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Tzenkethi Battlezone

ambassadorkael#6946 ambassadorkael Member, Administrator Posts: 2,673 Community Manager
Hey kids,

I'm recollecting some feedback on this zone. What doesn't work here? Why is it considered mostly broken? Hit me up.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Comments

  • tunebreakertunebreaker Member Posts: 1,222 Arc User
    edited October 2018
    The main problem is that Tzenkethi ships arrive too fast to recapture the zones. So you need a really good coordinated effort with several mid-to-high DPSers if you even want to hope to capture all the zones and get bosses to appear.

    Contrary to some beliefs, it's actually doable, and I'm not aware of any glaring bugs or brokeness per se, however it's extremely unforgiving to majority of players, and to even high-end players if they don't go in with a group, considering how Battlezones should be (at least as far as I understand) normal-tier content.

    Edit: I don't want to be mean, and I appreciate you folks looking into it and asking our feedback, but you should've really started a thread like this a year and 9 months ago.
  • ichaerus1ichaerus1 Member Posts: 986 Arc User
    Timers for the NPC ships to begin capturing nodes are wicked short for starters. You can have a node freshly captured, you're getting ready to move to the next one, and it's like the doggie whistle and dinner bell are sounded, because you have Tzenkethi swooping in to tell you to come back for Round 2. I'm pretty sure no other battlezone really has the issue this bad. That's an issue I can think of, off the top of my head. Feel free to hop into the battlezone to verify, or to contradict.
  • lordsteve1lordsteve1 Member Posts: 3,492 Arc User
    The biggest problem by a country mile is that the captured zones get re-capped ridiculously fast by the incoming Tzenkethi ships. This means that to be effective as a "team" the players in a zone need to realistically leave at least one player per capped zone as a point defense person.
    Now in general that is just going to be a really boring job for that poor sod left guarding a point for the duration whilst everyone else is gallivanting off round the rest of the zone grabbing bigger rewards and generally doing more fun things.

    So what happens normally is that people cap a zone and move to the next, nobody watches for back-caps and so people find the zone impossible to complete and everyone argues its broken. Result = dead zone nobody plays in.

    Like @tunebreaker said, it's actually possible to win there, you just need a really coordinated team with DPS able to nuke everything really fast, or have people willing to break off and hold caps.
    To be perfectly honest you are rarely if ever gonna find that sort of coordination in an open pug zone.
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  • antonine3258antonine3258 Member Posts: 2,391 Arc User
    I'm going to try really hard to be polite because I've only ever seen one complaint on the zone whenever it comes up in any discussion. This should not be considered new information, and I appreciate there's some sort of attempt to fix it.

    Captured zones flip ridiculously fast back. Basically no warning, and the 'reinvade' seems to spawn almost immediately. Even with guarding a capped zone they seem to work fast. I'm not sure I've ever seen the endgame start on it.

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  • ambassadorkael#6946 ambassadorkael Member, Administrator Posts: 2,673 Community Manager
    I'm going to try really hard to be polite because I've only ever seen one complaint on the zone whenever it comes up in any discussion. This should not be considered new information, and I appreciate there's some sort of attempt to fix it.

    Captured zones flip ridiculously fast back. Basically no warning, and the 'reinvade' seems to spawn almost immediately. Even with guarding a capped zone they seem to work fast. I'm not sure I've ever seen the endgame start on it.

    And nowhere did I say it was no information. But I figured it was better to reach out and make sure the feedback I'd already collected match what players are saying now. :)
  • rattler2rattler2 Member Posts: 57,969 Community Moderator
    SWEET! Thanks for doing this Kael!
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    I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
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  • ichaerus1ichaerus1 Member Posts: 986 Arc User
    I'm going to try really hard to be polite because I've only ever seen one complaint on the zone whenever it comes up in any discussion. This should not be considered new information, and I appreciate there's some sort of attempt to fix it.

    Captured zones flip ridiculously fast back. Basically no warning, and the 'reinvade' seems to spawn almost immediately. Even with guarding a capped zone they seem to work fast. I'm not sure I've ever seen the endgame start on it.

    And nowhere did I say it was no information. But I figured it was better to reach out and make sure the feedback I'd already collected match what players are saying now. :)

    Are you likewise able to suit up to take a peek in the battlezone, jot down notes, and forward those notes as well to the devs?

    The only time I've seen the battlezone progress, was due to multiple players fielding the Improved Command Frequency trait, warping in the Fleet Support reinforcement at a captured node, then zooming off to go to another. But that's a 5 minute CD(and a trait slot) for a reinforcement, and if you're a KDF player or Romulan player, that ship goes into cloak(despawns) soon afterwards. To attempt to slow down the Tzenkethi "invasion" force.
  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,569 Arc User
    The Protomatter Containers awarded at the end are inconsistent and sometimes not at all.
    'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
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  • roscoe3400roscoe3400 Member Posts: 14 Arc User
    edited October 2018
    I'd agree with all of the sentiments above.

