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.
@protoneous uh... did you mean to put that entire thing as a quote? Cool if you did but just asking XD
"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
@protoneous uh... did you mean to put that entire thing as a quote? Cool if you did but just asking XD
No I didn't... alas. Can you figure out where I went wrong? I don't want to fuddle it up more at this point lol.
Fixed it! There was an extra "quote" tag in there towards the beginning of the post.
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
As far as believing that you are pigeonholed into piloting a specific class of ship, I cannot say where people get that idea from. As far as I know, the game does not tell you that you are stuck on any particular class of ship. Quite the opposite in my experience as that is one way Cryptic sells more ships.
That one I can tell you. It comes primarily from two places - the Trinity build of most MMOs, where healers get healer gear, tanks get tank gear, and so on; and from these forums.
And again, this bifurcates. Part one is the insistence that once held in these forums (which, thankfully, fell to the wayside a few years ago) that one's specialty should dictate one's ship - "a science captain is best in a science ship". Easily disproved with a little gameplay, but it was a prevailing opinion for a time anyway. Part two is the sensible statement that your gear should be of a type. Unfortunately, some folks misinterpret that as meaning that your gear should be be the same "type" that your character is (see Trinity, above), where it's meant to indicate that if you're running, say, antiproton, you should ideally have all antiproton weapons, and consoles that support increasing antiproton damage. (One of my captains is a Sci who is currently flying an escort with polaron weapons and consoles because she got so many of them from Reputation boxes. Those Sci skills come in handy sometimes.)
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.
Great example of how player knowledge worked better than any arbitrary gear score would.
The sharing of player knowledge and experience CAN work very well but depends upon (in part) whether or not a player is willing to try different things.
Speaking only for myself it seems there was some barriers in place that I needed to reckon with prior to expanding my game play options.
As a longer term player, sometimes making changes seemed pretty tough as I had to overcome a lot of habits I had formed as well as assumptions I had made on how things "should" work based upon watching Star Trek on television for decades.
It is not rocket science to understand humans learn through trying and failing and through trial and error.
You are advocating for an arbitrary gear ranking system based on the premise players do not know what they are doing due to the game not being not informative enough to educate them. Players struggling to complete content or defeat NPCs are going to come to the realization that something is not right organically. Either they decide to try and make a change and improve or they do not. See this recent post here on the forums by @colonelmarik. He explains his difficulties in completing a particular mission and seeks the advice of his fellow players. This is just one example, and you should know in threads like that there is always more than one way to approach a problem.
A couple of things on this point. First, I am aware of the thread you mentioned and answered in that thread what I did to get past the mission. I also asked what he was using for equipment and modules in that thread because whether one likes it or not, the quality of your gear and what you actually chose to use has a huge impact on your performance. A mk xii very rare phaser simply is not going to have the potential of a mk xv gold phaser. In that instance, knowing what kind of captain he was, along with equipment he's using and had available was going to tailor my advice accordingly. Thankfully it seems he has since gotten past that level and no further issues were had from the looks of it. If I am wrong on that point he's welcome to say. In that context yes there is more than one way to approach the issue as he asked how other people got through it. Colonelmarik also wanted some kind of help where as many more simply don't.
Second, you're tunnel vision focusing on one part of what I advocated in the gear check and ignoring that I paired it with a role check and a dungeon journal. It assumes all 3 pieces are in use. It's not purely an arbitrary thing trying to exclude people, but giving people a reality check straight out of the gate so they have an idea of if they're ready for certain content or not. None of this waiting around and slamming your head against a wall for ages like @protoneous did or had to do until he realized what he was doing wasn't working. The game will straight up tell you that you're ready or that you're not ready. If a person is ready then great. If you're not ready then it gives you the knowledge of where to go to get gear should you need it, and where you failed the role check. It ensures they are ready for the higher tier content they want to go into, thus saving them a ton of aggravation wondering if they're ready, and also potential groupmates. If that person gets into a group and has issues you know it's one of 3 things going on, they have something going on outside of their control, they're still learning the mechanics at which time you can answer questions easier, or they're simply not trying.
Third, the gear check, role check, and dungeon journal in WoW were not arbitrary, but coincided with the minimum standards set forth by the game itself. If content required you to do 20k DPS as a minimum to clear it, the gear check required you to have gear that would give you the stats to meet this goal, the role check ensured you had the knowledge of your class to do so, and the dungeon journal supplied you with mechanical information to do so. Essentially they became a basic boot camp of sorts.
And yes, as elitist as it I'm sure some will say it sounds, there are alot of people in this game that simply do not know what they're doing. The game simply does not offer the kind of information and education in its operation that you give it credit for.
