My favorite part was the way Martok kept running in front of me and blocking my shots. (I also liked how when we weren't in combat, he would run up and stand on my heels like he'd never heard of "personal space". I gotta tell ya, I think Martok's name is probably on a spreadsheet if he's like that with every woman in the galaxy.) My second favorite thing was the way the whole story seemed to be "The Adventures of Martok!" and I kinda sorta wondered what would happen if I ran off and sat in a corner or something.
This was maybe most annoying in the boss battle on the bridge, where the Tzenkethi leader would go pound Martok into a corner, every so often turning around to hop up and down on me like the Winter Invasion Yeti. Maybe I just don't do enough ground DPS to aggro the guy. Tho', like others have already said, it would also be nice if you could talk the guy down or something. Be more Trekkish if you could, anyway.
On a more serious note, the maps were pretty enough, though it seems like you can run a little ways outside the window on the Tzenkethi bridge. While this undeniably enhanced the view of Bajor and DS9 a wee bit, it did seem like a questionable design choice on the part of the Tzenkethi shipwrights. The efforts to give the mission an epic final battle feel were appreciated, though I don't really think they were as effective as the Battle of Sol in "Surface Tension." The surprise guest at the end was a nice touch and I'm hoping the character will be showing up again.
Maybe it was playing on "Advanced" instead of "Elite," but the swarmers were a little... underwhelming, to be honest. I dunno, maybe they'd be harder if I were flying a glass cannon instead of a brick, but the most noticeable effect I saw was that I sometimes had to bump up the juice to my rear shield.
I feel bad slagging this mission. Normally I'd keep it pretty much to myself, but I guess this mission had a lot of promise and the overall storyline, while not as strong as some past ones, has been decent enough. The general quality of the arc so far had given me hope it would be more than just riding a rail while watching a name-level NPC who was out of bubblegum running in front of me and practically soloing the mission. Unlike previous missions with a VIP unkillable named NPC, "Scylla and Charybdis" felt like playing a D&D module where the DM thinks he's supposed to also be running his own PC. "Stand back, Martok will thrash them!" The devs might look back at what they did so well in "A Step Between Stars," where Tuvok was a useful ally that you felt you were helping, not the dominating star of the show while the player's character is relegated to bumbling sidekick. I definitely want to emphasize, too, that part of the disappointment is due to the high expectations engendered by the general high quality of STO's story arc missions.
I enjoyed the episode, lil suicide swarmers on an elite stf might even be difficult. Though it's another thing faw builds Excel at which is disappointing on another level. Please though don't make the tzenkethi battlestation some form of lockbox or RnD box ship lol so big!
Might be because my f2p captain is a tad shorter than the lifer I played through it on but the railings around the mass effect map in the final station fight blocked line of sight for me yet the tzenkethi could shoot me through them.
I had the same observation with a normal sized captain, so probably WAD.
As for the surprise guest at the end: the sound quality indeed made it seem more like cut out of some other footage than specifically recorded here. However, if it should evolve into a good contribution to the arc, I think we will get better.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Played through on my f2p and it occured to me that if the tzenkethi took a moment to extract their heads from their posteriors they'd have realised that they could have got the KDF to help with the simple phrase, "the hurq", and in doing so they'd have also got the rest of the alliance to join in.
They'd have to know about the Klingon history with the Hur'q for that. Which they probably don't, considering Hur'q is a Klingon word and probably not the name the Tzenkethi use.
yeah it isn't a word the Tzenkethi can be assumed to know, Dratzuli (or however you spell it) seems to be the Tzenkethi word for the hur'q.
As for the difficulty personally I didn't find it way too easy, but then I understand that not every person in the game has an optimizied build and a T6 ship nor are everyone willing to do insanely difficult combat for a story mission.
I liked the mission very much. Hopefully this is the start of a good long arc like the iconians. I don't want this uber nasty massive threat to be killed off in 4 or 5 missions, I want it to be a growing threat to a massive cataclysmic battle.....but with a longer story and build up.
