I haven't played a lot of MMO, but rather than a gear system it'd be a competency system.
A competency system can be translated into completing a certain benchmark patrol or calculating if the gear on you ship equals X value, but neither one takes into account that knowledge is the main contributor.
Someone can clear a benchmark patrol or gear check with ease but still Leroy Jenkins a TFO.
Using the WoW example I gave above, there is another part to this I didn't mention which was the vote kick system included in random content. Proving grounds challenges tested the knowledge of the player as far as how well they knew they class and role. If the person attempting the test was paying attention to what their abilities do as they unlocked them, and mechanics they encountered with certain mobs, they would be fine to pass the test. They didn't need the most optimal rotation or have everything memorized to a frame-perfect press, just a rudimentary understanding of "press 1, then 2, then stay out of dumb on the ground". If they knew enough to get the gear to pass the check, and knew enough to get past the proving grounds, they had ZERO excuse to then Leeroy into a TFO and fail it for everyone else or cause issues. Especially since on top of the gear check and the proving grounds they also had the dungeon journal which gave them a rundown of what each basic enemy is in an instance and what they do. It didn't outright say "do x y z to beat him" but it did give you enough info to formulate your own strategy. 5 different groups with 5 different strats could go into the same instance and all 5 clear it.
As part of getting the gear for the check and clearing the proving grounds, they would've been introduced the the dungeon journal as well which told them where to go, and gave them that info. Point being if they were smart enough and competent enough to get through the checks, they had zero excuses for when it came to actual content. To use STO terminology if they constantly attacked the Borg Queen during feedback pulse and blew themselves up multiple times and the run failed, or they couldn't stay alive, they had no excuse because there would've been a note about her ability in the dungeon journal. If someone went into a Undine Assault with the 3 lanes and refused to close an errant rift right next to him because "that's just an optional" and failed the TFO, he had no excuse because that would've been covered in the briefing for the TFO itself and he knew that on elite it wasn't an optional anymore but mandatory. Thus the checks gave you a way of telling who was a team player and who was just trying to Leeroy and troll everyone. If you encountered the second kind, you had a vote kick system to remove them from the group. So the community could police itself more. Vote kicked also granted recourse for trolls in other difficulties as well such as if you had a guy that was just being an absolute tool in chat or purposefully making the TFO more difficult, such as spamming the engineering cover shield to prevent access to an objective, you could boot them.
There's never going to be a 100% "Leroy" proof system. However steps can be taken to reduce it to near zero so that if it does come up, it's a statistical anomaly. Point being if someone had the knowledge to get through the checks, they had the knowledge to not simply Leroy in. If they did then you knew they were most likely a troll.
"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 could see an adaption of the AFK system to put someone who does not contribute (Both Damage output and working the objectives) to be banned from Random Elite TFO for a total of 4 hours. Not regular with premade, but random Elite TFO.
The distinction is to allow people to learn with a premade group and discourage trolls.
The 4 hour ban would have to be account wide though to prevent switching characters and rinse and repeat.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Kicks are probably the most annoying and abused system in MMOs.
For instance, higher level ESO random dungeon runs have a high failure rate, not because they are so difficult as such but rather because as the dungeon level increases the bosses (and often the minibosses) have more and more annoying mechanics the toxic powersnobs in the group (and inevitably it seems you always get at least one) don't want to deal with (or they are speedrunners who don't want the run to take more than the absolute minimum of time).
That means that if the group does not vaporize the first miniboss they run into before it can pop any mechanics tricks you can expect the kick vote nonsense to pop up. And, if the party commits the sin of dismissing the vote those powersnobs get all torqued out of shape and start flaming, sometimes even actively troll the party, and eventually rage-quit the dungeon, which leaves the party short until someone shows up to replace them (assuming they don't immediately leave when they see they are in the middle of a run since most people know how that kind of run usually turns out).
If that happens they usually end up running the rest of the dungeon shorthanded, and often either the remaining people cannot generate enough DPS, defense/healing, or both to kill the main boss with the few left and give up, or if the ones left are stubborn enough, spend an hour or so trying and sometimes eventually make it through (I did that with as few as just two of us left and it sometimes worked, though that does not excuse the idiocy that led to having to do it).
Defiance had it even worse, there was an exploit that essentially killed their version of dungeons where the team leader would kick everyone off the team just before encountering the main boss and let their buddies in to reap the rewards of that last encounter and cheat the original team out of it.
In both of those games it got to be way more annoying than fun doing dungeon runs so I stopped doing them altogether in Defiance (no loss there since they had open world stuff that was similar to dungeon runs without having to deal with dysfunctional parties), and only do dungeons in ESO when I am running low on transmute crystals, or having to run them is a necessary evil to get event tickets (it's a shame though, the lower level ones are usually fun before the egomaniacal BS dominates dungeon runs).
In STO I do something similar, I do the event TFOs or que up for regular TFOs but avoid the RTFOs whenever possible because of the dysfunctional-group BS that tends to happen in them (even if far less often than the first two games I mentioned).
Building gear checks, passive checkruns, and other gatekeeping into the system is inherently solo and so cannot effectively predict how a player will do in elite group content, especially since most TFOs (and the equivalent in other games for that matter) nowadays amount to a set number of people soloing in the same place at the same time rather than any real team play.
What would probably help more than those things would be to have a unified ingame voice system that actually works so the more organizationally skilled people can more easily keep things together and on track without having to stop fighting and start typing in the chat (which few apparently look at during TFOs anyway). Discord and Teamspeak just cannot cut it because there are way too many different channels so the chances of the whole random group being on the same channel on the same service are about as dismal as getting a gold phoenix token.
I honestly don't think you need to separate STO into "do we focus on casuals or hardcore players?". The game has enough range to cover both, Cryptic/whoever just needs to be smart about it.
The Secret World and one or two other games had a very straightforward system: "elite" type content is locked until you get an accolade or award. You get that accolade or award by successfully completing a single-player challenge. The challenge consists of some of the elite mechanics you need to be aware of, and a DPS check. Complete it with any build/gear you like and are capable of, so no "gear check/gear rating" problems. (Secret World even had different versions for DPS, Tank, Healer builds)
STO has all the mechanics for this already. It could even do a separate challenge unlock for Space and Ground elites, which would be a nice customization feature.
Catering to the widest audience is needed for continued financial success, and would take barely more effort than mutating an existing TFO and some accolade checks.
Whether Cryptic is willing to put in even that level of effort on the issue is, of course, a different matter.
Kicks are probably the most annoying and abused system in MMOs.
Pulling this bit as it's the crux of the argument.
The examples you gave from ESO and Defiance tell me straight away those systems are poorly designed. With the WoW and SWTOR type systems, what you described is not possible. First, if you boot someone from group, you can't simply invite your friend to fill the slot. You have to press the Find Replacement button and roll the dice, play without a full team, or simply disband the group. Those are your options. Also people can't simply spam kick requests either. If you call a vote kick there is 3-4 minute cooldown before you can call another vote to kick regardless of whether it's successful or not. With the WoW system especially, if you are a frequent user of the kick system and constantly calling votes to kick, your ability to use the system diminishes. So instead of 3-4 minute timer to call another vote, it may increase to 6-7 minutes up to a maximum of around 30 minutes I believe it was. The only way to reduce that timer is to complete runs without calling a vote kick. These systems have been in place for over 10 years in both games and have been proven to work.