Sure, there are some who will throw up their hands and give up. Let them. These are not the kind of people I personally would want to team with anyway and an arbitrary gear score is not going to do anything to change their mind. If "Bob" is arguing with and unwilling to take the advice of a supposed fleetmate about improving their build, no arbitrary gear score is going to help him.
I also wanted to add that for every patient and helpful person out there who is willing to help out a fellow player, there is an elitist jerk. My own personal experience with raiding guilds in MMORPGs like WoW are more interested in using you to help their friends out than helping you achieve goals. They use things like gear scores to discriminate against other players. Not long ago, there was a thread on the CoH HC forums where quite a few people were discussing how they refuse to invite people to their teams if they do not have a specific badge count or specific accomplishment badge. Tools like gear scores do more to attract and foster these kinds of ignorant attitudes.
I used the name Bob because to outright give the guy's name would be naming and shaming. I still have photos of one of his builds from the time he was in my fleet and also a message log from the night he flipped out on my officer. Should he ever return and try to ask for help I have grounds to say "are you going to listen this time or are you going to flip out like last time."
Now with that said I'm glad you agree nothing is going to change the mind of people like Bob and you don't want to group with people like that. Which is all the more reason you should support adding the gear check, role check, and dungeon journal as it filters out people like Bob anyways until one of two things happen. They either swallow their pride and realize they're not Q's gift to the game like they thought they were and they then try to improve, or they give up and quit the game. Either is a win as I don't like grouping with people like that either. These 3 tools filter out people like Bob before they can ever use the random group finder to start with since they won't pass the checks due to their own stubbornness.
Now with regards to your mention of the CoH HC forums, what you're describing are private groups of people. Those private groups are free to set whatever standards they wish for their private runs, no matter how ridiculous you or I might think they are. If people don't like those standards, they are free to go elsewhere or form their own groups with like minded people. With as much as I've seen you preach about people being social and people like myself who would qualify as high DPSers forming our own groups, I'm surprised you of all people are bringing this up as an objection to new features. The only power those people have is over their own private groups. Just like in WoW when people gave me grief after the gear score addon was introduced, I formed my own groups. Then later when the random group finder was added, I just pressed the find group button and ignored the elitists.
Again no feature will ever be 100% abuse proof and elitists will always find a way to be elitists no matter what you do. However the benefits of instituting the Gear Check, Role Check, and Dungeon Journal far outweigh the potential risks. Further on this point, with the ability to form your own private groups and the ability to use the random group finder, the only way you can be locked out of content is if you choose to lock yourself out. There is also one last thing I should mention, the Gear Check, Role Check, and Dungeon Journal only applied to random group finder groups. If you had a full team of 5 people that wanted form their own private group, the game would generally still let people in the door even if they didn't meet the gear or role checks, they just couldn't random group their way in the door.
Another of Bob's many exploits was always staying angry with me that I would never take him on any of the fleet Battle of Korfez runs until he improved his builds and damage output. I told Bob many times that when he improved his builds and damage output and demonstrated to me that he had, I would gladly take him on the run. Until he could do so I wasn't going to waste the fleet's time or his since it would just auto-fail. Idk what the actual auto-fail DPS check is for Korfez but let's assume it was 50k. Bob at the time would've been lucky to break 20k. I offered to help him get to the 50k after I told him he wasn't yet ready, but he instead called me an elitist. Ignorance is Bob knowing he wasn't ready for the TFO but demanding I take him anyways. I find that far more infuriating than a guy being a tool because he's 5 points higher than me on the gear metric. If that's how dude wants to measure his success then cool. Otherwise how sad of an existence he must lead that he's measuring his life accomplishments purely by what he does in a video game.
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?
You are adding much more into what I said. Please go back and re-read my post and take note of where I use words like basic and rudimentary to describe the information provided by the game. I did not say the game provides an overabundant wealth of detailed information.
As I recall, the tutorial does explain how to enable auto-fire, so if the player did not take the time to read it or hid the admittedly annoying pop-up help window that explains it, that is on them. As far as believing that you are pigeonholed into piloting a specific class of ship, I cannot say where people get that idea from. As far as I know, the game does not tell you that you are stuck on any particular class of ship. Quite the opposite in my experience as that is one way Cryptic sells more ships.
I said what I did on this part because it goes to my point. You make some pretty massive assumptions about how people will easily pick up on some of these extremely basic concepts because as you say, the game isn't hard to figure out. Yet many times over people don't. Too many people come out not knowing very basic things that you or I have known for years. I will continue to use the example of auto-fire on weapons as that is a godsend, but far too many don't know about it. Far too many people also think that if a ship comes with a beam array, dual bank, torpedo and single cannon up front, that's how the ship has to be played. Far too many people think that if you're a tactical captain you're only allowed to fly tactical ships, science is only allowed science, and engineering is only allowed engineering ships. You and I both know that's not the case in either situation, but the average players don't because the game does NOTHING to dispel these myths. For that matter the game doesn't even explain the difference between a +15% Bonus Phaser damage and +15% Phaser damage, and that's a HUGE one.
