YES!!! I have hated most of the conflict story arcs to now. The Klingon war was okay but always felt wrong... almost everything since this has been worse. But now we're going against the True Way!! I get to KILL Religious Fanatics!! ... I am So EXCITED!!!
You appear to have the True Way and the Oralian Way confused. The True Way supports the old, oppressive regime that hunted down and tried to eliminate the Cardassian religious believers of the Oralian Way. The Oralian Way has not engaged in terrorism. Rather, they are under threat by the True Way.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Cardassians are part of the war. There's a Cardassian mixed in with the Alliance. Plus, there's a Galor that is fighting in Midnight. It'll be easy for Cryptic to shoehorn the Cardassians into the story there.
Then explain it. Do it. I'm all ears.
Give me a storyline, that begins the same time the Fed, Rom, and Klingon tutorials do, that has as many missions as the Feds, Roms, and Klingons do, and that logically follows the local events of Cardassian space in the Alpha Quad, into the events of the Iconian war in the Beta Quad. And that has as many connections and foreshadowing to the Iconians being behind all their problems at the time as the Fed/Rom/Klingon missions do.
Ohh wait... you can't. Because the source of the Cardassian's problems are the True Way, who are being helped by the Mirror Universe, who are being helped by a faction from the Temporal Cold war, likely the Na'Khul or Sphere builders. Which has absolutely nothing to do with The Iconians at all, and thus doesn't serve as a proper buildup to the eventual unification of the factions to fight the Iconians. Making everything about it totally disconnected to everything from the Dyson sphere missions onward.
The only way a Cardassia plotline would make sense at this point is if it takes place AFTER The Iconian war, which would mean Cardassian characters would have to start at level 60 and be given top tier ships and items from the beginning so they can play the level 60 content.
Further preventing a Cardassian storyline is that its the Feds/Klingons/Romulans who eliminate The True Way, The New Dominion, and the Mirror Universe... so you can't even have the Cardassian storyline deal with stopping the True Way and all that jaz, because the other races beat them to the punch.
If the Cardassians could defeat the true way, due to having a super special player character Cardassian captain, as the Romulans defeated their enemies, the Tal Shiar and Elachi, then they wouldn't have had to ask us for help in the first place.
So what exactly would the Cardassian plotline be about?
I don't see it as being that hard.
You have a playable Cardassian with a unique 10 levels of war fallout. They choose a side, Federation or Klingon as an allied military observer, and get assigned those missions and a Galor as well as a commanding liason in the Federation or KDF. They deal with threats at home interspersed with Fed/Rom/Klingon issues. The threats at home are 2 additional missions in each front which foreshadow the new endgame.
Anything CAN be done. There is nothing that CAN'T be done. They could do 35 levels of missions about Cardassians occupying Q's Winter Wonderland. The question is always if it can be done to everyone's satisfaction. The answer to that is, of course, no. But it can be done in a way that works well enough for someone who has never touched STO before.
Whilst it's great to see a revamp, it's exactly as predicted -- a considerable number of episodes removed but only 4 added in to replace them.
Please stop shrinking the game...
We'd love to have access somewhere to deprecated content from the Cardassian, Romulan and Klingon War arcs.
Edit:
How's this going to affect Delta Recruuits?
One possibility I've thought of to address this, though I'm not 100% sure if it is within the Foundry EULA, is to get a YouTube Let's Play of any of the older missions that you wish to revive, and rebuild the mission in the Foundry. It would not be completely identical of course, but I think because of the lower level of effects and gameplay involved in those missions, it would not be that far off from the original. I have a bad feeling, for instance, that one of my favorites from before the 2800, "Seeds of Dissent," is on the chopping block, and that could be one way to immortalize it.
If you really want to do this, I'll give you a tip from a Foundry author POV who knows his way around hacky tricks and shortcuts.
Don't rely on a Youtube Let's Play.
Play through the mission. Take a demo record at each step of it. Screenshot the dialogue.
I could remake that one pretty much perfectly.
