Besides cutting out 25% of the spawn points, the remaining rifts spit out a new ship only about 15% as frequently (the spawn time is bumped up to 10 minutes, meaning that most of the rifts should activate once before it moves on from Mirror ship mode), and once the map switches anomalies (that is, closes the Mirror Ship rifts), the remaining ships should disappear along with the rifts.
On top of that, the ships will be much more likely to attack the Entity and the fragments than before.
So we should see the threat of the Mirror ships drop down to about 10% or so of what they are on Holodeck now.
I saw the Redshirt patch notes, the point in my post is that their efforts isn't enough. Even if they reduce their numbers and fix their spawn rates, mirror ships will still cause major problem for players.
If you don't believe me, feel free to gather a team of your friends and go to Redshirt and try it. It's still full of frustration and the Dev team is too stubborn to listen to feedback.
I saw the Redshirt patch notes, the point in my post is that their efforts isn't enough. Even if they reduce their numbers and fix their spawn rates, mirror ships will still cause major problem for players.
If you don't believe me, feel free to gather a team of your friends and go to Redshirt and try it. It's still full of frustration and the Dev team is too stubborn to listen to feedback.
Even then, when is this stuff supposed to take effect? This Thursday? 1 week into a 3 week event? OK that's great. And we all know the first "patch" is usually a disappointment - er needs more tweeking.
Another run on my Sci, the last of my five current toons, and again that one gets the mirror mega spam that gets moi fried. I went after the CE, single targeted, didn't aggro anything else I saw near me. And then second phase on top of the mirror-tholian spam, were the subspace ruptures, that I could get out of, cause of unseen tractor beams that were coming from Recluses that apparently aggroed on me, after other players for wiped. Oh and the lag was still idiotic, on top of it all.
The game doesn't like my sci I guess, second straight run on that toon, with this result, of having to leave, to redo the run.
The ruptures and tyken rifts are okay enough, but GET RID of the Mirror ships. Even adjusting, which I did well enough on my engy Dread main toon, to success effect, didn't help for my sci toon, despite getting to second phase, and things only getting worse from there.
Sorry, the mirror ship spam is just a bad idea, implimented badly. Adjusting just isn't good enough, they need to be removed from the event. Reducing wont be enough, cause of the game engine history of 'reverting' code, with further patches. Remember how CE was initially, being better after an adjustment patch, and then 'back', within the next patch or two?
Sorry, this isn't fun game play mechanics, especially on normals, for those simply trying to complete the rep project.
Are you 100% certain that the Terran ships are not firing on the Tholians or CE, and not being chased by Fragments? That would be different than what was observed during local testing.
If left to their own devices, a good portion of the Terran ships are likely to end up aiding players against the Crystalline Entity. Unless something has gone wrong.
If everything is working as originally intended, then one potential 'solution' for this phase (if it appears - it doesn't always) is to ease off on the use of AOE abilities like Cannon Scatter Volley, Beam Fire-at-Will, Photonic Shockwave, Tractor Beam Repulsors, etc. Unless, of course, you WANT every nearby ship shooting at you, instead of one another...
Yeah no, sorry bort.
It really needs a look over because went in with a custom team that knew the tactics behind this and still the mirror ships were agro'd right on the team rather the ce and or tholian ships. I kept an eye on several of them as others did and not once did we see them shoot the tholians or even yet tholians shoot the mirror or... get destroyed by the CE's massive damage burst after the energy "suction" phase. Few ships did but even some right around the CE were still there with full health.
Again its one of those dev features that you guys add more to something that really needed nothing to it before as last time around. It needs a look back and also the event should be extended with the amount of issues this thing has. Sorry to say.
Even then, when is this stuff supposed to take effect? This Thursday? 1 week into a 3 week event? OK that's great. And we all know the first "patch" is usually a disappointment - er needs more tweeking.
Unless they say otherwise, right now looks like the patch is Thursday.
And since this an "Event CE" than the regular CE, I seriously doubt they are willing to try to tweek it any further. Unless there is a bunch of testers who say that change sucks. So I hope others go Red Shirt and give their input while they can.
Unless they say otherwise, right now looks like the patch is Thursday.
And since this an "Event CE" than the regular CE, I seriously doubt they are willing to try to tweek it any further. Unless there is a bunch of testers who say that change sucks. So I hope others go Red Shirt and give their input while they can.
And players pre-testing and giving feedback is supposed to do what exactly?
The event is definitely doable on normal though occasionally annoying... Even bop. I wouldn't count on the fix working correctly.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Ya, nope.
There are plain and simply too many Terrn ships. It is no longer fun. Have one wave, and that is fine, but they keep coming and coming. Plenty of people have complained about this. And every time I played the Elite level we have to give up. It gets to a point where you cannot even see who you are shooting at.
