For the 100th time, this just isn't happening. The demand for 3 hour missions is very low in STO.
-Adults don't have time to sit down for 3hrs straight and grind a mission out, much less 5 adults on a team
-The kids that do have the time to sit down and raid for hours in other MMOs are doing it over there mostly, they also aren't paying the bills in STO.
-The dev time needed to get these back online would be extremely large, for.. what? They could focus on adding new elite missions to make people happier than the few who have that much time to run them.
For the 100th time, this just isn't happening. The demand for 3 hour missions is very low in STO.
-Adults don't have time to sit down for 3hrs straight and grind a mission out, much less 5 adults on a team
-The kids that do have the time to sit down and raid for hours in other MMOs are doing it over there mostly, they also aren't paying the bills in STO.
-The dev time needed to get these back online would be extremely large, for.. what? They could focus on adding new elite missions to make people happier than the few who have that much time to run them.
OMG
if you do not have time to do the mission, DO NOT DO IT
no one is asking you to bring the old missions and replace the new
Why not just run the No win scenario if people find the current stfs not challanging enough?
Old STFs weren't more challenging, they had a sense of accomplishment, and length, they felt like a mission. Go Queue for Khitomer Accord, Tell me why its called Khittomer accord, and why ur in an underground base. You cant, it doesn't make sense w/o a story anymore.
All for old STFs to make a comeback. Maybe even have them give awards and drop old Mk X Borg stuff, and Kits. And average time for STFs with a good team in Season 2 was:
Infected: 30minutes
Cure: 45-80 minutes
KA: 40 to 60 Minutes.
Average STF times now:
Infected:30 Minutes (10 Space, 20 Ground)
Cure: 40 Minutes (20 Space, 20 Ground, Because they Cut the map in half)
KA: 50 Minutes (20 Space, 30 Ground)
STFs times havnt changed at all. Take gear from back then into an Elite STF, youll find they take the same average times. The problem is the fact that now we have supercharged gear, Shotguns that while out groups, Transphasic Bombs doing 3k Damage. Back then it was Sniper Rifles. And u HAD to take out the node.
STFs should make a comeback in their mission form
Rewards say:
Mk X Assimilated Piece (Lowered from XI)
150 Omega Marks
7500 Experience
NO DILITHIUM: Ur getting a set piece, worth like 7k Dil, come on.
For the 100th time, this just isn't happening. The demand for 3 hour missions is very low in STO.
-Adults don't have time to sit down for 3hrs straight and grind a mission out, much less 5 adults on a team
-The kids that do have the time to sit down and raid for hours in other MMOs are doing it over there mostly, they also aren't paying the bills in STO.
-The dev time needed to get these back online would be extremely large, for.. what? They could focus on adding new elite missions to make people happier than the few who have that much time to run them.
Actually I hate to correct you but the missions are still in STO, the originals, the problem is that the Devs disabled them, their still in the game but disabled for the new mini-stf queues.
And honestly if that's the complaint that adults don't have time, oh well we have the choice to go into an STF if we think we have time before we have to A: Leave for an appointment, B: leave for work, or C: leave to go out with family/special person. How ever whether you have the time to do them isn't the issue.
Those who haven't played the original STF's don't know the full story behind the current missions. Example: Infected you have to clear the system of borg vessels, including the gate, before beaming onto the station to rescue the survivors and find out what happened to key personel.
Khitamor Accord, you have to clear the system of borg transwarp gates before the borg can send vessels into the time vortex, go back in time to the Vega Colony before what has happened in the tutorial mission, kill the borg on planet, beam back, find and destroy donatra's ship and damage what borg ships you can before they have a chance to assimilate the colony, and leave before Ensign <Your Character name> arrives at Vega to answer it's distress call.
There's a lot of story behind the STF's that hardly anybody knows about, and as I said, the missions are still there, the FULL missions, their only disabled. These are missions and story with-in STO it self that needs to come back into the light.
Old STFs weren't more challenging, they had a sense of accomplishment, and length, they felt like a mission. Go Queue for Khitomer Accord, Tell me why its called Khittomer accord, and why ur in an underground base. You cant, it doesn't make sense w/o a story anymore.
