test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Options
Ground missions hell, is it because im VA?
System
Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
Ok, a few months back before i was VA i used to go on ground missions and have a chance.. now in the past few weeks ive had to bypass them whenever i can due to the fact the mobs are so damn overpowering they swarm me and take me out in about 5 seconds. Everyone of my boff's has top of the line gear but it makes no difference.. Difficulty is set to normal, but it doesnt matter.. i understand the ground revamp s coming, but this issue ruins my enjoyment of the game and gets me so angry i just want to disconnect and never return. I dont mind challenges, and several times ive stuck it oujt, respawned and changed tactics and tried pulling them, etc.. sometimed ive even succedec, but seriously the effort is not woth the reward 99% of the time..
Now with foundry missions I end up not being able to continue story lines and get all the way through the mission only to have to spend 3x the time already spent on the mission just to "try" to get through a final battle.
I would much rather see this towned down system wide untl season 4 changes ground combat, just so we could have a chance at enjoying ground based foundry missions, or random encounters..
Sigh... ok i vented..i dont see how this current difficulty is helpung sto in anyway shape or form..
- X -
Now with foundry missions I end up not being able to continue story lines and get all the way through the mission only to have to spend 3x the time already spent on the mission just to "try" to get through a final battle.
I would much rather see this towned down system wide untl season 4 changes ground combat, just so we could have a chance at enjoying ground based foundry missions, or random encounters..
Sigh... ok i vented..i dont see how this current difficulty is helpung sto in anyway shape or form..
- X -
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
It sounds more like there is an issue with your style than anything really wrong with the ground combat. If you aren't utilizing the expose mechanic, or using your abilities like tactical initiative, turrets, science debuffs, etc, you will really have the problems you describe.
I also mentioned, i could sit and jack aroud with different methods, but spending large ammounts of time to get past one mob, only to be confronted by another is not very enjoyable, expec when im not earning xp to rank, but trying to engage in a storyline and the story can not be continued until you pass thr mob,which really is not even a main character, but more of filler/redshirts..
The point here is not that they are too difficult, but that the risk/time spent on the mindless battle with some filler mob does not justify the reward. I dont mind if some eppic final battle is hard, but when every group is like an end boss, it kills the enjoyment and people will find better ways to get their entertainment.
It would be like having the end boss from super mario bros as the mushroom guys, you would first be numb by the end, and end battle would lose all its meaning and epic feel.
- X -
Im not here to bad talk sto, im here to suggest tweaks and find a majority agreement on a subject. If you can tell me that the majority think the mobs are not overpowering, then great, ill leave it at that.
Myself, i enjoyed doing a ground mission once in awhile before, but now i just avoid that part of the game as much as possible..
- X -
Sure, I still can have a single ground battle last over an hour, especially when going up against a mob with two medics and a bunch of engineers.
Ill do some modifications and let you know how it goes! This was reallt the kind of feedback I was looking for. Im not trying to make excuses, but find solutions or see if there is a core problem. I think when its all said and done and season 4 gets here, ill start a new character from scratch. Learning a new system from lvl 1 up will be a lot better then being thrown into a different system with the same style as before.
Whatever i learn ill try to pass on to others in a constructive way :-)
- X -
Glad I could help. Now, I'm not saying that my setup is perfect, or that I even like playing ground missions this way with shield generators and phaser turrets cluttering up the ground everywhere I go. It's just that this is the way I have found to give me a chance in away missions.
I think that that there is definitely a core problem with ground combat. If there wasn't one Cryptic wouldn't be working on a revamp then would they? Before the game was released Cryptic said that ground combat would be fast paced, requiring tactics and fire, movement and cover, while utilizing the away team members skills. This sort of made it in the game but it just doesn't work very well, with over powered personal shields and under powered weapons. And enemy groups running right up to the player and firing at point blank range. Ground battles are won or lost by who can throw down the most turrets and shield generators and who can restore shield and health bars the most, the fastest and the most frequently.
Thats a good idea about making a new character to level up with the revamped ground combat system, I might do that too.
It can be done, I swear it.
At Vice Admiral I rarely have any ground mob last 30 seconds. They quilte literally melt from the combined weight of 12 phaser turrets going off.
