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Critical issues and deterioration of core DPS space maps. (Updates with disastrous recent changes)
xgamefreakz
Member Posts: 76 Arc User
Note, the initial title for this post was "Proposal to shift just a few enemies around to fix huge issues caused by changes to DPS space maps", the title has been updated to reflect the evolved situation.
Note, the last of my comment in this thread explains critical issues stemming from the recent patch which is the most pressing concern regarding DPS: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/comment/13752038
Hi, I hope this reaches Jonathan Herlache.
I'll try to keep this as brief as possible. For one of the longest time the DPS space maps (infected the conduit and hive onslaught, of which infected conduit is one of if not the most popular TFO queue) has been left untouched functionally, even with all the changes to borg textures, the map remained and played mostly the same. The last time there was a functional change was adding the invulnerable shield to the gateway itself to persist after the start phase is dead so players could not attack it instead of the transformer with enough DPS to bypass the heal, destroying the gateway and bugging the map out. However this did not change how the match was mostly played since you would not want to shoot the gateway anyway given the option. So the DPS maps was mostly played the same for almost a decade.
The incursion update that made changes to some borg ships has unfortunately partially broke this in a rather unforeseen way. The infected conduit specifically has had all cubes changed to assimilators and the hive onslaught has had all tac cubes changed to regular cubes, and all cubes changed to assimilators. I've went in and found that the HP and enemy abilities and position of the enemies are all the same, the only thing that was changed was the visuals and hitbox of the affected enemies since the assimilator uses a new model with a different hitbox.
Unfortunately, the change to the hitbox from the new assimilator model as well as the downgrading of enemies in hive onslaught which itself also reduces the enemy hitbox sizes for the swapped enemies has created a whole lot of issues. The assimilator is smaller than the regular cube with a smaller hitbox while still being in the same positions previously as where the cubes was. This has impacted many speed run strategies and DPS items that were long used with AOE to hit them, that now cannot reach the assimilator due to the smaller hitboxes.
One of the biggest and common use in part of an ISE TFO run is to use a torp boat (or even on a DEW build that can slot CF3 (concentrate firepower 3)) with EBM (enhanced biomolecular torpedo) and shooting it under HY turned it into an AOE torpedo that has an AOE big enough to hit the (previously) cube above both transformer (can be seen in the video linked below). The smaller assimilator hitbox now makes the EBM AOE unreachable when fired on the transformer making this strategy now unviable, note that the cube itself had 2.1m HP on elite (which is also how much the assimilator on elite has now).
Hive onslaught has likely taken some of the worst hit by this because the general strategy is to go right into the middle of the enemy positions and fire all your AOE abilities. With the tactical cube (biggest hitbox) changed to regular cubes (smaller hitbox) and regular cubes being changed to assimilators (even smaller hitbox), many AOE abilities now hit far less enemies than it used to.
There are many affected strats, I won't elaborate them all here and will just put some before and after in the video linked below:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X2WXuajeLiVy8X9OfFGSHrzSpqGWyc5J/view?usp=sharing (video in 4k, needs download for sharper viewing)
There are enough changes that one of the parsers is thinking of doing a full entire wipe of the leaderboards of all ISA / ISE / HSE parses and starting from scratch again.
From an immersion point of view, the regular borg cubes are now relegated to actual dreadnoughts with the assimilators taking over what was previously the regular borg cube, this is a good change. Although the regular cube now entirely doesn't appear in infected conduit in any difficulty, that may not be liked upon.
From a DPS point of view, its pretty apocalyptic what has just happened, and just a FEW enemy position changes is needed to fix everything.
Here are the position changes needed for Infected conduit to make it more AOE friendly:
As shown in the image above, the 2 assimilators needs to be horizontally shifted towards the tactical cube. As seen in the video above, in ISA, somehow my spinal console would hit all enemies before, and no longer does now, even to spheres that did not change in hitbox and assumingly its positions too, so to play it safe the spheres should also be slightly shifted horizontally towards the tactical cube.
