I still prefer to do two patrol runs. In most cases I can get two runs of the patrols (playing the witch patrol) done before some groups can do the one TFO especially if you have players that don't fight the skeletons in the light or don't activate the switches in the last boss fight. Plus, if you switch characters between runs you get 2k dilithium ore total instead of if I remember correctly 480. Yes, you earn more marks running the TFO, however.
I still prefer to do two patrol runs. In most cases I can get two runs of the patrols (playing the witch patrol) done before some groups can do the one TFO especially if you have players that don't fight the skeletons in the light or don't activate the switches in the last boss fight. Plus, if you switch characters between runs you get 2k dilithium ore total instead of if I remember correctly 480. Yes, you earn more marks running the TFO, however.
I do exactly the same, was so glad they brought the patrols in rather than having to do the TFO. Got tedious fairly fast that first year, dealing with people not getting it or wandering off doing something else. I get frustrated with groups at the best of times and this one just exacerbated it.
As for a space TFO or Patrol I'd love one but can see that it would not be straightforward as Catspaw was the only really spooky, rather than out and out horror, episode. They would have to craft something totally new, not that Cryptic have never done that before.
Could do something like a Space Biathlon TFO for multiple people, where you are racing against Trelane in a ghostly Space Galleon from point to point, arriving to deal with enemies of different strengths at check a few check points. Him cheating all the while. And a Patrol where you are dealing with a more puzzle element, maybe a maze where Gothos is chasing you, simple Simon targets. Or something.
Why Trelane? He has the same feel as the Old Ones, similar aesthetic, they use a technological base for their powers, Trelane's mirror and the Old One's Transmuter. Make the Old Ones his parents and he is the one who has put the Devidians up to kidnapping them so he can play a bit makes sense and ties both sides together.
I still prefer to do two patrol runs. In most cases I can get two runs of the patrols (playing the witch patrol) done before some groups can do the one TFO especially if you have players that don't fight the skeletons in the light or don't activate the switches in the last boss fight. Plus, if you switch characters between runs you get 2k dilithium ore total instead of if I remember correctly 480. Yes, you earn more marks running the TFO, however.
I do exactly the same, was so glad they brought the patrols in rather than having to do the TFO. Got tedious fairly fast that first year, dealing with people not getting it or wandering off doing something else. I get frustrated with groups at the best of times and this one just exacerbated it.
As for a space TFO or Patrol I'd love one but can see that it would not be straightforward as Catspaw was the only really spooky, rather than out and out horror, episode. They would have to craft something totally new, not that Cryptic have never done that before.
Could do something like a Space Biathlon TFO for multiple people, where you are racing against Trelane in a ghostly Space Galleon from point to point, arriving to deal with enemies of different strengths at check a few check points. Him cheating all the while. And a Patrol where you are dealing with a more puzzle element, maybe a maze where Gothos is chasing you, simple Simon targets. Or something.
Why Trelane? He has the same feel as the Old Ones, similar aesthetic, they use a technological base for their powers, Trelane's mirror and the Old One's Transmuter. Make the Old Ones his parents and he is the one who has put the Devidians up to kidnapping them so he can play a bit makes sense and ties both sides together.
I usually do the TFO because in an MMO people are supposed to work together and it gets tedious doing solo patrols every day without the sideshow of seeing what screwy things the people do in the TFO. I am also one of those weird roleplayers who look at backgrounds while waiting for the start to get a feel for the "cast" of the adventure, though it generally means just a quick skim instead of a full read (assuming anyone on the team even has a background written) so admittedly that sideshow effect might not apply to the majority I suppose.
By " wandering off doing something else" are you talking about the people who try to make sure the secondary objectives are done instead of just charging down the shortest path to the end of the TFO? Cats Tale has the secondary of finding all the cloaked cats, and a tertiary of lighting all of the candles that can cause people to "wander off" to do them (or in some cases to make sure they have been done by others, like the cat on the stairs just before the Alchemy room and the one in the spider room on the far side across from the door you enter from). Really, some people prefer a perfect score over a sloppy speed-run.
