The Voth over the Contested Zone control towers are more difficult than the Undine with the exception of the planet killer waves.
Plus is it just me or do the point reinforcements sometimes just let the Undine waltz in and retake a point without putting up a fight? This happens in the Voth ground battle zone too, where allied reinforcements will be standing on one part of a control point and the Voth beam in 30 or 40 feet away and retake the point without having to fire weapons a single time because the allies all have their backs turned to them.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
Is there yet a way to cleanse the Bioplasmic Torpedo debuff? I've tried a bunch of different cleansing powers--Eng/Sci/Tac Team, Hazard Emitters, Polarize Hull--none of them powked. I don't mean workarounds like Evasive Maneuvers that improve your engines to compensate for the effect, I'm talking about an ability that actually removes the debuff.
Same with the deathtrap rifts. Normally, you can escape a snare with Polarize Hull, but it didn't work here.
Have immunities to these two things not been programmed yet, or is there something I haven't tried that works?
I like the battlezone idea, and I ran the whole bit from beginning to Voth on Tribble earlier.
I do hope there is more variance once it goes live. The map looks as though each zone could spawn any one of the three objectives, which would be a nice way for the map to stay fresh, and I like the "Fix a ship and it follows you around" mini objective, so I hope more things like that get added in as well.
Probably more for a different threat, but I would like to see the undine super grav well lessened, more in frequency than in power and a fix to keep it from auto killing small craft. Also, it would be nice if the cruisers couldn't jump out of holds; tactically it's challenging to have them moving about on the map, but it's annoying to burn a Grav well or Borg tractor only to have them vanish out of it.
With Holodeck being down for several hours today, a lot of people have hopped onto Tribble. There are at least 17 people in this instance of the Undine zone and it's ridiculously fun now.
However I have to say that the flight ceiling feels arbitrarily low. I've run into it several times and gotten stuck while trying to escape from pursuers.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
First, I like the fact that we have a space battlezone that we can move through, and do things in, like the ground battlezone. I was expecting something a little different in objectives than the ground. It is pretty much a copy.
I would recommend adding some variation to the mix. Have a different objective that needs to be done. Aside from that, I do enjoy being able to fly from point to point in the battlezone.
Second, I think that the Undine are way too weak. I know that it has been like 40 some years, or something like that since Voyager first encountered them. However, a Borg spheres on normal STFs take longer to take out than an Undine battleship in the battlezone.
I think that boosting them up a little bit, and making them either a bit more powerful, or smarter (so that they use tactics against players) would be great. I am assuming that they are still a challenge to the Borg. I don't know, because I never got to experience the original Borg missions in the game. I know that there have been a lot of changes since the originals. But, it still seems to me like they should offer some challenge.
About the rift that they use like a Gravity Well, I do think it needs to be adjusted. I believe that it's pull should vary depending on the mass the ship has. I saw my Advanced Romulan fighters be able to survive them for a while. However, someone else with me had their BOPs killed almost instantly. My Scimitar, and carriers were able to pull away from them like they were nothing.
At this rate, they serve no purpose but to kill fighters. The only time I had a little trouble getting away was when I had 4 of them activated right on me. I just added power to my engines, and pulled away. The other players with me did as well.
It seems like the pull would increase depending on the size of the ship. Fighters should be able to pull away easily, because they are smaller ships with faster speeds. Escorts should have a little more trouble pulling away, but not be caught in the center of it, unable to move. They do have faster speeds that large ships, and that should be reflected, without making the rift look like a piece of the background.
With that in mind, I feel that with the mass that larger ships like cruisers, carriers, and dreadnaughts have, they should have the hardest time getting away. They don't have the speed, and should find it harder to get away.
A Gravity Well is a source of gravity. For that reason, I feel that it should reflect that. The same for these rifts. They are pretty much the same. I think that doing this would help with gameplay in the battlezone.
I love the ground battlezone, and play it a lot. If the space battlezone has comparable rewards, I can see myself playing it as well. Each of the sections seem like a copy of the ones in the ground battlezone (activate this to move it, hold this point, or go in circles to activate each of these three times), which makes it feel more repetitive if you do both.
If possible, please add more things to do. Also, adding something like a reinforcement system to at least slow down how fast an area can be recaptured will help. If you have over 80% captured with a small group, and then need to run all the way across the map to keep it an area from being recaptured, it can cause you to spend the whole time doing nothing but that.
I feel like it should be able to be done with 3-4 people. One to keep the areas secured, and the others to capture, and assist securing areas as needed. So far, the support ships that come in just sit there a lot of times, and don't even fire at the enemy till you show up to start shooting. I have sat cloaked at some of these areas, and just watched them sitting there the whole time. seldom ever do they do anything.
Or, at least let us have an option to call in turrets to help slow down the enemy advancements. This will work if the area scales to the amount of players there. The more players, the more Undine ships sent in to recapture an area.
These are just a few thoughts I had on it. I look forward to seeing what the finished project will be like.
Thank you for the new content.
Tim.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
Thank you all for your feedback, please keep it coming! Today, I will be investigating options to make point recapture feel better as well as looking at other points of feedback that I can address (without getting too specific, since I can't promise anything!)