Demorecord give you exact map coordinates for NPCs. The only issue then is you need some standard/metric conversions for those coordinates and to convert from quarternions into radians for rotation. Granted, you can't do Z axis rotation in the Foundry but that's never necessary for NPCs, really, only for map assets. In this case, all the map assets are pre-placed.
We have received intelligence that the True Way has stolen an Orb of the Prophets from the Cardassian Union in "Spoils of War" our first episode in the Cardassian Arc!
I just hope there will be a way to get the Shard of Possibilities after this. So far, a Featured Episode replay of the Mirror Universe section of the Cardassian Arc was the only hope, and that string is now under the axe. I sincerely hope there's a new way to get it, or they do an FE replay event before they remaster this.
The problem with that is, bringing them up to standards involves removing all the TRIBBLE "kill 10 groups of X" parts of missions, which brings each of their size down considerably, to the point you don't have enough content for a full mission, so they merge the updated parts of each mission until they do.
I don't know if you have heard about this, but quality > quantity.
By that logic, Delta Rising's innumerable "System Patrols" are in DIRE need of being revamped away. Don't misunderstand, I'm not arguing with your main point, I merely think that condemning old episodes for repetitive strings of largely identical battles WITHOUT condemning the new ones for doing the exact same thing is a bit biased. My feeling is that the dividing line between "old style" and "new style" episodes is not so much in the game play (or lack thereof), but in the amount of cutscenes (minimal in the "old days", ludicrously heavy in the "new").
And I admit I may also be biased myself here, because I am old enough to remember the bad old days of FMV games, and that's what STO is resembling more and more lately. I'd much rather replay the unrevamped Cadassian Arc than the Iconian War Movie Arc again. At least you PLAYED that, instead of passively watching Nog, Noye, Kagran and company monologue their way through interminable chunks of it.
I just hope there will be a way to get the Shard of Possibilities after this. So far, a Featured Episode replay of the Mirror Universe section of the Cardassian Arc was the only hope, and that string is now under the axe. I sincerely hope there's a new way to get it, or they do an FE replay event before they remaster this.
Shard of Possibiliies was never a reward for the mirror universe portion. It was a reward for completing The 2800 series (The five missions that dealt with the Dominion ships that were initially removed from time by the prophets).
The problem with that is, bringing them up to standards involves removing all the TRIBBLE "kill 10 groups of X" parts of missions, which brings each of their size down considerably, to the point you don't have enough content for a full mission, so they merge the updated parts of each mission until they do.
I don't know if you have heard about this, but quality > quantity.
By that logic, Delta Rising's innumerable "System Patrols" are in DIRE need of being revamped away. Don't misunderstand, I'm not arguing with your main point, I merely think that condemning old episodes for repetitive strings of largely identical battles WITHOUT condemning the new ones for doing the exact same thing is a bit biased. My feeling is that the dividing line between "old style" and "new style" episodes is not so much in the game play (or lack thereof), but in the amount of cutscenes (minimal in the "old days", ludicrously heavy in the "new").
And I admit I may also be biased myself here, because I am old enough to remember the bad old days of FMV games, and that's what STO is resembling more and more lately. I'd much rather replay the unrevamped Cadassian Arc than the Iconian War Movie Arc again. At least you PLAYED that, instead of passively watching Nog, Noye, Kagran and company monologue their way through interminable chunks of it.
I must be one of the few people who liked the Iconian War arc.
Excellent and long overdue. I know there are plenty of (somewhat justified) jokes about "X was removed to improve the overall quality of the game", but these missions really haven't aged well and don't meet the standards set by more recent content.
From what I can remember about the past bug reports I've submitted, the Fire Caverns had completely broken AI pathfinding. It was never possible for me to get my entire BOFF team through without manual waypoints.
A welcome revamp. Carry on!
=/\=Transwarp 10.0 Victory Achieved on 26-July-2012, Six Months After F2P =/\=
We have received intelligence that the True Way has stolen an Orb of the Prophets from the Cardassian Union in "Spoils of War" our first episode in the Cardassian Arc!