Of course you are going to fight the Terran ships too, like the Tholian they are in the way.
Bravo to those who beat the Elite level. But a vast majority have not been able too. It just gets tiring, and this is supposed to be fun, not a chore. It is a game afterall!
Even on normal the mirror ships are an absolute menace. It took nearly an hour on normal to wade through them all because the spawn point was right on top of a mirror rift plus the entity was within firing range of the spawn point too. I was dying along with most of the other players, within a few seconds of spawning. I quit out.
What I do now is if i join a game with mirror ships, I leave as fast as I joined, I then swap toons and repeat until I join a match with gravity wells. That's much easier. I don't have the time to spend an hour trying to rip through 30 plus mirror ships just to get to the entity which is hard enough in itself. I can do all my toons in under an hour on normal provided I don't encounter those awful mirror ships.
Cut the mirror ships down or I will continue to use the rinse repeat method above.
Monkey see, Monkey do. Monkey flings Feathered Monkey poo...
Even then, when is this stuff supposed to take effect? This Thursday? 1 week into a 3 week event? OK that's great. And we all know the first "patch" is usually a disappointment - er needs more tweeking.
Unless they say otherwise, right now looks like the patch is Thursday.
And since this an "Event CE" than the regular CE, I seriously doubt they are willing to try to tweek it any further. Unless there is a bunch of testers who say that change sucks. So I hope others go Red Shirt and give their input while they can.
You two need to lrn2devtracker.
They're planning for a Monday patch.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
Had one on my Klink last night where there were so many MU ship swarming, that it had the CE pinned to the planet. Not just not moving, not near the planet, outright pinned.
The really fun part was I couldn't even quit the match. CE pinned to the planet with one swarm, another swarm spawn camping, and enough following me that I couldn't get away long enough to drop red alert.
That was the odd thing, too. It started out with two Miranda that I couldn't shake, stopped to kill them so far out that I couldn't see the CE anymore. Then more ships showed up out of nowhere. Then more. Then more. Then more. Eventually swarmed by 20 something MU ships. Its nuts.
I saw this guy linked off Blaster (old Scifi Wire) and he really knows what he's talking about.
Challenging vs Punishing: That's exactly like comparing NWS to the CE.
I was on the original team that first legitimately defeated NWS and that was truly challenging since those months we had to figure out the strategies and build our teamwork to ultimately defeat it. The only bad thing is that we had disagreements once in a while and people wanted time to rest.
But with the CE, it effectively was both challenging and punishing at the same time. Version 1, people fought together until someone discovered the Ramming Exploit (gawd it was fun 1-shotting it), then came version 2 that was too difficult to even defeat and people effectively ignored it. Which years later they dumbed it down for Version 3.
IMHO, CEv2 was actually fun when you got a team of friends to take it down. Because it actually took teamwork to defeat (just like NWS). Why people stopped is because when the cannon strategy was discovered, and the CEv2 stopped being fun since you could defeat it doing the same exact thing. But the clincher was the loot drops........there was no more point in doing it since the drops were lackluster. The CE wasn't like other Boss Mobs from other MMOs that dropped awesome gear after a raid that made you want to go back.
But the CEv2 became punishing for the players because those in public queues didn't have the teamwork and coordination that friends or fleetmates did have and it was utter chaos. So they had to dumb down the beast. Then comes CEv3 and people could beat it again even in bad public queued PuGs.
But with CEv4 (or is it more like 3.5?) Borticus or someother Dev thought it was too easy and then dumped a ton of Mirror Universe NPCs to make it harder, but instead they overkilled it in so many ways. While is intention is understandable to make it more difficult, he clearly miscalculated the effects it would have on PuGs as well as player graphics cards. So he turned the CEv4 into a punishment, hence the outcry.
If I had someone to really blame, it wouldn't be the Devs but whomever is the one that decided that STO would now have the Fleet Actions as Queued Events. It really is that Public Queue that made STO to dumb down it's mechanics for the sake of satisfying the need for instant-action.
Devs, don't you get it? Why do you think old STO Vets want the old STFs back? Not for the loot but for the challenge!
If I was in charge, I would've kept the old way and encouraged players to form real fleets that worked together like in other MMOs to take down bosses and learn from their mistakes, not the mess we have now with PuGs. I mean a great example is Mine Trap and the utter disaster that occurs outside of premade teams of fleets or friends who know the dos and don'ts. There is no AFKers there is Moochers, there is no Griefers.
This is the direction STO needs to move back to. Not continuing to dumb down the game. And you can do it without blowing up people's video cards. Come on Borticus, even though you messed up with adding the Mirror Universe, adding that Black Cloud was actually genius! I actually loved losing my bearings in trying to fight the CE in that cloud and losing targeting and had to find it again to attack it!
