I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
It's been awhile. While I've played some of the new expansion since the other day, I am curious about how the KDF has been treated with it's release.
Don't hold back on me. Good, bad, neutral, no matter what, I want to know the honest truth about how Cryptic has treated our faction.
i dont think it has ever been so obvious i am playing feddie missions before. taking orders from feds, babysitting talaxians, cowering before benthian threats, getting 'rescued' by feddie capitol ships, etc. some of these things have happened in the past, but they pour it on particularly thick in DR.
on the ship front, no t6 sci ship. feds got a sci buff (second deflector) kdf got nothing. no t6 bop. feds have a 'new' t5u bop (buffed aquarius) thats a better bop than anything the kdf have. only 2 'ship mastery' traits. non cross-faction queues deader than they have ever been, and no viability in pvp to make up for it this time.
its pretty grim. anecdotally (looking at friend list, watching Beautiful fleet activity), kdf are giving up all hope.
I mainly play Fed, but I love to put on my Honour Guard Armour and play the role of warrior...
this sort of underscores the other issue we face...
many people that (used to) log in kdf-side have fed mains, and due to the horrific grind introduced, most people seem to be putting their alts on the back burner, which seems to have affected the kdf worse than the feds.
It's been awhile. While I've played some of the new expansion since the other day, I am curious about how the KDF has been treated with it's release.
Don't hold back on me. Good, bad, neutral, no matter what, I want to know the honest truth about how Cryptic has treated our faction.
Hey mimey,
Well, as always, it lacks consistency. At least from my perspective.
So what do we have now?
They finally got the ships right (although the blatant Federation bias is more evident then ever with 6 vs. 2 compared to the KDF and RR) - the Mat'Ha is arguably the best ship in the game. No seriously, this ship is off the hook, it's the most insane thing I've ever played with in STO. And it's amongst the top designs and very genuine looking, at least in my opinion. The Qib is also awesome, back to back with the Romulan Faeht the best looking intel ship in game unlike the Fed scrap metal. She also has top preformance especially if you put the OP intel abilities in the mix and the access to battlecloak is just frosting on top.
However, while they got the ships right this time - the content is totally 'bleh' from Klingon (and for that matter Romulan) perspective. It's just lazy regurgitated Federation content with Klingon sticker on top that is suposed to make a diversion in a stupid manner like "Hey look, this has a Klingon emblem on it - therefore it must be Klingon". Like others have mentioned, it's painfully obvious that it's pure Federation content hooked up for the KDF and RR - especially in certain missions like when I play Neelix's personal errand boy.
Still no Dahar Master overcoat or Targ breeding or bat'leth tournaments, nor many good ideas spoken about around here. I'm glad that lately we have Smirk lurking around here often and taking note of, even supporting some of our ideas. At least it doesn't feel like talking to a brick wall, knowing that Smirk will at least mention it even though he has no power to force the devs. to make it happen. Without him arround, I can't really remember when was the last time I saw a dev. in this section of the forum.
It saddens me to say so, but it seems my suspicions that when Stahl left we (as a KDF playerbase) have lost the last staunch supporter in the dev. team that had leverage over the development. Kahless knows I disagreed with the man often, but what we have now can only be described as 'bleh'.
Basically everything is sold out to the Feds, they now have access to almost every single KDF console (and all the worthwhile ones) and are now slowly starting to rip-off Romulans - taking away unique consoles from T5 ships in the process. Feds now have ships that look nothing like Starfleet and have innate cloaks, they even have a raider...yeah lazyness prevailed. Copy-paste.
It's the first time since 2011 that STO is not my primary MMO game. I still play and I still enjoy the KDF and the gameplay, but I can't be blind to the development of the storylines. I can't be blind to the blatant rip-off of everything unique the faction had to offer. I can't be blind to the company's lack of interest.
And I just can't keep banging my head against the wall beacuse of my faction choice any more. That "other game" that I primarily play now doesn't judge me like that and it's really refreshing. I have full access to developer attention and a ton of faction unique items, environments, abilities, etc., regardless of the faction I picked.
I'll still play some STO and enjoy the KDF when I can, I'm an incorrigible Star Trek fan and it won't cost me anything after all. However the feeling of wasted potential due to developer arrogance, shortsightedness and complete lack of vision deeply saddens me.