I just hope there will be a way to get the Shard of Possibilities after this. So far, a Featured Episode replay of the Mirror Universe section of the Cardassian Arc was the only hope, and that string is now under the axe. I sincerely hope there's a new way to get it, or they do an FE replay event before they remaster this.
The problem with that is, bringing them up to standards involves removing all the TRIBBLE "kill 10 groups of X" parts of missions, which brings each of their size down considerably, to the point you don't have enough content for a full mission, so they merge the updated parts of each mission until they do.
I don't know if you have heard about this, but quality > quantity.
By that logic, Delta Rising's innumerable "System Patrols" are in DIRE need of being revamped away.
No, they aren't.
Take Argala. It's a single patrol. There are about 6 combat engagements there. After the first, you get treated with an actual dialog. Along the other fights, you get those NPC call-outs, which also tell a bit of a story, revealing what the asteroid field is used for and how the big bag is called by an emergency transmission. And afterwards, you get a resolution and some information from the Benthan Guard Captain.
In contrast, in a typical Cardassian Struggle mission, you go through 5-6 enemy groups without a single dialog or call-out.
Even the simplest, easiest repeatable content in DR has more story per your murder-activities than a Cardassian Struggle story arc mission usually has.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Shard of Possibiliies was never a reward for the mirror universe portion. It was a reward for completing The 2800 series (The five missions that dealt with the Dominion ships that were initially removed from time by the prophets).
By George, you're absolutely right! I'm glad to be wrong here. And at least the 2800 is not coming under the axe, so there may be hope for an FE rerun for it. Thank you for setting my mind at ease on that!
I'm still sorry to see "The New Link" go. I really enjoyed the battle with Laas and the dialogue with the other Changeling. And "The Tribble With Klingons" was worth it just for Cyrano Jones' tribble-expert descendant - I hope they move it to the Klingon War arc, as others have suggested, instead of losing it entirely.
The one I really wish they would edit down and revamp is "Of Bajor". It drags on forever! That's the one I really hate in the arc - particularly the snotty Commander mission giver. You seriously outrank her by the time you meet her, by at least two or three grades. Real commanders don't speak to Flag Officers like they're raw cadets - not and remain commanders. This mission might make sense if you did it when you were a lieutenant, but by the time you reach it, it's just absurd and insulting.
Given that the Romulan revamp gave so much EXP that it was able to match all of the EXP gained from the 15 missions that existed before the revamp, minus like 2 patrols, I don't see why you would think the Cardy mission revamp would be any different.
That's not entirely true. A first run of the new 4 episodes of Romulan Mystery at proper level (roughly the late-20s) gives about 34400 xp, while, according to the wiki, the old version gave around 47750 xp. Federation characters will probably notice a loss in xp from this revamp. I couldn't tell you right now if it will open up an actual gap in progression for those that are solely using episodes to level up, but it may. Having less of the missions to begin with will probably cause these missions to pay out more than the ones they are replacing for Klingons and Romulans, though.
This is an MMO, not a Star Trek episode simulator. That would make for a terrible game.
I wonder if anyone so far has mentioned the kinda disturbing fact that the teleporter room on Bajor in the website page's picture seems to be in a certain district. Is that for real?
By that logic, Delta Rising's innumerable "System Patrols" are in DIRE need of being revamped away. Don't misunderstand, I'm not arguing with your main point, I merely think that condemning old episodes for repetitive strings of largely identical battles WITHOUT condemning the new ones for doing the exact same thing is a bit biased. My feeling is that the dividing line between "old style" and "new style" episodes is not so much in the game play (or lack thereof), but in the amount of cutscenes (minimal in the "old days", ludicrously heavy in the "new").
And I admit I may also be biased myself here, because I am old enough to remember the bad old days of FMV games, and that's what STO is resembling more and more lately. I'd much rather replay the unrevamped Cadassian Arc than the Iconian War Movie Arc again. At least you PLAYED that, instead of passively watching Nog, Noye, Kagran and company monologue their way through interminable chunks of it.
I disagree.
The Delta Rising Patrols are good, as patrols, which are not actual episodes/missions, and are thus not held to the same standards. Varying possible enemy types, several different objectives, multiple ways to complete them. they serve as good repeatable daily content, that most MMOs have, quite well with the New Romulus patrols.