I have to disagree with "not particularly Star Trek" comment in regards to away team selection. The fact that you CAN select any mix or match for your away team is very much like Star Trek. I often will change out certain members of my away team if I have an idea of what I might encounter. I often do not take my some of my ship BO's as they are specialised differently then my ground BO's. The whole point of Star Trek was to deploy your away team with the best chance for success. Same in STO.
I have to ask.....one ENCOUNTER or one ENTIRE ground mission taking an hour? If it is either, you may not have the best setup. The longest I have ever taken on an ENTIRE ground mission was about 20 minutes. Something is not right there if you are taking one hour.
Just on a side note, there are Mobs that are particularly harder for some class captains then others. I found my Tac VA has one particular melee oriented Mob group that he always has a hard time with. I have even gone as far as dropping missions if those Mobs are involved. Cryptic has said that they are looking at these sorts of issues.
Now to a pet-peeve. I hate how virtually all Mobs in STO (and about every othere MMO) in groups attack your player character OVER and BEYOND any other BO you may take with you. I have sent in my team while I am still well out of range and 90% of the time the enemy Mobs will make a beeline to me even though I have not fired a shot. TO ME, that is not realistic nor fun.
Yes, not really very much challenges an away team very long.
I do basically this. Support drone is an alternative to PT3 if you're not an engineer and can't get somebody to train for you.
I swap the fourth engineer for a science officer packed with 4 heals, or 3 heals and an expose power if I'm playing on normal. The Reman is great for this, since he'll tend to send anything that closes in flying, which takes a huge amount of weight off of fighting swordmasters. With 4 heals on normal you're immortal against anything except Thalaron weapons.
As for myself, tactical captain with fire team kit. Two splitbeam rifles on normal, two snipers on anything else. The kit is pretty much built for burst damage, I've killed elite tactical drones before they go immune by piling up all my buffs and getting a flanking sniper shot opener.
Equipment, make sure there's mk X all around - you can gear up with purple mk X gear at battlegroup omega in a few days by trading down emblems. Gearing with mk XI takes a lot longer, but the gain isn't as noticeable.
Armor: I prefer Polyalloy armor. If you're playing on normal you'd be fine with energy harnesses or something to boost damage, but on advanced and elite, my biggest threats are usually melee hits, so I gear to take them.
Weapons: Boffs don't make good use of exploits, so give them expose weapons. I like dual pistols for the short cooldown and big AOE secondary, pairs nicely with a splitbeam rifle for getting multiple vaporizations.
This whole setup is the ground equivalent of a cruiser with 8 beam arrays and FAW1/2. There's no finesse or elegance, it's not particularly pretty, but it's brutally effective.
Edit: Also, I'd suggest staying away from weapons with the [DOT3] modifier on them for now (one of the splitbeam rifles on the emblem vendor has this) - the AOE radiation damage hits contact NPCs in Foundry missions, and since contacts spawn in at level 1, if one is located close to combat, a proc is usually lethal.
Thanks for all the feedback, ill continue to try out some different methods. Im sure someone new working their way up the ranks woould have had this figured out, but i was unsure if it was styles that changed, or a super uber level issue.
Thanks again!
- x -
What I meant about it being "not particularly Star Trek" was, to use TNG as an example, I don't recall an Enterprise D away team going into a possible combat situation with the team consisting of Picard, Geordi, Barclay, Dr Crusher and Nurse Ogawa. And when fighting the enemy hordes I don't think I've ever seen a Starfleet Engineer deploy automated Phaser turrets, nor seen a Medical Officer bring someone from almost dead to perfectly fine by typing on a tricorder standing 20 feet away.
That's one encounter. It has only been happening with foundry missions, for some reason some people place a 5 person mob of 2 combat medics and 3 engineers. So if you focus your attack on one of the medics the engineers recharge his shields and he and the other medic recharges his health. Once you get him down, the other medic just revives him and you have to start all over again. If you try to take out an engineer the medics just heal him and then revive him when he dies even if you vaporise him, which is just awesome.
I've noticed this too.
Seriously, a balanced team with minimal up to date weapons and any kind of trained up BO skill configuration should at least make it on normal difficulty without taking ages.
There are weapons and BO skills that definitely seem to be more valuable than others to have on your team and i see this as an unbalanced design flaw.
Oh and by the way, it might be a good idea to program BOs so that they actually learn to use combos and exploits when using fists and melee weapons.