Trelain would be great for a temporal scenario meant for TOS or SNW, I am not so sure he would fit right in a Halloween one since his aesthetics are totally different (Trelain has that "Victorian fop" aesthetic instead of a 'spooky' Halloween one). After some annoying 'tests' of the player character in an introductory mission he could be cast as the equivalent of Daniels but on a crosstime level (mixed with a dash of Q-style mischief of course) if the devs want to run STO in a way that would put the SNW, TOS, TNG-to-2409, and possibly the DSC far future eras on a reasonably even footing so all could be played as paradox-avoiding parallel timelines instead of the boring, way overused "holodeck mission" format they have used so far.
The Ancients in STO are supposed to be very advanced material aliens (from the TOS episode Catspaw) whereas Trelain was an energy being (similar to the Ascended in Stargate, or the Organians in Trek) who (at least in theory) used an incredibly advanced piece of tech as a sort of crutch to make his magic-like tricks easier.
While the aliens STO calls the Ancients did something similar with the transmuter, the difference is that they were entirely dependent upon in it (even as far as life support on class M worlds), while Trelain apparently only used the mirror as a focus or amplifier since he was capable of continuing his actions without it and only stopped when his parents intervened.
By " wandering off doing something else" are you talking about the people who try to make sure the secondary objectives are done instead of just charging down the shortest path to the end of the TFO? Cats Tale has the secondary of finding all the cloaked cats, and a tertiary of lighting all of the candles that can cause people to "wander off" to do them (or in some cases to make sure they have been done by others, like the cat on the stairs just before the Alchemy room and the one in the spider room on the far side across from the door you enter from). Really, some people prefer a perfect score over a sloppy speed-run.
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By " wandering off doing something else" are you talking about the people who try to make sure the secondary objectives are done instead of just charging down the shortest path to the end of the TFO? Cats Tale has the secondary of finding all the cloaked cats, and a tertiary of lighting all of the candles that can cause people to "wander off" to do them (or in some cases to make sure they have been done by others, like the cat on the stairs just before the Alchemy room and the one in the spider room on the far side across from the door you enter from). Really, some people prefer a perfect score over a sloppy speed-run.
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Me too, if I decide to do the TFO, I like getting a perfect score as well. I don't need a speed run, but I don't want a run that takes forever because people don't know the mechanics of the mission and just keeps shooting and all you see is "Immune" floating above the mobs head.
I never knew their were objectives for doing all those things.
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The more I play this event the more I am convinced its not random which room you get sent to. Been watching my actions and playing the exact same way every run and I am now on 99% Alchemy room as well as 0% Spider room. Which would not happen if its random given that 4 people end up outside the Alchemy room and only 1 person inside along with how many runs I have done.
The more I play this event the more I am convinced its not random which room you get sent to.
So, what's the theory for getting sent to the Alchemy room?
We can try testing it to find out if it truly works...
Assuming its not a weird bug. My best guess is one these things.
Its seems unlikely but I noticed I tend to open the doors and go though the doors first. Potentially the trigger might be linked to door access though I doubt it.
It might be linked to skeleton and/or all NPC kills. Typically I kill 70 NPC's while the average teammate kills less then 15 each.
It might be linked to damage. Typical I run at 350+ DPS while the average teammate is under 50k dps.
It might be linked to immune damage. Seems unlikely but when a Skeleton is immune I more often then not do not fire. This leads to teammates getting more ticks worth of wasted file on immune skeletons. Like the doorway ideas I doubt its this.
Lastly and I doubt this one as well but I tend to tank around 7.2k DPS from the NPC's while a typical teammate only tanks 2k DPS from the NPC's.
What I have ruled out is its 100% not interacting with cats, lights, talking to NPCs or interacting with objects excluding doors.
My working idea what ever the trigger is the lowest two people end up with the spiders, the middle two people end up with the books and the person with the most triggers ends up solo in the Alchemy room. The reason I think this is 99% of my runs are the Alchemy room and the only two times I ended up in the library was when I distracted in real life so not destroying skeletons or running though doors. Never seen the Spider room in a TFO run in years.
