there in time, them or me? In order to mitigate the chances of that happening when joining random TFOs, I can take a ship in there that's a bit faster and save my slower ship for private runs with friends.
For every person wanting to improve their setup and being willing to do so, I've seen just as many that are stuck in their ways and unwilling to change anything. And woe be unto the person who dares suggest someone from the second group needs to change something. Had a guy that was in my fleet for awhile that we found out was part of that second group. Back when the Colony first came out, myself, an officer and a new player were going into Dranuur Gauntlet normal mode to get some colony provisions at the time. We had just helped this new person put together a build and were about to go in when the 4th guy came online. We'll call him Bob. Bob asked to go along and we thought why not, 4th guy putting provisions in. During the run we got one of the nastier foes for normal mode. myself, the pug, and my officer came close to dying a couple of times but never did. The new person died twice due to lack of experience. Bob on the other hand died 18 times in a normal mode run. After the run I went afk to get a drink before we moved on. When I came back I caught the tail end of Bob raging at my officer. Bob messaged me right after telling me what happened while my officer was telling me the same thing in voice comms. My officer asked Bob "hey dude I noticed you had a hard time staying alive in there. You died 18 times in total. Is there anything we can do to help you out?" Bob took that as an insult to him and called my officer an elitist, along with many other things I won't repeat on this forum. All because my officer dared suggest he might need help. I bring that up to say this. For every person out there who is willing to change, adapt and the like, there is another who is like Bob that refuses to change anything.
The problem with folks like Bob is that it's never their fault in their minds. It's always the rest of the team and never him. It's the people coming in with their "pay to win" builds and the like that won't let him play. If he dies more than once or twice in certain things, it's too hard and needs to be nerfed. He was never willing to take responsibility for his part in making sure he has a fun experience. Now I have no problem with people like Bob playing what they like in game, but Bob needs to stay out of content he's clearly not ready for as it negatively impacts the other people on the team. The other problem with people like Bob is they often over-estimate their own ability and the power of their builds because they play story difficulty where they can sneeze in the direction of foes and wipe entire groups. Then when they step into advanced and/or elite and they get rolled, they think something is wrong with the game when there's not.
"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
I never played WOW, but I had played guild wars, and I remember all to well the heroes ascent catch 22 "requirement" its community shoved down everyones throats for that;
To participate in heroes ascent, players required you to have at least hero title rank 3.
To get any progression towards that title requiresd participation in heroes ascent. Anyone without rank 3 thus cannot ever participate, ever.
(Edit: As player base thinned apparently, they dropped that catch 22, simply, no one left to play who had the "requirements".)
I feared that'd happen to city of heroes when it was live, and it partly did, with the incarnate trials, thankfully, it didn't get to such an absolute extreme like guild wars, or how gear checks apparently became in WoW. Thing is, elitist gamers love to manipulate communities into these kinds of systems to maximize there win %s, if due to how big a sore losers they universally are(and often not necessarily good at the game at all, why else do they require everyone else be perfect?).
All gear check/dps check ect, if displayed to others would do, is create that extreme level of elitism and exclusion that prevents progression entirely. Its why I stated for difficulties just recomendations for player expectations of those difficulties but thats all I advocate for, we shouldn't put in things that let elitists get intrusive on others and exclude others over not "being able to stomp the difficulty and having played the difficulty a few hundred times to even qualify for said difficulty setting to begin with".
So a couple of things on this. You're never going to get rid of elitism 100% as there will always be those certain players that want to flex on everyone else. That's not just gaming history but human history. There will always be those certain people who think they're better than everyone else and they're somehow entitled. As to your comment regarding manipulating people to increase win percentages, what exactly are you winning in STO? I see people bring this argument up all the time as to why we shouldn't do anything, but none ever elaborates on what you're winning. With regards to player standards, people have a right to set whatever standards they want for private mode runs they are hosting. You don't have to like the standards they set, but your dislike of those standards doesn't negate their right to have them. In WoW when the GearScore addon came about and people wanting to be (choice of insult here) about my being a mix of 232 and 245 gear instead of exclusively 245, even though the game itself only required 232 across the board, I made my own groups.
Today though there is an advantage that is pretty much standard across all MMOs that didn't exist at that time, random group finder. Almost all MMOs today have them meaning you can NEVER be locked out of content if you've met the minimum standards for it. If for example lets say you wanted to do a piece of content that required 226 across the board as a minimum and you were at that 226 minimum, but all the private groups were demanding you be at 232+, all you had to do was join a random group. Where as the private groups may not take you, as is their right to exclude you, you could still get into the content. So this idea that people are going to be excluded from content because of elitist players if we instituted some kind of gear/roll checks is just bogus. If those were to be implemented and people aren't able to get in, it's because they're not meeting the minimum standards set forth by the game itself. It would be like something requiring all 226 gear, and you being in all 218 and being mad you can't get in. When the elitists find that none wants to play with them and they're not needed for people to see the content, they'll either fall in line or continue to be irrelevant.
As for being intrusive or excluding people, if a particular piece of content required everyone on the team do 50k DPS minimum and that 5th person isn't meeting that 50k minimum, they have no right to be in that TFO until they up their performance as they're not meeting the standard set forth by the game itself in that instance. It also guarantees the team will fail because they were not ready. In that instance 4 other people are negatively impacted because of the one, and that's not fair to the other 4 being expected to carry the 5th guy.
If you're expecting something to be 100% abuse proof before it's ever implemented, Cryptic may as well stop developing the game. There is no such thing as a 100% abuse proof system or feature. There are always going to be people who try to weaponize features and the like against their fellow players in some form or fashion. All you can do is minimize the issue.
As just one example, I have brought up how I wish there was an inspect player function that we could use to see what gear other people have equipped. Every time I bring that up people always jump straight to "people will just use it to shame other people who aren't as geared as them" and the like. While there are some in games like SWTOR who abuse the inspect function, if I am trying to help a guild member or even a random person that's asked for help, or accepted an offer of help, it save so much time as I can just inspect and go. There's no foolishness with having to get them in discord, get them to share their screen, have to direct them to click this, mouse over this or that, have them fumbling through menus for 30 minutes before I can even make heads or tails of what they're doing. Instead I can simply inspect what the person has, and tell them "if you want more damage, take off (thing 1) and (thing 2) then move (thing 3) to slot A and get to X amount of stat Y" and we're both on our way at that point. "Well it violates my privacy" they say next usually. Well no it doesn't because by even stepping foot into the game and running a combat log I can reverse engineer your build with 95% accuracy, and you could do the same for me. If I watch your buff icons I can tell what you're using. All that's accomplished by leaving an inspect function out of the game is making it harder to actually help people when the time comes and share information.
Lastly in regards to the loser comment, expecting someone to meet the basic minimum standards set forth by the game is not wrong and is not elitism. If it requires everyone do a minimum of 20k DPS, then expecting everyone in the run to be at 20k DPS is not elitism. If it only requires 20k DPS and someone in the group is expecting you to do 100k DPS, then that's elitism by far.
Point being if you're expecting 100% abuse proof features you're never going to see anything new.
"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
There is a problem with all gear check systems in that the devs cannot really know exactly what an object (weapon, shield, ect.) can do in every possible situation, so those checks are rough estimates at best. And using those rough checks to base a gating system on is a good way to turn off players.
Oddball roles and secondary effects of gear can all too easily throw off calculations. For instance, in Defiance I used to take my starting characters into open-group content in the gated-entry endgame part of the map (Silicon Valley) and do a lot of shoot-and-scoot with a flare pistol (it was a high-arc ballistic trajectory fire-DoT weapon) and would keep lighting up the NPCs to make them panic and roll around trying to put themselves out. It is not something that shows up in damage calculations (the flare pistol was not considered a high DPS weapon though they could cause a lot of overall damage spread across a battle if handled right).
After a while the devs stopped trying to enforce the gate because it was so easy to circumvent and a lot of people did it and the gate wasn't needed anyway because people who took low-level characters there either knew how to equip for it or soon figured out something that worked for them.
I also liked to do something like that in BDO (which also has open-group content) where the high level characters would tend to keep the attention of the boss or whatever while the lower-level characters would keep the adds busy, do various other support things, and take potshots at the boss when possible. It all worked out well for everyone with no gates and the minimum of elite ego toxicity problems. And if a player was careful and sneaky enough they could mug regular npc enemies in higher level areas than they should have been in too, though killing them could take quite a while.
To have any accuracy things like gear checks generally have to depend on a very limited, highly controlled gear/skill/technique and whatever else structure, and the more rigid it is the less interesting it tends to be for a lot of players. The more variety there is the more variables there are to try to keep on top of, and trying to keep it all under control quickly gets out of hand.
And yes, there are some "Bob" types in every game, just like there are toxic elites in every game. The majority of players nowadays tend to be neither one though, so game companies do not have to cater to either of them anymore (though some choose to do so) which leaves the field open for other player types to find a game that fits their styles.
STO is an odd sort of casual blend of open-world and lobby elements mixed into a very loosely-ordered story-driven system that has significant casual social elements to it. A lot of players find that refreshing after playing more restrictive structured games, and not having rigid rails helps a lot with both roleplaying (though there is not a lot of it here) and alts (which is a major emphasis in STO, to the point that they now have events to encourage making them). Highly tiered narrowly channeled content of the type that works best with gear checks and gates is not a good fit here except maybe as a sideline of some sort (which is already in the game in an informal way via private TFOs and the like).
Personally, I don't think there's really anything you can do about power creep. It is as common to games as leaves on a tree. Before it was f2p there was a ton of power creep. There were consoles and sets that you needed to have to do the content easily. And the people that could afford it afforded it and those that couldn't didn't. The same as it is today.
It's an inevitability. Much like growing up. Personally it seems as if players believe devs are incompetent when they really aren't. They don't make these decisions. Companies do, and companies see dollars, not discussions, not arguments, not opinions. And with that desire for money comes power. And that power is even more mitigated by the devs to try to slow the creep.
Power creep itself is the wrong term. Because power creep means they intended it to happen slowly. But I don't think that's the case. I think it comes from unintended factors. Such as this useless skill made on date A when mixed with this useless skill on Date B with this ship and weapon build on Date C, with these consoles/sets on Date D. And thus you have a new OP Meta, even if all of those factors where made Years apart.
The game was not intended to do that. It is simply an unintended consequence of age, player knowledge, and the cost of doing business. So I just never find discussions that talk about companies making power creep effective. They will not stop making money, if they do then the product itself goes bye bye. So the only effective conversation you can have is on your end. You would have to change the way you play for yourself.
It's also odd that we have these discussions about DPS as if DPS'ers with extreme DPS such myself are around ever cornor and bend. That is most certainly not the case. Extreme DPSer's that can deal 500k per salvo is rare. So its a redundant conversation, because there are very very very few of them. Players that have a large amount of Lock Box ships for traits, and consoles is few and far between. So the conversation isn't that the DPS is too high, but that the players standards are too low, if they are being kicked from pugs when they are matched up with other normal/casual players. They are just not keeping up with the regular players and want some sort of difference in treatment made for them.
Now generally my opinion on these subjects is "It is what it is. If those people want it, sure why not, its not like it will harm me in any way." I don't mind if the enemies are stronger, or absorb more of a beating. I enjoy watching the line go up and the red go down. But sometimes I genuinely just wonder if its is worth the discussion really. Since if it is only taking you 2-3 minutes to do the instance and you can do it infinite amount of times during an event without any repercussions then what's the problem? Just do it until you get the item. Avoid the problems, the animosity, the misunderstandings that can come from these conversations that lead to no where anyhow. They were never meant to be anything other then the old man yelling at he sea to begin with, yet people put weight to them as if they are on a conference call with the board. But that's just my opinion.
There is a problem with all gear check systems in that the devs cannot really know exactly what an object (weapon, shield, ect.) can do in every possible situation, so those checks are rough estimates at best. And using those rough checks to base a gating system on is a good way to turn off players.
This right here is part of why I said that on its own, a gear check does nothing but ensure you have stats on paper to survive and contribute to the team. With as many combinations of gear as there are in typical MMOs, things like WoW, SWTOR and a few others that have used them don't care about the secondary effects, only the primary stats and effects. If for example the gear check in STO terms required all mk xii very rare gear, the gear check didn't care if you had a rainbow build to get there, it only cared that you had the basic stats with the mk xii very rare gear. Again keep in mind the gear check isn't to see if everything is min/maxed to the hilt, but purely if you have enough basic stats to survive and contribute. This is why gear checks in WoW were paired with the proving grounds role check, aka the Tank/healing/DPS check.
The role check when comboed with the gear check told the game and the groups that not only did you have the basic stats on paper to survive and contribute, but also the basic mechanical knowledge of your class to do so. Let's use our hypothetical rainbow build player once again. If that player went into the role check with a rainbow build that just used whatever he could in order to cheese the gear check and didn't put actual thought into it, he was pretty well guaranteed to fail the role check and wouldn't be allowed in the door. If he wanted to use that build then he would be free to do so in normal mode runs, but not in advanced or elite where he would be a liability to the rest of the team.