Now, with the second expansion more than ever they had the chance to make things right and balance the board across the 3 factions in every meaningfull way. Sadly, we have regurgitated Fed content once again. Not suprising if you consider that this expansion is more of a glorifed season TBH. It is what it is. What it could have been is probably for our dreams and another developer.
Sorry that I couldn't share more positive and happy conclusions. The ships are really awesome this time around, they feel Klingon and agressive and are tons of fun to use - however the content didn't receive that attention to detail. Not at all.
The short answer so far is that KDF got passed over for most of the goodies and we got a hand out with a big smile to ease the pain.
2 T6 ships to buy to get mastery traits, Feds already have 6.
Of the 6, the reciprocity trait is rather nice at aiding folks to get away from full and even partial A2B builds, but it's only a fed available trait.
The Matha has potential, but needs better turn rate to be an OP ship.
The Qib is like a 4/4 weapon layout cousin of an upgraded Mogh, nothing special.
Intel abilities are ok, but I am not seeing why some folks are excited with them. for example, Surgical strikes lowers the firing rate to boost damage with each swing. PvE DPS is inconsistent with it. Lowering the firing rate on already slow cycling DHCs is creating inconsistent DPS, sometimes lower overall DPS in my parses.
The 2 KDF ship traits so far are nothing special, just a slight turn rate and damage boost with cannons and one with beams. If one benefited cannons and the other was like reciprocity, it could help.
The solo missions are all copies of Fed missions. The Vaadwaar act more Klingon than you do.
In general, not just for KDF......
The piloting skill trait of attack pattern expertise is like a lesser version of the romulan singularity ability quantum absorption that activates with each attack pattern beta, delta or omega.
The level grind is ridiculously long, though some folks took advantage of an early loophole and leveled up incredibly quick.
Joining random STF queues are a big chance. The PvE queues are flushed with folks who are flustered with the changes. It's all in how you adapt to the changes and work as a team. Teamwork is very important for many players now to overcome other deficiencies.
Most of the PvE baddies have more hit points, so you need to adjust things. For example, in Infected Space, FAW spewing beam boats should park above the cubes to attack or they have a good chance to blow up the generators long before the cube, leaving less time to kill the transformer before the nanite spheres arrive. Also, the mission ends/ fails when they do arrive, no losing bonus and continue on, the mission ends right there.
PvE missions have more use for control based builds now, which is a good thing. Now the players who like that play style actually can be an important part of the successful completion of a mission, not some insignificant player. Because things take more damage and longer to kill, having a dedicated tank to take the heat from the glass cannon types is also useful as players slowly adjust to the stuff that's changed.
this sort of underscores the other issue we face...
many people that (used to) log in kdf-side have fed mains, and due to the horrific grind introduced, most people seem to be putting their alts on the back burner, which seems to have affected the kdf worse than the feds.
Everyone said a lot so far, and thank you all for the replies, it seems to fit in with what I've been seeing, heard, and done in the game so far.
In particular Bubbaloo's quote there really fits for me. I've been only on for a few days again, and honestly, it's entirely true. I've almost completely dropped ALL other alts for the time being because I simply know I cannot level them. Because I wasn't here while it was super-easy to level I've been effectively 'punished' for all intents and purposes for not being here, thus having to grind up. I have pulled all every bit I know in this game to try and squeeze as much xp out of it as I can, and I am still only level 55...on ONE character.
Unless they make it a much more reasonable thing to get levels again like you used to be able to, I doubt I will ever get all my characters to 60. It's just over the top. It's one thing to just do story missions and a little extra stuff to gain levels, but the sheer heaping tons of xp you need for one level just gets ridiculous.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
New content: Terribad copy-paste of Fed missions. Seriously, that's just embarrassing.
New ships: Mat'Ha is absurdly OP in PVE, I mean this thing can kill enemy capitals faster than a Scimitard. QIb is...not terribad. Like a light fleet k'tinga with a battlecloak and a gimmick, maybe a bit tac-heavy. I find it a decent ship to fly.
Mat'Ha with QIb trait is absurdly OP.