Thank you all for your feedback, please keep it coming! Today, I will be investigating options to make point recapture feel better as well as looking at other points of feedback that I can address (without getting too specific, since I can't promise anything!)
Awesome. Look forward to it.
Tim.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
So I noticed when I hover my cursor over a point on the big map that they all have specific designations such as Romulan Point Delta etc.
I think a very useful addition would be little mini flavor texts (sorry I don't know the proper term) on the side of the screen when a point is being recaptured by the Undine. "Warning! Klingon point Alpha is being retaken!" I'm referring to the same little notifications that announce the arrival of the planet killers or the order to regroup for the incoming voth wave at the end.
The Contested Zone has something similar but off the top of my head I think it only announces completed captures, not capture-attempts (e.g. Allies/Voth are assaulting the Wasteland Tower!)
In an earlier post in this thread I mentioned how there should be more evidence of the past Voth occupation of this area and there should be lingering skirmishes that are separate from the actual point control. To expand on that point, I think they should function in a manner similar to the roaming mini-bosses on the Voth ground zone. Defeat a cluster of skirmishing Voth and Undine ships and you get a small point/dilithium reward. Will the Undine zone have small side quests like the Allied and Contested zones where you can assist a fire base or get intel from a defector Voth or blast a horde of Iconian probes, etc? It should. It'll make it feel like a more active zone.
Each of the points are designed to smartly scale in size based on the number of players in the area. Our goal is that a point can be enjoyable solo or with five people, and anywhere in between (or upward).
They scale awesomely. The points get really fun when 3+ people are trying to capture the same point.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
I like the way the Undine fight. With them being able to dip into fluidic space, then pop out somewhere else was awesome. Running cannons, I can see where that would be a pain. I still see the gravity well type things they use are a little unbalanced, I feel.
I have still seen them snuff out the fighters as soon as they get snagged. My Advanced Romulan Drones even have a hard time getting away. They sometimes survive a bit from them.
When they are used on larger ships, I first felt that they were too weak. However, I was finally able to play against them with a good sized group. I think that against large ships they are set pretty good now. If hit with one, I can easily pull away. But, when I got hit by multiple ones, I can see that they are able to give a challenge to get away. If any one of them was stronger, then you would never get away from them when they are activated.
There is a big problem that has been mentioned by others before. It really could benefit from a support, and warning system.
When an area is taken, the NPCs that spawn in are basically worthless to help hold the area. I think it might be better to have something like a varying scale of support. It is pointless to have the NPCs be so powerful the Undine couldn't retake it. However, what if the group that came into each captured area would vary in either size, or abilities based off of how many players were in the entire map?
The purpose is to slow down the rate at which the Undine can retake an area. If there are a small number of players, then it would take longer for them to retake it. If the map had a large number of players, then they could retake it faster.
This will allow the entire map to be both challenging (but not so that a small group of fairly new members to STO would get discouraged from playing the content), and fun.
Having a warning system to let you know when an area is about to be retaken, and which one, is a great idea. When in the middle of combat, it is hard for someone in a leadership position to pull up his map all the time to direct others. If there was a warning, they could see there is an area in danger, and send someone there to help.
This last thought is for the mini map. It would be nice to have an indicator that showed other players on it. We can see the ones we are teamed with, and enemies. However, all of the other players are invisible. If they are on a team with you, there is a marker to show their anywhere on the map. There should be one for allied players that are not teamed with you.
As it is, you have no idea where aliens are. Sometimes, I have been in the map while others were, but they were a good bit away. If you like to use team work, it makes it hard if you can't see them.
We have seen that the game's mini map can track multiple players. The ESD we use now on Holodeck does this all the time. The only difference is adding a marker to show which are players vs NPCs. It will be almost like in the Star Trek shows when there was a battle. All the ships in a battle could see where the others were, even when out of line of sight.
These are a few suggestions. The work so far is great. I am looking forward to getting to play on Holodeck, and see what else is coming. Please keep up the awesome work.
Tom.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
Notes regarding upcoming changes to Fluidic Rifts were recently posted in the Viscous Cycle feedback thread. Since they are relevant to some of the discussion ongoing here, I will repost the body of that message:
Regarding the Fluidic Rifts: Some recent changes have been made internally that are relevant to much of the conversation going on in this thread. So I figured I'd fill you in now, as I'm not entirely sure when those changes will appear on Tribble for testing...
1) Undine NPCs will no longer attempt to spawn a Fluidic Rift if there is already one active within 10km of their current position.
* It may still occasionally happen, if two NPCs spawn their Rifts simultaneously.
2) If more than one Rift ends up spawned within 12km of one another, they will each begin counting the number of Puddles/Bubbles that currently exist.
* Once there are a total of 12 Puddles in their vicinity, they will stop creating additional Puddles.
* Once enough Puddles dissipate to drop the count below 12 in the vicinity, they will begin creating them again until the cap of 12 is reached.
3) Rifts will no longer attempt to pull in Mines, Torpedoes or Hangar Craft
* NOTE: Since this removes these entities from the rifts' Max Pulled Targets count (which has always been 5), it may actually seem like they are more voracious towards players after this change is made.
