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I like the new Epsiode set up, i really do. What i don't like is the feeling of forced leveling it gives. I like being able to choose the mission myself from the list, not be forced to choose a mission i'm not really into. I usually save the Devidian FE, for an example, until i have nothing left to do. I do the same with other missions that i, frankly, find boring.
Now, with the new set up, i'm forced to play through missions i find tedious. The list is great, and it's easier to see what should be done at what level, but the freedom is gone. Is there a way to have the list give the missions on a rank basis, and then have all missions available to take for that rank?
Or am i missing the point entirely?
Now, with the new set up, i'm forced to play through missions i find tedious. The list is great, and it's easier to see what should be done at what level, but the freedom is gone. Is there a way to have the list give the missions on a rank basis, and then have all missions available to take for that rank?
Or am i missing the point entirely?
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Many problems with this system:
1. There's no freedom to do what you want. You're stuck doing what the list says unless you want the tedium of redoing a mission you just finished. Not bad if you like them, boredom if you don't.
Which leads to 2:
2. If a mission becomes bugged players have no recourse but to redo mission they may have just finished. It'd be nice to think all bugs could be hit with Raid and disappear but we all know that's not going to happen. Missions will become bugged. This may be fine at RALH or even Captain. Lt., Lt. Commander? Boring because you may have only 4 missions you can redo.
3. The rewards aren't set up to the proper ranking. War is Good for Business, for an example, gives a MKII award when you're already at Lt. Commander and can find MKIV items while doing it. I know this because i literally just finished it and found a MKIV Kit while the reward is a MKII Kit.
In the old system i could whatever was listed regardless of what i did before. I could choose to do Diplomatic before i did Stranded in Space if i wanted, or Khuv before Skirmish, etc. Now i have to follow the list before i can do the next mission.
Shoot, i used to do the whole Guardian of Forever set before i ever got around to Drake and the Devidian FE's. Now the Drake FE just bores me so i wait till i have nothing to do before doing it. I do the missions i have fun with before i do the ones i find tedious or boring.
I rarely do patrols because they become entirely too repetitive after a while so i don't know if this will open up missions in Episodes. So far it's just been following the list.
FE's have a story arc. Even the Khuv makes sense if put in order with the augments and Forever in a Day sequence, or the other missions with B'Vat like Treasure Trading Station which starts the Doomsday sequence. As it stands it's just missions stuck in what seems to be a haphazard non-order.
Now if they were to take the missions that actually begin a story arc, like the ones i mentioned, and put them under Episodes, i'd be happy with that as they are actually Episodes with an arc. War is good for Business, Stop the Signal, etc, don't really start, and aren't part of, a story arc. They're just missions that a player can do when nothing else can be done imho. Same with Stranded in Space, etc.
Even in the Rommie missions there's plenty that start a story arc. Some, like Trapped, Saturdays Child, etc, do not. In fact there's some that could make really interesting story arcs, such as taking the Admiral to the rommie station and it turns out she's an Undine(can't remember the mission name), or the one in the Great Bloom. Both could start very good stories! The same could be said for Cardassian missions as well.
Personally i'd keep anything without a story arc out of Episodes frankly. That way players have missions they can do if, and let's face it-when-, an actual episodic mission gets bugged to occupy their time other than hanging out in space chatting, or redoing missions they may have just finished.
there are several things i think they could do to ease the problem.
1) once you get a VA or LG on your first character then all later alts can do them as they unlock normally (ie you can skip missions).
2) or break the fronts up, so you dont have to do the whole klingon front for the romulan one to unlock, and same with the others. they are all separate stories.
3) break them down into smaller arcs. so the early orions missions are one arc, the b'vat missions are another, the devidian missions are another etc etc. so you still have to play the missions of an arc in order but if you dont complete the first arc, it does not stop the second or thirds arcs from unlocking.