In PVP, the Mat'Ha is crippled by the Raptor turn issue, but it's better than most of the Fed ships; since t6 is now basically required in pvp because of intel powers, most people are flying Guardians and Rommie t6s from what I can tell. The Mat'Ha can probably take a well-specced Guardian 7 times out of 10, but the QIb is hosed and the Rommies can PWN everything as usual thanks to stacking SRO.
PVP in general is a hot mess.
Intel is just powerful enough to be mandatory in PVP while being just useless enough to be worthless in PVE.
Feds got 6 ships but the Duntless is epic TRIBBLE and the Pathfinder isn't much better. They do have the Guardian, though, and that's a scary good tank. Klingon ships are BETTER but Feds have more.
Visuals: Tron lines aside, the QIb is hot enough, and the Mat'Ha is a sexy killer. I flew one in factory condition into KDF Royal Rumble on advanced and soloed it easily without a single death.
Once I slapped on a half-decent build it was PWNing Foundry elites with laughable ease.
CMs and Devs: Devs are in panic mode and have been since launch. Smirk and Trendy have really stepped up but keep getting screwed over by bad internal communication. They brought in a new guy to facilitate communication but I have yet to see anything solid. A new forum mod was anointed and he promptly locked a very popular joke thread in Ten Forward using hideously flimsy justifications; someone seems to have taken him aside, though, since the ban thread was recently reopened for a 3rd time and it's still going strong.
Basically, the Devs are frantically trying to unscrew themselves, except for Tacofangs whose only problems are newbies asking him to fix X thing that he doesn't handle in-game. The CMs at least are listening and passing things on, props to them.
just to Add they pretty much squashed our Alts so now we have to pick only a few characters to play because leveling is too time consuming
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
All I can say is that, for the most part, it's business as usual for the KDF. If you prevailed as KDF before Delta Rising, then life hasn't changed much. I haven't done any of the Delta Rising yet, choosing instead to continue enjoying my KDF and Orion has I've had before the expansion hit (thanks to which, I've hit level 54 as of this date without even getting near the Delta quadrant). Some of the bugs I got hit with got fixed, the example being that my Be'Ves Klingon Honor Guard selection has been finally unlocked.
If you are worried about leveling your alts, I recommend using your alts to DoFF while you play the Delta Rising content on one character. In my opinion, this maxes my DoFF XP so that I can then trade it in for Fleet Marks which helps my fleet's starbase. At the same time it levels all my alts so I can leisurely play Delta Rising content later on.
As for Federation bias, it doesn't bother me as much as the others. Playing KDF is playing a hardy people and I take pride in that I can make things work without having to be handed a new toy. Not that I won't mind new toys.
Well, hope that helps!
Member since November 2009... I think. (UFP) Ragnar
just to Add they pretty much squashed our Alts so now we have to pick only a few characters to play because leveling is too time consuming
The trick it to get a good build (the equivalent of old MK 11 blues), a couple of buddies with similar builds, and then do a ton of space missions on elite. Just do Argala or something on advanced or elite 15-20 times, and doff while you do it. Log in to all characters, set up doff missions for 20 hours or so, then focus on ONE main at a time.
Should take about 2 weeks of focused grinding 2 hours a day to get to full spec points like that.
Just go one at a time, doffing on all the others daily, and you SHOULD hit 60 on everything without too much hassle.
Meh. I'm running 1 toon through, and I'm not bothering to push it, but what I've seen so far, the Kobali adventure zone's probably the best of that content. The other voice-over miissions are...adequate, though to be honest, I was never a fan of Voyager, so I don't get the 'squee' experience that Voyager fans did from having four voices from the show. I won't go into the rant over the Neelix mission, it's just not worth the pages of venom, but I 'get' why it's a rebranded fed experience instead of a true KDF experience...if it were a KDF experience, we'd have just shot Gaul right there in the meeting.
which would've derailed the whole thing.
One small note: UIE is packed. 2-3 minute wait time, tops.
Or just PESTF it to avoid the PUG brigade of Mr. Illiterate, Mr. Troll, and Mr. Doesn't Care.
Now, in response to the quoted bit: I agree pretty much entirely; in fact, my headcanon for this is that the KDF is not allowed to do anything involving Neelix like, at all. Because they'd just kill him for being mind-blowingly useless and call it good.
