STO Needs A Difficulty Revamp in 2024

[@MrGustavevil]

Didn't I feel dumb making a damage-over-time build and then watching my teammates delete all enemies in 3 seconds.

[@DarthonRamoi]

wow i love everybit of this video ! it gives me so much hope of what sto could be ! thank you , you inspire us all.

[@waldoonline]

This is the type of thing the game honestly needs at Elite. I know a lot of players will probably push back on this because of time and resources into their build and not wanting to change that but there are a lot of great ideas here that should probably be put into the game. Thanks for the deep dive.

[@Arcane05404]

Coming into the game a year ago I thought the game was like this…quickly I found different! Is item A better than item B is spot on. Amazingly well thought out video! Thank you!

[@mikeohawk95]

Back in early year if the game the BIRg tfo difficultly was higher back then but declined in few recent years, and we could use this difficultly again, even excitement sicne the iconian war arc and prior, also any Star Trek lore ships and stuff not in game, I’d say work to program them into the game, even if we have to make and order 1000x+ supercomputers to allow programming space for these additions,mass upgrades and more

[@jimmyoflogerty9982]

Even just starting the video I can agree. What it needs is not more hp sponges. It needs more interesting use of mechanics to make the fights a challenge.

[@ironsides982]

I think your point on lowering the amount of mob spam is important. Fewer harder enemies would make single target firing modes more relevant in PVE. Players would need both AOE and single target on their builds and use them according to the situation. There's a bunch of other issues I have with how the meta has developed, like all the filler in the Boff system, but I digress. Thanks for the video!

[@bretsgamingchannel]

That's a key point I probably should've emphasized even more. FEWER enemies, but more challenging ones, and I love the concept of using an AoE and Single-Target ability on the same build but the game now doesn't ever really require it. Thanks for watching!

[@ironsides982]

Thanks for making these kinds of videos!@@bretsgamingchannel

[@joebaranski1996]

I got so sick of Guillotine because of how quickly you overwhelmed with Borg probes and spheres just trying to bring up a satellite.

[@simj-pi3fw]

Another good point for spawning in fewer enemies is that would allow them to be displayed... currently having a party of minelayer/hangar ships makes some just disappear, which is very annoying (and queueing solo for ratfos you really can't tell what kinda team comes together)

[@cjileong]

Bret, I've watched a few of your videos here and there, but this is the one that got me to subscribe and follow going forward. I'm a casual player, but i love your whole discussion here. I know these ideas will probably never make it into the game, but thank you for sharing them all the same. It's always interesting to think about what could be!

[@bretsgamingchannel]

Thank you, and thanks for the sub. I do a lot of niche detail stuff but I'm going to try to cover some of the bigger topics at hand moving forward. Cheers

[@cjileong]

Awesome! Will be looking forward to it!

[@DivisionMuEpsilon]

I think an "Ultimate" Game mode that utilizes the suggestions here would be good. But Elites themselves should stay the same so that DPSers and general PvErs who still want the normal "DPS" challenge we have gotten use to don't change too much. My primary concern is that random elites would get very complicated since each TFO might get challenging. If the existing levels and games modes are changed to, say reduce the number of NPCs, then DPS builds will be less effective and people who bought those things will be salty. So I think it just makes more sense to add an "Ultimate" level and then have this higher level there. If the game were not 14 years old this would be a vastly superior way to do levels, but now its 14 years old and people are invested on a particular idea of meta. I am not sure changing that compared to just adding another level type would be a good idea. Could even two two more levels so that you can still get that "getting used to it" differentiation you were going for.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

Back when I started on this video, Random Elites didn't exist, so that obviously has to be factored in, but I didn't want my work to go to waste. Ultimate mode, or even just preserving the current DPS maps as "classic" versions could work.

[@DivisionMuEpsilon]

Thats probably a better idea tbh, going with the way you recommend in the video and just having a second classic version as is. Makes a lot more sense than a new even higher level.@@bretsgamingchannel

[@littletee8849]

I know we're talking about space here, but I'd like to chime in about the whole DPS thing here. In the 14 years I've been playing the game, I have watched my 'kill me if you can' Ground Sci dedicated healer go from being almost essential in some ground content like Manus or Hive, and very useful in other ground content, to now being basically a joke build, or at the very least, a 'team saver' for a terrible random pug team. I haven't changed her ground set up out of principle, but the instances where she's even needed now are very few and far between. Things die so quickly that there's no damage to heal, and you can forget about sustained damage against multiple targets. Ground healing used to be an actual challenge, and super fun. Space really isn't much different these days, and her Control/Support heal build has abandoned the heal part in favour of going more and more into a CtrlX/PG build because nobody even half decent at the game with a half decent build even needs someone else to throw them a heal. It's sad. DPS is fun, and if people like DPS, great, but like the video points out, there are a bunch of abilities and skills that are, or can be largely ignored because high enough DPS can compensate for almost everything almsot 100% of the time.

[@wChris_]

Oh man i still remember the first D'deridex it was a drag and made me first realize i should put on better weapons aka the same weapons on my ship. And a good while after that in the Hierarchy mission where you get mr. potato head thats where i first used my boff abilities. let that sink in i never use boff abilities before that! This was back in 2017 were the game was easier. And a few years back when i leveled my delta recruit i hadnt any issues with the missions i remembered from back then.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

I started that way too! I was manually tapping abilities and I hardly understood what they were doing until someone explained to me how to use them. This was back in 2013 so everyone still kind of "figuring it out." Good times, back then the Borg were the scariest, toughest enemies, and a real challenge to fight. Kind of crazy that they are considered one of the easiest enemies now, and guys like the Vaadwaur, who canonically should be scared to death of the Borg, are much harder to fight for most players. (Side note, I think the key to fighting Vaadwaur is mobility, just move out of the way of the barrages, use sci team if one of the interdictor ships subnukes you. Most newer players are not very mobile, probably because on-screen trek combat is usually pretty slow paced, capital ship type stuff, so they emulate that behavior)

[@joebaranski1996]

My first attempt a decade ago I could not get past the Rea no matter how hard I tried. That was before I learned of being able to set weapons to autofire, keybinding and BOFF ability stacking. But even now after picking the game back up after like 6 years I got so sick of some Voth missions in the Delta arc I outright skipped them.