THIS IS WHAT WE NEED MAN! SMARTER NOT HARDER!
Oh well, Devs probably have me on ignore anyhow. :P
Lets just say they value your feedback. The question is if they will listen to it. Sometimes they do, sometimes they.......well you know. :P
I saw this guy linked off Blaster (old Scifi Wire) and he really knows what he's talking about.
Challenging vs Punishing: That's exactly like comparing NWS to the CE.
I was on the original team that first legitimately defeated NWS and that was truly challenging since those months we had to figure out the strategies and build our teamwork to ultimately defeat it. The only bad thing is that we had disagreements once in a while and people wanted time to rest.
But with the CE, it effectively was both challenging and punishing at the same time. Version 1, people fought together until someone discovered the Ramming Exploit (gawd it was fun 1-shotting it), then came version 2 that was too difficult to even defeat and people effectively ignored it. Which years later they dumbed it down for Version 3.
IMHO, CEv2 was actually fun when you got a team of friends to take it down. Because it actually took teamwork to defeat (just like NWS). Why people stopped is because when the cannon strategy was discovered, and the CEv2 stopped being fun since you could defeat it doing the same exact thing. But the clincher was the loot drops........there was no more point in doing it since the drops were lackluster. The CE wasn't like other Boss Mobs from other MMOs that dropped awesome gear after a raid that made you want to go back.
But the CEv2 became punishing for the players because those in public queues didn't have the teamwork and coordination that friends or fleetmates did have and it was utter chaos. So they had to dumb down the beast. Then comes CEv3 and people could beat it again even in bad public queued PuGs.
But with CEv4 (or is it more like 3.5?) Borticus or someother Dev thought it was too easy and then dumped a ton of Mirror Universe NPCs to make it harder, but instead they overkilled it in so many ways. While is intention is understandable to make it more difficult, he clearly miscalculated the effects it would have on PuGs as well as player graphics cards. So he turned the CEv4 into a punishment, hence the outcry.
If I had someone to really blame, it wouldn't be the Devs but whomever is the one that decided that STO would now have the Fleet Actions as Queued Events. It really is that Public Queue that made STO to dumb down it's mechanics for the sake of satisfying the need for instant-action.
Devs, don't you get it? Why do you think old STO Vets want the old STFs back? Not for the loot but for the challenge!
If I was in charge, I would've kept the old way and encouraged players to form real fleets that worked together like in other MMOs to take down bosses and learn from their mistakes, not the mess we have now with PuGs. I mean a great example is Mine Trap and the utter disaster that occurs outside of premade teams of fleets or friends who know the dos and don'ts. There is no AFKers there is Moochers, there is no Griefers.
This is the direction STO needs to move back to. Not continuing to dumb down the game. And you can do it without blowing up people's video cards. Come on Borticus, even though you messed up with adding the Mirror Universe, adding that Black Cloud was actually genius! I actually loved losing my bearings in trying to fight the CE in that cloud and losing targeting and had to find it again to attack it!
THIS IS WHAT WE NEED MAN! SMARTER NOT HARDER!
Oh well, Devs probably have me on ignore anyhow. :P
This is a casual mmo where pugs should be able to do everything. The game's population is too small to allow for only guild runs and on top of that is very anti social. I am in 3 different fleets across 5 toons and fleet chat is dead. No one teams up for content and everybody uses channels, when not queuing, which are nothing but manual queues. Heard the same from friends in other fleets.
Given the low pop, casual centric and anti social characteristics we need queues to be able to do what little content is here.
Back to the topic. People keep forgetting that devs admitted the mechanics are broken. Lagging out even top rigs with hundred ships all firing is not challenging. The only people reporting success on elites are probably premades or teams with 2 or 3 p2w lock box escorts with god like DPS.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Top Ten Nicknames for the Crystalline Catastrophe Event
10. Mirror Finger
9. Frustration Junction
8. Hungry Hungry Anomalies
7. Dev Surprise
6. The Settlers of C'mon!!
5. Crystalline WTF
4. Gozer's Revenge
3. Chutes and Respawn
2. Trivial Pursuit (of Marks)
1. QA Catastrophe
Lmao. +1 internet to you.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
it IS makable on normal and elite. the tip the devs gave with not using AOE attacks and ignore the MU completely works. but only if all 10 players know about it.
we had a 5 man fleet team. and the other 5 were pugged and he obviously used torp spread 3, as that is what every pve player that is not in the forum would use.
well sure it went fubar after that.
point is. i might have to queue up 3 times a day until i get my shard.
still people with not very well build ships. or no forum connection.. might only have 1 shard by now. and this will be fixed only next week. as the new fixes are tested already.
