I dislike the new "A Gathering Darkness" :(

stormwaltz2

For me, Kessik IV was one of the most memorable missions in STO - the sick horror of a planet completely overrun by Borg, to the point that trees had cyber-grafts, and the ground glowed with circuitry. You could wander all over the surface, seeing and hearing awful things. I loved it. I took dozens of screenshots.

It's been "improved" to a short corridor shooter with cutscenes.

This mission is emblematic of everything that is wrong with modern games. It *was* atmospheric, sprawling, and immersive. Now it's short, boring, and excessively scripted. There are some impressive visuals, yes, but good luck seeing them over all those walls placed to prevent you from leaving the shooty corridor.

I won't be replaying this mission again. At least I have my memories, and a lot of screenshots.

This is the first "remastered" mission that has made me sad. I don't expect it to change... but I did want to express my sadness.

EDIT: And as icing on the TRIBBLE-cake, the mission broke - the "follow the Borg ship" objective won't advance if you don't immediately follow the Borg at full impulse (I wanted to look around, so I didn't).

revandarklighter

I have to agree.

I actually feel similar about pretty much every of the revamped mission, Assimilation in particular.

dragonsbrethren

I thought both of these examples were pretty big improvements over the originals, but I see where you guys are coming from, too. It would be nice if they were a little open ended. The new missions are definitely better designed and more fun than the originals, but good mission design doesn't require total linearity.

The new cube in Assimilation is awesome compared to the original. The maze was in no way fun or impressive visually. The two vistas in the new map are better than anything the original offered.

stormwaltz2

dragonsbrethren wrote: »

The new cube in Assimilation is awesome compared to the original.

I agree with you on this. The new maps give an impression of scale that is rarely found in STO. The cube feels appropriately gigantic.

I freely admit I dislike one and like the other based purely on subjective feelings.

markhawkman

I need to try the new Kessik, but Assimilation? The only thing I miss are the doors that say funny things when you try to open them. That's it, nothing more.

suricatta

dragonsbrethren wrote: »

I thought both of these examples were pretty big improvements over the originals, but I see where you guys are coming from, too. It would be nice if they were a little open ended. The new missions are definitely better designed and more fun than the originals, but good mission design doesn't require total linearity.

The new cube in Assimilation is awesome compared to the original. The maze was in no way fun or impressive visually. The two vistas in the new map are better than anything the original offered.

Same here, I was a bit skepital of having 7 missions condensed into 4, but after playing the new arc I must admit I prefer it was more! The flow is so much better and the quality of the maps in awesome, infact I'm really looking forward to the other arc revamps now. Once that is done the player experiance from tutorial to max level will be really smooth :-D

I was playing the improved tutorial recently on a new charactor and was pleasently surprised at the way it felt compared to the old one as well, it is far easier to get addicted when starting now!

Lots of really nice things instore for the game coming up :-D

revandarklighter

Na sorry. I see little improvement that counts.

Sure they look more shiny.
Voice overs... not a fan (IMO that "show" is about MY crew having adventures. They don't have voice over, I'd prefer it consistent^^), but well... for those who like it: Yey.

But they lack ANY substance. They are completely one dimensional. No feeling of an open environment (unlike the old ones).
For me there is no real difference between that and this final attack on the planet killer in the last fe where we couldn't even steer our ship any more. Just one long hallway with shooting.


And old assimilation was my favorite mission for a reason, its kind of sad to see that no one got that feeling.
Beside a few beauty-shots borg corridors were kind of tight in the series, too and old assimilation captured that well.
But the awesome part was the way the mission was build, not the map itself.

Thing about the Borg is they don't attack anything they consider a thread. And thats what the first part in the cube captured perfectly.
It was full of drones that totally ignored you. Like a borg cube should be. You COULD go through there without firing one shot if you were lucky.
SOMETIMES if you were not lucky some drones beamed in we had to fight; but THEY were not that dangerous either.
The real fun thing was to keep a low profile. An AOE attack, a granade, a turret, an BO not on passive triggered the inactive borg because.... you became a thread.
And at least in the early day that means you were completely overrun without a chance. THEN that mission turned into a nightmare. (well that wasn't really the case anymore later, since we became so strong that we could easily roflstomp the horde even on elite. THATS something they could have fixed in the rework^^)

So it wasn't just a shooting gallery, you hat to proceed extremely cautious and always were surrounded by a thread.

