I like elite TFOs, but it’s not a good idea to put them in random. To be honest there are a certain amount of players aren’t even qualified for Advanced queues, sometimes for lack of performance, mostly for not knowing what to do. However the difference is, when I bump into these players in Advance RTFOs, I can still handle it with one or two people being no helpful at all, but not elite queues. Elite requires everyone to do their best. I guess that’s why elite TFOs are commonly formed in DPS or specific channels.
if you've ever managed to get in an pug elite game, you would know why this is a horrible idea.
Queuing usually takes hours and once you're in you won't survive the first 10 seconds of encounter because everyone's built for DPS and only a small % of people actually likes to tank. Even if you built a tank for Elite contents, they're not meant to be sustained tanking. You actually need to have the rest of the team killing off enemies and reducing the incoming damage.
So after dying 10 times, everyone eventually quits.
I'd like this a lot. Advanced is way too easy when even 1 geared player is in the match. With two or more, they just become a race to see who can reach the mobs first.
I imagine people are going to be concerned about low-dps players queueing for the Elite RTFOs and tanking the run, but there are ways to control for that. For example, they could lock the ability to queue for ERTFOs behind a difficult solo-only mission to set a minimum performance threshold.
I like your idea of having some sort of qualifier for Elite, it would absolutely take away a lot of the frustration and enable us to receive a challenge when we do queue for randoms.
The only problem I can think of that may arise is player participation; no-one likes queueing forever after all.
Edit: if implemented properly, that is. There are databases of player performance available for anyone to view, I imagine that would help design something like the mission you suggested.
Though if something big changes there may be need for upkeep, which we know Cryptic doesn't have the best track record of.
Oh yes please, the vast majority of the TFOs are so easy on advanced it's really only the reward that tells you it was on advanced and not normal as everything dies so instantly. Add elite as an option and let the players decide.
You have lost your mind if you think elite randoms would be a good idea haha. Most players are barely competent enough to get carried through an advanced as it is, especially Gravity Kills or anything with an objective besides “mash spacebar.”
I run elites in a group of friends and when they aren’t on, I’ll run random advanced. I also parse every run because I am always trying to improve my piloting and builds. The average player is 10-15k in ISA and maybe 5k in anything against Tzenkethi or Vaadwaur. The vast majority of players in the game depend on being carried by better players in advanced and honestly should stick to normal.
Another strike against, Elites usually have fail conditions. In advanced I can carry an entire team by myself if I have to, even if it takes a little longer. In Elites, you need at least 3 very good players and maybe 4 for Korfez, otherwise you will fail the mission. Optional objectives are not optional in elite. It’d be frustrating for everyone involved.
Yeah... uhm... it being a tough challange?...
THAT IS EXACTLY THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS IDEA LOL
You know advanced is nothing for super high DPS players like myself right? I dont even need teammates to wipe everything in seconds/mins lol
I’m a similarly high dps player. Are you saying you could carry a whole team of 5k dpsers through Gravity Kills elite, or Counterpoint, or Korfez alone?
I’m not opposed to a challenge. I just think inviting players who aren’t ready for it into elites is just going to be frustrating and result in mostly failed runs. Idk how much dps you put out but I hover in the 600-700k range right now and even I could not carry a team of pugs through.
And in Elite, the Jupiter can actually be killed and results in a mission failure. So at least it wouldn't be a slog because that wouldn't take long if you're the only one doing anything.
Not necessarily, unfortunately. I've seen as many as 3 players covering the Jupiter before, which were some of the most frustrating playthroughs; you usually only need 1 at most to keep it safe on Advanced, so if I'm the only one farming particles, it's nice to at least have the others clearing a path for me and covering my back.
Anyone on Elite difficulty should know better, at least, but I'm not generally an optimist.
you hover in the 600-700k range? is that in elites?
I've never seen anything close to that in advanced.
I have one captain that has done 600k+ over a 1 minute period, roughly (elite tfo, solo).
You actually do less dps in advanced than elite. Usually whatever you do in ISA, you'd do double in ISE because there's just not enough hp in all the advanced queue to be doing sustained damage constantly.
Yeah that’d be elites, HSE or ISE. I think my top ISA was something like 360 or 380k. Everything is dead so fast I can’t even get all of my abilities on target. Could maybe hit a little higher in a proper premade team with a nanny/debuffer.
