Frankly, this is a personal curiosity poll but since the topic is seen frequently debated/mentioned/crying for the nerf gun I figured I'd create a poll to get the opinions of STOA website users. Quite simply, I'd like to know your thoughts on power creep in this game.
I had my own personal 'dilemma' if you will with this issue when I recently picked up a lockbox ship as a reward and swapped out for a Galor. I loved the look of the ship without ever having owned one, on paper it made for a good read but so many people told me not to get one (even for Spiral Waves), that the game had moved on from when it was released which was before I even started playing sto and the ship wasn't really relevant (the latter most argument apparently justified by a lack of Galors flying around in space today). I took the gamble and frankly its the best cruiser I own and has somewhat turned my opinion on what constitutes power creep in this game.
Looking forward to some thoughts on this!
C
Edit: this relates to all kinds of creep be it ship design, general gameplay, if you feel there is a 'Pay to win' attitude moreso than before...
Frankly, I believe a lot of people say that ships are no longer good just because they aren't the "flavor of the week" anymore. Yes when the Galor came out, everyone wanted one. When the Odyssey came out, everyone wanted one. When the D'Kora came out, everyone wanted one. You saw hundreds of those ships flying around, until the next flavor was released.
The fact of the matter is, all the tier 5 ships are pretty good. A lot of them depends on how you use it. If there is creeping, it's very little. A lot of the ships before the Odyssey was released didn't have set bonuses. Now the new ships do. Cryptic is planning on fixing this a little at a time.
A big issue, although I don't think this constitutes as a creep, would be players focusing more on DPS than on other roles (tank and healer being the big ones). It could be because people don't know how to survive so they decide to take the enemy out quicker. It could be an unbalance with the game. I'm really not sure.
Cryptic seem to be very good at not making old stuff obsolete. I'm running a normal negvar with some below average gear and I tank with no problem. I'd maybe be low down in the dps ranking, but at least donatra is only shooting at me for the whole time.
But I think cryptic are also great at making the new stuff seem awesome. So people drop their ships and get the new toy. Then couple that with a general dps obsession at the moment - which was the last non-rommie ship that was really a cruiser or pure sci ship? How many can't take cannons?
And what is also cool is that you can play in anything when it works. There are so many wrong answers, and so many right ones!
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They have a monetary incentive to make sure all the new cool shiny things are incredibly appealing to buy.
High DPS are for the litlle boys so that they could feal great.
But you also also player with "garbarge" equipment in Elite STF like Hive - you wil ask why because they could do and to hopefully leech some XII.
It's an old miracle (I'm online since 2005 and bevor wow was released)
Everybody wants a healer, tank oder debuffer in the end game but nobody wants to raise one because the are boring and make no damage
I still haven't seen a large amount of power creep everyone keeps talking about. But I mostly fly my Oddy on my main tac.
I've noticed some power creep, but it's been my experience that every MMO suffers from this to a degree and that cryptic has handled it better than most.
In regards to the discussion of team roles in STO, I think most people focus on DPS for two reasons, first and foremost because it seems the only relevant path in the late game and secondly because it's fun. Unlike most MMO's I've played where a tank is a necessity and a good healer is priceless in STO they get no love at all. I played as a tank for most of my time since season 1 and I felt increasingly irrelevant, when dps based builds are doing ten times as much damage than the tank they tend to kill the enemy before they're seriously threatened by enemy counterfire, it's also difficult to hold enemy aggro to the tank in those circumstances even with buffs and consoles to draw aggro. It's possible, but difficult, and seemingly unnecessary.
It would be nice if combat in STO were better balanced regarding these traditional roles, but until they are I suspect the trend of almost every late game player chasing dps will persist.
I have not played any end game stuff other than Red Alerts, but I was not even aware that there were tanking/healing roles! Which is a shame and a bit worrisome maybe some players do not choose these roles as they are naturally funnelled to dps builds. On other games I play Tank and Healing are essential (tanks are always boring) healing so long as it has good attack abilities as well tend to be fun.
I think you nailed it exactly, in STO thus far DPS is everything, tanks and healers are never invited to the fun parties and spend their Saturday nights at home watching Netflix and such. I live in hope however that eventually the dev's will skew the combat system in such a way as to make the other roles more relevant.
They would have to do two things....no three things...
1. Make tactical and some science focus on a ship result in no real way to take damage. Melt stuff fast, but get hit and BOOM...dead.
2. Make Engineering and some science focus on a ship result in no real way to create damage. Tank all day long and take longer to kill most anything.
3. Break up the Tactical/Engeering/Science classes so they have less overlap...so an Engineer with tanking abilities isn't loading up an Escort and negating steps 1 and 2.
The problem is....good luck with all that...it would take a major redo of the game to make that happen. As is, just grab on to the DPS and run with it. Acknowledge the small differences in the classes as being essentially relevant to the ground combat.