4) Puddles no longer cause damage to Mines, Torpedoes or Hangar Craft
* The Speed Debuff will still apply to these small pets.
* Players piloting Small Craft (Shuttles/Fighters) will still suffer both Damage and Debuff from Puddles.
We hope that these changes will alleviate some of the concerns over this power.
We are also monitoring feedback regarding the strength of the Rifts' pull, and may end up tuning it in the future. However, for the time being, we'd like to see how the above changes go over first before pursuing any additional tuning.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Thank you all for your feedback, please keep it coming! Today, I will be investigating options to make point recapture feel better as well as looking at other points of feedback that I can address (without getting too specific, since I can't promise anything!)
It's a random idea, and I'm not sure if you guys have the time left to develop it, but what about an adjacency reinforcement system? If a friendly point comes under attack, perhaps a ship from each adjacent friendly territory could be dispatched to hold off/delay the attackers? Klingon points would send Klingon ships, Federation points would send Starfleet ships, etc. Maybe one of the Flagships might show up on a very rare occasion and completely hold the point for several minutes.
It would (presumably)slow down point recapture while most of the players are pushing the final points on the opposite side of the map, and add a bit of immersive flavor into the conflict at the same time. Perhaps some of the code for it might even open a door for a dynamic battle line system in future updates(where only adjacent territories can be captured/lost).
This last thought is for the mini map. It would be nice to have an indicator that showed other players on it. We can see the ones we are teamed with, and enemies. However, all of the other players are invisible. If they are on a team with you, there is a marker to show their anywhere on the map. There should be one for allied players that are not teamed with you.
As it is, you have no idea where aliens are. Sometimes, I have been in the map while others were, but they were a good bit away. If you like to use team work, it makes it hard if you can't see them.
We have seen that the game's mini map can track multiple players. The ESD we use now on Holodeck does this all the time. The only difference is adding a marker to show which are players vs NPCs. It will be almost like in the Star Trek shows when there was a battle. All the ships in a battle could see where the others were, even when out of line of sight.
It does do this, but there's a limited range of maybe 20-30km before a non-teamed player will disappear from your map. The map is so huge that you can only see player icons on the minimap up to about 1 capture point away from you.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
Regarding the Romulan capture point, looking at the structures gives me the impression of this setup basically being a "Railgun" type of setup. It doesn't really seem to act like that in practice.
An idea that keeps the same "interactivity" of the current version is that if a player is diverting power to the checkpoint at the time the singularity reaches it, it speeds it up in a kind of "gravimetric railgun" type of setup. The more players channeling, the faster the core goes.
Maybe I'm not seeing the design philosophy of the current design, though.
Just as a heads up, our rewards are closer to final than they were before. I say "closer" so in the event that a bug comes up or something changes, I can point to here and go, "I said closer!"
We fixed an issue where the huge reward handout at the completion of the zone was not being rewarded. Now, when you complete the battlezone (capturing points, killing bosses, possibly doing the bonus round), you should receive a reward based off of how many planet killers were defeated by the zone, along with how many points you personally helped capture.
Just as a heads up, our rewards are closer to final than they were before. I say "closer" so in the event that a bug comes up or something changes, I can point to here and go, "I said closer!"
We fixed an issue where the huge reward handout at the completion of the zone was not being rewarded. Now, when you complete the battlezone (capturing points, killing bosses, possibly doing the bonus round), you should receive a reward based off of how many planet killers were defeated by the zone, along with how many points you personally helped capture.
I don't really mind the rewards its just the previous info on last dev blog is like a huge dark cloud pretty much destroying anything you can possibly do for this.
I like the zone! The visuals are pretty damned fantastic, the Undine are fun to fight, and it follows the ground battlezone's recipe pretty closely.
That said, it's too easy. Too ******ned easy.
I guess I see what you guys are doing and making it viable to casuals wanting to get a few marks with no hassle, but...
With this design decision, you guys are killing teamwork No offense, but I don't see much point in making a Persistent (And I'm not sure persistent is the right word here, but I'll go with it) battlezone if 1 person can blaze through it in no time. I know some players like lonewolfing it up, but this is an MMO, and this persistent battlezone works on that notion, so why not base this space battlezone around teamwork?
You guys had a nice idea with the new Mirror Invasion event and the roles all 3 ship classes brought to the table. We havr three faction and three different capture points, each tied to a faction. I'd be nice if the KDF folk captured the KDF zones faster, the Romulan folk captured the Romulan zones faster, etc.
The space zone is EASIER than the Voth ground battlezone, which is kinda sad, to be honest. I want a nice challenge, something where me and my sci vessel could feel useful but it seems that I'll just plow through this space battlezone idly because there isn't much of a challenge.
I like the idea of difficulty scalability, but it doesn't feel like much of a battle/war when only 1/2 Nicors or whatever are floating around a major capture point and the rest of the battlezone is fairly empty of enemies.
Just as a heads up, our rewards are closer to final than they were before. I say "closer" so in the event that a bug comes up or something changes, I can point to here and go, "I said closer!"
