THE GOOD:
- lots of Voice Over ( recognized J-Man 2 times ^^ )
- lots of Multiple Choice dialog
- lots optional sidequests
- moving mouth on talking NPCs! (did not see that before or i have missed it before?)
- proper LCARS textures in the DS9 conference room
- DS9 conference room !!!
- neat implementation of mini DOff missions
- play Dabo while you wait for DOff missions to complete
- My alien-creator-fake Jem'Hadar Captain likes the new (SET) ITEMS!
- cloaked Jem'Hadar MINES like in that DS9 episode, evil little buggers
THE BAD:
- major BUG: on promenade, when the fighting starts Engineers can not use Turrets or Support Drones (tested with KDF char), social zone dampening field seems to be still active.
- DS9 promenade seemed too empty, some NPC civilians would have added some flair + life
- in the conference room, all correct answers are marked with [Diplomacy] or [Mission Completion] tags, why make it so obvious?
- no moving mouth animation on NPC head in the text popup (which most players will be looking at instead of the actual Head of the NPC)
- some LCARS textures in conference room are 180° reversed / inverted, please make sure that the text is readable when standing in front of the consoles.
- Jem'Hadar NPC Ships used the OLD artwork, not the updated Artwork from Captain Logan that he made for the Player Ship version (looks very low poly)

- lots of text + talking + running in circles = good storytelling, but bad for teaming with other players
- after all the teasing about "the 2800", the Borg discussions seemed a bit... unimportant and holding out on the actual story, we all knew the end of the mission before we could play it -> this time it was impossible to avoid spoilers which took part of the fun out of it
- Jem Hadar Ships using pretty much the exact same abilities as Breen Ships. (Polaron, Tractor Beams, Subnucleonic Beam)
- Jem Hadar Dreadnought needs to be BIGGER!
http://www.st-minutiae.com/misc/renaissance/tm/images/comparison_galaxy.gif
Comments
Diplomacy is tagged because it is an unlockable response based on your Diplomat Level.
***
I had an issue with the Science Objective. The Security Officer was not selectable despite the objective to heal him.
All in all, I rather enjoyed the mission. The last battle was quite difficult on Elite settings.
I was rather disappointed with the first episode - because, quite frankly, it comes no where near the quality of the previous FE episodes.
This may sound harsh, but honestly the mission felt like a poorly playtested Foundry mission.
Right up until actually getting into the Conference room, there is absolutely nothing new added to the game asset-wise. I've been to DS9 before, why are these terrible optional 'errend boy' tour-the-station side missions even included? Filler? And heaven forbid you have maxed out your Doff assignments before starting the mission - because one of the optional side quests requires 3 open slots. Seriously? There wss no warning given about this in the mission acceptance dialog. I certainly am NOT going to drop 3 previous assignments just to complete this part. In addition, the Kanar side quest bugged out and couldn't be completed anyway - or the final NPC in the chain was in a VERY bad location and couldn't be found.
The NPC voiceovers are terrible (well except for the the Ops gal), and become really annoying having to hear them over and over again when speaking with them. About the only place it was effective was in the cut scene, but even then it was pretty bad.
The 'negotiation' part had one major flaw - - why am I having to convince my own side (Fed. Capt. or Gorn ambassador) to join the alliance? I understand that this mission is playable by both sides, but really, couldn't a little extra code have been added that skipped over the talk to your own guy step?
The ground combat portion again reminded me of any Foundry mission - standard fare, except that the "Heal security officer" had NO mission ring on the map to find the poor soul. I eventually found him lying behind a table by serching around for him.
The space combat was also pretty standard fare, but was seriously lacking any good direction on what you should be doing in the dialog. Something as simple as "Destroy the ships at the station then escort the escaping shuttles. IGNORE the fleet coming out of the wormhole - your mission is to help the escapees get away!"
Anyway, I was really looking forward to something pretty cool after so long. The bar was set pretty high with the previous FEs - and this one just didn't come close Cryptic.
The only consolation is that the only way to go is up from here....I hope.
I actually was able to choose the wrong response from the choices before the "Mission Completion" window. They didn't indicate which was the right or wrong answer. So my choice caused the Gorn to refuse my offer.
As far as the episode goes, all I'll say is I liked it, but I'll reserve judgement til the FE is over. All of the FE's have had their great episodes, and their meh episodes.
Pretty much all of these I'm in agreement with.
Overall a good episode. THIS is why we want more of them! =D The voice acting was okay, but honestly, I'm still trying to get used to voice acting in MMOs.
If there was something I could do without, it was the dabo optionala mission, and the kanar optional mission. That just seemed rather pointless and time-wasting, and had me remembering the infamous 'nerve tonic' mission. Still, these weren't as bad as that one, and they were tolerable, just took a bit of time.
DS9 looks *awesome!*
Good fights all around, fights with *purpose* rather than 'scan 5, shoot 5, blow up 5.' But that's been the hallmark of FEs and why we wants more of them! They put the shootin' and the fightin' and the blowin' stuffs up into a context.