The difficulty level was pitched nicely...all good and thanks to the various developers involved.
It had a weak start, just warp in and kill in space and ground. We do not commit genocide, and not talking about the Tzenketi.
But without spoilering, the 2nd part made the episode better. The explaining of the crystals makes sense why the Tzenketi do what they do. And the our help at the end made me smile, and as a cherry on the top of this dessert, that new from our allies, made me shout out loud a cheer. Looking forward to the follow up.
"Reports of our depression are vastly exaggerated." "Anyaway, we don't often see a sense of humor in Section 31."
I think the issue you guys both faced with the difficulty is a result of your DPS simply being too much for what the map was designed for. Every mission is designed for players that have an adequate DPS in order to complete them. Not everyone in the game needs to have high DPS for the average story mission.
That's the first time someone tells me I have too much DPS for something.
It can't be considered high compared to what others can do with a build like that:
or I found a special efficient build without even trying.
Last time I posted a screenshot of one of my ships' gear (which wasn't even the point, it was to show a quirk in the numbers of something, IIRC), someone said, paraphrased, "that poor molested Bugship, this is so sad to see such an abominable build on it"
So, by the end of the episode, a genocidal and intransigent enemy with obscure motives, who cannot be reasoned with and must be fought to the death, has been replaced by... a genocidal and intransigent enemy with obscure motives, who cannot be reasoned with and must be fought to the death. Oh good. To quote... some bloke or other... "Does anyone remember when we used to be explorers?"
I'm with others in that, the Tzenkethi Admiral point blank tells you they're not interested in diplomacy.
I also found that Martok got in my way many times as well. But he's a Klingon, they live for battle and he must have wanted all the glory. Ah well, I just threw what kit powers I could and let the Martok and my BOFFs shoot them.
Still, it was an enjoyable romp, especially when I need to murder scores of ships for fun. The Raiders went down like mosquitoes in a bug zapper, though I will admit that they put up a good fight when there were a f-ton of them all around.
I'll be playing it at least once a week to get the Bajoran ship goodies to go with the ship I'm trying to 'earn'.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
I thought the reveals in the episode were spectacular.
Martok was great, as expected.
[redacted] makes an appearance!
The two things preventing this from getting a 10/10 are
1. It felt like the space battles were built around FAW (as is usually the case). Using a FAW build made it ridiculously easy, but a cannon/torpedo build felt tedious and annoying.
2. Martok talked to my Klingons the same way as my joined Trill. There were two very noticeable cringe dialog moments. "You fight like a Klingon" ugh. And my Klingons have to ask about the Hur'q(!) right about the time you hear about how every Klingon would love to fight them.
Not everyone is using a FED BFAW character, guys. It'd be nice if that would be acknowledged, and it gets a tad more obvious and irritating that this is ignored/disregarded with every new FE.
I think the issue you guys both faced with the difficulty is a result of your DPS simply being too much for what the map was designed for. Every mission is designed for players that have an adequate DPS in order to complete them. Not everyone in the game needs to have high DPS for the average story mission.
That's the first time someone tells me I have too much DPS for something.
It can't be considered high compared to what others can do with a build like that:
or I found a special efficient build without even trying.
Last time I posted a screenshot of one of my ships' gear (which wasn't even the point, it was to show a quirk in the numbers of something, IIRC), someone said, paraphrased, "that poor molested Bugship, this is so sad to see such an abominable build on it"
XIV gear and Epic consoles, and you're giving it the "I don't know why someone thinks I have good DSP..." routine??
IMO, anything above VR Mk XII (ie standard game rewards) shows a deliberate effort to improve/focus on performance areas, so it's no surprize when such gear is more than sufficient, for PvE content
This was what I ran the mission with first time (AoY tac)
While I wouldn't go so far as to call the content 'difficult', there were a few moments when things got a bit tense, and in one toe-to-toe slugging match with one of those Big Tzenkethi ships (I forget the name), they won...
