Re-ran the mission last night with a PUG and came out with a few errors
Bugs:
Disconnection not accounted for - Our team did the first room, and began to move into the second room, as we did so, the 5th DCed, and then the game began the virus upload with the 4 of us already in the room noticing the 5th DCed. The 5th player could NOT get back to us, he ended up reloading at the begining and there was a forcefield in the way at the first room. I like the attempt to keep people more grouped by forcefield control, but you must account for disconnections. Otherwise private or PUG is going to be a nightmare if there are connection issues for even a few seconds forcing a relog of someone.
No orbitals on second try of virus room - The four of us left ended up accidently all dying in this room, we respawned and began again. This time no orbitals to watch out for, just borg.
Oh and did I mention already.. Too Short and too easy? This is supposed to be a STF, and kinda a grand STF too with the queen and all... it should be harder not easier leading up to the queen. Its a "good start" but that's it.
---
"We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile."
Sincerely,
The Cube Assimilating Your Ship Right Now
Tried it in elite again. Not that diffult, no further comment on the stf itself.
One new bug: we killed the queen, she died on the ground in the middle of the room but the mission didn't complete, and the shield was still up at the entrance of the room.
Pic of the situation. We stand where the dead body of the queen is (you can see the tentacles).
It was a fun mission, very easy to do. I found no bugs in my run through of it, will run a few more times to see if I can.
My thoughts on it are as follows.
The drones at the start of the mission were very easily dispatched by engineers using mine kits and deploying mines and bombs infront of the alcoves to ambush the drones. After that it was just a matter of cleaning up the already weakend Borg.
I liked the new deadly floor of doom and mortar lock on effects, very nice. Besides having to be on the move all the time so as not to get hit by either of these, the mission overall was to easy and lacked any real challenge.
I agree with a lot of other people, this seemed way too easy for the penultimate STF.
Bias: Tac in Mk xi MACO gear. Elite STF with a pug that seemed to be at least minimally competent (so standard test server bias).
The mechanics of the whole thing:
Run in a big square, run in a little square, run up a ramp, keep moving when beams target you don't stand in giant green squares, win.
I realize in STO it's very hard to have mechanics to fights that are reasonably complicated, but the borg aren't scary, you basically just dps burn them down, and they even fall over. I'd, at a minimum, make borg adaptive to knockdown and stun effects (diminishing returns calculation probably). Maybe have the borg be somewhat unpredictable, of the 4 alcoves at each thing have some combination of 4 little borg, 2 big borg or one heavy tactical drone activate, but without knowing which one you're going to get this time. Some tension without a huge shakeup in what needs to happen.
The second room, where you have a beam target you that puts a ground aoe down you move out of, that needs to happen faster. A lot faster. Any time I'm deliberately ignoring an effect on me I'm making it more confusing that exciting. Just how much longer do I have to stand in this corner?
The last boss and her pet gorn don't seem to well, do very much. Good for me, there's something I should dps more.
I don't know here. I think part of the problem the entire ground game has is that it's not really an FPS and it's not really an RPG, and it's not all that good at either, or both. A FPS is about your ability to react to things, you see a rocket you step out of the way, you find cover, you shoot from cover, you move to confuse your adversary. In an RPG you choose what abilities will have the most effect at any given time. You can have action in an RPG and ability choices in a FPS but STO fits uncomfortably in the gap of too many abilities for an FPS, and not a sensible collection for a RPG (most of the abilities are largely orthogonal to each other).
With the borg queen in particular, if she does anything all that interesting it's buried in the visual noise of the green squares jumping around, and the general lighting tone in the room. If I'm up close at personal to her I should be worried about threat, and getting smacked in the face, if I'm mid range I should be worried about some sort of mid range bolt attack or the like, at long range I should be trying to avoid the ground targeting effect copied from the second room, but as it is I have no real motivation to care about my range getting me much of anything, I just don't stand in green squares and shoot more. It doesn't even seem to matter where I place the targeted ground effects*.
Admittedly I only did this once (and that was on elite), but I found that when inside a big green square of doom I couldn't always tell which direction was 'out' because the decal itself has black areas in it, and the height of the edge particle effect makes it hard to get a sense of depth. This might not actually be a problem once you've seen the effect a few times, but with the dark lighting on a dark floor and having dark patches inside the green square it made it less easy to see than it should be to where where I should be going.
