My experience today was totally different - I've never found any of the minigames, but today (again) I got a Tier IV reward, around 300 XP , no dil, no special items. But the map turned blue and some dreadnoughts came out. Two went down before the timer ran out, we didn't get to the third. With more people, it would have been feasible I guess.
That is the problem, not enough people go there to actually get much done. Maybe they should aggressively put up endeavors that are best done there (like killing Tzenkethi ships or something) for a while until people get used to going there again. Or even better perhaps would be to make it more solo friendly in addition to its normal stuff though I am not sure if the scaling would stretch across the range that far.
I would say that putting some endeavor missions that have you go into the battleground, maybe not specifically Tzenkethi ships needed being destroyed, but more some of the higher difficulty endeavors that have you needing to go to the different battlegrounds and completing the capture zones (maybe needing a certain number of points captured, or needing to complete specific capture points.). Though I also always was more for giving different form of content like stfs, battlegroounds, and endeavors having unique rewards that makes doing that content feel more rewarding even with the basic rewards being semi unbalanced in the payout to time ratio.
"Destroy 10 (20, 30) Tzenkethi ships at Gon'Cra" would be good enough, I think, to get the zone going again. Maybe "complete 1 battlezone" for a higher difficulty endeavour.
The problem I see is that most people, and this includes me, don't know that you need to do *other* things besides shooting at the enemy to capture a point. Only when I started "stealing Tzenkethi data" did other people join in because they could see the status bar floating above my ship. Maybe a VO that tells you what to do (like in the Badlands bz) would help? I'm still looking for the minigames mentioned in this thread. And I only found out about stealing data when I got close to a "Going critical" interaction arrow by sheer luck and curiosity.
I could see them doing some endeavors that have you go to the different battlegrounds to complete 3/6/12 maybe of the different point types. Like finishing three of the asteroid points in the Tzenkethi zone, or or completing the generator points in the dyson zone, as than the players have a better reason to learn how to do the different point types. Just making the endeavor kill a specific number of ships, or dealing/healing a specific amount of damage of a given type makes it more worth it for players to spam damage into enemies over learning the content.
"Destroy 10 (20, 30) Tzenkethi ships at Gon'Cra" would be good enough, I think, to get the zone going again. Maybe "complete 1 battlezone" for a higher difficulty endeavour.
The problem I see is that most people, and this includes me, don't know that you need to do *other* things besides shooting at the enemy to capture a point. Only when I started "stealing Tzenkethi data" did other people join in because they could see the status bar floating above my ship. Maybe a VO that tells you what to do (like in the Badlands bz) would help? I'm still looking for the minigames mentioned in this thread. And I only found out about stealing data when I got close to a "Going critical" interaction arrow by sheer luck and curiosity.
lol I was here the other day again... green endeavor, kill 10 ships here... came saw that 3 or 4 blue the rest was red zones (total 9 people in battlezone). went the the center area with 3 zones (2 blue/1 red). hold zone for 5 mins? finish and by then... other 2 blue zones turned red. lol promptly left and did other things. got 65 lukari marks I think. the npc speech at end when capturing zone was funny as hell... congrats and alliance forces has come to hold the zone for us as we go capture other zones.
Supposed to be 15 minutes before an attempted recapture by the recent Patch Notes.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Supposed to be 15 minutes before an attempted recapture by the recent Patch Notes.
yeah and 15 mins no way is enough if you have zones that are time gated to 5 mins to hold... so you basically need 3 teams to each go and capture zones... who in there right mind would spend time here? at the end even if you flip the entire zone blue... you get 1 boss ship that rewards you 1 elite mark. and during all this you get practically no ship xp.
As a lifer from release, this is the worst battlezone in the whole game. Balancing is well off. You need an entire fleet to get it to flow correctly. This is going to be the one rep I will end up giving up on. None of it is fun. Dev's need to go play badlands and look at how battlezones can work for everyone. Not just min/maxers in a large coordinated group.
Tug of War seems to be the biggest sticking point. It's almost always the last to have a red section, so everybody goes to it, as it's the only pace to fight, but that actually makes it much harder for the allies to beat. The more players are there, the more Tzenkethi spawn, and the greater the visual clutter and graphical lag. These problems only harm the players, not the Tzenkethi, as they know where the asteroids are, and don't experience the stuttering frame rates. The result is that the more players go there, the less likely they are to win it, wasting time and watching areas fall back to the Tzenkethi.