As shown in the image above, the assimilator above each transformer just needs to be shifted downwards.
Optionally, if you are going to shift the enemy around, it would be a good time to also shift the generators slightly inwards to the transformer as shown in the image above.
Its assumed the positions of ISE and ISA is the same for the enemies with just the enemy type swapped, so the changes described above needs to apply to ISA as well (the changes to sphere position and generator position can apply to ISN as well).
Here is the before and after images of HSE:
This one will be left up to you, generally just have the cubes and assimilators closer inwards towards the Queen and tightly packed. Similarly the changes should apply to HSA and HSN as well.
Also, alternatively, you could just put back the exact same old hitboxes used for all the enemies as per the previous infected conduit and hive onslaught (assuming the sphere positions hasn't been changed). Though doing it this way might be problematic / less immersive in maps like hive onslaught.
You will likely need to go through some of the borg maps to do some clean up and bug fixes after the changes from incursion, like this one:
Another one would be that the incursion update has made a previously existing bug (no shields on transformer and generator) even more prevailing now (almost every match you enter for infected conduit now has at least one with no shields) and has made the infected conduit map extremely abusable (made easily unable to be complete / bugged out in public matches).
When you do go through those issues, please do include these changes proposed as part of the fixes.
Note, the last of my comment in this thread explains critical issues stemming from the recent patch which is the most pressing concern regarding DPS: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/comment/13752038
Hi, I hope this reaches Jonathan Herlache.
I'll try to keep this as brief as possible. For one of the longest time the DPS space maps (infected the conduit and hive onslaught, of which infected conduit is one of if not the most popular TFO queue) has been left untouched functionally, even with all the changes to borg textures, the map remained and played mostly the same. The last time there was a functional change was adding the invulnerable shield to the gateway itself to persist after the start phase is dead so players could not attack it instead of the transformer with enough DPS to bypass the heal, destroying the gateway and bugging the map out. However this did not change how the match was mostly played since you would not want to shoot the gateway anyway given the option. So the DPS maps was mostly played the same for almost a decade.
The incursion update that made changes to some borg ships has unfortunately partially broke this in a rather unforeseen way. The infected conduit specifically has had all cubes changed to assimilators and the hive onslaught has had all tac cubes changed to regular cubes, and all cubes changed to assimilators. I've went in and found that the HP and enemy abilities and position of the enemies are all the same, the only thing that was changed was the visuals and hitbox of the affected enemies since the assimilator uses a new model with a different hitbox.
Unfortunately, the change to the hitbox from the new assimilator model as well as the downgrading of enemies in hive onslaught which itself also reduces the enemy hitbox sizes for the swapped enemies has created a whole lot of issues. The assimilator is smaller than the regular cube with a smaller hitbox while still being in the same positions previously as where the cubes was. This has impacted many speed run strategies and DPS items that were long used with AOE to hit them, that now cannot reach the assimilator due to the smaller hitboxes.
One of the biggest and common use in part of an ISE TFO run is to use a torp boat (or even on a DEW build that can slot CF3 (concentrate firepower 3)) with EBM (enhanced biomolecular torpedo) and shooting it under HY turned it into an AOE torpedo that has an AOE big enough to hit the (previously) cube above both transformer (can be seen in the video linked below). The smaller assimilator hitbox now makes the EBM AOE unreachable when fired on the transformer making this strategy now unviable, note that the cube itself had 2.1m HP on elite (which is also how much the assimilator on elite has now).
Hive onslaught has likely taken some of the worst hit by this because the general strategy is to go right into the middle of the enemy positions and fire all your AOE abilities. With the tactical cube (biggest hitbox) changed to regular cubes (smaller hitbox) and regular cubes being changed to assimilators (even smaller hitbox), many AOE abilities now hit far less enemies than it used to.