The point to bringing that up was to show that the information isn't as widespread and out there as you're wanting to believe. I wish it was and that more people knew about autofire coming out of the gate, and the myth about tactical only flying tactical and such wasn't so prevalent but it is.
I did not say it was, so no idea where you are getting that from. I merely suggested that the information provided is showing higher values for higher tier and higher quality equipment to provide the player with a basic understanding of gear and tier progression.
Never said that you did, but made the general statement and explained why that number is deceptive as it sits without further context.
You are correct that many players do not know all of the various intricacies of how weapons and consoles and stat multipliers work. I certainly did not when I first started playing. I did do my own research though to learn what I could, just as many others who want to learn will do. We all figured this stuff out without an arbitrary gear score system too.
Again you're tunnel visioning one part of a 3 part system as though the gear check is the only part of what I suggested when it's just one component of a larger machine. You're tunnel visioning one thing like it's the only thing I suggested when it's not. You need to step back and look at the entirety of what I suggested and not just the one part.
Now you and I may have figured certain things out, but that's because we wanted to and chose to. Again I do not expect people to know everything starting out. However there are some major things that the game should be teaching that it doesn't, such as the difference between a +15% Bonus Phaser Damage and +15% Phaser Damage. The game doesn't tell you the bonus damage is the higher boost or why. So a new player will not know the difference and could trade in their cat2 bonuses for all cat1. You and I doing things on our own are the exception and not the rule.
The dungeon journal would be a source for this basic knowledge that exists in game people can go to when they want to learn, or even just refer back to things. The gear check and role check give them a goal to work towards while also verifying they've learned what they have been reading. All of it goes together.
I do not at all disagree there is always room for improvement, but I would rather players do most of the detailed research and reporting on their own and leave Cryptic to developing actual content. The game changes often enough that it would be cumbersome for Cryptic to maintain detailed information. Players are going to do a far better job on it than any developer would anyway. No offense meant to the developers. Part of the community in MMORPGs are the players dedicated to a game that post information online for others to use and enjoy.
The problem again is that alot of people simply won't do the research and seek out the information outside the game as they view it as too much work. The dungeon journal only has to be compiled the initial time and afterwards it's as simple as updating text if/when something changes. Anytime they change what an ability does or something along those lines they have to change the tooltip anyways. It's as simple as copy/paste those changes to the dungeon journal as well. Maybe 5 seconds. Also fundamentals like the difference between cat1 and cat2 damage, autofire for weapons and the like won't be changing anytime soon. You're also assuming the dungeon journal would outright say "do X Y Z" when that's not the case at all. It simply gives you the basic information to form plans and strategies. Such as telling you the difference between cat1 and cat2 boosting, how to autofire weapons, where to get certain gear, and the abilities of certain foes. From there it's up to you to form your strategy.
Cryptic already has to maintain a large amount of info anyways in the form of ability tooltips and the like. All that's being done is copy/pasting it to one additional place. Nothing is stopping players from expanding on this with additional content outside of the game.
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?
I have already answered this. Players who cannot complete content or are struggling with certain things are going to know something is not right and something needs to change. As to who is going to help them, there are fleets, public chat channels, websites, social media etc. Researching, taking in information, trying different things through trial and error will teach them whether they are on the right track or not.
Except you didn't answer it, you gave a vague half answer. If the goal is for the player to improve and things are left up to the player, who or what is going to tell them they need to improve? Yes not being able to clear content is the most obvious way to know if they need to improve. However, what of the people who are able to clear content, but wish to improve further? How are they to measure their improvement or lack of? If a guy swaps out a console from what he had before and goes into content but can't tell if there is a difference in his performance or not, how is he to verify said difference or lack of? I'm asking you for specific metrics.
Good. Let people fail. It is perfectly OK to fail. That is a very clear indication for them that something they are doing is not right. There is absolutely nothing wrong with failing so long as you learn from it.
I'm glad you said this because it goes right along with what I've said. I'm all for letting people do the trial and error method, but not at the cost of entire groups failing time after time after time because one guy refuses to learn or get better.
Guys like Bob for example can do the trial and error bit in the Role Check map until he gets it right without subjecting 4 other people to his experimentation. Let him get his basics in order first before he attempts to join random groups. Once his basics are in order, it's a simple matter of mechanics. I have no issues helping folks learn mechanics, but I despise people who knowingly come into maps expecting a carry.
Well no, that is not really what I said. My question was more about asking if people with high DPS builds really need to bring their high DPS build into Normal event content. Doing so is clearly overkill. Some high DPS builds are complete overkill for Advanced level TFOs too.
