Graphics advantages

[Zandtar]

I'll admit up front I'm biased towards the Romulan faction and am looking forward to playing with them. Which has me wondering how Cryptic is going to handle combat with cloaking devices and detection. This could probably cover some other area's as well. Specifically, I'm hoping Cryptic can devise a method that doesn't allow for players to gain unfair advantages by tweaking graphics settings.

I understand the need for the ability of players to do this, with the wide range of systems of the player base. However I can recall a number of games where certain actions in-game could be easily negated by someone just adjusting a graphics setting on their end. For example, if Player A is in a cloaked ship, and Player B fails a skill check to detect, then Player B should not be able to see where Player A is, no matter what they do graphic's wise. I'd like to see such things kept within the game and not influenced by external methods.

Worse case I remember, playing Battlefield Vietnam and having fun as a sniper for a little bit. Until I started noticing people zeroing in on me from across the map. As I discovered, players quickly found out they could lower their graphics settings to their advantage. While I was laying in a field of high grass, under great cover from my end, the opposing players could lower their graphics so the field was nothing but a flat, empty plot that I was laying out in the middle of.

[Skelly]

Gotta agree with you. I played BFV as well. The only thing tall grass and shrubs did was impact you. STO shouldn't have the same problem if the cloke device just makes your avatar (ship) not show up in there graphics file. The thing that will either help or hurt cloking is lag. If you are lagging and were hit before the cloke was registered but you see it after you cloke then x player is hacking. Like wise if you uncloke, but player x is lagging you get an unintended weapons bonus because you can fire earlier than designed.

[Zandtar]

BFV was just one example. I've also played games where a form of stealth is considered a form of a buff on the character, and the character is drawn first then buffs applied. Which, can also be a form of an unfair advantage for just that brief flash before the stealth buff was applied during the drawing of the character on the opponent's screen. Or another game that had a tell-tale sound effect if a character using a form on invisibility was near you.

I'm guessing there is going to be a penalty of sorts, when cloaking. Like a huge power drain so shields and weapons are offline. Which I'm fine with. I just don't want to be given a balancing penalty like that, just to suffer further by some design issue or graphic 'cheat' to allow an opponent to unfairly target me.