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Elachi Missions - Were they even Tested?
azurianstar
Member Posts: 6,985 Arc User
I am disappointed with all the Bugs and NPC Imbalances I'm finding with the Elachi Missions. They are easily the most frustrating enemies in STO, second to the Tholians.
Did anyone Test these missions after the Wasteland Arc?
Took 30 minutes to kill those 3 Waves of ships, because they had insane resistances.
The Ground, those Plasmathrower Walkers just moes down everything.
Very disappointed, easily ruins the fun of playing new content.
Did anyone Test these missions after the Wasteland Arc?
Took 30 minutes to kill those 3 Waves of ships, because they had insane resistances.
The Ground, those Plasmathrower Walkers just moes down everything.
Very disappointed, easily ruins the fun of playing new content.
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They were tested, but due to the short testing cycle Cryptic insists on having, instead of proper long term testing, like BioWare did with their first exp pack for TOR, we get so many bugs as we are seeing.
That, and the fact that Cryptic seems to be using Holodeck for testing, instead of the actual test server, Tribble.
They have a track record of releasing stuff in a bugged state, despite the testers saying not to release in a bugged state.....
Sad really....
You'll find a significant plurality disagree that there's anything wrong with the difficulty/annoyance of the missions. Although to be fair, you also will find people who said the EV Tholian Commander and the Unknown Vessel during the lower levels were a-ok before the nerfs there too.
A fair part of the problem may be the time frame commitment, failure to identify bugs/glitches resulting in the disparate results, or believing the difficulty to be appropriate at that level. Or some other reason, or combination of reasons.
The EV commander was challenging for players who knew what they were doing.... definately not good for a beginner mission.
The first Elachi ship you fight... the main issue with that encounter was that people kept skipping the "optional" part where you shoot the Tal'Shiar ships(it's no longer optional at all). Also.... the ship had ridiculous shield regen. Most of the time it died to plasma fire and not direct damage. As I mentioned earlier, the cone attack blows out it's forward shield arc now and it's shield regen is far less than it was.
The flamethrower Elachi drones are annoying, but... they die too fast to be a real threat.
So there have actually been fixes for some issues.
My character Tsin'xing
Be thankful the old 'Best Defense' atmospheric mission didn't make it to live - it made the final confrontation over New Romulus seem like child's play(2-3 walkers per wave, 20-30 shuttles assisting each walker and constantly reinforcing all groups). I think I died over a dozen times.. with EPTS, Quantum Absorption and full power to engines.
Conversely, I actually cleared the final command ship wave without a single death the first time I went through it during testing. I do think the waves still need to be rebalanced though - a more gradual build-up that isn't quite as silly/tedious as the final wave currently is. Also, the cone attacks on those dreadnoughts are ridiculous. Not only do they seem to have an emitter on each cardinal facing, but they even tore through about 2/3rds of the hull of my D'ridthau while it was phased out... with full, reversed shields and brace for impact active. Whatever those bolts are, they seem to play by a completely different set of rules.
The large crescent bolts also behave like destructible torpedoes, in that they will smash into the first thing they hit. I personally tested that by putting myself between the Elachi ship and the allied ship it was firing upon and took the attack myself, as well as ducking behind an allied ship when the Elachi fired upon me and watching that ship take the blast. Pets, Mines work as well. I'm sure an asteroid or chunk of debris will work too.
So yes, anything that can counter energy-based attacks will stop the Elachi Cone Weapon, since it's energy based and does disruptor damage.
The elachi have big strong shields but are weak in hull and die quick if they drop. When an elachi uses the cone attack it drops the shield facing and a strong hull hit will destroy it. Ground they're weak to physical attacks, just make sure you target the gas/plasmathrower walker things fast and swat them like the flies they are.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
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Personally, the only times the Elachi have given me trouble is against the commander class versions. Random mooks go down ridiculously easy in ground combat since I've got two grenade-tossing officers and tend to alternate between the Close Combat and Grenade kits, and the mook ships aren't much better.
The monbosh up in space, though? I fething hate those. Especially when they spawn the control and support craft. Then you've got viral matrices getting thrown at you from two ships until you blow one of 'em up, and the support craft is healing them. The commander class ground shrooms are just ridiculous with those damnable subspace rifts. The station commander shouldn't even have been able to open them, since we were already in subspace! But I Rider Kicked him into next week, so he ultimately learned not to mess with Romulans... after he killed Tovan like, five times. I need to remove Draw Fire from him...
'Candle in a Hurricane' was ridiculous because of the large number of ships, mostly 'upgraded' at that. They at least seemed to function mostly on old supervillain mook rules, with only one actively attacking you at a time unless you did something stupid. 'Defense of New Romulus' though? Hate, hate, HATED it. It actually took me less time to complete during tribble when I was using worse equipment.