Are some builds overkill for certain maps, absolutely. However that does not negate the right of that person to take that overkill build into content. Difficulty level is irrelevant to them having that right. Also the kind of high DPS builds you're talking about are extremely rare. Most of the playerbase is 50k DPS and below. At best maybe 20% of the playerbase is above 50k. Of that 20% that's above 50k DPS, maybe 1% are above 300k. Do I believe people are encountering those types of builds in the normals, of course. Do I believe it's as widespread of an issue people try to make it out to be, not even close. With that said, if I am forced into normal mode content for an event, I'm ending that map as quickly as I can so I can get in and get out and not linger longer than necessary.
You seem to be confused by this part of the discussion. What difficulty is being run is the important part here. Again, is a high DPS build really needed to end Normal difficulty event content in literal seconds? No, it really is not. Should you bring a low end, sub par build to run Elite level content? No, absolutely not. Do you understand how the door goes both ways here?
Also, corralling others into higher DPS builds is not making an already problematic situation any better. It is just making more players with higher DPS that will vaporize the content even faster. I do not believe this is what Cryptic intends to happen. They may as well just create "I Win" buttons for everyone that clears a map with no effort and gives out rewards for free. Some players actually want to enjoy piloting their ships in combat and events and/or TFOs ending in under 30 seconds is not providing any enjoyment for them. Building for higher DPS to speed through content is not a sustainable solution overall. The game will eventually need content designed for and balanced around higher performing builds.
And here's where I guarantee I'm going to get accused of hypocrisy. It does go both ways, but not how you think it does. So long as people are meeting the minimum standards set forth by the game itself, be it by just barely making it or exceeding those standards by light years, they have a right to be in that TFO. If they are not meeting those standards, they have no right to be in that TFO until they do. That person who has the build capable of ending a map in seconds has just as much right to enter normal mode TFOs as does the person with a less DPS focused build. If a higher level TFO requires someone to do 50k DPS and someone is doing exactly 50k DPS, then they have just as much right to be in that higher level TFO as the guy doing 500k. On the opposite side of the coin, if that person seeking to enter our hypothetical TFO requiring 50k DPS is only doing 25k DPS, they have no right to be in that TFO yet.
Now you might say "but wait that's a double standard", but actually it's not. The 25k DPS guy has no right to be in there because he's not meeting the minimum standards set forth by the game itself, which is the 50k DPS. Once he meets that requirement, he has every right to be in there. Until they meet that standard however he doesn't. I am applying an equal standard to both sides, just not in the way you like. Anyone meeting the minimum level set forth by the game itself has a right to be in there, whether they're right at the minimum level or light years ahead of it. At the same time I am also giving people a method and path of progression to reach that minimum standard.
If our hypothetical player gets to the 50k DPS minimum and decides not to shoot for additional DPS, that is his right not to take his builds higher. If on the opposite end of the coin he wants to shoot for 500k, he is free to do so. I am not now nor have I ever suggested everyone has to push to get every last one and zero out of their ship. I am however arguing that people need to meet a certain basic standard, and that standard is the minimum set by the game itself to clear the content. So long as the minimum standards have been met, the guys at the minimum are under no obligation to bring their numbers up, and the folks light years ahead are under no obligation to bring their numbers down.
With that last bit being about power creep, it's going to happen in any MMO. As cryptic releases new powers and abilities, people are going to get stronger and stronger over time, especially if they don't update the already existing content to take the new powers into account. I'll give you an example that was used to argue against flying mounts continuing to exist in WoW by one of their devs over there. "Suppose you have a quest that required you to enter a castle and rescue a person. In the era before flight you would run into the castle and fight your way through 30 mobs, click the cage and free the person. In the era of flight, you can land on the roof and click the cage through the roof without ever having to fight the 30 mobs, which is bypassing content." And yes they actually tried to call that bypassing content and used their lack of updating the content as grounds to argue against a feature.
Being that I've got some experience creating content for games, even though I'm not a AAA studio developer, I suggested a fix to their hypothetical scenario that took both sides into account. From their scenario, that told me the quest had never been updated to account for flying mounts being a thing and had stayed the same for years. It also told me that those 30 mobs were not part of the quest objectives but were simply trash mobs meant to slow you down, and that the cage didn't have a key. My solution was for them to change the quest to require a key for opening the cage and incorporating the 30 mobs into the quest objectives. The key could drop off the first guy, and it may not drop until the 30th guy, or make it so the person is afraid to come out until all 30 mobs have been dealt with, but in that situation you have made sure people fight the mobs while simultaneously giving them a second means of approaching the quest. Do they run in the front door like ye old school people, or do they approach from the air?
I'm a strong proponent of bringing the content to meet the players when and where possible. I consider nerfing to be a last resort. Less is often more when dealing with this stuff.
