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Post your worst STF experiance
Archived Post
Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
I'm starting this post so people can post their STF experiances. I thought it might be fun.
Here's one that I just compleated.
I qued up for a Cure Normal. I'm just 2 away from the 300 Accolade so i wanted to get it out of the way quick.
I must have entered one that was already partway completed because there were 7 minutes left on the clock and one of the nodes on the first cube was already dead.
All 4 of the other ships were oddys with technicolor rainbow beams, all 4 had accolade points under 3500 and all 4 were at the Kang shooting away at several BoP's.
I figured 4 ships, they could handle it. I said "HI" and flew on to the first cube. That's when I saw one node was gone.
I proceded to kill the other nodes and the first cube by myself.
That's when I figured there must have been someone else who knew how to do the STF who got fed up and bailed.
I flew on to the next cube. One of the nodes was dead there also. I started killing away and called in Fleet Support because none of the other ships were answering any hails.
This part is odd... My fleet support and the turret I had dropped were shooting at the cube, not the nodes and the cube blew up at the same time the last node blew up. I've never seen that happen before. I'm sure my CSVIII was hitting it too but I'd still never seen it happen before.
The other 4 ships are still pounding away at the kang and time ran out as i was flying to the last cube.
I killed the two raptors then started at the nodes. I also noted here that a couple of the nodes were gone.
After a couple minutes the cube died and I look back, the other 4 are still shooting away by the kang.
I flew to the kang and hailed it, the other 4 are well within hailing range but none of them could figure that out.
I clear out the remaining BoP's and Raptors and here comes the Carrier.
Low and behold, now there are 4 ships shooting the BoPs and TELLING EACh OTHER TO KILL THE BoP's FIRST! One ship flew off 70k. I guess he was scared.
Needless to say, I finished the Carrier by myself.
I could see why whoever I replaced had bailed.
Moral of the story?
Dump the Technicolor/Rainbow Beams. Turn on your chat screens and read the forums about how to do STF's before you try them. And finally, If you want to win don't do PuGs.
Ok there's my story for the day.
Next?
Here's one that I just compleated.
I qued up for a Cure Normal. I'm just 2 away from the 300 Accolade so i wanted to get it out of the way quick.
I must have entered one that was already partway completed because there were 7 minutes left on the clock and one of the nodes on the first cube was already dead.
All 4 of the other ships were oddys with technicolor rainbow beams, all 4 had accolade points under 3500 and all 4 were at the Kang shooting away at several BoP's.
I figured 4 ships, they could handle it. I said "HI" and flew on to the first cube. That's when I saw one node was gone.
I proceded to kill the other nodes and the first cube by myself.
That's when I figured there must have been someone else who knew how to do the STF who got fed up and bailed.
I flew on to the next cube. One of the nodes was dead there also. I started killing away and called in Fleet Support because none of the other ships were answering any hails.
This part is odd... My fleet support and the turret I had dropped were shooting at the cube, not the nodes and the cube blew up at the same time the last node blew up. I've never seen that happen before. I'm sure my CSVIII was hitting it too but I'd still never seen it happen before.
The other 4 ships are still pounding away at the kang and time ran out as i was flying to the last cube.
I killed the two raptors then started at the nodes. I also noted here that a couple of the nodes were gone.
After a couple minutes the cube died and I look back, the other 4 are still shooting away by the kang.
I flew to the kang and hailed it, the other 4 are well within hailing range but none of them could figure that out.
I clear out the remaining BoP's and Raptors and here comes the Carrier.
Low and behold, now there are 4 ships shooting the BoPs and TELLING EACh OTHER TO KILL THE BoP's FIRST! One ship flew off 70k. I guess he was scared.
Needless to say, I finished the Carrier by myself.
I could see why whoever I replaced had bailed.
Moral of the story?
Dump the Technicolor/Rainbow Beams. Turn on your chat screens and read the forums about how to do STF's before you try them. And finally, If you want to win don't do PuGs.
Ok there's my story for the day.
Next?
Post edited by Archived Post on
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I must have good luck with STF PUGs - my worst experience has been one spawn point idler.