TLDR version : the whole ground system needs a complete overhaul and need to be as much rewarding overtime than space combat.
That's my 2 cents.
I think it's called "Season 4"
Of course they wouldn't if they KNOW what they are going up against. I agree with that. But IF they know, they would build the team accordingly...which you can do in STO. I guess we are talking apples to organes.
Ahhh yes....THOSE foundry missions. I usually just bypass those because they are really what I call poorly designed. I am sure the author had good intentions but in practice they do not always work right. I also WILL give them a one star rating if it looks like they are trying to intentionally make a mission falsely scale up just because they can. Anyway, no mission/encounter should take anyone more then 20-30 minutes. Kind of goes against the grain and becomes extremely boring no matter how good the writting of the story might be.
Yup, and this post was to see if there was something i could be doing different in the mean time in order to have a chance. The suggestions have made a complete difference, and ive not had any problems since redeploying my ground away team. I cant wait to se what changes are coming to make it more engaging. Im sure there will be issues with it as well, and probably a lot of threads just like this one. Once a good technique is found tho, we will all be ok. Atleast cryptic is listening and moving forward which is all i ask they keep doing! I undrrstand things take time, but it sounds like they are laying some serious groundwork to be able to crank out content at a much more rapid pace. In development it is usually a constant one step back, two steps forward momentum, so i completly understand whats going on with their season 4 plans..
- x -
Having said all that, it sounds like you're on the right track after checking out the Ground Playbook. The only other thing I would suggest is just make sure you didn't accidentally set your slider to Elite at some point without realizing it. The one-shot bugs, massively OP mobs, and wiping your team in seconds sound very much like well known, long standing issues that have plagued Elite for quite a while.
So, you don't have to give up your favorite setup, just be mindful of what powers they have and how they will worth with eachother, and how you can use them to their best effect.
Everyone just leaves the system and finds another mission which doesn't require an away team.
Ground combat is broken.
You can give your sci Boff Medical Tricorder 1-3 and he can use all 3 skills freely without shared cooldown, it´s strange.
Yeah well, me too i sometimes get bored of doing space stuff with the usual kill-5-giant rats spawns and decide to go do a ground mission for a change...
But then i stumbled on Borg ground troops and it suddenly becomes "held" "rooted" "knocked down" "held" "held" "held" "rooted" "knocked back" "held" "held" "held" "held" "held"....
Sooner or later the away team healer gets Held too and then its "melee damage" "knocked down" "melee damage" "dead"....
This is where ithrow away my mouse at the wall, slaps my computer screen and swear i will not get lured into a VA ground mission ever again
This is irritating to say the least.
I've never had this problem with the Borg. I may be the only person who sees no issue with the current ground combat setup (though I'll be happy to see improvements).
Well that is exactly the issue i have with Ground Combat. How can two different players experience such a different scenario when both fighting at lowest difficulty? That is non-sense.
When doing space combat, anyone can solo pretty much anything on lowest difficulty by bringing in any kind of ship with pretty much any kind of BO setup. As long as you have weapons equipped, it is pretty much just a metter of time before the opposition gets wiped out.
But when it comes to Ground Combat, if you do not cherry pick your Away Team weapons, cherry pick your Away Team skill setup, cherry pick your shields and armors and consumables and what not, even on lowest difficulty you can run into problems. And for what? For spending 5 minutes sludging into one enemy group who will at best give you like total 5-10 skill points. Meanwhile, killing one cruiser in space takes like 30 seconds and gives around 15-20 skill points.
That's just wrong.
I have 1 engineer (Borg BO), 1 sci healer (Reman), 2 tacs (Gorn and Breen). I never give BOs anything but expose weapons.
I use an exploit weapon or a melee sword on my engineering captain. I try to remember to setup turrets beforehand. I try to avoid using my exploit abilities except on an exposed enemy. I focus fire on medics. Enemies go down pretty fast.
Personally, I'm inclined to think that instead of exposes and exploits being tied to weapons, every character (player or BO) should have an "Expose" stance and an "Exploit" stance that tack on expose and exploit effects to weapon special abilities.
Players should default to the "Exploit" stance. BOs should default to the "Expose" stance. Multiple exposes should stack for increases exploit effectiveness and chance to disintegrate. Exploits should refresh the timer on any expose effect even if they do nothing else.