We fixed an issue where the huge reward handout at the completion of the zone was not being rewarded. Now, when you complete the battlezone (capturing points, killing bosses, possibly doing the bonus round), you should receive a reward based off of how many planet killers were defeated by the zone, along with how many points you personally helped capture.
Hi,
I managed to play one round today. There was a big reward around 1.8k dil for 3 PK and I participated in four captures. We managed to kill 3 Voth waves but I forgot to check if we got some dil for that. Is there some ?
I have had some graphical issues. I could not see my canon bolts in battle whit greater numbers of enemy (PK with more than 6 support ships and Voth waves). Where should I report that? Here? If so do you need my PC conf?
I really like SBZ.
Love that you have to move non stop around FR and bubbles. You did great job with Undine knocking you of course like Voyager in Scorpio.
I do not like that I don't know where other players are. If Undine begin to recapture a point and you are on the far side you don't know if a player is on the way and it is very hard to make the decision to leave a half captured point or not. Is someone already there? You are not sure that you will make the trip in time and once I was on the half way when someone secured the point... There are lot of people that don't say "Hi" to the team in queued events and to expect that they will say on local channel that they are securing a point. Some help in seeing where are other players would be great.
Thank you
After 21 crafting assignments and burning 1575 dil to bypass 2h building time to build MK II dual cannon I got:
0, yes zero very rare AP MK II dual canons
p.s. I will execute my rare Jamhadar who is serving under me for 1,5 years for incompetence its just a MK II dual canon, he is Energy Weapons Officer not a Doctor.
I like the zone! The visuals are pretty damned fantastic, the Undine are fun to fight, and it follows the ground battlezone's recipe pretty closely.
That said, it's too easy. Too ******ned easy.
<snip>
What kind of ships/playstyles did you try, and are you fighting on points mostly solo?
The difficulty tends to pick up a bit more once you get 3 people at a point and the Heavy Bio-ships/Battleships start jumping in. With 5 people, I'd say it's roughly on par with the Voth encounters, just different tactics. The Undine trade the Immunity Shields for Megabeams(which can be quite punishing if someone actually tries to 'tank' multiple/every ship at once).
It's cool and all, but i was able to solo a KDF point with only Dil store gear and poorly trained boffs (thanks to -1,000,000 expertise lol). I didn't even have any reps filled out.
I think they should be more offensive, unlike the voth. Ramp up their firepower a bit. I wanna see people teaming up because they literally cannot do it alone. As it stands now it's just sit back and watch Scimitars solo points..
I notice that my FPS drop a lot in the Undine Battlezone once there are multiple players involved. Particularly bad during the Planet Killer part. I am not sure what can be done about directly - maybe find a way to make the Dyson sphere SFX and the Undine SFX a bit less costly. (Of course, some will say I should get a better computer, but my computer is pretty decent, but even if not, it would probably only be exemplary for what many STO players have and will face in the Zone.)
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I notice that my FPS drop a lot in the Undine Battlezone once there are multiple players involved. Particularly bad during the Planet Killer part. I am not sure what can be done about directly - maybe find a way to make the Dyson sphere SFX and the Undine SFX a bit less costly. (Of course, some will say I should get a better computer, but my computer is pretty decent, but even if not, it would probably only be exemplary for what many STO players have and will face in the Zone.)
Same here. Decent PC and never had any problems, yet on planet killer fights i get a major FPS drop. I think its all the clutter that is in there: ships, bio-torps, fluidic rifts + fluidic "bubles".
Overall, after 2 days of playing it, I have to say I dont like it so much. Its not fun, gameplay wise. Graphics are good, undine ships looks good. Liked also the damaged ships that you find around, wich if you help they will help you. Its a nice touch, and also a bit cute to watch a lil Dhael warbird fighting and, surprisely, surviving a long time, along your side . Kinda a bit like the boffs I think were ment for.
But gameplay wise, figthing undine kinda sux imo. Grav wells are kinda useless since undine ships can and will use their fluidic space jump ability to... jump onto another location further away from any CC skills you may use. This also kinda makes using DHCs and DC a bit tedious too, since they will jump from the cone of ur weapons most of the times. So again its BFAW paradise in here :rolleyes:
Another thing, the rifts and bubles, even after latest patch, still are too much. Died once from bubles's dmg cuz I couldnt move from too many rifts's pull. I mean, what the hell, barely move a lenght of ship using full engine+evasive
Also there isnt any rewards for defeating the voth yet. And speaking of rewards, 10 marks its a bit too small for the amount of time you spend on each capturing point. The bar it seems soo slow to fill, even with 2-3 more players around. Only when where 5 players I noticed a diference. Also the mark rewards for completing the map are kinda small too. Barely got 70-80 marks, even fighting on all 3 planet killers. As a comparison, since it seems fitting, on voth ground battlezone, clearing all T-rexes will get you even 120 marks... And speaking of that, same as voth ground zone, how about adding some bosses around here too. Like maybe an Assimilated Undine boss ship, or a Genetic Abomination ship, sort-of a genetic mistake or something like that. Would add a nice touch imo.
Is there any point to the part where you just shoot at Voth ships (after all 3 planet killers are destroyed) except for the pure enjoyment of blowing stuff up? You get a timer, you blow ships up, and get no reward.
