Similarly to how Kerrat is split into zones based on level, do that for sector space, ESD, Qo'nos, Etc. At whatever level (51-2 I think it is) that you begin the Iconian War you are now placed in these zones. In sector space there would be cracked planets, Iconian/herald Red Alerts. In ESD and social hubs there would be "battle scaring" on the hulls of space stations and the like, perhaps even an occasional lone Herald ship could enter the zone.
The zones with war and the ones without war would be split by level so the players who have not began the Iconian war would not experience it.
But no, we just get ques
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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My character Tsin'xing
If you look around in game, I'd say we're kicking their butts. The Iconian queues are not all that difficult and there is NO indication of anything going on other than that.
I wish they would take some sectors... say the Iconia sector and the Gasko sector. Say these sectors have been taken over by the Iconians. If level 60 players venture in, they will be attacked.
They just need to do SOMETHING. This war feels even less like a war than the Klingon one did.
Not to mention that the Lohlunat festival has been going on as usual. They really should begin "Broken Circle" with a major Iconian attack on Risa as the festival ends. That would be an epic way to set the tone for the rest of the mission.
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you can do all of these things without worrying that something else is going to be forced down your throat and I don't see why the iconian war should be any different.
I am happy to play the iconian content when I want to play it not just because the game dictates that I have to play it and I certainly don't want it effecting safe social zones like ESD or events like risa.
I do agree that there has been very little content for this so we could do with a few more mission but I don't want to see iconian content overwhelming the game.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
This has, without a doubt, been the worst story line I have seen in STO. There was absolutely no immersion of any kind, no sense of any type of war, no feeling of anything being different in any way. Then we just get this blog saying we have been losing this entire time.. really sad.
I don't know what they're talking about, but I haven't had an Iconian come close to even scratching the paint on my hull. They're weak and silly.
This is not a bad thing, it means you can go your own way; play Sto as you always did. Personally I am not impressed with the Iconians. Anything, anybody that got involved with folks as Hakeev and Sela, well, I think, I can beat that with keeping one hand in my pocket. Then, no matter how long they have been arround, how advanced they are, godlike, in the 24th century we are really no longer impressed with stuff like that.
So those wartime posters, that propaganda stuff, seems completely out of place. Just get to their home world and nuke'm out of existence. They shouldn't have taken the path of a classic war like WWII, but instead something of the cold war. Ane enemy that never can be catched, yet is terrifying.
Now it all makes sense to me.
Delta Rising is the Voyager expansion. To be true to VOY, you need to waste a perfectly good plot, otherwise you aren't event trying!
Gamma Radiating will be awesome.
The end to that war was a little anti-climatic sure, but Mindscape is at least one of the best missions from DR and it's somewhat believable - instead of just taking on the entire Undine fleet you convince mother brain that war is needless.
Iconians are making more of a mess but it doesn't feel like a threat. And even more irritating to me it looks like whatever was going on with the Tholians on New Romulus has been shoved to the side and forgotten like The Borg.
I think it was Gulberat who first said it: Cryptic seems to have taken the vote for "more VOY-related content" as a validation of all of VOY's absolute worst qualities.
They could have made a hub inside the dayson sphere with a few gates under our control, where we can respond fast to Iconian incursions at the three homeworld's doorstep.
The Klingon Homeworld is under siege already in the queues.
We could have opened another ground warzone on New Romulus with defending the gateway.
And a good opportunity to use the Utopia Planetia shipyards being attacked threatening our ability to produce new ships to keep zp with the Iconian onslaught.
I think those are the most major battlefiels with the biggest pressure points for the enemy to push and actually put us on the defensive.
We shouldn't have an offensive campaign at all. Every victory should come at a major cost forcing us to retreat a step further.
Herald red alerts, warzones (space and ground). We had way more war with the Undine and the Voth than with the heralds at this point.
And we all know, when someone is under attack, you only warp there with warp six. Since you have all the time of the universe.
Well... we have only seen events of the war through the eyes of our characters alone. Only the battles our characters have taken part in, and so far the story missions we have were defeats or pyrric victories. Although the last one we had did give us a new ally.
I do agree that we need a bit more to show what's going on, but I think they're considering everyone is NOT at the same level as us lv 60 players who've played all the missions to date. The Borg Alerts make sense because the Borg could appear anywhere anytime and are known to the player from day 1. The Tholian Alert in Tau Dewa makes sense because the Tholians have an interest in the region. Herald Alerts don't really make sense because they don't appear at all until "a year" or so after the player character starts out.
A battlezone might have been a better idea, and an alternative to PvE queues.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
Kirk (Players): Sits there grinning and eating an apple.