Next, there are always going to be elitists in any game you play, or "powersnobs" as you called them. There will always be those few people who think they're better than everyone else because they can pull 0.0000000000000001% more than someone else. Anytime I run into these guys and they try to run their mouths I will either ignore them, vote them out of the group, or hit them with a "congratulations, you're doing more than someone in a video game. how sad is your life that you're measuring accomplishments by what you do in a video game." People like this and trolls are two of the very reasons vote to kick systems are a thing in the first place. As it sits right now if someone wanted to troll a group by putting up an engineering cover shield to prevent mission progression, there is nothing you can do about it. Right now if you run into one of those elitists or trolls you have no recourse. GMs aren't going to get involved for a number of reasons. First is that 99% of the time there will be no evidence and it's simply a player squabble of "he said she said" with no actionable offenses. Even if they wanted to step in, by the time they could the run would already be over before they could get there. Unless something absolutely egregious happened, GMs do not have the time to go policing every bad interaction in the group finders. Giving players a vote kick system allows them to police their own groups. If you get a troll then boot them, if you get an elitist then boot them, some guy being an unreasonable tool then boot them. It gives you instant recourse that you otherwise did not have.
One of the big things people miss with debates like this is they assume that simply because a vote kick exists it means it's going to get used constantly and people will never be able to join random content ever again, which is simply untrue. Can a vote kick system be abused, certainly as there's no such thing as an abuse proof system. I can tell some horror stories of how I saw it be abused against myself or others who did no wrong. However I can tell far far more success stories where it did what it was meant to. By a factor of about 20:1 in favor of success. About 85% of the vote kicks that come up are due to 2 reasons, someone disconnected and isn't coming back and they're preventing group progress, or they've went AFK and haven't come back after a reasonable amount of time thus preventing progress. In both of those cases the groups can kick the disconnect or AFK and get a new member to carry on. The remaining 15% are actual instances of needing to kick someone for being a troll, an elitist, or just a general tool. In the past 60 days that I have played SWTOR as just one example, I've had to call a vote kick 3 times. 2 were disconnects because they didn't like the instance it gave us, and the 3rd was for some guy whining because we used a different strategy than he usually does and tried to hold up the group. If you want to break it down and assume the patterns stay true for the entire year, that's roughly 1 kick for being a troll/tool/elitist every 60 days for a total of 6 kicks per year, and 12 kicks per year for folks who essentially abandoned the group. So roughly 0.05 kicks per day.
If someone is constantly being kicked out of group content, there is a reason for it. Either they're a troll trying to mess with their group, an elitist trying to do powersnob things as you called it, or they're just an unpleasant tool. Eventually once that person is removed enough times one of a few things is going to happen, either they're going to straighten up and correct the issue causing them to get kicked so much, or they're going to quit the game and give up. Either way the playerbase is improved as a result.
Building gear checks, passive checkruns, and other gatekeeping into the system is inherently solo and so cannot effectively predict how a player will do in elite group content, especially since most TFOs (and the equivalent in other games for that matter) nowadays amount to a set number of people soloing in the same place at the same time rather than any real team play.
First up on this point, there have been various "gates" if you will in games since their inception and this is nothing new. In STO you're not allowed to join TFOs before a certain level, and only on certain difficulties. Many other games lock certain bits of gear, spells, weapons or so on behind reaching a certain level. In STO and many other games, certain things are locked behind reaching a certain reputation level. The ability to do certain types of content is locked behind having certain achievements or completing certain tasks to unlock it. By the logic you're using with this argument, every game that ever requires you to unlock something instead of just handing it to you out of the gate is some kind of elitist gatekeeper. I'm sorry but I call hogwash on that.
If you want a community to thrive and do well, you need a certain level of gatekeeping. I know folks don't want to hear that, but sometimes it's a necessity. As one huge example, you wouldn't want a bunch of "powersnobs" in your fleet/guild would you? A D&D group isn't going to want to play with people who make it a miserable experience every time. I also don't mind helping people who legitimately want to learn and get better, but I'm also not going to keep people around who practically expect me to play the game for them either. Cryptic also punishes exploiters that would take advantage of the playerbase. You also don't want to play with what you call powersnobs, so you too are gatekeeping to a small degree. Wanting to protect a community and heaving HEALTHY boundaries and such is not wrong. For me I simply don't want people in elite content until they can show they're ready for it because otherwise it's a miserable time had by all, which brings me to the next point.
You say that checks like those proposed above such as gear check, dungeon journal and proving grounds are inherently solo and can't predict how a player will do in group content. I firmly disagree for a number of reasons. First being the point of the test isn't to determine how they will perform, it's to determine if they have the basic equipment and skills necessary to function in a group environment, just like a driver's license test is meant to determine if a driver has the necessary skills to be behind the wheel and function in a group environment, aka traffic. The only way you're going to be able to account for every single scenario to ever exist is if you're a god or have some way to see every possible scenario like you're using the time stone.
The last thing you forget here is that groups are composed of individuals, and all it takes sometimes is just one of those individuals to not do their part to collapse the efforts of the entire group. Example, you have an 8 man raid team in SWTOR of 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4 DPS. If one of those tanks isn't doing their job, or one of the healers isn't able to keep up, it can cause the other 7 to fail. This is why the tests have to be on an individual level. You test the two tanks, and if they can clear it they're good. You test the 4 DPS and if they can clear it you're good. You test the two healers and if one of them fails, you have 7 people who are ready to go. Then you look at where the second healer failed and you know what needs to be addressed. Just like a driver's license test, if you fail the test, the instructor will tell you what parts caused you to fail so you can come back and try again. Same concept as here with elite content. Get your ducks in a row for your benefit and that of the group, then join the content and it's a good time had by all.
What would probably help more than those things would be to have a unified ingame voice system that actually works so the more organizationally skilled people can more easily keep things together and on track without having to stop fighting and start typing in the chat (which few apparently look at during TFOs anyway). Discord and Teamspeak just cannot cut it because there are way too many different channels so the chances of the whole random group being on the same channel on the same service are about as dismal as getting a gold phoenix token.
Please know that I don't mean this how it's going to sound over pure text, but this part of your post actually made laugh out loud. I'm sorry but you're so off base with this part it's not even funny. Again I do not mean this how it may sound over pure text, but have you ever tried to put together a raid of any kind and coordinate it? Especially something like a 25 or 40 man raid like you might see in WoW as just one example? I have, and I can assure you from experience that being on some type of voice comms doesn't guarantee success or that people will magically know what they're doing. It can make it easier to coordinate, but that again assumes that your group has some basic idea of what they're doing to start with. Anytime I have been leading a raid, I didn't mind going over the strategy we're going to use for the fight, calling certain things out, or explaining a specific mechanic within reason as that's to be expected. However what I'm not going to do is sit there and give someone an encyclopedia britannica worth of explanation about how to play their class AND the raid itself on top of that. They should have at least a rudimentary knowledge of their build/class etc before ever stepping foot into that raid. By pressing the join random button for such content, or especially asking me to bring them on said raid, they are by necessity saying to me that they have that basic knowledge already. I don't expect it to be perfect every time, but I should be able to clear 9/10 runs with little to no issue.