I don't get the optionals every time (Infected lately seems to be the worst for this) but they're always finished in decent time. I think my longest STF was a Khitomer Accord where I was the only DPS ship of note and Donatra's Scimitar took ages to bring down.
I've only played on Normal level, the razor-thin improvement of the MK XII stats aren't worth the insane repetitive grind to me.
Except in my case the four cruisers defending Kang... failed.
Yep. Four f'in cruisers (at least two Oddy's) decided to guard Kang, leaving me to take out a cube in my cannon bortasqu.
And they FAILED. Lost the optional.
Optional isn't the end-all, be-all, but I had enough and took my leaver penalty. What a bunch of nincompoops.
Oh, and the part that annoyed me was, of course, that none of them responded to hails.
My worst STF experience is probably all of ground STF, and the 6 or 8 times last night I had to leave during the boss fight because it became quite clear that our group couldn't do it.
That's 3-4 hours I could have been spending doing ... anything else, and gotten far more reward (or, gasp, actually doing stuff in RL). Heck, I could have spent it in Space STFs and gotten 12-15 EDC.
Sigh.
My fleetmate takes off to do probes right, the rest of us go left, Everything is going good until the PUG on probes left runs into trouble! The other 2 run to help him and Never come back! And to top it all off they let a probe thru! My fleetmate and I end up taking both sides down by ourselves well these 3 PUGS flew around in circles NEEDING every drop,
I dunno if people (F2P) don't read the forums or what, But in the last week I have run into more Rainbow Beam Boats than ever before, And Cannons to PUG into Infected space Wednesday, counted red green and blue, on an Advance Escort. Every time he hit his Scatter Volley looked like a Pack of Skittles exploded
newbs get infected ground but lost on cure and kihitomer
I have a strange bug I can not talk to team in STF so when team stalls out I can not walk them trough mission thanks cryptic
I think there was one or two Rainbow Oddy's there as well.
(Also, I had to explain to Dad about the 10% rule)
This has made my morning. Thank you.
I am usually pretty laid back about STFs. But man folks just are so... surprising, I guess, though I have learned I really shouldn't be surprised.
There are numerous times with rainbow boats and cruisers that have tiny DPS but also don't heal at all that have been quite frustrating. I mean, I totally get that PuG'ing is no guarantee for optionals, cool. But to be so close and miss it just because someone derps around or hasn't grasped the game mechanics can make you sigh. To be clear, though, it's just a game; I don't get angry or whatever. I just hope people are learning the more they play.
Anyway, one of the worst times was in a KA. I was on the far side while the rest of the team took down the other side. This was normal mode. The number of deaths over there was staggering. I am pretty sure I had all but the gate down and was working on it on my side before they even got to it (no, we didn't get the optional, of course).
Can just imagine that Skittles commercial:
DESTROY THE RAINBOW
TASTE THE RAINBOW
That's really frustrating.
Skittle Boats...
What's you're favorite term???
I avoid the ground STFs. Borg on the ground are miserable to fight, and just no fun for me.
Done a few good Khitomer Accord ground runs though.
Then there was the Cure Ground Elite, that I wasn't even supposed to go into, except the fleetmate I was going in with, queued us up for that by mistake, and then at the last second he bailed (Darn Brits
More often than not the actual Federation Vs Terran ship fights proceed nicely. Then the ISS Stadi shows up and, more often than not, everyone goes after the Stadi. The number of times I've found myself trying (and often failing) to fight off numerous Terran battleships singlehanded as a result of almost everyone else charging off to shoot at the Stadi......
:rolleyes:
Instead I'll offer my closest.
I usually run Infected space because I figure, since there's no failure possibility due to nothing destructable and stuff, that I minimize the chance for idiocy. However, of course, my team is always too busy killing the nanite generators(in fact they often don't focus fire on them one at a time, lengthening the process) to notice the legions of nanite probes and spheres that keep coming through the gate. So, I valiantly break off and engage either in my raptor or odyssey (depending on what character I'm running- don't worry, my odyssey only runs one color of beams), but we end up failing the optional because I just can't kill all of them before they reach a repair point... than I get blamed for it. This also happens on Khitomer although usually it's a lot easier since it's just probes and not spheres.
But hey guys, I dunno about you, but usually I can tell if my team knows what they're doing within the first 5 minutes- doesn't that mean we can figure out what we're going to end up doing ahead of time?