All for old STFs to make a comeback. Maybe even have them give awards and drop old Mk X Borg stuff, and Kits. And average time for STFs with a good team in Season 2 was:
Infected: 30minutes
Cure: 45-80 minutes
KA: 40 to 60 Minutes.
Average STF times now:
Infected:30 Minutes (10 Space, 20 Ground)
Cure: 40 Minutes (20 Space, 20 Ground, Because they Cut the map in half)
KA: 50 Minutes (20 Space, 30 Ground)
STFs times havnt changed at all. Take gear from back then into an Elite STF, youll find they take the same average times. The problem is the fact that now we have supercharged gear, Shotguns that while out groups, Transphasic Bombs doing 3k Damage. Back then it was Sniper Rifles. And u HAD to take out the node.
STFs should make a comeback in their mission form
Rewards say:
Mk X Assimilated Piece (Lowered from XI)
150 Omega Marks
7500 Experience
NO DILITHIUM: Ur getting a set piece, worth like 7k Dil, come on.
I agree on that, honestly in the old STF's (as stated before) if you had a good group the average time was about 30-45 minutes to an hour or so, depending which STF you were doing and what the objectives were.
I do also agree on the rewards, because honestly when I was getting my science toon's borg space set back in the day, when I gotten my last piece (the shield from KA) I had this sense of accomplishment, and not only that but when I finished the stf's on my main, I was a bit surprised on KA's ending, plus I loved how it tied everything together for like, why you were there at Vega and why the borg seemed all disconnected.
Actually I hate to correct you but the missions are still in STO, the originals, the problem is that the Devs disabled them, their still in the game but disabled for the new mini-stf queues.
Unfortunately they gutted the old stf and reused the maps for the new stf. Fortunately they didn't change the maps they didn't use.
All the maps are the there but the new stfs are overlapped on the old ones.
That is unfortunate. That also means they could create a copy, and manipulate that to the older STF style though, provided there is a framework to easily duplicate.
This sounds completely doable to re-add as either story missions, or traditional-stfs to run along side the new, allowing players that want the story and/or longer missions for the player base that wants to change it up and have a different type of challenge.
Old STFs weren't more challenging, they had a sense of accomplishment, and length, they felt like a mission. Go Queue for Khitomer Accord, Tell me why its called Khittomer accord, and why ur in an underground base. You cant, it doesn't make sense w/o a story anymore.
All for old STFs to make a comeback. Maybe even have them give awards and drop old Mk X Borg stuff, and Kits. And average time for STFs with a good team in Season 2 was:
Infected: 30minutes
Cure: 45-80 minutes
KA: 40 to 60 Minutes.
Average STF times now:
Infected:30 Minutes (10 Space, 20 Ground)
Cure: 40 Minutes (20 Space, 20 Ground, Because they Cut the map in half)
KA: 50 Minutes (20 Space, 30 Ground)
STFs times havnt changed at all. Take gear from back then into an Elite STF, youll find they take the same average times. The problem is the fact that now we have supercharged gear, Shotguns that while out groups, Transphasic Bombs doing 3k Damage. Back then it was Sniper Rifles. And u HAD to take out the node.
STFs should make a comeback in their mission form
Rewards say:
Mk X Assimilated Piece (Lowered from XI)
150 Omega Marks
7500 Experience
NO DILITHIUM: Ur getting a set piece, worth like 7k Dil, come on.
Too many capslock, and it is not 'u' , it is 'you' .
Why would I ever do a mission that does not reward dilithium? Dilithium is the most needed resource in game. What a silly idea.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
There's a lot of story behind the STF's that hardly anybody knows about, and as I said, the missions are still there, the FULL missions, their only disabled. These are missions and story with-in STO it self that needs to come back into the light.
Yeah, there's a Let's Play of STO. I watched it before I played, which wasn't until it went F2P. And from what I've seen, I'm glad the old STFs aren't active anymore, they didn't look much fun.
The current versions are a bit more disjointed, sure, but one can still see the connections between them if one is paying attention. But with the current PUG structure of the STFs, it's probably for the best that the old versions aren't around.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
Too many capslock, and it is not 'u' , it is 'you' .
Why would I ever do a mission that does not reward dilithium? Dilithium is the most needed resource in game. What a silly idea.
