CAPTAIN'S BLOG

"The only piece of advice I can share with you is to play Star Trek Online the way you want."

Exactly! This whole DPS fanatism is just weird. Having 10k, 30k and 50k or maybe even 50k DPS channels is just leading to a wrong sense of elitism.

Personally, I refuse to use Antiproton just because of the higher Damage on Critical Damage. While I do damage around 15k DPS, that is not what I am looking for in playing this game.

I want to have fun. Fun more me is to engage in common action with Friends and Fleet mates and get the satisfaction of completing it.

So, I will continue to use my Tetryon Beams to play Shield Buster. I will continue to use Gravity Well for Crowd-Controlling and I will continue to do until this game will shut down some twenty years in the future.

PLAY THE GAME HOW YOU LIKE TO PLAY IT AND NOT HOW A DPS LEAGUE DICTATES!

Carry on. ;)

DPS seems like it's everything because the game is broken for healers and tanks. With rules in place like the game looking at the damage you do and locking you out of STFs for being AFK if you don't do enough damage DPS is all that matters right now. I like playing a healer but the only STF that counts healing in determining if you're AFK is CC. I do want to have at least one 50k DPS build that can run elite STFs but when I try to run advanced pugs I feel like I have to do that with every character if I want to finish them.

One of the main reason Hive space is one of my favorite STFs is because it really encourages you to have a mix of ships and captains to do well.

But I certainly feel that in new Elite queues, even though I do moderate DPS, the focus is less on me keeping the team alive, or controlling the crowd, and more on being able to quickly eliminate threats that have huge HPs. And I feel they way they created High level content (by keeping the AI similar, and adding more HPs) does require a certain amount of DPS to succeed.

I'd love to be able to play the game a different way but the developers have designed the end game content specifically for DPS. Why? It is the best way to drive profit, period. That is a discussion for another time though. You may ask what I mean by the end game content being designed for DPS. Most of the advanced and all of the elite content requires you to not only meet the requirements, but to to so in a specific amount of time which requires the team as a whole to put out x amount of damage. If the team doesn't put out x amount of damage you WILL fail every time. This is the problem and the reason people are driven by DPS in the end game. One other thing that drives DPS is the ability to earn resources as quickly as possible. This is another aspect that was created by the developers. You are NOT rewarded for taking your time getting through queued missions. The faster you finish them the more resources you can earn per hour played. Are there things that can be done to fix this mindset? Of course. Will they? Probably not.

I have to agree with martinison on this one. With so many of the ques that are built around the idea of timed objectives, killing things as fast as possible is the only option at your disposal. And all those reshirted captains out there that rely on "go down fighting" they get pissed when someone heals them when they are purposely attempting to get their health down past the halfway mark.

So this leaves me the option "play Star Trek Online the way you want" by pretty much solo play for endgame content. I refuse to turn this game into a "by the numbers" or math test to constantly check and run a parser staring at some sort of spread sheet to determine what gives me the quickest route to turning a group of Borg spheres into nothing more than popcorn.

There is the "Star Trek Battles" channel that was made with the purpose of having canon builds and the intention that it's not about the quickest route to victory, but the battle itself what makes the game fun. And high DPSers need not apply, because if they b*tch at you for not dishing out a certain amount of DPS, then they get b*tched at by other members of the STB's community for being a dps elitist snob.

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1026351

There are those that play both, creating builds solely for high DPS and having a layout reserved for playing with the STB community. They'll try to make the best DPS canon build they can, but they won't be an overt d*ck about it.

Another sad thing too is that in a recent interview, Al Rivera stated when posed with a question about building a T6 science ship for the KDF, he said that it just won't be worth it (profitable) that when they release something like that, they sell, literally, in the dozens and not the hundreds or thousands like their more popular ships being escorts or cruisers. So to me that sounded like he was admitting that the game was to far gone to anything about it now... the DPS plague is latched on like a lamprey.

I think one way to help remedy this would be to deny certain things to escorts or tactical captains that can make them into something that is too self reliant. One thing, for instance, is these new pilot ships that just came out... they are teeny tiny, in no way should they be able to house the same thing or more than a dreadnought cruiser. I mean, come one, seriously??? if that is the case then their weapons should be strapped to the outside of their ships, let alone the components required to run them. And turn escorts back into glass cannons, so when those tactical captains are lowering their health to get to "go down fighting" it's way more of a threat than a reward.

My apologies for the wall of text.

I have been mastering my builds for months (2011-2013). I was good at that, due to proper abilities and skills my ships excelled in missions and even pvp. Then day by day Cryptic introduced some changes in game mechanics and I found out that there were players who exploited the changes and were able to DPS 5-10 times higher than me. I stopped playing this game.
Playing the game that is not balanced is not funny.

Personally I was a little surprised to find that this game was so DPS heavy. One of the things that makes the Star Trek universe so endearing is that humanity is the underdog. They aren't out in space to conquer anything; they are explorers. Frequently they are faced with the challenge of having to analyze and strategize their way out of seemingly insurmountable situations. Go in guns a-blazin' and they'd be dead (and sometimes were, then reset by a time-loop ;D ). Other space-faring species are usually older more experienced and generally more powerful than we are. That, to me, is where STO should be. Sure there'd be some fighting but it doesn't need to be at every single turn.