A couple of days ago on a bad Infected Space Run....
The group was mixed. My Galor, a few cruisers and a guy in a DPS escort coppin' an attitude. When one of the Rainbow Brites prematurely detonates a genny, this 'experienced' player cusses him out, insults him (the word 'TRIBBLE' was thrown about). No problem... salvagable and one loudmouth can't ruin the entire run, right?
Wrong!
All the other Rainbow Brites concentrated on the two spheres that spawned after the first genny prematurely died. Nanite spheres were on the way. Only our loudmouth was taking the transformer and there was no way that two or even three of our ships could take that transformer down before the first nanite sphere reached us.
Did I mention the Rainbow Brite using Gravity well was shooting his Gravity Well at anything BUT the incoming nanite spheres? That was true the entire match. Once he even dropped the Gravity Well on the Nanite Transformer...
So I made a call. I'd buy some time, take out the nanite sphere that's closest, Eject Warp Plasma 3 every incoming sphere, and hope that buys enough time for the Rainbow Brites to get their act together and take that damn transformer down.
You can see where this is going, right?
In retrospect, I shouldn't have tried to take out that first nanite sphere. Hell, I could have destroyed the entire horde of spheres and locked them in an indefinite suspended animation, and it wouldn't have made a lick of difference. The Rainbow Brites were getting popped by spheres, and Loudmouth was screaming for some help in between complaints about PuGs and N00Bs. Meanwhile, I was throwing everything at the oncoming Nanite Sphere horde. Graviton beams, graviton console bursts, tractor beams, eject warp plasma, anything to keep the hope alive (because god knows I wasn't expecting a Gravity Well in the right spot any time soon...).
It was not enough. The rainbow brights were too busy getting their butts kicked by two spheres... and loudmouth was too busy ranting about about PuGs, N00B's, whatever elitist TRIBBLE he was spouting...
To my credit, the lead nanite sphere did go down. The two after that, however...
I finally asked what's taking so long with the transformer. Rainbow Brites were silent. Loudmouth didn't say anything of note about it. So the Rainbow Brites and I had to mop up these nanite spheres and try again, as well as kill the regular spheres which were becoming too numerous. I think Loudmouth screamed about concentrating on the transformer at that point. I just sighed and tried to stop multiple spheres from tractoring and gangbeating me while trying to pull their nanite spheres away...
We did manage to mop up and destroy the nanite transformer. Thank god. So off to the next side!
Went as well as expected. The Rainbow Brites once again messed up the nanite gennies. Again, I maintain that this is salvagable, but like last time, the Rainbow Brites concentrated on the spheres. At this point I was sympathetic. They really were getting their butts handed to them...
Loudmouth once again spouts off. You could practically predict the paint by numbers elitist anti-pug and anti-noob nonsense this guy was saying. I was rather sick of his attitude and of the poor performance of the Rainbow Brites (but mostly of his poor attitude), so I finally told the group...
"Less complaints, more Gravity Well!"
And that's when Loudmouth decided... hey... it's all MY fault. The Rainbow Brites better be grateful, for from that point on, all the complaining was directed to ME.
So for the next half hour, I had to listen to Loudmouth cuss me out, accusing me of not doing the plan right, complaining that I should have been focusing on the transformer instead of slowing down the nanite spheres, PuGs, N00B's, read a guide, blah blah blah. I made the mistake of defending myself (because god knows explaining one's actions may sometime actually work as intended or advertised...). It wasn't offensive, just annoying.
When the guy called me a dumb***... that's when I figured he crossed the line.
So I told him, "Say what you will, but never insult."
Oddly enough, he didn't have a retort about that. Just the same elitist ad nauseum stuff mentioned before. And this time he's taken an interest in me... he starts questioning my experience, wondering how I could mess this up.
I replied, "I suspect your credentials as well."
To this he did have a response. He told me how many accolade points he had. Over 10 thousand... wow... not bad.
(Mine's higher, not to mention that in STF's it means jack all, but who am I to burst his bubble?)
The rest of the match went as expected. Rainbow Brites went boom. Loudmouth was being loud. I was wondering why there wasn't a 'frag teammate' feature in the game...