I guess the best way to test this is to do a TFO and not fire main weapons, not use kit modules, hang back and not open or go though doors first at least until after the 3 witches are dead. If this constantly avoids the Alchemy room and puts us in the Spider room we can then narrow down the trigger.
Could also be linked to career.
Usually run on my engineer main and i cannot remember having ever seen the "Spider room" as some of you name it.
I usually get either library or the cauldron.
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.
Could also be linked to career.
Usually run on my engineer main and i cannot remember having ever seen the "Spider room" as some of you name it.
I usually get either library or the cauldron.
I tried testing yesterday and no matter what I did I couldn't get into the spider room. Didn't fire weapons, didn't interact with anything, didn't use modules or kill anything. So much for that idea.
Still stuck in Alchemy/Cauldron room 99% of the time. Also an Engineer.
Inquiring minds have inquired, and I'm told that this is set up to be truly random. There is no trigger that sends you to a particular room.
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I enjoyed the Halloween Event, and thanks to the devs for keeping Hearts and Minds up for the entirety of the event (even thought it started on the 13th and not when the event itself started). I hope the devs take this request to heart and keep Hearts and Minds active for the entirety of the Halloween Events to come.
Must be some sort of wired bug in the random check that is not being random like it should.
I wouldn't be too sure of that. We humans are rubbish at being random and perceiving randomness. Computers, however, are pretty good at random.
You've a 1 in 5 chance of being dropped into the Alchemy room each run. If you're there 5 days in a row, your chance of being there doesn't go down.
Another example to think about is the famous three-door probability problem:
Doors A, B and C have prizes behind them. One has a sheep, one has a cow, and the third a brand new car.
The probability is 1 in 3 that you can win the car.
Suppose you pick door C, but door A is opened to reveal the cow.
Do you now stick with door C, or switch to door B?
Because there's two doors left, you may think we have a 1 in 2, or 50/50 chance of winning the car.
However, you picked door C at a chance of 1 in 3; the other two doors are the remaining 2 in 3, so switching to door B doubles your chance of winning the car.
It's not an example or randomness, but it is a good example of how we humans are not that great at probability and chance.
And, by extension, randomness.
- - - - I n f e r i o r i t y - C o m p l e x - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Must be some sort of wired bug in the random check that is not being random like it should.
I wouldn't be too sure of that. We humans are rubbish at being random and perceiving randomness. Computers, however, are pretty good at random.
You've a 1 in 5 chance of being dropped into the Alchemy room each run. If you're there 5 days in a row, your chance of being there doesn't go down.
Another example to think about is the famous three-door probability problem:
Doors A, B and C have prizes behind them. One has a sheep, one has a cow, and the third a brand new car.
The probability is 1 in 3 that you can win the car.
Suppose you pick door C, but door A is opened to reveal the cow.
Do you now stick with door C, or switch to door B?
Because there's two doors left, you may think we have a 1 in 2, or 50/50 chance of winning the car.
However, you picked door C at a chance of 1 in 3; the other two doors are the remaining 2 in 3, so switching to door B doubles your chance of winning the car.
It's not an example or randomness, but it is a good example of how we humans are not that great at probability and chance.
And, by extension, randomness.
While I agree humans are rubbish at random and perceiving random this doesn't feel like that is the case here.
If it was working correctly we would expect it to average out over time for the Alchemy room to be the rarest room of all with 20% appearance rate give or take a little. While the other two rooms would be more common with a 41.67% appearance rate each. Combined there is a 83.34% chance to get any room apart from Alchemy so to get 95% to 98% Alchemy room appearance and a 0% spider room appearance would be near impossible over a large amount of runs.
This strongly points towards there being something wrong with the random check. To never see the Spider room in over 2 years of running the event constantly and a 98% or what ever it works out appearance of the Alchemy room feel very wrong to me. If I had only done 4 or 5 runs I would put it down to fluke but we are talking lots of runs over years.