will the event get over time due to this?
for these who were not able to beat it by now once a day?
or those who dont have the time to queue up a couple times to beat it until a good group appears?
i still will make it without any changes to it. but only on my main toon.
so until this is fixed i guess most casual-people wont get the end reward like last time
it IS makable on normal and elite. the tip the devs gave with not using AOE attacks and ignore the MU completely works. but only if all 10 players know about it.
we had a 5 man fleet team. and the other 5 were pugged and he obviously used torp spread 3, as that is what every pve player that is not in the forum would use.
well sure it went fubar after that.
point is. i might have to queue up 3 times a day until i get my shard.
still people with not very well build ships. or no forum connection.. might only have 1 shard by now. and this will be fixed only next week. as the new fixes are tested already.
will the event get over time due to this?
for these who were not able to beat it by now once a day?
or those who dont have the time to queue up a couple times to beat it until a good group appears?
i still will make it without any changes to it. but only on my main toon.
so until this is fixed i guess most casual-people wont get the end reward like last time
In my super high DPS tank Eng in a fleet excel - Aux to bat build - fire at will and beam overload and massive heal potential I can take the entity down to the 65% mark on normal to clear the MU ships - BY MYSELF - but in most of my other ships it's not possible.
Every mission is 100% possible in everyone follows the lead right to the entity and focas fires.
HUGE PROBLEM - getting all 10 or even 8 to always focas on the entity and not arrgo the whole map.
This is really only a puggable event on such short time frame for most people - so it has to be designed with the lowest common denominator of player in mind - especially for normal.
This is one of those situations where the devs change something that never needed changing, just for the sake of it.
the MU ships were not needed, the event was fine the way it was. They could have given the Entity GW and TR as a boss power, and that would have been sufficient....
I have been in pugs ( I love the "unknown" factor in pugs btw) that have destroyed the Entity in reasonably short order and in other pugs that were so overwhelmed by Terran ships that one could barely see the Entity at all, much less lock weapons onto it. I am still trying to figure out how to deal with the jamming "fuzz" and "darkening field" that the Entity seems to be using on occasion.
The tactic that seems to be working best is NO AOE, with the exception of gravity well and quantum singularity but only on the center, or as close to the center as possible, of the CE itself. These seem to "clean up" the small fragments before they can heal the Entity. With the singularity, one must move into the CE until movement is stopped by it, then unleash the singularity and then fire rear torpedoes on the way out. Romulan ships work very well for this, if they are set up for it.
Fire ONLY beam overload, high yield torpedoes, and tachyon beam but make sure you are hitting the Entity only, Watch out for the warning about the Entity absorbing energy. This usually means that the Entity is preparing to release its area burst weapon ( or so it has seemed to me) then try to evasive maneuver outside 10 km, if you can, to avoid the burst.
Tachyon beam, high yield torps, beam overload and gravity well the center of the Entity. From what I have seen, this works about the best.
Also, if you are being followed by large fragments, try to lure them out as far as possible before destroying them, if you can, so you will have the best chance of destroying the small fragments that the large ones break up into when destroyed, before the "smalls" can get back to and heal the CE.
Except for destroying a few tholian ships right at the very beginning, try to ignore the other enemy ships, if you can. I have also seen a couple of occasions where the Terran ships seemed to have been suddenly destroyed enmasse by something. I have not figured out if it was some weapon or some bug but it seemed there was no warning before it occured.
Make sure you have the Entity in your weapons lock before you fire so as to avoid breaking up the large crystals too close to the Entity and/or drawing the fire from the terran ships. Good luck! I am running about 60%-40% victory ratio with teams who use these tactics. I may be wrong, or not completely correct, but this is what seems is happenings when we win.
Just LEFT another!! Mission!! Was point blank fighting the entity around 68% for a few tries - look at my team - CLOSEST was 49km way!! Alive and fighting - not dead!!
It seems one strategy is to draw the Entity far enough away as to reduce the aggro you draw from the Terran ships. However, that's with very little play time to properly analyze this scenario.
I've played this on three different toons, my Best on a Bug ship with high DPS and being carefully only to fire on the Entity (no AoE). He still died multiple times until I finally quit. My only success was my weakest toon (still working on Rep, Accolades, etc). He's a Sci Romey and playing with some of my Fleet members we finally took out the Entity after about 30 mins. We drew it around the far side of the planet and tried to ignore the smaller Terran forces we faced.
This is NOT an enjoyable scenario. Spending too much time, too many enemies, too much going on (causing lag issues for other players). The rewards are not worth the hassle.
I suggest players skip this nonsense from the Devs. Cryptic will not likely keep paying to Develop unwinnable, unenjoyable content if very few players use it. Like any business, Devs have to justify a Cost Benefit. If they spend on developing such scenarios but almost no players use it and get poor feedback, it will be hard for them to keep going back to Cryptic (Perfect World) to get funds to develop more.