There are many affected strats, I won't elaborate them all here and will just put some before and after in the video linked below:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X2WXuajeLiVy8X9OfFGSHrzSpqGWyc5J/view?usp=sharing (video in 4k, needs download for sharper viewing)
There are enough changes that one of the parsers is thinking of doing a full entire wipe of the leaderboards of all ISA / ISE / HSE parses and starting from scratch again.
From an immersion point of view, the regular borg cubes are now relegated to actual dreadnoughts with the assimilators taking over what was previously the regular borg cube, this is a good change. Although the regular cube now entirely doesn't appear in infected conduit in any difficulty, that may not be liked upon.
From a DPS point of view, its pretty apocalyptic what has just happened, and just a FEW enemy position changes is needed to fix everything.
Here are the position changes needed for Infected conduit to make it more AOE friendly:
As shown in the image above, the 2 assimilators needs to be horizontally shifted towards the tactical cube. As seen in the video above, in ISA, somehow my spinal console would hit all enemies before, and no longer does now, even to spheres that did not change in hitbox and assumingly its positions too, so to play it safe the spheres should also be slightly shifted horizontally towards the tactical cube.
As shown in the image above, the assimilator above each transformer just needs to be shifted downwards.
Optionally, if you are going to shift the enemy around, it would be a good time to also shift the generators slightly inwards to the transformer as shown in the image above.
Its assumed the positions of ISE and ISA is the same for the enemies with just the enemy type swapped, so the changes described above needs to apply to ISA as well (the changes to sphere position and generator position can apply to ISN as well).
Here is the before and after images of HSE:
This one will be left up to you, generally just have the cubes and assimilators closer inwards towards the Queen and tightly packed. Similarly the changes should apply to HSA and HSN as well.
Also, alternatively, you could just put back the exact same old hitboxes used for all the enemies as per the previous infected conduit and hive onslaught (assuming the sphere positions hasn't been changed). Though doing it this way might be problematic / less immersive in maps like hive onslaught.
You will likely need to go through some of the borg maps to do some clean up and bug fixes after the changes from incursion, like this one:
Another one would be that the incursion update has made a previously existing bug (no shields on transformer and generator) even more prevailing now (almost every match you enter for infected conduit now has at least one with no shields) and has made the infected conduit map extremely abusable (made easily unable to be complete / bugged out in public matches).
When you do go through those issues, please do include these changes proposed as part of the fixes.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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I was hoping they would leave the existing Borg PvE untouched, too bad.
I was in ISE after the patch and thought to still read “Cube” as lable of the new assimilators while on the new maps they seem to be called as such.
Any chance that this change is only some form of accident or bug?
A bug they could please change back… asap.
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NOOOOOOOOOOOO! *breaks nearest glass panel*
A lot of these concerns don't really seem to be something that would fall under Johnathan's wheelhouse in the first place. What is being brought up is more in the realm of environmental/scenario design.
I do think there is merit in going through an environmental pass and making sure things like the energy beams properly line up with the new model scaling(as pointed out in the final image of the OP).
Conversely, the new bounding box changes might actually prove to be a good thing by discouraging the useage of VFX-heavy AoE spam in the game. It doesn't address the core issue of mob quantity spam requiring the useage of AoE solutions, but it may be a good step towards the reduction of the overall visual spam/overload in the game.
You realize theres a reason why cryptic did not touch this map for a long time? Even with this iteration, all the enemies have the same HP, same abilities, even the assimilators still have the same old name "cube"? They tried to just swapped out the enemies visuals without changing anything else but didn't account for the smaller hitbox size which unfortunately does impact many AOE abilities.
