These are the things I really dislike about the new Undine Space Battlezone:
- You get plunged into the action right away with some popup half-explaining what to do.
- I didn't understand what to do, as there was waaaaaay too much clutter on the screen (my allies of course, and my enemies). So it was impossible to understand where to get to shut off or trigger something. Kill Undine, yes I got that part easily, but the rest was a mess of becoming lost. It took me a very short while to understand the Ground Battlezone, but the Undine one? OMG, it's a total mess of "What do I do, and how?".
- I still don't understand what the heck the singularity is in the zone. My Second in Command (or maybe it was Captain Shon, didn't pay attention to that detail) kept telling me that we should do something about the singularity (I can't recall the words, but for the life of me I have no clue where that singularity was in the Romulan space in the Undine Battlezone).
- In the very end, the planet killers... what are you supposed to do when it raised its red shield? The very brief explanation doesn't help at all. I just killed Undine, and left whoever knew what they were doing (either by chance or knowledge) take care of the shield. From what the explanation said, we had to deal with a particular thing, which I could not find on the screen.
- The Undine Gravity Well (I don't know what it's called) is way too powerful. I have an Ha'feh Assault Warbird and EVEN using Evasive Manoeuvres III, I could not even get out. My ship is clearly a nimble ship and not a Cruiser, nor an Escort, nor a Dreadnought, but a nimble Warbird. Maybe not the fastest, but it's it's pretty fast imo. So why do I have trouble getting out of those Gravity Wells?
- I really did not like having the Undine shooting some sort of Gravity Well. It just makes things so messy with like 20 allied ships plus 15 enemies. Sometimes you can't avoid getting caught. But my main concern aside from it being a death trap as mentioned in the point above, is that that type of attack should not even be in the Battlezone. It makes it boring, and for me, it reduces the fun.
At this point, with all these problems I will not enter that Battlezone. It's a really boring Battlezone imo. When we speak about the explanations, it should be something you can pick up within 5 minutes. After the amount of time I played and still not understanding, it makes the Battlezone very boring.
Also, my graphics card clearly surpasses the recommended specs (so does my ram), but the game was lagging so much so because of the Battlezone. I've never had so much problems running a game since the original Neverwinter Nights on my older computer. And that was many years ago.
As far as the Yellow Baby Snot floating all across this game these days, Hazard Emitters will clear it off you, then Evasive Maneuvers to get you out of the sticky situation. Evasive Maneuvers alone will not help you. HE has to come first. That's a route for those without APO or want to save APO.
Otherwise, fast movement and knowing where you're going will keep you out of the yellow goo. Escorts and BOPs should have no problem staying out of these things, esp. those with high ENG power or using EPTE.
Cannon users have to be more careful because they can easily get waylaid by the goo as they're trying to focus their forward firepower. Broadsiders just circle the perimeter blasting away from a safe distance and avoiding the goo altogether.
As for the Undine Space Battlezone itself, I have only 2 issues:
1. Huge Sysem Hog. My computer can take the top of the line, graphics hungry game like BF4 with maximized settings and chew it up and spit it out with no problem. But STO Undine BZ? It's crying for mercy. There's far too much glitter and pixy dust going on. I've had fleetmates refuse to go to this BZ because their computer cannot handle this area.
2. The Voth. Tacked on so we can kill these idiots who are far too late to the party. What's comedic is that they refuse to see that the alliance is fighting the Undine and make even an attempt at diplomacy to hash something out and end the hostilities. But I guess they have no qualms about getting butchered by a 3 way alliance of major powers and the dangerous Undine. Anyways, I felt their inclusion was pointless and took too long with minimal reward considering how long it takes for these fools to give up.
Turning off dynamic lighting sorted out most of my stuttering issues. No idea why it suddenly became a frame rate issue, though. This is totally anecdotal, but it does seem to lag more when a few people spam faw, though.
And the 8472 "gravity" wells: aux to damp gets me out of them. And ph and he to get clear of the snot balls.
I actually like the zone. Doable solo (each position I mean, not the whole thing) but gets harder as more people rock up.
I finally ventured to the zone to check it out. Got in when the Voth come. There were at least 10-15 other players and the stuttering was awful. It's just too much going on in one spot. NPC spam and player spam..whoohoo!
Won't be going back.
i usually only do 1 mission in the zone for the 10+55 marks...and the 3 planet killers when there is the opportunity.
usually planetkiller 1 and 2 are withoutframerate probs, but number 3 is the gathering point for all people in the zone...so is the voth invasion after that.
So, my advice would be to not ignore the battlezone, since it is still the fastest way to get marks and the gear token things, but leave the voth part out...or just afk those 5 minutes...