I'd bet very soon, if not before next weeks maintenance, we might see a significant change in this scenario. If they don't, well it just proves the Devs are too disconnected and out of touch with their customers.
Yes, we all like a challenge, but apparently these Devs think 'lotsa bad guys in overwhelming numbers' is how to satisfy that demand. Creativity and originality is something they can't seem to get a handle on.
2nd in a row I had to leave - entered and it was going 50 ships at spawn point - I could not even leave - just die in my escort!! Respawn and could not leave because instant fire red alert by 50 ships - had to disconnect
FAIL
The first one at Tholians knock all your powers off line while the entity AND 100+ mirror ships pound on ONLY THE PLAYERS = FAIL!!
Even my cloaked ship wasn't working very well....because they not only could see through the cloak most time at random intervals....but they also used tons of those torpedos that auto-targeted cloaked ships.
And well of course the crystalline entity and its shards are never fooled.
Anywise I was tempted to stay logged in to see if I could get the server to crash but got board.....by the way the lag is because of the instances with so many ships.....
Your instance may not have much of anything....but a few instances with tons of mirror universe ships will bog down the servers a lot....
They really messed up on this...they should have put a cap. on how many spawn and a way to get rid of the rifts.
I mean its sad when in the tv show they can easily close the rifts but in the game we are too stupid to know how to.
<added this bit in>
Had a really bad thing happen once so far...each time we got the crystal to the next stage....we kept getting more of the rifts with mirror ships.....had this happen once.....I think I died over 100 times....not much fun when that happens.
Power without Perception is Spiritually useless and therefore of no true value.
Even my cloaked ship wasn't working very well....because they not only could see through the cloak most time at random intervals....but they also used tons of those torpedos that auto-targeted cloaked ships.
And well of course the crystalline entity and its shards are never fooled.
Anywise I was tempted to stay logged in to see if I could get he server to crash but got board.....by the way the lag is because of the instances with so many ships.....
Your instance may not have much of anything....but a few instances with tons of mirror universe ships will bog down the servers a lot....
They really messed up on this on this...they should have put a cap. on how many spawn and a way to get rid of the rifts.
I mean its sad when in the tv show they can easily close the rifts but in the game we are too stupid to know how to.
Actually that would be hilarious in a devious way - just endlessly spawning Mirror ships until the mission crashed - if its possible. 10,000 mirror ships in on instance - that would be funny.
Actually that would be hilarious in a devious way - just endlessly spawning Mirror ships until the mission crashed - if its possible. 10,000 mirror ships in on instance - that would be funny.
actually I did that in the city of heroes game...they had a mission where this one enemy would makes clones of him self....I left the game on and after 8 hours....the game client crashed as the mission had too many duplicates in it.
I would not be surprised if players started deliberately trying to crash the servers from this.....
like I said....they kind of messed up....they should have put a cap on how many can appear.......also they should make a way to make the rift go away from some powers....or perhaps could be destroyed with torpedos.
I think that's how the enterprise usually closed things.....shot torpedos at it.
Power without Perception is Spiritually useless and therefore of no true value.
actually I did that in the city of heroes game...they had a mission where this one enemy would makes clones of him self....I left the game on and after 8 hours....the game client crashed as the mission had too many duplicates in it.
I would not be surprised if players started deliberately trying to crash the servers from this.....
like I said....they kind of messed up....they should have put a cap on how many can appear.......also they should make a way to make the rift go away from some powers....or perhaps could be destroyed with torpedos.
I think that's how the enterprise usually closed things.....shot torpedos at it.
Well I in no way advocate crashing the SERVER - cause that effects everyone - but you are right - I could see lots of pissed off players try to do it on purpose. Anyone that is found deliberately trying to crash the server should get banned.
Comments
I saw the Redshirt patch notes, the point in my post is that their efforts isn't enough. Even if they reduce their numbers and fix their spawn rates, mirror ships will still cause major problem for players.
If you don't believe me, feel free to gather a team of your friends and go to Redshirt and try it. It's still full of frustration and the Dev team is too stubborn to listen to feedback.
Even then, when is this stuff supposed to take effect? This Thursday? 1 week into a 3 week event? OK that's great. And we all know the first "patch" is usually a disappointment - er needs more tweeking.
The game doesn't like my sci I guess, second straight run on that toon, with this result, of having to leave, to redo the run.
The ruptures and tyken rifts are okay enough, but GET RID of the Mirror ships. Even adjusting, which I did well enough on my engy Dread main toon, to success effect, didn't help for my sci toon, despite getting to second phase, and things only getting worse from there.