You don't try to change something thats been there for a long time that nobody want's changed. Its why even some super old bugs are still in the infected conduit maps that still happens if you get a bad load. But this map was designed a long time ago with the intention of cubes and tactical cubes, not assimilators, thats why it looks so weird after the change, especially in hive onslaught all the enemies are just weirdly spaced out of each other, thats also why its so weird that in any difficulty of infected conduit, the regular cube doesn't appear at all. In fact, not including the new borg TFOs, the regular green cube only appears in TFOs in hive onslaught advanced and elite, and khitomer vortex elite. And then theres all the bugs, the green link not matching with the assimilator ship, the shields being down on generator that makes the infected conduit TFO so abusable now.
Adapt? I think what you mean is "just live with it"? It is this bad mentality that all these new issues and bugs comes out and keeps piling on and we're supposed to just brush it off and just live with it that's thats aggravating people, as if there is nothing wrong with the game. Is moving a few enemies an unreasonable request? Do you really think everyone liked that the regular cubes are now gone in many of the regular borg queues? What's the point of having a discussion forum if the solution we're supposed to accept is "Adapt"? For example, after telling cryptic so many times that its obviously the lack of appeal for people that's high DPS to play in higher difficulty queues thats causing them to go into lower difficulty queue and obliterating it, thats causing people to complain about overpowered things, that once adjusted wrongly (and cryptic has a bad history of doing so), makes the issue even worse, and so many people apparently wanted the nerfs even though the issue was obviously the enemies, not the players. In the end up, with this recent update it was leaked unintentionally that random elites is actually coming to address that issue!
With almost every single update and patch introducing more issues/bugs than it actually fixes, you have what few people left that even cares to put up a bug report. Should I just stop doing that then, and just "adapt"?
There is no way you speak for or represent cryptic.
And neither do you. The difference is, Badd is a moderator who does an actual job for Cryptic, unpaid or not, you do not.
You do not and cannot claim to know the reason why Cryptic did not touch this map for a long time either. In fact, you are utterly 100% wrong about it as they have altered it a fair few times now, as late as last or this year, to add way point markers and add more ships.
As for Random Elites being 'leaked', no, it wasn't, as it was blindling obvious that Random Elites were coming when they updated Elite selection of TFO's.
Adding a way point marker does not affect the map or enemies at all. You might as well say they touched the map because they changed the borg textures. It doesn't affect the gameplay of the queue. They have not added more enemies to infected conduit, there is a same amount of spheres, probes that are spawned from the gateway, same number of prepositioned enemies. Unless you are referring to the tactical cube having the ability to spawn nanite spheres that I've only started to notice some time a year ago. The spawn is extremely unreliable, it does not spawn consistently enough, you're likely to complete finish the queue without noticing them at all because you have to damage the tactical cube at the end until it has low enough HP, and let it live long enough for it to start spawning the nanite spheres. And it don't matter because they immediately self-destruct the moment the tactical cube is dead, or after a while of being active (it looks like they spawn just to heal the tactical cube). I didn't even see any kind of patch notes that added this, one day while experimenting in the map I just noticed it. I have played the map countless of time for years and after so long only this update has created issues.
(Flaming/trolling comments moderated out. - BMR)
Take for example:
Does it look like the 4 sphere position's were intentionally changed? If not, then any good reason why the same attack no longer hits the other assimilator and 2 other sphere? Perhaps cryptic intentionally shifted the 2 spheres by just a little bit just so that 3km AOE attacks will not hit as many foes at the start because 3km AOE attacks are overpowered against the start? Or perhaps as some others have said, this is one step towards reducing heavy VFX usage, because the problem with the VFX spam is how the enemies are not spaced out enough instead of the VFX itself? Obviously that all makes no sense and the more likely reason is that the different hitbox of the assimilator has somehow slightly shifted their positions or that a smaller hitbox straight out reduce the AOE radius of certain attacks when attacked directly (if you use this same attack on elite, where your engaging the tactical cube in the center foe instead of an assimilator in advanced, it actually hits all foes; all 4 spheres are hit, the tactical cube has a way larger hitbox than the assimilator).