[@bX-rk2oo]

Imagine if you actually got through to the devs! People have been trying for over a decade. Keep fighting the good fight Bret.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

Thanks!

[@NeojetangelSTO]

Actually npc's do have skills, generally not a lot, but they do have them. Like Borg actually have a lot of drain skill (over 1000 drainx), which is why they have a high resist against player drain and have such a potent shield drain. You are most likely taking this from what one Dev once mistakenly said in a interview.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

Do you have proof of this? Because I can say pretty confidently that borg do not have DrainX, or at least they don't have any more DrainX than any other NPC. Testing with Tachyon Beam I get the same exact amount of shield drain damage against a borg sphere as I do against a Kazon cruiser (both normal difficulty, quick test). If Borg really had 1000 DRAINX, they'd resist tachyon beam heavily - when I use tachyon beam against a player ship with ~200 drainx, it deals less than half the damage that it does against borg/kazon. I'd like to see power levels but can't. I do remember a time when Drain was reworked, which essentially prevented the subsystem from actually going offline when drained to zero power, but that wasn't adding DrainX skill, it was a change to ship power mechanics entirely, and affected the entire game (npcs, players, all factions). I don't know anything about an interview. I tested to confirm that NPC's don't have different passive skill points by faction, so that's what I drew conclusions from. I could have missed things but I'm just not seeing any evidence to the contrary.

[@NeojetangelSTO]

@@bretsgamingchannelActually when they reworked drain they stopped power levels from going into negative numbers (the true days of drain pvp when you could take people to negative 300 power and they couldn't do anything about it), it will still knock subsystems offline if it hits zero, triggering the offline lockout. You can see the borg have a drainx stat by looking at how long you should knock their subsystems offline and how long it actually does it for. If they have no resistance, then it should always take them offline for as long as it says on the tooltip. I and a number of players have worked on the PVE drain meta over the years, and those build end up having to run over 1000 drainx for a legitimately effectively build against the borg at the elite level. So a few of us have come to the conclusion that they have around that number as well.

[@falkwulf3842]

@@bretsgamingchannel Thank you for giving me an avenue to further my testing. I do need to test drain and see what it actually does numbers wise. For years we have only used Tachy beam and drain overall for proc'ing Det Secondary Deflectors for all that massive RAD goodness. Drain itself has not been very important unless you were building a debuff nanny for structured runs.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

@@NeojetangelSTO I spent some time testing this today, check my latest video. They do stay drained for the amount of time on the tooltip, but fully draining them does not take the subsystems offline, that's the mistake being made here. No lockout is applied because it doesn't go offline - otherwise we'd see weapons stop firing or shields flickering on/off rapidly. I don't know if this changed at some point but I do remember testing this with drain pvp builds all the way back in 2020 so it's been this way for at least that long. Also, if they did have over 1000 drainx, they would resist drains completely. Each point of drainx is twice as effective at resisting drains as it is at improving them, so if you have 1000 drainx and Borg resist the drain completely (no effect at all), they'd have 500 drainx. Cheers

[@NeojetangelSTO]

@@bretsgamingchannelHey, I saw your video and thanks to for the shout out in it. It is good to see some independent testing of some of this stuff. It was really well done. I should have clarified that certain borg have resistance to it, and them having 1000 drainx is a number that has been floating around for a while. I actually thought the same that it should be half that, but you have to remember that it adds drain resistance rating. Which I have always guessed scaled the same as DRR, so it can never actually get to 100% resistance. I actually did a short testing video (kzbin.info/www/bejne/lXnLn6qnbq6Imbs) showing pure energy drain taking subsystems offine just like you mentioned (it used to trigger a lockout but maybe that was changed). I also fired off opening salvo near the end to show that the larger borg ships do have resistance. But yeah I tested it and probes and spheres either have very little or none it seems. I have some more footage of some other interesting things, so I'll may put them together into a actual video at some point.

[@simj-pi3fw]

For the borg specifically I'd say they should add a adapt mechanic in space as well, instead of fixed resistances. (On normal they adapt slowly, and counter-adapting is fast, on advanced swap one, on elite both. If they adapted to a damage type that then does a lot less (not 0, more like -90%) dmg) And maybe have the adapt apply their offense as well (aka if they keep firing at the same target they do more dmg the longer they do so / start bypassing shields / res), cleared by reverse shield polarity / polarize hull / team abilities. In turn they never really show much offensive finesse beyond their adaptation... so not many "boff abilities" (tractor beam and boarding parties would still be a must, as would be the shield neutralizer). Maybe have them run a persistent hazard emitters (1 on normal to 3 on elite, +1 for bosses) (maybe only the heal part, not the dot clearing?)? Voth should get significant shield hardness, but maybe take a while longer to restart them should they be brought down (they have pretty high tech, but would perhaps be a bit "wha? they broke our shields?!?" when they go down)... also make their shields work against epg. They should also get some notable DrainX. Elachi could maybe be evasion-focused? They do already teleport around some... They'd definitely fit intel on their ships. In canon Breen started with disruptor and fitted polaron only during the dominion war... so maybe back? and give them their consoles! And from what I recently learned about their ship design philosophy, they should get secondary shields / automated shield rerouting / high shield regen ... rambling on before saying what I meant to say: Good idea! Wanna see something like that happen!

