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Episodes: Tradecraft
stonewbie
Member Posts: 1,454 Arc User
Did anyone find the ready room portion of this episode to be a bit too much? I managed to complete it, but only because i got impatient and so i went with the process of elimination (guessed). It's nothing like the Fed/KDF version...i started reading the Romulan version...and thought to myself "this is a lot of TRIBBLE to read, remember and cross reference". I never even got a chance to see if it was hard/easy, i just got frustrated by all the walls of text.
It seems like they wanted to try and raise the difficulty of this type of puzzle quest over the last one we did. But instead they went a little overboard. To top it all off, everybodys favorite boff Tovan comes out at the end and says that you should go to Drozana.
EDIT: i'm gonna try repeating the quest again and force myself to do it the right way just to see how long it takes.
It seems like they wanted to try and raise the difficulty of this type of puzzle quest over the last one we did. But instead they went a little overboard. To top it all off, everybodys favorite boff Tovan comes out at the end and says that you should go to Drozana.
EDIT: i'm gonna try repeating the quest again and force myself to do it the right way just to see how long it takes.
Post edited by stonewbie on
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To answer your question therefore, No i didnt find it too much at all.
Still waiting to be able to use forum titles
Somebody, anybody, post the sequence, .......please?
i cant even figure out what the darn thing is asking me for.
"Does this look infected to you?"
As dirlettia said it's as easy as making an educated guess if you didn't really bother reading everything.
During beta it wasn't highlighted, and even having paid attention to the storyline, it was hard.
^THIS!^
Yes it's way too much. Plus if you aren't really in the mood to jump through a bunch of hoops, you can't even skip passed the mission. So you're stuck until you either figure the maze out, or just say f-it and turn the game off.
My character Tsin'xing
Besides, if you don't want to think, there's always the process of elimination.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
My character Tsin'xing
Now, I'm actually your average to higher intelligence type of fella. But guess I'm having an off day.
I understand that some people prefer brain teasers and maybe a test at the end of each mission. Even perhaps one to test ones reading comprehension level. But others may not. Either way, it serves no purpose to use one's intelligence over others, imagined or not, as a weapon, or to be unnecessarily rude.
Any assistance, would be appreciated.
Oh and btw, even if you were to give the sequence word for word in a manner a three year old would understand, it would still require "using our brain" for more than 10 minutes.
Folks who are genuinely trying to run the mission as it was intended, but are having difficulties are not the ones drawing flak here.
It's fairly straightforward deductive reasoning. You're given a statement, a part of which is highlighted and known to be incorrect. What you need to do is take the context of that statement, compare it to the documentation you're given and find out what should be there instead.
If you feel it necessary, look at your options before you read the reference documentation. Knowing what your potential answers are may help you hone in on what the information necessary to make your determination.
And if all else fails, just keep choosing different options until you hit the right one. But you'll miss quite a bit of tangential lore if you go that route.
Just use the process of elimination. Try each option until you find one that works.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
Actually, it's not "straightforward deductive reasoning". It's very confusing and very frustrating. I've chosen the "highlighted" options and it keeps referring me back to other options. Each time I've chosen a different option. It again refers me back to the other option. Only to tell me that it's the wrong one. And I don't know how you're making a determination who is being "genuine" or not. Or who is playing the game the way it was intended ( whatever that means). But there's no excuse for being rude and condescending to people who are only offering constructive feedback. At the least, you could provide an option for those who don't want to, or can't , for what ever reason, progress through the encryption sequence to drop that mission and play another. Instead of being stuck there.
Extrapolating a conclusion (IE: finding which data point goes into which hole) from a series of statements is the functional definition of deductive reasoning.
Each "highlighted" option is a sub-menu. It's linking you to the reference documentation for that specific data point. Your job is to figure out from those linked reference documents what needs to go in the linked data point instead of what starts out there.
The mission is intended to be logically solved. Banging random buttons until one solves the puzzle is not how it was intended to be played.
You have three data points with four variables each. That means there are nine incorrect answers, and three correct answers. I find it very difficult to believe that you're incapable of devising a way to let yourself know which of those nine incorrect answers you've already picked.
As far as logic puzzles go, this is an incredibly simple and easy one.
Don't like, or want to do a mission? That's what "Skip" is for.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
The weapons present on the colony were the property of the terrorist militia helping D'tan helping his followers break away from the legitimate government of the Romulan Star Empire. These weapons were being BEING HELD FOR D'TAN by Lortrix at D'tans personal request.