Your comments in reply to mine all so far consistently does not try to explore or address the details that I have pointed out, they are mostly irrelevant to the discussion. And anyway, you missed my point about the random elites, the point is that people were focusing on powerful stuff when the issue instead is a lack of appeal to go into hard difficulty for such powerful stuff, and that cryptic did eventually rebuffed/reverted a number of nerfs and is seemingly tackling the need for elite randoms now instead of a long time ago because powercreep has reached a problematic point, basically proving those people wrong.
Also, its ironic, as far as I know, cryptic has never officially said that elite randoms were definitely coming soon. They've talked about it, but never explicitly says its coming for sure. You don't work for cryptic, how could you know for sure? Probably because its inferred from strong reasons like the updated elite selections of TFO, and the recent option to play elite randoms right after this update that was shortly disabled. Similarly, its inferred that the infected conduit map was never changed that much because its one of if not the most popular queue, almost a mainstay of TFOs and that people obviously don't want it changed.
Back to the issue, bugs and new problematic changes are simply to be reported, made aware by cryptic, and then either the issues presented is not good enough to enact a change, or it is and to be added to a list of things to be updated in the future. Why do I need to be constantly ambushed by these "white knights" in these discussions?
And, why does it seem like the community moderator is joining them instead of discouraging / preventing it?
(Flaming/trolling comments moderated out. - BMR)
I noticed that it says "Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic".
So like some kind of discord or reddit moderator or something.
Moderating the forums is not an "actual job"
Well put here:
---
This is false.
Let's hope they saw reason here and don't implement it. Random elites with the current playerbase would simply introduce non stop failures and frustration.
---
So while I think the game DESPERATELY needs a shakeup with NPC's, because combat is boring, single-minded, and insultingly easy for intermediate and above players, even on the "harder" difficulty modes I think GameFreakz complaints are totally valid for this crucial DPS map that has been used as a measurement tool by players for a decade now. Even if you hate DPS and the community in general, since there is no alternative "brick wall" or something to shoot out to test dps, this was an important part of the game that should've been left alone... at least ISA/ISE.
I have more ideas on how to fix the NPC issue but that's out of scope for this discussion.
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To be clear, these are only my personal opinions, not an official position of Cryptic by no means.
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With that said, a change his minor should not be making or breaking runs for people. The map still functions and it still works. If your team is doing their job this change will NOT matter in the slightest. At best you're talking maybe 5 seconds more to deal with something. Games like this are going to change from time to time with age. Simply because an update occurs to ISE/ISA doesn't mean they're targeting DPS chasers or similar, it means a map has been updated. ISE/ISA were always meant to be a Borg TFO people can fight a classic enemy in while getting some rewards. The fact that the DPS communities can use it to test their numbers is just a bonus of how the map is created but was NOT created with that in mind, nor is the DPS community entitled to keep certain maps in a particular shape just for their own convenience. Again this should not be making or breaking runs for people, and if it is then I would argue you have far more pressing issues than simply a tiny bit smaller hitbox on a foe.
I have long pushed for the tribble test map to be improved and ported to holodeck for folks who want a consistent testing map so they can control the variables better and do what they need to. It would nullify the need/basis for threads like this if that were the case.
Overall maybe they will change some things around again and maybe they won't. Time will tell. Personally the changes don't bother me save for aesthetic reasons.
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I found the change to Assimilators quite jarring at first, however, when it was explained the reasoning behind the change i.e. that Cubes should be more, let's say, foreboding, it makes sense, especially considering the haste at which we could dispatch them to oblivion. After years, I finally got my wish of 'tougher' Borg!
As for using the map as a measuring stick, it's a false equivalency, as it only really measured what the players as a team puts out accurately, not the player in isolation, unless they solo it with no-one else on the map (if that is even still possible). The Tribble test map is far better for individual DPS tracking as you're not impacted by other's effects.