The gear and role checks didn't care how you cleared them, simply that you did. Whether you were an energy build, torp build, or what have you was irrelevant. you're correct that there's going to be some rough calculations to it as in establishing those baselines WoW had to sit down and think, okay what's a reasonable amount of gear to require for this, and then how much Tanking/DPS/healing should a person be able to do with that gear. Once they established the baseline they shipped it to players.
Were there some people who weren't able to get into bits of content right away, yes there were. However the people that couldn't get in were folks that were not ready for the content yet and had no business in there to start with. That may sound elitist, but I've seen quite a few people in my day playing this game who want to come into certain content thinking they're ready for it and they're absolutely not, be it in STO, SWTOR, WoW, and other games I've played. Now I want those people to eventually be able to get into the content, but not if they're going to be a liability to the team as that's not fair to the other people.
As for turning people off, the status quo we have now is already doing that. It never fails, I see people come on here time and again complaining about the status quo we have now in STO. They demand things be changed to their exact suiting, usually involving nerfing and limiting things people paid for or earned that they don't like. Then when people like myself or others point out why that's a non-option and offer solutions that have been proven to work in other games, they whine and say "that won't work because X Y Z" and as a result nothing ever changes. In part I'm convinced that's because too many people don't really want change of any kind in STO. They're comfortable with the status quo even though they complain about it. Too many people anymore imo want the benefits and rewards of advanced/elite level content, but don't want to put in advanced/elite levels of work to get there. At some point people have to take responsibility for their own woes in game but too many don't want to do that. Anyways before anyone tries to say otherwise, this last paragraph are purely my own general thoughts and observations and not directed at anyone specific.
"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
“Extreme DPSer's that can deal 500k per salvo is rare. So its a redundant conversation, because there are very very very few of them. “
Not sure that’s right as I see that style of DPS pretty much every play session often by multiple players. Even pets now do well over 500k salvos, player main weapons can do millions per salvo. 500k is common place. 500k salvos are not extreme DPSers or rare. 500k can be the salvo from 1 weapon rather then 1 entire volley salvo.
“In WoW when the GearScore addon came about and people wanting to be (choice of insult here) about my being a mix of 232 and 245 gear instead of exclusively 245, even though the game itself only required 232 across the board, I made my own groups.”
GearScores can certainly work and they worked well in Division 1 and 2 which was built from the ground up around GearScore. But I am not sure how it would work in STO without a major amount of work. Up to a point gear doesn’t matter (build dependent), as a Carrier pilot I would be really frustrated to be locked out of content that I could easy do because my gear which has little impact on my Carrier ability or ship performance is too low. For STO its not so much the gear level as the combination of how the gear interact with traits and powers.
Now for energy boats it’s a little different GearSCore makes more sense as you can upgrade weapons for a better representation of the ship. It’s the other builds like Carriers I am unsure how it would work. Not saying it won't work, just its a problem area for Gearscore.
I'm starting to get the feeling that certain people are trashing all ideas just so the gap between high end DPS and the bulk of the casual player base remains intact.
"You know when that shark bites, with its teeth dear... scarlet billows start to spread..."
I'm starting to get the feeling that certain people are trashing all ideas just so the gap between high end DPS and the bulk of the casual player base remains intact.
Sorry! double posted a quote by accident.
"You know when that shark bites, with its teeth dear... scarlet billows start to spread..."
It is disingenuous to believe people are not intelligent enough to figure things out on their own or do their own research.
I wasn't intelligent enough to figure things out on my own.
How did you determine you needed and/or wanted to improve?
Knowledgeable players whom I trusted urged me to try different things. Also, I wanted to improve.
While not the greatest at it, STO does provide enough information for the player to understand basic concepts.
I don't believe this to be true. The game tricks a lot of people into heading in the wrong direction. This happened to me and I stubbornly refused to take any helpful advice for many many years.
People are intelligent enough to come to the conclusion that if they are struggling with or unable to complete content, they need to change something.
Or they could refuse to engage in any self improvement.
I could not agree more that players should take personal responsibility for their actions in the game. With that said, I will add the caveat that this door goes both ways. If people are failing content by running in a Tier IV ship with all common gear and a rainbow of various weapons, then yes, that is on them. Players running all MkXV Epic quality gear in a maxed out ship hitting 500K+ DPS running Normal difficulty events and Advanced level TFOs that cause others with capable builds and skills to barely have enough time to enjoy the content needs to take some responsibility for that too.
I've never seen anybody parse that high in advanced content. I do have an undeveloped Jem'hadar alt running it's stock gear doing events though and it seems to do very well and not have any issues whatsoever at about 15-20K.
No doubt this happens. It also happens (and in my experience more often than not) that players are entering TFOs with more than sufficient gear, skills and DPS yet there are one or two players with very high DPS builds who completely dominate. They wipe out the map before other players barely get any shots in. Can the players with the higher DPS build use loadouts to have a less DPS focused build for running public content? Do you really need to run with a 300K+ DPS build to complete event content on Normal difficulty?
Can the players who barely get any shots in use a different loadout in order to move about more quickly? The benefits of mobility have been discussed for years now. Not getting enough shots in isn't just a dps thing.
Do players with 300K builds really want to run normal difficulty content? I don't think they do and if they must then it's once for event progress and they're done. These folks (the 300K+ players) are pretty rare in my experience.
Aren't the majority of event maps managed in other ways i.e. not dps but waves, travel, timers, etc? I believe most are so a million dps player would be doing about the same as everybody else in these event maps (i.e. The Breach, event version).
Hi, I'm one of them ppl with "Ridiculous DPS" as it was called. I aquire it by doing events, TFO's, And earning many rewards, My years spent playing, My experience in building my ships, etc., etc., etc., (I could go on).
How do I enjoy myself with my being able to keep myself and my ships alive so well?: I enjoy the game immersion more than I do trying to just stay alive. When I'm in game I feel like I'm in my own personal episode of Star Trek and I decide how it goes and ends.
THAT is PRICELESS to me and I suspect others. In addition, It was not always this way for me. But with time and experience I learned how to build the classes of ships I fly (mostly Carriers) be it science, tactical, or engineering. I remember a time many years ago when it was all I could do to stay alive even in my story missions.
I'm just voicing my humble opinions no offence to the OP or anyone intended. And I thank the dev's and the other's on the STO staff for giving us this ability for the experience.
Hope everyone has a lovely day! Time for me to go blow somethings up, lol. See y'all in game!
I never played WOW, but I had played guild wars, and I remember all to well the heroes ascent catch 22 "requirement" its community shoved down everyones throats for that;
To participate in heroes ascent, players required you to have at least hero title rank 3.
To get any progression towards that title requiresd participation in heroes ascent. Anyone without rank 3 thus cannot ever participate, ever.
(Edit: As player base thinned apparently, they dropped that catch 22, simply, no one left to play who had the "requirements".)
I feared that'd happen to city of heroes when it was live, and it partly did, with the incarnate trials, thankfully, it didn't get to such an absolute extreme like guild wars, or how gear checks apparently became in WoW. Thing is, elitist gamers love to manipulate communities into these kinds of systems to maximize there win %s, if due to how big a sore losers they universally are(and often not necessarily good at the game at all, why else do they require everyone else be perfect?).
All gear check/dps check ect, if displayed to others would do, is create that extreme level of elitism and exclusion that prevents progression entirely. Its why I stated for difficulties just recomendations for player expectations of those difficulties but thats all I advocate for, we shouldn't put in things that let elitists get intrusive on others and exclude others over not "being able to stomp the difficulty and having played the difficulty a few hundred times to even qualify for said difficulty setting to begin with".
So a couple of things on this. You're never going to get rid of elitism 100% as there will always be those certain players that want to flex on everyone else. That's not just gaming history but human history. There will always be those certain people who think they're better than everyone else and they're somehow entitled. As to your comment regarding manipulating people to increase win percentages, what exactly are you winning in STO? I see people bring this argument up all the time as to why we shouldn't do anything, but none ever elaborates on what you're winning. With regards to player standards, people have a right to set whatever standards they want for private mode runs they are hosting. You don't have to like the standards they set, but your dislike of those standards doesn't negate their right to have them. In WoW when the GearScore addon came about and people wanting to be (choice of insult here) about my being a mix of 232 and 245 gear instead of exclusively 245, even though the game itself only required 232 across the board, I made my own groups.
Today though there is an advantage that is pretty much standard across all MMOs that didn't exist at that time, random group finder. Almost all MMOs today have them meaning you can NEVER be locked out of content if you've met the minimum standards for it. If for example lets say you wanted to do a piece of content that required 226 across the board as a minimum and you were at that 226 minimum, but all the private groups were demanding you be at 232+, all you had to do was join a random group. Where as the private groups may not take you, as is their right to exclude you, you could still get into the content. So this idea that people are going to be excluded from content because of elitist players if we instituted some kind of gear/roll checks is just bogus. If those were to be implemented and people aren't able to get in, it's because they're not meeting the minimum standards set forth by the game itself. It would be like something requiring all 226 gear, and you being in all 218 and being mad you can't get in. When the elitists find that none wants to play with them and they're not needed for people to see the content, they'll either fall in line or continue to be irrelevant.
As for being intrusive or excluding people, if a particular piece of content required everyone on the team do 50k DPS minimum and that 5th person isn't meeting that 50k minimum, they have no right to be in that TFO until they up their performance as they're not meeting the standard set forth by the game itself in that instance. It also guarantees the team will fail because they were not ready. In that instance 4 other people are negatively impacted because of the one, and that's not fair to the other 4 being expected to carry the 5th guy.
If you're expecting something to be 100% abuse proof before it's ever implemented, Cryptic may as well stop developing the game. There is no such thing as a 100% abuse proof system or feature. There are always going to be people who try to weaponize features and the like against their fellow players in some form or fashion. All you can do is minimize the issue.
As just one example, I have brought up how I wish there was an inspect player function that we could use to see what gear other people have equipped. Every time I bring that up people always jump straight to "people will just use it to shame other people who aren't as geared as them" and the like. While there are some in games like SWTOR who abuse the inspect function, if I am trying to help a guild member or even a random person that's asked for help, or accepted an offer of help, it save so much time as I can just inspect and go. There's no foolishness with having to get them in discord, get them to share their screen, have to direct them to click this, mouse over this or that, have them fumbling through menus for 30 minutes before I can even make heads or tails of what they're doing. Instead I can simply inspect what the person has, and tell them "if you want more damage, take off (thing 1) and (thing 2) then move (thing 3) to slot A and get to X amount of stat Y" and we're both on our way at that point. "Well it violates my privacy" they say next usually. Well no it doesn't because by even stepping foot into the game and running a combat log I can reverse engineer your build with 95% accuracy, and you could do the same for me. If I watch your buff icons I can tell what you're using. All that's accomplished by leaving an inspect function out of the game is making it harder to actually help people when the time comes and share information.
Lastly in regards to the loser comment, expecting someone to meet the basic minimum standards set forth by the game is not wrong and is not elitism. If it requires everyone do a minimum of 20k DPS, then expecting everyone in the run to be at 20k DPS is not elitism. If it only requires 20k DPS and someone in the group is expecting you to do 100k DPS, then that's elitism by far.
Point being if you're expecting 100% abuse proof features you're never going to see anything new.
Hopefully, I don't miss anything as your post as many paragraphs easily border into TLDR(and I'm actually working BUT its slow enough for the most part atm, practically sitting around), even go past it, as an fyi, but i'll try to reply to this best I can.
Firstly, elitists try to manipulate the game because they are very sore losers, they get PO'd over losing. I used to have that mindset in fact YEARS ago(please understand, not remotely the same person today, I was in my late teens back in the day). So they take the game super, super seriously. As if they are service desk workers facing extreme repercussions over AHT/sales metrics in a call center, to a point everyone dislikes them for good reason. I also had a friend growing up who shared the same hyper competitive mentality, even to a point he talked to me about the game we were playing as if it was a job, AND simultaneously forgetting just who he was speaking to(we hardly spoke in years at this point).
No, I do not expect to ever get rid of elitism, in fact far from it, instead it's more keeping them from having the ammo to exploit to begin with. Many people here are bringing up and opposing gear checks for the same reason though; they rather not breed further toxicity with it.
Now this game has random TFO's and I actually prefer those over normal content, but even then, I am not sure elite could be random because my understanding is that many TFO's can outright fail and the teams need to be well coordinated, that coordination rarely happens in a random pug which random TFO's generally are. This has and will always be true, they don't necessarily have the time to build that team relationship in a super fast paced random. I mean how much dialogue besides the occasional joke or gl HF do you see in a TFO here? You don't learn much of your teammates in such brief runs.