While this may be true for a select few people, I definitely would not agree it is true of everyone. There is a lot of nuance to this discussion.
Again strongly disagree. If someone's first thought is to jump straight into demanding DPS limits on everyone else while refusing to acknowledge their own part in their gaming woes, they are every bit the problem. Neither myself or anyone else is under an obligation to nerf ourselves because another person is doing the bare minimum and getting left in the dust as a result. Time and time again I see people complaining about things being too hard or having an issue with something, and 90% of the time it's their own fault for something they're doing or not doing. This is why when someone asks for help one of the first things I do is ask them what their build looks like as it's the obvious first step. Are they using a basic cohesive build? If they are then great, we can move on to tactics. If tactics are good then we move on to other areas such as if there is a bug preventing progress. If a person says "(thing) is too hard" and I ask them what they're running and how they're approaching it, and their first reaction is to instantly jump to "my build and tactics aren't the problem it's just too hard" then that tells me the person isn't interested in getting help at all, but just wants to whine and rant. I can deal with people who are having a rough time and are irritated but legitimately seeking help, but I have no time for whiners who aren't willing to help themselves and want me and everyone else to do everything for them.
This is part of why I advocate for the Gear Check, Role Check, and Dungeon journal. It sets clear and transparent standards of what people will need at the minimum level to succeed in higher level content, while also giving them a path to get there if they're not currently there. It removes all excuses from people while maintaining a transparent and objective view of a person's progress. If someone meets the gear check, but isn't clearing the roll check, then something they're doing or not doing is the problem and yes, it is on them. If the person meets all the checks and can't clear something, we know one of a few things is happening. Either something outside their control like internet issues, they need to bone up on or get used to certain mechanics a bit more which will come with time, or they're simply not trying.
So for me if people say they want things to change, yet all the time find excuses as to why changing anything can't or won't work, then I'm left with no other conclusion than to assume they don't want change. They enjoy the status quo and like to complain.
"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 glossed over a lot of the wall o' text posts, to the point of TL;DR. that said, some of the points I got were, Too bad you don't do a zillion DPS, it's on you to "git gud." I did not see much on how to fix it (which is obvious, make advanced and elite versions of every6thing released as a special event. It was said before, start pugging matching based on a average DPS score. as I think about that, it should be a 7, 14 or 30 day average.
None of this waiting around and slamming your head against a wall for ages like @protoneous did or had to do until he realized what he was doing wasn't working.
In this particular case I'll happily let myself be used as an example
In retrospect my game play would have been more enjoyable sooner if perhaps I had spent less time complaining and being stubborn and more time trying a few small changes in game.
Comments
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.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
No I didn't... alas. Can you figure out where I went wrong? I don't want to fuddle it up more at this point lol.
Fixed it! There was an extra "quote" tag in there towards the beginning of the post.
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
Moderation Problems/Issues? Please contact the Community Manager
Terms of Service / Community Rules and Policies / FCT
Facebook / Twitter / Twitch
And again, this bifurcates. Part one is the insistence that once held in these forums (which, thankfully, fell to the wayside a few years ago) that one's specialty should dictate one's ship - "a science captain is best in a science ship". Easily disproved with a little gameplay, but it was a prevailing opinion for a time anyway. Part two is the sensible statement that your gear should be of a type. Unfortunately, some folks misinterpret that as meaning that your gear should be be the same "type" that your character is (see Trinity, above), where it's meant to indicate that if you're running, say, antiproton, you should ideally have all antiproton weapons, and consoles that support increasing antiproton damage. (One of my captains is a Sci who is currently flying an escort with polaron weapons and consoles because she got so many of them from Reputation boxes. Those Sci skills come in handy sometimes.)
The sharing of player knowledge and experience CAN work very well but depends upon (in part) whether or not a player is willing to try different things.
Speaking only for myself it seems there was some barriers in place that I needed to reckon with prior to expanding my game play options.
As a longer term player, sometimes making changes seemed pretty tough as I had to overcome a lot of habits I had formed as well as assumptions I had made on how things "should" work based upon watching Star Trek on television for decades.
A couple of things on this point. First, I am aware of the thread you mentioned and answered in that thread what I did to get past the mission. I also asked what he was using for equipment and modules in that thread because whether one likes it or not, the quality of your gear and what you actually chose to use has a huge impact on your performance. A mk xii very rare phaser simply is not going to have the potential of a mk xv gold phaser. In that instance, knowing what kind of captain he was, along with equipment he's using and had available was going to tailor my advice accordingly. Thankfully it seems he has since gotten past that level and no further issues were had from the looks of it. If I am wrong on that point he's welcome to say. In that context yes there is more than one way to approach the issue as he asked how other people got through it. Colonelmarik also wanted some kind of help where as many more simply don't.