Now the Federation only patrols, that you can do only once, those suck, and should probably be looked at.
I also don't find the cutscenes to be too heavy. I much prefer them to just looking at dialogue boxes for 5 minutes straight like in old missions, that was tiring.
I must be one of the few people who liked the Iconian War arc.
I liked The Iconian war arc very well, and don't understand why it get as much hate as it does.
I feel the Iconian War arc got so much hate because of the fact that outside of the episodes, there was no real feeling that there was a war going on. I've seen people state multiple times that they should have had a Battlezone (something unrealistic given the nature of the heralds, only logical place would have been the Herald Sphere) or at least Red Alerts for the Heralds (since they can pop anywhere at will). When you go to the Dyson Sphere Voth Battlezone, Undine space battlezone or Kobali ground battlezone, you at least get the sense that there's an ongoing struggle. You don't get that feeling with the Iconians.
If you're a Fed and don't have the Starfleet kill accolades, better start farming them now. Once they remove War Games, there goes the only way to get that accolade as a Fed.
Not entirely, there is still the possibility to play or create Foundry missions with "Rogue KDF-Aligned Federation" Squads both on ground and in space. The accolade will still be achievable post revamp.
"Everything about the Jham'Hadar is lethal!" - Eris
Original Join Date: January 30th, 2010
More removal of content should never happen I for one am not seeing myself playing this game as much s I used to and seeing more missions being removed and only 4 added makes me now think it's time to try something else rather than a game with limited content
NO TO ARC
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If you're a Fed and don't have the Starfleet kill accolades, better start farming them now. Once they remove War Games, there goes the only way to get that accolade as a Fed.
Federation Rebels in the Foundry count towards that accolade. At least it did for me last week.
How exactly are they shrinking the game when they release a new episode each month?
New content will become "old" soon enough.
They are removing all the current Cardassian Arc missions (minues the 2800 series) and giving us four missins in its place.
The dramatic over reactions are ridiculous. The revamp is a prelude to expanding the Cardassian story line with more future content. And Cardassian is likely the first new playable race.
Over all the game has done nothing but expand. And this is just a step for more later.
Where is your information supporting this as the romulan story arc and borg ones have never been expanded once they were removed so most of us are speaking from experience
NO TO ARC
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I also expect an XP loss. Even if they double or triple the XP gained from each mission compared to the old ones, it will not be enough.
And then each mission will have your character likely skip a level entirely which makes for less than ideal progression.
However there is an easy solution.
Create or modify patrol missions into repeatable ones with a one time wrapper mission that gets included into the Cardassian Struggle similar to the Delta Rising content. If you add in 3-4 of those with the combined XP of the wrapper and the individual patrols this should compensate nicely.
One wrapper mission for each of the former sector blocks should be enough.
The patrols already exists, just need to be made repeatable and opened for KDF and Romulans, of course. Should be doable for the next mid season update.
The one I really wish they would edit down and revamp is "Of Bajor". It drags on forever! That's the one I really hate in the arc - particularly the snotty Commander mission giver. You seriously outrank her by the time you meet her, by at least two or three grades. Real commanders don't speak to Flag Officers like they're raw cadets - not and remain commanders. This mission might make sense if you did it when you were a lieutenant, but by the time you reach it, it's just absurd and insulting.
(Emphasis mine.)
I know, right? You _literally_ cannot play most of the worst offenders until you actively and often severely outrank the offender (depending on whether or not you've enjoyed a double-xp weekend before getting there.
When playing that mission, more than once, I've muttered "Commander. Flag officers do not 'report' to Lieutenants. Have your lieutenant report to you and you can catch up with Captain X [my flag captain's name] when he has a moment for you. Dismissed."
Granted, I'm normally much more approachable than that, and somewhat of a believer in meritocracy over rank, but seriously, it would be good if the writing branched a bit based on player's rank.