    I'd also add that the location is very out of the way and I probably wouldn't go there often even if it wasn't broken. Unless your character is in a fleet there's not much else to do in that area of the galaxy. I usually spend most of my time in the Beta Quadrant or around DS9. The other battlezones are much more centrally located.

    A transwarp option or a shortcut via the Iconian Gateway would encourage me to visit more often.

    EDIT: Just realized there actually is a transwarp that comes with the Lukari Rep, but something that doesn't require cooldown would be appreciated as well.
  • postagepaidpostagepaid Member Posts: 2,899 Arc User
    Try playing it! The issues should be VERY apparent to anyone even those unfamiliar with the general gameplay.

    Given nothing much has been done to address the issues it's had since goncra was added the feedback now will be pretty much what has always been said about it.
  • thunderfoot#5163 thunderfoot Member Posts: 4,540 Arc User
    edited October 2018
    Collecting information is one thing.

    Doing something positive with the aforementioned information is entirely something else. No point in reiterating what's wrong with Gon'cra here in my post. Since all of these issues were reported while Gon'cra was on Tribble.

    I appreciate the effort, Kael. But I already know based on past experiences not one damn thing will change about Gon'cra. It will remain broken for the rest of the life of this game. Because people higher in the food chain than you are at both Cryptic and Perfect World have shown me they have no incentive to listen when their players tell them.
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  • asuran14asuran14 Member Posts: 2,335 Arc User
    Hey kids,

    I'm recollecting some feedback on this zone. What doesn't work here? Why is it considered mostly broken? Hit me up.

    Well one big thing is the recap time on the zones is abit high in many people's opinion. Though I would say that also it would be nice to have a way of making it personally rewarding to defend zones, something like getting a small dil an mark reward for defending a zone that is contested an going to be recapped. I find more often that players either don't get to the zone to recap it, or just don't feel it is worth their effort to defend the points as they reward nothing.

    The elite marks that you gain at the end, and the dreads that you are supposed to kill to get them, need to be more reliable. I have seen alot of times the dreads either don't spawn, or gt glitched an stuck somewhere you can't get to. Also making some system in the battle-ground that makes spreading to cap multiple zones at a times more worthwhile. Like a stacking bonus modifier that is increased by either defending points, or capping zones also could increase the modifier. Thought there would need to be a timer that was abit quick, so that you could not stack the modifier up just by doing the zone, but in a specific method or style like spreading across the points to cap them in quick succession. Right now many will flow as a single group to make sure they get very mark an dil they can from doing the many points.
  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    As others have said, the recap is WAY too quick.. actually instant.

    If you look at other BZ's, enemy ships enter the zone and the zone goes into a 'contested' state. At this point, you have to speed back to hold off the enemies, or you end up losing the zone. In the TZ Zone, they take the point back almost immediately which means that the only way to hold zones is someone has to stay behind and just sit there waiting for recap. No one wants to do this.

    You can do it in coordinated groups where you have people willing to take the bullet and sit there doing nothing while the rest of the zone is captured, but obviously this is not much fun. The simple solution is to make it function like the highly successful Undine and Badlands zones where NPC patrols can hold the zone for a while and you can zoom back and stop the recap. I have had times in the TZ zone where I have taken a zone and had it fall back under enemy control before I could even turn my ship to face the next zone. I could literally just sit in one zone taking it and losing it over and over indefinitely. Obviously, this is not fun at all.
    ltminns wrote: »
    The Protomatter Containers awarded at the end are inconsistent and sometimes not at all.

    This is also an issue. I have had times where I have contributed to all of the end boss battles and not received the rewards for it. That hasn't been a problem in a while though since right now it's pretty much impossible to get the boss phase to start unless you're in a coordinated group.
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  • ktbu#5082 ktbu Member Posts: 53 Arc User
    The zone is ugly... compared to the other zones it is exactly the same play as dyson and terran and they look nicer.

    It is boring... how many zones do you need that play the exact same way?

    Scrap it... nobody plays it because it is too hard for the majority of players to figure out that you need to attack the front shields and by the time they do figure it out they realize their ship build are too weak to survive the battle anyway :pensive:

    IMO just delete it. There is nothing that you can do that will get me to play it. The terran zone, dyson and squid zone is enough. Create something new, something different. Sometimes you just have to admit that you F-uped and start over.
  • angrytargangrytarg Member Posts: 11,001 Arc User
    How about adding improvable NPC defenders, like in Dyson ground?
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  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    edited October 2018
    ktbu#5082 wrote: »
    The zone is ugly... compared to the other zones it is exactly the same play as dyson and terran and they look nicer.