[@bretsgamingchannel]

I love the concept of an "adapting" mechanic for the Borg in space. Even if it was a really simplified one that just copy-pastes something else --> for example, the Elite Fleet Shields with [Adapt] modifier, when you take incoming damage it increases shield resistance to that damage type by 2%, stacks up to 20% total. Just copy that same mechanic and apply it to all borg, but change the scaling depending on difficulty and boom - fights are more interesting. Could still implement a "weakness" to certain types like Antiproton or Transphasic to keep things feeling accurate to the shows. Re Voth shields resisting EPG, I'd be on board if they got rid of all of that "100% shield penetration" crap they keep adding. For example, the new Hirogen Predator Experimental Weapon deals Physical Damage, yet has 100% shield pen. Why? What sense does that make? Any negatives of it being a physical weapon are gone because of that, so if it deals the most DPS, why would you ever run anything else? I hate that kind of simplification. Anyway, you understood my thoughts perfectly. A couple of devs could get together and watch some episodes of Trek, brainstorm these kind of ideas, and make this game incredible. Sad that it'll never happen.

[@simj-pi3fw]

@@bretsgamingchannel Yeah, the 100% shield pen stuff can be annoying... particularly if you consider what that gun supposedly does... holographic matter should be *weak* to shields, like do nothing at all to them and be stopped flat

[@falkwulf3842]

I have a few thoughts and I know its not going to sit well with some. First of all at 1:50 This is a BOLD statement that might be true for some lower tiered endgame players but not true for the higher end players. Higher end DPS players know this unwritten rule. "DO NOT DO advanced TFO's because there simply is not enough DAMAGE to go around in advanced TFO's as the enemies just do not have the health pool." Elite TFO's are the only place where 200k+ DPS ships can actually shine. My group has tested this EXTENSIVELY, on Normal or Advanced TFO's our heavy 200K+ dps Starships are only churning out 100-135k dps because everything dies before we can even get through one full spam bar rotation. The group I belong to is a day 1 Fleet/Armada with 2509 members. We poll our fleet and armada members and parse regularly to track each others progress and I can safely say that 99% of our Armada members parse at 100-110k+ DPS breaking it down farther 80% of the armada are parsing 250k+ Dps. 40% of our armada cracking over 350Kdps. 8% of our armada crack 500k+.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

As you say, high end players are doing elite for DPS measuring, but the majority of the players are not high end. I spent a lot of time prepping for this video, testing, reading build posts, watching twitch and youtube streamers. There is a very large number of players who are flat out not ready to Elite TFOs. I can nanny just about anyone up to 100k dps in a support build but that doesn't mean they should be doing random elites. Shoot, according to Cryptic, more than half the game's playerbase don't even do TFOs and are still just trying to get through the episodic content, and maybe play normal difficulty only. I actually expected comments to tell me that I'm wrong about most players doing Advanced, and that they are doing Normal, but you're saying the opposite. See what I said at 2:45 though - DPS as a metric of "who is good at the game" is very flawed. That's great for your fleet, if DPS is the only thing of value (it is currently), but like I say in the video, chasing DPS numbers in just a few maps seems like a disappointing endgame to me. Also for what its worth, I've done over 400k in a pug ISA in both a CSV and EPG build, and I'm fairly confident I could do that with relative consistency. But ultimately my point is I can do 400k in an ISA, and that lowers the amount of damage to go around to my teammates, so what? We successfully completed the mission. If the missions were more complex or required more than just damage to complete them, it would be more rewarding to play.

[@falkwulf3842]