Which brings me back to a point about toxic elitism in the second paragraph, older games you generally couldn't succeed in a random PUG in those games WITHOUT a well coordinated team and specifically built setups. Guild wars was especially bad about that, and the heroes ascent example wasn't even the only one(it was pvp to), lightbringer ranked based content in the nightfall expansion was also especially bad(this was pve); rank 10+ was demanded and that took HOURS to grind AND REQUIRED PLAYING THE CONTENT PLAYERS LOCKED YOU OUT OF. It's the community imposed catch 22's that I think people wish to prevent or at a minimum are being reminded up when they hear of gear or dps checking. At the very least, they don't wish to see more toxicity.
Elitist players also do NOT like to give advice or help newbies, ever. They often feel they do not have the time and they never have the patience. But also my experience, they become influential, in spite all of the above. You would be surprised, because they are also often very power hungry people, likely so in real life. They WANT to be at the top and get mad, jealous even when they see anyone with even a tiny bit of influence over others in anything. My friend in fact was very mad with me over not being serious enough, while simultaneously refusing to offer any help at all. In short, he kind of soft-banned me from content himself.(that caused a major falling out).
And I think since you kind of mentioned teams having a right to inspect others gear ect, are we playing a game or applying for a job I mean, been there, done that with guild wars lost a childhood friend over it, thats not a cool experience.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
There is a problem with all gear check systems in that the devs cannot really know exactly what an object (weapon, shield, ect.) can do in every possible situation, so those checks are rough estimates at best. And using those rough checks to base a gating system on is a good way to turn off players.
This is a good point. I would add that gear is only part of the equation too. Any unskilled player can buy and equip Epic quality gear. That in no way gives them the skills to know how to use them properly, so a gear check is essentially pointless. Situational awareness and player knowledge and skill is much more important in my opinion. I would take a skilled player running a full set of Rare gear over an unskilled player with Epic gear any day.
Thats why at most I thought on difficulties recommendations, not hard requirements be added, just something to let the player know so the player can decide if they are ready for a difficulty or not, help them make a good judgement call.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
I've never seen anybody parse that high in advanced content. I do have an undeveloped Jem'hadar alt running it's stock gear doing events though and it seems to do very well and not have any issues whatsoever at about 15-20K.
I can back up Valoreah on this a little, heck i only recently exceeded 200k DPS in advanced conduit.....the same character was able to near effectively one shot the Iconian Dreadnaught at the end of Gates to Grethor
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
GearScores can certainly work and they worked well in Division 1 and 2 which was built from the ground up around GearScore. But I am not sure how it would work in STO without a major amount of work. Up to a point gear doesn’t matter (build dependent), as a Carrier pilot I would be really frustrated to be locked out of content that I could easy do because my gear which has little impact on my Carrier ability or ship performance is too low. For STO its not so much the gear level as the combination of how the gear interact with traits and powers.
Now for energy boats it’s a little different GearSCore makes more sense as you can upgrade weapons for a better representation of the ship. It’s the other builds like Carriers I am unsure how it would work. Not saying it won't work, just its a problem area for Gearscore.
Actually it's much simpler than you might think. An easy way to do it would be making sure that the person has at least purple versions of the minimum equipment level for their grade as a hypothetical. For level 65 toons, mk xiii very rare purples as one hypothetical. They can buy mk xii very rares from the exchange, run them through the upgrade window one time each (assuming they don't flip) and there you go. Then any build has passed the gear check. Next you pair that with a role check which requires you do X amount of DPS at the minimum with just default bridge officer powers you can get without using lockboxes and the like. To keep the math simple let's say that's 20k just for the hypothetical. The role check doesn't care how you hit the 20k, be it carrier pets exclusively, your weapons and boff powers exclusively, a mixture of both or what have you. So long as you meet the checks you're good to go. Carriers are easy to account for as are all the builds.
Now this game has random TFO's and I actually prefer those over normal content, but even then, I am not sure elite could be random because my understanding is that many TFO's can outright fail and the teams need to be well coordinated, that coordination rarely happens in a random pug which random TFO's generally are. This has and will always be true, they don't necessarily have the time to build that team relationship in a super fast paced random. I mean how much dialogue besides the occasional joke or gl HF do you see in a TFO here? You don't learn much of your teammates in such brief runs.
You're partially right about why you couldn't have random elites is because of the fail conditions. It does require coordination and if everyone isn't bringing their A-game, you will fail. And this is where I'm sure someone will accuse me of being elitist, but the other reason you could never have random elites is that most of the general playerbase in this game is NOT ready for elite at all. I would say about 60% of this game is nowhere near ready for elite as alot can barely scrape by on advanced. We used to have the auto-fail conditions in advanced mode for awhile just like in elite. Even with the reduced difficulty of advanced, people STILL couldn't clear the optionals and were failing as a result. About 75% of the runs were failing because people couldn't be bothered to learn or obey mechanics to avoid the auto-fail. People threw the mother of all hissy fits afterwards demanding it be removed and it was.
WoW largely got rid of this problem by instituting the gear and roles checks along with the dungeon journal. If you knew enough to get the gear, and knew enough to clear the role checks, you had no excuse for not learning the mechanics of the content you were going into. Especially since the dungeon journal told you exactly what to expect from each instance. You may not have gotten it on the first try, but people had no excuse not to eventually learn it. In WoW after those things were implemented, I knew that one of 3 things was going on if the group couldn't hack it, something was going on outside of the team's control such as internet drops or real life, person(s) on the team didn't know the mechanics that well yet and needed to be taught, or were simply expecting a free ride and were leeching. First two I have no issues with and can play around, third I have no tolerance for.
Firstly, elitists try to manipulate the game because they are very sore losers, they get PO'd over losing. I used to have that mindset in fact YEARS ago(please understand, not remotely the same person today, I was in my late teens back in the day). So they take the game super, super seriously. As if they are service desk workers facing extreme repercussions over AHT/sales metrics in a call center, to a point everyone dislikes them for good reason. I also had a friend growing up who shared the same hyper competitive mentality, even to a point he talked to me about the game we were playing as if it was a job, AND simultaneously forgetting just who he was speaking to(we hardly spoke in years at this point).
Elitist players also do NOT like to give advice or help newbies, ever. They often feel they do not have the time and they never have the patience. But also my experience, they become influential, in spite all of the above. You would be surprised, because they are also often very power hungry people, likely so in real life. They WANT to be at the top and get mad, jealous even when they see anyone with even a tiny bit of influence over others in anything. My friend in fact was very mad with me over not being serious enough, while simultaneously refusing to offer any help at all. In short, he kind of soft-banned me from content himself.(that caused a major falling out).
These two sort of go together so addressing them at once. With regards to your "friend", I'm a firm believer that people will eventually show you who they really are if you give them enough time and opportunity to do it. In this case, that person was never really your friend at all. In fact a person I knew since 4th grade is why I quit pvp outright years ago. In a nutshell, myself, he and his brother were playing 3s arena in WoW and bottom line was we got outplayed. Guy raged at his brother then raged at me over it while refusing to take any responsibility on himself. I haven't talked to this guy in over 10 years as a result. Yes it sucks when people take a game too seriously, but they are often the exception and not the rule. There will always be die-hards in every game who think they're Q's gift to gaming. You will never get rid of that.
As for your friend soft banning you from content, I'm sorry but I'm absolutely calling shenanigans on that one. He never soft-banned you from anything, you chose not to play anymore instead of forming your own groups to play. Even if you couldn't play with him and his specific group I'm sorry but I do not believe that you couldn't have found a different group to play with if you chose to. Likewise in my case, I was never banned from pvp or 3s, I chose not to play anymore. I very easily could've found another 3s arena team if I chose to, I simply chose not to. Likewise when people gave me grief when the gear score addon was first introduced in WoW (it was originally an addon) I told the people who gave me grief to get bent and made my own groups. Several times getting even farther into the raids and faster than the folks focused purely on gear alone.
In today's game you have the power to still access the content via random group finder AND private groups both. If one private group turns you down, there are others. Today you cannot be "soft-banned" from content as that simply doesn't exist. Even before random group finder, you ALWAYS had the options to form your own group and were only as helpless as you chose to be.
Also to the point regarding elitists being mad because they're losing, what exactly are they winning/losing in STO? Elitists are going to elitist no matter what happens. I've found that most elitists in STO are one trick ponies that could never pull off anything special without nanny runs or trying to have people boost them. There's also a HUGE difference in not wanting to fail a run, vs demanding people do 30 times the damage required to complete the run. If a TFO required everyone do a minimum of 50k to avoid an auto fail, you need to be doing the 50k or you have no right to be in there. That's not elitist, but holding people to the standard the game itself sets. If the TFO demands you do 50k minimum and someone is demanding you do 300k to even get in the door, THAT is elitist.
Lastly on this point regarding elitists not helping anyone and trying to manipulate the game, of course they might not help. Again elitists are going to elitist no matter what happens. When it comes to helping people, I have no problems helping people who legitimately want it and need it. What I won't do however is waste my time with someone who simply disregards everything I say. If hypothetically someone comes to me and asks me to help them with a tank build, so long as they're willing to learn I will help them. If however they're going to just let what I say go in one ear and out the other and not listen to anything I've said, I will not help them because they've demonstrated they don't really want help. As such I won't waste my time or theirs. Just like going to a mechanic asking them to help fix your car but never taking any advice they give you or doing what they recommend. If you're not willing to take the help I am offering, especially if you asked for it, why would I or anyone else try to help you?
With regards to manipulation, everyone tries to sway things to their way at some point or another, it's human nature. What I find to be extremely manipulative however is to say that myself or anyone else should be limited because another person doesn't like that my build is doing more than them or doing something they don't like. Why should I or anyone else have to alter our builds and nerf ourselves while another person refuses to change their own builds? Folks who do that are demanding the game cater to them at the expense of everyone else.
No, I do not expect to ever get rid of elitism, in fact far from it, instead it's more keeping them from having the ammo to exploit to begin with. Many people here are bringing up and opposing gear checks for the same reason though; they rather not breed further toxicity with it.
And I think since you kind of mentioned teams having a right to inspect others gear ect, are we playing a game or applying for a job I mean, been there, done that with guild wars lost a childhood friend over it, thats not a cool experience.
Anything can be used as ammo by elitists if they try hard enough. It could be that you don't have all your reps to t6 like they do, you don't have a particular vanity shield they do, you're using a different color scheme on your ship than they do. Again no feature will ever be 100% abuse proof. Again if you and I were to go into a run right now and I had the combat log on and watched your buff bars, I can already reverse engineer your build with 90% accuracy. On this point, I know you might not like to hear it, but private groups have a right to set whatever standards they want for that group. If they want to require you to have 300k DPS even though the TFO itself only requires 50k, they have a right to set that standard for their group. You have the option to either meet that standard if you want in, or form your own private group with different standards or use the random group finder.
Also I'm sorry but I don't buy the argument that there's going to be these daily public and mass shamings by implementing an inspect function in game. WoW has it, SWTOR has it, and most modern MMOs have it. Unless you're trying to keep your build ub3r s00p3r s3cr3t for some reason, it hurts no one by knowing what gear you're using. I played WoW for years, and have played SWTOR since closed beta. Unless people are just being tools to be tools, I can count on one hand how many times I've seen people actively go out of their way to shame another person for lack of gear. The only times I have ever said something to someone about gear is if they joined content they were not ready for, such as someone needing to do 50k DPS when they're only doing 25k. In which case I have every right to say "hey dude, what's going on you're not pulling your weight" because that guy is effecting not just me but the rest of the team. I don't mind if someone isn't at the same DPS level as me so long as they meet the minimum standards set forth by the game for us to clear the content. If they don't, then I have a problem with that. I don't mind the runs taking a little longer because someone is learning, I do however mind if the runs take 30 years because someone refuses to learn. There is a distinct difference in the two.
Finally, since you mentioned helping people, having an inspect function is a priceless tool to do exactly that. As is right now in STO if I want to help someone improve their build, I have to get them into discord to even see what they have, or have them send me screenshots and/or a list of things. All of these waste valuable time when I could just inspect the person, see what they have, and go. You're not making any kind of dent in elitism by keeping an inspect function out of the game. All you're doing is keeping a tool away from the playerbase they can use to help others.
Again at what point do people take responsibility for their woes in game? Because nothing against you personally, speaking purely in a general sense at this point, I'm seeing alot of people in here complaining about particular things they see as issues, yet every time someone suggests something to fix it, they whine about how it won't work for this that or the other. I really wonder how many people actually want to change things, and how many just like complaining about the status quo.
"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
I've never seen anybody parse that high in advanced content. I do have an undeveloped Jem'hadar alt running it's stock gear doing events though and it seems to do very well and not have any issues whatsoever at about 15-20K.
I can back up Valoreah on this a little, heck i only recently exceeded 200k DPS in advanced conduit.....the same character was able to near effectively one shot the Iconian Dreadnaught at the end of Gates to Grethor
First of all, congrats on breaking 200K. I hope to be right behind you. Yes, I agree that in about the range we parse at a lot of advanced content just disappears rapidly.