I guess my main problem is that the last boss and her gorn should do things I'm aware of them doing, and have to meaningfully react to. Have her randomly possess a player and that should matter to me even if I'm not that player (do I tank that player, CC him, heal his target, dps something etc..). Maybe have her resurrect all of the borg you've been fighting and they can stupid vulnerable zombie borg but a lot of them and we get to AOE them all down or... someone needs to tank the gorn or not just have him fall over dead before anyone really processes that the gorn is big and supposed to be scary.
*this is I suspect, an engine problem. There are enough problems with lighting and effects not showing (gravity well anyone) that having a persistent deadly ground effect that randomly doesn't show up isn't an option. That sort of thing seems like it seriously constrains your designs
'Penultimate' means one before the final one - just sayin'
Good post.
I would presume that space is actually a final fight. I don't know the story, but we're inside a cube, so shouldn't we kill the borg queen and enrage the borg and have a desperate struggle to escape the surviving borg ships?
I would presume that space is actually a final fight. I don't know the story, but we're inside a cube, so shouldn't we kill the borg queen and enrage the borg and have a desperate struggle to escape the surviving borg ships?
One might presume that, but AFAIK, Into The Hive has only ever been mooted as a ground map and there seems to be no intent from Cryptic to deliver a space segment - this is the grand finale to the other 6 STFs...
Defeating the Queen should be the last part of this series of STF's. Maybe just a small suggestion, but to add some length to this one maybe add a brief space part at the beginning to explain how one got on the cube in the first place.
More bugs: I got disconnected during an elite run just after the borg queen video. I've been able to log in again but i've been stuck in the first room and there was a shield not letting me out. I jump from the platform to respawn and i was still stuck there. Even when the whole team dided, I had the same shield not letting me out to get back in the queen's one.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I got the feeling Elite difficulty has been bumped a little in this patch. Which is good, assuming of course this wasn't due to typical incompetent pug team that died every ten seconds and beamed out after two first failed queen attempts...
The new voice acting is now standard for STO - i.e. horrible... The queen doesn't sound intimidating. She sounds bored...
As for bugs, I noticed my cordazine hypos and medic (the one summoned by doff) healings were not working most of the time and I couldn't figure out why.
Also, the new respawn mechanic may be clever, but in the end is annoying, especially when the system forces players to die AGAIN only to respawn the whole team together (twice as much injuries).
Moreover, the initial cut-scene can be skipped by pressing Escape. Not sure if intended, but if even one person does so he can start the battle while others are still watching (they can take damage in the meantime due to this).
Pros:
the two rooms actually look nice, a tad better then foundry stuff,
jumping is OK fun, although not very challenging, much less then INfected Ground
Cons:
Its way too easy, I m sure you can actually solo this.
The map is small, and has very little of to offer, besides the Super Mario JnR element. The queen fight doesn't make any sense, team work is not required.
it is too short.
It doesn't make any sense.
No space!?!?!?
If we are in a tac cube how come there are about 2-5 borg coming for us in waves, with us doing nothing about preventing the borg from just beaming us to space, or overrunning....arghhh
All we needed was a shuttle.......
Cut scences are bad for STFs, its nice looking at it for the first three times but after 300 i just want to kill myself.
Not enough teamplay element, no reason for changing gear or weapons, or team composition
Assimilation properly scaled to 5 players makes a better STf then this.
There are still a number of old Cryptic trailers on Youtube showing the massive Borg Unicomplex and intense space fights before cutting to the queen. I can only assume these were created for The Hive initially. Why the heck were these scrapped? Please put this back into this STF before you release it!
There are still a number of old Cryptic trailers on Youtube showing the massive Borg Unicomplex and intense space fights before cutting to the queen. I can only assume these were created for The Hive initially. Why the heck were these scrapped? Please put this back into this STF before you release it!
This last stf needs to be way more epic than it is currently.
Many assets and maps already exist, why wouldn't you use them? I think most of us could even wait one or two more months before seeing this STF in game if it allows you to make it even better!
Just finished the Elite version with all optionals completed. It's a pretty fun run though the actual borg you fight aren't that tough. Might be a good idea to have more elites in the hallways between sections.
Not sure if already reported, but last time I ran this on normal, I didn't seem to recieve any omega marks. Failed first optional, completed the second, dispite being the only one standing at the end phase with floaty queen. But I consider this balanced, since she was already mostly dead, and I was in MK XII MACO gear, and again, this was on normal, so I felt it was balanced.
Haven't run elite yet, honestly I'm not going to try on tribble unless I manage to rope in some people who know what they are doing. I'm an average player, and I think the above was more luck than skill.