Your whole argument on this particular paragraph makes two MASSIVE assumptions. First is that it assumes everyone is going to use voice comms, and not everyone has the desire or ability to do so. Nor should they have to be on voice comms every single time just to clear something. Second, although myself and others may have the skills to clear elite content and the ability to teach others to do so, does not mean I have the desire to do so every single time I step into an elite run. I do not mind helping people who legitimately want to learn and improve, but I'm not their dad and I'm not there to hold their hand every single time I want to play elite. At some point they have to be able to stand on their own two feet and need to have learned the stuff, because even if I wanted to play with them, there are going to be times I'm not there. Then what are they going to do? If I'm having to explain everything every single time from the basics of flying a ship up to the actual TFO itself, I'm not going to want to play as that is not fun for me. Understand I am not expecting people to be able to pull infinite DPS, I'm expecting people to be able to pull the MINIMUM level to succeed. If they can do more than the minimum we need to clear the content, that's fantastic. If all they can do is the minimum then we're good. If they can't do the minimum then they have no business in that TFO yet because they're not ready.
I know people don't like to hear it, and to be frank I don't like having to say it, but there are simply some people that just are not ready for certain levels of content. And the problem isn't the game, the problem is the person needs to get better and improve. Eventually they will be ready for that higher tier content, but right now they're not. I want to see things in place so folks can improve and get better then go back and roflstomp. The checks I've outlined above put them on the path to do that, and also gives them grounds and recourse against powersnobs should they try to show themselves.
"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
Anyway... Elites were originally meant for players to self-organize a team who knew the content and were actually capable of completing it successfully. That often might require team organization, possibly a pre-TFO briefing to discuss strategy and whose role is what in the action. So, solutions about putting together a team first, well, you were already having to do that. All of these other "solutions" you're talking about: gear checks, vote kicks, etc., y'all have been talking that for 14 years. Doubtful it will ever happen now. Random TFOs, by their very definition, you have no idea which TFO you're going into and who you're teaming with. Y'all asked for this. You reap what you sow. If you end up in an Elite Ground TFO with Captain Clueless, no sense complaining about it. Them's the breaks. Better luck with the next roll of the dice.
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Anyway... Elites were originally meant for players to self-organize a team who knew the content and were actually capable of completing it successfully. That often might require team organization, possibly a pre-TFO briefing to discuss strategy and whose role is what in the action. So, solutions about putting together a team first, well, you were already having to do that. All of these other "solutions" you're talking about: gear checks, vote kicks, etc., y'all have been talking that for 14 years. Doubtful it will ever happen now. Random TFOs, by their very definition, you have no idea which TFO you're going into and who you're teaming with. Y'all asked for this. You reap what you sow. If you end up in an Elite Ground TFO with Captain Clueless, no sense complaining about it. Them's the breaks. Better luck with the next roll of the dice.
This is the process called "Learning Curve". It might be steep, but within the next two week those who entered elite and found out they failed often (possibly due to their own incompetence) will stop entering those Random Elite TFO and move back to Random on Advanced. There is this caveat though, that those who previously carried in advanced may now thrive in Random Elite and no longer partake in advanced.
We shall see.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Anyway... Elites were originally meant for players to self-organize a team who knew the content and were actually capable of completing it successfully. That often might require team organization, possibly a pre-TFO briefing to discuss strategy and whose role is what in the action. So, solutions about putting together a team first, well, you were already having to do that. All of these other "solutions" you're talking about: gear checks, vote kicks, etc., y'all have been talking that for 14 years. Doubtful it will ever happen now. Random TFOs, by their very definition, you have no idea which TFO you're going into and who you're teaming with. Y'all asked for this. You reap what you sow. If you end up in an Elite Ground TFO with Captain Clueless, no sense complaining about it. Them's the breaks. Better luck with the next roll of the dice.
That's not how I remember it Elites being meant for self organised teams. Until the devs made the really bad design change many of us used to join random groups for Elites and have no idea who we are joining with. Some of the best times I had in STO was doing that before the option was stupidly removed. Going even further back when we called them STF raids I pretty must only ran with random people. Raids another feature that should never have been removed.
Which is one of the frustrating things as this change shows that removal was never needed in the first place.
"Y'all asked for this."
I would point out Random Elites is not what we all asked for. We asked for Elite PUG groups back. Not Random Elites. The idea was we could pick the Elites we wanted to do and other random people could see that and join like it used to work in the past. The idea was the people would be random not the TFO would be random. That way everyone could gear correctly for the TFO in question and be ready for the Elite. Which granted is less of a problem in todays game with all the power creep.
In a way Elite Random is the worst implantation of both worlds. It takes the worst elements of both systems with none of the benefits of either. Its a worse system what the game originally shipped with. But at least we are getting Elites back.
Only thing I don't want is entering into the TFO on my tank ship and seeing 3 other people in tank builds as well. I don't need an hour long half afk low dps run lol
Only thing I don't want is entering into the TFO on my tank ship and seeing 3 other people in tank builds as well. I don't need an hour long half afk low dps run lol
Short term it might happen if people think about it and prepared.
That being said, a tank is not necessarily a low dps build.
Aside from bulk a tank needs to grab the aggression and that means positioning, matching damage output and the tricks of the trait.
Tanking is a LOT more than just soaking up damage, it is positioning yourself where you as a tank are the most threatening.
By learning to be a proficient tank one learns to read the situation in a TFO which can later be translated into a better DPS performance.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Only thing I don't want is entering into the TFO on my tank ship and seeing 3 other people in tank builds as well. I don't need an hour long half afk low dps run lol
Short term it might happen if people think about it and prepared.
That being said, a tank is not necessarily a low dps build.
Aside from bulk a tank needs to grab the aggression and that means positioning, matching damage output and the tricks of the trait.
Tanking is a LOT more than just soaking up damage, it is positioning yourself where you as a tank are the most threatening.
By learning to be a proficient tank one learns to read the situation in a TFO which can later be translated into a better DPS performance.
I don't get the people who think tanks are low DPS. If a tank is low DPS its not a tank as its unable to function as a tank at least in team work. Tanks for teams due to how they work need at a minimum a mid level range of DPS if not higher. If they are doing Low DPS they will not work as a tank.
Only thing I don't want is entering into the TFO on my tank ship and seeing 3 other people in tank builds as well. I don't need an hour long half afk low dps run lol
I can crank 150k on my tank easy, and the only reason I don't go higher is I have no desire to. Being a tank doesn't mean you're can't do damage, in fact you need a little bit of damage to be able to do your job. Otherwise even with the highest threat multiplier possible, you're not going to keep threat and at best will be an unkillable turtle.
Point being complaints like this are why I want to see systems in place to make sure people are actually ready for the stuff they're joining the queue for. I know folks don't like the idea of being told they're not ready for certain content, but this sort of thing is a discussion that needs to be had with the introduction of random elites now. There needs to be better ways to ensure people are ready, and get them ready if they're not.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
@darkbladejk mate forget about the gear checks, skill checks and vote kicks. They're not needed.