Then you'd have obviously no point in doing the episode missions to level your character or the featured episodes. And again that's why you still have the current STF's so that you can play them and get your dillithium.
Honestly it makes more sense for the story missions to not have dilithium as a reward because then all people could do is play through featured episodes or previous missions and possibly reach their dilithium cap after around 16 or so missions (Depending on how much dilithium you would get.)
But think of the other rewards you'd get, one being mark X assimilation pieces, each mission before had a piece they gave you for completing the mission. Infected was the deflector, Cure the engine, and Khitomer accord the shield.
I for myself started in spring 2012 and back then did one or two borg ground stf. Little did I know. I got help for the accolade to get me the borg boff and thats it. I have no reasons to do ground borg stf again. I remember getting lost in those hallways without knowing what to do next, where to go and which shields the other players were talking about.
Even the "guides" were no help at all because everything looked similar back then.
I had a rather long brake from the game from late september last year till feb
and have yet to test out ground borg stf. Maybe when I complete my Omega xi ground set and see if that remodulating stuff gets any better - because at its current state its really annoying. (thats why I go melee when on defera)
Have the ground stf been reworked meanwhile? (waypoints, descriptions etc.)
*edit: I have no problems with 2-hour long missions but the reward has to compensate for the effort.
.o0( The gods of deutsch data recovery have prevailed! The techno will continue.)
The current way is certainly useful for quicker accumulation of marks, etc. But surely there's scope to reinstate the full (story-driven) versions of the STFs for solo play, obviously without the uber-rewards the group-based versions hold. Too many times when the original full-length STFs were active you'd get groups who steamrollered their way through with someone screaming "DON'T READ - RUN! NOOB!" in chat. As a long-time STO player I'd love the chance to go through the STFs with my BOFFs at my own pace, enjoying the story along the way.
The original full-length STFs were brilliant story-driven episodes which offered good narrative progression from the existing solo Borg missions. Please Cryptic, if you're able to - please consider tweaking the original length STFs for solo play. Clearly some parts would need to be reworked but rebalancing end rewards should negate any potential reward abuse. Even if each instance only offers something small like 10 Omega marks and 250 Dilithium or something - it's the playable story content that counts. Plus, with a solo variant, instances where someone bails out or rage-quits deep into the mission wouldn't be a problem. Man, that was annoying - committing an hour or more to an original STF only to have one (or even two) people bail close to the end, rendering the entire thing virtually impossible to complete and wrecking any progress made. That's certainly one thing I don't miss. Sure, it still happens a bit now but with the shorter ones, it doesn't sting as much.
But restoring the full-length group-based would be fun as well. Story is what drives STO and the new ones, while a decent challenge most of the time, lack the story-driven "oomph" that the originals had.
Some of the co-operative elements are well beyond BOffs. The three console inputs in Infected Ground for example. The shield generators in Khitomer Accord ground too, how would you be able to direct a BOff to disable the shields around generator? Or direct them to attack a generator that you've disabled when you're in another room and can't see the target to assign it to them? I wouldn't even trust them to defend generators in the Cure, even with waypoints.
They'd have to be made so easy or changed so much to account for this that they'd be useless as training tools, imo. So you'd really only have them for the story element.
Exactly. I think Dstahl once said that it would be very hard to make BO's work correctly in STF's. It would require them to nearly completely remake the STF's for solo play with BO's.
As mentioned above, there are things that would not work currently in game, like the 4 transformers in Infected at the boss room, or to take it even further, how about the space parts of the STF's? How would that even work? You have the generators/probes in all the space parts of the STF's, and the current AI in this game would make it very hard to accomplish the taking down of generators/probes.
Also,in Khitomer ground, how would you go about the part with the nodes needing to be desttoyed and what to do about the part of taking down the shields of said generators in the room you currently have to beam into??
In the end, it would be too much work and not worth the effort to develop. It would be bad ROI on Cryptic/PWE's part...
It wouldn't be so hard since most of the maps and mechanics are still there, as a story driven mission even if you can't use your BOFFS to do half the mechanics for stuff like Infected and KA, at least they'd be brought back for the story that most F2P players and returning players are missing from the old STF's.