I haven't regularly played advanced space content for about a year, but when I did, and was parsing, I didn't see anybody over the mid 300's in ISA/Conduit Advanced so what I said matches my own experience in not seeing any 500K + players.
The reason I mentioned an alt using the stock Mark 12 gear and ship that comes with a Jem'hadar was just to emphasize that even with a relatively undeveloped character doing 15-20k (est) that plays primarily event maps, I'm not having any issues nor am I finding that others arrive before me and vaporize things.
Yes, I have an emergency conn officer equipped as well as two Zen store starship traits but that is it.
I'm quite happy that Star Trek Online seems to generously reward things like piloting and timing
For the record though, I've played this game with some absolutely exceptional players and they always seemed to set a very high standard for being helpful and non-judgmental (no toxicity, no elitism). Am pretty sure they just want everybody to have fun.
Asking this is revealing. It is disingenuous to believe people are not intelligent enough to figure things out on their own or do their own research. How did you determine you needed and/or wanted to improve? How did anyone in the DPS League figure out how to improve? Most all of us have improved ourselves over the years without any gear checks or dungeon raid tiers. Others can and will do the same just as we did. The game is just not that complicated to figure out. Many MMOs do not have raid tiers or gear checks and players do just fine without them. I would also add that most player driven content that collates all of the various tribal knowledge is much better and far more informative than anything the developers can put together.
Show me where I said people couldn't figure it out if they wanted to. Please quote the exact line you believe I made this claim. What I asked you was if we're leaving things to the individual player to figure out if they need to improve or not, what standard are they to use? If it's up to individual players to measure their own progress, how are they supposed to measure it? You assume that people are going to automatically figure it out and if that's the case, how are they going to do that? While people can find the information out there on the net and figure things out IF THEY CHOOSE TO, alot simply don't.
For every person who recognizes they need to improve and tries to do so, either by being told they need to improve or running into a brick wall repeatedly, there is another like Bob in the previous example I gave who was part of my fleet for awhile. Bob died 18 times in a normal mode Dranuur Gauntlet, yet refused to accept responsibility for taking a subpar build into a normal mode run and dying so many times. It was the game's fault for being too hard and he didn't want to start using "pay to win" stuff. It was his own fault, yet raged at my officer for daring to say something to him. So for lack of a better way of putting it, yes there are some people in this game who choose to remain willfully ignorant to what level they're actually at, thinking they're doing much better than they actually are. Then when they get a reality check, choose to blame the game and/or other players.
While there are alot of people who will look things up on youtube, come to places like this, or other sources, there are alot who simply won't. They see it as making the game too much of a job, which goes right back to what I mentioned before about some people choosing to remain in the dark.
While not the greatest at it, STO does provide enough information for the player to understand basic concepts. They can see how things like gear rarity, Mk level and ship tier improve as they level up. It is straightforward to read the difference in DPS between Common and Very Rare gear. Where the game could improve in my opinion is explaining the TFO UI better.
Hard disagree on this one. If the game provides as much information as you say, then why is it so many people come out of the tutorial and otherwise not knowing how to set their weapons to auto-fire as just one glaring example? Why do so many people think that if you're a tactical toon, you have to use tac only ships or some similar combination? Why do so many people think that if a ship comes with a beam array, torpedo, dual bank, and single cannon up front that's how the ship has to be played?
Also the DPS listed on the weapons while sitting still is NOT the final DPS you will gain from the weapon. That's purely the DPS you can expect from dry firing the weapon without any kind of powers/traits etc further enhancing the weapon. If for example I have a mk xii very rare phaser that shows 500 DPS on the weapon, just firing that weapon normally as part of the weapon cycle will yield 500 DPS over the cycle. When you start adding in firing modes, traits, attack patterns, captain powers, consoles and other items, the results become much MUCH higher than that. So if you're going by purely the DPS you see on the beam and thinking that's going to be your overall DPS, you're already misinformed. While you and I may be aware of this fact regarding the DPS of the weapon, far too many in the playerbase simply are not.
It legitimately makes me angry at just how little information the game gives sometimes, and how the information it does present is sometimes so poorly presented it may as well not even be there. I've had to spend hours sometimes explaining basic concepts to people because of how poorly the game handles it at times. They've gotten alot better with this, but still have a LONG way to go. Hence why I have advocated for a dungeon journal of sorts that puts all this information in one place so folks aren't having to scour youtube for hours and sorting through a ton of outdated info. There's far far more to increasing DPS and damage output than purely slapping a bunch of gold gear on the ship. While that's part of the equation, you have to know what gear to slap on along with when/where/how to use it.
People are intelligent enough to come to the conclusion that if they are struggling with or unable to complete content, they need to change something. That may mean their tactics need to improve or their ship and gear need to change or both. A player can join a fleet or any number of publicly available channels to ask questions of other players. They can research the abundance of information available on various websites devoted to STO. They have many options available to them to try different things and find what combination of skills and build work best for them. Options are a good thing. STO does not have specific gear sets that are required to run any of the TFO content and it does not need them in my opinion.
Gear scores work in WoW because it is designed with them in mind. STO is not and never was. The amount of time and effort it would take to implement it here, especially given how unnecessary it is, is a waste of time in my opinion.
When it comes to knowing someone needs to improve, if it's left to the individual player, again who or what is going to tell them this? Who or what is going to tell them they're on the right track or no they're not? While I agree there is a ton of info out there, again, who is going to point them to that info? STO doesn't require you to use specific gear sets to run TFOs, but if for example you want to do elites, they do require you to have equipment and skill capable of dealing certain amounts of damage if you want to clear that content. So while they may not outright say "you need to use the Jem'hadar set on your bug ship since you're using polaron instead of using that Borg set", they do require you to bring your A game. In many elites if you can't wipe out certain groups of foes in a specific amount of time, as in not enough DPS, you automatically fail the TFO.
For that matter even WoW never required you to use any specific kind of gear, only that the gear you had matched a certain threshold of base stats. To put this in STO terms, lets assume a particular TFO required 50k DPS from everyone on the team to clear it. Let's assume again to keep the numbers simple that you needed to have 200% boost to your weapons damage to get there. The system would require an average item level who's base stats would get you there purely by having it on the ship. Then the role check would verify that you can in fact clear that 50k minimum before letting you in the door. The system wouldn't care if you got there from a pure phaser build or a rainbow build, so long as you get there. I don't know where people are getting this idea that you're forced to use a specific set of gear, such as being forced into Jem'hadar set vs the Borg set, but it's factually incorrect.
I could not agree more that players should take personal responsibility for their actions in the game. With that said, I will add the caveat that this door goes both ways. If people are failing content by running in a Tier IV ship with all common gear and a rainbow of various weapons, then yes, that is on them. Players running all MkXV Epic quality gear in a maxed out ship hitting 500K+ DPS running Normal difficulty events and Advanced level TFOs that cause others with capable builds and skills to barely have enough time to enjoy the content needs to take some responsibility for that too.
No doubt this happens. It also happens (and in my experience more often than not) that players are entering TFOs with more than sufficient gear, skills and DPS yet there are one or two players with very high DPS builds who completely dominate. They wipe out the map before other players barely get any shots in. Can the players with the higher DPS build use loadouts to have a less DPS focused build for running public content? Do you really need to run with a 300K+ DPS build to complete event content on Normal difficulty?
Addressing these two together as they go together.
I asked the question I did regarding the fast pilot ships vs the big slow dreadnought because it goes to the heart of the issue. You say in the first paragraph that people should have to take responsibility for their own actions, yet turn around and advocate that people alter their builds because another person chose to run a build they knew could cause them issues.
If I got into a TFO in a big giant dreadnought that moves at the speed of smell, and get grouped with 4 pilot ships that nuke things before I can even traverse the map, I alone am responsible for that. Those pilot ships did nothing wrong, I chose a bad ship for that content. Whether they're doing 2k DPS or 2m DPS is irrelevant. Would it be fun for me not to make it there in time to participate, no it's not, but again that's my fault for using a slow ship, they are not responsible for that in any way. I am not asking someone else to take responsibility for something that is not theirs to bear. Likewise I am not taking responsibility for something that isn't mine to bear. Again I am not responsible for your enjoyment. If those 4 pilot ships get there before me and nuke everything before I can get a shot off, well I'm just CoL. Likewise if I'm one of the 4 pilot ships and I get there before that dreadnought, then he's just CoL.
On this point, you're not going to see someone doing 500k in a normal mode run, it's just not going to happen because the HP isn't there to get to that point, and people doing 200k+ are fairly uncommon to rare. The average person in this game does maybe 30k-70k DPS at best. The only thing I am responsible for is doing my share of the damage and surviving. Anything beyond that is a bonus.
By pressing the random TFO button, you are agreeing to play with whoever the game pairs you with. You might get some people doing only the bare minimum, and you might get guys with enough firepower to clear the TFO in their sleep. You don't know what you're going to get. If you know you might run into a group of those high DPS people, you alone bear responsibility for making sure you are able to get into the run and in position in time to contribute, they are not. To go back to my previous example of the 4 pilot ships and the slow dreadnought, I am free to run that slow dreadnought if I choose. However if I run that dreadnought and get hit with an AFK because I didn't have the movement speed to keep up, that's purely on me and my own fault. If I want to minimize the risk of that happening I can form private groups, or I can use a faster ship.
To the point of people with high dps doing events on normal mode only, I don't like that anymore than you do and despise it greatly. As to whether I would use a 300k+ DPS build on a normal mode event TFO, yes I absolutely would so I can get it done faster. With that said I take my 150k+ tank into most everything unless I'm changing ships for some reason. As to why, because I want it done fast, and that's the build I want to take in there. No other explanation is needed. I am under no obligation to nerf my build purely because someone else doesn't like it. I'm sorry if someone doesn't have a fun time in that particular TFO but there's nothing I can do about that.
If you're going to say "why can't you use a build that doesn't do as much DPS for public content", I'm going to ask you a similar question. Why are you refusing to use a build that has enough DPS and mobility that would allow you to participate? Why can't you simply bring a better build? If you're going to insist it goes both ways and I should consider using a build that doesn't do as much DPS in public content, I'm going to insist you bring a build that's more DPS focused than what you're currently running. So now we're right back to square one. Why am I somehow responsible for nerfing my build for you, but you're not responsible for doing more DPS for me?
To insist that I not use my best builds for content because of someone else is to try and make me responsible for THEIR gameplay. I am not responsible for anything beyond meeting the minimums standards set forth by the game itself nor are they. If they meet the standards, they have a right to be there, even if it's just the bare minimum standard they've met. If they can't meet that standard, they have no right to be in there. Simple as that.
So far I'm convinced that people don't really want solutions, they want to complain about other people doing too much DPS. Instead of asking why they're having issues being able to get into the fight and participate, they're making excuses instead of bettering themselves and defending the status quo.
"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
Knowledgeable players whom I trusted urged me to try different things. Also, I wanted to improve.
This did not answer the question. Clearly something happened that caused you to question whether or not you need to improve. What was it? Were you not able to complete a piece of content? Were you having difficulty surviving? How did those other players become more knowledgeable?
I don't believe this to be true. The game tricks a lot of people into heading in the wrong direction. This happened to me and I stubbornly refused to take any helpful advice for many many years.
Would you mind clarifying by what you mean by the game "tricking" players into going in the "wrong direction"? What I was referring to was there is at least rudimentary information such as MK level and rarity. Some examples; <img> <img>
You can see the difference in between lower and higher Mk level and DPS, so that does provide some very basic information. As ships go up in rank, you see that the ships have more weapon and console slots available.
Can the players who barely get any shots in use a different loadout in order to move about more quickly? The benefits of mobility have been discussed for years now. Not getting enough shots in isn't just a dps thing.
Yes they can. Can the higher DPS/mobility player use a loadout that is not intended to vaporize the entire map in a matter of seconds? Yes, they can.
Val I'm not so sure anything specific happened that caused me to question whether or not I needed to improve. I was able to complete advanced content and didn't seem to have any major survivability issues. It's food for thought. Part of the answer might lie within answering your next question.
What do I mean by the game "tricking" players into heading in the "wrong direction"? As a Star Trek fan without any prior gaming experience there really wasn't much of a guide available when I started playing. All you really have is a canon sense of what the gameplay should perhaps be like and an almost instinctive or predictable set of things new players do when they first start.