See above, the whole "roll of the dice" argument only goes so far. By pressing that random button you are telling the team you have a basic knowledge of what to do, and capable of pulling at least the minimum required to clear the content. If you can't that means you lied and are not ready for the content. As said before it's wholly unreasonable in my book to expect four other people to accept an automatic fail to spare the final guy's feelings at being told he isn't ready yet and needs to improve.
You are entitled to your thoughts and opinions of how the game should go just as I am. You having the opinion they're not needed doesn't automatically confer correctness on you anymore than my saying they are makes me automatically correct. I will continue to advocate for things I believe will improve the game and playerbase just as you are free to do as well. Should a disagreement arise, I will lay my arguments out and let the chips fall where they may. If something I suggest gets implemented and works, then great, if something you suggest gets implemented and works then great. If on the opposite side of the coin something I suggest gets implemented and backfires, then I will eat that hit that for having suggested it.
With that said, I stand by my calls for various systems to prepare people for higher tier content. There are multiple games out there which have had said systems in place for YEARS with little to no issue. If you believe they are flawed and have better ideas then by all means explain why you think they're flawed and suggest ideas of your own. If you simply don't think it will work, then by all means you're entitled to that opinion. We will have to agree to disagree.
I find one thing rather ironic, you accuse me of wanting to play admiral and "order people around", yet turn around and tell me how to play. Like I said, you do you dude, I'm still going to suggest things I believe will make things better. Lastly, as said above, vote kicks are rare events. If you or someone else is constantly seeing them or subject to vote kick removal, there is going to be a reason for that. Seeing near constant kicks is not normal. However I digress.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
the only thing that would cause low DPS players to queue up for elite runs is if it's in the endeavor list. I know more than a few players that lose out because the random and advanced TFO are in the rotation. too many people have experienced the TFO where they are not familiar with the strategy and get the YOU SUCK comments. so they don't play TFOs unless it's for the big grinds
Only thing I don't want is entering into the TFO on my tank ship and seeing 3 other people in tank builds as well. I don't need an hour long half afk low dps run lol
Short term it might happen if people think about it and prepared.
That being said, a tank is not necessarily a low dps build.
Aside from bulk a tank needs to grab the aggression and that means positioning, matching damage output and the tricks of the trait.
Tanking is a LOT more than just soaking up damage, it is positioning yourself where you as a tank are the most threatening.
By learning to be a proficient tank one learns to read the situation in a TFO which can later be translated into a better DPS performance.
I don't get the people who think tanks are low DPS. If a tank is low DPS its not a tank as its unable to function as a tank at least in team work. Tanks for teams due to how they work need at a minimum a mid level range of DPS if not higher. If they are doing Low DPS they will not work as a tank.
4 or 5 people doing 200k dps vs 1 200k and 4 800k is low dps. Stop being so literal people geez....
Only thing I don't want is entering into the TFO on my tank ship and seeing 3 other people in tank builds as well. I don't need an hour long half afk low dps run lol
Short term it might happen if people think about it and prepared.
That being said, a tank is not necessarily a low dps build.
Aside from bulk a tank needs to grab the aggression and that means positioning, matching damage output and the tricks of the trait.
Tanking is a LOT more than just soaking up damage, it is positioning yourself where you as a tank are the most threatening.
By learning to be a proficient tank one learns to read the situation in a TFO which can later be translated into a better DPS performance.
I don't get the people who think tanks are low DPS. If a tank is low DPS its not a tank as its unable to function as a tank at least in team work. Tanks for teams due to how they work need at a minimum a mid level range of DPS if not higher. If they are doing Low DPS they will not work as a tank.
4 or 5 people doing 200k dps vs 1 200k and 4 800k is low dps. Stop being so literal people geez....
I was being literal as for a decently deigned group tank to function at Elite it will need to do decent DPS not low DPS. Which means 5 tanks can breeze though any Elite TFO without problem or delay. So I didn’t understand why they where being used as an example of people worried about being in a group with too many tanks. It doesn’t really impact the TFO length.
The way I see it is 170k is the bare minimum. 200k to 250k is low but enough to get though without problems. Tanks tend to be it a 250k to 600k range.
For Elites player should be aiming for 200k+ DPS each to get though without problem. If the build is below 200k its not really ready for Elite.
So as long as the group DPS is above 1 million any TFO should be a breeze. Once group DPS goes below 700k that’s the point when Elites fail due to DPS being to low.
the only thing that would cause low DPS players to queue up for elite runs is if it's in the endeavor list. I know more than a few players that lose out because the random and advanced TFO are in the rotation. too many people have experienced the TFO where they are not familiar with the strategy and get the YOU SUCK comments. so they don't play TFOs unless it's for the big grinds
First up with this, I highly doubt they would include elites in the endeavor list, and it would be a very bad move if they did.
The rest of this also goes back to what I said before about people signing up for content they're clearly not ready for yet. There have been plenty of times I've gone into something such as Brotherhood of the Sword on elite and gotten pug teams that don't know what they're doing which fails the run for the rest of us. On other instances I have gone into Battle of Korfez and it's failed at the start because we would get one guy in there who was doing far less than the rest of the team. Korfez is a slight exception to the rule as you can't really prepare for it too well as it's elite only. However simultaneously people shouldn't be attempting elites until they've reached a point where they have a basic cohesive build put together and have at least some semblence of what they're doing. Problem is far too many in this game over-estimate their abilities and how good they're doing because of how easy it is to roflstomp stuff on normal difficulty and in most instances even advanced. On normal mode you can sneeze and wipe out entire maps with full mk x blues anymore. Then those same people go into higher content and get their aft shuttlebays kicked and wonder what happened.
Far as people not being ready, this is why I advocate and will continue to advocate for systems to get them ready. A dungeon journal of sorts takes care of them not knowing what foes can do by giving them basic info on the enemies they will encounter in a TFO, such as their abilities, weapons and such. Then they can formulate their own plans. It can also tell them where to get certain types of items. Such as if they wanted something for Tetryon but didn't know where to get it. Then you have the proving grounds which tests their knowledge of basic mmo mechanics and a means to test their build against the types of foes they will come against. Then you have the gear check to make sure people aren't trying enter elites with a mis-match of quest greens and blues ranging from mk ii up to mk xii. Clearly some people don't like to be told they're not ready for certain content or face the possibility they may not be ready for it, but facts are some simply are not ready and their presence is a detriment to the team. I don't agree with beating someone over the head with "you suck" and being a tool to people. Simultaneously I see nothing wrong with saying "hey dude you were at (insert DPS here) which is low for this run. is there anything we can do to help you improve?"
Because whether folks like it or not, if you want to clear elite content, you need a certain level of minimum damage from the team or you will not clear it. You don't need infinite DPS, but if a TFO requires 300k combined from the team or 60k per person, then everyone in there needs to be capable of pulling at least 60k or they're not ready for that TFO and have no business in there.
Problem right now is the game doesn't do anywhere close to enough to help people understand mechanics. Examples being the difference between cat1 vs cat2 damage, what abilities pair well with what, why it's a bad idea to one of every type of weapon on a ship such as 1 cannon, 1 turret, 1 beam array, 1 dual bank and so on. To their credit the devs have tried to explain certain things better, but it's not enough. I want people to be able to see and clear elite content if they want to, BUT not at the expense of 4 other people. Hence what you've described is actually a selling point for why we need better systems to help folks improve. Give them a means to prepare with the dungeon journal, test themselves with proving grounds, and equipment check to make sure they have the stats on paper to contribute and survive, and then they have no excuse for not being at a basic level at the very least.