@amingchannel I agree 100% we need more TFO's like Korfez where players have at least some mechanics at play. Maybe I didnt articulate things correctly about the fleet/armada I am in. When we get a new member we take the time to get to know them and find out what they want out of the game. We guide them to a path that will get them to where they want to get to in the game. We have F2P players who have not spent a dime on the game who bat 100K+ dps with just mission items Fleet Ships/gear and rep gear and free gear that cryptic gives away periodically. But those players didnt get there overnight and it took perseverance on the players part and guidance on our part as leaders. We have found that this method is fairly effective keeping our fleet mates interested in playing the game on a regular/Semi-Regular basis and it keeps our active Fleet/Armada active members #'s up. Because we as leadership go out of our way to make sure every member of our fleet/armada garners a sense of accomplishment for their time and money playing the game. It is true that most people do not want nor can they afford to chase the DPS dragon but most people who play STO do want the ability to do all the game's content comfortably without feeling inadequate or struggling in Elite cue group or solo play. Thus the Fleet/Armada that I am in goes out of our way to make that a reality at every budget level for every member. As a side note Our Fleet/Armada does not just parse the popular DPS run maps we parse EVERY Mission, Every TFO, Every Patrol, because the parse tells more than just DPS EPEEN, it also tell us and the player what is working for said individual player and what is not working for said individual player and what changes can be made within their budget constraints and playstyle so the individual player can get the most out of their experience while playing the game whether it be in space or on the ground. If more Fleets/Armada's used this model as a template then we might see the overall game population numbers increase and more importantly STAY. I have never agreed with just poo pooing damage and spamming skills as a metric for who is good at the game. This is why STO lacks as a MMO. However in reality there isnt anything in the endgame other than to chase the DPS dragon. Its sad but still is a fact. I get it that this is the purpose of your video, cause you seem to understand this fact. The problem is POPULATION... There simply is not enough population of daily players or weekly players for Cryptic to justify the investment cost of that kind of rework. Poo Pooing 400K dps in a ISA is fine and dandy if you only care about your personal numbers but I have seen and heard from literally 100's of players who were completely emasculated in TFO's by someone with massive DPS eating everything. Leaving no meat on the bone for the younger players who have not obtained that level or have a fully fleshed out build. This is a detriment to the community as a whole because A LOT of those people I just spoke about became frustrated and disenchanted and thus literally QUIT the game because they feel they are not getting anywhere after spending hard earned $$$ or spent months grinding for something they thought might bring them joy only to be shown that the $$$ or the time they spent were not enough and are making little to no headway. This compounds the issue and causes a lower population of daily players and thus the game suffers because of it.... This is where that unwritten rule comes into play. As we in the upper echelon of the game do not wish to ruin the game for others and cause them to leave the game. This will ultimately kill the game for everyone including us at the top. So as a rule If your High DPS stay out of the lower decks and let the up and comers have something they can look forward to. Let them have a space in the game where they can have some fun, get satisfaction and sense of Accomplishment and maybe JUST Maybe they will keep playing the game. As far as Cryptic is concerned they (cryptic) factor in every account in the game as a whole. Even accounts that have been idle for 8+ years. SO of coarse there are 100's of Thousands of accounts that are not even done with story content or actively doing TFO's for that matter. Story Content and TFO's have been added since they last logged on so it skews the #'s. Short story long is Cryptic does not pay attention to last login dates when they spout those numbers and metrics. Why you might ask? Because it would be counter productive for them to segregate the numbers in such a way that would show what we have as long time players known for at least the last 4 years. Star Trek Online struggles to hold players. Why do you think Cryptic changed the rewards for the yearly event to give F2P players EVERYTHING they need to hit massive numbers... Its because Cryptic knows the overall population and health of the game is NOT GOOD and thus they are trying to entice people to come back to the game and are giving them massive incentives to do so. Why do you think most long time Cryptic DEVS are leaving for greener pastures. Simple answer is the game is DYING. There is not enough of a player base to sustain the game for much longer. As I type this reports are being released that more members of the long time STO dev team has left. Moral of the Story is How can the community as a whole entice more people to play the game and how do we recover those players who have played the game in the past but quit. Because without a SERIOUS uptick in player base Cryptic will not even consider making these kinds of changes that your advocating for, as it would cost more money than Cryptic and Investors would get in return.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

@@falkwulf3842 I agree completely with everything you said in this comment, thank you for taking the time to write it. We agree on a lot of stuff and it sounds like you guys run a really fantastic community. If you have a discord and a "guest" or "friend" role, I'd love to join as well. I also know quite a few people who hit a wall and got frustrated and quit. I remember one guy was telling me that he had everything he could ever want for his science build, couldn't break 100k dps, and told me that everyone who did more than 100k must be hacking/cheating. I get that he was just frustrated, and I did try to help (his build did have a lot of things to be improved on even if he felt it was "done"), but it was a bit sad to see him leave and it's not an uncommon situation. It wasn't strictly about DPS like you said, it was about feeling a sense of progression in the game. The player count/metrics thing, I actually mention that in my "Lazy Pahvo" video a few back. Cryptic does not care if you play 20 TFOs in a day, or how long your session is. They only care that you logged in so they can say "hey, 15,000 players logged into the game today." If the content engaged them or not - they don't care. I also have written a post, and a few of my friends repeat this line back to me, but I called it "Caveman Business Logic." Cryptic only does "Make New Ship -> Sell New Ship -> Check Profits." As opposed to "Make Game Content Better -> People Find Content Engaging -> People Buy Ships To Play That Content -> Players Retained." In short, they'd rather sell 500 players a new ship than keep 5,000 players playing the game. That's why I play so much PvP, it's the only part of the game that engages me, since I've done every TFO and patrol a thousand times. I don't get excited about new ships, I've done it all before because the content is the same, and ships are really not that different from each other outside of a few major types (epg, torps, single target dew, aoe dew). Retaining current players or bringing back old players with more interesting, engaging content would be a win - maybe it doesn't have to be as extreme as my video ideas here, but I would be happy to see anything beyond "ships are content."

[@ryans756]

Fine ideas until you take into account the Random TFO side of things. You set your ship up for those Borg you mention, only to get some Terran TFO and blah blah blah. "Guys sorry but I'm AFK while I change over to Disruptor" etc. It would be chaos.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

To be fair, I wrote this script and spreadsheet before Random Elites existed. But even if you use your "borg" loadout and end up against Terrans, the goal would be that you can still accomplish the TFO, even if you aren't in the optimal build. Plus, if you saw my video on Counterpoint, you don't even need to kill any Terran ships after the first phase to succeed, all you have to do is close 5 portals and run 15 assault teams and it is mission success even if you never fire a weapon the whole time. Either way it would take some testing/balancing on Cryptic's part and we all know they wouldn't put the effort in to do it right, this is just a dream of what STO "could've been."

[@axelhopfinger533]

STO needs a lot of revamps. Like the entire loot system and the 14+ year old netcode. Also have you thought about applying at DECA games as an assistant systems designer or maybe external advisor? Because this may be just the right time for it.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

I have considered it but I'm pretty comfortable in my current job, and honestly I'm a little worried that I might be "too close" to STO in some ways. They do have a System Designer position posted right now though, tempting thought. As for advisors, I'd love to see a player council/focus group/whatever if they'd actually listen to it, even if I'm not on it, because that would improve the quality of the game. The danger of something like that is that those types of player groups end up being higher-end players with lots of time invested into the game, and that doesn't necessarily reflect the entire population especially newbies and more casual players, so it'd be a balancing act.