New assimilation? I nice looking shooting gallery. Thats it. Absolutely nothing else to that mission.

That is my problem with new missions in general. They might look better and better, but they become more and more stupid. And for non-romulans we had no new missions EVEN INCLUDING ANY bridge officers since the dominion series, and there it was already rare.

markhawkman

revandarklighter wrote: »

Thing about the Borg is they don't attack anything they consider a thread. And thats what the first part in the cube captured perfectly.
It was full of drones that totally ignored you. Like a borg cube should be. You COULD go through there without firing one shot if you were lucky.
SOMETIMES if you were not lucky some drones beamed in we had to fight; but THEY were not that dangerous either.
The real fun thing was to keep a low profile. An AOE attack, a granade, a turret, an BO not on passive triggered the inactive borg because.... you became a thread.
And at least in the early day that means you were completely overrun without a chance. THEN that mission turned into a nightmare. (well that wasn't really the case anymore later, since we became so strong that we could easily roflstomp the horde even on elite. THATS something they could have fixed in the rework^^)

So it wasn't just a shooting gallery, you hat to proceed extremely cautious and always were surrounded by a thread.

Honestly? I massacred the Borg in the old one. I systematically wiped them out starting at the beam in point. It was a tedious chore, but it guaranteed they wouldn't be around to attack me later.

Truthfully, this mission is one place where I would expect the Borg to see me as a threat immediately. I'm openly leading a hostile boarding party. The Borg saw my ship as an enemy until I disabled them, now I'm invading their ship in person. That whole passive stance thing makes no sense.

The objectives in the old one were confusing, and in some cases very awkward. You had to go around trying to find the right console to beam you to the part of the ship with the Undine.... It was tedious and boring.

mustrumridcully0

I agree with markhawkman that in this episode,it absolutely makes sense that the Borg would be immediately hostile.
But I would love to play through a Borg episode again (or a part of such an episode) where they are not.


But isn't there a Romulan Borg mission that works like that already.

markhawkman

yes, there is. In it the Tal Shiar FIND a cube drifting derelict and you sneak onboard to figure out why it's derelict.

anodynes

markhawkman wrote: »

yes, there is. In it the Tal Shiar FIND a cube drifting derelict and you sneak onboard to figure out why it's derelict.

In fact, the new Assimilation is the one case that I've seen in shared content where we're all treated like one faction, and that faction isn't Starfleet. When you beam to the cube, your bridge officer mentions that you learned at T'liss that the Borg generally won't attack you if they don't perceive you as a threat, no matter which faction you are playing. That is a Romulan Republic-only mission.

I also usually wiped out all of the Borg in the old version, mostly to pad my accolade on my non-Starfleet characters. Starfleet characters all got the accolade during the old tutorial in the engineering room part of the ship. That's the only part that I miss about the old Starfleet tutorial, and even it was a good substitute for Ambien.

paxfederatica

markhawkman wrote: »

Truthfully, this mission is one place where I would expect the Borg to see me as a threat immediately. I'm openly leading a hostile boarding party. The Borg saw my ship as an enemy until I disabled them, now I'm invading their ship in person. That whole passive stance thing makes no sense.

It does when you remember that this is the same enemy that keeps saying "resistance is futile" even though we've successfully resisted them, and then some, countless times over. Millennia-old habits die hard.

duncanidaho11

revandarklighter wrote: »

But they lack ANY substance. They are completely one dimensional. No feeling of an open environment (unlike the old ones).

Unlike the old ones? If you simply push the walls back does that mean you have open gameplay? No it doesn't. It just means that the path you take has more room to meander through a linear grind. That doesn't make them any more replayable, any more enjoyable. It's just visual fluff across an unfocused space, worse even than moving borg bits on the new kessik because at least there are no pretenses with them.