"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
All this talk of pre-made groups for elite TFOs as far as I'm aware has never happened.
On console we don't have any way to even judge DPS, heck we don't even have access to the Science stats (EPG for example) on the ship stats page (Hey @baddmoonrizin are console players getting access to the inbuilt DPS meter)
If anyone has any suggestions for judging DPS on console would be appreciated.
All this talk of pre-made groups for elite TFOs as far as I'm aware has never happened.
On console we don't have any way to even judge DPS, heck we don't even have access to the Science stats (EPG for example) on the ship stats page (Hey @baddmoonrizin are console players getting access to the inbuilt DPS meter)
If anyone has any suggestions for judging DPS on console would be appreciated.
PC player here but I have a theory.. if you feel "quite comfortable" when playing some of the rowdier advanced content and are familiar with the optionals then you could be ready to bump things up a notch. One possible test might be to play the The Ninth Rule (Kinjer System Patrol) and see if you can take out all of the continuous waves of enemies without respawning. While I don't know how much dps this represents it would be a good test of your bridge officer ability actuation and cooldowns (the ability to do sustained damage).
@darkbladejk It sounds like what you are talking about is something to compensate for the waning of community interaction and support nowadays, which I also see as a problem, but I don't think it is practical to try and retrofit other games' attempts at automated solutions to the problem into STO. STO is not much like those other games for one thing, and without the formal Trinity and raid structure and whatnot I don't see how they would really be that effective
That said, improving the systems they have in place already might help more than overcomplicating things with all those "tests" and whatnot. For example, the long pause for pre-action voiceover (or text boxes) currently seems to average about sixty percent or more fluff and then skimp on the actual advice (or even give hilariously wrong advice) and cleaning them up to be actually useful would help a lot. So would fixing the severe map change dump-to-login bug so that players would actually get into the TFO in time to read or listen to them.
The dungeon journal thing would only help if people actually read them (in other games with the equivalent there is often conflict between people who do read them and those who prefer to "learn on the job" and just do the scenario a few times to get it down (most TFOs and the equivalent only last about fifteen minutes or so (if even that), unlike the hour-long commitment that raids and some longer dungeons have in other games, so they don't consider it an undue waste of time). Also, watching the blunders devs do in streams make it is obvious they are (with a few exceptions) not the ones who should be giving players advice on how to fight.
If there was a community effort to produce and maintain one of those journals it might work if the devs were willing to integrate an interface to it into the game, but even then, there is still a significant number of gamers who would rather trial-and-error it instead of reading about it (it is why so many people go into those things blind instead of reading the wiki pages and walkthroughs that already exist for the same purpose as those journals).
When I'm trying out a new ship, or I want to just make stuff go boom, I usually manually switch the area selector to Space and check everything. This way, I know I'm always going to get a Space mission.
When I'm on a character that I enjoy Ground on and Space, I just hit the Random TFO and wait, but I don't know if anyone else thinks this idea is a good one or not, but I'd like the button press on Random TFO to use the area selector's current choice to limit the selection of the TFOs, because I see a lot of people when a new ship comes out, quit out of the start of a ground mission because they're probably trying to level their ship up fast.
Still, thank you for the 3 levels, as now I don't have to manually pick all the elites.
It is live now.
Due to some awful long working hours i have not yet had the opportunity to queue for the Random Elite TFO.
Who tried the new feature and what are the first impressions?
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Elite are hard, and people should be ready for them. I strongly believe that the Devs should allow us to change the specializations at the beginning of the TFO.
Be spec-ed for space and ending up in ground, and the reverse, it's terrible and does impact survivability and DPS.
A change like this would allow many to enjoy more the random-Elite and decrease the chance of fail.
Comments
Using the WoW example I gave above, there is another part to this I didn't mention which was the vote kick system included in random content. Proving grounds challenges tested the knowledge of the player as far as how well they knew they class and role. If the person attempting the test was paying attention to what their abilities do as they unlocked them, and mechanics they encountered with certain mobs, they would be fine to pass the test. They didn't need the most optimal rotation or have everything memorized to a frame-perfect press, just a rudimentary understanding of "press 1, then 2, then stay out of dumb on the ground". If they knew enough to get the gear to pass the check, and knew enough to get past the proving grounds, they had ZERO excuse to then Leeroy into a TFO and fail it for everyone else or cause issues. Especially since on top of the gear check and the proving grounds they also had the dungeon journal which gave them a rundown of what each basic enemy is in an instance and what they do. It didn't outright say "do x y z to beat him" but it did give you enough info to formulate your own strategy. 5 different groups with 5 different strats could go into the same instance and all 5 clear it.
As part of getting the gear for the check and clearing the proving grounds, they would've been introduced the the dungeon journal as well which told them where to go, and gave them that info. Point being if they were smart enough and competent enough to get through the checks, they had zero excuses for when it came to actual content. To use STO terminology if they constantly attacked the Borg Queen during feedback pulse and blew themselves up multiple times and the run failed, or they couldn't stay alive, they had no excuse because there would've been a note about her ability in the dungeon journal. If someone went into a Undine Assault with the 3 lanes and refused to close an errant rift right next to him because "that's just an optional" and failed the TFO, he had no excuse because that would've been covered in the briefing for the TFO itself and he knew that on elite it wasn't an optional anymore but mandatory. Thus the checks gave you a way of telling who was a team player and who was just trying to Leeroy and troll everyone. If you encountered the second kind, you had a vote kick system to remove them from the group. So the community could police itself more. Vote kicked also granted recourse for trolls in other difficulties as well such as if you had a guy that was just being an absolute tool in chat or purposefully making the TFO more difficult, such as spamming the engineering cover shield to prevent access to an objective, you could boot them.
There's never going to be a 100% "Leroy" proof system. However steps can be taken to reduce it to near zero so that if it does come up, it's a statistical anomaly. Point being if someone had the knowledge to get through the checks, they had the knowledge to not simply Leroy in. If they did then you knew they were most likely a troll.
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The distinction is to allow people to learn with a premade group and discourage trolls.
The 4 hour ban would have to be account wide though to prevent switching characters and rinse and repeat.
For instance, higher level ESO random dungeon runs have a high failure rate, not because they are so difficult as such but rather because as the dungeon level increases the bosses (and often the minibosses) have more and more annoying mechanics the toxic powersnobs in the group (and inevitably it seems you always get at least one) don't want to deal with (or they are speedrunners who don't want the run to take more than the absolute minimum of time).
That means that if the group does not vaporize the first miniboss they run into before it can pop any mechanics tricks you can expect the kick vote nonsense to pop up. And, if the party commits the sin of dismissing the vote those powersnobs get all torqued out of shape and start flaming, sometimes even actively troll the party, and eventually rage-quit the dungeon, which leaves the party short until someone shows up to replace them (assuming they don't immediately leave when they see they are in the middle of a run since most people know how that kind of run usually turns out).