Here is a list of things that qualify me as a certified expert on heading in the "wrong direction" (things I did when I didn't know any better)
set ship's power to "balanced" so as to provide a good middle of the road approach to survivability and damage
use forward and rear torpedoes (sometimes two in each direction) because that's what they seemed to do on TV
slot lots of resist consoles to enable my ship to slug it out with the bad guys and win
put universal clicky consoles into tactical console slots because whenever I clicked them it looked cool and was neat so Shirely they were powerful
cooldown reduction, what is that ?
thinking I could click on an entire basic rotation as fast as those people that use those "complicated" keybinds and still pilot my ship
"knowing" that the uberdeepz people must rely upon fancy lockbox stuff as the sole means for their pay-to-win big numbers
(saving the best for last) being stubborn to the max that as a starship captain my way of doing things was absolutely right
So, somehow those knowledgeable players (that must have done a lot of practicing, parsing, testing, and math) knew about all these predictable things newbies do and perhaps even how they think.
Here in the forums, over a period of many years, they patiently delivered they same message as I raged and screamed about being the Captain of my own ship and ranted about their abuse of the fancy P2W lockbox stuff. They backed this up by giving the same small bits of advice in-game and by ensuring that whenever they were part of a team that having fun was job #1
They even addressed my "stubborn" behavior in small and gentle ways over time so as to not upset my entire apple cart all at once.
Am certainly grateful for their patience and good cheer and am glad that over time I decided to take some of their advice to heart, one step at a time. It can be hard to break old habits but it sure does make the game a whole lot easier.
Can the higher dps/mobility players use loadouts not intended to vaporize the entire map? Well I guess they could. But personally I haven't any issues in "detuning" things, whether ground or space, by sometimes not using any buffs (even things like EPtW or Cannon Scatter Volley) or kit modules in order to provide a better experience when forced to play normal content.
Comments
On battlezones, 100% they need an advanced, not sure if an elite difficulty would work(how many players really are suited for that to participate regularly and progress, even with extreme high end performers?) but definently advanced is needed.
On the difficulty I agree though, the game still does a poor job of explaining things such as buff stacking and yeah, GUI needs to warn people of the differences between normal, advanced and elite, I mean it needs to be clear, some players may just even be assuming elite is only marginally harder than normal only to find out enemies have millions of HP to drill through and inflict a ton of damage.
And I think it should warn of the kind of players who tend to favor those difficulties are not only highly equipped but also very skilled and consistently equip high speed impulse, often such newer players don't even get to the fighting and get the lockout penalty for "idling"(even if they really werent, just not getting to fights in time).
I'd even state the game should do like the original doom does with nightmare mode: Warn the player when they first pick a higher difficulty, more-so if they have like low reps(no reps at tier 4 I think would be fine). Like, ahem, included descriptions;
Normal: Fine for players starting out who have not developed reputations. No heads up/warning given.
Advanced: For players who have either well developed reputations or know what they are doing. Warning given to players with undeveloped reputations(same warning applies to elite).
Elite: For maxed out players and experts only.
Many games do this why not STO?
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
The problem with that road is that we start having discrimination based on Gear Score like in WoW. I have a friend who used to play WoW, and they saw toxic behavior over there over gear score that it makes the less desireable memebers of DPS League look like kittens. "You must have X Gear Score to run with us or else", "You must have X rating on OUR site to run with us or else"... it got pretty toxic. And it didn't matter if you knew the content and were running on an alt that did meet at least the minimum required gear score, if you got saddled with those kinds of players you got the boot for not conforming.
I don't know if that is the case with PSO2, but that was with WoW. A Gear Score would just give the toxic types more ammunition to use.
Additionally, another problem with gear score is that while you may have the necessary gear, doesnt mean you know how to use it effectively.
I know exactly what you mean. It's not as big a problem in PSO2 because it has a lower population and the battlescore for content is pretty tight on minimums.....and alliances aren't worth anything at the moment because the game was released 2 years too early
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
the problem is that it's "DPS" as everything. And in one area, the game's gone backwards. In the mission S'harien's Swords, there was a warbird that adapted, you could only hurt it with beams to a point, then only torpedoes. and so on. So the ability to have it was there, but this was removed back in 2015.
Basically, we need TFP content that has 5 players and so needs 5 players, and ideally 5 players not running identical builds of ship. The boss triggers in both the Undine and Tzinkethi battlezones start that way, but its only really apparent in the Competitive TFOs, where players DPS is less relevant than their ability to work together. And that stuff gets marked down by many (well, some) because it does take more than just DPS to do. But it is the starfleet way to work as a team, and it's a matter of Klingon honor to be smart and not just be an overpowering bully (hence all the jokes about the great tribble hunt, and how 'glorious those battles must be')
The only way to deal with the DPS creep is to moderate it so that just having big DPS alone can't solve things, and certainly that you can't solo a mission eventually (else you don't have a 5 player TFO, you have a 1-to-5-player TFO)
And that's the only way you're going to get away from the powercreep, not by trying to nerf the DPS, because that'll just change the makeup of the min-max build. It's where you need to use all the players (or most of them, 4 say) and they need some secondary quality, like actually being able to survive.
It should say something about the DPS state in the game, where I've seen people say 'don't bother tweaking shields, they're irrelevant and just go down anyway, you just blow them up before they can deal you enough DPS to blow up your hull.
Until DPS isn't the answer to every single bit of content in the game, there's going to be people pushing the powercreep, and right now there's no other viable path.
If you want a parallel, look at the TV show BattleBots (a show I used to work on as one of the safety/tech inspection crew). There used to be 3 main bot types. High KE Spinners (horizontal, vertical and drum), control bots (ones with clamps/lifts/flippers) and wedges (that used drive power alone). Generally spinners beat control bots, control bots beat wedges, and wedges beat spinners. Few years ago, when going to ABC tv, they put in a rule of 'no wedges', because two wedges fighting each other is dull. Well, then every bot became a spinner, because controls don't have anyone to beat, and spinners don't have anyone to lose to. They changed the meta, to try and eliminate the boring (wedge on wedge) and ended up making one design philosphy key. it's deal out as much damage as you can, and kill them before they can kill you. And sure it can look spectacular, but it also gets kinda boring, because you lose all the variety.
Sure theres a Beam build, and a cannon build, and a EPG build and a carrier build, But they're all built around making a big alpha-strike and done. We need ways where everyone has to be involved in a mission to progress, and the "DPS guy" needs the cooperation of others, or their glass cannon is going to be shattered. For this reason, the Voth are some of the hardest ships to destroy, because they have that 180 shield, and sometimes reflection (just got my ship blown up twice in the contested zone when a citadel on the event used the reflective immunity matrix on me)
Is it any surprise then, that my favourite TFO is Binary circuit (only seem to be able to do that when its the universal) and the now removed Mine Trap (although it was great for the nearly 3 years it was in, between seasons 7 and 11)
the database probably is not tracking the average DPS of each toon. If it were it would be very simple for the server to scan the queue ad match palyers with brackets of 2,5,8,10K damage, that way the 10,000 DPS player will never be matched with the 1M dps l33ts. so yes, if they did add a field to the toon database of average DPS for matching purposes it would work very well
1: Gear check
2: minimum DPS/Healing/Tanking check
3: dungeon journal so folks know where to get things
First up is a gear check. When used PROPERLY a gear check/gear score tells you if a person has the stats ON PAPER to contribute to the team and survive the content. That's the only thing gear score is good for is to tell you if someone should have the stats on paper to survive and contribute. It's a valid measure, but needs to be paired with other things to matter.
Wow paired the gear check with the minimum DPS/healing/tank check in order to tell if people were ready. They did this by the proving grounds which was sort of a training map. It had 4 difficulties. bronze, silver, gold, and endless. In order to get into the door for random content you had to have the minimum gear, and complete the silver level difficulty. If for example I wanted to tank it would recognize I'm a tank and have me complete certain tests that a tank would face. Such as keeping threat against a group of foes while a healer NPC keeps everyone alive, and some DPS NPCs wiped the group. The test would include taunting foes that break off, positioning the boss/foes based on mechanics, knowing when to hit a defensive cooldown and the like. Similarly for healers they had to keep certain people alive, knowing when to purge debuffs from people and the like. It didn't prepare you for everything but it prepared for the basics.
Then finally they gave people a dungeon journal that told where to get certain bits of equipment. Such as if you wanted polaron gear for a jem'hadar ship, it would tell you where you got certain polaron drops. The other big deal was that it would give you a basic rundown as to what you can expect from certain foes. It didn't outright say "do X Y Z to beat this boss." It would however tell you for example if fighting a borg pickle ship, "it has abilities x y z that deal damage type A and can be interrupted." It gave you enough info to formulate your own plans. You could have myself leading a group, BMR leading a group, Rattler leading a 3rd group, all of us using 3 different strats, and all 3 of them working.
With those 3 things WoW gave people a clear progression path so they know where to get certain gear, and had a goal to meet to get into random instances. This ensured that people had the stats on paper to survive the encounter and contribute to the team via gear check. Then ensured they're at least competent enough to contribute via the DPS/Tank/Healing check. If folks could get the gear, and complete the silver proving grounds, yet still couldn't compete in the actual instances, you knew one of a few things was going on. Either the person was having technical problems, a mechanic is tripping them up, or they're straight up not trying. Yes some people got locked out of higher difficulties they weren't ready for, but overall the group quality improved.
In terms of how it could work for STO, it would give minimum standards to shoot for so folks know if they're ready for advanced and elite content. If they're not ready it can give them an idea of what they need to get ready. Personally I don't play on normal mode unless I'm forced to do so purely because I might AFK someone. However at the same time it's also incumbent on people to mitigate their chances of getting AFKed as well. If you know you're joining a pool of players with higher DPS people and you're running a build that's not as potent be it by choice or not yet having access to the higher level gear, you bear some responsibility for that choice. If you go into a run with 4 pilot ships zipping across the map with high DPS and you're in a cruiser that moves at the speed of smell doesn't have the damage output those ships do and you get an AFK penalty, then that's on you in part.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Gear progression already exists in this game in the form of upgrades, so that ship has sailed. It may not take the form WoW or SWTOR use, but it does exist.
Now with that said, if you're opposed to what I have said above, then what is your solution that allows people to know if they are ready for advanced and/or elite content or not? How do you propose people improve their equipment and improve their builds to be able to contribute to the team, be it a "canon" build or full min/max build?
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
1: Are they ready for Advanced/Elite
2: How can they improve
As long as those two questions remain unanswered or theres a big Adobe Gaussian blur ontop of it, this problem will continue. From a standpoint of making it as "easy" as possible for the player and as easy as possible for the devs....
In Star Trek there are cadet and officer reviews, we've seen it in the show.
How about a Captains Review?
When the player is ready to take part in TFO's, or, when the player is jumping into their first random a "Scenario" for the Captain is played out in the holodeck with their current ship, this is the Gatekeeping part. It can be based off of part of ISE so the player goes into a "cut down" ISE on normal setting. There's only one generator active, no probes come in to heal and only two spheres above. That player has to take out that generator and the two spheres.
Yes, its over simplified, but a generator with only two sphere's guarding it and no probes healing it means the playing field is levelled for the new people coming into TFO's. If they end up taking too long, or they end up being killed by the two spheres, then the player will have a recommendation not to take part in Adv/Elite TFO content because their ship is simply not up to scratch to take part in them and they will die...a lot.
If they end up being recommended not to take part in Adv and Elite, a PADD is given to them with tips on how to increase damage, general tips on how to increase health.
The gatekeeping "Captain's Review" can be taken anytime by the player as they overhaul their ship. Encouraging the newer players to push their ship further up the ladder to get into those Adv TFO's by at least increasing damage and survivability is at least one part of the puzzle. The big problem is a lot of new players go into these TFO's and have no idea just how much of a DPS centric mess they are currently in.
You cant limit the high end players, the only way around it is to encourage the new or casual player to put a bit more time into kitting out their ship so they at least have a chance to get in and get damage done. If the bottom rungs of the player ladder are not being given some sort of advice on how to keep climbing, then the gap between the DPS chasers and the general casual playing public is just going to get increasingly worse within the random TFO's.
Personally, and from a former game dev standpoint, i would enlist the help of some of the YouTube STO creators as well. Have them make a "Beginners Guide to Adv/Elite TFO's" video, with their own standpoint of making a beam based and canon based build using only mission rewards or reputation bought ship parts. Once the creators have made those videos, blast them all out on the STO website and possibly even mention them on the PADD that's given to the player telling them that its recommended they don't take part in the Adv/Elite content.
Anything to give the casual/new TFO players that helping hand up to the next rung on the ladder is a good thing, it means they are happy having a better ship, and they see the results of that little bit of extra time they have put in.
To participate in heroes ascent, players required you to have at least hero title rank 3.
To get any progression towards that title requiresd participation in heroes ascent. Anyone without rank 3 thus cannot ever participate, ever.
(Edit: As player base thinned apparently, they dropped that catch 22, simply, no one left to play who had the "requirements".)
I feared that'd happen to city of heroes when it was live, and it partly did, with the incarnate trials, thankfully, it didn't get to such an absolute extreme like guild wars, or how gear checks apparently became in WoW. Thing is, elitist gamers love to manipulate communities into these kinds of systems to maximize there win %s, if due to how big a sore losers they universally are(and often not necessarily good at the game at all, why else do they require everyone else be perfect?).
