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Are the new difficulty moving this game from a one player game to a team effort?
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Having been involved on the tribble servers I complained about the new difficulty levels before they were released. The hardest difficulty level is the equivalant of Cryptic masochism so I have no intention of playing this. The advanced level I thought I would give this a go. In the single game this is making up for lack of content at Rear Admiral 5 because on a single player I keep getting killed as the AI is NOT on an equal par any more. I am sorry but as I said before the damage should be affecting the AI in the same way as the human player and this is not happening. As a result the damage incurred by the human player is just a hindrance and continually makes the human player weaker in battle.
At the moment I am not enjoying this game whereas I was before. Oh and before some clever person suggests moving back down to normal level. Why should I when Cryptic have made more gameplay and items available on the harder levels?
I was one that suggested damage but I suggested it in the spirit of having to limp to a starbase when you had been in battle. Not being reincarnated every 3 minutes and having to go through eight starships just to complete part 2 of 3. You should have one starship which lasts a lot longer and then if you are defeated you release escape shuttles which take you back to the nearest starbase.
Oh and whilst I'm on the subject of 2 of 3 why does missions have to be like the borg. 1 of 3, 2 of 3, 1 of 6. Collect this one and now collect another 3. It is like a maths textbook. Can we please not have a random generator which does not tell you how many pieces you have to collect/starships you have to kill. Use the scanner to find your enemy and or work out distortions or perhaps not find them and let them find you. The artifacts for example are shown on the map as per what your scanner sees. The map should show the main gist of the mission and the extras such as the collectibles for Memory Alpha. It should not lead you miles away to gain a collectible when you do not necessarily want to gain this.
Enough said at the moment - back to screaming, shouting and swearing at this game in trying to finish this mission! I am not moving down to normal level, not when I have now played this game for so long. Cryptic sort this please and listen more closely to the fans/customers of the game.
At the moment I am not enjoying this game whereas I was before. Oh and before some clever person suggests moving back down to normal level. Why should I when Cryptic have made more gameplay and items available on the harder levels?
I was one that suggested damage but I suggested it in the spirit of having to limp to a starbase when you had been in battle. Not being reincarnated every 3 minutes and having to go through eight starships just to complete part 2 of 3. You should have one starship which lasts a lot longer and then if you are defeated you release escape shuttles which take you back to the nearest starbase.
Oh and whilst I'm on the subject of 2 of 3 why does missions have to be like the borg. 1 of 3, 2 of 3, 1 of 6. Collect this one and now collect another 3. It is like a maths textbook. Can we please not have a random generator which does not tell you how many pieces you have to collect/starships you have to kill. Use the scanner to find your enemy and or work out distortions or perhaps not find them and let them find you. The artifacts for example are shown on the map as per what your scanner sees. The map should show the main gist of the mission and the extras such as the collectibles for Memory Alpha. It should not lead you miles away to gain a collectible when you do not necessarily want to gain this.
Enough said at the moment - back to screaming, shouting and swearing at this game in trying to finish this mission! I am not moving down to normal level, not when I have now played this game for so long. Cryptic sort this please and listen more closely to the fans/customers of the game.
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bottom line; as cocoajin said, it may be hard if you suck
Well I will reply to you because at least you have a brain unlike Cocoajin. I have replied in private to this individual although I do notice that you use his reply within your own mmmmm.
I am playing as a Rear Admiral 5 and have a bit of experience of the game now as others do. I also have experience of other games and have finished many. My point here is that I don't think the balance is correct and that the injury/damage system has just made it worse!
Lastly, waving your RA5 skill level means very little. It doesnt mean the recipant of the RA5 level is necessarily skilled themselves...and missions that scale to your level pretty much render many benefits of your high level moot...you might as well be a noob right out of the Academy.
So, I stand by the statement...Maybe, but probably only if you suck. Once again, thats not intended to apply to you necesarily, but please feel free to put the shoe on if it fits.
Well thank you cocoa-jin for explaining yourself in a better light. I do agree with you regards the RA5 level now that you have explained yourself more. I hadn't thought about the auto-levelling that the game does. But as you know it does make a difference if you have completed all the missions as compared to a newbie simply because you understand more about the game.
Well with regards to the shoe I'd say no, simply because I came across players tonight that do suck and kept getting themselves killed because of injuries they had. They ended up leaving the mission rather than completing it.
Just a higher chance of finding it.