Oh yes, like it has been mentioned, the mark rewards are pretty low given the time investment. For reputation progression it's fine, but to obtain the space set pieces, it's horribly low.
It would be nice if successfully fending off an attempt by the Undine to reopen a rift awarded a small number of Undine Marks. It might encourage people to do that rather than stay at an overcrowded in-progress recapture, and it would make the battlezone more consistent (rewarding players for successfully doing something useful to the battle).
Mark income is very slow and tedious. Unless this is brought up to Voth BZ levels, then this is a trainwreck waiting to happen.
It would probably help if you could explain why, especially considering there are at least some players in this thread that say mark/dil income from this zone is as fast or even faster than in the Voth ground zone.
For my part, I like the zone, but the undine ships seem a little bit too durable for my taste. I'm not saying every enemy needs to be burned down in 3 seconds or less, but their damage resistance is a tad too high versus the threat they present (or lack thereof).
During encounters while taking zones in groups of 2-3 I was rarely in danger of dying. The Undine don't feel like they posed a greater threat than the Voth (with their many shield-piercing abilities) and yet the Undine ships took, on average, 50% more time to kill due to their very high native damage resistance.
I imagine that this is why the new bio-molecular weapons and undine-specific gear will come into play, just like how new proton and protonic polaron builds are specialized towards dino-killing, but unless the anti-undine procs are crazy effective I'm not sure I see these fights being more exciting.
Issue number one. The Undine rifts that pull you in and spew the yellow bubbles that fry you are crazy. Unlike most things, they don't despawn when you kill the ship generating them, and several times I've had two of them stack up. Very hard to get out of.
To be fair, part of this might be the graphics lag, which is horrible. With pets and rifts, and everything else, this makes it look like I'm on 56K with a 286 computer. And trust me, that is nowhere near the case.
Also, currently the reward for closing a rift is 10 marks. I'm assuming that this is going to be like in the Dyson sphere where doing something similar gets you 10 marks and 1 commendation, so under the new system, I assume that would be 10 marks and enough to do the daily rep project. If closing a rift will get 10 marks plus enough to do the daily rep, that sounds okay, and I will assume that you haven't put that in yet. If not, it needs to be.
The people talking about graphical overload are really spot on.
Prior to S8, I could run the game at maxed out settings and only have to worry about performance in Starbase 24, where it would still hold in the 30's. In S8, the space Dyson zones I had to turn down to high to keep it above 30, and sometimes needed to turn off shadows even then.
The Undine battle zone, though? During the last phase against the planet killers, I've had framerates as low as 25 with settings all the way down to medium. Just way, way too many ships and too many things going off. It's not as bad in the rest of the zone, but the whole place is just awful for graphical performance.
The people talking about graphical overload are really spot on.
Prior to S8, I could run the game at maxed out settings and only have to worry about performance in Starbase 24, where it would still hold in the 30's. In S8, the space Dyson zones I had to turn down to high to keep it above 30, and sometimes needed to turn off shadows even then.
The Undine battle zone, though? During the last phase against the planet killers, I've had framerates as low as 25 with settings all the way down to medium. Just way, way too many ships and too many things going off. It's not as bad in the rest of the zone, but the whole place is just awful for graphical performance.
I have the same problem. I have a really speced out computer and can play the graphics on high but doing the battlezone my video just bottleneck and I think it's hitting low 20-25 fps. Although other parts of the game I'm well above 30 fps.
The game becomes almost unplayable in that region. Also, the ships are dirt easy to beat. Cryptic is so backwards. They take away passive skills in the reputation usage and then puts out a overloaded gimmicky space zone. That only drops the performance out of a computer.
Comments
Plus is it just me or do the point reinforcements sometimes just let the Undine waltz in and retake a point without putting up a fight? This happens in the Voth ground battle zone too, where allied reinforcements will be standing on one part of a control point and the Voth beam in 30 or 40 feet away and retake the point without having to fire weapons a single time because the allies all have their backs turned to them.
Joined January 2009
Same with the deathtrap rifts. Normally, you can escape a snare with Polarize Hull, but it didn't work here.
Have immunities to these two things not been programmed yet, or is there something I haven't tried that works?
I do hope there is more variance once it goes live. The map looks as though each zone could spawn any one of the three objectives, which would be a nice way for the map to stay fresh, and I like the "Fix a ship and it follows you around" mini objective, so I hope more things like that get added in as well.
Probably more for a different threat, but I would like to see the undine super grav well lessened, more in frequency than in power and a fix to keep it from auto killing small craft. Also, it would be nice if the cruisers couldn't jump out of holds; tactically it's challenging to have them moving about on the map, but it's annoying to burn a Grav well or Borg tractor only to have them vanish out of it.
I uploaded a bunch of screenshots over here:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=15846271
However I have to say that the flight ceiling feels arbitrarily low. I've run into it several times and gotten stuck while trying to escape from pursuers.
Joined January 2009
First, I like the fact that we have a space battlezone that we can move through, and do things in, like the ground battlezone. I was expecting something a little different in objectives than the ground. It is pretty much a copy.