All gear check/dps check ect, if displayed to others would do, is create that extreme level of elitism and exclusion that prevents progression entirely. Its why I stated for difficulties just recomendations for player expectations of those difficulties but thats all I advocate for, we shouldn't put in things that let elitists get intrusive on others and exclude others over not "being able to stomp the difficulty and having played the difficulty a few hundred times to even qualify for said difficulty setting to begin with".
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
Yes, but simple solutions don't allow players to insist that role playing can complete a map.
Nicely said.
These tools and resources already exist.
This can be a delicate process. There is often active pushback against any form of self improvement or changes in play style. Try suggesting to a Starship Captain that perhaps they could equip or fly their ship a bit differently lol.
There are LOTS of very good guides out there from a variety of sources as well as places like "The Academy" here in this forum.
Why sure, it's just that easy
So a couple of issues. First, how do you propose they know if they're improving or not? You say leave it up to the individual player but you don't cover how they're to measure their improvement or lack of. With what you've said you're also assuming that people want to improve as well which can be a very big assumption at times.
WoW instituting the gear check, dungeon journal, and role check served several purposes. First, it gave people a way to measure themselves and where they're at currently. If a person met the gear check and role checks, then they were good to go for group content. If they didn't meet the gear and role checks, they had the dungeon journal that told them where to get the things they needed to improve, and gave them information on various mechanics so they can formulate their own plans to counter those mechanics. It removed all excuses from people seeking to do group content. If they could meet those checks, then unless something happened that was out of their control, such as internet dropping or real life issues, they had zero excuses as to why they couldn't do things in group content. They had the gear, the had the basic mechanical knowledge, and had the information available to them via dungeon journal. The checks instituted gave folks a real time check on where they were and where they needed to advance.
Now this is where I see a misconception most people have. Just to make this clear, I am not saying you specifically, but speaking in general terms when I say this. Simply because in WoW I may have qualified to step into the highest tier raids or what have you, did NOT require me to play those higher tiers, only that I could. If I wanted to play the mid tier raids because I found them more fun, I could. All those checks did was ensure that if/when I did step into the higher tier raids, I was ready for them.
So again I have to ask. How do you propose people measure themselves to know if they need to improve or not? At what point do people take a little personal responsibility for their woes in game? If I go into TFO in a cruiser that moves at the speed of smell and I get grouped with 4 people in pilot ships who zip around and kill everything before I can get there, who's fault is it I didn't get there in time, them or me? In order to mitigate the chances of that happening when joining random TFOs, I can take a ship in there that's a bit faster and save my slower ship for private runs with friends.
For every person wanting to improve their setup and being willing to do so, I've seen just as many that are stuck in their ways and unwilling to change anything. And woe be unto the person who dares suggest someone from the second group needs to change something. Had a guy that was in my fleet for awhile that we found out was part of that second group. Back when the Colony first came out, myself, an officer and a new player were going into Dranuur Gauntlet normal mode to get some colony provisions at the time. We had just helped this new person put together a build and were about to go in when the 4th guy came online. We'll call him Bob. Bob asked to go along and we thought why not, 4th guy putting provisions in. During the run we got one of the nastier foes for normal mode. myself, the pug, and my officer came close to dying a couple of times but never did. The new person died twice due to lack of experience. Bob on the other hand died 18 times in a normal mode run. After the run I went afk to get a drink before we moved on. When I came back I caught the tail end of Bob raging at my officer. Bob messaged me right after telling me what happened while my officer was telling me the same thing in voice comms. My officer asked Bob "hey dude I noticed you had a hard time staying alive in there. You died 18 times in total. Is there anything we can do to help you out?" Bob took that as an insult to him and called my officer an elitist, along with many other things I won't repeat on this forum. All because my officer dared suggest he might need help. I bring that up to say this. For every person out there who is willing to change, adapt and the like, there is another who is like Bob that refuses to change anything.
The problem with folks like Bob is that it's never their fault in their minds. It's always the rest of the team and never him. It's the people coming in with their "pay to win" builds and the like that won't let him play. If he dies more than once or twice in certain things, it's too hard and needs to be nerfed. He was never willing to take responsibility for his part in making sure he has a fun experience. Now I have no problem with people like Bob playing what they like in game, but Bob needs to stay out of content he's clearly not ready for as it negatively impacts the other people on the team. The other problem with people like Bob is they often over-estimate their own ability and the power of their builds because they play story difficulty where they can sneeze in the direction of foes and wipe entire groups. Then when they step into advanced and/or elite and they get rolled, they think something is wrong with the game when there's not.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
So a couple of things on this. You're never going to get rid of elitism 100% as there will always be those certain players that want to flex on everyone else. That's not just gaming history but human history. There will always be those certain people who think they're better than everyone else and they're somehow entitled. As to your comment regarding manipulating people to increase win percentages, what exactly are you winning in STO? I see people bring this argument up all the time as to why we shouldn't do anything, but none ever elaborates on what you're winning. With regards to player standards, people have a right to set whatever standards they want for private mode runs they are hosting. You don't have to like the standards they set, but your dislike of those standards doesn't negate their right to have them. In WoW when the GearScore addon came about and people wanting to be (choice of insult here) about my being a mix of 232 and 245 gear instead of exclusively 245, even though the game itself only required 232 across the board, I made my own groups.
Today though there is an advantage that is pretty much standard across all MMOs that didn't exist at that time, random group finder. Almost all MMOs today have them meaning you can NEVER be locked out of content if you've met the minimum standards for it. If for example lets say you wanted to do a piece of content that required 226 across the board as a minimum and you were at that 226 minimum, but all the private groups were demanding you be at 232+, all you had to do was join a random group. Where as the private groups may not take you, as is their right to exclude you, you could still get into the content. So this idea that people are going to be excluded from content because of elitist players if we instituted some kind of gear/roll checks is just bogus. If those were to be implemented and people aren't able to get in, it's because they're not meeting the minimum standards set forth by the game itself. It would be like something requiring all 226 gear, and you being in all 218 and being mad you can't get in. When the elitists find that none wants to play with them and they're not needed for people to see the content, they'll either fall in line or continue to be irrelevant.
As for being intrusive or excluding people, if a particular piece of content required everyone on the team do 50k DPS minimum and that 5th person isn't meeting that 50k minimum, they have no right to be in that TFO until they up their performance as they're not meeting the standard set forth by the game itself in that instance. It also guarantees the team will fail because they were not ready. In that instance 4 other people are negatively impacted because of the one, and that's not fair to the other 4 being expected to carry the 5th guy.
If you're expecting something to be 100% abuse proof before it's ever implemented, Cryptic may as well stop developing the game. There is no such thing as a 100% abuse proof system or feature. There are always going to be people who try to weaponize features and the like against their fellow players in some form or fashion. All you can do is minimize the issue.
As just one example, I have brought up how I wish there was an inspect player function that we could use to see what gear other people have equipped. Every time I bring that up people always jump straight to "people will just use it to shame other people who aren't as geared as them" and the like. While there are some in games like SWTOR who abuse the inspect function, if I am trying to help a guild member or even a random person that's asked for help, or accepted an offer of help, it save so much time as I can just inspect and go. There's no foolishness with having to get them in discord, get them to share their screen, have to direct them to click this, mouse over this or that, have them fumbling through menus for 30 minutes before I can even make heads or tails of what they're doing. Instead I can simply inspect what the person has, and tell them "if you want more damage, take off (thing 1) and (thing 2) then move (thing 3) to slot A and get to X amount of stat Y" and we're both on our way at that point. "Well it violates my privacy" they say next usually. Well no it doesn't because by even stepping foot into the game and running a combat log I can reverse engineer your build with 95% accuracy, and you could do the same for me. If I watch your buff icons I can tell what you're using. All that's accomplished by leaving an inspect function out of the game is making it harder to actually help people when the time comes and share information.
Lastly in regards to the loser comment, expecting someone to meet the basic minimum standards set forth by the game is not wrong and is not elitism. If it requires everyone do a minimum of 20k DPS, then expecting everyone in the run to be at 20k DPS is not elitism. If it only requires 20k DPS and someone in the group is expecting you to do 100k DPS, then that's elitism by far.
Point being if you're expecting 100% abuse proof features you're never going to see anything new.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Oddball roles and secondary effects of gear can all too easily throw off calculations. For instance, in Defiance I used to take my starting characters into open-group content in the gated-entry endgame part of the map (Silicon Valley) and do a lot of shoot-and-scoot with a flare pistol (it was a high-arc ballistic trajectory fire-DoT weapon) and would keep lighting up the NPCs to make them panic and roll around trying to put themselves out. It is not something that shows up in damage calculations (the flare pistol was not considered a high DPS weapon though they could cause a lot of overall damage spread across a battle if handled right).
After a while the devs stopped trying to enforce the gate because it was so easy to circumvent and a lot of people did it and the gate wasn't needed anyway because people who took low-level characters there either knew how to equip for it or soon figured out something that worked for them.
I also liked to do something like that in BDO (which also has open-group content) where the high level characters would tend to keep the attention of the boss or whatever while the lower-level characters would keep the adds busy, do various other support things, and take potshots at the boss when possible. It all worked out well for everyone with no gates and the minimum of elite ego toxicity problems. And if a player was careful and sneaky enough they could mug regular npc enemies in higher level areas than they should have been in too, though killing them could take quite a while.
To have any accuracy things like gear checks generally have to depend on a very limited, highly controlled gear/skill/technique and whatever else structure, and the more rigid it is the less interesting it tends to be for a lot of players. The more variety there is the more variables there are to try to keep on top of, and trying to keep it all under control quickly gets out of hand.
And yes, there are some "Bob" types in every game, just like there are toxic elites in every game. The majority of players nowadays tend to be neither one though, so game companies do not have to cater to either of them anymore (though some choose to do so) which leaves the field open for other player types to find a game that fits their styles.
STO is an odd sort of casual blend of open-world and lobby elements mixed into a very loosely-ordered story-driven system that has significant casual social elements to it. A lot of players find that refreshing after playing more restrictive structured games, and not having rigid rails helps a lot with both roleplaying (though there is not a lot of it here) and alts (which is a major emphasis in STO, to the point that they now have events to encourage making them). Highly tiered narrowly channeled content of the type that works best with gear checks and gates is not a good fit here except maybe as a sideline of some sort (which is already in the game in an informal way via private TFOs and the like).
It's an inevitability. Much like growing up. Personally it seems as if players believe devs are incompetent when they really aren't. They don't make these decisions. Companies do, and companies see dollars, not discussions, not arguments, not opinions. And with that desire for money comes power. And that power is even more mitigated by the devs to try to slow the creep.
Power creep itself is the wrong term. Because power creep means they intended it to happen slowly. But I don't think that's the case. I think it comes from unintended factors. Such as this useless skill made on date A when mixed with this useless skill on Date B with this ship and weapon build on Date C, with these consoles/sets on Date D. And thus you have a new OP Meta, even if all of those factors where made Years apart.
The game was not intended to do that. It is simply an unintended consequence of age, player knowledge, and the cost of doing business. So I just never find discussions that talk about companies making power creep effective. They will not stop making money, if they do then the product itself goes bye bye. So the only effective conversation you can have is on your end. You would have to change the way you play for yourself.
It's also odd that we have these discussions about DPS as if DPS'ers with extreme DPS such myself are around ever cornor and bend. That is most certainly not the case. Extreme DPSer's that can deal 500k per salvo is rare. So its a redundant conversation, because there are very very very few of them. Players that have a large amount of Lock Box ships for traits, and consoles is few and far between. So the conversation isn't that the DPS is too high, but that the players standards are too low, if they are being kicked from pugs when they are matched up with other normal/casual players. They are just not keeping up with the regular players and want some sort of difference in treatment made for them.
Now generally my opinion on these subjects is "It is what it is. If those people want it, sure why not, its not like it will harm me in any way." I don't mind if the enemies are stronger, or absorb more of a beating. I enjoy watching the line go up and the red go down. But sometimes I genuinely just wonder if its is worth the discussion really. Since if it is only taking you 2-3 minutes to do the instance and you can do it infinite amount of times during an event without any repercussions then what's the problem? Just do it until you get the item. Avoid the problems, the animosity, the misunderstandings that can come from these conversations that lead to no where anyhow. They were never meant to be anything other then the old man yelling at he sea to begin with, yet people put weight to them as if they are on a conference call with the board. But that's just my opinion.
This right here is part of why I said that on its own, a gear check does nothing but ensure you have stats on paper to survive and contribute to the team. With as many combinations of gear as there are in typical MMOs, things like WoW, SWTOR and a few others that have used them don't care about the secondary effects, only the primary stats and effects. If for example the gear check in STO terms required all mk xii very rare gear, the gear check didn't care if you had a rainbow build to get there, it only cared that you had the basic stats with the mk xii very rare gear. Again keep in mind the gear check isn't to see if everything is min/maxed to the hilt, but purely if you have enough basic stats to survive and contribute. This is why gear checks in WoW were paired with the proving grounds role check, aka the Tank/healing/DPS check.