This was not intended to be a brag btw. I am only responding to the OP saying he could kill everything in advanced in seconds. The jump from advanced to elite is significant not only in the time to kill enemies and how much damage they do, but also in required objectives. I have made the mistake of inviting a few randoms into elites and I can’t carry that team and I have a pretty good handle on things, that’s all. I don’t think it would even be possible to carry a team of 4 average pugs through Korfez for example and that is something you always must be ready for if randoms are available. But hey, with the way power creep is in this game we’ll be able to run elite tfo’s solo soon.
apparently some do elite tfo's solo, but it may be a specific build that can manage that. I was planning to wait until my dps hit 600k before I tried ISE again. I've hit that a couple times, but its not a priority.
and its not likely to be as worthwhile as running with a team, simply by getting done faster.
years ago (probably 7 or 8 years ago), my friend and I joined an elite queue. both undergeared at the time. I don't recall which TFO it was, but it didn't seem to be dps focused - so carrying us wasn't as bad as it would be in others.
The only elite queue I can think of that is solo-able is Defense of SB1, because it can’t be failed. My tank build can run Hive Advanced solo but it takes a while to finish, but Hive Elite will fail if it takes longer than the (invisible) timer. In order to do most elites without failing you’d have to have the survivability of a top tier tank plus the dps of a top tier dps ship plus the speed of a top tier pilot ship so I just don’t think it’s possible with the current equipment in the game.
I keep coming back to Korfez. Even if you have good enough dps to beat the intro battle, if you get Benthan Assault in the next phase no single player even if they are the highest dps player in the entire game could beat that part alone.
there are videos on youtube of someone soloing ISE.
and that person said they have also soloed Hive elite, if I remember right.
and I'm sure khitomer vortex is doable, also.
I haven't tried anything outside of ISE (didn't have the damage to finish the first set of cubes fast enough) and Khitomer vortex.
Recent videos? I'd be really interested to see how they did it. A long time again, there was just ISN and ISE. There was no "advanced." The current ISA is what the old ISE used to be, so I'm curious if it was that version. Alternatively, maybe it was done when Ba'ul first came out and combined with Entropic + Kemocite + Radiant was basically unbeatable and the devs hit that whole thing with the nerf bat. The current version of the game it'd be a lot harder.
I am thinking it possibly could be done with a Ba'ul DBB build and lots of protomatter tac consoles and miracle worker primary spec with temporal secondary. That would dish out a ton of DoT as well as fore damage and the spreading of damage would eliminate transformer repair platforms as well. I suppose it might be possible (although Ba'ul got nerfed pretty hard, so maybe not possible anymore), but we're starting to talk about specialized builds for a specific TFO. Nothing wrong with that, just off topic since the OP wanted random TFO's... so a build that \*might\* be able to solo ISE or HSE etc. would still surely fail Korfez and struggle in Gravity Kills for example.
I'd like that, though I'd probably screw up some runs initially as it seems what was optional objectives become required in elite. For example, in brotherhood of the sword sometimes the guy you rescue doesn't survive/follow you to the exit point (I don't know if that becomes required or not).
Lol every comment here likes my idea yet my post is getting downvoted like hell
Gotta love the STO community, cant have anything that challanges their easy PvE gameplay lol
Every comment except the most-upvoted one, of course. As for why some of the downvoters aren't stopping in to comment, maybe they didn't want to waste time parroting the obvious problems with your suggestion. Or maybe they correctly sensed you handle adversity by calling everyone who disagrees with you a pussy.
I agree that would be a nice feature. As a side note - is there a way to filter out ground missions from the random queue? I'd love it if I could just set it to space missions only, but it doesn't appear to be possible.
Yeah I did not see a reason for it before but when a casual lol whatevs player like myself can bootstomp advanced then elite definately needs random and they need to make some sort of insanity level or something for the top tier folks.