I read somewhere on the forums by a dev that purples have a 0.01% chance of dropping, or some such tiny fraction.
The added difficulty levels only add an extra 0.01% to the multiplier.
So on advanced you have a 0.02% and elite has a 0.03% chance to drop the good stuff.
I'd find the link, but I can't remember what area of the forum it's in. And I can't remember the name of the person that posted this info. Which doesn't really help me state my case, but I do remember seeing it posted.
I agree with you denare however it is one of those things that sometimes you want to chance finding better loot with a 0.02% or 0.03% chance. Look how many people round the world put on the various lotteries that are in existence for really the same reason. The biggest problem for me right now is that I agree with the bringing in of the injury/damage system but I think in its present form it is very ill-thought through. It was a great opportunity to bring in the sickbay and Doctor options for injuries to the players and for the damage to ships the game could have made more of the engineer.
I agree, I was routinely curbstomping elite level enemies on my engineer.
Elite Ground Combat... There is a difference between hard and impossible. Create a new toon and go to the Delta Volanis Cluster when given the exploration quests. Do some ground missions against the Klingons. Setup your away team and snipe a Klingon at max combat range. If there is no cover for you to hide behind, within 2 to 3 seconds you are dead. No amount of player skill or equipment load out is going to save you. Even if there is cover, you still may be dead within 10 seconds. It depends on whether or not the Klingons decide to switch targets and attack the away team you positioned between you and them, or the Klingons run around the cover and through the away team and continue to exclusively attack you.
The only way to win elite ground is to be sure and last long enough to kill at least one Klingon per attempt.
All of the above comments are solely directed at starting out with a new toon in the early game. Whether or not the comments can be applied to elite ground as a whole, I cannot say as I have not tested elite ground other than above. Eventually I will though. My new toon will do nothing but elite as I level up, even as frustrating as it is (ground wise... I have yet to die in space combat).
Unfortunately, the new difficulty system will not do much to change team size, I think. Missions balance according to number of players anway, so if it was too tough before, it probably still be then. Still, it might be more fun since there's more variety to be had.
Except that individual missions will take a lot longer to complete then. I guess that's my only real issue overall with the system, barring bugs. I like the new pace of combat, particularly in space. But a single exploration "sub"mission still requires taking down 6 or so enemy groups. It just takes too long.
First off, space combat is just as easy on advance than on normal.
As noted by others before in this thread, Delta Volanis AND Arucanis Arm ground combat is definately unbalanced. The last mission I did in the Arm, I must have died at least once for each ennemy I killed. It seems that the ennemies do criticals 7 shots out of 10 with damage above 100. Needless to say that in mere seconds, in those conditions, you and your team become maggot food pretty quickly. Too quickly to be able to "tactic" youre way out of it.
I have also noted a few oddities with my away team in action, enough to wonder if the Away team's AI is broken or something.
I have a tactical officer with the Draw Fire skill which i liked alot with my other captains because ennemies are focusing on him while the rest of my BOs are free to pick the other foes one by one. But since I've been playing this new guy, My tac BO's Draw fire skill seems to not do what it is suppose to. Ennemies are totally ignoring him when he turns it on.
Also, the BOs, in combat, when an ennemy that they were firing at, is incapacitated or knocked down, are switching to another foe instead of finishing their previous target, giving the ennemy time to heal and return into the fight.
I also noted a difference of behavior in the mission in the Briar's patch. Once you have infiltrated the klingon base and set the charges on the weapons, you have to evacuate the base and must destroy blast doors to reach a section of the base where you can beam out. With my other captains I was ordering my BOs to fire at my target(the blast door) and they would obey and shoot at the door. Now, they simply rush foward and hug the door.
Seems to me that more bugs have been created and that we'll have to wait for god knows how long for them to be fixed.
Yes, very annoying isn't it.
OMG, yes. Cryptic broke this around March 1. I certainly hope it was not intentional, because BO's are supposed to shoot what we tell them to shoot.
I'm not sure I understand your point. Elite is suppose to be hard. Lots of people that are not you are able to complete the missions just fine. Your basically complaining about hard-mode because its too hard for you.
You can either:
a) get better at the game
b) move down your difficulty slider
Taking Elite and making it less difficult because you aren't capable enough to capitilize on the risk-reward scenario is ridiculous.
