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Season 8 - Just don't get it?
xingbell
Member Posts: 28 Arc User
I asked in game and got a few replies, so I thought I would ask here.
Am I the only one who just doesn't get what the Sphere and it missions are all about? I have been playing around the area since the season started and I cannot seem to figure out the missions. Doesn't matter where I go, I just seem to be lost and running around at random taking pot shots at targets.
I have been playing STO since just before the beta ended and this is the first time I just cannot figure out what the heck I am supposed to be doing. In fact this is the first game that I have run into this feeling with and I have been gaming longer than I care to admit.
Kinda feel dumb stating this on an open forum, maybe part of the healing process is to admit a problem.
Maybe I will find out I am not the only one.
Am I the only one who just doesn't get what the Sphere and it missions are all about? I have been playing around the area since the season started and I cannot seem to figure out the missions. Doesn't matter where I go, I just seem to be lost and running around at random taking pot shots at targets.
I have been playing STO since just before the beta ended and this is the first time I just cannot figure out what the heck I am supposed to be doing. In fact this is the first game that I have run into this feeling with and I have been gaming longer than I care to admit.
Kinda feel dumb stating this on an open forum, maybe part of the healing process is to admit a problem.
Maybe I will find out I am not the only one. Peaceful exploration? I have a heavily armed ship and a phaser with a kill setting, how peaceful is that?
Post edited by xingbell on
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There are three areas/zones on the ground to enter... outskirts, city, and park.
Within each location are capture points...
1. The Omega Particle Generator: The objective is to get the particles to the other end of the rail thingy. So activate the console and the speed device on one end and defend it until it moves to the other end and your done.
2. The Artillery: You usually need a little help here. You need to approach each of the five devices around the perimeter and disable them. It's a three step process that closes the device. (use the console on each side of the device. After all five devices are shutdown then defend it until the timer is up.
3. The Kill Zone (as I call it): This one is just holding the spot and killing all the enemies that spawn until the timer is up.
4. The Transporter: Defeat the enemies and activate the console. note: If the enemy holds the transporter no one can transport into that zone
Once each area turns blue on your map the allied control bar goes more blue and when it reaches 100% then the V-Rex shows up and the medics try to extract the particles before you can stop them at the consoles next to the V-Rex. Your job is to stop the medics and then kill the V-Rex before they get enough particles as indicated by the meter on the screen. note: The medics will continue to respawn so keep an eye out to stop them or it wont matter if your trying to kill the V-Rex.
That's the ground pretty much... there are little mini bosses to kill for accolades, wounded to help, and then consoles to scan, etc. but the above is the main action on the ground map. I haven't done much space myself because I find it confusing.
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
You are not alone, i feel the same way about this release and to be honest it seems like a waste of resources that should have been put into more important areas for the game by improving the overall experience, this S8 Sphere i dont get myself and it seems pointless.
The story from the end of the Feature episode to what we see in Season 8 is missing several chapters as far as I can see, and if any sci fi author submitted this addition to their editor I am certain the editor would be contacting them asking if they forgot to send the missing chapters/content.
How come the Federation have turned into complete thugs and now follow orders from Romulans?
How does the Federation know if the Voth are actually collecting Omega Particles for some good purpose, perhaps to build a weapon that will give them the edge against an Iconian invasion force?
Instead the Federation just tosses the Prime Directive out the airlock and decides it is time to turn Klingon where we just kill everything and enslave the rest that survive the battles?
I can just imagine Gene Roddenberry would be spinning in his grave right about now with the way Cryptic and CBS have completely forgotten about the Prime Directive that Star Trek was founded on.
Season 8 is horribly written and even the game play sucks because these Voth are supposed to be millions of years ahead of the rest of us in technology and we can solo most of the content?
Ridiculous, and MMO developers in general seem to be afraid to put any sort of challenge into their games because they want everyone to be able to succeed and that leaves nothing for good players to do but grind, and there is always plenty of that...:rolleyes:
But as for Feddies turning Klingon, it's about TIME we had episodes written from a KLINGON point of view, that Feddies now get to suffer through, instead of Feddie-centric episodes that Klingons must now awkwardly fumble through while mouthing Feddie lines.
See the Galaxy, meet new and interesting lifeforms from distant and exotic worlds, and then kill them!
This was a complaint/feedback that I left weeks ago in the tribble testing section: the feeling of being lost - directionless actions/missions in both zones.
In the space zone nothing is marked well and in the ground so it is hard to tell where other players are in the 3 separate zones.
One of several things will happen:
A - they will make the zones and missions more defined and managable
B- people will get tired and frustrated and give up on the New zone and just get their marks from the two space events in the Q's
C- people will get more familiar with the set-up over time
I see it becoming just like defera - only a limited amount of players still go there - the rest get marks through Q'd events.
