[PODCAST] Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 255: A Quick Breach

midniteshadow7

Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 255: 'A Quick Breach' has warped on to Holosuite Media, you can download and stream it from:

http://holosuitemedia.com/tie255/

We're back once again to discuss this week's Star Trek news and in this week's episode we talk about Star Trek Online PC news, Star Trek Online Console news (1:15:31), Star Trek Timelines (1:17:13), Star Trek Discovery (1:24:42), Conventions (2:12:59), Unofficial Productions (2:18:07), Community Feedback (2:20:06) and more!

Community Questions:
1. Do you think we'll get the old style Breach queue back after the event or do you think we'll be keeping the new style queue?
2. How much of Star Trek TV & Film have you watched for the 50th anniversary?
3. How do you handle your Star Trek Timelines crew when you run out of character slots?

chozoelder2nd

1.) I'm one of the rare few that didn't mind the old queue. The problem was taking that queue and turning it into an event. It was usually an average of 20 minutes per run for me, so it was a real drag trying to do it on multiple alts. Back when it was a regular queue, almost nobody wanted to play it because everyone prefers doing the Voth battlezone if they want to build on Dyson rep. It was one of those queues that you never see anyone playing because people receive much more rewards doing other things in the same amount of time it takes to finish The Breach.

Shortening and turning it into an event was a good idea. The thing you'd see many players have issue with was that it was too long. So based on that feedback, I honestly don't think Cryptic would do a 180 and keep the old version as a standard queue after this event is over. I would like to see it return, but I realize that I'm the 1%.


2.) I started last summer because I was too impatient to wait until September. I started with one of the series I never saw, DS9. After I finished DS9, I moved onto the other series I never touched before, Enterprise. I finished that too and now I'm currently going through all of TOS since I never saw every episode of it. I'll eventually go through all of TNG and Voyager because why not?

I also finally watched Beyond on the anniversary itself. I 100% agree with Timber Wolf. Who in their right mind thought Suicide Squad had better makeup than in Beyond? Get outa here with that noise. Go home Academy Awards, you're drunk.



Feedback


Arena of Sompek

I missed last week but I want to quickly skim through this.

I was one of those affected by the massive wait times in-between rounds. It was bad. Really bad. We're talking like 8 minutes of nothing happening after every round. By round 4, everyone was tired of all the nothing that was going on and let the mobs finish us once round 5 finally started. Terrible first impression.

I then ran it a second time, this time with two other fleet members. The 5th player in the team dropped out or disconnected near round 15. We made it to round 45 and had a pretty fun time with it. My third time was a pug that felt like at least two members wanted everyone else to die early so they can get their daily reward and quickly get out.

As someone who enjoys ground combat, it was definitely refreshing to see a ground based event like this. I would've preferred if it lasted at least another three days to make it a one week event. I hope it comes back, preferably without the wait time bug.



26th Century Dreadnoughts

Does anyone remember how huge the Enterprise-J was in the Battle of Procyon V queue/story episode?

I also recall one of the devs saying somewhere that Enterprise-J can't be playable because of how massive it is. Maybe I'm remembering wrong. Am I crazy? I'll just say that I am since I can't bother to go back and find the source.

Either way, it's here. We're now so far down the rabbit hole of possible playable ships in STO. I've lost count of how many times I said to myself "We're never getting x or y ship." At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they put out a kitbash mega bundle, Voth Citadels, Borg ships, whatever. Sadly, the Universe class and the rest are promo ships. I'll probably never have one because... Well, you know how high promo ships go for. At least the NX Refit was Lobi.

sisteric

Hey there....
So I was thinking about the game and the what was said on the show. Here are some of my thoughts.

Arena of Sompek was great. I range from 14 to 67 in my runs. Only one person complain about the delay, but he attributed it to the self seeking mines. Once those would pop, things would advance. I use those kind of mines so tried to limit there use to when enemies were in large number. Things went faster. So he at least some plausability and useful advise.

The Breach. I hate the breach as it is now. It is trivial in its difficulty and content. I liked the old Breach, it took time, but it also was satisfying because of the time it took to complete. A real sense of accomplishment. Now, things are done before I have had time to get more than 2 shots in most runs. For an event, fast is good. But it shoukd also feel like it was a challange. And this is not, nor has it so far fekt like it.

q2: I did not re-watch any star trek because of the 50th. I watched everything but TOS when it first aired. TOS i got in reruns before the did the Animated series and I have watched all of TOS in streams in past 5 years or so.

q3: I am out of slots now. And have been for quite some time. I look at what I have and what I think I need and just get ride of the ones I no longer want or don't think I will ever use. With no way to get any more slots, since is don't buy dilithium. Timelines has become a game a play when I am board and can't play on my computer.

The Enterprise J, sad to see it in game. And it wont be powerful as a ship of that generation shoukd be. THe temperal ships all seem to be lobotimized from the power they shoukd be having. I knw that it's all about game balance, but still, it doesn't seem right.

Th enew story, read it. SO the Tzenkethi are going after the crystals, we knew that. And they tried a peaceful process it failed, thats new. And the crystals can be used as an energy source, thats new too. And its good to see that not all tzenkethi agree with the current directive. And it's a widespread concern, enough so that they have to use decption to protect the weapon. To bad the science officer did succeed.

alex1ger

Goooooooooood morning, tribble-nam!