4) have no restriction and let each one unlock at the correct rank and just trust that the new improved mission journal is enough to guide players. if we managed to do it at launch with a butt ugly interface im sure they will manage with a nice shiny journal.
5) have silvers be locked into this mission progression and have gold be able to skip missions like we do know. you are still holding the hands of silvers players and giving golds the freedom they have now.
such as romluan, cardasion etc.
that means you unlock that entire arc of missions, so you can do them in your own order.
that way you wont have to do stupidless grind becouse your locked out of a mission
???? you dont need latinum to get in to skirmish. you need to play dabo once in spin the wheel but that is fairly well explained and you are standing in the correct room at the time.
Your first reply in this thread made the impression you were happy with locking out Romulan play until you finish the Klingon one.
I would be perfectly fine with you have to do mission a to get to mission b in each area. It's the can't move to the next area until all is done in the first area that is messed up.
As Capt_Revo already said you can play Dabo on Drozana, and get in the game for only 10EC.
I'm more worried about a mission becoming bugged and Silver players not being able to carry forward. If it was to happen at the day of launch that's a fairly significant loss. All it would take is one mission, and Silver's are toast for doing anything other than exploration or patrols. Not a bad thing in, and of, itself, but could be frustrating for some. It might not be too bad if GM's can open the next mission for everyone at once, close the mission until the bug is fixed, and then reinsert it in the lineup.
There definitely does need to be a fix for how missions line up. I've done the Khuv, War is Good for Business, and others as soon as i could. Waiting for Lt. Commander was frustrating because i knew the reward was a flop by that level. If the missions that have a story arc could be upgraded to resemble an FE i think it would be perfect. If the reward scaling system that's used in FE's could be used in all missions it wouldn't be too bad. So the lumpy Uncommon MII kit you get for a mission would upgrade to Rare MKV kit by Commander, etc. It would also give incentive to replay those missions.
For example, the Dividian FE breaks the flow of the Undine infiltration storyline in the Klingon arc.
It would be preferable to have the regular story arcs that we've always had under Episodes and then the FE's as a separate "Mini-series" tab. Then when you reach a certain level it unlocks the FE, and you get a note saying "congrats! you've unlocked yadda yadda yadda" go here to play it or continue on your episode path, and come back to it later.. As a new player, that would be like a bonus reward for leveling in my opinion.
And I completely agree with the OP that gating content to level progression is going to bite you on the butt when a something breaks - and it WILL break - and suddenly you have thousands of players unable to play or level anymore, so they just get frustrated and quit playing all together.
Keep the scaling if you want, keep the annoying linear episode list even, but please do not keep the "progression locked until mission completion" change.
I have not reached the last too yet, but will check for modifications to the story when I do.
The new mission setup summed up in one word "SUCKS"
I got very irritated when playing and even a bit angry being forced to play down a linear path.
And linearity in an MMORPG is a VERY bad thing.
Yes, i should be encouraged to follow the story line in order, but not forced.
And I can see the sense in two or three quests being grouped together in a chain, like the two episodes involving the Guardian of Forever, but thats it.
I also noticed that this has rendered some of the current rewards obsolete, such as Mk IV equipment being awarded when your almost finished with the rank, and even when you have reached Commander 1.
What i found to be the worst thing of all was locking up the feature episodes to certain levels instead of having them scale like before.
All in all I can't think of a single good thing to say about the new Episode system.
Its simply IMHO one of the worst things they have done in the F2P Beta.
Chiefly for me so far, was when one of my friends needed help with a mission. I went along to give him a hand, and then discovered I couldn't, as I hadn't completed the mission before the one he was on.
I think if the journal style stays as it currently is, but at least, the lock out should be over-ridden if the team leader sets a later mission.
The Devidian missions become available way before the player has had the chance to meet Franklin Drake. That seems kind of backwards to me.
DSE's
Clusters
PvP
FA's
are all possiblities other than the main arc. Hopefully, they'll squash some of these bugs so it can be set up this way.