HORRIBLE overestimation of what cryptics engine is capable of on the dev side...
SOLUTION: voth invasion (which is idiotic and not needed imo anyway) spread out over the whole map, like 5-6 different spawnpoints...
and a 4th planetkiller, but all 4 have lower HP.
Ground Battlezone Voth
The City is empty only NPC running around or are hurt real bad. If I stop to aid one of them? Then I get hit from above like crazy non-stop.
Outside the city isn't any better like you see the same players on and off. Running around going after key targets then when they're finish they jump out to the Park target. Once done they jump out to the City.
Prime target is the huge Bio-Dino which has the greater points. You would think that would be a lot higher than it is. Smaller ones are not worth the trouble. Scoring should be base on the damage you do to the target. More you hit the target the more points you get.
Undine Space Battle yea the lag is there, even with a fast GPU and the latest driver for the graphics it did pick-up a bit. You have over 20 players all shooting their weapons at the same time and the Planet Killer target seems to be facing in the opposite postion.
One target I was the only one attacking it and finished that target on my own. Where did everyone go I say.
After the Undine wave you got a few seconds to deal with Voth wave is harder but I guess it has to be that way. The mothership is larger than all my ships! Really huge and you need more than one ship to take that out. The distance to it seems way, way out there at times.
I find myself doing the regular missions instead. I don't see the point to only have 2 of your crew beam down to the battlezone you should be able to use your regular beam down party. In the City I've notice Nimbus III worms are there too shooting their green goo at you and that's deadly also.
City, the park and the outside both area's is a maze. If you figure it out then you can do well, but not with 2 crew members and yourself. It can get really missy with the Bio-Dino, Mini Dino and Robot's more are out now and are very tough too take out and smart too.
As for the Frame rates a lot of factors are in play the internet the balance load from your ISP to the Internet then to your game then back again. ADSL and over WiFi would be worst. CABLE if too much load they might throttle back. Always check your internet speeds and see that your getting what your paying for. Anyone downloading huge files or playing other games online or even watching streaming movies all these things to consider.
Fun is fun back to Risa Beach Party.. Khan Outfit works for Fed and KDF, just change the colors and your good to go. Romulan have their own cut off tee-shirt. I had to make a pair of white sneakers for Romulan VA. Lt-General jet-pack was not visual as the other two. Guess that needs to be fixed one day.
Like a lot of people have said here, the new Undine space battle zone is just plain boring. Fly here, fly there, destroy planet killers, kill some voth and done. Not enough going on there and not enough to do to keep my interest.
I don't get why the ground battlezone is so much more interesting and dynamic and even that gets boring pretty quickly. Is it not possible to do a fun and interesting space battlezone?
Is it not possible to do a fun and interesting space battlezone?
Probably. I was concerned about this when they first announced it. Compared to an adventure/battle zone on the ground... what do you do in space? You basically have a big, mostly empty area where your choices boil down to:
1. Fly here
2. Scan this thing
3. Kill these guys
That's what all space content in STO is, and I don't honestly know what else it would be. That's why I think Foundry authors seem to favor having you spend most of your time on ground maps. There's just more you can do to immerse the player when you can put them in an environment and have them explore. Space you never need to explore, you just point your ship at the next waypoint, kick on full impulse, then kick back and sip your coffee until you get there. Combat is the same. On the ground, you have to move tactically, try to maintain cover, and choose your targets. In space, it's all about the build. If you have a good build, you will dominate all space content with no effort. I can't see how you would do a space battle zone that's any different than what we have. It seems it boils down to two camps:
1. My build isn't good enough and/or not appropriate to the Undine, and I hate it
2. My build is solid and crushes the Undine with no effort
Group 1 gets frustrated and leaves, group 2 gets bored and leaves.
what makes the clutter even worse is all the transparant fluidic garbage they dump on the screen, as if a transparant image on a 2d monitor translates well at all. I cant tell is these see-through blobs are right next to me, or a hundred miles away. Clearly the people who design this rubbish dont acually play with it.
I find the lag to be the most off putting aspect of the space BZ. And the lag is clearly a serious problem because more and more people are reporting missing weapons fire in combat so the engine is at max rendering capacity and is not showing some of it due to all the spam. I don't know if it's BFAW or snot bubbles (which I just ignore now and fly straight though them) but there is a lot more of something that is clogging the engine up!
The mission itself is not hard to do and if you unofficially pair up with at least one other player you can just stomp through the undine at each point in a couple of minutes.
The most annoying part is the sectors where you need to capture the point by having more friendly than undine ships present. It's just too small and crowded for that sort of nonsense. It works on the ground BZ as you can set up defensive positions and can easily see where the enemy needs dealing with. In a space BZ where the response time for your ship is a lot slower it just ends up with hundreds of ships in a swirling mass of BFAW spam, nobody really knows what is going on but just shoots constantly until they win the point.