Something like: "Oh, Admiral, we have a gap in the training schedule for this holodeck. We've written some new training simulations we think will help us prepare. If you have some time to spare, my team would be grateful if we could get some feedback from someone with recent direct experience fighting the Dominion."
So, just as with the Romulan arc, anything not directly related to the Grand Vision will be deleted? Pretty much as I expected.... Tell me, at what point does Cryptic expect to reach its goal of removing every remaining trace of fun from this game?
Play the Cardassian Arc as it is now and tell me it's "fun" again.
It's only NOT fun because of how absurdly difficult it can be for non leveled characters. I liked most of those missions.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
So, just as with the Romulan arc, anything not directly related to the Grand Vision will be deleted? Pretty much as I expected.... Tell me, at what point does Cryptic expect to reach its goal of removing every remaining trace of fun from this game?
Play the Cardassian Arc as it is now and tell me it's "fun" again.
It's only NOT fun because of how absurdly difficult it can be for non leveled characters. I liked most of those missions.
Even when playing correctly-levelled and armed characters, it's -as Seven would say- "offensive" to fun.
Take, for example, the freaking mission where you have to escort an ensign (who, I'm pretty sure, was an Undine pretending to be attacked) just so he can sloooooowly retrieve his holonovels. Or the Rapier where you have to escort, all the way back an ugly wormhole, an annoyingly slow escort with enemies that somehow managed to enter from the Bajoran side of said wormhole. Or the one with Thomas Riker's son and those pointlessly-long-to-kill giant turrets after you had to keep traveling across the space map killing ships and scanning moons. Or the Cage of Fire one where your Boffs can commit suicide and be unable to retrieve unless you kill yourself. Or the Shutdown one where you have to protect the engineer that somehow managed to activate DS9's self-destruct system. Or these Cardassians corridors and rooms EVERYWHERE in this arc.
Really, the only good stuff are "The New Link", the "Tribble with Klingons" and "the Other Side" missions, and some parts of the rest, like the confusing gas that allows your dumb BOffs to kill each other, the ending of Cracks in the Mirror, and the plot of Seeds of Dissent. The rest must be sent to Noye for existence wipeout.
Oh, good point about the wormhole. I really hope we will get at some point a much more canon accurate wormhole travel scene.
It won't be gameplay, because the canon wormhole is pretty boring, since there is not much in the way of maneuvering, but I finally want to see an exterior shot of my ship flying through.
What we got as playable wormhole maps never cut it, it was always too static and didn't look like anything from the show with it'S solid walls with painted on stars and blue swirls.
Rapier was good. Especially as a Federation allied Romulan. The looks on their faces haha.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Excellent and long overdue. I know there are plenty of (somewhat justified) jokes about "X was removed to improve the overall quality of the game", but these missions really haven't aged well and don't meet the standards set by more recent content.
From what I can remember about the past bug reports I've submitted, the Fire Caverns had completely broken AI pathfinding. It was never possible for me to get my entire BOFF team through without manual waypoints.
A welcome revamp. Carry on!
I have never really heard of anyone having problems with the AI if the Fire Caverns. Could your ISP been TRIBBLE up the time?
By that logic, Delta Rising's innumerable "System Patrols" are in DIRE need of being revamped away. Don't misunderstand, I'm not arguing with your main point, I merely think that condemning old episodes for repetitive strings of largely identical battles WITHOUT condemning the new ones for doing the exact same thing is a bit biased. My feeling is that the dividing line between "old style" and "new style" episodes is not so much in the game play (or lack thereof), but in the amount of cutscenes (minimal in the "old days", ludicrously heavy in the "new").
And I admit I may also be biased myself here, because I am old enough to remember the bad old days of FMV games, and that's what STO is resembling more and more lately. I'd much rather replay the unrevamped Cadassian Arc than the Iconian War Movie Arc again. At least you PLAYED that, instead of passively watching Nog, Noye, Kagran and company monologue their way through interminable chunks of it.
I disagree.
The Delta Rising Patrols are good, as patrols, which are not actual episodes/missions, and are thus not held to the same standards. Varying possible enemy types, several different objectives, multiple ways to complete them. they serve as good repeatable daily content, that most MMOs have, quite well with the New Romulus patrols.