You now meet him in the Devidian Series, and in 'Under the Cover of Night' he is replaced with T'Par.
Good to know - thanks!
Those are possibilities to keep the time occupied. Depending on how busy the devs are though it could be a few days before a mission bug is fixed. Not everyone will want to PvP. DSE's will grow tedious after a while especially when you have admirals in the low level ones trying out new equipment. Exploration is great, but even that can become tedious after a few hours of repetitive missions.
If they dedicate a team to bug squashing, or have a workaround prepared for GM's, it may not even be a few hours before a bugged mission is fixed. I don't know their HR or how many people they have available. They'll definitely need to keep bugs out of missions if they decide to keep it locked though, or many will not be happy when a mission can't be finished.
I haven't bothered leveling here the way i do on holo. I've only done 2 patrols, Vulcan and Orion, and only one exploration into DV; i decided on a different tack for testing purposes. I do find it odd that by Lt. Comm. 7 i'm able to do rommie patrols, but not rommie missions. I can even go to the Khazan Cluster, but not do a single rommie mission.
Currently you unlock the next episode by completing each previous episode, making you follow the story. My Tribble character is almost Rear Admiral but is only now nearing the end of the Romulan episodes, I assume this is because of the massive amount of XP as I have been only doing the Episodes.
Now my idea is to keep the progression the same, but to add in that when you reach each rank it automatically unlocks the Episodes for that rank. So that if you are still in the Klingon episodes but you have hit Commander then the Romulan Episodes open automatically.
For example, you could be on the mission 'Dooms Day Device' and hit Commander and have the mission 'Heading Out' open up while the last 2 Klingon missions stay closed until you complete 'Dooms Day Device.'
I think this would work because it would allow you to see how the story line should progress, but not cause you to get lower ranked rewards, and would also allow you to have some control over 'your story.'
If they want players to hold to story arcs that makes much more sense. It allows a little more freedom to do missions they want without the worry of a mission bug stopping level progress. It works if they group missions with an actually story arc, like Khuv and Doomsday story arcs, together as well. It would also allow players to do Exploration or Patrols to unlock those Sectors as well if they chose.
I got hit with the "Stopping the Signal" issue. Not a big problem and I went off to do patrols, explores, & DSEs hoping the map would reset itself. I eventually I had to drop and reaquire it. Luckily I knew about how to acquire those missions (I'm thinking a new player might not). Now I'm at Captain 2 with five more missions left in the Klingon story line (finished Task Force Hippocrates).
I love the fact that the story missions are now akin to the remastered episodes and that they level with you. But reward wise I'm ready to move on to the Cardassian front. The whole Romulan sector has now become a grind just to get to there, by which time I will have outleveled that. And it's not like I just have to go through the Romulan story line itself, if the Devidian FE thrown into the middle of the Klingon story line is any indictation. I also have to go through the Romulan FE.
I know the game isn't all about the loot, but really? Am I supposed to make a selection between Mk III gear when I'm already equipped with Mk VII?
Currently, on Holodeck "Hide and Seek' and 'Stop the Signal' are Lieutenant level missions. So if you were to do 'Hide and Seek' then go off and do some Exploration or maybe PvP and came back as a Lieutenant Commander and went to play 'Stop the Signal' it would give you useless gear and not a lot of XP, making it pretty much pointless to play.
But over on Tribble, this is not so. If you played 'Hide and Seek' at Lieutenant, did some Exploration, PvP, maybe an Event, and came back as a Lieutenant Commander to play 'Stop the Signal' the enemies and the loot, eventually, will match your level.
So what they have done is removed the Storyline, which is what it is, from a players level progression. You can now do what you want when you want. Sure you have to play the Storyline in order, but you have to do that with the FE's on their first play through.
People have pointed out that it 'forces' you to follow the story. Which is true, but you also now have the ability to play choose what to play and when to play it.