Now that you have explained what you meant by "adapt", I can elaborate further. Of course, things change and you take the next best option. That's not the issue, the issue is that, from my understanding, the way DPS and hence general gameplay works, you have tightly packed enemies and they have more HP, the game allows you to do more DPS in that scenario. If they are spaced out enough that AOE's can't reach them, you do less DPS in that scenario. Which the end result leads to a longer completion time, which also leads to the map technically being harder / overall less DPS. In essence, the TFO has just got straight out worse, and it can be technically said the map got "nerfed". So in that sense, you don't really "adapt" (I pretty much mastered this map, I'm well aware of what is the next best), you simply just accept that its now worse. I'm not saying its now way too hard or DPS has dropped far too much, far from it. If this was some other random queue I doubt anyone would bother. But this is the infected conduit, the go to DPS map that has been untouched for many many years. After so long this update has finally breached enough changes for it to matter enough.
Its seems like even in this update cryptic does not want to change the way the TFO generally plays, with essentially mostly everything kept the same but the visuals, except the hitboxes, which is the issue that was probably unforeseen. While I and maybe others would prefer the map reverting back to what it was, I do not want to go against anything art related; I'm not asking for a reversion. With my experience in the map, I simply saw that any negative gameplay changes to the map that came with update can be fixed with just a few shift in certain enemy positions, hence the post; the devs should be aware that while on paper it would seem like nothing should change just swapping the enemy visuals, there were in fact changes in gameplay, and for the worse. If for whatever reasons that shifting the enemies position cannot be done, or it is deemed not important enough, then so be it, I'll take the next best option. But the point was that from my opinion, the map has been made worse, enough to warrant at least some fix, considering also that, its not just any random queue.
I did not mean to lash out at you, however as you remember from the maelstrom thread, some things people say just baffles me. I think for any future post I make, since its mostly bug related / straight forward, I'm just going to put a "Outside of cryptic dev replies or anything that is critical, I will not be commenting or replying to anything", comment on the first 3 slots to reserve it for future use should there be any updates to make, post it, and just leave it there, don't have to bother seeing whatever people say.
The issue you are having is that you are posting in General Discussion, where most people go, and as per the Forum title, people will comment and discuss, whether you like it or not.
If you want the appropriate forum for giving feedback, that the Dev's are more likely to see, it's the Feedback forum:
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/categories/sto-feedback
However, that still will not elicit a Dev's response, because 99.99% of the time they won't as per the FCT's.
It's fine. I do not take personal offense. 😊
I must say, I find it odd that you would make a thread that invites discussion, but yet do not seem to want to have that discussion, as indicated here. Of course, you always have the option of ignoring everyone in the thread and not responding to them, regardless.
Good luck to you, though. 😊
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I also find it weird that a 36m hp boss at the end of ISE got reduced to a regular cube. But the tac cube that appears in guillotine appears on normal difficulty, and only has 4.6m hp. If they removed tactical cubes because it wasn't that representative of threat in ISA or ISE as bosses at the end but added it to guillotine...and 2 of them at the same time, some weird consistency there.
As for the starting enemies of ISE, so far hitboxes seems fine for that one from the change of tactical cubes to regular cubes. Hitboxes remains an issue elsewhere as per the post.
There are way to many assimilators. I don't mind a few but they out number the cubes and tactical cubes which feels wrong. The loss of the tactical cubes makes the boss looks weak and less worthwhile.
Well we've been using them as punching bags for years.
Some of the things that helped make the Borg appear to be a threat may have been lost. To me, having a strong sense of immersion has always been an important part of engaging the Borg.