Now the Federation only patrols, that you can do only once, those suck, and should probably be looked at.
I also don't find the cutscenes to be too heavy. I much prefer them to just looking at dialogue boxes for 5 minutes straight like in old missions, that was tiring.
I must be one of the few people who liked the Iconian War arc.
I liked The Iconian war arc very well, and don't understand why it get as much hate as it does.
The Iconian War Arc is known for bad timing cutscenes, and plenty of them. All the action you're doing during the cutscene doesn't stop. So while you get put on hold to watch a cutscene, your ship is getting pounded. Can't the cutscene just wait till you're out of red alert before starting? I also see the excess cutscenes is another ploy to lower the amount of content that is playable in exchange for content that isn't. It's still content but players have less to do. If you literately skip the cutsscenes, then the episodes are actually shorter than the old episodes.
As for older episodes, some people no longer have the attention span of a brick wall. They have to have their episode done right then and there. Always rush, rush, rush. No one takes their time anymore.
Wait... where is Kurland? Isn't Kurland 'here' anymore?
Kurland will always be here, in our heart. Please, get a surgeon.
=Clicks his claws on the Consol.= I need Picard As a Cadet fighting Norsicans and a Noricon behind him. =Looks at kurlands corps.= Thank god hes finaly dead Jim
Take, for example, the freaking mission where you have to escort an ensign (who, I'm pretty sure, was an Undine pretending to be attacked) just so he can sloooooowly retrieve his holonovels. Or the Rapier where you have to escort, all the way back an ugly wormhole, an annoyingly slow escort with enemies that somehow managed to enter from the Bajoran side of said wormhole. Or the one with Thomas Riker's son and those pointlessly-long-to-kill giant turrets after you had to keep traveling across the space map killing ships and scanning moons. Or the Cage of Fire one where your Boffs can commit suicide and be unable to retrieve unless you kill yourself. Or the Shutdown one where you have to protect the engineer that somehow managed to activate DS9's self-destruct system. Or these Cardassians corridors and rooms EVERYWHERE in this arc
Which is a quantity > quality approach to game design, aka, bad game design.[/quote]
Those are the type of episodes that many people DO enjoy. Mainly because it's more than just kill x enemies, then cutscene, and episode over.
The ensign retrieving his holonovels was fun because it was mission based. Not just pew, pew, pew.
Escorting the Rapier, again, is mission based.
The Riker's son mission, yeah, killing the turrets is a pain, but it's still fun, and again, you're escorting someone somewhere. Mission based.
Cage of fire: Not once have I or any of my friends have any problems with the BOFFs committing suicide.
And escorting the engineer to shut down the self destruct.....
You see a pattern here........
All these missions are MISSION BASED, yet people are complaining that they are padded. If that is the case, remove the damn forced patrol missions in the Delta Arc. They are just padding to make the Delta Arc longer than what is needed. Stop trying to kill older missions when they are just needing a facelift, not removal.
Comments
You appear to have the True Way and the Oralian Way confused. The True Way supports the old, oppressive regime that hunted down and tried to eliminate the Cardassian religious believers of the Oralian Way. The Oralian Way has not engaged in terrorism. Rather, they are under threat by the True Way.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I don't see it as being that hard.
You have a playable Cardassian with a unique 10 levels of war fallout. They choose a side, Federation or Klingon as an allied military observer, and get assigned those missions and a Galor as well as a commanding liason in the Federation or KDF. They deal with threats at home interspersed with Fed/Rom/Klingon issues. The threats at home are 2 additional missions in each front which foreshadow the new endgame.
Anything CAN be done. There is nothing that CAN'T be done. They could do 35 levels of missions about Cardassians occupying Q's Winter Wonderland. The question is always if it can be done to everyone's satisfaction. The answer to that is, of course, no. But it can be done in a way that works well enough for someone who has never touched STO before.
If you really want to do this, I'll give you a tip from a Foundry author POV who knows his way around hacky tricks and shortcuts.
Don't rely on a Youtube Let's Play.