Community questions:


1.) Well, sun already explained how the Crystalline Entity was revamped and you did not get the old version back. I have another example. When they "reworked" the STFs. Infected did not always have space and ground. It was just Infected. Same with... I'm blanking... Khitomer Accords? That was split into Khitomer space and Khitomer ground. The old versions don't seem to exist anymore.
So when the "The Breach" event ends, you will get "a" regular "The Breach" queue. It's just gonna be the new version of it.

I mean seriously, Timber, you make all these videos showcasing how everyone and their mother just facerolls through Infected Space Advanced and you think Cryptic is gonna give you a "new" queue that takes more than 5-10 minutes to complete? Actually, they might but unless they rework the reward system such a queue probably wouldn't see much play because guess what? Players are notorious for seeking the "biggest bang for their buck". Even if they don't pay a single cent.
I should probably add that, well, I do agree. I am used to "dungeons" that take 20-ish minutes to complete at a somewhat leisurely pace. But I do remember dungeons (not raids, just regular dungeons) that could take hours to complete, because they were so expansive. It was daunting and more often that not people would only do specific parts of these dungeons, but I do admit that they had a certain "epic-ness" to them.
Watching you showcase ISA is like... okay, that's basically the equivalent of the "trash mobs" and the first boss in... pretty much any "dungeon" in any other MMO out there. And that is AFTER every other MMO decided to make their "dungeons" more bite-sized. So... where's the rest of the "dungeon"?

Yes, some events in WoW require you to go to a dungeon and kill an event boss. But guess what. They put that option into their lfg-tool. So you queue up for the event boss and when the group is ready you get teleported to that boss. No need to kill any trash mobs (unless they are meant to be part of the encounter) and the "complete" dungeon is still available for play.
But hey, I guess only Blizzard has the budget to offer such an intricate and overly complicated mechanism. *shrug*

And let's not forget, Cryptic does not offer "STO's awesome RANDOM Q", so... how many queues see play on a regular basis? Then there's the cooldown timer. Which brings up the question: Could you even "chain-run" one queue after another or would you run out of "playable" queues? I mean, you can do that in pretty much every other MMO out there. Some people who play tanks or healers level exclusively by chain-running dungeons. But this is bordering on game design philosophy... again. I try to get the e-mail done this weekend. Game design can be such an interesting topic.


2.) I have not re-watched anything, yet. I still plan to give Enterprise a try. Oh well. As long as I get it done 'til early fall, I'm still within the 50th, right?


3.) What has two thumbs and is (at this point) refusing to play Timelines?

This guy!

Feedback:


Enterprise J:
You know, when I read the announcement I thought I might get angry, but it didn't happen. I guess for me this game really did jump the shark with Agents of Yesterday, the Temporal Packs, the Konnie and the Connie. And since I read a discussion in this forum about what it's gonna take for this game to jump the shark... Just because you "jump the shark" that does not spell immediate doom. It just means that someone did something so "over the top" silly that you can't take that person/show seriously anymore. For me, this game jumped the shark already.
The Iconian War ended with the Iconians going back into Isolation, but we get to use all their technology. Because it's "fun".
The Temporal War ended with us "preserving" the timeline only to defecate all over the oh so precious timeline by using all these temporal ships. Because it's "fun".
And I would be very surprised if the upcoming Tzenkethi war didn't end with us using protomatter weaponry (or some other weapon of mass destruction, I mean look at the romulan FLAGSHIPS that are equipped with thalaron weapons...) because we can and it's "fun".
If "fun" is all that matters, I believe we should see a T6 (classic) Miranda, T6 K'Vort, T6 kitbashes and... uhm... let's throw in playable borg ships and for first contact day a Phoenix small craft and a T6 T'Plana Hath. Or how about a CVN 65 (was that the registry number?) Enterprise skin? Wouldn't that be "fun"?
Because Star Trek has always been about rejecting logic and reason and just indulging in self-centered hedonism with a complete and utter disregard for any sort of consequences. Well, look at that. I did get angry. Not because of the J, but because of "fun".

Okay, that rant was directed at the powers that be...
Dear ship artists, I do not blame you for the Enterprise J. It was not your fault. You did what you could. But I think the romulan ship looks really nice. How do you keep making these things? I mentioned it before, but I liked every single romulan ship (again, the adapted ships and the Scimitar don't count!) so far. Keep up the great work!
What? There's a klingon ship? Well, that's nice for them, I guess. It certainly looks klingon, but who plays KDF anyway?



RP blog "A Divided Duty":
Okay, nice blog. Don't expect any in-depth analysis, because I can't be bothered.
I mean, Cryptic likes to bemoan the fact that they don't have the budget to do this or the (wo)manpower to do that. How they have to aim for the "biggest bang for the buck" and then they get their team to put together these well-written blogs (even though some of them have more logical flaws than others) and hide them away on the website.

Remember how Trendy made an index page for the Iconian war story blogs? Well, a few episodes ago we talked about a spherebuilder defector (one of you called him a tuterian defector, but you know what I mean) and it took me quite a while to find that blog again because I couldn't find an index page for the temporal war blogs. How is that the "biggest bang for the buck"? I don't even... *double facepalm*