[@axelhopfinger533]

@@bretsgamingchannel Well, i just hope that open systems designer position wasn't Herlache's. But STO really could use some fresh blood and people who are long time players and have intimate knowledge of the game's systems and the playing experience.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

@@axelhopfinger533 I don't think it's his position, it's a generic one not specific to STO. Just noticed that it had a bunch of requirements related to MMO mechanics, but STO isn't the only MMO that DECA runs from what I understand.

[@christianstuver7060]

Have you been 1 spotted by the nanite ability in elite? I think different difficulties have more abilities

[@bretsgamingchannel]

Nope, never. What nanite ability? You can actually find the list of NPC ships and what abilities they have on the wiki - they do not have different abilities, it's always the same regardless of difficulty.

[@Milan_1389]

Very good insight and game knowledge. Sadly most devs do not have players insight of game.

[@QuantumNova]

As a game designer myself, I'm wondering why they didn't think to do special resists for certain enemies? Or scripted skill use for NPC's IE: 'If [Self HP] is lower than 50% is True, use skill [Hazard Emitters III] on Target [Self]'. Old RPG games from 1994 can do that. Tactical cubes should have Attack Pattern Alpha III on Elite. Lastly I believe 'Borg Spheres' had their tractor beams removed back in 2013. Most players couldn't handle it.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

There is some super basic script like that, for example the Kazon Cruisers have Aux2Damp, but don't use it until you use grav well on them. Ground enemies have some similar anti-CC thing, if you do endothermic field they will try to move out of the way. From what I understand, xbox/ps4 versions of the game have auto-execute powers that work as you describe for player ships ("if hp below 50%, use hazard emitters"), so I feel like that system could be applied in some form to NPC's too. It would make the combat feel more interesting even if their power usage would be predictable, it would at least be something.

[@SternenruferinPatchouli1]

@@bretsgamingchannel thats why you use things like Paradox Bomb before any Fields

[@pcubed664]

What Armada are you a member of?

[@bretsgamingchannel]

“-STO- Community”, although I’m not as active as I used to be there

[@play030]

Thank you

[@slugsliming2948]

Fantastic knowledge dump and great points made. HP sponges and over-inflated numbers bypassing built-in mechanics and skills is always a terrible difficulty curve. Sadly, STO isn't the only one. Regardless, the knowledge on Borg you're bestowing here is great! When are they going to make you a Dev? Or at least, part of a "player council" that the developers directly work with to fix STO.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

I'd sign an NDA tomorrow if they contacted me and took my input on some things in the game. It is a shame that there is no "player council," as many other games have, although that has its own set of drawbacks since the council is usually high-end players and even I sometimes forget what it is like for newbies - part of the reason I made the F2P account, to re-experience what it was like to have no gear or money and try to get through the game (and I did enjoy doing that again, probably because I had enough knowledge that it wasn't truly difficult). Thanks for watching!

[@DivisionMuEpsilon]

Same@@bretsgamingchannel

[@SternenruferinPatchouli1]

lets hope DECA will listen

[@lariandark]

Before all that, i woud like to be able to use any ship in the game and not be underperforming. - add a universal console that set your inertia and turn rate to about an odysee class or idealy better, making big ships (1/3 of c store.) actualy fun to play. - add the ability to change 2 bridge officer per ship into a specialisation of your choise, sudently all ships become usable. After that make it so that bridge officer special abilitys coud be learned or transfered. it woud prevent everyone having to use the same bridge of (romulan operative and watchers) Is it a star trek game if you can't use the ships you like and the crew you like ?

[@bretsgamingchannel]

1. The polaric modulator and RCS [Turn] consoles exist and already fulfill that purpose. Most people want the game to slow down even, making ships faster/more maneuverable would just be the same. If the added consoles were good, currently fast escorts would be even faster, big ships would still feel slow and lumbering by comparison. No improvement. 2. Changing 2 boffs per ship to any spec of choice? Ok - so all the same ships that are already relatively better will still be better. Ships that underperform will still be worse than those that already had good seating. Still no net improvement and a massive power creep move too as ships like the Dhailkhina CSV are already doing 6 million DPS, add a MW and a 2nd intel seat on top of that and now we've got 7-8-9 million. Ships like the Europa will still underperform in comparison even with the addition of two more spec seats. No improvement to the game. 3. I completely agree on the boff thing though. I never liked boffs having special space traits, ground traits kinda make more sense but for example if an officer is better at targeting things (reflected by increased crit chance/severity), why limit that to only one or two races? There's no human or klingon officer who can aim a ship's weapons as well as a Romulan? Stupid. I think you are working from a weird point though, and that's the concept that any ship "underperforms." Even the worst crappiest ship in the game - shoot even the T5 Hirogen Hunter - is capable of over a million DPS or more, easily enough to clear even the most difficult content the game has to offer. People hate the Europa and I've even done over a million DPS in that. If you are chasing that last 1% of performance, no extra consoles or spec seats are going to let you fly your favorite Galaxy class to get there when the ships that do offer that last 1% would get the same buffs and simply be even better. However, if there was a metric to measure ships besides "how much dps does it do," like making the changes I mention in the video, then each ship would excel at a different category. Instead of everything only having a single category to measure performance like the game works right now.