Sorry, the mirror ship spam is just a bad idea, implimented badly. Adjusting just isn't good enough, they need to be removed from the event. Reducing wont be enough, cause of the game engine history of 'reverting' code, with further patches. Remember how CE was initially, being better after an adjustment patch, and then 'back', within the next patch or two?
Sorry, this isn't fun game play mechanics, especially on normals, for those simply trying to complete the rep project.
Call me egregiously miffed at the moment here.
Yeah no, sorry bort.
It really needs a look over because went in with a custom team that knew the tactics behind this and still the mirror ships were agro'd right on the team rather the ce and or tholian ships. I kept an eye on several of them as others did and not once did we see them shoot the tholians or even yet tholians shoot the mirror or... get destroyed by the CE's massive damage burst after the energy "suction" phase. Few ships did but even some right around the CE were still there with full health.
Again its one of those dev features that you guys add more to something that really needed nothing to it before as last time around. It needs a look back and also the event should be extended with the amount of issues this thing has. Sorry to say.
Unless they say otherwise, right now looks like the patch is Thursday.
And since this an "Event CE" than the regular CE, I seriously doubt they are willing to try to tweek it any further. Unless there is a bunch of testers who say that change sucks. So I hope others go Red Shirt and give their input while they can.
And players pre-testing and giving feedback is supposed to do what exactly?
Give them something to summarily ignore.
- Judge Aaron Satie
There are plain and simply too many Terrn ships. It is no longer fun. Have one wave, and that is fine, but they keep coming and coming. Plenty of people have complained about this. And every time I played the Elite level we have to give up. It gets to a point where you cannot even see who you are shooting at.
Of course you are going to fight the Terran ships too, like the Tholian they are in the way.
Bravo to those who beat the Elite level. But a vast majority have not been able too. It just gets tiring, and this is supposed to be fun, not a chore. It is a game afterall!
What I do now is if i join a game with mirror ships, I leave as fast as I joined, I then swap toons and repeat until I join a match with gravity wells. That's much easier. I don't have the time to spend an hour trying to rip through 30 plus mirror ships just to get to the entity which is hard enough in itself. I can do all my toons in under an hour on normal provided I don't encounter those awful mirror ships.
Cut the mirror ships down or I will continue to use the rinse repeat method above.
You two need to lrn2devtracker.
They're planning for a Monday patch.
The really fun part was I couldn't even quit the match. CE pinned to the planet with one swarm, another swarm spawn camping, and enough following me that I couldn't get away long enough to drop red alert.
That was the odd thing, too. It started out with two Miranda that I couldn't shake, stopped to kill them so far out that I couldn't see the CE anymore. Then more ships showed up out of nowhere. Then more. Then more. Then more. Eventually swarmed by 20 something MU ships. Its nuts.
Lets just say they value your feedback. The question is if they will listen to it. Sometimes they do, sometimes they.......well you know. :P
I saw this guy linked off Blaster (old Scifi Wire) and he really knows what he's talking about.
Challenging vs Punishing: That's exactly like comparing NWS to the CE.
I was on the original team that first legitimately defeated NWS and that was truly challenging since those months we had to figure out the strategies and build our teamwork to ultimately defeat it. The only bad thing is that we had disagreements once in a while and people wanted time to rest.
But with the CE, it effectively was both challenging and punishing at the same time. Version 1, people fought together until someone discovered the Ramming Exploit (gawd it was fun 1-shotting it), then came version 2 that was too difficult to even defeat and people effectively ignored it. Which years later they dumbed it down for Version 3.
IMHO, CEv2 was actually fun when you got a team of friends to take it down. Because it actually took teamwork to defeat (just like NWS). Why people stopped is because when the cannon strategy was discovered, and the CEv2 stopped being fun since you could defeat it doing the same exact thing. But the clincher was the loot drops........there was no more point in doing it since the drops were lackluster. The CE wasn't like other Boss Mobs from other MMOs that dropped awesome gear after a raid that made you want to go back.
But the CEv2 became punishing for the players because those in public queues didn't have the teamwork and coordination that friends or fleetmates did have and it was utter chaos. So they had to dumb down the beast. Then comes CEv3 and people could beat it again even in bad public queued PuGs.
But with CEv4 (or is it more like 3.5?) Borticus or someother Dev thought it was too easy and then dumped a ton of Mirror Universe NPCs to make it harder, but instead they overkilled it in so many ways. While is intention is understandable to make it more difficult, he clearly miscalculated the effects it would have on PuGs as well as player graphics cards. So he turned the CEv4 into a punishment, hence the outcry.
If I had someone to really blame, it wouldn't be the Devs but whomever is the one that decided that STO would now have the Fleet Actions as Queued Events. It really is that Public Queue that made STO to dumb down it's mechanics for the sake of satisfying the need for instant-action.