To never see something with a 41.67% chance of appearing after two or more years doesn't feel right to me for a correctly working random check.
By that thinking, then I should have a greater chance of ending up in the spider room, but for me it is the rarest room to get. I'm much more likely to end up in the alchemy room.
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By that thinking, then I should have a greater chance of ending up in the spider room, but for me it is the rarest room to get. I'm much more likely to end up in the alchemy room.
That's why I think something odd is going off with the random chance. If we had some sort of 5 sided dice. We should get 2 roles that put us in the spider room, 2 roles that end up in the book room and 1 role that ends up in the Alchemy room.
Or another way to put it 4 players end up outside the Alchemy room and only 1 player ends up inside the Alchemy room so it should be by far be the rarest room to see. Yet there seems to be a pattern where some players are ending up almost exclusively in the spider room and other players are ending up almost exclusively in the Alchemy room.
Just finished my last runs of the event for this cycle and yet again I failed to get into the spider room. Not once this year or last year. Pretty sure I had the same problem 3 years back as well.
Comments
I do exactly the same, was so glad they brought the patrols in rather than having to do the TFO. Got tedious fairly fast that first year, dealing with people not getting it or wandering off doing something else. I get frustrated with groups at the best of times and this one just exacerbated it.
As for a space TFO or Patrol I'd love one but can see that it would not be straightforward as Catspaw was the only really spooky, rather than out and out horror, episode. They would have to craft something totally new, not that Cryptic have never done that before.
Could do something like a Space Biathlon TFO for multiple people, where you are racing against Trelane in a ghostly Space Galleon from point to point, arriving to deal with enemies of different strengths at check a few check points. Him cheating all the while. And a Patrol where you are dealing with a more puzzle element, maybe a maze where Gothos is chasing you, simple Simon targets. Or something.
Why Trelane? He has the same feel as the Old Ones, similar aesthetic, they use a technological base for their powers, Trelane's mirror and the Old One's Transmuter. Make the Old Ones his parents and he is the one who has put the Devidians up to kidnapping them so he can play a bit makes sense and ties both sides together.
I usually do the TFO because in an MMO people are supposed to work together and it gets tedious doing solo patrols every day without the sideshow of seeing what screwy things the people do in the TFO. I am also one of those weird roleplayers who look at backgrounds while waiting for the start to get a feel for the "cast" of the adventure, though it generally means just a quick skim instead of a full read (assuming anyone on the team even has a background written) so admittedly that sideshow effect might not apply to the majority I suppose.
By " wandering off doing something else" are you talking about the people who try to make sure the secondary objectives are done instead of just charging down the shortest path to the end of the TFO? Cats Tale has the secondary of finding all the cloaked cats, and a tertiary of lighting all of the candles that can cause people to "wander off" to do them (or in some cases to make sure they have been done by others, like the cat on the stairs just before the Alchemy room and the one in the spider room on the far side across from the door you enter from). Really, some people prefer a perfect score over a sloppy speed-run.
Trelain would be great for a temporal scenario meant for TOS or SNW, I am not so sure he would fit right in a Halloween one since his aesthetics are totally different (Trelain has that "Victorian fop" aesthetic instead of a 'spooky' Halloween one). After some annoying 'tests' of the player character in an introductory mission he could be cast as the equivalent of Daniels but on a crosstime level (mixed with a dash of Q-style mischief of course) if the devs want to run STO in a way that would put the SNW, TOS, TNG-to-2409, and possibly the DSC far future eras on a reasonably even footing so all could be played as paradox-avoiding parallel timelines instead of the boring, way overused "holodeck mission" format they have used so far.
The Ancients in STO are supposed to be very advanced material aliens (from the TOS episode Catspaw) whereas Trelain was an energy being (similar to the Ascended in Stargate, or the Organians in Trek) who (at least in theory) used an incredibly advanced piece of tech as a sort of crutch to make his magic-like tricks easier.