In fact, I'm writing a fixit fic for "All that Glitters" at some point where D'trel goes for Gaul instead of just sitting there like a blithering idiot and gets her rear handed to her by that OP f*cker...maybe I should do it with starswordc, that oughta be fun.
And Voyager in general. Seriously, Unimatrix Zero was such a terrible episode it isn't even funny.
Are the kids doing well at your mother's place? Schmoopie and I are doing well on our trip; she does NOT like her cat carrier, but I have the treats to bribe her.
I WILL get you for making me take the cat on my business trip, by the way! Next time, YOU get her! AND THE LITTER BOX!!!
Gameplay - still turkey shooting in PvE, PvP is f**ked like a prozzie putting out for free in a marketplace around horny rapey blokes.
Actual Klingonness of new stuff - not much. The Mat'ha is pretty good but is crippled in the ways all raptors are.
...because after this I have little to add... and apparently neither did the devs (as of yet). Of course, following a launch where 9 T6 ships divvied up as 5:2:2, we later added a third T6 Science Vessel for our Federation captains and still none for our KDF/Rom captains, resulting in 6:2:2 overall. Still no changes to advancement, other than a Skill Point Update that was intended to change nothing. No changes or strategies were implemented to capitalize (financially or otherwise) on having multiple factions... rather the opposite overall with the launch of Delta Rising and no improvements since.
Overall... mostly sad, more than anything else. Heck, check out the single character that virusdancer has listed in his signature. The guy used to have a variety of characters across multiple Professions and builds... and now he has a single Federation Klingon listed with a tip on how to get better at Swordsman. That's not a good sign. :P
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
And Voyager in general. Seriously, Unimatrix Zero was such a terrible episode it isn't even funny.
Are the kids doing well at your mother's place? Schmoopie and I are doing well on our trip; she does NOT like her cat carrier, but I have the treats to bribe her.
I WILL get you for making me take the cat on my business trip, by the way! Next time, YOU get her! AND THE LITTER BOX!!!
Unimatrix was great.
The kids are fine, thank you. I have found a woooonderfull nice children's home and the kids were really excited to go there. They already found a nice boy there to play with. I think his name is Tiny Tim. But only the headmaster, Mr. Scrooge is a little hard on the kids.
But at least, I do have enough time to drink a few Chai Latte teas with left-turning soy milk each day.
Don't forget that Schmoopie can't handle those dry fish treats from Oskar Meyer. The result is always very explosive...
And why are you complaining? Just give the cat to one of your floozies in the whole country you have cheated me with.
It's been awhile. While I've played some of the new expansion since the other day, I am curious about how the KDF has been treated with it's release.
Don't hold back on me. Good, bad, neutral, no matter what, I want to know the honest truth about how Cryptic has treated our faction.
Mostly Bad.
We got 2 ships to the fed's 5. Both are actually pretty good. The tanky intel "cruiser" is one tac console short of a load for me to buy it. I have the raptor and it is as close to a scimitar as we are gonna get (the big dps gap now being their better stealth & officer passives).
The downside is that the "cruiser' has the cannon skill.... derp. If you want to make a cannon BOP with that skill you have to buy that space whale to get it... pure greed by PWE.
The story is just awful. It is 100% pure fed baloney. One mission in particular sums up the experience:
NPC: Grand Admiral, I need you to take your bird of prey over there and hide behind that asteroid so we can ambush the vaaudwar.
Me: Can't I cloak?
NPC: NO. Go hide behind that asteroid and shut up.
Me: Are you working for Hairy Carrie, that other moron fed captain?
The missions make it feel like we stole a KDF ship but are really feds. And again, the lack of ships is just insulting, moreso because a week after DR launch, they released another fed ship when they feds already has as much as rom and kdf *combined*.
Unless they make it a much more reasonable thing to get levels again like you used to be able to, I doubt I will ever get all my characters to 60. It's just over the top. It's one thing to just do story missions and a little extra stuff to gain levels, but the sheer heaping tons of xp you need for one level just gets ridiculous.
On the bright side of that front ... such as it is , keep an eye out for events .
Last month we've had a Mirror Invasion event , and the dificulty level of that remained unchanged , and at the end of it I had 15 of my toons at Lvl 53 just by doing the event (2 hours in the early morning , 2 in the evening) .
