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Team Instancing not working reliably - how is this still a thing?

As someone who has recently returned and been quite enjoying the content landscape on the whole, there is one thing I wish to call out to LaughingTrendy's and Cryptic's attention.

This is not a bug thread as the bug has clearly been reported, repeatedly, across many instances and many actual mission instances, no pun intended.

Nor is this a lack of comprehension about 'tutorials' being a forced solo case.

The fact is that this particular phenomena is the height of a buzzkill bug. Rolling along with friends, playing with others, all of us having a good time...

... then inexplicably unable to continue playing as a team, no warning, with the added bonus of having said missions difficulty geared for the team size and now solo-able only.

Yes, we have tried reforming, resequencing, re-assigning leadership, re-logging and so on. Sometimes, though rarely, does this resolve the problem.

The question I would propose is, as the title suggests:

"How on earth is this kind of basic functionality being so unreliable still a thing?"

With the push towards consoles, which I do hope will be a success for STO as I do believe their grasp on making actual quality content has improved significantly in the past few years, this kind of session driven, network instance bug is going to be deadly to your player experience. We have more tools and options in the PC space, as well as historical tolerance, for troubleshooting this kind of issue. That's not a dig at the console market, nor a PC master race claim, it's merely a description of the consumer behaviour from my vantage point; PC players are willing to, at least on some minimal level, troubleshoot to eliminate issues they recognize may be generated by their particular configuration or setup. As the console landscape is entirely WYSIWYG as far as technology goes, I have never personally known anyone willing to pursue that process to the same degree in that platform; and to be clear, I don't blame them one bit for that posture.

This splitting of teams to personal instances, on missions not flagged as solo, where a team leader clearly enters first to set up the instance, simply should not be acceptable for a product this long in the tooth and looking to stabilize new deployments on current gen consoles.

It is frustrating, needless and ultimately, a major barrier to wanting to play the game and enjoy the otherwise high quality episodic content that Cryptic has been assembling. Encountering this bug is the number one 'Well, i've had enough for the night' trigger the guys I roll with regularly encounter, and has always been so.

If there is a guaranteed fix for this phenomena, it should be posted in giant stickies that are unmissable and come up in any search for 'team instance', which I assure you, is not currently the case for the searches I've done.

If a mission is solo-set for any reason, it should be clearly and unmistakably stated as it is with things like the Racing patrol in the Delta Quadrant or various parts of the Solanae campaign.

And whatever the technical reason for this nonsense might be, it should be a priority to fix or I would wager it will be a major point of frustration and aggravation for Cryptic's pending new customer base. That is of course, my opinion, but I would like to believe (however incorrectly) it is not an unfounded one.

If other's have found this persistent issue as frustrating, I would welcome your comments as well in the hopes that it is brought to the forefront as a critical element for sorting, not just for PC, but to ensure a better player experience across all platforms.



"The only thing mankind learns from the study of history is that mankind does not learn from the study of history." ~G. Santayana

Comments

  • modecker1#1025 modecker1 Member Posts: 1 New User
    I agree, it makes no sense to have an online game that you can't play with others. Don't have any problems hooking up in Neverwinter! This game could use a better help section.
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