I'm looking forward to seeing how different builds and different characters cope with the episode
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Someone told me that this mission would be do-able by everyone, starting at level 11. On a f2p account, I am having a hard time believing that, as my level 12 KDF toon is not cleared to go to the alpha quadrant, and does not have the dil to make the jump.
Someone told me that this mission would be do-able by everyone, starting at level 11. On a f2p account, I am having a hard time believing that, as my level 12 KDF toon is not cleared to go to the alpha quadrant, and does not have the dil to make the jump.
The transwarp button on the featured episode tab doesn't work?
While I really enjoyed the episode, there were a few things about it which I really did not enjoy (way too much Martok, both physical presence in-game, and intrusive voice overs) clumsy writing (Loriss 4 ) and a single instance of 'sound' at the end, which doesn't even deserve to qualify as 'voice over work', because it was a very low-quality sampling, rather than actual voice over work, like the rest of the vocals in the episode, which were all top notch. The 'warp after Tzenkethi' aspect, didn't feel like a chase, such as when pursuing the Reman ship in Frozen, or the Rhode Island in Dust to Dust, I thought it felt like doing a set of stacked Red Alerts/Deep Space Encounters. It wasn't the actual mission content which bugged me, just the way it was presented, compared to other previous (and IMO better) episodes.
But other than those things, I did really enjoy the space combat scenes, as well as the familiar faces who returned (I would have preferred more Geordi and more Kuumaarke and less Martok)
I also really like the visual effect which the shield gives ships
It's a mission I'll enjoy replaying for the rest of the set, and as 'something to do', but there were definitely aspects of the presentation, which I disliked, as much as I liked everything else...
Overall score, 8/10
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
People competing over who's got the *worst* gear and DPS. Now that's new!
So far I didn't enjoy much of anything involving the Tzenkethi. Hurrdurr, we're nuking entire planets and we can't be bothered to explain why we're doing this, even though it would only take a second. Because "we're not open to diplomacy and we'd rather fight the entire population of a planet than at least make an attempt at explaining ourselves". Except for that one nice Tzenkethi who is unlike anybody else in her entire species and that one "Oh look, these guys don't fight so bad" moment where they help save a colony. What is this, Star Trek or a Saturday morning cartoon show? These guys are absolute weaksauce. Space stations moving all over the place and helpful Dominion ex machina with a crappy audio recording from DS9, because that stuff wasn't creepy enough in the 23rd century content. And people getting blown up left, right and center by the relatively harmless zerg. Sorry, hur'q.
And now I gotta wait a week to replay this exact same 15 minute mission again in order to get the next reward item. And again. And again. Because let's milk the absolute TRIBBLE out of this small bit of new content.
That's a point actually. That whole nuke stuff without explaining ourselves was silly along with the even sillier "told ya so" after the reveal was even sillier. If you'd bothered to explain in the first place Mr Kethi, you wouldn't be nursing a load of wounds and wouldn't have lost most of your fleet to me. Have we not shown ourselves more than capable by now? Nope, we'll just continue nuking stuff causing all manner of problems for us instead.
Oh and Tony Todd trying to one up himself on being over-dramatic is always entertaining, just a good thing he couldn't employ his usual vocabulary.
People competing over who's got the *worst* gear and DPS. Now that's new!
I think you've misunderstood my post
That gear shown, is the best gear I have on that character. That output (I don't know what it is, I don't parse) is the best they can currently do. With that gear, I found the episode a fun and fairly easy challenge (except for that one time of getting blown up) so anyone with XIV gear, is going to find it easier than I did, and they shouldn't be surprized that they find it easy, because their gear, is better than what the episode requires
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
That's a point actually. That whole nuke stuff without explaining ourselves was silly along with the even sillier "told ya so" after the reveal was even sillier. If you'd bothered to explain in the first place Mr Kethi, you wouldn't be nursing a load of wounds and wouldn't have lost most of your fleet to me. Have we not shown ourselves more than capable by now? Nope, we'll just continue nuking stuff causing all manner of problems for us instead.
Oh and Tony Todd trying to one up himself on being over-dramatic is always entertaining, just a good thing he couldn't employ his usual vocabulary.