Devs, don't you get it? Why do you think old STO Vets want the old STFs back? Not for the loot but for the challenge!
If I was in charge, I would've kept the old way and encouraged players to form real fleets that worked together like in other MMOs to take down bosses and learn from their mistakes, not the mess we have now with PuGs. I mean a great example is Mine Trap and the utter disaster that occurs outside of premade teams of fleets or friends who know the dos and don'ts. There is no AFKers there is Moochers, there is no Griefers.
This is the direction STO needs to move back to. Not continuing to dumb down the game. And you can do it without blowing up people's video cards. Come on Borticus, even though you messed up with adding the Mirror Universe, adding that Black Cloud was actually genius! I actually loved losing my bearings in trying to fight the CE in that cloud and losing targeting and had to find it again to attack it!
THIS IS WHAT WE NEED MAN! SMARTER NOT HARDER!
Oh well, Devs probably have me on ignore anyhow. :P
10. Mirror Finger
9. Frustration Junction
8. Hungry Hungry Anomalies
7. Dev Surprise
6. The Settlers of C'mon!!
5. Crystalline WTF
4. Gozer's Revenge
3. Chutes and Respawn
2. Trivial Pursuit (of Marks)
1. QA Catastrophe
This is a casual mmo where pugs should be able to do everything. The game's population is too small to allow for only guild runs and on top of that is very anti social. I am in 3 different fleets across 5 toons and fleet chat is dead. No one teams up for content and everybody uses channels, when not queuing, which are nothing but manual queues. Heard the same from friends in other fleets.
Given the low pop, casual centric and anti social characteristics we need queues to be able to do what little content is here.
Back to the topic. People keep forgetting that devs admitted the mechanics are broken. Lagging out even top rigs with hundred ships all firing is not challenging. The only people reporting success on elites are probably premades or teams with 2 or 3 p2w lock box escorts with god like DPS.
- Judge Aaron Satie
Lmao. +1 internet to you.
- Judge Aaron Satie
it IS makable on normal and elite. the tip the devs gave with not using AOE attacks and ignore the MU completely works. but only if all 10 players know about it.
we had a 5 man fleet team. and the other 5 were pugged and he obviously used torp spread 3, as that is what every pve player that is not in the forum would use.
well sure it went fubar after that.
point is. i might have to queue up 3 times a day until i get my shard.
still people with not very well build ships. or no forum connection.. might only have 1 shard by now. and this will be fixed only next week. as the new fixes are tested already.
will the event get over time due to this?
for these who were not able to beat it by now once a day?
or those who dont have the time to queue up a couple times to beat it until a good group appears?
i still will make it without any changes to it. but only on my main toon.
so until this is fixed i guess most casual-people wont get the end reward like last time
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
In my super high DPS tank Eng in a fleet excel - Aux to bat build - fire at will and beam overload and massive heal potential I can take the entity down to the 65% mark on normal to clear the MU ships - BY MYSELF - but in most of my other ships it's not possible.
Every mission is 100% possible in everyone follows the lead right to the entity and focas fires.
HUGE PROBLEM - getting all 10 or even 8 to always focas on the entity and not arrgo the whole map.
This is really only a puggable event on such short time frame for most people - so it has to be designed with the lowest common denominator of player in mind - especially for normal.
the MU ships were not needed, the event was fine the way it was. They could have given the Entity GW and TR as a boss power, and that would have been sufficient....
the tooltip at the beginning should say NOT USE AOE and just ignore the mirror ships invading our space.
most casuals dont think that way. they see enemy and autofire.
so this event was clearly just tested inside cryptics office on high end machines. :P
a public testing with regular tribble or now in this case reshirt server players would might have helped resolving this issue before it arised.
it reminds me now on the old cyrstalline event that lasted for 2 hours sometimes. was also fun and nearly unbeatable.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=866961
I have been in pugs ( I love the "unknown" factor in pugs btw) that have destroyed the Entity in reasonably short order and in other pugs that were so overwhelmed by Terran ships that one could barely see the Entity at all, much less lock weapons onto it. I am still trying to figure out how to deal with the jamming "fuzz" and "darkening field" that the Entity seems to be using on occasion.
The tactic that seems to be working best is NO AOE, with the exception of gravity well and quantum singularity but only on the center, or as close to the center as possible, of the CE itself. These seem to "clean up" the small fragments before they can heal the Entity. With the singularity, one must move into the CE until movement is stopped by it, then unleash the singularity and then fire rear torpedoes on the way out. Romulan ships work very well for this, if they are set up for it.
