PVE Story-related design flaws

casualsto

1.Unskippable Kobali Story Act on the Delta Arc
2.Delta Arc is unskippable and tied to the Iconian Arc, therefore blocking the expected progression in an inconsistent manner.

Given the fact that you do have certain priorities with S15, the most obvious fix is "Implement (back) functionality to the Skip buttons all across the board - To Do".

It looks like upon the revamping of the story arcs, something broke and instead of bug fixing and its risks, it was just left like that. The entire content excepting this is skippable and the whole concept of the Star Trek Online: Holodeck is that you basically have certain control over your PVE selection experience. Design which breaks between the Kobali act I and the Iconian Arc.

Why this is important?

Testing with a new toon which I've spoonfed with high end traits, (no reputations yet on it), colony armor, epic mk XIV weaponry and late game kit with late game kid modules. The two boffs following me also got some heavy UR weaponry mk XIV. You barely match the Vaadwaurs. The mission progress is slow and tedious and the fragmentation of these "forced" missions makes it even worse. Hands' down, a character handling its first stuff there would die continuously up to the point of giving up.

This is hindering the time and (obvious) currency (dil, zen) into the character. If the payer in the few time it has cannot enjoy the experience, but simply be against a design-wall (even worse than paywall), this is an issue.

nerfing the Vaadwaurs would not be a fix. Missions should be skippable. They're nice all integrated and fitting into the story, but perhaps at my 8th and 9th toon I don't wanna waste alot of time on playing content that is not that enjoyable and for sure not the type of obligatory content.

I hardly find this as an arguing matter and mostly a minimal fix (since presumably the functionality and wiring is already there).

I don't usually advocate for design changing, since some people put alot of work into this type of content, but we should keep in mind "It's supposed to be playable. It's supposed to be the place where you jump in. Not the login you don't do, picking Netflix or Youtube instead, because you don't wanna be force-fed with chores ingame. There's plenty of chores outside STO."

Your opinion is most welcome and your input matters.

maniac20

Well then you will hate LOTRO which is story driven and alot of content locked without playing through the earlier stuff. Barring it hasn't changed since then I haven't played in years. I don't mind the Delta stuff not being skippable. Being an MMO vet over multiple MMO's I have learned to space out characters to recover before bringing another through the content.

anodynes

Kobali Prime is incredibly easy to do with Mk XII gear, no specs, no rep traits, solo. It just requires learning to deal with Vaadwaur tactics and not over-aggroing. About the only time that I die there is when the Vaadwaur instantly respawn in an area where I've just completed one of the open missions, most notably "Trapped," the open mission at the end of "Hidden Assault." Even that surprise doesn't always happen, and when it does, it doesn't always get me. I also sometimes get taken down by the final boss in the last open world part, "The Last Stand."

That being said, I think that you should be able to skip any normal mission, with the possible exception of the ones that introduce you to new areas and don't require any combat. If it's available for one, it should be available for all.

kaithan1975

casualsto wrote: »

1.Unskippable Kobali Story Act on the Delta Arc
2.Delta Arc is unskippable and tied to the Iconian Arc, therefore blocking the expected progression in an inconsistent manner.

Given the fact that you do have certain priorities with S15, the most obvious fix is "Implement (back) functionality to the Skip buttons all across the board - To Do".

It looks like upon the revamping of the story arcs, something broke and instead of bug fixing and its risks, it was just left like that. The entire content excepting this is skippable and the whole concept of the Star Trek Online: Holodeck is that you basically have certain control over your PVE selection experience. Design which breaks between the Kobali act I and the Iconian Arc.

Why this is important?

Testing with a new toon which I've spoonfed with high end traits, (no reputations yet on it), colony armor, epic mk XIV weaponry and late game kit with late game kid modules. The two boffs following me also got some heavy UR weaponry mk XIV. You barely match the Vaadwaurs. The mission progress is slow and tedious and the fragmentation of these "forced" missions makes it even worse. Hands' down, a character handling its first stuff there would die continuously up to the point of giving up.

This is hindering the time and (obvious) currency (dil, zen) into the character. If the payer in the few time it has cannot enjoy the experience, but simply be against a design-wall (even worse than paywall), this is an issue.

nerfing the Vaadwaurs would not be a fix. Missions should be skippable. They're nice all integrated and fitting into the story, but perhaps at my 8th and 9th toon I don't wanna waste alot of time on playing content that is not that enjoyable and for sure not the type of obligatory content.

I hardly find this as an arguing matter and mostly a minimal fix (since presumably the functionality and wiring is already there).

I don't usually advocate for design changing, since some people put alot of work into this type of content, but we should keep in mind "It's supposed to be playable. It's supposed to be the place where you jump in. Not the login you don't do, picking Netflix or Youtube instead, because you don't wanna be force-fed with chores ingame. There's plenty of chores outside STO."

Your opinion is most welcome and your input matters.

Actually almost all of Delta can be skipped to get to the Iconian arc. Escalation/Kobali Front/Kobali Crisis Act I are the only ones you can't skip. But, yea, the Vaadwaur are kinda ridiculous but doable. Trying to do it with no reps, that would be daunting but then again at that point you should have reps, so in that respect you kind of gimped yourself.

leemwatson

After the first nerf bat hit Delta, it became even easier to do! I have a 7 year old PC account and started a new XB1 account, and I breezed thru the Delta Arc on my new account without issues, and without specialized equipment. The progression did get slightly messed up through the unnecessary recent revamp, and the patrol side arcs should never have been removed, and we never would have got this slight hiccup. Don't accept more than 1 ground mission on the Kobali ground arc at a time and you'll be fine with progression. It's accepting multiple missions that causes the glitch.

anodynes

I take as many as I can get at once and never get a progression glitch. There must be some other reason, like the order in which people who take a bunch of them go about completing them. I take them so that I can clean up some objectives without having to double back, like clearing the communication arrays from "Temple of My People" while I'm dealing with the devices in "The Son."

I don't see any issue with taking out the patrol wrappers, either, just a bit of a story hiccup where you meet Gaul and he mentions that you have seen what's going on on Kobali Prime just before you first go there. That's a mission order problem, though, not related to the patrols. I actually liked the patrols (one time through) for giving me a better look at what was going on in the area, too, but I would say that they're better as optional side stories than as a requirement, especially since you don't need them for level progression anymore.

I personally think that the wrappers for the Kobali Prime missions probably shouldn't have been added, given that they took away the patrol ones at the same time, and that they didn't add wrappers for the New Romulus missions, but that's just my sense of consistency nagging at me.

postagepaid

My main complaint about prime was that you got dragged away to chat with the doc just before you had the mission to unlock the transporter so when you returned you had to run all the way over once again because the previous transport was in a stupid location.

Other bug bear was they decided to base the spawn rate on a full instance of players, all actively killing, when it would never be that way even with the grind required because the xp for ground kills simply made doing so pointless and the map wasn't particularly fun since there wasn't really an overarching objective like the dyson ground bz had.