As a point, the Tzenkethi have absolutely NO interest in explaining themselves to "weak" species. As far as they were concerned, we'd just be a liability. Regardless of our past accomplishments.
I thought the reveals in the episode were spectacular.
Martok was great, as expected.
[redacted] makes an appearance!
The two things preventing this from getting a 10/10 are
1. It felt like the space battles were built around FAW (as is usually the case). Using a FAW build made it ridiculously easy, but a cannon/torpedo build felt tedious and annoying.
2. Martok talked to my Klingons the same way as my joined Trill. There were two very noticeable cringe dialog moments. "You fight like a Klingon" ugh. And my Klingons have to ask about the Hur'q(!) right about the time you hear about how every Klingon would love to fight them.
Not everyone is using a FED BFAW character, guys. It'd be nice if that would be acknowledged, and it gets a tad more obvious and irritating that this is ignored/disregarded with every new FE.
6.5/10
I'mma go do it on a SC/CSV Scimmi now, just because you said "non-FaW"....
Just realised that martok will be an absolute nightmare on console with how buggy aimed targetting is.
My f2p is in a command cruiser and thanks to having played the mission once already before them I actually swapped the omnis to the front and arrays and torp to the rear. Other than that beam overload and spread 3 was kept.
Phased quantum did well but I'd assume that the grav torp from dyson rep might be pretty good as well. Proximity to swarmers could make plasmas more than just a bit problematic.
That's a point actually. That whole nuke stuff without explaining ourselves was silly along with the even sillier "told ya so" after the reveal was even sillier. If you'd bothered to explain in the first place Mr Kethi, you wouldn't be nursing a load of wounds and wouldn't have lost most of your fleet to me. Have we not shown ourselves more than capable by now? Nope, we'll just continue nuking stuff causing all manner of problems for us instead.
Oh and Tony Todd trying to one up himself on being over-dramatic is always entertaining, just a good thing he couldn't employ his usual vocabulary.
As a point, the Tzenkethi have absolutely NO interest in explaining themselves to "weak" species. As far as they were concerned, we'd just be a liability. Regardless of our past accomplishments.
Despite the fact we kicked their bootys hard in every encounter, good call 'Kethi. Not to mention they had considerable numerical advantage most of the time (cryptic loves a bit of quantity these days). Even once we beat the Admiral he was still defiant.
Guess we can put that down to brawn over brains. Not a thinking species.
With regards to plasma, they work just fine without too much splash damage. Then again I'm at full throttle at all times.
I really enjoyed the episode. It had a definite Klingon feel to it that my KDF tac liked. I was puzzled about one thing however. When did Rodek start referring to himself as Kurn? I know Martok said in a previous episode that he would explain everything but I don't remember him actually explaining it to Kurn. Am I missing something? I was away for a few weeks but I have not missed a single episode.
I really enjoyed the episode. It had a definite Klingon feel to it that my KDF tac liked. I was puzzled about one thing however. When did Rodek start referring to himself as Kurn? I know Martok said in a previous episode that he would explain everything but I don't remember him actually explaining it to Kurn. Am I missing something? I was away for a few weeks but I have not missed a single episode.
I noticed that as well, but I have missed a couple of Martok episodes, so I figured it was something which was refered to in them... Interesting if it wasn't explained though
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
XIV gear and Epic consoles, and you're giving it the "I don't know why someone thinks I have good DSP..." routine??
Universal consoles found on ships when you buy them are always epic. What I'm saying is I have no "Vulnerability"-based fleet consoles or energy-specific-enhancing tac console like phaser relay or antiproton mag regulator.
Ran it on my rommie and t'laru and the swarmers weren't too problematic.
Wonderful bug happened with one of the leapy tzenkethi, obviously taking a leaf out of the la forge guide to ground combat, got their head stuck in the ceiling and hung there while my boffs killed him.
Shame that the admirals text doesn't reflect that its a romulan facing him, wouldn't surely have been all that hard to alter the lines just a small amount even for a more direct mockery of what became of the star empire.