I would recommend adding some variation to the mix. Have a different objective that needs to be done. Aside from that, I do enjoy being able to fly from point to point in the battlezone.
Second, I think that the Undine are way too weak. I know that it has been like 40 some years, or something like that since Voyager first encountered them. However, a Borg spheres on normal STFs take longer to take out than an Undine battleship in the battlezone.
I think that boosting them up a little bit, and making them either a bit more powerful, or smarter (so that they use tactics against players) would be great. I am assuming that they are still a challenge to the Borg. I don't know, because I never got to experience the original Borg missions in the game. I know that there have been a lot of changes since the originals. But, it still seems to me like they should offer some challenge.
About the rift that they use like a Gravity Well, I do think it needs to be adjusted. I believe that it's pull should vary depending on the mass the ship has. I saw my Advanced Romulan fighters be able to survive them for a while. However, someone else with me had their BOPs killed almost instantly. My Scimitar, and carriers were able to pull away from them like they were nothing.
At this rate, they serve no purpose but to kill fighters. The only time I had a little trouble getting away was when I had 4 of them activated right on me. I just added power to my engines, and pulled away. The other players with me did as well.
It seems like the pull would increase depending on the size of the ship. Fighters should be able to pull away easily, because they are smaller ships with faster speeds. Escorts should have a little more trouble pulling away, but not be caught in the center of it, unable to move. They do have faster speeds that large ships, and that should be reflected, without making the rift look like a piece of the background.
With that in mind, I feel that with the mass that larger ships like cruisers, carriers, and dreadnaughts have, they should have the hardest time getting away. They don't have the speed, and should find it harder to get away.
A Gravity Well is a source of gravity. For that reason, I feel that it should reflect that. The same for these rifts. They are pretty much the same. I think that doing this would help with gameplay in the battlezone.
I love the ground battlezone, and play it a lot. If the space battlezone has comparable rewards, I can see myself playing it as well. Each of the sections seem like a copy of the ones in the ground battlezone (activate this to move it, hold this point, or go in circles to activate each of these three times), which makes it feel more repetitive if you do both.
If possible, please add more things to do. Also, adding something like a reinforcement system to at least slow down how fast an area can be recaptured will help. If you have over 80% captured with a small group, and then need to run all the way across the map to keep it an area from being recaptured, it can cause you to spend the whole time doing nothing but that.
I feel like it should be able to be done with 3-4 people. One to keep the areas secured, and the others to capture, and assist securing areas as needed. So far, the support ships that come in just sit there a lot of times, and don't even fire at the enemy till you show up to start shooting. I have sat cloaked at some of these areas, and just watched them sitting there the whole time. seldom ever do they do anything.
Or, at least let us have an option to call in turrets to help slow down the enemy advancements. This will work if the area scales to the amount of players there. The more players, the more Undine ships sent in to recapture an area.
These are just a few thoughts I had on it. I look forward to seeing what the finished project will be like.
Thank you for the new content.
Tim.
Thank you all for your feedback, please keep it coming! Today, I will be investigating options to make point recapture feel better as well as looking at other points of feedback that I can address (without getting too specific, since I can't promise anything!)
Awesome. Look forward to it.
Tim.
I think a very useful addition would be little mini flavor texts (sorry I don't know the proper term) on the side of the screen when a point is being recaptured by the Undine. "Warning! Klingon point Alpha is being retaken!" I'm referring to the same little notifications that announce the arrival of the planet killers or the order to regroup for the incoming voth wave at the end.
The Contested Zone has something similar but off the top of my head I think it only announces completed captures, not capture-attempts (e.g. Allies/Voth are assaulting the Wasteland Tower!)
In an earlier post in this thread I mentioned how there should be more evidence of the past Voth occupation of this area and there should be lingering skirmishes that are separate from the actual point control. To expand on that point, I think they should function in a manner similar to the roaming mini-bosses on the Voth ground zone. Defeat a cluster of skirmishing Voth and Undine ships and you get a small point/dilithium reward. Will the Undine zone have small side quests like the Allied and Contested zones where you can assist a fire base or get intel from a defector Voth or blast a horde of Iconian probes, etc? It should. It'll make it feel like a more active zone.
They scale awesomely. The points get really fun when 3+ people are trying to capture the same point.
Joined January 2009
I have still seen them snuff out the fighters as soon as they get snagged. My Advanced Romulan Drones even have a hard time getting away. They sometimes survive a bit from them.
When they are used on larger ships, I first felt that they were too weak. However, I was finally able to play against them with a good sized group. I think that against large ships they are set pretty good now. If hit with one, I can easily pull away. But, when I got hit by multiple ones, I can see that they are able to give a challenge to get away. If any one of them was stronger, then you would never get away from them when they are activated.
There is a big problem that has been mentioned by others before. It really could benefit from a support, and warning system.
When an area is taken, the NPCs that spawn in are basically worthless to help hold the area. I think it might be better to have something like a varying scale of support. It is pointless to have the NPCs be so powerful the Undine couldn't retake it. However, what if the group that came into each captured area would vary in either size, or abilities based off of how many players were in the entire map?