Some oddness with the animations in the cutscenes, particularly with the two deaths of the characters who were talking. (Baddie steps up to speaking character. Pause. Speaking character screams and topples. Now THAT is some killer BO. Get that Jem'hadar some Old Spice STAT.) To be fair, not sure what can be done about this.
(Oh, and as for the weapons: FINALLY!
So all in all, well done, and hopefully a good start. Again, this is why we like FEs and anything at all to make them able to be produced faster could only be a good thing.
So to sum it up I am still looking forward to next weeks episode.
Those were on Tribble for your BOffs a couple of months ago and they didn't look good, so I'm glad they didn't use it here.
Aside from a couple of bugs, which I detailed in the thread on the bug forum:
+ points
Overall plot concept.
Implementation of DOff jobs into a main mission. That's something I want to see more of.
Bald Cardassian. A minor detail, but it looked cool.
Combat was generally solid. The NPC ships you're supposed to help can actually die if you decide to go play with the mob at the Wormhole instead, so you have to follow your objective.
Was good to see S'tass representing the Klingons rather than some bloke who we haven't seen before.
- points
Cutscene animations. Some of the gesticulating from Captain Shon was hilariously bad, and then there's Andrews falling down in a heap simply because a Jem'Hadar invaded her personal space.
Absence of Admiral D'Vak. He runs Omega Force, the only joint operation between the Feds and the KDF in about the last 40 years. Surely he is the guy to have at a conference designed to get the Federation and the KDF (& the Cardassians and Deferi) to work together on a common problem.
Lack of any dialogue when you transfer to the space part.
It felt a little short when you strip out the optionals.
Who's actually representing The Federation? Me (if on my Fed), Shon, the guy chairing it or Kurland? Don't see why all of us need to be there.
Stuff I can see both + and - points for:
The optional missions (aside from the DOff based one). Some players will like the extra immersion, some won't and will just skip. So the option is good. Maybe they could've been a bit more interesting than basic fetch quests though.
Houdini mines. They're cool, but I can see potential getting really aggravating with more tightly packed mobs spwaning more of them than were spawned on this mission. Now, if we get them as a reward of course, then suddenly they'll be my best friends.
I did a bit, actually. Same with my kit powers.
I certainly hope that the rest of the episodes in this series are worthy of all the hype you have given, considering the year-long drought long-time players had to endure.
This is STAR TREK Online, not a generic third- or fourth-rate game. Please treat it -- and its long-suffering customers -- with dignity and respect.
Ouch.
/10chars
I'm big on all the optional missions. It's cool that I actually wanted to go back and try different things to see what happens. Figuring out what dialog will convince the representatives is a nice challenge, and saving all the support ships is a fun challenge that I'll keep trying for on different characters. Not to mention wondering if taking on the larger battleships will give anything ...
Overall, this mission didn't have quite the 'new asset smell' that the Vault had, but I think they delivered a solid episode that gives great story and plenty of things for players to chew on. I'm guessing most disappointed fans just had their expectations way too high or got distracted by server-load issues.
Kirkfat,
Once you run through the mission, you'll see that any Foundry author could have done the same mission, as the only maps used were the DS9 ones - with the exception of one new conference room for the meeting - something any good Foundry author could have placed in any DS9 room/office with zero effect on the story flow or feel.
I have actually played a good many Foundry missions based around DS9/Dominion/Bajor/Cardassia themes that were better in their pacing, character development, and 'optionals' than this last FE. And that's really sad when you think of how awesome FEs like The Vault, Colusieum, "Bonnie-kin", Cold Call, etc were.
So while your latest Foundry mission may be limited by the resourses available to you (which you are still ablle to use to great effect) - - 'Helna of Troy' stands heads and shoulders above "Second Wave" in terms of imagination and creativity - and even with unavoidable Foundry 'hickups' - has far fewer bugs.
you know, you can negotiate Hadron's price down to almost nothing, although you get an accolade if you don't haggle. I thought the VOs were pretty good, although not as good as some of the ones in Cloaked Intentions. my only problem story-wise was that we are left with a cliff hanger in which a major social hub is captured by the enemy, it feels like it breaks the immersion whenever I beam down to DS9 now. For the time being I'm just taking an RP route and doing all my business at ESD or Drozana until we get DS9 back. If only there was a way to lock out the station and relocate all the NPCs to Bajor or something.
Jem'Hadar weapons are probably causing that. Part of the FE rewards are consumables that will debuff healing. I assume the Jem'hadar get it for free.
As a foundry author myself, I respect the time put into missions. But even accounting for the raw effort, I don't think it's fair to just put aside anything not possible in foundry as 'well, their tools aren't screwy, so that's given'.
Best parts of the mission in my opinion:
-interesting side quests
-Elaboration on the discord amongst Alpha quadrant powers
-Exciting assault cutscene
-Escape ground portion and leading delegates away
-Epic space battle
-Challenging ship rescue sequence
-epic ending amongst other vessels in Bajor instance
Most of these high points could be dismissed as 'just dev tools doing what we can't', but doing so doesn't do justice to the devs' actual work. I found what they made to be very fun and interesting. Dev tools don't auto-magically make these things happen. I'm sure talented authors could do similar things if they had the tools, but doing them all together on a schedule is what the devs get paid for.