Tug of War also has an opposite problem. When you do it solo, you can easily win, but still get a Tier I reward because not enough ships spawn for you to fight to get credit. It doesn't count successful defense or overwhelming them in the actual game of the area for your participation, making me avoid it at both extremes.
If I go there, I take one of the other two types of points if I want a reward, only looking to Tug of War as a place to kill Tzenkethi ships in a crowded instance when I have an Endeavor to do so.
This is an MMO, not a Star Trek episode simulator. That would make for a terrible game.
"Destroy 10 (20, 30) Tzenkethi ships at Gon'Cra" would be good enough, I think, to get the zone going again. Maybe "complete 1 battlezone" for a higher difficulty endeavour.
The problem I see is that most people, and this includes me, don't know that you need to do *other* things besides shooting at the enemy to capture a point. Only when I started "stealing Tzenkethi data" did other people join in because they could see the status bar floating above my ship. Maybe a VO that tells you what to do (like in the Badlands bz) would help? I'm still looking for the minigames mentioned in this thread. And I only found out about stealing data when I got close to a "Going critical" interaction arrow by sheer luck and curiosity.
If the endeavor was a general battle zone i might go for it, but if it was a specific battle zone i would most likely reroll the endeavor. It's simply due to the available time. I would have to spend the better part of a day to finish a Tzenketti or Terran battle zone.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
I can't remember a time when there were more than 2 players in the Tzenkethi Battlezone when I arrived; I just use it as a shortcut to Dranuur until my fleets get the TW conduit done. Pretty much useless, otherwise, and the Badlands aren't much better... :-|
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STO player since November 2013
I can't remember a time when there were more than 2 players in the Tzenkethi Battlezone when I arrived; I just use it as a shortcut to Dranuur until my fleets get the TW conduit done. Pretty much useless, otherwise, and the Badlands aren't much better... :-|
The problem is that Badlands IS better, and so are all the other battlezones. Gon'Cra has some serious problems that hopefully are still being worked on.
I can't remember a time when there were more than 2 players in the Tzenkethi Battlezone when I arrived; I just use it as a shortcut to Dranuur until my fleets get the TW conduit done. Pretty much useless, otherwise, and the Badlands aren't much better... :-|
Think I'd rather use Defera as the shortcut here. I'm only ever in the BZ for endeavors. Thing since they redid it, I've completed it once.
The timegating is still bad. As other have said, at 5 minutes per area, that's three areas, before you have to go back to where you started. Even the Voth Space BZ isn't that bad. That's where the difference is, and what people are complaining about. The other's, while timegated, are good to go. You can complete them with minimal people. The Tzen, you could do with 6 people, but they'd constantly have to keep circling the same three zones. The other space BZ's, can be done with 2-4 players. You might not be able to defeat the boss at the end, but you can at least get there. You can't do that with the Tzen BZ, which is why there's still a problem with it.
I can't remember a time when there were more than 2 players in the Tzenkethi Battlezone when I arrived; I just use it as a shortcut to Dranuur until my fleets get the TW conduit done. Pretty much useless, otherwise, and the Badlands aren't much better... :-|
The problem is that Badlands IS better, and so are all the other battlezones. Gon'Cra has some serious problems that hopefully are still being worked on.
The Badlands is the perfect picture of how a BZ should be made. The only problem left is that it still doesn't always give you full credit for participation in the Terran Bases in the end, I almost always get the full rewards, but usually I will fight in the bulk of the operation and get a 'Tier II' reward on 1 of the 3 bases. It's more an annoyance then anything else.
The TZ Battle Zone is obviously a lost cause. Like the rest of the player base, I have given up on it. The only reason I ever go there is for Endeavors. As soon as I get the Endeavor, I leave immediately.
We finally got the dreadnought phase triggered. All three ships were destroyed, I got zero rewards for it. Cryptic, if you're looking for old content that no longer meets your standards, this BZ should be your prime candidate. What a waste of time that thing is...