[@lariandark]

@@bretsgamingchannel Hello,i get and agree to a lot of what you say. My point was to make it ,so any ships in the game fells good to pilot and can reach 70-80% of the best ones . The difference betwen a 1m europa and a 9m Dhailkhina is just too huge and most people don't have the gears / items to even make that 1m work. Most people don't do dps runs or pvp ,and for those they fell how mutch the worse ship underperform . And that mean you can do a fun build and contribute little to the team ... or do a meta build like everyone and not use 90% of the ships in game. It's the gap that bother me and honnestly any solution to that is fine to me . A valkis drift a whole 5km from full speed to stop even with rcs it's a inertia problem mostly . And yeah you can fly one but after using a odysee class .... it's like flying a brick and about as fun. In pve you can probably make any ship work kinda,but it's expensive we'r talking about the real life price of an used car.... And in pvp ,your choise of ships is even more limited ,making a valkis be usable and effective ? My main problem whith STO is i can't play the ship i like and use the bridge officer i want . If that make sense .

[@bretsgamingchannel]

@@lariandark Honestly I'd say the very worst ships in the game are within 10-15% of the best ones already, easily. The difference between a Dhailkhina and some other CSV build is the TEAM that supports it. Plus, outside of peak DPS chasing stuff, which is now at the point of essentially exploiting the game (using traits and buffs that stay after de-slotting them etc), the gap is even closer. On topic to this video, all of this would be solved if DPS wasn't the only thing that matters when measuring a ship. I don't have a Valkis, but I do have a Durgath and other large ships. You can stop the power sliding pretty easily by using competitve fortified engines, which grant +100 inertia for 5s every 10s. The secret is to never drop to zero throttle, ever. Drop to 1/4, then to zero if you want to stop. Power slide solved. RCS actually makes the powerslide effect worse, not better. It's still clunky to maneuver, but there's a certain piloting practice/skill involved with different ships and that's part of what differentiates them. If all big ships flew like Oddy's, and all small ships flew like Defiants, the game would be even more boring than it already is. As for the price of a used car thing, I guess it depends on where you live, but where I am I can't get a used car for $500. Granted, that's still an insane amount of money to spend on a video game, so I agree with the sentiment, just not the hyperbole. All of those nitpicks aside though, I agree with your core statements about wanting to fly the ship you want with the crew you want. When I was a kid I played the crap out of Star Trek Starship Creator for that very reason. Cheers

[@darthwingnut464]

You seem to despise the idea of the Random queue. Going from Normal to Advance to Elite may seem like a good steady progression with a set batch of fellow players (it won't be, your description still means the best strategy is just burn it out faster, lower HP at Elite levels means the enemies won't last long enough to make a lot of use of all the interesting abilities) but it means that to try to queue for random, first you are rolling the dice on whether your weapons will be at all effective due to random enemies, and you are also gambling that the other people in your PUG have any clue what they are doing...

[@bretsgamingchannel]

I wrote this video and recorded most of these clips before Random Elites were introduced, but I didn't want to waste my effort so I put it out anyway for discussion. Lower HP at elite levels -> yes, but remember I also specifically say that they should have passive skills including resistances. So they would have time to use additional abilities (they activate them all the second combat starts anyway), and one of the key additions is healing skills - so an enemy with say, 1 million hull might heal 200k hull every 30 seconds. So if you can kill it in that time frame, you only need to do 1 million damage, if it takes 2 minutes to kill it, you'll need to do 1.8 million damage (effective, after debuffs). The key to doing it right, and the reason I chose the values I did, is that even if you used say, Phaser, which Borg have 200 resist to (that's 61%), you can still accomplish the content, it would just be more difficult than using Antiproton (which is 0%). Drr debuffs continue to flatten the curve between weapons types. It would make different weapon types actually be worth running, instead of the current situation of "Does Phaser do the most DPS in all situations? Yes? Ok then run Phasers." As for pugs not knowing what they are doing, yes, that is a problem currently in Elites, and even Advanced but at least Advanced you can't fail. The key point to that is to introduce the abilities and resistances slowly, from normal->advanced->elite, so players LEARN by playing the game. Right now players learn more by reading a guide or watching a video, not by playing it. Cheers

[@darthwingnut464]

@@bretsgamingchannel thank you for understanding my intent was not to attack you, but instead to give criticism as I see it. I do think that an ineffective weapon set would make an Elite unwinnable, but I could be wrong.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

@@darthwingnut464 Hey, it's an opinion piece, I like that discussions are happening around it, and I don't think I'm necessarily 100% right on it and I welcome feedback. I'd have to try these ideas out and see it in practice to be sure - and just like you say, if a set of weapons is so ineffective that an Elite can't be won, that's a problem and I'd change it accordingly. What I'd really like is a private instance/server where I can make adjustments to the code. That way I could actually test what it would be like to fight a Borg Cube with 200 phaser resist. My closest experience is PvP, fighting players with 200+ resist, so that's where I do a lot of testing related to stuff like this.

[@Robotrik1]

I see that the PVP curve in Fantasy STO still only curves in one direction . 😉 How about an easier PVP ? Something that has a non-vape PVP experience for the normies ?

[@bretsgamingchannel]

The best solution to that problem is population. I do need to point out that my ideas in this video would ease the transition from elite to pvp, since players would have a better understanding of what it is like to get debuffed, or why they should use a certain ability and when, compared to current PvE which requires very little thought or timing. The issue is players, even with high level gear, come into PvP and don't understand what the orange icons on their buff bar are doing or how to fix them, let alone how to have enough base resist/healing to survive the hits even without the debuffs - something some more thought-provoking PvE content would help change.