Now if I take that and extend it to other possible events , it is possible that within a year , all those untouched Alts will be around Lvl 56-58-59 ... through doing nothing but events -- at which point you can do DR on them and not want to kill yourself .
Well it's a thought anyway ... , and remember ... last year we were tagging Eppohs for Romulans ... -- and some of us loved that sh^t too ... .
Other then that , the Advanced queues that were promised to retain the previous Elite difficulty were launched at a much harder HP difficulty + non-optionals were added causing many a pug to fail and the empty queues that you see now .
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
I don't mind the Klingon, Roach, but there's not many translators online for it, so anytime I try it seems to come out as gibberish, so I dunno what you are saying.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
I don't mind the Klingon, Roach, but there's not many translators online for it, so anytime I try it seems to come out as gibberish, so I dunno what you are saying.
Bing Translator is wrong often.
I should have just said, QAQ QALEGH (it is good to see you)
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
Comments
Ships, visual - good, better than Feds at least
Ships, performance - PvE ok, PvP not ok
Ships, Feddiebear bias - 6:2
Ships, Intel - Fail.
Uniforms - bugged as usual.
Gameplay - still turkey shooting in PvE, PvP is f**ked like a prozzie putting out for free in a marketplace around horny rapey blokes.
Actual Klingonness of new stuff - not much. The Mat'ha is pretty good but is crippled in the ways all raptors are.
i dont think it has ever been so obvious i am playing feddie missions before. taking orders from feds, babysitting talaxians, cowering before benthian threats, getting 'rescued' by feddie capitol ships, etc. some of these things have happened in the past, but they pour it on particularly thick in DR.
on the ship front, no t6 sci ship. feds got a sci buff (second deflector) kdf got nothing. no t6 bop. feds have a 'new' t5u bop (buffed aquarius) thats a better bop than anything the kdf have. only 2 'ship mastery' traits. non cross-faction queues deader than they have ever been, and no viability in pvp to make up for it this time.
its pretty grim. anecdotally (looking at friend list, watching Beautiful fleet activity), kdf are giving up all hope.
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this sort of underscores the other issue we face...
many people that (used to) log in kdf-side have fed mains, and due to the horrific grind introduced, most people seem to be putting their alts on the back burner, which seems to have affected the kdf worse than the feds.
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Hey mimey,
Well, as always, it lacks consistency. At least from my perspective.
So what do we have now?
They finally got the ships right (although the blatant Federation bias is more evident then ever with 6 vs. 2 compared to the KDF and RR) - the Mat'Ha is arguably the best ship in the game. No seriously, this ship is off the hook, it's the most insane thing I've ever played with in STO. And it's amongst the top designs and very genuine looking, at least in my opinion. The Qib is also awesome, back to back with the Romulan Faeht the best looking intel ship in game unlike the Fed scrap metal. She also has top preformance especially if you put the OP intel abilities in the mix and the access to battlecloak is just frosting on top.
However, while they got the ships right this time - the content is totally 'bleh' from Klingon (and for that matter Romulan) perspective. It's just lazy regurgitated Federation content with Klingon sticker on top that is suposed to make a diversion in a stupid manner like "Hey look, this has a Klingon emblem on it - therefore it must be Klingon". Like others have mentioned, it's painfully obvious that it's pure Federation content hooked up for the KDF and RR - especially in certain missions like when I play Neelix's personal errand boy.
Still no Dahar Master overcoat or Targ breeding or bat'leth tournaments, nor many good ideas spoken about around here. I'm glad that lately we have Smirk lurking around here often and taking note of, even supporting some of our ideas. At least it doesn't feel like talking to a brick wall, knowing that Smirk will at least mention it even though he has no power to force the devs. to make it happen. Without him arround, I can't really remember when was the last time I saw a dev. in this section of the forum.
It saddens me to say so, but it seems my suspicions that when Stahl left we (as a KDF playerbase) have lost the last staunch supporter in the dev. team that had leverage over the development. Kahless knows I disagreed with the man often, but what we have now can only be described as 'bleh'.
Basically everything is sold out to the Feds, they now have access to almost every single KDF console (and all the worthwhile ones) and are now slowly starting to rip-off Romulans - taking away unique consoles from T5 ships in the process. Feds now have ships that look nothing like Starfleet and have innate cloaks, they even have a raider...yeah lazyness prevailed. Copy-paste.