We finally got the dreadnought phase triggered. All three ships were destroyed, I got zero rewards for it. Cryptic, if you're looking for old content that no longer meets your standards, this BZ should be your prime candidate. What a waste of time that thing is...
I am pretty sure this was their last attempt at fixing it. It's been worked on before and all their attempts to fix it have failed.
I don't expect them to make any further attempts, the zone is a total loss.
The zone is a lost cause indeed. It still barely functions and requires an entire instance of heavily coordinated players to push through to the final stage.
Ridiculously fast respawns at the points means that someone pretty much has to hang back at each one to play guard duty and that means that person gets sod all rewards for most of the zone. That's hardly a decent design for a battlezone.
The only really reason to go there is to run endeavors or to test builds you'll be using against Tzenkethi elsewhere as there's enough ships to get a good test fight going.
The zone is a lost cause indeed. It still barely functions and requires an entire instance of heavily coordinated players to push through to the final stage.
Ridiculously fast respawns at the points means that someone pretty much has to hang back at each one to play guard duty and that means that person gets sod all rewards for most of the zone.
And then even if you do all that, you have a pretty large chance that it won't give you the reward once you're done.
Was in there yesterday for an endeavour, I was all alone in there, couldn't find any ships to kill, then suddenly my ship warped out and warped back in, right into the middle of a furball with lots of other players, got the endeavour, but still have no idea WTF happened to cause me to warp out and back in like that.
I don't know what is so difficult for them to give out the Rewards at the end of the Dreadnought Phase like they do with every other Space Battle Zone. If it is a DPS thing that's set too high, just lower the G*d-d*mned number already.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
the timer to trigger the bosses is way to short... you often dont have a full zone of folks. also they need to make it locations more obvious. you have other parts marked on map when it has nothing to do with the bosses. best I have seen is being able to kill 2 of the 3 boss ships. you basically need 3 groups to go to each the bosses to start the process of dragging those 4 pylons out. if you do it one boss at a time... given the time counting down and the time gate to trigger the boss... your SOL.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,582Community Moderator
Noticed a possible bug. The nodes you gotta pull out to actually GET at the Dreads... were insta resetting. I don't know if it was a one time issue limited to one instance or something more.
I've actually succefully completed the zon once now. I think we got one or two Dreadnoughts.
It didn't feel worth the effort. The second time I tried it, it was the same problem as previous times - zones would flip while the other zones were still not completed. And I woul say the main reason this is such a big issue is really the time gating of all the missions. In the Undine Battleones, you actually have points that you can flip more quickly, and that gives people more freedom to respond to other zones flipping back, and of course also reduces the time needed overall to flip the complete zone.
Maybe one fix would be - forget the whole zone-flipping for this battle zone. Once you've done a zone, you've done it for good. Let the zone only reset after the Dreadnought Phase is completed. We've already spend 15 minutes on getting different points to flip in the first place, no need to drag it out even further.
And before you do another zone, understand why the Undine Zone and the Badlands work, and why the Tzenkethi doesn't. Because when the Battle Zones work, they are really great. Enjoyable fun, you can join when you like and help advance it and there is a good chance you even see the final phase and make some Elite Marks. It's more flexible than queues IMO, and more varied. So I really want more. But they can't be Tzenkethi-Like Zones.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The best zone imo is the Voth ground BZ because it's straight forward what you need to do, it responds well to the number of players at each point (becoming more intense as more players join in) and the rewards are decent. Also it does have mechanics to flip points back to the Voth but they are manageable and don't interfere with the overall feeling of the zone.
Plus there are lots of little "missions/quests" dotted around the zone to complete too; protecting science teams, capturing Swarmers, killing Voth commanders etc.
All in all it's a way more enjoyable experience than many of the space zones. The Badlands is pretty good but every point just feels like more of a timegate than anything else (apart from the one with the 3 lasers shooting into the middle which can be done pretty fast).
The best zone imo is the Voth ground BZ because it's straight forward what you need to do, it responds well to the number of players at each point (becoming more intense as more players join in) and the rewards are decent. Also it does have mechanics to flip points back to the Voth but they are manageable and don't interfere with the overall feeling of the zone.
Plus there are lots of little "missions/quests" dotted around the zone to complete too; protecting science teams, capturing Swarmers, killing Voth commanders etc.