Looking at the map itself is the big circle on the floor of the map not a door to outside the sphere? A more interesting mission or objective would be to hold the door either open or closed by using different control points. Make it similar to the tower control in the Both zone but with some aspects of the new BZ as well. It currently feels a bit daft just flying in circles and then the undine appear out of nowhere again.
My experience in the zone was terrible until a friend and I happened on an instance that was largely empty and areas that were far from player concentrations. It was like night and day!
First, yes, lag, stuttering, FPS issues, all those went away and yeah, those are serious enjoyment killers when you're in the swarm.
Enemy spawns and both kinds of environmental hazards are scaled to the number of players in an area. With just two of us, both were extremely manageable and left enough time to actually figure out what was going on (not to mention other players were not activating triggers before we could ever see them).
After figuring out the three kinds of zones and their planet killer variants, the battlezone becomes a lot less frustrating. Again, not excusing the technical performance of the game; that's a nightmare pure and simple, but the experience can be fun despite it.
The Voth at the end is a big meh, but I still enjoy flying around in my bird of prey alpha striking targets of opportunity while the bigger ships filled the air with sparklies.
And it's not equipment dependent. I just got a Romulan to 50 and he's equipped with a terrible d'd with mark 10 and 11 green and white. I still earned a few thousand dilithium and plenty of marks, still had fun. Yeah that means the zone is too easy, but if I wanted a challenge I wouldn't be playing this game, I'd be playing FTL so the RNG can bend me over and spank my TRIBBLE again.
So that's my advice. Figure out how the zone works, find an instance without a lot of players, go in and mess around for a bit.
Admiral Ryvaken, USS Arthra (NCC-947749), Aventine class.
As the seventy-fourth Rule of Acquisition clearly states, knowledge equals profit. And I am a very rich Ferengi.
Comments
1. Hazard emitters
2. Hazard emitters
3. Hazard emitters
4. Hazard emitters
your welcome
Otherwise, fast movement and knowing where you're going will keep you out of the yellow goo. Escorts and BOPs should have no problem staying out of these things, esp. those with high ENG power or using EPTE.
Cannon users have to be more careful because they can easily get waylaid by the goo as they're trying to focus their forward firepower. Broadsiders just circle the perimeter blasting away from a safe distance and avoiding the goo altogether.
As for the Undine Space Battlezone itself, I have only 2 issues:
1. Huge Sysem Hog. My computer can take the top of the line, graphics hungry game like BF4 with maximized settings and chew it up and spit it out with no problem. But STO Undine BZ? It's crying for mercy. There's far too much glitter and pixy dust going on. I've had fleetmates refuse to go to this BZ because their computer cannot handle this area.
2. The Voth. Tacked on so we can kill these idiots who are far too late to the party. What's comedic is that they refuse to see that the alliance is fighting the Undine and make even an attempt at diplomacy to hash something out and end the hostilities. But I guess they have no qualms about getting butchered by a 3 way alliance of major powers and the dangerous Undine. Anyways, I felt their inclusion was pointless and took too long with minimal reward considering how long it takes for these fools to give up.
And the 8472 "gravity" wells: aux to damp gets me out of them. And ph and he to get clear of the snot balls.
I actually like the zone. Doable solo (each position I mean, not the whole thing) but gets harder as more people rock up.
i usually only do 1 mission in the zone for the 10+55 marks...and the 3 planet killers when there is the opportunity.
usually planetkiller 1 and 2 are withoutframerate probs, but number 3 is the gathering point for all people in the zone...so is the voth invasion after that.
So, my advice would be to not ignore the battlezone, since it is still the fastest way to get marks and the gear token things, but leave the voth part out...or just afk those 5 minutes...
HORRIBLE overestimation of what cryptics engine is capable of on the dev side...
SOLUTION: voth invasion (which is idiotic and not needed imo anyway) spread out over the whole map, like 5-6 different spawnpoints...
and a 4th planetkiller, but all 4 have lower HP.
The City is empty only NPC running around or are hurt real bad. If I stop to aid one of them? Then I get hit from above like crazy non-stop.
Outside the city isn't any better like you see the same players on and off. Running around going after key targets then when they're finish they jump out to the Park target. Once done they jump out to the City.
Prime target is the huge Bio-Dino which has the greater points. You would think that would be a lot higher than it is. Smaller ones are not worth the trouble. Scoring should be base on the damage you do to the target. More you hit the target the more points you get.
Undine Space Battle yea the lag is there, even with a fast GPU and the latest driver for the graphics it did pick-up a bit. You have over 20 players all shooting their weapons at the same time and the Planet Killer target seems to be facing in the opposite postion.