I'll admit some things in the STF's can't be done, but the STF's back in the day with a good group and good gear, some of them can be done even with the minimal requirement of people. Today with the gear most people have now if you took a team of three people with a mix of MACO, Omega and/or Honor guard (Adaptive and/or non-adaptive sets.) Infected can be done even with only 3 people, if not more. I admit that most things in KA and Infected can't be done with BOFF's alone, but of course that is why we have a team. And most things like cross faction teaming isn't that hard, or won't be that hard to do considering the Romulan update will allow romulans to cross-faction team with both Fed or KDF players/fleets depending on who they are aligned with. For the story missions how ever they would allow KDF and Fed players to cross-faction only with-in Gamma Orionis (as I've mentioned before) which with their current coding shouldn't be that difficult to do. As for making these missions accessible, it's only a matter of putting the coding back that they removed for you to hail Admiral D'vak and request for the mission.
It's not as much work as the Cryptic Dev team is putting into the Legacy of Romulus expansion, it may sound like allot reading all the suggestions and stuff, but that's when developers can pick and choose which route to take. To be honest it's actually much less work to reactivate the old STF's some may think. Even if they can't be solo'd the old STF's had story in them, and it connected everything together, that's something many F2P players hasn't, and currently can't experience. Unless a Dev responds to tell us how it's not possible to bring the old stf's back along side the new stf's, I believe, as I've seen many others so far in and out of this topic, that it is possible to bring these STF's back.
Allowing these STF's to be accessible again would also add in story for the KDF side, and in fact add in more to the Romulan faction since the old stf's, as story missions, are/were quite an eye opener. I know that the Dev team has many plans for the Romulan side in line of featured episodes and standard missions, but bringing the old STF's back would add allot more story from what it's currently missing.
It would be harder than you think. The pathing for the BO's would need a huge improvement, especially on Infected ground, so that they do not take a plasma bath at the boss room. And how would it work on Khitomer ground where you have to destroy those generators?
Or how about space? How would you ensure that allied NPC ships do not aggro or destroy the generators before the player is ready? Or aggro a tac cube at the wrong time. Or.... Well you get the point...
A lot of things would need changing to even work in some semblance, and I think it would be a nightmare of untold proportions for Cryptic to fix BO pathing, and NPC ship behaviour, and not to speak of any changes that might need doing to the STF maps themselves...
So while it would be nice to see the old STF's as solo STF's, it's sadly not a very realistic thing to hope for. Call it a pipe line dream, nice, but not very realistic...
especially on Infected ground, so that they do not take a plasma bath at the boss room.
Don't do that. I just had a flash back to the fire caves where 3 of my boffs are dead in the flames and one on top of the walk way continually trying to revive one of them in a vicious cycle as if they wouldn't accept the truth of the matter.
Comments
-Adults don't have time to sit down for 3hrs straight and grind a mission out, much less 5 adults on a team
-The kids that do have the time to sit down and raid for hours in other MMOs are doing it over there mostly, they also aren't paying the bills in STO.
-The dev time needed to get these back online would be extremely large, for.. what? They could focus on adding new elite missions to make people happier than the few who have that much time to run them.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
Visit our Youtube channel
OMG
if you do not have time to do the mission, DO NOT DO IT
no one is asking you to bring the old missions and replace the new
Old STFs weren't more challenging, they had a sense of accomplishment, and length, they felt like a mission. Go Queue for Khitomer Accord, Tell me why its called Khittomer accord, and why ur in an underground base. You cant, it doesn't make sense w/o a story anymore.
All for old STFs to make a comeback. Maybe even have them give awards and drop old Mk X Borg stuff, and Kits. And average time for STFs with a good team in Season 2 was:
Infected: 30minutes
Cure: 45-80 minutes
KA: 40 to 60 Minutes.
Average STF times now:
Infected:30 Minutes (10 Space, 20 Ground)
Cure: 40 Minutes (20 Space, 20 Ground, Because they Cut the map in half)
KA: 50 Minutes (20 Space, 30 Ground)
STFs times havnt changed at all. Take gear from back then into an Elite STF, youll find they take the same average times. The problem is the fact that now we have supercharged gear, Shotguns that while out groups, Transphasic Bombs doing 3k Damage. Back then it was Sniper Rifles. And u HAD to take out the node.