It's the first time since 2011 that STO is not my primary MMO game. I still play and I still enjoy the KDF and the gameplay, but I can't be blind to the development of the storylines. I can't be blind to the blatant rip-off of everything unique the faction had to offer. I can't be blind to the company's lack of interest.
And I just can't keep banging my head against the wall beacuse of my faction choice any more. That "other game" that I primarily play now doesn't judge me like that and it's really refreshing. I have full access to developer attention and a ton of faction unique items, environments, abilities, etc., regardless of the faction I picked.
I'll still play some STO and enjoy the KDF when I can, I'm an incorrigible Star Trek fan and it won't cost me anything after all. However the feeling of wasted potential due to developer arrogance, shortsightedness and complete lack of vision deeply saddens me.
Now, with the second expansion more than ever they had the chance to make things right and balance the board across the 3 factions in every meaningfull way. Sadly, we have regurgitated Fed content once again. Not suprising if you consider that this expansion is more of a glorifed season TBH. It is what it is. What it could have been is probably for our dreams and another developer.
Sorry that I couldn't share more positive and happy conclusions. The ships are really awesome this time around, they feel Klingon and agressive and are tons of fun to use - however the content didn't receive that attention to detail. Not at all.
2 T6 ships to buy to get mastery traits, Feds already have 6.
Of the 6, the reciprocity trait is rather nice at aiding folks to get away from full and even partial A2B builds, but it's only a fed available trait.
The Matha has potential, but needs better turn rate to be an OP ship.
The Qib is like a 4/4 weapon layout cousin of an upgraded Mogh, nothing special.
Intel abilities are ok, but I am not seeing why some folks are excited with them. for example, Surgical strikes lowers the firing rate to boost damage with each swing. PvE DPS is inconsistent with it. Lowering the firing rate on already slow cycling DHCs is creating inconsistent DPS, sometimes lower overall DPS in my parses.
The 2 KDF ship traits so far are nothing special, just a slight turn rate and damage boost with cannons and one with beams. If one benefited cannons and the other was like reciprocity, it could help.
The solo missions are all copies of Fed missions. The Vaadwaar act more Klingon than you do.
In general, not just for KDF......
The piloting skill trait of attack pattern expertise is like a lesser version of the romulan singularity ability quantum absorption that activates with each attack pattern beta, delta or omega.
The level grind is ridiculously long, though some folks took advantage of an early loophole and leveled up incredibly quick.
Joining random STF queues are a big chance. The PvE queues are flushed with folks who are flustered with the changes. It's all in how you adapt to the changes and work as a team. Teamwork is very important for many players now to overcome other deficiencies.
Most of the PvE baddies have more hit points, so you need to adjust things. For example, in Infected Space, FAW spewing beam boats should park above the cubes to attack or they have a good chance to blow up the generators long before the cube, leaving less time to kill the transformer before the nanite spheres arrive. Also, the mission ends/ fails when they do arrive, no losing bonus and continue on, the mission ends right there.
PvE missions have more use for control based builds now, which is a good thing. Now the players who like that play style actually can be an important part of the successful completion of a mission, not some insignificant player. Because things take more damage and longer to kill, having a dedicated tank to take the heat from the glass cannon types is also useful as players slowly adjust to the stuff that's changed.
Everyone said a lot so far, and thank you all for the replies, it seems to fit in with what I've been seeing, heard, and done in the game so far.
In particular Bubbaloo's quote there really fits for me. I've been only on for a few days again, and honestly, it's entirely true. I've almost completely dropped ALL other alts for the time being because I simply know I cannot level them. Because I wasn't here while it was super-easy to level I've been effectively 'punished' for all intents and purposes for not being here, thus having to grind up. I have pulled all every bit I know in this game to try and squeeze as much xp out of it as I can, and I am still only level 55...on ONE character.
Unless they make it a much more reasonable thing to get levels again like you used to be able to, I doubt I will ever get all my characters to 60. It's just over the top. It's one thing to just do story missions and a little extra stuff to gain levels, but the sheer heaping tons of xp you need for one level just gets ridiculous.
I think this is the most succinct, accurate summary of DR from the KDF perspective I've yet seen.