The purpose is to slow down the rate at which the Undine can retake an area. If there are a small number of players, then it would take longer for them to retake it. If the map had a large number of players, then they could retake it faster.
This will allow the entire map to be both challenging (but not so that a small group of fairly new members to STO would get discouraged from playing the content), and fun.
Having a warning system to let you know when an area is about to be retaken, and which one, is a great idea. When in the middle of combat, it is hard for someone in a leadership position to pull up his map all the time to direct others. If there was a warning, they could see there is an area in danger, and send someone there to help.
This last thought is for the mini map. It would be nice to have an indicator that showed other players on it. We can see the ones we are teamed with, and enemies. However, all of the other players are invisible. If they are on a team with you, there is a marker to show their anywhere on the map. There should be one for allied players that are not teamed with you.
As it is, you have no idea where aliens are. Sometimes, I have been in the map while others were, but they were a good bit away. If you like to use team work, it makes it hard if you can't see them.
We have seen that the game's mini map can track multiple players. The ESD we use now on Holodeck does this all the time. The only difference is adding a marker to show which are players vs NPCs. It will be almost like in the Star Trek shows when there was a battle. All the ships in a battle could see where the others were, even when out of line of sight.
These are a few suggestions. The work so far is great. I am looking forward to getting to play on Holodeck, and see what else is coming. Please keep up the awesome work.
Tom.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=15919471&postcount=36
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
It's a random idea, and I'm not sure if you guys have the time left to develop it, but what about an adjacency reinforcement system? If a friendly point comes under attack, perhaps a ship from each adjacent friendly territory could be dispatched to hold off/delay the attackers? Klingon points would send Klingon ships, Federation points would send Starfleet ships, etc. Maybe one of the Flagships might show up on a very rare occasion and completely hold the point for several minutes.
It would (presumably)slow down point recapture while most of the players are pushing the final points on the opposite side of the map, and add a bit of immersive flavor into the conflict at the same time. Perhaps some of the code for it might even open a door for a dynamic battle line system in future updates(where only adjacent territories can be captured/lost).
It does do this, but there's a limited range of maybe 20-30km before a non-teamed player will disappear from your map. The map is so huge that you can only see player icons on the minimap up to about 1 capture point away from you.
Joined January 2009
An idea that keeps the same "interactivity" of the current version is that if a player is diverting power to the checkpoint at the time the singularity reaches it, it speeds it up in a kind of "gravimetric railgun" type of setup. The more players channeling, the faster the core goes.
Maybe I'm not seeing the design philosophy of the current design, though.
Just as a heads up, our rewards are closer to final than they were before. I say "closer" so in the event that a bug comes up or something changes, I can point to here and go, "I said closer!"
We fixed an issue where the huge reward handout at the completion of the zone was not being rewarded. Now, when you complete the battlezone (capturing points, killing bosses, possibly doing the bonus round), you should receive a reward based off of how many planet killers were defeated by the zone, along with how many points you personally helped capture.
I don't really mind the rewards its just the previous info on last dev blog is like a huge dark cloud pretty much destroying anything you can possibly do for this.
That said, it's too easy. Too ******ned easy.
I guess I see what you guys are doing and making it viable to casuals wanting to get a few marks with no hassle, but...
With this design decision, you guys are killing teamwork
You guys had a nice idea with the new Mirror Invasion event and the roles all 3 ship classes brought to the table. We havr three faction and three different capture points, each tied to a faction. I'd be nice if the KDF folk captured the KDF zones faster, the Romulan folk captured the Romulan zones faster, etc.
The space zone is EASIER than the Voth ground battlezone, which is kinda sad, to be honest. I want a nice challenge, something where me and my sci vessel could feel useful but it seems that I'll just plow through this space battlezone idly because there isn't much of a challenge.
I like the idea of difficulty scalability, but it doesn't feel like much of a battle/war when only 1/2 Nicors or whatever are floating around a major capture point and the rest of the battlezone is fairly empty of enemies.
Hi,
I managed to play one round today. There was a big reward around 1.8k dil for 3 PK and I participated in four captures. We managed to kill 3 Voth waves but I forgot to check if we got some dil for that. Is there some
I have had some graphical issues. I could not see my canon bolts in battle whit greater numbers of enemy (PK with more than 6 support ships and Voth waves). Where should I report that? Here? If so do you need my PC conf?
I really like SBZ.
Love that you have to move non stop around FR and bubbles. You did great job with Undine knocking you of course like Voyager in Scorpio.
I do not like that I don't know where other players are. If Undine begin to recapture a point and you are on the far side you don't know if a player is on the way and it is very hard to make the decision to leave a half captured point or not. Is someone already there? You are not sure that you will make the trip in time and once I was on the half way when someone secured the point... There are lot of people that don't say "Hi" to the team in queued events and to expect that they will say on local channel that they are securing a point. Some help in seeing where are other players would be great.
Thank you
0, yes zero very rare AP MK II dual canons
p.s. I will execute my rare Jamhadar who is serving under me for 1,5 years for incompetence its just a MK II dual canon, he is Energy Weapons Officer not a Doctor.
What kind of ships/playstyles did you try, and are you fighting on points mostly solo?