I had a laugh when Loudmouth got within 5 km's of the gate during the gate destruction portion of the game. I even pointed it out, to which he gave an indignant response similar to 'You are telling ME how to play?', because remember at this point our opinions of each other were low, like we saw each other as a lower evolved lifeform.
Maybe it was too passive aggressive?
Yeah, it was. But I think the point I made, that perhaps he isn't as 1337 as he thinks, that he is fallible, actually went a bit over his head.
But that's the thing about perpetually angry people like that. Nothing gets through to them. So I think the Rainbow Brites had it right by keeping quiet. Elite players wonder why there's no communication? Probably because all it's gonna get you is a lot of abuse.
So I took what I had to learn to heart. My efforts weren't going to change the outcome, so next time just focus on the transformer and let someone else take the blame when the nanite spheres come running in.
And don't feed the trolls.
One particular Normal Khitomer Space took well over an hour. I was the only one in there with ANY DPS at all. It was me and four Odysseys. As soon as I saw the other ships I knew it was a loss. Two took off and started attacking nodes right away WITHOUT killing the guardian. Me and the other two went after the guardian. It took several minutes to kill. The two Ody's with me had technicolor beams. But we did finally kill it. I typed several times on the chat screen for the others to come help to no avail.
After the guardian was killed I beelined it to the portal to see if there were any probes, I didn't see any but low and behold the other two Ody's had followed me. I guess they were trying to learn or something. I kept typing to tell them to one go watch the other gate and the other go help the other two. No luck.
They tried to help with the probes but their DPS was so low they couldn't kill them. I ended up flying back and forth between gates to kill the probes. After several minutes of this I noticed the first two Ody's had killed one of the nodes. What were they doing all this time? But what did I see now??? More technicolor beams.
So I go back to the other side and check for probes where the other two Ody's had started trying to kill the nodes. One of them was just happily firing away at the Gate. I typed at him to kill the nodes to no avail. He just kept firing away.
At this point I was ready to bail, three probes had made it through.
I kept running back and forth killing probes and taking shots at nodes when I could. I killed two at one point on the side of the first two Ody's while noticing they were still working on their second.
I mean SERIOUSLY! These guys were Admirals, All of them! And they couldn't even put dents in nodes or probes!
So I continued running back and forth killing anything I could. The Spheres are getting thick so I had to start killing them too.
About 30 minutes into this the one shooting the gate is STILL shooting the gate. I got right in front of him where he could see my message box and typed, 'STOP SHOOTING THE GATE NOOBE!'
No luck.
So I keep flying back and forth, I never did notice any of the Ody's die but I had other things on my mind.
45 minutes into this I'm fed up. I kill all the remaining nodes on one side, go check the probes and fly back to the other, kill a generator, fly back to the other and do it all again. By now 7 probes had made it through.
I get to the main gate and get it killed with what little help the two Ody's on that side could offer.
By now I'm pretty peaved and worn out. My trigger finger was really hurting.
But the hard part was done, I could fly back to the other side and start killing.
The Ody shooting at the Gate is STILL shooting at the gate.
So Now I am working on side two.
Here comes a three probes. I watch as an Ody starts chasing the probes. He's shooting and shooting and shooting, one of the probes pops. The other two are getting closer and closer to the gate. HE CAN'T STOP THEM! So I fly over and catch one as the other gets through.
We're at 8 through the the portal now.
Over an hour has passed, the second gate goes down and I start clearing spheres.
One of these clowns types, 'Is that it? That was easy!'
OMG :eek:
I refrained from typing what I was thinking for fear of melting my keyboard and lightning bolts crashing through the windows of my house. :mad:
Out pops Dinotra or however you spell it.
At least 15 cloakings later she dies.
Two of the Noobes took off, guess what they didn't pick up!!! LOL.
This random Elite tac drone slap the entire team and we all died. We called it the Borg pimp slap it has 100% Accuracy and 100% hit point crit.
I should have known something was up when we were ALL dying far too easily, but that was nothing compared to the last room. We'd already lost someone, but you wouldn't know that one of the guys was a rookie since none of them knew what the hell they were doing despite me telling them that there needed to be at least 3 of us per corner in order to drop the shields.