Asian Guy in Control Room (Cryptic): "Why isn't he taking this war seriously?"
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colored text = mod mode
For the red alert i would love to see it in several zone but most of all in the Delta quadrent, mostly since it has no red alert. Make it maybe that you come into a three way fight betwen the Voth an Vaadwaur, and a random third faction, of which two of them you can form a allience with to fight the Vaadwaur. Once the Vaadwaur or/and voth fleets have been taken out than the solanae or elechi fleets enter the fray launching a pincer attack, and then at the end a Herald fleet portals in an takes out what is left of the fleets leaving just you to fight them, unless you take the time to repair the other allied ships to fight with you (maybe this is doable thru the entire red alert.
And please do not make Iconian red alerts. I agree that this would not make sense for players less advanced in the storyline at all, and maybe also not to those who advanced too far, we don't know yet.
If you want to create some desperation yourself, you can do so. Do NOT go to ESD/First City/New Rom. Do NOT change ships. Do NOT use the exchange to buy stuff (selling crafted items should be okay, after all there's still a game under the story). All not possible because of drained resources/immediate attacks. Survive with what you have and maybe go to some backwater world like Nimbus to sell off stuff.
And if you don't want to do that, be happy that the story does not force this on us. And please, anybody complaining about Risa: entertainment in the broader sense is one of the last things to be cancelled during a war. People will try to party if there is any possibility to do so. Gives the mind some food apart from worrying.
One of the reasons players feel that we are "kicking the Iconians left and right" is because many players don't get the idea of Story and Gameplay Segregation. Yes, we're going into STFs and attacking the Herald Sphere or taking back Qo'nos or whatnot, but players forget that this just one time, not multiple. Also, yes, we got superior tech in the form of Mk XIV gear and such, but the story says otherwise.
I still feel that a lot of people think that this should be some sort of near-apocalyptic war for survival that threatens to destroy modern civilization as we know it a la most modern day games. The thing is, this is Star Trek. Not even the Dominion War nor the events of Star Trek: Destiny forced this sort of thing on its setting. Granted, Destiny had a lot more bigger stakes and did blow up planets. However, that's because it's the Novelverse. More dedicated readers would be fine with that. STO is meant to be for people who just watched the TV series and be much more accessible than the novels. We really can't go that far and I don't think CBS wants us to.
I am sure Cryptic could figure out a way to show Herald Red Alerts only to players of sufficient level / sufficient story advancement.
I get what you're saying, but as a player.. the only perspective I really care about or have any access to is my own. In all the story episodes, we have done fairly well against the Iconian 'threat.' Outside of the one mission where it just forces you to retreat even if you're mopping the floor with them, there haven't been any big defeats. I certainly don't count the death of the insignificant Khaless to be a defeat.. I haven't felt any real sense of pressure or any real threat from the Iconians at all.
Maybe a battle zone would have been better, or as many have suggested.. Iconian red alerts. The big problems are that outside of the story missions, there is absolutely no hint or trace of Iconian presence at all. Heck, during this supposed 'War' where we're apparently getting beaten from pillar to post, we're lounging around Risa, riding hover boards and building sand castles. Running the Summer Event along side this completely non existent war was a total immersion breaker.
Honestly, when I read that blog post and it started out saying 'the war hasn't been going well,' I was really surprised. I had to read it again, because I was under the impression that the Iconians had failed to be any real threat at all. I certainly didn't feel like there was ever any real danger of losing this skirmish that they keep calling a war.
I know that me and my friend 'experienced' the war more when we were moving straight from one episode to another over the last couple of weeks until we reached the end of Time in a Bottle and had a bad disconnect.
"Sorry, no time, the cooldown's up and I'm off to kill more Heralds by the dozen."
...
"Did he say something about loosing?"
"Sorry, can't hear you over the sound of me soloing 3 battleships at once".
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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I hope not, it would be the very definition of anticlimactic.
To give Cryptic the benefit of the doubt perhaps they are attempting to set the stage for an epic story. It begins with our forces (allegedly) losing badly. There is the desperate struggle for survival, the break that turns the tide of the war and the final all out confrontation - which by then could be a new BZ or just something with the scope of an actual war. The slow release of single FE's work against them in this case.
Other problems include the underlying fact that a player will not lose. We never lose. How can anything be a threat to the invincible demigod Captain who can either wipe the floor with you in seconds, or simply keep coming again and again to wear you down?
Then the problem that this war isn't even a thing for a great deal of newer players. Keeping the war out of the home quadrants would have been the better route - then you could have Herald or Elachi red alerts or even system patrols showing in more detail the front lines of this war. Systems being lost, supply routes being disrupted, allies needing urgent help etc.