New ships: Mat'Ha is absurdly OP in PVE, I mean this thing can kill enemy capitals faster than a Scimitard. QIb is...not terribad. Like a light fleet k'tinga with a battlecloak and a gimmick, maybe a bit tac-heavy. I find it a decent ship to fly.
Mat'Ha with QIb trait is absurdly OP.
In PVP, the Mat'Ha is crippled by the Raptor turn issue, but it's better than most of the Fed ships; since t6 is now basically required in pvp because of intel powers, most people are flying Guardians and Rommie t6s from what I can tell. The Mat'Ha can probably take a well-specced Guardian 7 times out of 10, but the QIb is hosed and the Rommies can PWN everything as usual thanks to stacking SRO.
PVP in general is a hot mess.
Intel is just powerful enough to be mandatory in PVP while being just useless enough to be worthless in PVE.
Feds got 6 ships but the Duntless is epic TRIBBLE and the Pathfinder isn't much better. They do have the Guardian, though, and that's a scary good tank. Klingon ships are BETTER but Feds have more.
Visuals: Tron lines aside, the QIb is hot enough, and the Mat'Ha is a sexy killer. I flew one in factory condition into KDF Royal Rumble on advanced and soloed it easily without a single death.
Once I slapped on a half-decent build it was PWNing Foundry elites with laughable ease.
CMs and Devs: Devs are in panic mode and have been since launch. Smirk and Trendy have really stepped up but keep getting screwed over by bad internal communication. They brought in a new guy to facilitate communication but I have yet to see anything solid. A new forum mod was anointed and he promptly locked a very popular joke thread in Ten Forward using hideously flimsy justifications; someone seems to have taken him aside, though, since the ban thread was recently reopened for a 3rd time and it's still going strong.
Basically, the Devs are frantically trying to unscrew themselves, except for Tacofangs whose only problems are newbies asking him to fix X thing that he doesn't handle in-game. The CMs at least are listening and passing things on, props to them.
Could be worse overall, I suppose.
just to Add they pretty much squashed our Alts so now we have to pick only a few characters to play because leveling is too time consuming
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
All I can say is that, for the most part, it's business as usual for the KDF. If you prevailed as KDF before Delta Rising, then life hasn't changed much. I haven't done any of the Delta Rising yet, choosing instead to continue enjoying my KDF and Orion has I've had before the expansion hit (thanks to which, I've hit level 54 as of this date without even getting near the Delta quadrant). Some of the bugs I got hit with got fixed, the example being that my Be'Ves Klingon Honor Guard selection has been finally unlocked.
If you are worried about leveling your alts, I recommend using your alts to DoFF while you play the Delta Rising content on one character. In my opinion, this maxes my DoFF XP so that I can then trade it in for Fleet Marks which helps my fleet's starbase. At the same time it levels all my alts so I can leisurely play Delta Rising content later on.
As for Federation bias, it doesn't bother me as much as the others. Playing KDF is playing a hardy people and I take pride in that I can make things work without having to be handed a new toy. Not that I won't mind new toys.
Well, hope that helps!
(UFP) Ragnar
The trick it to get a good build (the equivalent of old MK 11 blues), a couple of buddies with similar builds, and then do a ton of space missions on elite. Just do Argala or something on advanced or elite 15-20 times, and doff while you do it. Log in to all characters, set up doff missions for 20 hours or so, then focus on ONE main at a time.
Should take about 2 weeks of focused grinding 2 hours a day to get to full spec points like that.
Just go one at a time, doffing on all the others daily, and you SHOULD hit 60 on everything without too much hassle.
One small note: UIE is packed. 2-3 minute wait time, tops.
Or just PESTF it to avoid the PUG brigade of Mr. Illiterate, Mr. Troll, and Mr. Doesn't Care.
Now, in response to the quoted bit: I agree pretty much entirely; in fact, my headcanon for this is that the KDF is not allowed to do anything involving Neelix like, at all. Because they'd just kill him for being mind-blowingly useless and call it good.
In fact, I'm writing a fixit fic for "All that Glitters" at some point where D'trel goes for Gaul instead of just sitting there like a blithering idiot and gets her rear handed to her by that OP f*cker...maybe I should do it with starswordc, that oughta be fun.
Neelix.
