TFOs are now too easy

drycraeft · January 13

I don't know what's happened but the TFOs are now way easy now like it's not even a challenge anymore, why were they made easier? everyone is taking stuff down with too much ease now i think it was at the right difficulty before.

More of the TFOs level has been changed to easy too, i think ramp the difficulty back up again guys and i like it when you may make it even harder during random TFOs and i've only seen that happen once or twice now. Keep more enemies in the TFOs to make sure it stays a challange.

carasucia83 · March 24

This has as much to do with it being possible to do over a 1000k DPS (that's a million for those who are bad at numbers) on certain maps than anything else. It might only be a few people who can do this much, but the average damage output among most players who know what they're doing is still bonkers high compared to what any of the content is/was designed to withstand, and 250k DPS is really not that unusual anymore even among players who aren't particularly bothered about their numbers. It's kind of a yes and no, but generally speaking the Constable specialization is kind of proof of how out of touch with their own game the devs are. Four seconds is an eternity in STO, but if any devs had ever seriously played this game beyond pretending to be 'just another one of the guys' for PR and marketing purposes, they'd know that...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about DPS as a thing, and of course doing a crazy amounts of damage is a perfectly legitimate way to have your fun, but for me, the problem STO has had for a long time in this regard is that there just doesn't seem to be any kind of real and punitive ship durability penalty for doing such insane amounts of damage - and as I said before, for how the content has been designed and balanced, anything over 100k DPS counts as 'insane'.

Of course there are always people who play any game and are just insanely good at it, but I'm talking generally about your average player. A massive part of the issue specifically with the group content in STO (PvP is whole other discussion) is that there are so many consoles, traits, devices, and abilities part of whose function is to heal you, or increase your debuff resistance, or reduce your cooldowns, or whatever, based on the amount of damage you just did, to the point where there's sort of no point running a build that isn't damage focused because a damaged foucsed build is able to fulfil almost all of the functions of almost all other build types. In turn, this means that 99/100 TFOs are 4 dps builds + whatever you're running, and without any real need to use heals or remove debuffs on anybody else, the result is easy content. I could be wrong as I've been away for a while, but I'm yet to see a console or trait that makes your damage go up massively because you hit Engi team. I don't want this to be a thing anyway because it would totally misunderstand the root of the problem, but I hope the point is made.

The holy RPG trinity is not the answer here, as one of the great things about STO is the freedom to build your ship however you want and to be able to just go fly it without having to wait around for a player running a specific build type in order to do stuff. But if you do build a tank, or a healer. or a debuffer, you are in most cases self-imposing a disadvantage in terms of your damage output - whether it's fun or not is for another discussion. There are more and less extreme cases with different non-damage focused build types, but because of how the game is, and has been for the best part of a decade, you self-impose a disadvantage on your overall usefulness to the group to varying degrees. DPS always being a Glass Cannon isn't the answer here either, but there's a real need (or not? If we're all content to just carry on grabbing the next 'increases my dps' trait or console) to do things to make everything in the game 'useful' that I'm not sure whoever the devs of the day are will even want to. This got out of hand years ago, and the game is obviously still making money, so if we all hold our breath waiting for change, I doubt any of us will survive.

I play, I have fun. But I also see how the game could be sooooooo much better than the Turkey Shoot we currently have without changing too much.

inferiority · March 24

drycraeft#5841 wrote: »

I don't know what's happened but the TFOs are now way easy now like it's not even a challenge anymore, why were they made easier?

I'm not sure it's the TFO's becoming easier, but that our ships & characters are becoming that little bit more powerful with each new bit of equipment made available.

e.g. Equip that new Pahvo set on a Shuttle and you'll be getting a much bigger damage boost than any other energy-type.

whiteknight1x · March 26

I assume you're talking about doing these on Elite difficulty settings. It does depend if you're running with an organized group versus a pug group. With an organized group yes these are way too freaking easy. A pug group depends on the TFO. Still yes they are easier, some have been dumbed down while others have because of the DPS creep in this game.

With players doing over 300K+ DPS, it's easy. The players doing over a million DPS is not really a true reputation since they're doing this in Nanny runs. They need someone else to take all the Heat since they have glass Jaws. This even becomes more annoying when we're being forced to do these events on normal, since the general player base can't complete these event TFOs on normal.

Another problem is that the rewards for completing these tasks on Elite difficulty aren't exciting. Loot drops should be based on your crit ability. The more you crit the bed the better the drops should be. We should be seeing a lot more very rare drops. I'm tired of going into a random TFO outperforming everybody else yet I'm not getting an epic reward. I don't like having the same chance of winning an epic reward as someone else who cannot perform anywhere near the level I am doing. I don't like participation trophies.

carasucia83 · March 26

whiteknight1x wrote: »

The players doing over a million DPS is not really a true reputation since they're doing this in Nanny runs. They need someone else to take all the Heat since they have glass Jaws.

Maybe so, but the fact that this is even possible is my main gripe with the state of the game.

Before anyone gets into it with this comment, I do not for a moment blame the players or have any hate towards players who like to melt things, but DPS/Damage seems to have no upper limits, imposed or othwerwise, whereas things that have other functions beyond the damage that they also do, like Tyken's rift even with 800+ in DrainX now struggle to drop shields or cut engine power (PvE) to even BoP sized enemies. Charged Particle Burst is pretty much instant no shields to everything at that level of DrainX. There is very little discernable difference between a 700+ and a 400 CrtlX GW due to the arbitrary range limit imposed on them. The difference can be immense if we're using those abilities primarily for their damage qualities with high EPG. I guess I just hate/resent being forced into building and speccing more and more for damage by the direction the game has been steadily and continuously heading for more than 10 years.

You could of course argue, and you'd be right, that having a Rift that stops things dead and drops all power levels to zero to all things within it's radius, or a GW that can grab literally everything on the map is OP too and makes things just as easy, but at least it's a variation on the theme.

And let's not even get started on the absolute and total lack of a need for anyone to be a dedicated healer (PvE). Ground stuff isn't much different.

These are some of the reasons I took a 6 year break from the game. It was bad then, it's worse now.

drycraeft · March 27

It seems better again now

but for a few months i could be shooting at them with a weapon that wasn't upgraded and poof. Weapons with rare stats with very high critical damage really destroy things i spent an arm and a leg on a gun and a few beams to get it lol but i barely had to hit things for those few months.

I really think the damage on a lot of things do need nerfing though, like that big deep red portal thing that shoots out plasma people use in space tfos it destroys things way too fast even when things are randomly made more difficult. Really needs balancing out again. Anything new we get from events don't make them so OP so even if the DPSers will still destroy things more than the rest of us they're still provided with a bit of a challenge, it's just no fun where there isn't one.

There isn't really any need for dedicated healers when science chars triple as healers, scientist, and then tactical because of the ground skills. A lot of people use nanite health monitor which i do too because it keeps the team alive for a whole lot longer. Then engineers have health fabricators then we've just got the borg vinculum a few months back so anyone can do the healing.

TFOs are now too easy

Comments