That said, 'Defense of New Romulus' can be simplified if you don't go charging in like I was dumb enough to do the first dozen times. Although most of that dozen I was trying to be sneaky and lure away a victim... they just brought friends and decided I needed to vent atmosphere. With swarms of Elachi ships, you need to fight smarter, not harder. Remember that you're a Romulan (or Reman... or, Alien thing, I guess), not some graceless Human or Klingon.
As others have commented, Cryptic once again rushed content out the door without listening to the Beta Testers. They first missions got fairly bug squashed, but due to the server wipe, few people even bothered testing the Post Nimbus Missions. Which now, Romulan players have to endure this lack proper testing. Else the Defense of New Romulus and other major bugs wouldn't be so stressful.
So I hope you are taking notes Devs, it's becoming all too routine you rushing content out the door without proper bug squashing and it is driving people away. They see how buggy your new content is, this will cause disenterest and lack of long term playabily.
I'm on the 'missions are bugged' side of the debate; I have to be. Because if the missions aren't bugged, if they're supposed to be this way, I'll end up being disappointed and somewhat angry with the developers who would think this is the kind of mission we come to play. I don't want to, I want to be able to believe that they want us to enjoy the game and the storyline.
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
The test period for LoR way what? 3-4 weeks?
Then look at BioWare, they tested the TOR exp pack for atleast 3 months, if not more.
Their exp pack launched with very few bugs, and those bugs that were reported, was fixed relativly fast, I think between 1-3 weeks, depending on the complexity of said bugs.
I know Cryptic is not BioWare, but they should plan their testing cycles to be much longer in general, and fix what bugs they can, and then release to Holo. Then there will be less bugs, and more happy campers...
Sorry that the Romulan content isn't all lobotomized brain damaged monkey easy, but that doesn't make it bugged. Just because some people can't do anything but faceroll stupid easy content doesn't give their feedback that its too hard more weight than the majority that seem perfectly able to do the content without crying.
Wait, what??
We are not alking about "Defense of New Romulus", but rather the Elachi missions as a whole, and if they were tested enough or not.
Sure "DoNR" is part of the Elachi missions, but here we talking about all the Elachi missions, not just one. Some of the other Elachi missions are though, but doable, but some are very long and tedious, or just tuned wrong, like "DoNR" apparently was, if you look at the recent Tribble patch notes...
So in the end I think that while the Elachi missions were tested, they could for sure have needed a lot more testing...
Look into the future, people; my gosh, if they've made the servants this over-powered, we might as well forget about it if they ever add the Iconians themselves in any way...
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
I haven't had any problems with those things.
That being said, some of the Elachi on the ground have lots of HP or resistance, so they take a long time to get through. I actually found some of the new mechanics (the stasis sniping / teleporting thing, the skittering saboteurs) kind of cool, and fun to try to avoid.
The New Romulus space mission with three waves was just ridiculous. However, the cone thing only fires one shot, at what seems to be the nearest enemy. I've found that if I have a high-yield plasma torp heading the Elachi's way, it gets shot down instead of me.
It's been a while since I had to ask myself "What's the best way to kill this guy?"
My character Tsin'xing
The only real bugs is the plasma flamethrower effect being so incredibly framerate disabling, it needs some work.
The 3 waves of ships was complained about before the patch hit holodeck a lot, but you see how long it takes for a fix.
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The Elachi seemed to be designed in a way to encourage strategic thinking. Instead of just trying to rush through using the same one size fits all build most players use from start to finish of the game, you are actually encouraged to adjust your weapon loadout to get the best results.
On the ground the Elachi have strong shields that make gun play rough, but they crumple like paper under melee attacks. In space it is a similar situation, with plasma fire and transphasics being highly useful.
The only thing about them that I think is unbalanced is the cooldown on their cone attack, which I feel is way to short. Normally when you are dealing with a small group of ships it isn't an issue, but on that last episode with the fleet of dreadnoughts it seems like a near constant barrage of those cone attacks.
If it is hard for experianced players then it is impossible for new players. A new player not enjoying the game is one that will not put money down on that game and is more likely to quit altogether. Plus hard does not always equal fun and the elachi missions were not the hard kind of fun.
I found them to be really poorly designed with wave after wave of the same enemies and hard to kill easy to die from at that. More frustrating and Oh great more of these. The ground mission getting to the room to shut down a self destruct, wave after wave of monotony once you get to the room and each corner on the way was repeats and way too many corners. Wasnt hard but it wasnt fun either. Last stand 3 waves of the same exact thing... Yeah thats inventive, make the first wave then run out of ideas for more so copypasta?
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
The worst one was Last Stand - the one with the three waves, each with masses of enemy ships.
it was nice to see some harder missions ones u dont zzzzzz through
My character Tsin'xing