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My thoughts after completing the Romulan Feature Episodes up to 'Mind Game'
g0vawk
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Levelling my Romulan character from Level 1 to 20 and playing through the feature episodes was enjoyable and without issues that hampered progress. I found myself immersed in the storyline as my lowly colonist character rose up to become a valued member of the Romulan Republic with close ties with D'Tan and also became a successful covert operative.
The visuals were stunning, especially on open air ground maps where I could almost feel the vibrance of the land while on war torn maps, the looming presence of enemies waiting to attack. The attention to detail and the use of lighting were what made things stand out and create a sense of completion to the way buildings or rock faces appeared.
Ground combat was somewhat the same compared to what I have experienced with my Federation and Klingon characters but that didn't detract from the Romulan themed gameplay in any way.
Space combat was interesting using the new Singularity Core powers; I didn't find too many uses for the AoE shockwave power during space combat in the Feature Episodes as most enemies weren't affected much by it. The shield heal/shield regeneration+temporary power was much more useful especially being only a Level 11-19 Centurion and not having a lot of access to Bridge Officer powers. The last singularity power, 'Warp Shadows', was pretty good during my testing. I found I would use it when things weren't going well for me such as having all my heals on cooldown and being surrounded. Using the ability would give me some extra time to consider my options without lowering my shields such as using the Battle Cloak would have done or I would turn the tables in a battle by being able to attack an enemy without fear of reprisal for ~5 seconds.
Overall I rate my experience playing as a Romulan character 7.8 out of 10, 10 being the best possible.
I also made note of things that could potentially be improved/fixed:
Feature Episode related
- 'The Search for New Romulus', underwater graphic for the section of river near the first nanov appears higher than the visible waterline.
- 'Stepping In', the eliminate all the starbase' picket/defenders objective is a bit vague. The objective could be read as to 'destroy all turrets and ships in the asteroid field between the initial spawn point and starbase.
- 'Price of Neutrality', 'Suspicious colonist/Yiridian' cutscene has the left side of his body out of frame so it isn't clearly seen he moves his left hand to his ear. Makes it look like he is talking to himself or someone out of frame.
- 'An Inside Job', typo's/spelling errors are frequent; 'handleing', 'planes' instead of 'plans', 'my' instead of 'might' and probably a few more I didn't write down. Also the last text in the mission makes reference to Franklin Drake instead of K'Men who, since my character is KDF allied, would be the correct covert intelligence contact. Finally, the Isolinear Chip rewarded at the end of the mission has more typo's.
- 'Sleepers', the flashlight did not illuminate the interior of the Borg ship much. Maybe a graphics issue on my end; all I could see was a dim circle of light about 1.5m in diameter.
- 'Revelation', more typo's/spelling errors. Also, the Iconian gateway at the end of the mission caused significant frame rate drop with my computer. I think at the worst I was at 8-10 FPS.
- 'Mind Game', one of the objectives is to kill a bridge officer but when that option is taken there is no graphic effect from the disruptor pistol.
- A few KDF missions appeared when I chose to ally with the Klingon Defense Force as my Romulan character hit Level 10. After playing through them I figure they aren't meant to appear or be played by a Romulan because of the strong Klingon emphasis on language used (my romulan character going full KDF native shouting 'Qa'pla' and loving a good fight.)
UI related
- When purchasing commodities from vendors the slider bar used to indicate the number of items to be purchased doesn't have a large enough 'click and drag' area. I put the mouse cursor over the square slider, tried to drag only it but end up dragging the entire window. It took on average 3 tries before I positioned the mouse cursor on the right spot of the slider square.
- The chat window disappeared for periods of time after map transitions, at worst up to a minute before it reappeared for no apparent reason.
- Locating the Bank and Mail consoles requires some exploration as there aren't any map icons for them.
Visual/graphic related
- Could barely see the visual effect for Plasma DoT's on Romulan ships, just a small wisp of plasma fire on one of the warp nacelles or on some random part of the hull.
- General clipping error from Romulan civilian clothing
Other
- Can't remember if there was a tooltip about the use of the abilities/power toolbar, something for a new player to understand better.
- Was there a tooltip about how to 'dodge' or roll? Would be a useful tip for a new player when avoiding grenades.
- Ship becoming decloaked because a bridge officer said something via a non-interactive text window.
- The scan function did not locate ground NPC contacts during a mission if the objective was to interact with them. It worked for items and consoles that needed to be interacted with.
The visuals were stunning, especially on open air ground maps where I could almost feel the vibrance of the land while on war torn maps, the looming presence of enemies waiting to attack. The attention to detail and the use of lighting were what made things stand out and create a sense of completion to the way buildings or rock faces appeared.
Ground combat was somewhat the same compared to what I have experienced with my Federation and Klingon characters but that didn't detract from the Romulan themed gameplay in any way.