Play through the mission. Take a demo record at each step of it. Screenshot the dialogue.
I could remake that one pretty much perfectly.
Demorecord give you exact map coordinates for NPCs. The only issue then is you need some standard/metric conversions for those coordinates and to convert from quarternions into radians for rotation. Granted, you can't do Z axis rotation in the Foundry but that's never necessary for NPCs, really, only for map assets. In this case, all the map assets are pre-placed.
Is that a picture of downtown Cardassia city... or south-side of Detroit... don't complain, I came from the Detroit area.
By that logic, Delta Rising's innumerable "System Patrols" are in DIRE need of being revamped away. Don't misunderstand, I'm not arguing with your main point, I merely think that condemning old episodes for repetitive strings of largely identical battles WITHOUT condemning the new ones for doing the exact same thing is a bit biased. My feeling is that the dividing line between "old style" and "new style" episodes is not so much in the game play (or lack thereof), but in the amount of cutscenes (minimal in the "old days", ludicrously heavy in the "new").
And I admit I may also be biased myself here, because I am old enough to remember the bad old days of FMV games, and that's what STO is resembling more and more lately. I'd much rather replay the unrevamped Cadassian Arc than the Iconian War Movie Arc again. At least you PLAYED that, instead of passively watching Nog, Noye, Kagran and company monologue their way through interminable chunks of it.
Shard of Possibiliies was never a reward for the mirror universe portion. It was a reward for completing The 2800 series (The five missions that dealt with the Dominion ships that were initially removed from time by the prophets).
I must be one of the few people who liked the Iconian War arc.
A welcome revamp. Carry on!
Take Argala. It's a single patrol. There are about 6 combat engagements there. After the first, you get treated with an actual dialog. Along the other fights, you get those NPC call-outs, which also tell a bit of a story, revealing what the asteroid field is used for and how the big bag is called by an emergency transmission. And afterwards, you get a resolution and some information from the Benthan Guard Captain.
In contrast, in a typical Cardassian Struggle mission, you go through 5-6 enemy groups without a single dialog or call-out.
Even the simplest, easiest repeatable content in DR has more story per your murder-activities than a Cardassian Struggle story arc mission usually has.
By George, you're absolutely right! I'm glad to be wrong here. And at least the 2800 is not coming under the axe, so there may be hope for an FE rerun for it. Thank you for setting my mind at ease on that!
I'm still sorry to see "The New Link" go.
The one I really wish they would edit down and revamp is "Of Bajor". It drags on forever! That's the one I really hate in the arc - particularly the snotty Commander mission giver. You seriously outrank her by the time you meet her, by at least two or three grades. Real commanders don't speak to Flag Officers like they're raw cadets - not and remain commanders. This mission might make sense if you did it when you were a lieutenant, but by the time you reach it, it's just absurd and insulting.
That's not entirely true. A first run of the new 4 episodes of Romulan Mystery at proper level (roughly the late-20s) gives about 34400 xp, while, according to the wiki, the old version gave around 47750 xp. Federation characters will probably notice a loss in xp from this revamp. I couldn't tell you right now if it will open up an actual gap in progression for those that are solely using episodes to level up, but it may. Having less of the missions to begin with will probably cause these missions to pay out more than the ones they are replacing for Klingons and Romulans, though.
I feel the Iconian War arc got so much hate because of the fact that outside of the episodes, there was no real feeling that there was a war going on. I've seen people state multiple times that they should have had a Battlezone (something unrealistic given the nature of the heralds, only logical place would have been the Herald Sphere) or at least Red Alerts for the Heralds (since they can pop anywhere at will). When you go to the Dyson Sphere Voth Battlezone, Undine space battlezone or Kobali ground battlezone, you at least get the sense that there's an ongoing struggle. You don't get that feeling with the Iconians.
Not entirely, there is still the possibility to play or create Foundry missions with "Rogue KDF-Aligned Federation" Squads both on ground and in space. The accolade will still be achievable post revamp.
Original Join Date: January 30th, 2010
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Federation Rebels in the Foundry count towards that accolade. At least it did for me last week.