That's faulty logic. The rewards for the higher settings are the same items you can get from Normal. They just happen more often. But the deaths and costs of those deaths that you accumulate do not make the gameplay nor the rewards "more" in any sense of the word. You will get more items and make more credits on Normal, because you will finish the missions faster, and thus overcome the increased drop RATE of greens and blues by simply getting more drops overall from Normal. You will also get more gameplay out of doing it on Normal because you will be able to do more missions per hour on normal than you will on the higher settings.
The only real incentive to play on the harder levels is ... you want the added risks. You want the added costs. You want the added timesink. Because you want the challenge.
And if you want all this, then you don't get as frustrated when you do get killed. Because this is the price you pay for the higher risks.
If you want more reward and more gameplay ... you want to be playing on normal mode. Because it gets you your missions and your rewards faster.
1 tac, skills unimportant, mainly dps enhancing
1 sci, skills unimportant, mainly healing
2 engi's, skills very important here, both 2 phaser turrets and support drone, thats 6 extra targets for them to shoot at, then give 1 shield recharge and the other weapons malfunction
i had a 2 tac setup and was having a little trouble, switched to this after consulting a fleet-mate and havent looked back, works great
basic strat, call out the turrets and drones, then set the bo's on the same target, work from weakest up, usually can kill the first guy in less than 3 seconds, little longer when theyre borg if i dont get an expose, just keep the bo's on target
now, that all said, if youre still having trouble, its time to turn the "slider" down
c) wait for a few enemies that have become overpowered to be fixed. (Klingon Swordmasters are the most prominent example, but there enemies in several races with a similar power-setup that have the habit of one-shooting people.)
It all depends on where his problems lie. Generally, Elite and Advanced are definitely doable, both in space and on ground.
The trick is to play at a difficulty where you don't die so often. (And avoid any possibly bugged/OP enemies. Due to the latter, I risk only Advanced for now. I can beat them at that level without too much frustration. But still enough to question my personal skill in ground combat...).
You are correct though that missions will take a lot longer at higher difficulties, and so I hesitate on running at higher difficulty when my primary goal is levelling. But at skill cap, the challenge itself might be what keeps you playing - or it is getting neat loot.
b - the way to remove injuries gained was/is for me annoying. I have to carry with me even more stuff to limit my inv space then before and i also have to remember to bring em. ( hurray btw for increasing stacking items, that did in fact help ) I would rather have to visit my Tomstone kinda similar thing to remove injuries or to have to wait 30 mins to let em wear off. ( i have read or seen somewere that 30 min thingie is supposed to be implemented, but guess what it doesnt work, at least not on my toons. )
As for the leaving me blank what the idea behind stuff is all about i could rave on for hours about the changes in PvP ground. Its like " hey everybody we have a slight problem with gettin peeps to stay in PvP ground matches lets all see what brilliant ideas we can cook up to make it even worse" . Well if that was the agenda they did in fact suceed for once.
Btw sorry for the lousy English. I will not try to make it better.
It was always rediculess to have this HUGE masses of Ships if you are on team. It works with 3 people, if you are with for or more it was VERY hard on normal mode. On Elite its impossible. We made exploration with 4 on elite yesterday. If I used RSP and Hazard emitters before going into the battle it at last was able to survive long enough to SEE my hull going for 2-5 seconds (they killed me through the RSP and Hazard anyway). Without that i was just full -> booom.
Even a Full Fedball cant do that in PVP. One teammember had the Opinion a "healer" would help, i dont thing so, what should a healer do against instant kills? A tank wouldnt help either, of course my Bird of Prey is faster down than a cruiser but he cant do that long enough too.
Elite works with 1 or 2, may be three, but in large gruops the alpha strikes adamant, so... team play is even worst then before.
As a Tac officer I take only Eng and Sci BO down with me. I get in range with sniper rifle, target the most difficult mob then as as fast a sequence as I can toss a plasma, fire a targeted shot and assign my entire ground crew to target that mob as I'm starting to move from my initial firing position to avoid the plasmas I know are coming.
If there are any other elite mobs in the group they get everyone pounding on them.
Anyone dies I run over to them to revive.
I also equip all my BO with Tribs and heal kits which they use as needed.
Setting up a crossfire works wonders as well.
So scaling enemies works against grouping, and personally I think it should be removed now that the difficulty slider exists.
THEN there would be a very strong incentive to group up, since you could make short work of an elite enemy and get better loot.