Took about a dozen attempts which used ALL of my regenerators. By the time they managed to hit upon the right strategy I'd had enough- and yet one of the guys has the balls to say that I'm the one who doesn't know how to work as part of a team- forgive me if I struggle to work with a team who lacks any understanding of how to do a room :rolleyes: I swear I haven't struggled this much since I did pugs- total contrast to the last game I did that mission where we nailed the last room on the first go, that team was the best I'd ever done that mission with.
The above is why I generally stick to space missions- after ages without any good loot I got the prot. shield and prot. engines in consecutive missions. I assume the best set is the MACO one?
Without all the gory details- Cure Ground Elite, an hour and a half. No optional (which TRIBBLE claimed he could do quickly), no loot bag- and not because of a server crash.
Well, we continued on our merry way to the final room. Somewhere along the line, another person left, leaving us with a team of 3. Still, we continued, because that was just enough people to get the job done. Everything was going great. We cleared out the tactical drones and, with a little help, a female character who was new to this STF got the gist of things.... almost.
She was obsessed with those drones. Every time one beamed down, she ran over to shoot it. By the time we had gotten to the last shield generator thing, the first had timed out. I and the other guy held out the hope that she'd stop attacking the Borg and even told her not to, but it was no use. Finally, he got frustrated and left. I followed suit. An hour wasted... oh, well.
Mine was Space Elite with pugs. A couple cruisers moved directly to the Kang, so I headed to the first Cube. With the first drone destroyed I'd noticed noone else was with me: all four, both cruisers, an escort and a sci were with the Kang. I asked to someone come to help me with the cubes, as "there is no need to have four guys stopping the bops", and just got a "ROFL" as reply.
*All right, this will be long*
I continued destroying the drones from the first cube and started to fight with the Neg'var and Raptor, when suddenly the OPTIONAL FAILED screen poped up. The Kang was at 65% and going down fast, with several Bops (all but the ones from my cube, as I killed them as they were spawning) ripping him and my teammates appart. One was dead, and two more had suffered heavy damage.
Optional failed after just 3-4 minutes into the mission! :eek: With 4 guys covering the Kang! By the first Bop wave! :eek:
Obviously I had to help them to clear the bops... and not just once but three or four times while I was keep clearing drones and cubes, and then raptors and neg'vars waves. They didn't moved from the Kang but to come back there after die.
At least I was using my tactical on escort and not my main (eng) on cruiser, or could have been much more painful
Funny but true.
I had a lady in a Infected Elite who got really mad at me.
Someone screwed up the optional right away. It doesn't matter how many times you tell someone to stop shooting. They will continue shooting no matter what.
Anyhow, they screwed up the optional.
I kept tellin everyone to kill the Nanite Spheres so we could kill the Transformer before the next group of Nanites got close enough to heal.
This lady (lady by the name but it's hard to tell) swore up and down that we could not kill the Transformer if there were ANY nanites on the map even if they were not close enough to heal.
She was cussing at me, I could tell by the $%#$%.
I proved her wrong twice, once on the left and once on the right and she was STILL &^%$# at me.
All is good.
Sometimes you get a really awesome team (I completed the Cure Normal once with over 7 minutes to spare on the optional)
Sometimes your team is meh (When I fail optionals)
Sometimes your team is absolutely terrible (I rage quit on those and eat the 1 hr penalty)
A team of folks who are devastatingly competent is a joy.
Moral of the story - take Wil Wheatons advice, and "don't be a TRIBBLE."
The final boss of I.G. is razzed by players for being OP, but she's not the problem. It's the freaking tactical drones respawning left and right who make that fight effectively unwinnable. And then when you wipe, the ENTIRE ROOM resets and you have to go through the whole shield-gimmick song and dance again ... seriously, Cryptic? ONCE was too many times.
C.G. is even worse, with those turrets that require the combined firepower of the group plus a gimmick action to destroy once, and then they respawn while you're fanned out trying to protect the nodes from drones so the shield blocking the next area will go down. Yeah, THAT's going to end well.
I will not touch either of those two missions again until the respawns go the way of the dodo. Random inept players is bad enough, but when the mission mechanics themselves are rigged against you? "Free" is paying too much for that tripe.