Until they fix the balance issue this game will never really be much more than Guild Wars in space, IMO.

All I just want to say is, play the game as you want to play it!
Since the start of STO, I have tried to keep my ships as near to the faction as possible, using faction weapons that the ship was designed for (Phasers for fed, Disruptors for KDF etc..)
I use my escorts as heavy hitters and my cruisers as support ships that can do both heal and do average damage, using these fine ships I have fun and enjoy my game play. The whole idea of the game is to have fun, meet people in space & strange new worlds, and of course, go where no one has gone before! So please do as I do, just enjoy the game as intended.

In my opinion if you put together a good team with a few players that have extremely high DPS your chances are good. But if you have a nice TANK on your team that can absorb all of the damage and has very high threat generation, then you little Phantoms can swoop in with their mighty OP AP beam swoop in and destroy the enemy. I think this would be a great team set-up.

I have little to no respect for most DPS players I have encountered. Their whole build is nothing but a clone, very few of them have ever took the time to understand what they are coping or why it's set up the way it is. And almost all of them look down on other players as if they were gods and needed to be worshiped.

Tanking is still possible in the game (PVE) but with the balancing act the devs have to do to keep up with the DPS demand, It is hard now days to build a solid tank.

I agree with TacPaddy here the best build you can do is what your comfortable with playing, Don't let others dictate how to play YOUR game. Enjoy yourselves!

This sort of thing is why I don't like playing science people in science vessels, or engineers in cruisers a lot of times. To be honest, I wouldn't trade my escort-jockey science officer for anything. But, there's a reason why we have BUILDS, instead of haphazardly dropping armor and cannons onto escorts like a lot of newer players (and, sadly, some returning players) do.

Somebody who focuses on anti-shield damage, or killing off weapons, or ignoring shields has my respect more than somebody who just bluntly smashes away at targets with a couple hundred thousand HP (Correct me if I'm wrong, but some STF bosses are up in those numbers, iirc.)

The real problem is that you're initially encouraged to stick to your factions "default energy" type. It drops casual players, and people who're new to MMOs, into a rut that's really hard to get out of without literally scrapping their whole build and starting from scratch. In my opinion, low-level Zen ships definitely don't help here, since many of them focus on offensive upgrades or raw stat increases.

I had a longer rant about this on Skype with some of my buds, and that was the gist of it: The game encourages DPS over all.

You still should be able to produce more damage than you need for the mission to complete. That way you are not being carried by those who actually kill things and complete the mission.

It's funny reading most of these post and even coming across people in game who whine about us dps guys. While it is true that this game has turned into a dps type game sci and eng toons are still great toons to play. I have 6 lvl 60 toons 2 tact/2 eng and 2 sci. I can kill and tank with them all. Most people are forgetting this is a game and certain things are just going to work better than others. From what I've seen most people in this game don't take the time to figure out how to build a toon right either ground or space. The reason why people like myself wont play with pugs is because they don't even try to learn how to play the adv and elite stf's right and when people like me are farming r&d mats and pugs make us fail the stf we now have to wait 30 mins to try again. it's so easy to do 20 k dps in this game that its a joke.I even do it with my sci toon. How about you people stop crying and learn to build your toon correctly. Its not hard and I will help anyone who ask. Hell I even give out weapons and gear to help people. Stop acting like your in the tv shows and use weapon types that work. Stop using rainbow builds and thinking your going to kill something.

There was a point about 1.5-2 years ago where the STFs got considerably more difficult. Even the Fleet Alert got really hard and I found my cruiser builds unable to keep up. It became clear that I wasn't doing nearly enough damage and I became very frustrated. Then I started digging around and learned to really optimize my builds for...dps. I don't have any problems trying to get more dps out of my builds, because killing sh*t faster is more fun for me. Sure, it took me time to switch from crappy weapons (but never ever a rainbow build) to weapons with CritDx3 and to better DOffs, but it was worth it.

As my builds have gotten better, I've stopped playing in PUGs because I find them very frustrating and god forbid you should try to give someone advice. You get called a DPS-snob elitist a-hole, just for trying to help someone not blow up as much. Once I started playing with a DPS-league, I really enjoyed the game a lot more, plus most players in a DPS-league are very happy to help you tweak your builds. They don't resent someone asking them for help. This is how I want to play the game.

Your mileage may vary - this is my personal experience.

The reason DPS players get called something like "DPS-snob elitist a-hole" is because, far more often than not, they don't ASK the person if they want advice. They just GIVE it, usually in a smarmy or condescending way, or patronizing us poor common folk who don't have super-high DPS builds that match what they're running. NEVER dare to question them about anything they've proclaimed from high atop the DPS pedestal, because if you don't take it to heart immediately and completely, you're just another worthless PUGger.

Here's a concept: Try asking first. Some people don't WANT your advice, no matter whether it's right or wrong; they just want to play. When they realize on their own that they aren't satisfied with their own performance, or they just feel like trying to get better, they'll ask. Telling someone what's wrong with their build when they've never asked you anything is one guaranteed way to piss someone off and possibly drive a player away for good.

Even if they ask for advice, remember that a person may not want to follow it. If they don't, that's OK; if they do and they're happy with results, that's OK, too.