Space combat was interesting using the new Singularity Core powers; I didn't find too many uses for the AoE shockwave power during space combat in the Feature Episodes as most enemies weren't affected much by it. The shield heal/shield regeneration+temporary power was much more useful especially being only a Level 11-19 Centurion and not having a lot of access to Bridge Officer powers. The last singularity power, 'Warp Shadows', was pretty good during my testing. I found I would use it when things weren't going well for me such as having all my heals on cooldown and being surrounded. Using the ability would give me some extra time to consider my options without lowering my shields such as using the Battle Cloak would have done or I would turn the tables in a battle by being able to attack an enemy without fear of reprisal for ~5 seconds.
Overall I rate my experience playing as a Romulan character 7.8 out of 10, 10 being the best possible.
I also made note of things that could potentially be improved/fixed:
Feature Episode related
- 'The Search for New Romulus', underwater graphic for the section of river near the first nanov appears higher than the visible waterline.
- 'Stepping In', the eliminate all the starbase' picket/defenders objective is a bit vague. The objective could be read as to 'destroy all turrets and ships in the asteroid field between the initial spawn point and starbase.
- 'Price of Neutrality', 'Suspicious colonist/Yiridian' cutscene has the left side of his body out of frame so it isn't clearly seen he moves his left hand to his ear. Makes it look like he is talking to himself or someone out of frame.
- 'An Inside Job', typo's/spelling errors are frequent; 'handleing', 'planes' instead of 'plans', 'my' instead of 'might' and probably a few more I didn't write down. Also the last text in the mission makes reference to Franklin Drake instead of K'Men who, since my character is KDF allied, would be the correct covert intelligence contact. Finally, the Isolinear Chip rewarded at the end of the mission has more typo's.
- 'Sleepers', the flashlight did not illuminate the interior of the Borg ship much. Maybe a graphics issue on my end; all I could see was a dim circle of light about 1.5m in diameter.
- 'Revelation', more typo's/spelling errors. Also, the Iconian gateway at the end of the mission caused significant frame rate drop with my computer. I think at the worst I was at 8-10 FPS.
- 'Mind Game', one of the objectives is to kill a bridge officer but when that option is taken there is no graphic effect from the disruptor pistol.
- A few KDF missions appeared when I chose to ally with the Klingon Defense Force as my Romulan character hit Level 10. After playing through them I figure they aren't meant to appear or be played by a Romulan because of the strong Klingon emphasis on language used (my romulan character going full KDF native shouting 'Qa'pla' and loving a good fight.)
UI related
- When purchasing commodities from vendors the slider bar used to indicate the number of items to be purchased doesn't have a large enough 'click and drag' area. I put the mouse cursor over the square slider, tried to drag only it but end up dragging the entire window. It took on average 3 tries before I positioned the mouse cursor on the right spot of the slider square.
- The chat window disappeared for periods of time after map transitions, at worst up to a minute before it reappeared for no apparent reason.
- Locating the Bank and Mail consoles requires some exploration as there aren't any map icons for them.
Visual/graphic related
- Could barely see the visual effect for Plasma DoT's on Romulan ships, just a small wisp of plasma fire on one of the warp nacelles or on some random part of the hull.
- General clipping error from Romulan civilian clothing
Other
- Can't remember if there was a tooltip about the use of the abilities/power toolbar, something for a new player to understand better.
- Was there a tooltip about how to 'dodge' or roll? Would be a useful tip for a new player when avoiding grenades.
- Ship becoming decloaked because a bridge officer said something via a non-interactive text window.
- The scan function did not locate ground NPC contacts during a mission if the objective was to interact with them. It worked for items and consoles that needed to be interacted with.
sig.
It's not what is done or said but why.
Words and actions may be judged, but motives?
Motives are truth to a believer
It's not what is done or said but why.
Words and actions may be judged, but motives?
Motives are truth to a believer
Post edited by g0vawk on
0
Comments
I also played from level 1 up before making my thoughts know i agree, the detail was impressive. i have no major problems with what i have seen/experianced but i do have a few minor things:
spelling mistakes was also something i noticed, cloak and dagger mission in the breif has feel instead of fleet.
also romulan ships seem to change warp outs randomly, sometimes its the romulan green and sometimes its the fed blue it starts after you choose who you want to ally with. it just looks odd and hope all romulan ships can have their normal green.
But I do find the Plasma shockwave useful, especially against the D'Deridex "torpedo spam" .
While I am not quite there yet, I have so far loved every minute of this. Even though its not finished and needs polish, some minor bug fixing the gameplay has been fun, the storyline has been interesting. there are a ton of cool little features and i have been hugely impressed.
I honestly expected the romulan faction to be not much more than the kdf at launch (and i would have been ok with that, just getting them out was an achievement) but the content has been pretty significant and to a high quality, and we still have more to come, and stuff on the KDF side.
This update will easily be the best thing since launch. i hope everyone plays the hell out of it, and buys lots of stuff so we can see this kind of thing on a more regular basis.