[@Robotrik1]

@@bretsgamingchannel -- No offense my dude, but I see a disconnect between what you're saying and what PVP is in STO , and has been for a very very long time . Now I don't think that what you're saying is coming from a malicious position, and maybe I even understand the motivation (more people to play with & a certain frustration with folks who use ... certain items) . But, I've looked at some of the first match that your recent stream , and I saw speed tanking, 1 (likely 2) premade teams on voice chat , multiple subnukes on a single target, etc . . If you're honestly going to tell me that you see a PvE environment in "coffee break STO" (with it's 5-15 minutes STF's) -- that simulates anything near that level of play -- I'm going to disagree . The only challenging PvE game play this game ever offered were the first 3 Borg (2-3 hour long) STF's that pretty much existed in a game that offered the players sub-par gear for those missions -- in the hopes of offering better gear (the first space & ground sets) as RNG awards , while also leaving room for Cryptic to addin additional power creep without the need to tweak those STF's anytime soon . In other words the game started with an "end game" condition that forced players to build teams (besides not having an auto-match maker...) , teams that had to have a Sci with a specific kit if doing Cure , and other such pre-STF contemplations (a couple of Engineers were actually valuable as they could heal the smaller attack ships that got blown apart left and right in certain times -- while we all hid behind a certain shielded gate) -- these conditions don't exist anymore , and I don't think that they can be recreated in a time when Cryptic is just shoveling in the power creep, while a certain numbers chasing community has convinced the players that Tac's can do everything better and Eng's don't matter . #EngLivesMatter But back to the video , I support your idea of giving more buffs and abilities to NPC's regardless of PvP. Making opponents classes / fractions vulnerable to certain weapon types I support less , as knowing this player base, we'd just end up with a bunch of skittle builds & lazy boats . Putting more swag & awards on Normal won't fly , as it'll be misused by both players and bots (Normal is so easy I'm pretty sure it could be botted by the enterprising Gold sellers) . My own pipe dream for PvP still has minimalistic premade ships that are actually balanced . You know, that fun that still can be had in STO PVP with new Lt.Com - Captain toons (with just 5-7 Boff abilities) that are just made for PVP and then deleted , using the basics only . Because the underlying code underneath all (most) of the power creep & broken garbage (not counting Endeavors...) still allows for a good time in PVP for both newbies and vets (some vets anyway -- those who are not entrapped in power) . And "entrapment" is a real thing in STO . I still feel naked without 2-3 heals, and I haven't played PvP in years . In a way, the UnCon Trait broke me out of it, but it was very uncomfortable . Still is sometimes . The opposite entrapment is in the deeps numbers camp, where to get to the chance of going where they want to go, some enter Elite STF's with fingers crossed and without a single heal . I guess what I wanted to say here is that I understand being used to playing something in a certain kind of way -- and I understand that it would be difficult for some of the experienced PvP players to "go back" to only 5-7 abilities . Anyway, I'm rambling now so I'll stop . 😀

[@bretsgamingchannel]

@@Robotrik1 Great read, and I really appreciate this kind of feedback. This video was strictly an opinion piece (I know it's never going to happen) so it's cool to get that insight, and I really liked being reminded of the ancient days of STO. I was around then but playing *very* casually, I barely understood what was going on and needed a lot of help - it was my first MMO so I wasn't even used to hotkey/tray combat, that was totally new to me, and "shooter mode" didn't even exist back then - and kits were not customizable, you had a whole frame with your abilities on it, which honestly was restrictive but helped balance. It also reminded me of when ships had their specific console locked - if you were flying a certain ship to use its console, you had to work around its weaknesses, instead of right now where any ship can do almost anything. Some pros and cons to both concepts of course. Minimalistic pvp would be great honestly, as an optional mode. We hosted an event once where we worked through each ship tier, T1 up to T4, and made a number of rules around it to make sure it stayed balanced and it was a ton of fun, but the reality was that by the time we got to T4, the same people who were veterans of T6 PvP were the only ones still interested. It would've been nice to have more official support, it was difficult to wrangle 20+ players into a voice channel and go through all of their builds to make sure no one was cheating (intentionally or otherwise), and things as innocuous as Strategist Specialization were one-shotting players (the 10k electrical damage thing, which most people probably forget even exists!). I'd rather keep current T6 pvp intact and add in lower tier modes, or have a separate queue with only preset ships, but none of those should replace the current custom-build pvp mode. One comment on the stream video, that isn't representative of public pvp and I'd never expect that coordination from a public team. It was 6 of my fleetmates, all of them at the high end of the game, we all know and play together often, and it was private matches only (not public arena queue). I guess I'm trying to draw a line from that high end, coordinated gameplay, down to the public solo/duo queues (if you watch those videos on this channel, of which I've uploaded many, much less coordinated, but skill level is still high and people loosely communicate in-game chat), then continue that line into Elite TFOs. The same type of coordination you see in those premade pvp matches is very similar to premade DPS runs. Same kind of thing - private instance, all on voice chat, plan ahead, calling for certain buff timing, team batteries, flight paths, cleanup. The main difference is DPS is a static run, we attempt the same run 50 times and it gets easier and easier. The same is true of PvP but probably less than 1% of the player population has played 50 pvp matches. Cheers

[@Club_of_Gamers]

They better dont touch anything just fix current bugs becouse game is going to be more broken. Cryptic squad is incompetent, and development resources are being thrown on voice over from ST series instead of actual content and changes

[@detpackman]

STO has needed Diminishing returns to get rid of the overpriced Power creep since before Delta rising , the DPS race has just increase TEN fold , if your ever in a TFO where someone just NUKES everything in seconds thats the games real issue and has been for YEARS . even DPS parsing can be skewed based on where your are compared to others what enemies are , but in the end its pushed the game into a DPS race aside for anything else very little reason for control or tanking builds anymore just get your build to do the max amount of pews damage and thats it . with a high enough DPS you dont need anything else for any of the content even elites thats the games sad state