Where is your information supporting this as the romulan story arc and borg ones have never been expanded once they were removed so most of us are speaking from experience
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
And then each mission will have your character likely skip a level entirely which makes for less than ideal progression.
However there is an easy solution.
Create or modify patrol missions into repeatable ones with a one time wrapper mission that gets included into the Cardassian Struggle similar to the Delta Rising content. If you add in 3-4 of those with the combined XP of the wrapper and the individual patrols this should compensate nicely.
One wrapper mission for each of the former sector blocks should be enough.
The patrols already exists, just need to be made repeatable and opened for KDF and Romulans, of course. Should be doable for the next mid season update.
It's only NOT fun because of how absurdly difficult it can be for non leveled characters. I liked most of those missions.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Do we all need to chip in to buy STO a bigger hard drive or something? This is getting old
Gotta go find some babies now, need to clean the bath water out of my tub
Even when playing correctly-levelled and armed characters, it's -as Seven would say- "offensive" to fun.
Take, for example, the freaking mission where you have to escort an ensign (who, I'm pretty sure, was an Undine pretending to be attacked) just so he can sloooooowly retrieve his holonovels. Or the Rapier where you have to escort, all the way back an ugly wormhole, an annoyingly slow escort with enemies that somehow managed to enter from the Bajoran side of said wormhole. Or the one with Thomas Riker's son and those pointlessly-long-to-kill giant turrets after you had to keep traveling across the space map killing ships and scanning moons. Or the Cage of Fire one where your Boffs can commit suicide and be unable to retrieve unless you kill yourself. Or the Shutdown one where you have to protect the engineer that somehow managed to activate DS9's self-destruct system. Or these Cardassians corridors and rooms EVERYWHERE in this arc.
Really, the only good stuff are "The New Link", the "Tribble with Klingons" and "the Other Side" missions, and some parts of the rest, like the confusing gas that allows your dumb BOffs to kill each other, the ending of Cracks in the Mirror, and the plot of Seeds of Dissent. The rest must be sent to Noye for existence wipeout.
It won't be gameplay, because the canon wormhole is pretty boring, since there is not much in the way of maneuvering, but I finally want to see an exterior shot of my ship flying through.
What we got as playable wormhole maps never cut it, it was always too static and didn't look like anything from the show with it'S solid walls with painted on stars and blue swirls.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
I have never really heard of anyone having problems with the AI if the Fire Caverns. Could your ISP been TRIBBLE up the time?
The Iconian War Arc is known for bad timing cutscenes, and plenty of them. All the action you're doing during the cutscene doesn't stop. So while you get put on hold to watch a cutscene, your ship is getting pounded. Can't the cutscene just wait till you're out of red alert before starting? I also see the excess cutscenes is another ploy to lower the amount of content that is playable in exchange for content that isn't. It's still content but players have less to do. If you literately skip the cutsscenes, then the episodes are actually shorter than the old episodes.
As for older episodes, some people no longer have the attention span of a brick wall. They have to have their episode done right then and there. Always rush, rush, rush. No one takes their time anymore.
=Clicks his claws on the Consol.= I need Picard As a Cadet fighting Norsicans and a Noricon behind him. =Looks at kurlands corps.= Thank god hes finaly dead Jim
Those are the type of episodes that many people DO enjoy. Mainly because it's more than just kill x enemies, then cutscene, and episode over.
The ensign retrieving his holonovels was fun because it was mission based. Not just pew, pew, pew.
Escorting the Rapier, again, is mission based.
The Riker's son mission, yeah, killing the turrets is a pain, but it's still fun, and again, you're escorting someone somewhere. Mission based.
Cage of fire: Not once have I or any of my friends have any problems with the BOFFs committing suicide.
And escorting the engineer to shut down the self destruct.....
You see a pattern here........
All these missions are MISSION BASED, yet people are complaining that they are padded. If that is the case, remove the damn forced patrol missions in the Delta Arc. They are just padding to make the Delta Arc longer than what is needed. Stop trying to kill older missions when they are just needing a facelift, not removal.