There's this aweful comparison made to "modern gameplay" but what this revamp (not this truism) stands as is a major update that takes into account Star Trek Online's own gameplay. Can we take advantage of vast sprawling environments? No. Are objectives structured in such a way where picking node 1 versus node 4 to go after first is a meaningful choice? No, not without something like the Voth Battlezone at least. Does STO gameplay ever really make much use of space? Not really, the game is mostly in bottom trays. Do clusters allow for players and NPC abilities and weapons to interact in interesting ways? Hell yes.

Then what makes more sense, a meandering Skyrim bandit fight or cramped shootouts? You could take it on faith (or fashion) that being open was entirely equivalent to being better but as with anything its all in the application.



As for assimilation, well that was a nice touch, "don't upset the borg", but consider what was necessary for that to amount to anything, an over-long hallway evenly filled with drones. And once you broke the tension you had to live with the aweful consequences of that sub-par map. Its a loss for the revamp, but I do think its for the best because what we have instead is much better structured combat (which does a lot more to support the mission).

gerwalk0769

stormwaltz2 wrote: »

For me, Kessik IV was one of the most memorable missions in STO - the sick horror of a planet completely overrun by Borg, to the point that trees had cyber-grafts, and the ground glowed with circuitry. You could wander all over the surface, seeing and hearing awful things. I loved it. I took dozens of screenshots.

It's been "improved" to a short corridor shooter with cutscenes.

This mission is emblematic of everything that is wrong with modern games. It *was* atmospheric, sprawling, and immersive. Now it's short, boring, and excessively scripted. There are some impressive visuals, yes, but good luck seeing them over all those walls placed to prevent you from leaving the shooty corridor.

I won't be replaying this mission again. At least I have my memories, and a lot of screenshots.

This is the first "remastered" mission that has made me sad. I don't expect it to change... but I did want to express my sadness.

EDIT: And as icing on the TRIBBLE-cake, the mission broke - the "follow the Borg ship" objective won't advance if you don't immediately follow the Borg at full impulse (I wanted to look around, so I didn't).

I enjoyed the old Assimilation mission also. It was a tough and expansive mission and the exploration was fun the first time around. It made my Captain feel and appreciate just how large the Cubes were, and I appreciated the challenge of the Borg.

duncanidaho11

gerwalk0769 wrote: »

I enjoyed the old Assimilation mission also. It was a tough and expansive mission and the exploration was fun the first time around. It made my Captain feel and appreciate just how large the Cubes were, and I appreciated the challenge of the Borg.

I don't think that walking those hallways gave you a true sense of scale. Tens of thousands of drones, a ship the size of a fleet. That's the issue with STO and games like it, you can't approximate fictional space with playable because the latter is so much more constrained. You might be able to make the case "well this is a lot bigger than my own ships interior" and scale accordingly but that is a lot less reliable compared to showing that bigness in a way that's immediately appreciable (and furthermore makes no arbitrary imposition on mission structure.)

Look at the new space dock. It feels so much bigger, even though the total amount of floor space is probalby similar enough, because it makes use of visual space to establish the setting usuable space can't possibly hope to convey properly. You may think its just eye candy, but it's doing the job right.

questerius

markhawkman wrote: »

Honestly? I massacred the Borg in the old one. I systematically wiped them out starting at the beam in point. It was a tedious chore, but it guaranteed they wouldn't be around to attack me later.

Truthfully, this mission is one place where I would expect the Borg to see me as a threat immediately. I'm openly leading a hostile boarding party. The Borg saw my ship as an enemy until I disabled them, now I'm invading their ship in person. That whole passive stance thing makes no sense.

The objectives in the old one were confusing, and in some cases very awkward. You had to go around trying to find the right console to beam you to the part of the ship with the Undine.... It was tedious and boring.

The old assimilation mission was my go-to mission to train ground combat.
If someone makes a foundry mission mirroring assimilation I'm sure to play it again and again.

Don't get me wrong, i like how the new assimilation looks but the old one was just awesome.
I remember with one of the doors it said 10.000 alcoves were detected and we should not go that direction. Me, i wanted to tackle those 10k Borg.