The role check when comboed with the gear check told the game and the groups that not only did you have the basic stats on paper to survive and contribute, but also the basic mechanical knowledge of your class to do so. Let's use our hypothetical rainbow build player once again. If that player went into the role check with a rainbow build that just used whatever he could in order to cheese the gear check and didn't put actual thought into it, he was pretty well guaranteed to fail the role check and wouldn't be allowed in the door. If he wanted to use that build then he would be free to do so in normal mode runs, but not in advanced or elite where he would be a liability to the rest of the team.
The gear and role checks didn't care how you cleared them, simply that you did. Whether you were an energy build, torp build, or what have you was irrelevant. you're correct that there's going to be some rough calculations to it as in establishing those baselines WoW had to sit down and think, okay what's a reasonable amount of gear to require for this, and then how much Tanking/DPS/healing should a person be able to do with that gear. Once they established the baseline they shipped it to players.
Were there some people who weren't able to get into bits of content right away, yes there were. However the people that couldn't get in were folks that were not ready for the content yet and had no business in there to start with. That may sound elitist, but I've seen quite a few people in my day playing this game who want to come into certain content thinking they're ready for it and they're absolutely not, be it in STO, SWTOR, WoW, and other games I've played. Now I want those people to eventually be able to get into the content, but not if they're going to be a liability to the team as that's not fair to the other people.
As for turning people off, the status quo we have now is already doing that. It never fails, I see people come on here time and again complaining about the status quo we have now in STO. They demand things be changed to their exact suiting, usually involving nerfing and limiting things people paid for or earned that they don't like. Then when people like myself or others point out why that's a non-option and offer solutions that have been proven to work in other games, they whine and say "that won't work because X Y Z" and as a result nothing ever changes. In part I'm convinced that's because too many people don't really want change of any kind in STO. They're comfortable with the status quo even though they complain about it. Too many people anymore imo want the benefits and rewards of advanced/elite level content, but don't want to put in advanced/elite levels of work to get there. At some point people have to take responsibility for their own woes in game but too many don't want to do that. Anyways before anyone tries to say otherwise, this last paragraph are purely my own general thoughts and observations and not directed at anyone specific.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
GearScores can certainly work and they worked well in Division 1 and 2 which was built from the ground up around GearScore. But I am not sure how it would work in STO without a major amount of work. Up to a point gear doesn’t matter (build dependent), as a Carrier pilot I would be really frustrated to be locked out of content that I could easy do because my gear which has little impact on my Carrier ability or ship performance is too low. For STO its not so much the gear level as the combination of how the gear interact with traits and powers.
Now for energy boats it’s a little different GearSCore makes more sense as you can upgrade weapons for a better representation of the ship. It’s the other builds like Carriers I am unsure how it would work. Not saying it won't work, just its a problem area for Gearscore.
Sorry! double posted a quote by accident.
I wasn't intelligent enough to figure things out on my own.
Knowledgeable players whom I trusted urged me to try different things. Also, I wanted to improve.
I don't believe this to be true. The game tricks a lot of people into heading in the wrong direction. This happened to me and I stubbornly refused to take any helpful advice for many many years.
Or they could refuse to engage in any self improvement.
I've never seen anybody parse that high in advanced content. I do have an undeveloped Jem'hadar alt running it's stock gear doing events though and it seems to do very well and not have any issues whatsoever at about 15-20K.
Can the players who barely get any shots in use a different loadout in order to move about more quickly? The benefits of mobility have been discussed for years now. Not getting enough shots in isn't just a dps thing.
Do players with 300K builds really want to run normal difficulty content? I don't think they do and if they must then it's once for event progress and they're done. These folks (the 300K+ players) are pretty rare in my experience.
Aren't the majority of event maps managed in other ways i.e. not dps but waves, travel, timers, etc? I believe most are so a million dps player would be doing about the same as everybody else in these event maps (i.e. The Breach, event version).
How do I enjoy myself with my being able to keep myself and my ships alive so well?: I enjoy the game immersion more than I do trying to just stay alive. When I'm in game I feel like I'm in my own personal episode of Star Trek and I decide how it goes and ends.
THAT is PRICELESS to me and I suspect others. In addition, It was not always this way for me. But with time and experience I learned how to build the classes of ships I fly (mostly Carriers) be it science, tactical, or engineering. I remember a time many years ago when it was all I could do to stay alive even in my story missions.
I'm just voicing my humble opinions no offence to the OP or anyone intended. And I thank the dev's and the other's on the STO staff for giving us this ability for the experience.
Hope everyone has a lovely day! Time for me to go blow somethings up, lol. See y'all in game!
Hopefully, I don't miss anything as your post as many paragraphs easily border into TLDR(and I'm actually working BUT its slow enough for the most part atm, practically sitting around), even go past it, as an fyi, but i'll try to reply to this best I can.
Firstly, elitists try to manipulate the game because they are very sore losers, they get PO'd over losing. I used to have that mindset in fact YEARS ago(please understand, not remotely the same person today, I was in my late teens back in the day). So they take the game super, super seriously. As if they are service desk workers facing extreme repercussions over AHT/sales metrics in a call center, to a point everyone dislikes them for good reason. I also had a friend growing up who shared the same hyper competitive mentality, even to a point he talked to me about the game we were playing as if it was a job, AND simultaneously forgetting just who he was speaking to(we hardly spoke in years at this point).
No, I do not expect to ever get rid of elitism, in fact far from it, instead it's more keeping them from having the ammo to exploit to begin with. Many people here are bringing up and opposing gear checks for the same reason though; they rather not breed further toxicity with it.
Now this game has random TFO's and I actually prefer those over normal content, but even then, I am not sure elite could be random because my understanding is that many TFO's can outright fail and the teams need to be well coordinated, that coordination rarely happens in a random pug which random TFO's generally are. This has and will always be true, they don't necessarily have the time to build that team relationship in a super fast paced random. I mean how much dialogue besides the occasional joke or gl HF do you see in a TFO here? You don't learn much of your teammates in such brief runs.
Which brings me back to a point about toxic elitism in the second paragraph, older games you generally couldn't succeed in a random PUG in those games WITHOUT a well coordinated team and specifically built setups. Guild wars was especially bad about that, and the heroes ascent example wasn't even the only one(it was pvp to), lightbringer ranked based content in the nightfall expansion was also especially bad(this was pve); rank 10+ was demanded and that took HOURS to grind AND REQUIRED PLAYING THE CONTENT PLAYERS LOCKED YOU OUT OF. It's the community imposed catch 22's that I think people wish to prevent or at a minimum are being reminded up when they hear of gear or dps checking. At the very least, they don't wish to see more toxicity.
Elitist players also do NOT like to give advice or help newbies, ever. They often feel they do not have the time and they never have the patience. But also my experience, they become influential, in spite all of the above. You would be surprised, because they are also often very power hungry people, likely so in real life. They WANT to be at the top and get mad, jealous even when they see anyone with even a tiny bit of influence over others in anything. My friend in fact was very mad with me over not being serious enough, while simultaneously refusing to offer any help at all. In short, he kind of soft-banned me from content himself.(that caused a major falling out).
And I think since you kind of mentioned teams having a right to inspect others gear ect, are we playing a game or applying for a job I mean, been there, done that with guild wars lost a childhood friend over it, thats not a cool experience.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
Thats why at most I thought on difficulties recommendations, not hard requirements be added, just something to let the player know so the player can decide if they are ready for a difficulty or not, help them make a good judgement call.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
I can back up Valoreah on this a little, heck i only recently exceeded 200k DPS in advanced conduit.....the same character was able to near effectively one shot the Iconian Dreadnaught at the end of Gates to Grethor
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
Actually it's much simpler than you might think. An easy way to do it would be making sure that the person has at least purple versions of the minimum equipment level for their grade as a hypothetical. For level 65 toons, mk xiii very rare purples as one hypothetical. They can buy mk xii very rares from the exchange, run them through the upgrade window one time each (assuming they don't flip) and there you go. Then any build has passed the gear check. Next you pair that with a role check which requires you do X amount of DPS at the minimum with just default bridge officer powers you can get without using lockboxes and the like. To keep the math simple let's say that's 20k just for the hypothetical. The role check doesn't care how you hit the 20k, be it carrier pets exclusively, your weapons and boff powers exclusively, a mixture of both or what have you. So long as you meet the checks you're good to go. Carriers are easy to account for as are all the builds.
You're partially right about why you couldn't have random elites is because of the fail conditions. It does require coordination and if everyone isn't bringing their A-game, you will fail. And this is where I'm sure someone will accuse me of being elitist, but the other reason you could never have random elites is that most of the general playerbase in this game is NOT ready for elite at all. I would say about 60% of this game is nowhere near ready for elite as alot can barely scrape by on advanced. We used to have the auto-fail conditions in advanced mode for awhile just like in elite. Even with the reduced difficulty of advanced, people STILL couldn't clear the optionals and were failing as a result. About 75% of the runs were failing because people couldn't be bothered to learn or obey mechanics to avoid the auto-fail. People threw the mother of all hissy fits afterwards demanding it be removed and it was.
WoW largely got rid of this problem by instituting the gear and roles checks along with the dungeon journal. If you knew enough to get the gear, and knew enough to clear the role checks, you had no excuse for not learning the mechanics of the content you were going into. Especially since the dungeon journal told you exactly what to expect from each instance. You may not have gotten it on the first try, but people had no excuse not to eventually learn it. In WoW after those things were implemented, I knew that one of 3 things was going on if the group couldn't hack it, something was going on outside of the team's control such as internet drops or real life, person(s) on the team didn't know the mechanics that well yet and needed to be taught, or were simply expecting a free ride and were leeching. First two I have no issues with and can play around, third I have no tolerance for.
These two sort of go together so addressing them at once. With regards to your "friend", I'm a firm believer that people will eventually show you who they really are if you give them enough time and opportunity to do it. In this case, that person was never really your friend at all. In fact a person I knew since 4th grade is why I quit pvp outright years ago. In a nutshell, myself, he and his brother were playing 3s arena in WoW and bottom line was we got outplayed. Guy raged at his brother then raged at me over it while refusing to take any responsibility on himself. I haven't talked to this guy in over 10 years as a result. Yes it sucks when people take a game too seriously, but they are often the exception and not the rule. There will always be die-hards in every game who think they're Q's gift to gaming. You will never get rid of that.
As for your friend soft banning you from content, I'm sorry but I'm absolutely calling shenanigans on that one. He never soft-banned you from anything, you chose not to play anymore instead of forming your own groups to play. Even if you couldn't play with him and his specific group I'm sorry but I do not believe that you couldn't have found a different group to play with if you chose to. Likewise in my case, I was never banned from pvp or 3s, I chose not to play anymore. I very easily could've found another 3s arena team if I chose to, I simply chose not to. Likewise when people gave me grief when the gear score addon was first introduced in WoW (it was originally an addon) I told the people who gave me grief to get bent and made my own groups. Several times getting even farther into the raids and faster than the folks focused purely on gear alone.
In today's game you have the power to still access the content via random group finder AND private groups both. If one private group turns you down, there are others. Today you cannot be "soft-banned" from content as that simply doesn't exist. Even before random group finder, you ALWAYS had the options to form your own group and were only as helpless as you chose to be.
Also to the point regarding elitists being mad because they're losing, what exactly are they winning/losing in STO? Elitists are going to elitist no matter what happens. I've found that most elitists in STO are one trick ponies that could never pull off anything special without nanny runs or trying to have people boost them. There's also a HUGE difference in not wanting to fail a run, vs demanding people do 30 times the damage required to complete the run. If a TFO required everyone do a minimum of 50k to avoid an auto fail, you need to be doing the 50k or you have no right to be in there. That's not elitist, but holding people to the standard the game itself sets. If the TFO demands you do 50k minimum and someone is demanding you do 300k to even get in the door, THAT is elitist.
Lastly on this point regarding elitists not helping anyone and trying to manipulate the game, of course they might not help. Again elitists are going to elitist no matter what happens. When it comes to helping people, I have no problems helping people who legitimately want it and need it. What I won't do however is waste my time with someone who simply disregards everything I say. If hypothetically someone comes to me and asks me to help them with a tank build, so long as they're willing to learn I will help them. If however they're going to just let what I say go in one ear and out the other and not listen to anything I've said, I will not help them because they've demonstrated they don't really want help. As such I won't waste my time or theirs. Just like going to a mechanic asking them to help fix your car but never taking any advice they give you or doing what they recommend. If you're not willing to take the help I am offering, especially if you asked for it, why would I or anyone else try to help you?