And Voyager in general. Seriously, Unimatrix Zero was such a terrible episode it isn't even funny.
Are the kids doing well at your mother's place? Schmoopie and I are doing well on our trip; she does NOT like her cat carrier, but I have the treats to bribe her.
I WILL get you for making me take the cat on my business trip, by the way! Next time, YOU get her! AND THE LITTER BOX!!!
This... ...because after this I have little to add... and apparently neither did the devs (as of yet). Of course, following a launch where 9 T6 ships divvied up as 5:2:2, we later added a third T6 Science Vessel for our Federation captains and still none for our KDF/Rom captains, resulting in 6:2:2 overall. Still no changes to advancement, other than a Skill Point Update that was intended to change nothing. No changes or strategies were implemented to capitalize (financially or otherwise) on having multiple factions... rather the opposite overall with the launch of Delta Rising and no improvements since.
Overall... mostly sad, more than anything else. Heck, check out the single character that virusdancer has listed in his signature. The guy used to have a variety of characters across multiple Professions and builds... and now he has a single Federation Klingon listed with a tip on how to get better at Swordsman. That's not a good sign. :P
Unimatrix was great.
The kids are fine, thank you. I have found a woooonderfull nice children's home and the kids were really excited to go there. They already found a nice boy there to play with. I think his name is Tiny Tim. But only the headmaster, Mr. Scrooge is a little hard on the kids.
But at least, I do have enough time to drink a few Chai Latte teas with left-turning soy milk each day.
Don't forget that Schmoopie can't handle those dry fish treats from Oskar Meyer. The result is always very explosive...
And why are you complaining? Just give the cat to one of your floozies in the whole country you have cheated me with.
By the way, I need money.
Mostly Bad.
We got 2 ships to the fed's 5. Both are actually pretty good. The tanky intel "cruiser" is one tac console short of a load for me to buy it. I have the raptor and it is as close to a scimitar as we are gonna get (the big dps gap now being their better stealth & officer passives).
The downside is that the "cruiser' has the cannon skill.... derp. If you want to make a cannon BOP with that skill you have to buy that space whale to get it... pure greed by PWE.
The story is just awful. It is 100% pure fed baloney. One mission in particular sums up the experience:
NPC: Grand Admiral, I need you to take your bird of prey over there and hide behind that asteroid so we can ambush the vaaudwar.
Me: Can't I cloak?
NPC: NO. Go hide behind that asteroid and shut up.
Me: Are you working for Hairy Carrie, that other moron fed captain?
The missions make it feel like we stole a KDF ship but are really feds. And again, the lack of ships is just insulting, moreso because a week after DR launch, they released another fed ship when they feds already has as much as rom and kdf *combined*.
On the bright side of that front ... such as it is , keep an eye out for events .
Last month we've had a Mirror Invasion event , and the dificulty level of that remained unchanged , and at the end of it I had 15 of my toons at Lvl 53 just by doing the event (2 hours in the early morning , 2 in the evening) .
Now if I take that and extend it to other possible events , it is possible that within a year , all those untouched Alts will be around Lvl 56-58-59 ... through doing nothing but events -- at which point you can do DR on them and not want to kill yourself .
Well it's a thought anyway ... , and remember ... last year we were tagging Eppohs for Romulans ... -- and some of us loved that sh^t too ... .
Other then that , the Advanced queues that were promised to retain the previous Elite difficulty were launched at a much harder HP difficulty + non-optionals were added causing many a pug to fail and the empty queues that you see now .
... oh , and Branflakes is back as a player ...
R.I.P
QaQ buSbogh vo' SoH jatlhqa'.
R.I.P
I don't mind the Klingon, Roach, but there's not many translators online for it, so anytime I try it seems to come out as gibberish, so I dunno what you are saying.
<bangs translator> " It pleases me to hear from you again."
R.I.P
I'm glad to see you again as well. Can I safely guess playing STO hasn't been a huge concern of yours these past weeks?
unfortunately I have been working for the past year on a project that has kept me away. I have been enjoying some wonderful local food though.
R.I.P
Bing Translator is wrong often.
I should have just said, QAQ QALEGH (it is good to see you)
R.I.P
Ah, real life, gotta love it.
Bing is what I tried to use actually. And yeah, came out as gibberish pretty much.