Both ground zones provide lots of marks for the effort if things are moving well - but the zones are too small a pop size - they should bump it up by several players on the ground - maybe a zone size of 25 - yes if you get 25 hard cores in on zone it will be a Voth slaughter(more that it already is) but you won't have the problem of 6/7/8 people doing nothing in a zone making it impossible to hold the Voth back.
If changes are not made I see these zones becoming dead zones and people sticking just to the space qued content. I think they give so much more rewards on the ground to get people in there but if it ends up being a few hours of frustration people will avoid it no matter what the rewards are like.
Cryptic needs to face the fact that most people come to the game for the space ships and space battles- nothing they add to ground - even dinosaurs - is really going to change that.
I think in the end this will turn out to be a mildly failed experiment - and they will turn back almost completely to Q'd space missions.
im not jumping through hoops to validate their grinding system.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
No, you're not the only one. I spoke to the NPC's I when I got to the dyson sphere, then beamed to my ship and did a couple missions. Killed lots of Voth, ran Breach, killed lots more Voth. Still have no direction or clue what we're supposed to be doing. Everything looks good, though.
I'm not running the rep, so maybe that's it. But if you need to do the rep for S8 to make any kind of sense or have direction then this is the worst season yet. Hopefully that's not the case.
Well, there you go.
What's not to get? The game like most mmo's is designed to waste/spend your time and money - it's really not any more complicated then that.
"did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?" insanity is doing the exact same ****ing thing over and over again, expecting **** to change. That is crazy! But the first time somebody told me that... I thought they were bull******* me, so boom - I shot him in the head. The thing is...he was right"
--Vaas--far cry 3
I get that. This season seems more, I don't know, aimless(?) than the others? I guess I'm missing large parts of the how's/why's/where's by not doffing or repping. Oh well.
I have absolutely 0 desire to try it any more.
The scenery is beautiful and it is impressive to behold but that is about as much praise as I am willing to offer.
The new season is a total wash and waste for me. Very disappointed but I will give them credit in that they tried.
If it helps , you can view a playback of 'The Breach' here .
Audio commentary included , recommend you watch it full screen , with as much "HD" as you can muster .
That player also has a few Season 8 Tribble videos , I have not watched those , but perhaps they will be helpful to you as well .
Plus I would suggest that beaming down in the first few days of a release can be quite confusing as everyone is running around trying to figure out stuff . (that by itself can be hilarious at times !)
After a week or so you are more likely to met up with more experienced players that can guide you via zone chat or team chat .
I have not started Doffin in the sphere yet so I have no idea about that , but ...
Here is the first cut scene that unlocks at Tier 1 in the new Rep system . Recommend you watch it full screen , with as much "HD" as you can muster . :P
- "I don't get WHY (story wise) we're doing X..."
(or if they dump a lot of exposition in something at the star, it's:)
- "Man I get they have a story reason, but I don't like walls of text.."
or
- "Why give us everything up front? 'Star Trek' is about exploration/discovery. Give us a way to 'discover the story as we do stuff..."<-- Which is what they did with new Romulus in S7 and now the Sphere in S8.)
- "I don't get how to do <insert name of new mission/event> of the new content efficiently..."
- "Oh, you have to do X in game to get part of the story? TRIBBLE that, I don't like that they placed it behind a Mission/Grind/Etc.)"
Once the Season's been live a month, and they've triaged the major bugs a bit, and we have power teams doing "The Breach" and "Storming the Spire" in under 5 minutes; players will settle in -- and when the focus of Season 9 is announced, we'll start the cycle all over again and start complaining, crying DOOOOOM, etc. again.
No matter what they do, or how they present it, someone will not like it. There's nothing wrong with that, and if you're in that boat the only way to make your feelings know is post about it, and vote with your wallet.
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..."
But I am guessing regular marks and new "marks" for actually going to the zone in trying to force you there.
As always with reputation system you don't play them until others go through them and confirm what is working.
(we still waiting on omega t5 ground sets' outfits and accolades working and romulan t5 flamethrower wasn't released until half a year later)
And, also, as with all new ground sets they going to be obsolete without a costume and remodulation.
Personally I gave up on reputations by nukara, half the grind doesn't change anything for me.
Where it can get more confusing is the additional layers of: more zone wide alerts than before; more random encounters than before; more local NPC contacts than before; additional map based pick-up mission points; map based pick-up doff assignments and the overarching 'container' task (% complete is advanced by any of the above) of the daily.