    It is boring... how many zones do you need that play the exact same way?

    Sorry, but that's exactly backward. The zone does not at all play the same way as other battle zones.. and it should.

    The Undine and the Badlands are great (in my opinion) and whenever I go there.. at least during daylight US time.. these zones always have plenty of players in them. They have the model in place, they just need to do the non cryptic thing and learn from their successes.

    The TZ zone is empty because it doesn't work like the other BZ's do. And the last thing that this game needs is the removal of even more content.

    Fix the zone and people will play it. Removing it would be a waste.
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  • ktbu#5082 ktbu Member Posts: 53 Arc User
    ktbu#5082 wrote: »
    The zone is ugly... compared to the other zones it is exactly the same play as dyson and terran and they look nicer.

    It is boring... how many zones do you need that play the exact same way?

    Sorry, but that's exactly backward. The zone does not at all play the same way as other battle zones.. and it should.

    The Undine and the Badlands are great (in my opinion) and whenever I go there.. at least during daylight US time.. these zones always have plenty of players in them. They have the model in place, they just need to do the non cryptic thing and learn from their successes.

    The TZ zone is empty because it doesn't work like the other BZ's do. And the last thing that this game needs is the removal of even more content.

    Fix the zone and people will play it. Removing it would be a waste.

    Oh poor sea.. it seems you just want to argue.. meh

    You completely missed my point but I don't really care enough to rephrase because it is really not worth it to me. There is nothing that can be done to get me to encourage my fleets to spend time in there unless they really uber the rewards... even then the place is so bleh... just thinking about it is making me sleepy.
  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    ktbu#5082 wrote: »
    ktbu#5082 wrote: »
    The zone is ugly... compared to the other zones it is exactly the same play as dyson and terran and they look nicer.

    It is boring... how many zones do you need that play the exact same way?

    Sorry, but that's exactly backward. The zone does not at all play the same way as other battle zones.. and it should.

    The Undine and the Badlands are great (in my opinion) and whenever I go there.. at least during daylight US time.. these zones always have plenty of players in them. They have the model in place, they just need to do the non cryptic thing and learn from their successes.

    The TZ zone is empty because it doesn't work like the other BZ's do. And the last thing that this game needs is the removal of even more content.

    Fix the zone and people will play it. Removing it would be a waste.

    Oh poor sea.. it seems you just want to argue.. meh

    You completely missed my point but I don't really care enough to rephrase because it is really not worth it to me. There is nothing that can be done to get me to encourage my fleets to spend time in there unless they really uber the rewards... even then the place is so bleh... just thinking about it is making me sleepy.

    Not sure what's with the attitude, I thought my reply to you was respectful.

    But since I can see you're not interested in a meaningful dialogue we'll just mutually part ways on this discussion here. Should you ever decide you wish to politely exchange ideas, I am game.. otherwise no hard feelings. I thought your post was pretty clear, I just didn't agree with it, the attempt was only at an exchange of ideas.

    If it's going to get all snarky though, I am not interested. I am sure you understand.
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  • mustrumridcully0mustrumridcully0 Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
    Someone suggested the bug for the quick recaps could be caused by the enemies already being able to start their counter-cap while the players are capping the point. This is invisible to the players while on the cap, but the moment they leave after having won and the NPCs finally respawn, the point's "counter-cap" progress bar is already at maximum level and flips almost instantly.
    lordsteve1 wrote: »
    The biggest problem by a country mile is that the captured zones get re-capped ridiculously fast by the incoming Tzenkethi ships. This means that to be effective as a "team" the players in a zone need to realistically leave at least one player per capped zone as a point defense person.
    Now in general that is just going to be a really boring job for that poor sod left guarding a point for the duration whilst everyone else is gallivanting off round the rest of the zone grabbing bigger rewards and generally doing more fun things.

    So what happens normally is that people cap a zone and move to the next, nobody watches for back-caps and so people find the zone impossible to complete and everyone argues its broken. Result = dead zone nobody plays in.

    Like @tunebreaker said, it's actually possible to win there, you just need a really coordinated team with DPS able to nuke everything really fast, or have people willing to break off and hold caps.
    To be perfectly honest you are rarely if ever gonna find that sort of coordination in an open pug zone.

    Not only doing more funs things - they also get rewards for doing that. The one protecting a won point gets nothing. .
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  • stardustt2101stardustt2101 Member Posts: 12 Arc User
    I'll echo what's already been said here. The Tzenkethi recap all zones waaay too fast, and are inordinately tough if you don't have the proper high-level gear with the right attributes. Being a collector of sets, if I want to do this, I can only bring certain ships as the rest just don't have the hitting power or staying power to be effective.
  • masssquaredmasssquared Member Posts: 20 Arc User
    edited October 2018
    I've popped into this zone a few times, completed it only a handful of those.
    The main issue that came up for us was in the comet collecting part. It seems an exponential increase of enemies to allies. So as the other areas of the zone were completed and everyone bottlenecked to the comet part, the enemies got out of hand.
    We spent more time fighting our own numbers there as the other areas began falling back into enemy control.