While the aliens STO calls the Ancients did something similar with the transmuter, the difference is that they were entirely dependent upon in it (even as far as life support on class M worlds), while Trelain apparently only used the mirror as a focus or amplifier since he was capable of continuing his actions without it and only stopped when his parents intervened.
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Me too, if I decide to do the TFO, I like getting a perfect score as well. I don't need a speed run, but I don't want a run that takes forever because people don't know the mechanics of the mission and just keeps shooting and all you see is "Immune" floating above the mobs head.
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We can try testing it to find out if it truly works...
Its seems unlikely but I noticed I tend to open the doors and go though the doors first. Potentially the trigger might be linked to door access though I doubt it.
It might be linked to skeleton and/or all NPC kills. Typically I kill 70 NPC's while the average teammate kills less then 15 each.
It might be linked to damage. Typical I run at 350+ DPS while the average teammate is under 50k dps.
It might be linked to immune damage. Seems unlikely but when a Skeleton is immune I more often then not do not fire. This leads to teammates getting more ticks worth of wasted file on immune skeletons. Like the doorway ideas I doubt its this.
Lastly and I doubt this one as well but I tend to tank around 7.2k DPS from the NPC's while a typical teammate only tanks 2k DPS from the NPC's.
What I have ruled out is its 100% not interacting with cats, lights, talking to NPCs or interacting with objects excluding doors.
My working idea what ever the trigger is the lowest two people end up with the spiders, the middle two people end up with the books and the person with the most triggers ends up solo in the Alchemy room. The reason I think this is 99% of my runs are the Alchemy room and the only two times I ended up in the library was when I distracted in real life so not destroying skeletons or running though doors. Never seen the Spider room in a TFO run in years.
I guess the best way to test this is to do a TFO and not fire main weapons, not use kit modules, hang back and not open or go though doors first at least until after the 3 witches are dead. If this constantly avoids the Alchemy room and puts us in the Spider room we can then narrow down the trigger.
Usually run on my engineer main and i cannot remember having ever seen the "Spider room" as some of you name it.
I usually get either library or the cauldron.
Still stuck in Alchemy/Cauldron room 99% of the time. Also an Engineer.
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Thank you once again.
You've a 1 in 5 chance of being dropped into the Alchemy room each run. If you're there 5 days in a row, your chance of being there doesn't go down.
Another example to think about is the famous three-door probability problem:
Doors A, B and C have prizes behind them. One has a sheep, one has a cow, and the third a brand new car.
The probability is 1 in 3 that you can win the car.
Suppose you pick door C, but door A is opened to reveal the cow.
Do you now stick with door C, or switch to door B?
Because there's two doors left, you may think we have a 1 in 2, or 50/50 chance of winning the car.
However, you picked door C at a chance of 1 in 3; the other two doors are the remaining 2 in 3, so switching to door B doubles your chance of winning the car.
It's not an example or randomness, but it is a good example of how we humans are not that great at probability and chance.
And, by extension, randomness.
If it was working correctly we would expect it to average out over time for the Alchemy room to be the rarest room of all with 20% appearance rate give or take a little. While the other two rooms would be more common with a 41.67% appearance rate each. Combined there is a 83.34% chance to get any room apart from Alchemy so to get 95% to 98% Alchemy room appearance and a 0% spider room appearance would be near impossible over a large amount of runs.
This strongly points towards there being something wrong with the random check. To never see the Spider room in over 2 years of running the event constantly and a 98% or what ever it works out appearance of the Alchemy room feel very wrong to me. If I had only done 4 or 5 runs I would put it down to fluke but we are talking lots of runs over years.
To never see something with a 41.67% chance of appearing after two or more years doesn't feel right to me for a correctly working random check.
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Or another way to put it 4 players end up outside the Alchemy room and only 1 player ends up inside the Alchemy room so it should be by far be the rarest room to see. Yet there seems to be a pattern where some players are ending up almost exclusively in the spider room and other players are ending up almost exclusively in the Alchemy room.
Just finished my last runs of the event for this cycle and yet again I failed to get into the spider room. Not once this year or last year. Pretty sure I had the same problem 3 years back as well.