These additions can be a pain (your mission window can fill up quickly with multiple concurrent tasks if you keep accepting them) or an absolute godsend. I once completed most of my daily without a single monotonous 'go here, do that, come back' mission, by jumping into a 12 ship furball right out the gate (BTW it is so satisfying to come screaming out of the sky in a full impulse dive, as you would in a shuttle, only with a fully armed starship!).
If you want to slow it down or ease the management burden until you've explored more of what's on offer; then simply go in, accept the daily first (MUST do, so your achievements go towards that goal as well) and then proceed and treat as with any other rep zone by: hail, complete & repeat, only the main Zone Command NPC's handed out missions, until you hit your target.
Cryptic FINALLY makes the grind a million times easier, finally makes a zone that isnt the same old same old qued event and all you guys can do is complain.
How on earth anyone can think playing the same few stfs over and over again is better then a massive space area that is persistant and has tons of different stuff to do as well as a ground battlezone is beyond me.
This is ten times more fun then playing the same borg missions over and over or running around on new romulas collecting samples. I mean really? You have to not be paying attention or extremely high to not know what the story is. LOL all the forum does is call for the grind to be lowered then they build an area that lets you get the marks way way quicker and its the worst thing ever.
I for one think this is a step in the right direction and I thank Cryptic for making Season 8 the least grinding season in the history of the game.
Boring and tedious? But doing the same qued missions over and over again isn't? There is literally nothing Cryptic could do to make the forum people happy. If its not one thing its another and most of the time people are contradicting themselves.
aimless... wow you havent played it i guess. Aimless is the same qued missions over and over again.
Actually, aimless is a very good description for the new zone. As in, there is no aim or direction once you get there. You just fly around randomly and pick up missions that pop up with no overarching goal provided by the game. I'm not doing the new rep so I'm solely there to check out the new content. So far, it has been aimless. I'm guessing that some of the story elements for the new season being locked behind doff assignment crits and the new rep isn't helping matters.
And the word you're thinking of to describe the same queued missions over and over again isn't "aimless." It's "tedious."
The truth has been spoken so it was quoted.
And because of how season 8 is, it's rather boring too.
"There is no problem in the universe that can't be solved with a bribe, a paid assassin, or an overpowered fighter." - Chubain from Jumpgate Evolution
Seriously? That is a terrible, terrible way to deliver story and lore. Ugh.
Mine Trap Supporter
But lead dev like Al Rivera refuses to give us a good story. Most of his work is just shotgun diplomacy when it treads on lore and this is really bothering a lot of people. Rewind a year and if you were to have been in say any zone anywhere and said "I think they should add dinosaurs and put lasers on their head." you'd have been laughed at into oblivion.
They only had a couple of great ideas in s8. The battlezone is great. Having to spend some time conquering the area makes sense logistically and this is great for other aspects. Maybe we can finally get a borg version of it where we have to retake a ship from their nanoprobe infested tampering etc.
The streamline of the rep system for it is nice to the effect that we don't have to spend 4-5 hours every single day just to pass a tier into progress. More like 4-5 for just one day and use the commendations to keep going. Very good change there.
The rest is garbage. The only example of the voth from the voyager episode is completely perverted. Al Rivera has turned a nonviolent society into a war monger species bent on capturing omega particles.
For the sake of a rushed product with little to no QA whatsoever and for completely dousing us in this recent urine and calling it rain.. I'm pretty sure Al Rivera should give up his job and hand it to somebody who's capable of listening to feedback as well as bearing the responsibility to provide a quality product.
Of course I avoid ground.
Only bad thing is timed missions. Timed anything is bad.
Oh well...Seasons 1-7 were substantial improvements. I guess they were bound to have a less-than-stellar season ocassionally. Hopefuly Season 9 is better...
I'm more excited by the new mac client than any content in the Sphere.
What I would have liked to see is a second part episode to Sphere of Influence. After the Enterprise picks up Omega, it's now our job to go and investigate it. The episode would have us be the first through the gate. Now we have to figure out where we are and how Omega is involved. It's then a big reveal, OMG we're inside a Dyson Sphere on the edge of the Delta Quadrant and it's generating Omega particles for some unknown reason! Then we can have the Republic set up the HQ and we can go about the currently existing activities inside the Sphere.
It just really feels disjointed and incomplete to me right now. I feel that we're missing a huge chunk of major story line between Sphere of Influence and the missions we're doing inside the Sphere. And I don't like that. At all.
Mine Trap Supporter
should season 9 be out sometime end Q1-start Q2 in 2014, the cryptic team should keep to the storyline stuff.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Honestly, there IS a reason behind things, it's not spelled out-kindergarten style, but it's there.
The initial exploration teams to the Sphere were attacked by Voth and the Voth have refused any and all attempts to negotiate. Instead they've decided to eradicate all those who stand in their way.
My character Tsin'xing