Second, you're tunnel vision focusing on one part of what I advocated in the gear check and ignoring that I paired it with a role check and a dungeon journal. It assumes all 3 pieces are in use. It's not purely an arbitrary thing trying to exclude people, but giving people a reality check straight out of the gate so they have an idea of if they're ready for certain content or not. None of this waiting around and slamming your head against a wall for ages like @protoneous did or had to do until he realized what he was doing wasn't working. The game will straight up tell you that you're ready or that you're not ready. If a person is ready then great. If you're not ready then it gives you the knowledge of where to go to get gear should you need it, and where you failed the role check. It ensures they are ready for the higher tier content they want to go into, thus saving them a ton of aggravation wondering if they're ready, and also potential groupmates. If that person gets into a group and has issues you know it's one of 3 things going on, they have something going on outside of their control, they're still learning the mechanics at which time you can answer questions easier, or they're simply not trying.
Third, the gear check, role check, and dungeon journal in WoW were not arbitrary, but coincided with the minimum standards set forth by the game itself. If content required you to do 20k DPS as a minimum to clear it, the gear check required you to have gear that would give you the stats to meet this goal, the role check ensured you had the knowledge of your class to do so, and the dungeon journal supplied you with mechanical information to do so. Essentially they became a basic boot camp of sorts.
And yes, as elitist as it I'm sure some will say it sounds, there are alot of people in this game that simply do not know what they're doing. The game simply does not offer the kind of information and education in its operation that you give it credit for.
I used the name Bob because to outright give the guy's name would be naming and shaming. I still have photos of one of his builds from the time he was in my fleet and also a message log from the night he flipped out on my officer. Should he ever return and try to ask for help I have grounds to say "are you going to listen this time or are you going to flip out like last time."
Now with that said I'm glad you agree nothing is going to change the mind of people like Bob and you don't want to group with people like that. Which is all the more reason you should support adding the gear check, role check, and dungeon journal as it filters out people like Bob anyways until one of two things happen. They either swallow their pride and realize they're not Q's gift to the game like they thought they were and they then try to improve, or they give up and quit the game. Either is a win as I don't like grouping with people like that either. These 3 tools filter out people like Bob before they can ever use the random group finder to start with since they won't pass the checks due to their own stubbornness.
Now with regards to your mention of the CoH HC forums, what you're describing are private groups of people. Those private groups are free to set whatever standards they wish for their private runs, no matter how ridiculous you or I might think they are. If people don't like those standards, they are free to go elsewhere or form their own groups with like minded people. With as much as I've seen you preach about people being social and people like myself who would qualify as high DPSers forming our own groups, I'm surprised you of all people are bringing this up as an objection to new features. The only power those people have is over their own private groups. Just like in WoW when people gave me grief after the gear score addon was introduced, I formed my own groups. Then later when the random group finder was added, I just pressed the find group button and ignored the elitists.
Again no feature will ever be 100% abuse proof and elitists will always find a way to be elitists no matter what you do. However the benefits of instituting the Gear Check, Role Check, and Dungeon Journal far outweigh the potential risks. Further on this point, with the ability to form your own private groups and the ability to use the random group finder, the only way you can be locked out of content is if you choose to lock yourself out. There is also one last thing I should mention, the Gear Check, Role Check, and Dungeon Journal only applied to random group finder groups. If you had a full team of 5 people that wanted form their own private group, the game would generally still let people in the door even if they didn't meet the gear or role checks, they just couldn't random group their way in the door.
Another of Bob's many exploits was always staying angry with me that I would never take him on any of the fleet Battle of Korfez runs until he improved his builds and damage output. I told Bob many times that when he improved his builds and damage output and demonstrated to me that he had, I would gladly take him on the run. Until he could do so I wasn't going to waste the fleet's time or his since it would just auto-fail. Idk what the actual auto-fail DPS check is for Korfez but let's assume it was 50k. Bob at the time would've been lucky to break 20k. I offered to help him get to the 50k after I told him he wasn't yet ready, but he instead called me an elitist. Ignorance is Bob knowing he wasn't ready for the TFO but demanding I take him anyways. I find that far more infuriating than a guy being a tool because he's 5 points higher than me on the gear metric. If that's how dude wants to measure his success then cool. Otherwise how sad of an existence he must lead that he's measuring his life accomplishments purely by what he does in a video game.