Comments
This was maybe most annoying in the boss battle on the bridge, where the Tzenkethi leader would go pound Martok into a corner, every so often turning around to hop up and down on me like the Winter Invasion Yeti. Maybe I just don't do enough ground DPS to aggro the guy. Tho', like others have already said, it would also be nice if you could talk the guy down or something. Be more Trekkish if you could, anyway.
On a more serious note, the maps were pretty enough, though it seems like you can run a little ways outside the window on the Tzenkethi bridge. While this undeniably enhanced the view of Bajor and DS9 a wee bit, it did seem like a questionable design choice on the part of the Tzenkethi shipwrights. The efforts to give the mission an epic final battle feel were appreciated, though I don't really think they were as effective as the Battle of Sol in "Surface Tension." The surprise guest at the end was a nice touch and I'm hoping the character will be showing up again.
Maybe it was playing on "Advanced" instead of "Elite," but the swarmers were a little... underwhelming, to be honest. I dunno, maybe they'd be harder if I were flying a glass cannon instead of a brick, but the most noticeable effect I saw was that I sometimes had to bump up the juice to my rear shield.
I feel bad slagging this mission. Normally I'd keep it pretty much to myself, but I guess this mission had a lot of promise and the overall storyline, while not as strong as some past ones, has been decent enough. The general quality of the arc so far had given me hope it would be more than just riding a rail while watching a name-level NPC who was out of bubblegum running in front of me and practically soloing the mission. Unlike previous missions with a VIP unkillable named NPC, "Scylla and Charybdis" felt like playing a D&D module where the DM thinks he's supposed to also be running his own PC. "Stand back, Martok will thrash them!" The devs might look back at what they did so well in "A Step Between Stars," where Tuvok was a useful ally that you felt you were helping, not the dominating star of the show while the player's character is relegated to bumbling sidekick. I definitely want to emphasize, too, that part of the disappointment is due to the high expectations engendered by the general high quality of STO's story arc missions.
I had the same observation with a normal sized captain, so probably WAD.
As for the surprise guest at the end: the sound quality indeed made it seem more like cut out of some other footage than specifically recorded here. However, if it should evolve into a good contribution to the arc, I think we will get better.
As for the difficulty personally I didn't find it way too easy, but then I understand that not every person in the game has an optimizied build and a T6 ship nor are everyone willing to do insanely difficult combat for a story mission.
The difficulty level was pitched nicely...all good and thanks to the various developers involved.
But without spoilering, the 2nd part made the episode better. The explaining of the crystals makes sense why the Tzenketi do what they do. And the our help at the end made me smile, and as a cherry on the top of this dessert, that new from our allies, made me shout out loud a cheer. Looking forward to the follow up.
"Anyaway, we don't often see a sense of humor in Section 31."
It can't be considered high compared to what others can do with a build like that:
or I found a special efficient build without even trying.
Last time I posted a screenshot of one of my ships' gear (which wasn't even the point, it was to show a quirk in the numbers of something, IIRC), someone said, paraphrased, "that poor molested Bugship, this is so sad to see such an abominable build on it"
... this isn't a video-game, no, not at all.
I also found that Martok got in my way many times as well. But he's a Klingon, they live for battle and he must have wanted all the glory. Ah well, I just threw what kit powers I could and let the Martok and my BOFFs shoot them.
Still, it was an enjoyable romp, especially when I need to murder scores of ships for fun. The Raiders went down like mosquitoes in a bug zapper, though I will admit that they put up a good fight when there were a f-ton of them all around.
I'll be playing it at least once a week to get the Bajoran ship goodies to go with the ship I'm trying to 'earn'.
Noticed it happen and flew well beyond 15k from them and the graphic effect just became more and more stretched.
Martok was great, as expected.
[redacted] makes an appearance!
The two things preventing this from getting a 10/10 are
1. It felt like the space battles were built around FAW (as is usually the case). Using a FAW build made it ridiculously easy, but a cannon/torpedo build felt tedious and annoying.