If that happens they usually end up running the rest of the dungeon shorthanded, and often either the remaining people cannot generate enough DPS, defense/healing, or both to kill the main boss with the few left and give up, or if the ones left are stubborn enough, spend an hour or so trying and sometimes eventually make it through (I did that with as few as just two of us left and it sometimes worked, though that does not excuse the idiocy that led to having to do it).
Defiance had it even worse, there was an exploit that essentially killed their version of dungeons where the team leader would kick everyone off the team just before encountering the main boss and let their buddies in to reap the rewards of that last encounter and cheat the original team out of it.
In both of those games it got to be way more annoying than fun doing dungeon runs so I stopped doing them altogether in Defiance (no loss there since they had open world stuff that was similar to dungeon runs without having to deal with dysfunctional parties), and only do dungeons in ESO when I am running low on transmute crystals, or having to run them is a necessary evil to get event tickets (it's a shame though, the lower level ones are usually fun before the egomaniacal BS dominates dungeon runs).
In STO I do something similar, I do the event TFOs or que up for regular TFOs but avoid the RTFOs whenever possible because of the dysfunctional-group BS that tends to happen in them (even if far less often than the first two games I mentioned).
Building gear checks, passive checkruns, and other gatekeeping into the system is inherently solo and so cannot effectively predict how a player will do in elite group content, especially since most TFOs (and the equivalent in other games for that matter) nowadays amount to a set number of people soloing in the same place at the same time rather than any real team play.
What would probably help more than those things would be to have a unified ingame voice system that actually works so the more organizationally skilled people can more easily keep things together and on track without having to stop fighting and start typing in the chat (which few apparently look at during TFOs anyway). Discord and Teamspeak just cannot cut it because there are way too many different channels so the chances of the whole random group being on the same channel on the same service are about as dismal as getting a gold phoenix token.
The Secret World and one or two other games had a very straightforward system: "elite" type content is locked until you get an accolade or award. You get that accolade or award by successfully completing a single-player challenge. The challenge consists of some of the elite mechanics you need to be aware of, and a DPS check. Complete it with any build/gear you like and are capable of, so no "gear check/gear rating" problems. (Secret World even had different versions for DPS, Tank, Healer builds)
STO has all the mechanics for this already. It could even do a separate challenge unlock for Space and Ground elites, which would be a nice customization feature.
Catering to the widest audience is needed for continued financial success, and would take barely more effort than mutating an existing TFO and some accolade checks.
Whether Cryptic is willing to put in even that level of effort on the issue is, of course, a different matter.
The examples you gave from ESO and Defiance tell me straight away those systems are poorly designed. With the WoW and SWTOR type systems, what you described is not possible. First, if you boot someone from group, you can't simply invite your friend to fill the slot. You have to press the Find Replacement button and roll the dice, play without a full team, or simply disband the group. Those are your options. Also people can't simply spam kick requests either. If you call a vote kick there is 3-4 minute cooldown before you can call another vote to kick regardless of whether it's successful or not. With the WoW system especially, if you are a frequent user of the kick system and constantly calling votes to kick, your ability to use the system diminishes. So instead of 3-4 minute timer to call another vote, it may increase to 6-7 minutes up to a maximum of around 30 minutes I believe it was. The only way to reduce that timer is to complete runs without calling a vote kick. These systems have been in place for over 10 years in both games and have been proven to work.
Next, there are always going to be elitists in any game you play, or "powersnobs" as you called them. There will always be those few people who think they're better than everyone else because they can pull 0.0000000000000001% more than someone else. Anytime I run into these guys and they try to run their mouths I will either ignore them, vote them out of the group, or hit them with a "congratulations, you're doing more than someone in a video game. how sad is your life that you're measuring accomplishments by what you do in a video game." People like this and trolls are two of the very reasons vote to kick systems are a thing in the first place. As it sits right now if someone wanted to troll a group by putting up an engineering cover shield to prevent mission progression, there is nothing you can do about it. Right now if you run into one of those elitists or trolls you have no recourse. GMs aren't going to get involved for a number of reasons. First is that 99% of the time there will be no evidence and it's simply a player squabble of "he said she said" with no actionable offenses. Even if they wanted to step in, by the time they could the run would already be over before they could get there. Unless something absolutely egregious happened, GMs do not have the time to go policing every bad interaction in the group finders. Giving players a vote kick system allows them to police their own groups. If you get a troll then boot them, if you get an elitist then boot them, some guy being an unreasonable tool then boot them. It gives you instant recourse that you otherwise did not have.
One of the big things people miss with debates like this is they assume that simply because a vote kick exists it means it's going to get used constantly and people will never be able to join random content ever again, which is simply untrue. Can a vote kick system be abused, certainly as there's no such thing as an abuse proof system. I can tell some horror stories of how I saw it be abused against myself or others who did no wrong. However I can tell far far more success stories where it did what it was meant to. By a factor of about 20:1 in favor of success. About 85% of the vote kicks that come up are due to 2 reasons, someone disconnected and isn't coming back and they're preventing group progress, or they've went AFK and haven't come back after a reasonable amount of time thus preventing progress. In both of those cases the groups can kick the disconnect or AFK and get a new member to carry on. The remaining 15% are actual instances of needing to kick someone for being a troll, an elitist, or just a general tool. In the past 60 days that I have played SWTOR as just one example, I've had to call a vote kick 3 times. 2 were disconnects because they didn't like the instance it gave us, and the 3rd was for some guy whining because we used a different strategy than he usually does and tried to hold up the group. If you want to break it down and assume the patterns stay true for the entire year, that's roughly 1 kick for being a troll/tool/elitist every 60 days for a total of 6 kicks per year, and 12 kicks per year for folks who essentially abandoned the group. So roughly 0.05 kicks per day.
If someone is constantly being kicked out of group content, there is a reason for it. Either they're a troll trying to mess with their group, an elitist trying to do powersnob things as you called it, or they're just an unpleasant tool. Eventually once that person is removed enough times one of a few things is going to happen, either they're going to straighten up and correct the issue causing them to get kicked so much, or they're going to quit the game and give up. Either way the playerbase is improved as a result.
First up on this point, there have been various "gates" if you will in games since their inception and this is nothing new. In STO you're not allowed to join TFOs before a certain level, and only on certain difficulties. Many other games lock certain bits of gear, spells, weapons or so on behind reaching a certain level. In STO and many other games, certain things are locked behind reaching a certain reputation level. The ability to do certain types of content is locked behind having certain achievements or completing certain tasks to unlock it. By the logic you're using with this argument, every game that ever requires you to unlock something instead of just handing it to you out of the gate is some kind of elitist gatekeeper. I'm sorry but I call hogwash on that.
If you want a community to thrive and do well, you need a certain level of gatekeeping. I know folks don't want to hear that, but sometimes it's a necessity. As one huge example, you wouldn't want a bunch of "powersnobs" in your fleet/guild would you? A D&D group isn't going to want to play with people who make it a miserable experience every time. I also don't mind helping people who legitimately want to learn and get better, but I'm also not going to keep people around who practically expect me to play the game for them either. Cryptic also punishes exploiters that would take advantage of the playerbase. You also don't want to play with what you call powersnobs, so you too are gatekeeping to a small degree. Wanting to protect a community and heaving HEALTHY boundaries and such is not wrong. For me I simply don't want people in elite content until they can show they're ready for it because otherwise it's a miserable time had by all, which brings me to the next point.