With regards to manipulation, everyone tries to sway things to their way at some point or another, it's human nature. What I find to be extremely manipulative however is to say that myself or anyone else should be limited because another person doesn't like that my build is doing more than them or doing something they don't like. Why should I or anyone else have to alter our builds and nerf ourselves while another person refuses to change their own builds? Folks who do that are demanding the game cater to them at the expense of everyone else.
Anything can be used as ammo by elitists if they try hard enough. It could be that you don't have all your reps to t6 like they do, you don't have a particular vanity shield they do, you're using a different color scheme on your ship than they do. Again no feature will ever be 100% abuse proof. Again if you and I were to go into a run right now and I had the combat log on and watched your buff bars, I can already reverse engineer your build with 90% accuracy. On this point, I know you might not like to hear it, but private groups have a right to set whatever standards they want for that group. If they want to require you to have 300k DPS even though the TFO itself only requires 50k, they have a right to set that standard for their group. You have the option to either meet that standard if you want in, or form your own private group with different standards or use the random group finder.
Also I'm sorry but I don't buy the argument that there's going to be these daily public and mass shamings by implementing an inspect function in game. WoW has it, SWTOR has it, and most modern MMOs have it. Unless you're trying to keep your build ub3r s00p3r s3cr3t for some reason, it hurts no one by knowing what gear you're using. I played WoW for years, and have played SWTOR since closed beta. Unless people are just being tools to be tools, I can count on one hand how many times I've seen people actively go out of their way to shame another person for lack of gear. The only times I have ever said something to someone about gear is if they joined content they were not ready for, such as someone needing to do 50k DPS when they're only doing 25k. In which case I have every right to say "hey dude, what's going on you're not pulling your weight" because that guy is effecting not just me but the rest of the team. I don't mind if someone isn't at the same DPS level as me so long as they meet the minimum standards set forth by the game for us to clear the content. If they don't, then I have a problem with that. I don't mind the runs taking a little longer because someone is learning, I do however mind if the runs take 30 years because someone refuses to learn. There is a distinct difference in the two.
Finally, since you mentioned helping people, having an inspect function is a priceless tool to do exactly that. As is right now in STO if I want to help someone improve their build, I have to get them into discord to even see what they have, or have them send me screenshots and/or a list of things. All of these waste valuable time when I could just inspect the person, see what they have, and go. You're not making any kind of dent in elitism by keeping an inspect function out of the game. All you're doing is keeping a tool away from the playerbase they can use to help others.
Again at what point do people take responsibility for their woes in game? Because nothing against you personally, speaking purely in a general sense at this point, I'm seeing alot of people in here complaining about particular things they see as issues, yet every time someone suggests something to fix it, they whine about how it won't work for this that or the other. I really wonder how many people actually want to change things, and how many just like complaining about the status quo.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
First of all, congrats on breaking 200K. I hope to be right behind you. Yes, I agree that in about the range we parse at a lot of advanced content just disappears rapidly.
I haven't regularly played advanced space content for about a year, but when I did, and was parsing, I didn't see anybody over the mid 300's in ISA/Conduit Advanced so what I said matches my own experience in not seeing any 500K + players.
The reason I mentioned an alt using the stock Mark 12 gear and ship that comes with a Jem'hadar was just to emphasize that even with a relatively undeveloped character doing 15-20k (est) that plays primarily event maps, I'm not having any issues nor am I finding that others arrive before me and vaporize things.
Yes, I have an emergency conn officer equipped as well as two Zen store starship traits but that is it.
I'm quite happy that Star Trek Online seems to generously reward things like piloting and timing
For the record though, I've played this game with some absolutely exceptional players and they always seemed to set a very high standard for being helpful and non-judgmental (no toxicity, no elitism). Am pretty sure they just want everybody to have fun.
Show me where I said people couldn't figure it out if they wanted to. Please quote the exact line you believe I made this claim. What I asked you was if we're leaving things to the individual player to figure out if they need to improve or not, what standard are they to use? If it's up to individual players to measure their own progress, how are they supposed to measure it? You assume that people are going to automatically figure it out and if that's the case, how are they going to do that? While people can find the information out there on the net and figure things out IF THEY CHOOSE TO, alot simply don't.
For every person who recognizes they need to improve and tries to do so, either by being told they need to improve or running into a brick wall repeatedly, there is another like Bob in the previous example I gave who was part of my fleet for awhile. Bob died 18 times in a normal mode Dranuur Gauntlet, yet refused to accept responsibility for taking a subpar build into a normal mode run and dying so many times. It was the game's fault for being too hard and he didn't want to start using "pay to win" stuff. It was his own fault, yet raged at my officer for daring to say something to him. So for lack of a better way of putting it, yes there are some people in this game who choose to remain willfully ignorant to what level they're actually at, thinking they're doing much better than they actually are. Then when they get a reality check, choose to blame the game and/or other players.
While there are alot of people who will look things up on youtube, come to places like this, or other sources, there are alot who simply won't. They see it as making the game too much of a job, which goes right back to what I mentioned before about some people choosing to remain in the dark.
Hard disagree on this one. If the game provides as much information as you say, then why is it so many people come out of the tutorial and otherwise not knowing how to set their weapons to auto-fire as just one glaring example? Why do so many people think that if you're a tactical toon, you have to use tac only ships or some similar combination? Why do so many people think that if a ship comes with a beam array, torpedo, dual bank, and single cannon up front that's how the ship has to be played?
Also the DPS listed on the weapons while sitting still is NOT the final DPS you will gain from the weapon. That's purely the DPS you can expect from dry firing the weapon without any kind of powers/traits etc further enhancing the weapon. If for example I have a mk xii very rare phaser that shows 500 DPS on the weapon, just firing that weapon normally as part of the weapon cycle will yield 500 DPS over the cycle. When you start adding in firing modes, traits, attack patterns, captain powers, consoles and other items, the results become much MUCH higher than that. So if you're going by purely the DPS you see on the beam and thinking that's going to be your overall DPS, you're already misinformed. While you and I may be aware of this fact regarding the DPS of the weapon, far too many in the playerbase simply are not.
It legitimately makes me angry at just how little information the game gives sometimes, and how the information it does present is sometimes so poorly presented it may as well not even be there. I've had to spend hours sometimes explaining basic concepts to people because of how poorly the game handles it at times. They've gotten alot better with this, but still have a LONG way to go. Hence why I have advocated for a dungeon journal of sorts that puts all this information in one place so folks aren't having to scour youtube for hours and sorting through a ton of outdated info. There's far far more to increasing DPS and damage output than purely slapping a bunch of gold gear on the ship. While that's part of the equation, you have to know what gear to slap on along with when/where/how to use it.
When it comes to knowing someone needs to improve, if it's left to the individual player, again who or what is going to tell them this? Who or what is going to tell them they're on the right track or no they're not? While I agree there is a ton of info out there, again, who is going to point them to that info? STO doesn't require you to use specific gear sets to run TFOs, but if for example you want to do elites, they do require you to have equipment and skill capable of dealing certain amounts of damage if you want to clear that content. So while they may not outright say "you need to use the Jem'hadar set on your bug ship since you're using polaron instead of using that Borg set", they do require you to bring your A game. In many elites if you can't wipe out certain groups of foes in a specific amount of time, as in not enough DPS, you automatically fail the TFO.
For that matter even WoW never required you to use any specific kind of gear, only that the gear you had matched a certain threshold of base stats. To put this in STO terms, lets assume a particular TFO required 50k DPS from everyone on the team to clear it. Let's assume again to keep the numbers simple that you needed to have 200% boost to your weapons damage to get there. The system would require an average item level who's base stats would get you there purely by having it on the ship. Then the role check would verify that you can in fact clear that 50k minimum before letting you in the door. The system wouldn't care if you got there from a pure phaser build or a rainbow build, so long as you get there. I don't know where people are getting this idea that you're forced to use a specific set of gear, such as being forced into Jem'hadar set vs the Borg set, but it's factually incorrect.
Addressing these two together as they go together.
I asked the question I did regarding the fast pilot ships vs the big slow dreadnought because it goes to the heart of the issue. You say in the first paragraph that people should have to take responsibility for their own actions, yet turn around and advocate that people alter their builds because another person chose to run a build they knew could cause them issues.
If I got into a TFO in a big giant dreadnought that moves at the speed of smell, and get grouped with 4 pilot ships that nuke things before I can even traverse the map, I alone am responsible for that. Those pilot ships did nothing wrong, I chose a bad ship for that content. Whether they're doing 2k DPS or 2m DPS is irrelevant. Would it be fun for me not to make it there in time to participate, no it's not, but again that's my fault for using a slow ship, they are not responsible for that in any way. I am not asking someone else to take responsibility for something that is not theirs to bear. Likewise I am not taking responsibility for something that isn't mine to bear. Again I am not responsible for your enjoyment. If those 4 pilot ships get there before me and nuke everything before I can get a shot off, well I'm just CoL. Likewise if I'm one of the 4 pilot ships and I get there before that dreadnought, then he's just CoL.
On this point, you're not going to see someone doing 500k in a normal mode run, it's just not going to happen because the HP isn't there to get to that point, and people doing 200k+ are fairly uncommon to rare. The average person in this game does maybe 30k-70k DPS at best. The only thing I am responsible for is doing my share of the damage and surviving. Anything beyond that is a bonus.
By pressing the random TFO button, you are agreeing to play with whoever the game pairs you with. You might get some people doing only the bare minimum, and you might get guys with enough firepower to clear the TFO in their sleep. You don't know what you're going to get. If you know you might run into a group of those high DPS people, you alone bear responsibility for making sure you are able to get into the run and in position in time to contribute, they are not. To go back to my previous example of the 4 pilot ships and the slow dreadnought, I am free to run that slow dreadnought if I choose. However if I run that dreadnought and get hit with an AFK because I didn't have the movement speed to keep up, that's purely on me and my own fault. If I want to minimize the risk of that happening I can form private groups, or I can use a faster ship.
To the point of people with high dps doing events on normal mode only, I don't like that anymore than you do and despise it greatly. As to whether I would use a 300k+ DPS build on a normal mode event TFO, yes I absolutely would so I can get it done faster. With that said I take my 150k+ tank into most everything unless I'm changing ships for some reason. As to why, because I want it done fast, and that's the build I want to take in there. No other explanation is needed. I am under no obligation to nerf my build purely because someone else doesn't like it. I'm sorry if someone doesn't have a fun time in that particular TFO but there's nothing I can do about that.
If you're going to say "why can't you use a build that doesn't do as much DPS for public content", I'm going to ask you a similar question. Why are you refusing to use a build that has enough DPS and mobility that would allow you to participate? Why can't you simply bring a better build? If you're going to insist it goes both ways and I should consider using a build that doesn't do as much DPS in public content, I'm going to insist you bring a build that's more DPS focused than what you're currently running. So now we're right back to square one. Why am I somehow responsible for nerfing my build for you, but you're not responsible for doing more DPS for me?
To insist that I not use my best builds for content because of someone else is to try and make me responsible for THEIR gameplay. I am not responsible for anything beyond meeting the minimums standards set forth by the game itself nor are they. If they meet the standards, they have a right to be there, even if it's just the bare minimum standard they've met. If they can't meet that standard, they have no right to be in there. Simple as that.
So far I'm convinced that people don't really want solutions, they want to complain about other people doing too much DPS. Instead of asking why they're having issues being able to get into the fight and participate, they're making excuses instead of bettering themselves and defending the status quo.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Val I'm not so sure anything specific happened that caused me to question whether or not I needed to improve. I was able to complete advanced content and didn't seem to have any major survivability issues. It's food for thought. Part of the answer might lie within answering your next question.
What do I mean by the game "tricking" players into heading in the "wrong direction"? As a Star Trek fan without any prior gaming experience there really wasn't much of a guide available when I started playing. All you really have is a canon sense of what the gameplay should perhaps be like and an almost instinctive or predictable set of things new players do when they first start.
Here is a list of things that qualify me as a certified expert on heading in the "wrong direction" (things I did when I didn't know any better)
So, somehow those knowledgeable players (that must have done a lot of practicing, parsing, testing, and math) knew about all these predictable things newbies do and perhaps even how they think.
Here in the forums, over a period of many years, they patiently delivered they same message as I raged and screamed about being the Captain of my own ship and ranted about their abuse of the fancy P2W lockbox stuff. They backed this up by giving the same small bits of advice in-game and by ensuring that whenever they were part of a team that having fun was job #1
They even addressed my "stubborn" behavior in small and gentle ways over time so as to not upset my entire apple cart all at once.
Am certainly grateful for their patience and good cheer and am glad that over time I decided to take some of their advice to heart, one step at a time. It can be hard to break old habits but it sure does make the game a whole lot easier.
Can the higher dps/mobility players use loadouts not intended to vaporize the entire map? Well I guess they could. But personally I haven't any issues in "detuning" things, whether ground or space, by sometimes not using any buffs (even things like EPtW or Cannon Scatter Volley) or kit modules in order to provide a better experience when forced to play normal content.