All in all it's a way more enjoyable experience than many of the space zones. The Badlands is pretty good but every point just feels like more of a timegate than anything else (apart from the one with the 3 lasers shooting into the middle which can be done pretty fast).
Same with the Voth Space BZ. No bosses to hunt down. But, aside fromt eh zone capture, there are side quests you can do around each of the towers.
Same with the Voth Space BZ. No bosses to hunt down. But, aside fromt eh zone capture, there are side quests you can do around each of the towers.
Voth BZ also does not require you to capture all points and keep em blue. You just need to capture enough and if a zone flips it flips... but if you re-capture you get additional credit to move the bar progression to spawn the bosses.
A transwarp option or a shortcut via the Iconian Gateway would encourage me to visit more often.
You get a free transwarp to Gon'cra after reaching R1 in the Lukari rep.
To be honest, and I understand this could be seen as just nitpicking, but the name of this transwarp should be the name of the battlezone to make it understandable. For the longest time, I had no idea that I even had a transwarp to this area, and I honestly don't remember what clued me into realizing I did.
For the battles, I think the zone is great, but obviously as it has already been said, keeping it is a lot harder, and sometimes not really even possible. Part of the problem stems from the Tzenkethi missions being an endeavor (not the problem) so that when people have killed the number they need, they vamoose out of the area, leaving the people fighting there fending for themselves.
Fleet Admiral Duane Gundrum, U.S.S. Merrimack
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
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Recapturing/Holding on to a Point in the Voth BZ can give you a gold mine of Command Credits.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Recapturing/Holding on to a Point in the Voth BZ can give you a gold mine of Command Credits.
yeah I noticed but what good is it... you get a ton of those you can in support to hold a place but the amount of marks you get is very small at the end. if your there to just do the daily 4 quests... you dont really need to farm those credits, just playing nomally will get you all you need and then some.
It was more important before they auto divided the Credits and you had a bunch of run through mouchers scooping them up.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Comments
That is the problem, not enough people go there to actually get much done. Maybe they should aggressively put up endeavors that are best done there (like killing Tzenkethi ships or something) for a while until people get used to going there again. Or even better perhaps would be to make it more solo friendly in addition to its normal stuff though I am not sure if the scaling would stretch across the range that far.
The problem I see is that most people, and this includes me, don't know that you need to do *other* things besides shooting at the enemy to capture a point. Only when I started "stealing Tzenkethi data" did other people join in because they could see the status bar floating above my ship. Maybe a VO that tells you what to do (like in the Badlands bz) would help? I'm still looking for the minigames mentioned in this thread. And I only found out about stealing data when I got close to a "Going critical" interaction arrow by sheer luck and curiosity.
lol I was here the other day again... green endeavor, kill 10 ships here... came saw that 3 or 4 blue the rest was red zones (total 9 people in battlezone). went the the center area with 3 zones (2 blue/1 red). hold zone for 5 mins? finish and by then... other 2 blue zones turned red. lol promptly left and did other things. got 65 lukari marks I think. the npc speech at end when capturing zone was funny as hell... congrats and alliance forces has come to hold the zone for us as we go capture other zones.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
yeah and 15 mins no way is enough if you have zones that are time gated to 5 mins to hold... so you basically need 3 teams to each go and capture zones... who in there right mind would spend time here? at the end even if you flip the entire zone blue... you get 1 boss ship that rewards you 1 elite mark. and during all this you get practically no ship xp.
Tug of War also has an opposite problem. When you do it solo, you can easily win, but still get a Tier I reward because not enough ships spawn for you to fight to get credit. It doesn't count successful defense or overwhelming them in the actual game of the area for your participation, making me avoid it at both extremes.
If I go there, I take one of the other two types of points if I want a reward, only looking to Tug of War as a place to kill Tzenkethi ships in a crowded instance when I have an Endeavor to do so.
If the endeavor was a general battle zone i might go for it, but if it was a specific battle zone i would most likely reroll the endeavor. It's simply due to the available time. I would have to spend the better part of a day to finish a Tzenketti or Terran battle zone.
Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci
Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac
Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
The problem is that Badlands IS better, and so are all the other battlezones. Gon'Cra has some serious problems that hopefully are still being worked on.