You say that checks like those proposed above such as gear check, dungeon journal and proving grounds are inherently solo and can't predict how a player will do in group content. I firmly disagree for a number of reasons. First being the point of the test isn't to determine how they will perform, it's to determine if they have the basic equipment and skills necessary to function in a group environment, just like a driver's license test is meant to determine if a driver has the necessary skills to be behind the wheel and function in a group environment, aka traffic. The only way you're going to be able to account for every single scenario to ever exist is if you're a god or have some way to see every possible scenario like you're using the time stone.
The last thing you forget here is that groups are composed of individuals, and all it takes sometimes is just one of those individuals to not do their part to collapse the efforts of the entire group. Example, you have an 8 man raid team in SWTOR of 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4 DPS. If one of those tanks isn't doing their job, or one of the healers isn't able to keep up, it can cause the other 7 to fail. This is why the tests have to be on an individual level. You test the two tanks, and if they can clear it they're good. You test the 4 DPS and if they can clear it you're good. You test the two healers and if one of them fails, you have 7 people who are ready to go. Then you look at where the second healer failed and you know what needs to be addressed. Just like a driver's license test, if you fail the test, the instructor will tell you what parts caused you to fail so you can come back and try again. Same concept as here with elite content. Get your ducks in a row for your benefit and that of the group, then join the content and it's a good time had by all.
Please know that I don't mean this how it's going to sound over pure text, but this part of your post actually made laugh out loud. I'm sorry but you're so off base with this part it's not even funny. Again I do not mean this how it may sound over pure text, but have you ever tried to put together a raid of any kind and coordinate it? Especially something like a 25 or 40 man raid like you might see in WoW as just one example? I have, and I can assure you from experience that being on some type of voice comms doesn't guarantee success or that people will magically know what they're doing. It can make it easier to coordinate, but that again assumes that your group has some basic idea of what they're doing to start with. Anytime I have been leading a raid, I didn't mind going over the strategy we're going to use for the fight, calling certain things out, or explaining a specific mechanic within reason as that's to be expected. However what I'm not going to do is sit there and give someone an encyclopedia britannica worth of explanation about how to play their class AND the raid itself on top of that. They should have at least a rudimentary knowledge of their build/class etc before ever stepping foot into that raid. By pressing the join random button for such content, or especially asking me to bring them on said raid, they are by necessity saying to me that they have that basic knowledge already. I don't expect it to be perfect every time, but I should be able to clear 9/10 runs with little to no issue.
Your whole argument on this particular paragraph makes two MASSIVE assumptions. First is that it assumes everyone is going to use voice comms, and not everyone has the desire or ability to do so. Nor should they have to be on voice comms every single time just to clear something. Second, although myself and others may have the skills to clear elite content and the ability to teach others to do so, does not mean I have the desire to do so every single time I step into an elite run. I do not mind helping people who legitimately want to learn and improve, but I'm not their dad and I'm not there to hold their hand every single time I want to play elite. At some point they have to be able to stand on their own two feet and need to have learned the stuff, because even if I wanted to play with them, there are going to be times I'm not there. Then what are they going to do? If I'm having to explain everything every single time from the basics of flying a ship up to the actual TFO itself, I'm not going to want to play as that is not fun for me. Understand I am not expecting people to be able to pull infinite DPS, I'm expecting people to be able to pull the MINIMUM level to succeed. If they can do more than the minimum we need to clear the content, that's fantastic. If all they can do is the minimum then we're good. If they can't do the minimum then they have no business in that TFO yet because they're not ready.
I know people don't like to hear it, and to be frank I don't like having to say it, but there are simply some people that just are not ready for certain levels of content. And the problem isn't the game, the problem is the person needs to get better and improve. Eventually they will be ready for that higher tier content, but right now they're not. I want to see things in place so folks can improve and get better then go back and roflstomp. The checks I've outlined above put them on the path to do that, and also gives them grounds and recourse against powersnobs should they try to show themselves.
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Anyway... Elites were originally meant for players to self-organize a team who knew the content and were actually capable of completing it successfully. That often might require team organization, possibly a pre-TFO briefing to discuss strategy and whose role is what in the action. So, solutions about putting together a team first, well, you were already having to do that. All of these other "solutions" you're talking about: gear checks, vote kicks, etc., y'all have been talking that for 14 years. Doubtful it will ever happen now. Random TFOs, by their very definition, you have no idea which TFO you're going into and who you're teaming with. Y'all asked for this. You reap what you sow. If you end up in an Elite Ground TFO with Captain Clueless, no sense complaining about it. Them's the breaks. Better luck with the next roll of the dice.
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This is the process called "Learning Curve". It might be steep, but within the next two week those who entered elite and found out they failed often (possibly due to their own incompetence) will stop entering those Random Elite TFO and move back to Random on Advanced. There is this caveat though, that those who previously carried in advanced may now thrive in Random Elite and no longer partake in advanced.
We shall see.
Which is one of the frustrating things as this change shows that removal was never needed in the first place.
"Y'all asked for this."
I would point out Random Elites is not what we all asked for. We asked for Elite PUG groups back. Not Random Elites. The idea was we could pick the Elites we wanted to do and other random people could see that and join like it used to work in the past. The idea was the people would be random not the TFO would be random. That way everyone could gear correctly for the TFO in question and be ready for the Elite. Which granted is less of a problem in todays game with all the power creep.
In a way Elite Random is the worst implantation of both worlds. It takes the worst elements of both systems with none of the benefits of either. Its a worse system what the game originally shipped with. But at least we are getting Elites back.
Short term it might happen if people think about it and prepared.
That being said, a tank is not necessarily a low dps build.
Aside from bulk a tank needs to grab the aggression and that means positioning, matching damage output and the tricks of the trait.
Tanking is a LOT more than just soaking up damage, it is positioning yourself where you as a tank are the most threatening.
By learning to be a proficient tank one learns to read the situation in a TFO which can later be translated into a better DPS performance.
I can crank 150k on my tank easy, and the only reason I don't go higher is I have no desire to. Being a tank doesn't mean you're can't do damage, in fact you need a little bit of damage to be able to do your job. Otherwise even with the highest threat multiplier possible, you're not going to keep threat and at best will be an unkillable turtle.
Point being complaints like this are why I want to see systems in place to make sure people are actually ready for the stuff they're joining the queue for. I know folks don't like the idea of being told they're not ready for certain content, but this sort of thing is a discussion that needs to be had with the introduction of random elites now. There needs to be better ways to ensure people are ready, and get them ready if they're not.
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See above, the whole "roll of the dice" argument only goes so far. By pressing that random button you are telling the team you have a basic knowledge of what to do, and capable of pulling at least the minimum required to clear the content. If you can't that means you lied and are not ready for the content. As said before it's wholly unreasonable in my book to expect four other people to accept an automatic fail to spare the final guy's feelings at being told he isn't ready yet and needs to improve.