[@gabrielcruz4071]

Given how expensive everything is, and the lack of information in official channels as far as builds go, I think asking people to have a variety of builds and loadouts on every toon they want to run randoms with is way too much. Most of the player base has trouble enough putting one functioning build together, let alone a PvP-style build optimized and tailored to a specific TFO, for each and every TFO. Loadouts aren't stable enough to reliably enter a TFO and switch them without risking a partial or near complete wipe of traits and bars. Many of the TFOs don't even allow one to switch boats. I think what your asking for sounds like a fun game, but not THIS game. I think PvP could be made more popular with incentives, like gear that can only be found at vendors who take a PvP specific currency, which can be earned by participation in strings of matches, with higher rewards for people who win, but guaranteed rewards for people grinding it to gear up. ESO's PvP is wildly popular with players because they do it this way. and the fact that the gear is unbound opens up income streams for people who grind it and a few ways for people to kit out alts.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

That’s true, but people already run a variety of different builds on different toons - and only elite difficulty would really "require" it. The anything-goes nature of normal stays the same which covers most players, and builds feel more situational in advanced in a good way for players interested in that. But to use my example, if you took your phaser build into a borg tfo on advanced, you’d still be able to complete it no problem, it just wouldn’t feel as powerful as your antiproton build and so on. So you’re random normal and random advanced TFO’s are still going to be winnable for 98% of players who queue them (most of them at the time of writing don’t even have failure conditions anyway, besides getting soft locked but that’s a risk even now, say if you got 5 players under 5k dps in Procyon V or something). Values can be adjusted, but 100 phaser resist is only 48%, heavily flattened by drr debuff, even just a little like a single APB1 takes it to a mere 32%. I didn’t show in the video but I actually did quite a bit of testing on the numbers I showed, it’s a ballpark but based on average dps and average debuff across many ISA runs I don’t think anyone would struggle to complete advanced after my proposed changes. Also note that the changes are part of a whole system - lower HP and fewer enemy ships - so roughly the same performing builds right now still work. Players with multiple captains or ship builds would *like* this from a Trek perspective, i.e. "my captain flies an Akira and is really strong against borg" instead of the current "my captain flies whatever and is equally strong against everything." Only elite would actually require loadouts/prep, granted this all made a lot more sense when I originally started working on it and random elite tfos didn’t exist yet.

[@KakavashaForever]

Never gonna happen. STO stopped being developed like a game years ago. Its a cash shop with some game-like elements attached now to justify selling ships.

[@littletee8849]

Man... Like... Imagine being new...

[@bretsgamingchannel]

New players aren't playing level 65 Advanced and Elite TFO's. If these mechanics were slowly introduced throughout the leveling process they'd be fine.

[@littletee8849]

@@bretsgamingchannel Yea. I agree with most of your revamp ideas, and all of your sentiment. I used to complain about the narrow focus of the PvE side of the game at higher difficulties. I stopped bexause of a wall of 'I spent all this time and effort on my build...' As if I didn't spend any time on my dedicated healer, drainer, control, or other type of build. So when I saw that the devs were only apparently listening to one particular crowd, I gave up.

[@STNeish]

The problem I see is that Elite players doing 11 billion dps are NOT doing elite content. They go into the normal TFs and obliterate everything instantly, ruining it for everyone else. This means that making it HARDER at normal level is only going to prevent normal level players playing AT ALL. As it is, even on normal, my ships really can't kill Tzenkethi ships. My science ship spent an HOUR trying to kill one Tzenkethi cruiser. It couldn't kill me, but I couldn't kill it.

[@bretsgamingchannel]

I took great care to preserve the current difficulty at normal level if you watch again, I specifically talk about this and show it on the spreadsheet. Let me get this straight though - a Tzenkethi Cruiser on normal in the bz has 88,925 hp and an average of 20k shields per facing. Let's call it 160k total damage required to kill if you also took down every shield facing instead of just shooting through one side and killing it that way. There are 3600 seconds in an hour. So your science ship does an average of 44.4 dps. I suspect your comment is not really in good faith based on the videos on your channel (which show a build much better than 44 dps). I can go AFK and the passive reflect from Strategist spec does more damage than 44 dps, your photonic fleet does more than 44 dps, I think a brand new account's T1 ship does more than 44 dps, etc Many high level dps players do not do random tfo's at all, and definitely not Normal TFO's - why would they? I can run an ISE in roughly the same amount of time as ISN, and I get quadruple the rewards. I understand you may want to do some Star Trek RP and I'm all for it, that's what I'd like to happen with these changes. There are private TFO's or episodes if you want the single player experience, and the different factions would have skills/resistances appropriate to their lore.

[@JotaSilvaPT]

how bad can you actually be to not kill a tzenkthi ship that literaly on normal any decent player normaly one shots it... like literaly even on a sci ship with one overload or 1 torp spread you kill it...

[@STNeish]

@@bretsgamingchannelYep, I saw that. I'm really just kind of reiterating what you said. The base, normal difficulty can't be allowed to get more difficult. I also agree that difficulty should come from more than just giving enemies more health and/or damage. Make them more interesting! As for my own dps, the videos I posted are a bit older, and my woes against that Tzenkethi ship I mentioned were older than that (before I had access to specializations). The problem was that my weapons were doing next to no damage (1-3 points of damage most of the time, rather less than they USUALLY do). I suspect it's something to do with that particular TF mission (the gravity well one, I don't recall what it's called. In any case, I do appreciate what you suggested in the video.