One target I was the only one attacking it and finished that target on my own. Where did everyone go I say.
After the Undine wave you got a few seconds to deal with Voth wave is harder but I guess it has to be that way. The mothership is larger than all my ships! Really huge and you need more than one ship to take that out. The distance to it seems way, way out there at times.
I find myself doing the regular missions instead. I don't see the point to only have 2 of your crew beam down to the battlezone you should be able to use your regular beam down party. In the City I've notice Nimbus III worms are there too shooting their green goo at you and that's deadly also.
City, the park and the outside both area's is a maze. If you figure it out then you can do well, but not with 2 crew members and yourself. It can get really missy with the Bio-Dino, Mini Dino and Robot's more are out now and are very tough too take out and smart too.
As for the Frame rates a lot of factors are in play the internet the balance load from your ISP to the Internet then to your game then back again. ADSL and over WiFi would be worst. CABLE if too much load they might throttle back. Always check your internet speeds and see that your getting what your paying for. Anyone downloading huge files or playing other games online or even watching streaming movies all these things to consider.
Fun is fun back to Risa Beach Party.. Khan Outfit works for Fed and KDF, just change the colors and your good to go. Romulan have their own cut off tee-shirt. I had to make a pair of white sneakers for Romulan VA. Lt-General jet-pack was not visual as the other two. Guess that needs to be fixed one day.
Time will only tell!
I don't get why the ground battlezone is so much more interesting and dynamic and even that gets boring pretty quickly. Is it not possible to do a fun and interesting space battlezone?
Probably. I was concerned about this when they first announced it. Compared to an adventure/battle zone on the ground... what do you do in space? You basically have a big, mostly empty area where your choices boil down to:
1. Fly here
2. Scan this thing
3. Kill these guys
That's what all space content in STO is, and I don't honestly know what else it would be. That's why I think Foundry authors seem to favor having you spend most of your time on ground maps. There's just more you can do to immerse the player when you can put them in an environment and have them explore. Space you never need to explore, you just point your ship at the next waypoint, kick on full impulse, then kick back and sip your coffee until you get there. Combat is the same. On the ground, you have to move tactically, try to maintain cover, and choose your targets. In space, it's all about the build. If you have a good build, you will dominate all space content with no effort. I can't see how you would do a space battle zone that's any different than what we have. It seems it boils down to two camps:
1. My build isn't good enough and/or not appropriate to the Undine, and I hate it
2. My build is solid and crushes the Undine with no effort
Group 1 gets frustrated and leaves, group 2 gets bored and leaves.
The mission itself is not hard to do and if you unofficially pair up with at least one other player you can just stomp through the undine at each point in a couple of minutes.
The most annoying part is the sectors where you need to capture the point by having more friendly than undine ships present. It's just too small and crowded for that sort of nonsense. It works on the ground BZ as you can set up defensive positions and can easily see where the enemy needs dealing with. In a space BZ where the response time for your ship is a lot slower it just ends up with hundreds of ships in a swirling mass of BFAW spam, nobody really knows what is going on but just shoots constantly until they win the point.
Looking at the map itself is the big circle on the floor of the map not a door to outside the sphere? A more interesting mission or objective would be to hold the door either open or closed by using different control points. Make it similar to the tower control in the Both zone but with some aspects of the new BZ as well. It currently feels a bit daft just flying in circles and then the undine appear out of nowhere again.
First, yes, lag, stuttering, FPS issues, all those went away and yeah, those are serious enjoyment killers when you're in the swarm.
Enemy spawns and both kinds of environmental hazards are scaled to the number of players in an area. With just two of us, both were extremely manageable and left enough time to actually figure out what was going on (not to mention other players were not activating triggers before we could ever see them).
After figuring out the three kinds of zones and their planet killer variants, the battlezone becomes a lot less frustrating. Again, not excusing the technical performance of the game; that's a nightmare pure and simple, but the experience can be fun despite it.
The Voth at the end is a big meh, but I still enjoy flying around in my bird of prey alpha striking targets of opportunity while the bigger ships filled the air with sparklies.
And it's not equipment dependent. I just got a Romulan to 50 and he's equipped with a terrible d'd with mark 10 and 11 green and white. I still earned a few thousand dilithium and plenty of marks, still had fun. Yeah that means the zone is too easy, but if I wanted a challenge I wouldn't be playing this game, I'd be playing FTL so the RNG can bend me over and spank my TRIBBLE again.
So that's my advice. Figure out how the zone works, find an instance without a lot of players, go in and mess around for a bit.
As the seventy-fourth Rule of Acquisition clearly states, knowledge equals profit. And I am a very rich Ferengi.