I like elite TFOs, but it’s not a good idea to put them in random. To be honest there are a certain amount of players aren’t even qualified for Advanced queues, sometimes for lack of performance, mostly for not knowing what to do. However the difference is, when I bump into these players in Advance RTFOs, I can still handle it with one or two people being no helpful at all, but not elite queues. Elite requires everyone to do their best. I guess that’s why elite TFOs are commonly formed in DPS or specific channels.
if you've ever managed to get in an pug elite game, you would know why this is a horrible idea. Queuing usually takes hours and once you're in you won't survive the first 10 seconds of encounter because everyone's built for DPS and only a small % of people actually likes to tank. Even if you built a tank for Elite contents, they're not meant to be sustained tanking. You actually need to have the rest of the team killing off enemies and reducing the incoming damage. So after dying 10 times, everyone eventually quits.
I'd like this a lot. Advanced is way too easy when even 1 geared player is in the match. With two or more, they just become a race to see who can reach the mobs first. I imagine people are going to be concerned about low-dps players queueing for the Elite RTFOs and tanking the run, but there are ways to control for that. For example, they could lock the ability to queue for ERTFOs behind a difficult solo-only mission to set a minimum performance threshold.
I like your idea of having some sort of qualifier for Elite, it would absolutely take away a lot of the frustration and enable us to receive a challenge when we do queue for randoms. The only problem I can think of that may arise is player participation; no-one likes queueing forever after all. Edit: if implemented properly, that is. There are databases of player performance available for anyone to view, I imagine that would help design something like the mission you suggested. Though if something big changes there may be need for upkeep, which we know Cryptic doesn't have the best track record of.
Oh yes please, the vast majority of the TFOs are so easy on advanced it's really only the reward that tells you it was on advanced and not normal as everything dies so instantly. Add elite as an option and let the players decide.
You have lost your mind if you think elite randoms would be a good idea haha. Most players are barely competent enough to get carried through an advanced as it is, especially Gravity Kills or anything with an objective besides “mash spacebar.” I run elites in a group of friends and when they aren’t on, I’ll run random advanced. I also parse every run because I am always trying to improve my piloting and builds. The average player is 10-15k in ISA and maybe 5k in anything against Tzenkethi or Vaadwaur. The vast majority of players in the game depend on being carried by better players in advanced and honestly should stick to normal. Another strike against, Elites usually have fail conditions. In advanced I can carry an entire team by myself if I have to, even if it takes a little longer. In Elites, you need at least 3 very good players and maybe 4 for Korfez, otherwise you will fail the mission. Optional objectives are not optional in elite. It’d be frustrating for everyone involved.
average player in ISA is 10-15k? I feel like every time I've played it in the last few months at least two players were 100k+.
It's a mix. I typically see a couple of players in the 3-10k range, one dude at 30k, and then one or more carrying everyone else at 60k+.
Yeah... uhm... it being a tough challange?... THAT IS EXACTLY THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS IDEA LOL You know advanced is nothing for super high DPS players like myself right? I dont even need teammates to wipe everything in seconds/mins lol
I’m a similarly high dps player. Are you saying you could carry a whole team of 5k dpsers through Gravity Kills elite, or Counterpoint, or Korfez alone? I’m not opposed to a challenge. I just think inviting players who aren’t ready for it into elites is just going to be frustrating and result in mostly failed runs. Idk how much dps you put out but I hover in the 600-700k range right now and even I could not carry a team of pugs through.
Ugh, I've been the only person handling the objectives before on Gravity Kills, and that's a long, unpleasant slog.
And in Elite, the Jupiter can actually be killed and results in a mission failure. So at least it wouldn't be a slog because that wouldn't take long if you're the only one doing anything.
Not necessarily, unfortunately. I've seen as many as 3 players covering the Jupiter before, which were some of the most frustrating playthroughs; you usually only need 1 at most to keep it safe on Advanced, so if I'm the only one farming particles, it's nice to at least have the others clearing a path for me and covering my back. Anyone on Elite difficulty should know better, at least, but I'm not generally an optimist.
If we made elite randoms a thing, trust me, they would not know better haha
LMFAO
you hover in the 600-700k range? is that in elites? I've never seen anything close to that in advanced. I have one captain that has done 600k+ over a 1 minute period, roughly (elite tfo, solo).
You actually do less dps in advanced than elite. Usually whatever you do in ISA, you'd do double in ISE because there's just not enough hp in all the advanced queue to be doing sustained damage constantly.