The difficulty tends to pick up a bit more once you get 3 people at a point and the Heavy Bio-ships/Battleships start jumping in. With 5 people, I'd say it's roughly on par with the Voth encounters, just different tactics. The Undine trade the Immunity Shields for Megabeams(which can be quite punishing if someone actually tries to 'tank' multiple/every ship at once).
It's cool and all, but i was able to solo a KDF point with only Dil store gear and poorly trained boffs (thanks to -1,000,000 expertise lol). I didn't even have any reps filled out.
I think they should be more offensive, unlike the voth. Ramp up their firepower a bit. I wanna see people teaming up because they literally cannot do it alone. As it stands now it's just sit back and watch Scimitars solo points..
Same here. Decent PC and never had any problems, yet on planet killer fights i get a major FPS drop. I think its all the clutter that is in there: ships, bio-torps, fluidic rifts + fluidic "bubles".
Overall, after 2 days of playing it, I have to say I dont like it so much. Its not fun, gameplay wise. Graphics are good, undine ships looks good. Liked also the damaged ships that you find around, wich if you help they will help you. Its a nice touch, and also a bit cute to watch a lil Dhael warbird fighting and, surprisely, surviving a long time, along your side
But gameplay wise, figthing undine kinda sux imo. Grav wells are kinda useless since undine ships can and will use their fluidic space jump ability to... jump onto another location further away from any CC skills you may use. This also kinda makes using DHCs and DC a bit tedious too, since they will jump from the cone of ur weapons most of the times. So again its BFAW paradise in here :rolleyes:
Another thing, the rifts and bubles, even after latest patch, still are too much. Died once from bubles's dmg cuz I couldnt move from too many rifts's pull. I mean, what the hell, barely move a lenght of ship using full engine+evasive
Also there isnt any rewards for defeating the voth yet. And speaking of rewards, 10 marks its a bit too small for the amount of time you spend on each capturing point. The bar it seems soo slow to fill, even with 2-3 more players around. Only when where 5 players I noticed a diference. Also the mark rewards for completing the map are kinda small too. Barely got 70-80 marks, even fighting on all 3 planet killers. As a comparison, since it seems fitting, on voth ground battlezone, clearing all T-rexes will get you even 120 marks... And speaking of that, same as voth ground zone, how about adding some bosses around here too. Like maybe an Assimilated Undine boss ship, or a Genetic Abomination ship, sort-of a genetic mistake or something like that. Would add a nice touch imo.
Oh yes, like it has been mentioned, the mark rewards are pretty low given the time investment. For reputation progression it's fine, but to obtain the space set pieces, it's horribly low.
I will investigate to see if there is something odd going on.
Yeah, we haven't been getting any rewards for that. I was assuming it was going to be put in later.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
It would probably help if you could explain why, especially considering there are at least some players in this thread that say mark/dil income from this zone is as fast or even faster than in the Voth ground zone.
For my part, I like the zone, but the undine ships seem a little bit too durable for my taste. I'm not saying every enemy needs to be burned down in 3 seconds or less, but their damage resistance is a tad too high versus the threat they present (or lack thereof).
During encounters while taking zones in groups of 2-3 I was rarely in danger of dying. The Undine don't feel like they posed a greater threat than the Voth (with their many shield-piercing abilities) and yet the Undine ships took, on average, 50% more time to kill due to their very high native damage resistance.
I imagine that this is why the new bio-molecular weapons and undine-specific gear will come into play, just like how new proton and protonic polaron builds are specialized towards dino-killing, but unless the anti-undine procs are crazy effective I'm not sure I see these fights being more exciting.
TL;DR Undine not squishy enough, pls nerf
To be fair, part of this might be the graphics lag, which is horrible. With pets and rifts, and everything else, this makes it look like I'm on 56K with a 286 computer. And trust me, that is nowhere near the case.
Also, currently the reward for closing a rift is 10 marks. I'm assuming that this is going to be like in the Dyson sphere where doing something similar gets you 10 marks and 1 commendation, so under the new system, I assume that would be 10 marks and enough to do the daily rep project. If closing a rift will get 10 marks plus enough to do the daily rep, that sounds okay, and I will assume that you haven't put that in yet. If not, it needs to be.
Nouveau riche LTS member
Prior to S8, I could run the game at maxed out settings and only have to worry about performance in Starbase 24, where it would still hold in the 30's. In S8, the space Dyson zones I had to turn down to high to keep it above 30, and sometimes needed to turn off shadows even then.
The Undine battle zone, though? During the last phase against the planet killers, I've had framerates as low as 25 with settings all the way down to medium. Just way, way too many ships and too many things going off. It's not as bad in the rest of the zone, but the whole place is just awful for graphical performance.
I have the same problem. I have a really speced out computer and can play the graphics on high but doing the battlezone my video just bottleneck and I think it's hitting low 20-25 fps. Although other parts of the game I'm well above 30 fps.
The game becomes almost unplayable in that region. Also, the ships are dirt easy to beat. Cryptic is so backwards. They take away passive skills in the reputation usage and then puts out a overloaded gimmicky space zone. That only drops the performance out of a computer.