Fire ONLY beam overload, high yield torpedoes, and tachyon beam but make sure you are hitting the Entity only, Watch out for the warning about the Entity absorbing energy. This usually means that the Entity is preparing to release its area burst weapon ( or so it has seemed to me) then try to evasive maneuver outside 10 km, if you can, to avoid the burst.
Tachyon beam, high yield torps, beam overload and gravity well the center of the Entity. From what I have seen, this works about the best.
Also, if you are being followed by large fragments, try to lure them out as far as possible before destroying them, if you can, so you will have the best chance of destroying the small fragments that the large ones break up into when destroyed, before the "smalls" can get back to and heal the CE.
Except for destroying a few tholian ships right at the very beginning, try to ignore the other enemy ships, if you can. I have also seen a couple of occasions where the Terran ships seemed to have been suddenly destroyed enmasse by something. I have not figured out if it was some weapon or some bug but it seemed there was no warning before it occured.
Make sure you have the Entity in your weapons lock before you fire so as to avoid breaking up the large crystals too close to the Entity and/or drawing the fire from the terran ships. Good luck! I am running about 60%-40% victory ratio with teams who use these tactics. I may be wrong, or not completely correct, but this is what seems is happenings when we win.
Yeah - good team work there dumb dumbs!!
I've played this on three different toons, my Best on a Bug ship with high DPS and being carefully only to fire on the Entity (no AoE). He still died multiple times until I finally quit. My only success was my weakest toon (still working on Rep, Accolades, etc). He's a Sci Romey and playing with some of my Fleet members we finally took out the Entity after about 30 mins. We drew it around the far side of the planet and tried to ignore the smaller Terran forces we faced.
This is NOT an enjoyable scenario. Spending too much time, too many enemies, too much going on (causing lag issues for other players). The rewards are not worth the hassle.
I suggest players skip this nonsense from the Devs. Cryptic will not likely keep paying to Develop unwinnable, unenjoyable content if very few players use it. Like any business, Devs have to justify a Cost Benefit. If they spend on developing such scenarios but almost no players use it and get poor feedback, it will be hard for them to keep going back to Cryptic (Perfect World) to get funds to develop more.
I'd bet very soon, if not before next weeks maintenance, we might see a significant change in this scenario. If they don't, well it just proves the Devs are too disconnected and out of touch with their customers.
Yes, we all like a challenge, but apparently these Devs think 'lotsa bad guys in overwhelming numbers' is how to satisfy that demand. Creativity and originality is something they can't seem to get a handle on.
FAIL
The first one at Tholians knock all your powers off line while the entity AND 100+ mirror ships pound on ONLY THE PLAYERS = FAIL!!
I raging today!!
These are all normals
oh its not that bad....
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/631918823111865672/7C01429EE0B2D24A1F2C9679FE079DAB3B6DEEB1/
Now this was bad.....seams everyone else left except for me and one other person....wanted to see how bad it would get...
I counted over 1000 with this screen shot.
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/631918998334178625/4CC12D6EB06B8E5669A91187B2862236E5232DCF/
Even my cloaked ship wasn't working very well....because they not only could see through the cloak most time at random intervals....but they also used tons of those torpedos that auto-targeted cloaked ships.
And well of course the crystalline entity and its shards are never fooled.
Anywise I was tempted to stay logged in to see if I could get the server to crash but got board.....by the way the lag is because of the instances with so many ships.....
Your instance may not have much of anything....but a few instances with tons of mirror universe ships will bog down the servers a lot....
They really messed up on this...they should have put a cap. on how many spawn and a way to get rid of the rifts.
I mean its sad when in the tv show they can easily close the rifts but in the game we are too stupid to know how to.
<added this bit in>
Had a really bad thing happen once so far...each time we got the crystal to the next stage....we kept getting more of the rifts with mirror ships.....had this happen once.....I think I died over 100 times....not much fun when that happens.
Power without Perception is Spiritually useless and therefore of no true value.
=^_^=
Actually that would be hilarious in a devious way - just endlessly spawning Mirror ships until the mission crashed - if its possible. 10,000 mirror ships in on instance - that would be funny.
actually I did that in the city of heroes game...they had a mission where this one enemy would makes clones of him self....I left the game on and after 8 hours....the game client crashed as the mission had too many duplicates in it.
I would not be surprised if players started deliberately trying to crash the servers from this.....
like I said....they kind of messed up....they should have put a cap on how many can appear.......also they should make a way to make the rift go away from some powers....or perhaps could be destroyed with torpedos.
I think that's how the enterprise usually closed things.....shot torpedos at it.
Power without Perception is Spiritually useless and therefore of no true value.
=^_^=
Well I in no way advocate crashing the SERVER - cause that effects everyone - but you are right - I could see lots of pissed off players try to do it on purpose. Anyone that is found deliberately trying to crash the server should get banned.