The new bugs caused by the previous patch has basically caused a shutdown of any parsed runs whatsoever. As with the continued rise of issues thats caused with the changes to the old borg maps, its a pattern that it amplifies long years old bug that used to happen once in a while, now it happens far too often. The bug where transformers would not regenerate, is something that was already there for years, but only happens once every so often. Having some runs where the transformer would not regenerate, and hence making it killable much faster would not be fair in validation. Hence the major DPS parsers (SCM and CLR) has coded in their parsers checks years ago if the transformers has regenerated health at least once, because it will almost definitely regenerate at least once in an actual run. Parses uploaded will automatically be rejected if it fails the checks. The recent patch has amplified this issue and now at least one transformer will not regenerate in every infected conduit run. As per my bug report, in 10 tries of ISA, the results were:
1.L and R no regen
2.R no regen
3.L and R no regen
4.L no regen
5.L and R no regen
6.L and R no regen
7.L and R no regen
8.L and R no regen
9.L and R no regen
10.L and R no regen
Not once in that 10 tries where both left and right transformer were regenerating hull normally. Trying a few tries in ISE yielded similar results. This has basically caused almost all parses to be uploaded to be automatically be rejected. I have tried many times in solo ISA and had many rejected, by right at the rate of 100% of at least one transformer not regenerating in hull, all parses should be rejected, however I was able to get a few tries to upload; it would seem that if the left transformer is regenerating, but the right one is or isn't it can bypass the parser's checks.
Nevertheless, this has basically created an even worse apocalyptic scene for DPSing than the previous one. The changes brought upon by this patch easily takes number 1 in the history of bad changes that affects DPSing. Items can be nerfed and people will use different stuff, maps as per the original intention of this post can be slightly changed and people will switch strategies. But inability of uploading parses that will be accepted due to a screwed up map is not something even what few people left that has vested interest in this can endure, even for me.
The ramifications if this bug is left unfixed is unthinkable. SCM is the more popular parser, the admin no longer has access to change the codebase for the parser, and unable to remove the checker, which means the most popular DPS parser is straight out dead in the water if this bug is left unfixed. As for CLR, the admins has to be convinced to put in the effort to remove the checker entirely even though this creates some unfairness in consistency just so that people can even have a place to upload runs. Considering how bad things have been getting and consistent inactivity from the admins from CLR and wavering interest in general, theres a good chance the admins will not do anything.
This means that if this bug is left unfixed, this will be the final nail in the coffin for DPSing. Currently, those unaware of the whys and how, will be constantly wondering why their parses keep getting rejected. Those that soon will find out and are aware, what few people left with any interest has only one thing left to do in DPSing, after every patch day, retest if this bug has been fixed. Not to mention all the other issues, the other bugs in my new report, and in this original post, its baffling to think that any DPSer is going to put up with doing a run with some 20-30% chance of uploading successfully if the map happens to make the right combination of transformers to regenerate to bypass the parser's checks, not withstanding all the other bugs and issues.
Its surreal to think how fast this has come crashing down, starting all the way from the nerf to the maelstrom torp. Infected conduit has been the go to for DPSing in STO, and almost a mainstay of TFOs. If ISE/ISA goes down, the entire scene goes down with it. If these issues is left unfixed, or, not fixed fast enough, this will very likely be my last post for STO and it will be the end for DPSing in STO for me, and most likely also for the last few remaining peeps with such interest. Considering Cryptic's history with this, I have few hopes in this.
As Darkblade alluded to:
This is where/how DPS parsing/comparing needs to happen, but until it is, I don't think the devs should limit their changes to other game content in order to satisfy a minority.
-K
Yeah I agree, sure bugs and things that affect all players should be fixed ASAP but changes that are just "so this will be better DPS benchmark TFO" should be at best a very low priority for devs and if there's a conflict between "better map for general population" and "better map for DPS benchmark" the gen pop changes should win every time.
I think that the Tribble test map by comparison is rather boring although I'd welcome it's inclusion on Holodeck. This is something I've been waiting many years for. I don't think that having a test map would in any way nullify the need for consistent TFOs such as Infected Space.
A lot of the basic theories involved in ship building that have been very kindly passed on in this forum (and elsewhere) have their roots in testing on consistent maps such as Infected Space so I would hope that any changes made would be done with a good degree of caution.