STFs should make a comeback in their mission form
Rewards say:
Mk X Assimilated Piece (Lowered from XI)
150 Omega Marks
7500 Experience
NO DILITHIUM: Ur getting a set piece, worth like 7k Dil, come on.
Actually I hate to correct you but the missions are still in STO, the originals, the problem is that the Devs disabled them, their still in the game but disabled for the new mini-stf queues.
And honestly if that's the complaint that adults don't have time, oh well we have the choice to go into an STF if we think we have time before we have to A: Leave for an appointment, B: leave for work, or C: leave to go out with family/special person. How ever whether you have the time to do them isn't the issue.
Those who haven't played the original STF's don't know the full story behind the current missions. Example: Infected you have to clear the system of borg vessels, including the gate, before beaming onto the station to rescue the survivors and find out what happened to key personel.
Khitamor Accord, you have to clear the system of borg transwarp gates before the borg can send vessels into the time vortex, go back in time to the Vega Colony before what has happened in the tutorial mission, kill the borg on planet, beam back, find and destroy donatra's ship and damage what borg ships you can before they have a chance to assimilate the colony, and leave before Ensign <Your Character name> arrives at Vega to answer it's distress call.
There's a lot of story behind the STF's that hardly anybody knows about, and as I said, the missions are still there, the FULL missions, their only disabled. These are missions and story with-in STO it self that needs to come back into the light.
I agree on that, honestly in the old STF's (as stated before) if you had a good group the average time was about 30-45 minutes to an hour or so, depending which STF you were doing and what the objectives were.
I do also agree on the rewards, because honestly when I was getting my science toon's borg space set back in the day, when I gotten my last piece (the shield from KA) I had this sense of accomplishment, and not only that but when I finished the stf's on my main, I was a bit surprised on KA's ending, plus I loved how it tied everything together for like, why you were there at Vega and why the borg seemed all disconnected.
Unfortunately they gutted the old stf and reused the maps for the new stf. Fortunately they didn't change the maps they didn't use.
I decided to go back in and take a few shots
http://i.imgur.com/yN4TlfO.png
http://i.imgur.com/oIuBtzw.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/5ypPJYu.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ZRSPgKk.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/8QySCYz.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/PH58y3g.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/JPyEPSO.jpg
All the maps are the there but the new stfs are overlapped on the old ones.
That is unfortunate. That also means they could create a copy, and manipulate that to the older STF style though, provided there is a framework to easily duplicate.
This sounds completely doable to re-add as either story missions, or traditional-stfs to run along side the new, allowing players that want the story and/or longer missions for the player base that wants to change it up and have a different type of challenge.
Too many capslock, and it is not 'u' , it is 'you' .
Why would I ever do a mission that does not reward dilithium? Dilithium is the most needed resource in game. What a silly idea.
There is a way to see that story stuff, actually:
http://lparchive.org/Star-Trek-Online/
Yeah, there's a Let's Play of STO. I watched it before I played, which wasn't until it went F2P. And from what I've seen, I'm glad the old STFs aren't active anymore, they didn't look much fun.
The current versions are a bit more disjointed, sure, but one can still see the connections between them if one is paying attention. But with the current PUG structure of the STFs, it's probably for the best that the old versions aren't around.
Then you'd have obviously no point in doing the episode missions to level your character or the featured episodes. And again that's why you still have the current STF's so that you can play them and get your dillithium.
Honestly it makes more sense for the story missions to not have dilithium as a reward because then all people could do is play through featured episodes or previous missions and possibly reach their dilithium cap after around 16 or so missions (Depending on how much dilithium you would get.)
But think of the other rewards you'd get, one being mark X assimilation pieces, each mission before had a piece they gave you for completing the mission. Infected was the deflector, Cure the engine, and Khitomer accord the shield.
Even the "guides" were no help at all because everything looked similar back then.
I had a rather long brake from the game from late september last year till feb
and have yet to test out ground borg stf. Maybe when I complete my Omega xi ground set and see if that remodulating stuff gets any better - because at its current state its really annoying. (thats why I go melee when on defera)
Have the ground stf been reworked meanwhile? (waypoints, descriptions etc.)