Think I'd rather use Defera as the shortcut here. I'm only ever in the BZ for endeavors. Thing since they redid it, I've completed it once.
The timegating is still bad. As other have said, at 5 minutes per area, that's three areas, before you have to go back to where you started. Even the Voth Space BZ isn't that bad. That's where the difference is, and what people are complaining about. The other's, while timegated, are good to go. You can complete them with minimal people. The Tzen, you could do with 6 people, but they'd constantly have to keep circling the same three zones. The other space BZ's, can be done with 2-4 players. You might not be able to defeat the boss at the end, but you can at least get there. You can't do that with the Tzen BZ, which is why there's still a problem with it.
The Badlands is the perfect picture of how a BZ should be made. The only problem left is that it still doesn't always give you full credit for participation in the Terran Bases in the end, I almost always get the full rewards, but usually I will fight in the bulk of the operation and get a 'Tier II' reward on 1 of the 3 bases. It's more an annoyance then anything else.
The TZ Battle Zone is obviously a lost cause. Like the rest of the player base, I have given up on it. The only reason I ever go there is for Endeavors. As soon as I get the Endeavor, I leave immediately.
I am pretty sure this was their last attempt at fixing it. It's been worked on before and all their attempts to fix it have failed.
I don't expect them to make any further attempts, the zone is a total loss.
Ridiculously fast respawns at the points means that someone pretty much has to hang back at each one to play guard duty and that means that person gets sod all rewards for most of the zone. That's hardly a decent design for a battlezone.
The only really reason to go there is to run endeavors or to test builds you'll be using against Tzenkethi elsewhere as there's enough ships to get a good test fight going.
And then even if you do all that, you have a pretty large chance that it won't give you the reward once you're done.
Not hard to figure out why players don't run it.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
It didn't feel worth the effort. The second time I tried it, it was the same problem as previous times - zones would flip while the other zones were still not completed. And I woul say the main reason this is such a big issue is really the time gating of all the missions. In the Undine Battleones, you actually have points that you can flip more quickly, and that gives people more freedom to respond to other zones flipping back, and of course also reduces the time needed overall to flip the complete zone.
Maybe one fix would be - forget the whole zone-flipping for this battle zone. Once you've done a zone, you've done it for good. Let the zone only reset after the Dreadnought Phase is completed. We've already spend 15 minutes on getting different points to flip in the first place, no need to drag it out even further.
And before you do another zone, understand why the Undine Zone and the Badlands work, and why the Tzenkethi doesn't. Because when the Battle Zones work, they are really great. Enjoyable fun, you can join when you like and help advance it and there is a good chance you even see the final phase and make some Elite Marks. It's more flexible than queues IMO, and more varied. So I really want more. But they can't be Tzenkethi-Like Zones.
Plus there are lots of little "missions/quests" dotted around the zone to complete too; protecting science teams, capturing Swarmers, killing Voth commanders etc.
All in all it's a way more enjoyable experience than many of the space zones. The Badlands is pretty good but every point just feels like more of a timegate than anything else (apart from the one with the 3 lasers shooting into the middle which can be done pretty fast).
Same with the Voth Space BZ. No bosses to hunt down. But, aside fromt eh zone capture, there are side quests you can do around each of the towers.
Voth BZ also does not require you to capture all points and keep em blue. You just need to capture enough and if a zone flips it flips... but if you re-capture you get additional credit to move the bar progression to spawn the bosses.
To be honest, and I understand this could be seen as just nitpicking, but the name of this transwarp should be the name of the battlezone to make it understandable. For the longest time, I had no idea that I even had a transwarp to this area, and I honestly don't remember what clued me into realizing I did.
For the battles, I think the zone is great, but obviously as it has already been said, keeping it is a lot harder, and sometimes not really even possible. Part of the problem stems from the Tzenkethi missions being an endeavor (not the problem) so that when people have killed the number they need, they vamoose out of the area, leaving the people fighting there fending for themselves.
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
yeah I noticed but what good is it... you get a ton of those you can in support to hold a place but the amount of marks you get is very small at the end. if your there to just do the daily 4 quests... you dont really need to farm those credits, just playing nomally will get you all you need and then some.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'