1) Check purchase orders for Chaltok
Recent Chaltok Colony purchase orders
*Stardate 86020.4 : 10 crates of self sealing stem bolts
*Stardate 86025.4 : 5 water purifiers
*Stardate 86059.2 : 25 solar arrays
*Stardate 86091.3 : 3 metric tons of freeze dried food
2) Review weapon targetting information
Coordinates previously set as weapons targets
*Stardate 86036.5 : [Fire Protocol: Subsystem Target: Engines] [Target: Ferengi Freighter Latinum Lady]
*Stardate 86073.5 : [Fire Protocol: Long Range Torpedo Launch] [Target: Romulan Flotilla, Tau Dewa Sector Block]
*Stardate 86083.5 : [Fire Protocol: High Yield Bombardment] [Target: Suliban Helix, Tau Dewa Sector Block]
*Stardate 86091.3 : [Fire Protocol: Fire at Will] [Target: R.R.W. My Shipname]
3) Check communications traffic regarding thefts
Communications traffic with keyword "Stolen"
*Stardate 86036.4 Commander Temer to Subcommander Nadel : Keyphrase "...noticed that some grain was stolen..."
*Stardate 86045.2 Renak to Obisek : Keyphrase "...I found some stolen medical supplies on the black market..."
*Stardate 86056.5 Franklin Drake to Admiral T'nae, Starbase 39-Sierra : Keyphrase "...List the ships as stolen in the official record..."
*Stardate 86064.9 K'men to S'taass : Keyphrase "...You have stolen an honor that was due to me..."
The phrase you have to change is at the very top in red. But looking at all the hints they gave you none of it makes any sense. You HAVE to look at the choices to see what you can change that red text to. And here is what you can change that red text to:
-Being held for D'tan
-Sold to D'tan
-Aimed at Romulan Militia targets
-Stolen from Romulan Militia
I redid the mission that this entry deals with. It had Hirogen in space, some Hirogen reinforcements, a foreman on the ground pretending to be victims and hiding weapons. You would only know the correct answer if you pay attention to the details...there is only one instance where the answer in the mission is revealed, but it is worded a bit differently. They say republic instead of militia targets, but just a minor detail. The only thing i remember from doing it the first time around was that the foreman on the planet with the hidden weapons tried to kill me. But then take a look at the sentence structure when you put each option in place.
1) These weapons were being BEING HELD FOR D'TAN by Lortrix at D'tans personal request.
2) These weapons were being SOLD TO D'TAN by Lortrix at D'tans personal request.
3) These weapons were being AIMED AT ROMULAN MILITIA TARGETS by Lortrix at D'tans personal request.
4) These weapons were being STOLEN FROM THE ROMULAN MILITIA by Lortrix at D'tans personal request.
Wait? what? the correct answer says that D'tan requested Lortrix to aim those weapons at Romulan Militia targets, was there another conspiracy within a conspiracy that i missed out on? But wait, this text is supposedly written by the paranoid Tal Shiar or was it? is D'tan on our side or he a bad guy? that option doesnt make sense.
When i said the episode was a bit too much i wasnt talking about difficulty. They just throw a lot of text at you. And if you miss or forget a detail while doing the actual mission then you are left trying to analyze the text. For me though i wanted to use all the stuff i learned from doing the missions to solve the puzzle. But the missions just werent memorable for me. It wasnt like a Vulcan going 'surprise i'm an Undine' and then going 'now i'm a Klingon'. See something like that is a lot more memorable...more so then a line of text that says 'these weapons are being used on us'.
My character Tsin'xing
I, for one, would prefer an MMO where you need to solve puzzles. The Secret World is great at this. If you don't want to think about solving a mission, you certainly won't succeed in TSW. A lot of the missions you'll find yourself Googling for the answers or at least hints.
There are several things that bug me about this game, though I'm trying to live with them because I know they'll NEVER be addressed:
The fact that the key bindings for Pitch Up, Pitch Down, Camera Zoom In, and Camera Zoom Out are reversed from what they should be has bothered me for the longest. I reported this years ago and the five minutes it would take to correct has never been done.
Buttons for things (looting, beaming out, etc.) appear in random places on the screen: Sometime they are directly in front of you and other times off to the right of the screen.
Many times, just as I'll be ready to click a "Loot" button, it will switch to "Beam Out" and I'll leave an area before I'm done because I can't stop the beaming process. Then I have to walk all the way back, like in the Paradise Lost missions.
One of the main reasons people like to reach a new rank is to get a new ship. I'll wager space combat is far favored to ground missions by most. It annoys me that just after getting a new ship, it seems you always get ground missions and what you really want to do is try your ship. At level 20, I had two new ships, one from the rank change and one from a mission just before. And wouldn't you know it? No space missions, in fact, not until I was level 25 did I get one. Five levels of ground missions?