2. Martok talked to my Klingons the same way as my joined Trill. There were two very noticeable cringe dialog moments. "You fight like a Klingon" ugh. And my Klingons have to ask about the Hur'q(!) right about the time you hear about how every Klingon would love to fight them.
Not everyone is using a FED BFAW character, guys. It'd be nice if that would be acknowledged, and it gets a tad more obvious and irritating that this is ignored/disregarded with every new FE.
6.5/10
IMO, anything above VR Mk XII (ie standard game rewards) shows a deliberate effort to improve/focus on performance areas, so it's no surprize when such gear is more than sufficient, for PvE content
This was what I ran the mission with first time (AoY tac)
While I wouldn't go so far as to call the content 'difficult', there were a few moments when things got a bit tense, and in one toe-to-toe slugging match with one of those Big Tzenkethi ships (I forget the name), they won...
I'm looking forward to seeing how different builds and different characters cope with the episode
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
The transwarp button on the featured episode tab doesn't work?
But other than those things, I did really enjoy the space combat scenes, as well as the familiar faces who returned (I would have preferred more Geordi and more Kuumaarke and less Martok)
I also really like the visual effect which the shield gives ships
It's a mission I'll enjoy replaying for the rest of the set, and as 'something to do', but there were definitely aspects of the presentation, which I disliked, as much as I liked everything else...
Overall score, 8/10
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
So far I didn't enjoy much of anything involving the Tzenkethi. Hurrdurr, we're nuking entire planets and we can't be bothered to explain why we're doing this, even though it would only take a second. Because "we're not open to diplomacy and we'd rather fight the entire population of a planet than at least make an attempt at explaining ourselves". Except for that one nice Tzenkethi who is unlike anybody else in her entire species and that one "Oh look, these guys don't fight so bad" moment where they help save a colony. What is this, Star Trek or a Saturday morning cartoon show? These guys are absolute weaksauce. Space stations moving all over the place and helpful Dominion ex machina with a crappy audio recording from DS9, because that stuff wasn't creepy enough in the 23rd century content. And people getting blown up left, right and center by the relatively harmless zerg. Sorry, hur'q.
And now I gotta wait a week to replay this exact same 15 minute mission again in order to get the next reward item. And again. And again. Because let's milk the absolute TRIBBLE out of this small bit of new content.
Oh and Tony Todd trying to one up himself on being over-dramatic is always entertaining, just a good thing he couldn't employ his usual vocabulary.
That gear shown, is the best gear I have on that character. That output (I don't know what it is, I don't parse) is the best they can currently do. With that gear, I found the episode a fun and fairly easy challenge (except for that one time of getting blown up) so anyone with XIV gear, is going to find it easier than I did, and they shouldn't be surprized that they find it easy, because their gear, is better than what the episode requires
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
As a point, the Tzenkethi have absolutely NO interest in explaining themselves to "weak" species. As far as they were concerned, we'd just be a liability. Regardless of our past accomplishments.
My character Tsin'xing
My f2p is in a command cruiser and thanks to having played the mission once already before them I actually swapped the omnis to the front and arrays and torp to the rear. Other than that beam overload and spread 3 was kept.
Phased quantum did well but I'd assume that the grav torp from dyson rep might be pretty good as well. Proximity to swarmers could make plasmas more than just a bit problematic.
Despite the fact we kicked their bootys hard in every encounter, good call 'Kethi. Not to mention they had considerable numerical advantage most of the time (cryptic loves a bit of quantity these days). Even once we beat the Admiral he was still defiant.
Guess we can put that down to brawn over brains. Not a thinking species.
With regards to plasma, they work just fine without too much splash damage. Then again I'm at full throttle at all times.
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Wonderful bug happened with one of the leapy tzenkethi, obviously taking a leaf out of the la forge guide to ground combat, got their head stuck in the ceiling and hung there while my boffs killed him.
Shame that the admirals text doesn't reflect that its a romulan facing him, wouldn't surely have been all that hard to alter the lines just a small amount even for a more direct mockery of what became of the star empire.