I said what I did on this part because it goes to my point. You make some pretty massive assumptions about how people will easily pick up on some of these extremely basic concepts because as you say, the game isn't hard to figure out. Yet many times over people don't. Too many people come out not knowing very basic things that you or I have known for years. I will continue to use the example of auto-fire on weapons as that is a godsend, but far too many don't know about it. Far too many people also think that if a ship comes with a beam array, dual bank, torpedo and single cannon up front, that's how the ship has to be played. Far too many people think that if you're a tactical captain you're only allowed to fly tactical ships, science is only allowed science, and engineering is only allowed engineering ships. You and I both know that's not the case in either situation, but the average players don't because the game does NOTHING to dispel these myths. For that matter the game doesn't even explain the difference between a +15% Bonus Phaser damage and +15% Phaser damage, and that's a HUGE one.
The point to bringing that up was to show that the information isn't as widespread and out there as you're wanting to believe. I wish it was and that more people knew about autofire coming out of the gate, and the myth about tactical only flying tactical and such wasn't so prevalent but it is.
Never said that you did, but made the general statement and explained why that number is deceptive as it sits without further context.
Again you're tunnel visioning one part of a 3 part system as though the gear check is the only part of what I suggested when it's just one component of a larger machine. You're tunnel visioning one thing like it's the only thing I suggested when it's not. You need to step back and look at the entirety of what I suggested and not just the one part.
Now you and I may have figured certain things out, but that's because we wanted to and chose to. Again I do not expect people to know everything starting out. However there are some major things that the game should be teaching that it doesn't, such as the difference between a +15% Bonus Phaser Damage and +15% Phaser Damage. The game doesn't tell you the bonus damage is the higher boost or why. So a new player will not know the difference and could trade in their cat2 bonuses for all cat1. You and I doing things on our own are the exception and not the rule.
The dungeon journal would be a source for this basic knowledge that exists in game people can go to when they want to learn, or even just refer back to things. The gear check and role check give them a goal to work towards while also verifying they've learned what they have been reading. All of it goes together.
The problem again is that alot of people simply won't do the research and seek out the information outside the game as they view it as too much work. The dungeon journal only has to be compiled the initial time and afterwards it's as simple as updating text if/when something changes. Anytime they change what an ability does or something along those lines they have to change the tooltip anyways. It's as simple as copy/paste those changes to the dungeon journal as well. Maybe 5 seconds. Also fundamentals like the difference between cat1 and cat2 damage, autofire for weapons and the like won't be changing anytime soon. You're also assuming the dungeon journal would outright say "do X Y Z" when that's not the case at all. It simply gives you the basic information to form plans and strategies. Such as telling you the difference between cat1 and cat2 boosting, how to autofire weapons, where to get certain gear, and the abilities of certain foes. From there it's up to you to form your strategy.
Cryptic already has to maintain a large amount of info anyways in the form of ability tooltips and the like. All that's being done is copy/pasting it to one additional place. Nothing is stopping players from expanding on this with additional content outside of the game.
Except you didn't answer it, you gave a vague half answer. If the goal is for the player to improve and things are left up to the player, who or what is going to tell them they need to improve? Yes not being able to clear content is the most obvious way to know if they need to improve. However, what of the people who are able to clear content, but wish to improve further? How are they to measure their improvement or lack of? If a guy swaps out a console from what he had before and goes into content but can't tell if there is a difference in his performance or not, how is he to verify said difference or lack of? I'm asking you for specific metrics.
I'm glad you said this because it goes right along with what I've said. I'm all for letting people do the trial and error method, but not at the cost of entire groups failing time after time after time because one guy refuses to learn or get better.
Guys like Bob for example can do the trial and error bit in the Role Check map until he gets it right without subjecting 4 other people to his experimentation. Let him get his basics in order first before he attempts to join random groups. Once his basics are in order, it's a simple matter of mechanics. I have no issues helping folks learn mechanics, but I despise people who knowingly come into maps expecting a carry.
Are some builds overkill for certain maps, absolutely. However that does not negate the right of that person to take that overkill build into content. Difficulty level is irrelevant to them having that right. Also the kind of high DPS builds you're talking about are extremely rare. Most of the playerbase is 50k DPS and below. At best maybe 20% of the playerbase is above 50k. Of that 20% that's above 50k DPS, maybe 1% are above 300k. Do I believe people are encountering those types of builds in the normals, of course. Do I believe it's as widespread of an issue people try to make it out to be, not even close. With that said, if I am forced into normal mode content for an event, I'm ending that map as quickly as I can so I can get in and get out and not linger longer than necessary.
And here's where I guarantee I'm going to get accused of hypocrisy. It does go both ways, but not how you think it does. So long as people are meeting the minimum standards set forth by the game itself, be it by just barely making it or exceeding those standards by light years, they have a right to be in that TFO. If they are not meeting those standards, they have no right to be in that TFO until they do. That person who has the build capable of ending a map in seconds has just as much right to enter normal mode TFOs as does the person with a less DPS focused build. If a higher level TFO requires someone to do 50k DPS and someone is doing exactly 50k DPS, then they have just as much right to be in that higher level TFO as the guy doing 500k. On the opposite side of the coin, if that person seeking to enter our hypothetical TFO requiring 50k DPS is only doing 25k DPS, they have no right to be in that TFO yet.
