Options
About Hull Damage Reduction being nerfed despite community warnings against it
<TGE> Darxide
✭✭✭✭
in The Bridge
Large segments of the community built around it due to the low barrier of entry. DB responded over the years that they wouldn't do anything to change how the ability functioned which was more than enough confirmation that it was working as intended. Then along came WRG. We warned WRG against nerfing this ability after the announcement months ago. The 9.2 update notes curiously failed to mention it ahead of time, most likely to avoid backlash and shoehorn it in and then ignore protestations after the fact because "what's done is done." That's a very political move, even if not a diplomatic one.
Down to the meat of the issue, this short-sighted bullrush into attempting to squeeze more nickels out of the community has nerfed the damage the vast majority of players are able to do to FBB by two-thirds, if not three-quarters. This is not the casual decision WRG is trying to pretend that it is and must come with some form of compensation in terms of reduced boss health or damage output, or more likely both.
Down to the meat of the issue, this short-sighted bullrush into attempting to squeeze more nickels out of the community has nerfed the damage the vast majority of players are able to do to FBB by two-thirds, if not three-quarters. This is not the casual decision WRG is trying to pretend that it is and must come with some form of compensation in terms of reduced boss health or damage output, or more likely both.
3
Comments
I wish they would focus on more urging long time bugs.
This is it exactly. DB knew of the "issue" with this skill for years. Brought to their attention many times and they explicitly said they didn't plan to do anything about it. Just means they were fine with it, so it moved from not working as intended to working as intended in that moment. They don't have to come out and say that it's working the way they want it to or not. If they know of the issue and decline to do anything about it, that immediately validates it. Now that WRG is at the helm, it's been one fiasco after the next driving things towards squeezing out more nickels without providing much in terms of improved player experience.
*edit* I had a strong def buff of 31% in tier, that kept me alive I think. the HR crew are not nerfed, but the 40% HR is. It is straight damage now, not a percent of percent like it was.
Just in time for an oe with arena battles.
That's because you are bridge level 20. A lot of ships work on that level, including Constellation and even Borg Cube But nobody is bridge level 20 in my fleet. We're mostly bridge level 15 and I only managed to get 10M with the ISS before getting killed. Before 9.2.0 you were able to survive the whole run with ISS Enterprise even with bridge level 9. So this patch is widening the gap between those who are bridge level 20 and those who aren't.
True on bridge level 20. And when you are bridge level 20 you also have the Constellation maximized. What about those who have neither?
I'm bridge level 15 with a 9/10 Constellation. I do about 9M damage with the Constellation while it was 20M with ISS Enterprise before 9.2.0.
What you need is a big hull to survive with 3 HRs. From bigbook.app, top hull ships at 10/10.
With Bridge level 20 you can use the Borg Cube, but with the nerfed ISS it got a lot harder to reach level 20...
And then, after everyone invested in the HDR strategy they pull a complete 180 and announce HDR is being nerfed, and all I have to say is this is a CLEAR example of Bait-and-Switch, and a quick perusal of the term places it firmly in the realm of fraud.
It is irrelevant how HDR was intended to work when it was first introduced, the players identified early on the discrepancy and at EVERY opportunity the company either ignored the issue or through their actions gave their blessing. At that point it is a settled issue and any changes made after that point to weaken the ability after they benefited financially is fraud. Period.
Do you know what makes Voyages great? Progression, getting a little further every week, month, year. Other mechanics should be like that, not just piñata's that spill progress because everyone already has the key to it.
And giving out about haves and have nots in a fundamentally pay to win game is delusional. If you aren't already on level 20 you were already a have not. Loads of fleets are doing Ultra-Nightmare regularly. All that FBB did was redefine what have not was, in this case you have to have a good fleet, no more just hanging with your friends. That's where FBB was broken right at the beginning.
The problem with FBB isn't that there was a cookie cutter strategy to fight it, it's that there was no way to progress without it. I don't know if adding more Biltrium 1 to the lower tiers of loot is going to help, but that is what they need to improve. They should also remove the possibility of the boss fight ending before the first tier of rewards, that guarantees progression, it's just how fast you can do it that matters.
Then all they have to do is ignore it as a mechanic like Gauntlet and the gap between haves and have nots will disappear in time.
FBB as it stands is fundamentally a boring mechanic that destroys casual fleets. Fix that or none of this moaning matters one bit.
Winning with an HDR ship was 3 minutes of grinding tedium. Its hardly an 'I win' button. Using an Artifact is 'I win' button.
I don't mind they fixed the bug but the game needs a way to obtain additional schematics so people can get a variety of ships.
In the meantime I would also buff the Roddenberry's health to about 800K. You pretty much gave away a 10/10 to everyone at time of release and it will be an OK starter ship for FBB at that health level.
The problem is that thise schematics are so hard to find. In the past year or so, I can only recall getting Artifact schematics once in a premium pull. I've needed just over 100 to get to level 10 since the last time the Artifact was the reward in the arena.
I'm not saying that they are intentionally limiting how likely the Artifact schematics are. But if they *were* trying to limit it, I can't see how it would be much different.
But the reality is that this new Boss Battles feature was never intended to have players surviving for the full three minutes and scoring 20 to 30 million points at a time. I believe they intended to have people last long enough that the players with the best crews would get maybe 10 million each time and buy more tickets to get the best rewards.
Personally, I spent the first few months working hard for the best crew possible and carefully using crew retrieval. Since then, I just hit a couple buttons every few hours and set my phone down while I collect 20 million points for my fleet. Then I collect my winnings three times every two days.
I understand why they don't want to give out the best ship schematics. But at some point the players will assume it is hopeless and stop trying.
The extra Constellations will help some people but it’s mostly just a way to dump a bunch of Bridge materials into people’s laps. And 5000 merits. I’m doing it for the latter.
Artifact was an arena award shortly after FBB was released. So it’s unlikely they were trying to limit it. I didn’t max out on rewards but I probably got about 3000 schematics and got me to L9. I got L10 shortly thereafter from free premium pulls.
I think I tried one out at L7 but didn’t really go back to it till I hit L9 and it became my default lazy ship. With Scotty and 3x25% repair it would reliably score close to 20M damage even then.
I think I've gotten artifact schematics to drop once since FBB launched. I don't think they intentionally limited it. But just another case of RNG gating everything causes problems for gameplay.
But some schematics got really hard to get after Admiral's Division got a very long time only the oldest. And now, out of a sudden, we get a brand-new Bozeman.
It would help if dabo had ever been updated with schematics since they were first added. Dabo gets crew before they even appear in events. But is still limited to ships from 2017.
If so, I'm glad it's been fixed (I still use Proton in FBB myself though)!
Yep, I've finished half the OE and completed Bridge Level 9 today. I've previously timed out the boss before. I made ~9m and 9.6m in two damage runs today. I was hoping that this OE would help the rest of my Fleet buff their Bridges enough that we could really make a dent in Nightmare (we've never made 75%- best is 66%) or even beat it finally. If I, as a long term player and one of the top damage dealers for us, am seeing this sort of reduction, the rest of my Fleet is really going to hurt. I can only pray this gets rerun from time to time. My Fleet needs Bitrium II to get Bitrium II.🙀
I'm now using Proton Rocket with 3 HR crew and a damage dealer, lasting the whole run and getting approx 10M.