I liked the branching trees of dialog and Doff integration was awesome. When I started bragging about my crew and then my doffs showed up I yelled out loud.
I didn't Barter with the Bar owner because i didn't want to fail that optional goal so I just paid the 10K GPL out of pocket. I played as a Ferengi ENG and I'm curious what dialog everyone got in that conversation.
I seem to remember a Dev saying species specific outcomes/dialog would make its way into this FE. And I'm curious if that was is.
Also I'm glad to see diplomacy pay off in the options you when chatting with NPCs. I'm curious if they will link the other Doff skill levels into the missions. Having Trade level 4 and unlocking something during a mission conversation would be awesome.
Making diplomacy of use here was a great touch, though my new Season 50-created captain is still shy of commendation rank 3... making it kind of frustrating not to be able to get the right replies to convince others. *sighs* I'm not annoyed at the use of diplomacy so much as my inability to have it to level 4 by now since it creeps up pretty slowly.
The ground battle portion of the mission was... semi-tedious. It was basically an exercise of hammering the bad guys for as much damage as I could while reacting with hyposprays to damage. As far as ground combat mission go, this was below-standard compared to the other similar experiences in Colosseum and Cutting the Cord. So, really, this was the weakest part of the mission to me - fortunately, though, it was fairly short.
I loved the space combat, though! What I liked the most about it was the feeling that this was an evacuation with jemhadar ships overrunning our position with the 1 cruiser/3 frigates generic formula apparently tossed aside.
What brimmed the episode was its bugs. The most proemminent one was at the end, where warping to Bajor did not seem to complete the mission, with no hint of contact, no one to hail, and the mission actually looking like it had just been newly taken rather than just completed (going back to sector space and 'continuing' the mission actually restarted it).
The other hitches were mostly animation related regarding the cutscenes. I didn't like how the admiral being swiped gave no confirmation of his survival even though Kurland was scanning him and trying to do something. Kurland's XO falling due to that beefy Jem'hadar coming behind her without apparent reason was also kind of odd.
* * *
Overall, I liked it. Thank you.
FYI, your targeting the wrong security officer... there are two, one is dead (near the tactical objective), the other is injured... worked fine for me one I found the right guy
She just fainted. She'll be fine.
There wasn't any other Security Guard. I ran up and down that whole map four times, including all of the adjoining chambers. The only one was the guy lying by the gun. But I suppose if the Dreadnaught did not spawn for Amosov, and turrets would not spawn for CptBANG, then it is possible the second Security Officer just did not spawn for me.
It either makes you crash when leaving Quarks Bar or doesn't complete for a looooooong time. So far my 2/2 runs have had this problem and everyone in my fleet had this problem as well.
Also...myself and others in my fleet have been getting no registering for completing the mission...I had virtually no time to do these FE's this week...this was very unfortunate and pathetic in a way to see these careless bugs and others happen..
...a year sinse the last FE and this is what we got....I'm happy I had low expectations.
I liked the DOFF side missions. I think they should add that in future episodes, and even in remastered ones if they remaster more in future.
Overall I think a lot of the best foundry missions are of much higher quality and I was rather disappointed with this first FE of 2012.
I agree....I forgot it was a Star Trek game during that part too....it was sad...
The voice acting could have been better, it was nice to have but, dont force a damn dialect if you don't have it....yeah you miss irish, found that to be the most irritating one.
The mission itself seemed like a basic episode of st tng tbh, neither awesome or poor just ...there.
And lets take a step back and look at this for a moment....
We have...the federation at the table...hmm ok makes sense
We have...klingons at the table...makes sense..
We have...cardassians at the table...k makes sense their back door is overlooking bajor anyway
We have....deferi...you know the ones that cant do TRIBBLE for themselves and are getting you know what by the breen every 5 minutes...
and thats it...seems to me theres a faction missing...I can't seem to recall who it was tho that was missing from the table...um god what are they called...they been around since 66' ...god whats that faction called...oh right
ROMULANS, tbh so what if their homeworld is gone...they still are a major player in the current timeline and argue me that they aren't. I would have accepted ferengi at the table for the love of all thats good and holy but no Romulan rep what so ever...shows how much love cryptic does have for this faction if they can't even bother to script a key player in the alpha/beta quadrant to be at a borg conference.
and the reward...its a little meh tbh, I can get a purple weapon from a doff mission, and yes I understand this will be part of a grander set of some sort. But still.
Secondly, and way more importantly, the game's storyline makes is pretty clear that the Tal Shiar (and probably quite a few other groups as well) have been run out of the Iconian's back pocket ever since Hobus exploded. Given that the Iconians are trying to kill us all, and have are implied to have sicced both the Undine AND the Borg on us, I would not trust the Romulans with a carton of eggs, never mind the details of an anti-Borg alliance.