Now you might say "but wait that's a double standard", but actually it's not. The 25k DPS guy has no right to be in there because he's not meeting the minimum standards set forth by the game itself, which is the 50k DPS. Once he meets that requirement, he has every right to be in there. Until they meet that standard however he doesn't. I am applying an equal standard to both sides, just not in the way you like. Anyone meeting the minimum level set forth by the game itself has a right to be in there, whether they're right at the minimum level or light years ahead of it. At the same time I am also giving people a method and path of progression to reach that minimum standard.
If our hypothetical player gets to the 50k DPS minimum and decides not to shoot for additional DPS, that is his right not to take his builds higher. If on the opposite end of the coin he wants to shoot for 500k, he is free to do so. I am not now nor have I ever suggested everyone has to push to get every last one and zero out of their ship. I am however arguing that people need to meet a certain basic standard, and that standard is the minimum set by the game itself to clear the content. So long as the minimum standards have been met, the guys at the minimum are under no obligation to bring their numbers up, and the folks light years ahead are under no obligation to bring their numbers down.
With that last bit being about power creep, it's going to happen in any MMO. As cryptic releases new powers and abilities, people are going to get stronger and stronger over time, especially if they don't update the already existing content to take the new powers into account. I'll give you an example that was used to argue against flying mounts continuing to exist in WoW by one of their devs over there. "Suppose you have a quest that required you to enter a castle and rescue a person. In the era before flight you would run into the castle and fight your way through 30 mobs, click the cage and free the person. In the era of flight, you can land on the roof and click the cage through the roof without ever having to fight the 30 mobs, which is bypassing content." And yes they actually tried to call that bypassing content and used their lack of updating the content as grounds to argue against a feature.
Being that I've got some experience creating content for games, even though I'm not a AAA studio developer, I suggested a fix to their hypothetical scenario that took both sides into account. From their scenario, that told me the quest had never been updated to account for flying mounts being a thing and had stayed the same for years. It also told me that those 30 mobs were not part of the quest objectives but were simply trash mobs meant to slow you down, and that the cage didn't have a key. My solution was for them to change the quest to require a key for opening the cage and incorporating the 30 mobs into the quest objectives. The key could drop off the first guy, and it may not drop until the 30th guy, or make it so the person is afraid to come out until all 30 mobs have been dealt with, but in that situation you have made sure people fight the mobs while simultaneously giving them a second means of approaching the quest. Do they run in the front door like ye old school people, or do they approach from the air?
I'm a strong proponent of bringing the content to meet the players when and where possible. I consider nerfing to be a last resort. Less is often more when dealing with this stuff.
Again strongly disagree. If someone's first thought is to jump straight into demanding DPS limits on everyone else while refusing to acknowledge their own part in their gaming woes, they are every bit the problem. Neither myself or anyone else is under an obligation to nerf ourselves because another person is doing the bare minimum and getting left in the dust as a result. Time and time again I see people complaining about things being too hard or having an issue with something, and 90% of the time it's their own fault for something they're doing or not doing. This is why when someone asks for help one of the first things I do is ask them what their build looks like as it's the obvious first step. Are they using a basic cohesive build? If they are then great, we can move on to tactics. If tactics are good then we move on to other areas such as if there is a bug preventing progress. If a person says "(thing) is too hard" and I ask them what they're running and how they're approaching it, and their first reaction is to instantly jump to "my build and tactics aren't the problem it's just too hard" then that tells me the person isn't interested in getting help at all, but just wants to whine and rant. I can deal with people who are having a rough time and are irritated but legitimately seeking help, but I have no time for whiners who aren't willing to help themselves and want me and everyone else to do everything for them.
This is part of why I advocate for the Gear Check, Role Check, and Dungeon journal. It sets clear and transparent standards of what people will need at the minimum level to succeed in higher level content, while also giving them a path to get there if they're not currently there. It removes all excuses from people while maintaining a transparent and objective view of a person's progress. If someone meets the gear check, but isn't clearing the roll check, then something they're doing or not doing is the problem and yes, it is on them. If the person meets all the checks and can't clear something, we know one of a few things is happening. Either something outside their control like internet issues, they need to bone up on or get used to certain mechanics a bit more which will come with time, or they're simply not trying.
So for me if people say they want things to change, yet all the time find excuses as to why changing anything can't or won't work, then I'm left with no other conclusion than to assume they don't want change. They enjoy the status quo and like to complain.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
In this particular case I'll happily let myself be used as an example
In retrospect my game play would have been more enjoyable sooner if perhaps I had spent less time complaining and being stubborn and more time trying a few small changes in game.