You are entitled to your thoughts and opinions of how the game should go just as I am. You having the opinion they're not needed doesn't automatically confer correctness on you anymore than my saying they are makes me automatically correct. I will continue to advocate for things I believe will improve the game and playerbase just as you are free to do as well. Should a disagreement arise, I will lay my arguments out and let the chips fall where they may. If something I suggest gets implemented and works, then great, if something you suggest gets implemented and works then great. If on the opposite side of the coin something I suggest gets implemented and backfires, then I will eat that hit that for having suggested it.
With that said, I stand by my calls for various systems to prepare people for higher tier content. There are multiple games out there which have had said systems in place for YEARS with little to no issue. If you believe they are flawed and have better ideas then by all means explain why you think they're flawed and suggest ideas of your own. If you simply don't think it will work, then by all means you're entitled to that opinion. We will have to agree to disagree.
I find one thing rather ironic, you accuse me of wanting to play admiral and "order people around", yet turn around and tell me how to play. Like I said, you do you dude, I'm still going to suggest things I believe will make things better. Lastly, as said above, vote kicks are rare events. If you or someone else is constantly seeing them or subject to vote kick removal, there is going to be a reason for that. Seeing near constant kicks is not normal. However I digress.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
4 or 5 people doing 200k dps vs 1 200k and 4 800k is low dps. Stop being so literal people geez....
The way I see it is 170k is the bare minimum. 200k to 250k is low but enough to get though without problems. Tanks tend to be it a 250k to 600k range.
For Elites player should be aiming for 200k+ DPS each to get though without problem. If the build is below 200k its not really ready for Elite.
So as long as the group DPS is above 1 million any TFO should be a breeze. Once group DPS goes below 700k that’s the point when Elites fail due to DPS being to low.
First up with this, I highly doubt they would include elites in the endeavor list, and it would be a very bad move if they did.
The rest of this also goes back to what I said before about people signing up for content they're clearly not ready for yet. There have been plenty of times I've gone into something such as Brotherhood of the Sword on elite and gotten pug teams that don't know what they're doing which fails the run for the rest of us. On other instances I have gone into Battle of Korfez and it's failed at the start because we would get one guy in there who was doing far less than the rest of the team. Korfez is a slight exception to the rule as you can't really prepare for it too well as it's elite only. However simultaneously people shouldn't be attempting elites until they've reached a point where they have a basic cohesive build put together and have at least some semblence of what they're doing. Problem is far too many in this game over-estimate their abilities and how good they're doing because of how easy it is to roflstomp stuff on normal difficulty and in most instances even advanced. On normal mode you can sneeze and wipe out entire maps with full mk x blues anymore. Then those same people go into higher content and get their aft shuttlebays kicked and wonder what happened.
Far as people not being ready, this is why I advocate and will continue to advocate for systems to get them ready. A dungeon journal of sorts takes care of them not knowing what foes can do by giving them basic info on the enemies they will encounter in a TFO, such as their abilities, weapons and such. Then they can formulate their own plans. It can also tell them where to get certain types of items. Such as if they wanted something for Tetryon but didn't know where to get it. Then you have the proving grounds which tests their knowledge of basic mmo mechanics and a means to test their build against the types of foes they will come against. Then you have the gear check to make sure people aren't trying enter elites with a mis-match of quest greens and blues ranging from mk ii up to mk xii. Clearly some people don't like to be told they're not ready for certain content or face the possibility they may not be ready for it, but facts are some simply are not ready and their presence is a detriment to the team. I don't agree with beating someone over the head with "you suck" and being a tool to people. Simultaneously I see nothing wrong with saying "hey dude you were at (insert DPS here) which is low for this run. is there anything we can do to help you improve?"
Because whether folks like it or not, if you want to clear elite content, you need a certain level of minimum damage from the team or you will not clear it. You don't need infinite DPS, but if a TFO requires 300k combined from the team or 60k per person, then everyone in there needs to be capable of pulling at least 60k or they're not ready for that TFO and have no business in there.
Problem right now is the game doesn't do anywhere close to enough to help people understand mechanics. Examples being the difference between cat1 vs cat2 damage, what abilities pair well with what, why it's a bad idea to one of every type of weapon on a ship such as 1 cannon, 1 turret, 1 beam array, 1 dual bank and so on. To their credit the devs have tried to explain certain things better, but it's not enough. I want people to be able to see and clear elite content if they want to, BUT not at the expense of 4 other people. Hence what you've described is actually a selling point for why we need better systems to help folks improve. Give them a means to prepare with the dungeon journal, test themselves with proving grounds, and equipment check to make sure they have the stats on paper to contribute and survive, and then they have no excuse for not being at a basic level at the very least.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
All this talk of pre-made groups for elite TFOs as far as I'm aware has never happened.
On console we don't have any way to even judge DPS, heck we don't even have access to the Science stats (EPG for example) on the ship stats page (Hey @baddmoonrizin are console players getting access to the inbuilt DPS meter)
If anyone has any suggestions for judging DPS on console would be appreciated.
You're more than ready for advanced queues. Make the switch and don't look back
PC player here but I have a theory.. if you feel "quite comfortable" when playing some of the rowdier advanced content and are familiar with the optionals then you could be ready to bump things up a notch. One possible test might be to play the The Ninth Rule (Kinjer System Patrol) and see if you can take out all of the continuous waves of enemies without respawning. While I don't know how much dps this represents it would be a good test of your bridge officer ability actuation and cooldowns (the ability to do sustained damage).
That said, improving the systems they have in place already might help more than overcomplicating things with all those "tests" and whatnot. For example, the long pause for pre-action voiceover (or text boxes) currently seems to average about sixty percent or more fluff and then skimp on the actual advice (or even give hilariously wrong advice) and cleaning them up to be actually useful would help a lot. So would fixing the severe map change dump-to-login bug so that players would actually get into the TFO in time to read or listen to them.
The dungeon journal thing would only help if people actually read them (in other games with the equivalent there is often conflict between people who do read them and those who prefer to "learn on the job" and just do the scenario a few times to get it down (most TFOs and the equivalent only last about fifteen minutes or so (if even that), unlike the hour-long commitment that raids and some longer dungeons have in other games, so they don't consider it an undue waste of time). Also, watching the blunders devs do in streams make it is obvious they are (with a few exceptions) not the ones who should be giving players advice on how to fight.
If there was a community effort to produce and maintain one of those journals it might work if the devs were willing to integrate an interface to it into the game, but even then, there is still a significant number of gamers who would rather trial-and-error it instead of reading about it (it is why so many people go into those things blind instead of reading the wiki pages and walkthroughs that already exist for the same purpose as those journals).
When I'm on a character that I enjoy Ground on and Space, I just hit the Random TFO and wait, but I don't know if anyone else thinks this idea is a good one or not, but I'd like the button press on Random TFO to use the area selector's current choice to limit the selection of the TFOs, because I see a lot of people when a new ship comes out, quit out of the start of a ground mission because they're probably trying to level their ship up fast.
Still, thank you for the 3 levels, as now I don't have to manually pick all the elites.
Due to some awful long working hours i have not yet had the opportunity to queue for the Random Elite TFO.
Who tried the new feature and what are the first impressions?
Be spec-ed for space and ending up in ground, and the reverse, it's terrible and does impact survivability and DPS.
A change like this would allow many to enjoy more the random-Elite and decrease the chance of fail.