Sorry if some of this is a bit off topic, but if they would allow non-premium players (even ones who spend a lot of money on the game) to create new threads, I wouldn't have to do this.
i.imgur.com/LGpIGVB.png
FREE HONG KONG! *
I actually played TSW and i loved the solutions to some of their quests! Do you remember a quest in the later part of Kingsmouth? where you find a black SUV with a laptop in the back? the laptop has a password so you cant get into it of course. But then nearby you see two dead bodies...you inspect them and one has a employee identity card that had his employee ID number and his company website. Most people would have given up...but i thought to myself this hint has his name...employee number and website. Most company websites have a directory. So i put the address in the browser and sure enough the 'fake' website came up and i look him up and got his spouses name which was the password for the laptop. I figured all that out on my own...along with Vivaldi, Savage Coast, Blue Mountain, Egypt, and Transylvania.
You see it's not that i'm stupid, or have a short attention span, or that i'm a spacebar commando. This particular puzzle in STO just was not interesting to me. The hints i unknowingly picked up along the way on other missions which would have been clues in this one mission were quickly forgotten because they werent memorable. TSW missions are awesome because they really do force you to use your head. Vivaldi? you actually do have to use your browser and google that stuff. If you were in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and you had to get into a computer but the only hint you knew about the password was that it was a composer and the relevant phrase was 'music of the seasons 1723'? what would you do IRL? you have no knowledge of classical music, there is nobody near you that does. But nowadays everybody has a smartphone...so you would pull that out and google that stuff. And thats exactly how they intended for you to solve that quest. That's fricking genius!
but anyways...what were we talking about? Star Wars or something right?
I agree, some of the STO "puzzles" are not fun because they are not logical.
Another game I found where quests were interesting was D&D Online.
Yeah, same here on 1723. I like some classical music but not enough of a connoisseur to have known that without a search engine. Let's just be glad we don't have to take a trip down to a library to look stuff up.
i.imgur.com/LGpIGVB.png
FREE HONG KONG! *
This one has all the info you need IN the game, it even gives you easily assessed summaries of it all.....
My character Tsin'xing
and no i dont mind using my brain at all, i just hate tedious, lazily crafted walls of text disguidsed as puzzles.
scanning server-logfiles for errors and discrepancies is what i do for a living, the last thing i need on a sunday afternoon is doing just that instead of blowing **** up...
here's an example for a well done puzzle in an mmo, which i totally loved:
http://unfair.co/gaming/the-secret-world-men-in-black-vans-solution-guide/
it is one of the easier ones in tsw, solved them all. why? because they are interesting
anyways, logged off. reading a book now.
I personally loathe puzzles that make me put down the game and find information outside the game. Which AFAIK is what your example requires. IMO, if I have to read a guide just to play the game it stinks....
Seriously.... they made the puzzle easier by highlighting the parts of the text you need to pay attention to. You don't even need to read everything....
My character Tsin'xing
Thats actually one of the features that i discovered while doing this mission, and i thought it was kinda lame when it popped up. But i think it only comes up when you make 2-3 mistakes trying to find the correct choice, so they do the hint so that people dont become stuck on a mission for too long.
Ohh and regarding this? TSW actually has an in game browser, since it was built with the types of missions i mentioned above. You may not be fully understanding the setting of TSW. It's fiction but its a game about what would happen if normal people got super power/became immortal. If you as a normal person were to suddenly get superpowers like shooting fireballs out of your eyes you would still carry around your smartphone would you not?
Just like the example i mentioned a few posts up. Even if you had super powers and could not be killed you still lack knowledge about certain things. You come upon a doctors computer that has a password on it. But you *need* to get into the computer...and the password hint is "my favorite composer from the 1700's". The first thing i would do in the situation is to pull out my smartphone, and do a search for 'composers from the 1700s'.
The mission i talked about with the black vans? imagine the same thing you come upon 2 dead bodies and one of them has an employee ID card, and on that card is their company website. In the van there is a laptop with a password, password hint is something like 'wifes name'. You have the hint in your hand, so the next logical thing to do is pull out your smartphone and look up this company website and see if there is an employee directory.
Thats how the game is set up...you aren't alt tabbing to look up the information on how-to or cheat websites. You are actually staying in game, using the web browser, using hints left in game to look up info on wikipedia or fake websites that the devs created for this game. That Orochi-group website? you can pull that up on the in game browser or by alt tabbing. Thats an actual fake website that is on the internet that they added specifically for this mission. It's not like 'fake internet only for TSW', i'm talking about the internet you use to post on the STO forums. As you are reading this open up a new window and type in the website below. That's not a real company hehe, that is a company that exists in a video game. Go to the "who are we" part of if and you will see an employee finder. That is what is used to solve the puzzle in the game.
www.orochi-group.com