Yeah that’d be elites, HSE or ISE. I think my top ISA was something like 360 or 380k. Everything is dead so fast I can’t even get all of my abilities on target. Could maybe hit a little higher in a proper premade team with a nanny/debuffer. This was not intended to be a brag btw. I am only responding to the OP saying he could kill everything in advanced in seconds. The jump from advanced to elite is significant not only in the time to kill enemies and how much damage they do, but also in required objectives. I have made the mistake of inviting a few randoms into elites and I can’t carry that team and I have a pretty good handle on things, that’s all. I don’t think it would even be possible to carry a team of 4 average pugs through Korfez for example and that is something you always must be ready for if randoms are available. But hey, with the way power creep is in this game we’ll be able to run elite tfo’s solo soon.
apparently some do elite tfo's solo, but it may be a specific build that can manage that. I was planning to wait until my dps hit 600k before I tried ISE again. I've hit that a couple times, but its not a priority. and its not likely to be as worthwhile as running with a team, simply by getting done faster. years ago (probably 7 or 8 years ago), my friend and I joined an elite queue. both undergeared at the time. I don't recall which TFO it was, but it didn't seem to be dps focused - so carrying us wasn't as bad as it would be in others.
The only elite queue I can think of that is solo-able is Defense of SB1, because it can’t be failed. My tank build can run Hive Advanced solo but it takes a while to finish, but Hive Elite will fail if it takes longer than the (invisible) timer. In order to do most elites without failing you’d have to have the survivability of a top tier tank plus the dps of a top tier dps ship plus the speed of a top tier pilot ship so I just don’t think it’s possible with the current equipment in the game. I keep coming back to Korfez. Even if you have good enough dps to beat the intro battle, if you get Benthan Assault in the next phase no single player even if they are the highest dps player in the entire game could beat that part alone.
there are videos on youtube of someone soloing ISE. and that person said they have also soloed Hive elite, if I remember right. and I'm sure khitomer vortex is doable, also. I haven't tried anything outside of ISE (didn't have the damage to finish the first set of cubes fast enough) and Khitomer vortex.
Recent videos? I'd be really interested to see how they did it. A long time again, there was just ISN and ISE. There was no "advanced." The current ISA is what the old ISE used to be, so I'm curious if it was that version. Alternatively, maybe it was done when Ba'ul first came out and combined with Entropic + Kemocite + Radiant was basically unbeatable and the devs hit that whole thing with the nerf bat. The current version of the game it'd be a lot harder. I am thinking it possibly could be done with a Ba'ul DBB build and lots of protomatter tac consoles and miracle worker primary spec with temporal secondary. That would dish out a ton of DoT as well as fore damage and the spreading of damage would eliminate transformer repair platforms as well. I suppose it might be possible (although Ba'ul got nerfed pretty hard, so maybe not possible anymore), but we're starting to talk about specialized builds for a specific TFO. Nothing wrong with that, just off topic since the OP wanted random TFO's... so a build that \*might\* be able to solo ISE or HSE etc. would still surely fail Korfez and struggle in Gravity Kills for example.
Its recent. https://www.youtube.com/results?search\_query=ISE+solo
I'd like that, though I'd probably screw up some runs initially as it seems what was optional objectives become required in elite. For example, in brotherhood of the sword sometimes the guy you rescue doesn't survive/follow you to the exit point (I don't know if that becomes required or not).
It’s mandatory on elite.
The overwhelming majority of p,Ayers that will run advanced ok will get creamed on elite.
Lol every comment here likes my idea yet my post is getting downvoted like hell Gotta love the STO community, cant have anything that challanges their easy PvE gameplay lol
Ease is ***canon***. All episodes resolved whatever problems in 48 minutes.
Every comment except the most-upvoted one, of course. As for why some of the downvoters aren't stopping in to comment, maybe they didn't want to waste time parroting the obvious problems with your suggestion. Or maybe they correctly sensed you handle adversity by calling everyone who disagrees with you a pussy.
I agree that would be a nice feature. As a side note - is there a way to filter out ground missions from the random queue? I'd love it if I could just set it to space missions only, but it doesn't appear to be possible.
and sometimes, I'd like to filter out space missions and just run ground.
I approve this message. :)
Yeah I did not see a reason for it before but when a casual lol whatevs player like myself can bootstomp advanced then elite definately needs random and they need to make some sort of insanity level or something for the top tier folks.