    The other problem was player related. The zone was unable to properly communicate to one another due to ignore lists.
    If that's a moderation issue or up to the community to repair I'm not sure. Personally, I use the list and accept the repercussions associated with it, for they far outweigh the alternative.
  • antonine3258antonine3258 Member Posts: 2,391 Arc User
    The Tzenkethi are designed to be pretty tanky so even with the other items fixed, it takes longer to take out the points relative to the other battlezones.
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  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    The Tzenkethi are designed to be pretty tanky so even with the other items fixed, it takes longer to take out the points relative to the other battlezones.

    The power level of the Tzenkethi is a tough call. I admit, I somewhat lack perspective here, so I kind of have to differ to others that say they're too difficult to beat. I admittedly have only done this zone in powerful ships so obviously, I was able to get through them easier then most.

    The zone needs to be accessible to players of different ranges of difficulty, so I would suggest that their power increase in scale with the number of players if possible. This is a tough area to nail down because the difference between low end and high end builds in this game is more then extreme. It's more or less impossible to design enemies that are accessible to 50th level captains using peace meal mission reward items, but also challenging to the Romulan in a fully Epic Scimitar with SRO officers at every station.

    Adjusting the difficulty scale is a job I am glad I don't have.
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  • antonine3258antonine3258 Member Posts: 2,391 Arc User
    The Tzenkethi are designed to be pretty tanky so even with the other items fixed, it takes longer to take out the points relative to the other battlezones.

    The power level of the Tzenkethi is a tough call. I admit, I somewhat lack perspective here, so I kind of have to differ to others that say they're too difficult to beat. I admittedly have only done this zone in powerful ships so obviously, I was able to get through them easier then most.

    The zone needs to be accessible to players of different ranges of difficulty, so I would suggest that their power increase in scale with the number of players if possible. This is a tough area to nail down because the difference between low end and high end builds in this game is more then extreme. It's more or less impossible to design enemies that are accessible to 50th level captains using peace meal mission reward items, but also challenging to the Romulan in a fully Epic Scimitar with SRO officers at every station.

    Adjusting the difficulty scale is a job I am glad I don't have.

    Not so much difficult as 'time relative to marks' compared to the other Zones - the Tzenkethi take longer to kill, which takes longer for the time gates to take effect, takes longer to counter-cap, etc. Even if the rewards always worked and counter-capping functioned, the zone takes longer, but not necessarily more effort, compared to the other zones.

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  • kjwashingtonkjwashington Member Posts: 2,529 Arc User
    edited October 2018
    The Tzenkethi are designed to be pretty tanky so even with the other items fixed, it takes longer to take out the points relative to the other battlezones.

    The power level of the Tzenkethi is a tough call.

    The Tzenkethi aren't any stronger than other enemies on paper. In practice, their shield strength (and heavy fore weapons) gimmick invalidates certain styles of play. (I think their side shields are slightly stronger than average, and their rear shield is a lot stronger, while their fore shield is a lot weaker.) Particularly, raiders are hit hardest by this, since their playstyle revolves around hitting from the rear. Cannon ships also have a tough time, since keeping a cannon ship in the fore arc of an enemy is near impossible. This basically means that if you're not in a tac-heavy cruiser or a tanky escort, running a beam build, you might as well not bother. I don't usually play sci-ships, so I can't tell you how they match up. (Though I do know that some sci builds ignore shields or drain enough to disable them, so it could be better.)
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  • slifox#0768 slifox Member Posts: 379 Arc User
    I'll echo everything said here. I can't remember the last time I've seen more than a few zones captured long enough to get to a 4th zone. Let alone made it to the end to fight the boss. In fact, I believe I haven't fought the end since the battlezone was first made available. I'll visit it every once in a while just for a change in scenery.
  • willamsheridanwillamsheridan Member Posts: 1,189 Arc User
    Depending on my toon i am a low to mid DPSer. When i am in the Zone with just 3-4 another players its almost impossible to get anything done because the zones get recaptured too fast, there are too many enemies and the objectives take too long. In the undine or Badlands Zone its no problem to clear multiple objectives solo but in the tzenkethi zones its not possible (i think thats also because of the fact that Tzenkethi are much tougher than Undine or Terran ships and can be invulnerable from 3 angles.)

    BTW shouldn't there be a Ground battlezone too which was delayed because the Space zoneneeded fixing first, then the Ground zone got cancelled and nothing changed in Space and it was declared WAI? i think i remember something like that
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