*edit: I have no problems with 2-hour long missions but the reward has to compensate for the effort.
The original full-length STFs were brilliant story-driven episodes which offered good narrative progression from the existing solo Borg missions. Please Cryptic, if you're able to - please consider tweaking the original length STFs for solo play. Clearly some parts would need to be reworked but rebalancing end rewards should negate any potential reward abuse. Even if each instance only offers something small like 10 Omega marks and 250 Dilithium or something - it's the playable story content that counts. Plus, with a solo variant, instances where someone bails out or rage-quits deep into the mission wouldn't be a problem. Man, that was annoying - committing an hour or more to an original STF only to have one (or even two) people bail close to the end, rendering the entire thing virtually impossible to complete and wrecking any progress made. That's certainly one thing I don't miss. Sure, it still happens a bit now but with the shorter ones, it doesn't sting as much.
But restoring the full-length group-based would be fun as well. Story is what drives STO and the new ones, while a decent challenge most of the time, lack the story-driven "oomph" that the originals had.
Exactly. I think Dstahl once said that it would be very hard to make BO's work correctly in STF's. It would require them to nearly completely remake the STF's for solo play with BO's.
As mentioned above, there are things that would not work currently in game, like the 4 transformers in Infected at the boss room, or to take it even further, how about the space parts of the STF's? How would that even work? You have the generators/probes in all the space parts of the STF's, and the current AI in this game would make it very hard to accomplish the taking down of generators/probes.
Also,in Khitomer ground, how would you go about the part with the nodes needing to be desttoyed and what to do about the part of taking down the shields of said generators in the room you currently have to beam into??
In the end, it would be too much work and not worth the effort to develop. It would be bad ROI on Cryptic/PWE's part...
I'll admit some things in the STF's can't be done, but the STF's back in the day with a good group and good gear, some of them can be done even with the minimal requirement of people. Today with the gear most people have now if you took a team of three people with a mix of MACO, Omega and/or Honor guard (Adaptive and/or non-adaptive sets.) Infected can be done even with only 3 people, if not more. I admit that most things in KA and Infected can't be done with BOFF's alone, but of course that is why we have a team. And most things like cross faction teaming isn't that hard, or won't be that hard to do considering the Romulan update will allow romulans to cross-faction team with both Fed or KDF players/fleets depending on who they are aligned with. For the story missions how ever they would allow KDF and Fed players to cross-faction only with-in Gamma Orionis (as I've mentioned before) which with their current coding shouldn't be that difficult to do. As for making these missions accessible, it's only a matter of putting the coding back that they removed for you to hail Admiral D'vak and request for the mission.
It's not as much work as the Cryptic Dev team is putting into the Legacy of Romulus expansion, it may sound like allot reading all the suggestions and stuff, but that's when developers can pick and choose which route to take. To be honest it's actually much less work to reactivate the old STF's some may think. Even if they can't be solo'd the old STF's had story in them, and it connected everything together, that's something many F2P players hasn't, and currently can't experience. Unless a Dev responds to tell us how it's not possible to bring the old stf's back along side the new stf's, I believe, as I've seen many others so far in and out of this topic, that it is possible to bring these STF's back.
Allowing these STF's to be accessible again would also add in story for the KDF side, and in fact add in more to the Romulan faction since the old stf's, as story missions, are/were quite an eye opener. I know that the Dev team has many plans for the Romulan side in line of featured episodes and standard missions, but bringing the old STF's back would add allot more story from what it's currently missing.
Or how about space? How would you ensure that allied NPC ships do not aggro or destroy the generators before the player is ready? Or aggro a tac cube at the wrong time. Or.... Well you get the point...
A lot of things would need changing to even work in some semblance, and I think it would be a nightmare of untold proportions for Cryptic to fix BO pathing, and NPC ship behaviour, and not to speak of any changes that might need doing to the STF maps themselves...
So while it would be nice to see the old STF's as solo STF's, it's sadly not a very realistic thing to hope for. Call it a pipe line dream, nice, but not very realistic...
Don't do that. I just had a flash back to the fire caves where 3 of my boffs are dead in the flames and one on top of the walk way continually trying to revive one of them in a vicious cycle as if they wouldn't accept the truth of the matter.