When i play into the hive i can't see anything its all green. i can see all my HUD. Is there anything i can do to fix it. it only happens with Into the hive plz help thanks
It was pretty clear from the first time you play it that there should have been a space part, hell even the dialogue of your boffs hints to that, but for whatever reason they scraped it.
There needs to be a click option where if your entire team gets stuck behind forcefields you all die and re spawn at the start as I can remember playing this on normal and just to test that part we decided to die but res pawed in the holding cells and we were all scattered and then stuck, we couldn't get out. Plus one of our team members got disconnected and then came back only to spawn behind a force field at the very start where the STF starts which wasn't helpful could something be done to make it easier to re spawn?
Possible idea:
A team vote to kill all members and start from the last spawn point where all members have to agree for the team to be killed. this could be started by the team leader of that STf and then everyone agrees? Opinions?
Join date: April 2010 ; Lifetime Sub since April 2010. Actual 1000 day vet.
It was pretty clear from the first time you play it that there should have been a space part, hell even the dialogue of your boffs hints to that, but for whatever reason they scraped it.
Seconded ^
Join date: April 2010 ; Lifetime Sub since April 2010. Actual 1000 day vet.
The biggest thing I have seen running into the hive is getting people used to the idea that the floor can and will be used against them.
My suggestion would be to have a couple of red shirts beam down with the team and add a cut cinematic showing them get vaporized by the floor. The visual aid should help enforce the idea that you need to watch the floor.
Comments
Bugs:
Disconnection not accounted for - Our team did the first room, and began to move into the second room, as we did so, the 5th DCed, and then the game began the virus upload with the 4 of us already in the room noticing the 5th DCed. The 5th player could NOT get back to us, he ended up reloading at the begining and there was a forcefield in the way at the first room. I like the attempt to keep people more grouped by forcefield control, but you must account for disconnections. Otherwise private or PUG is going to be a nightmare if there are connection issues for even a few seconds forcing a relog of someone.
No orbitals on second try of virus room - The four of us left ended up accidently all dying in this room, we respawned and began again. This time no orbitals to watch out for, just borg.
Oh and did I mention already.. Too Short and too easy? This is supposed to be a STF, and kinda a grand STF too with the queen and all... it should be harder not easier leading up to the queen. Its a "good start" but that's it.
"We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile."
Sincerely,
The Cube Assimilating Your Ship Right Now
One new bug: we killed the queen, she died on the ground in the middle of the room but the mission didn't complete, and the shield was still up at the entrance of the room.
Pic of the situation. We stand where the dead body of the queen is (you can see the tentacles).
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
My thoughts on it are as follows.
The drones at the start of the mission were very easily dispatched by engineers using mine kits and deploying mines and bombs infront of the alcoves to ambush the drones. After that it was just a matter of cleaning up the already weakend Borg.
I liked the new deadly floor of doom and mortar lock on effects, very nice. Besides having to be on the move all the time so as not to get hit by either of these, the mission overall was to easy and lacked any real challenge.
Bias: Tac in Mk xi MACO gear. Elite STF with a pug that seemed to be at least minimally competent (so standard test server bias).
The mechanics of the whole thing:
Run in a big square, run in a little square, run up a ramp, keep moving when beams target you don't stand in giant green squares, win.
I realize in STO it's very hard to have mechanics to fights that are reasonably complicated, but the borg aren't scary, you basically just dps burn them down, and they even fall over. I'd, at a minimum, make borg adaptive to knockdown and stun effects (diminishing returns calculation probably). Maybe have the borg be somewhat unpredictable, of the 4 alcoves at each thing have some combination of 4 little borg, 2 big borg or one heavy tactical drone activate, but without knowing which one you're going to get this time. Some tension without a huge shakeup in what needs to happen.
The second room, where you have a beam target you that puts a ground aoe down you move out of, that needs to happen faster. A lot faster. Any time I'm deliberately ignoring an effect on me I'm making it more confusing that exciting. Just how much longer do I have to stand in this corner?
The last boss and her pet gorn don't seem to well, do very much. Good for me, there's something I should dps more.
I don't know here. I think part of the problem the entire ground game has is that it's not really an FPS and it's not really an RPG, and it's not all that good at either, or both. A FPS is about your ability to react to things, you see a rocket you step out of the way, you find cover, you shoot from cover, you move to confuse your adversary. In an RPG you choose what abilities will have the most effect at any given time. You can have action in an RPG and ability choices in a FPS but STO fits uncomfortably in the gap of too many abilities for an FPS, and not a sensible collection for a RPG (most of the abilities are largely orthogonal to each other).
With the borg queen in particular, if she does anything all that interesting it's buried in the visual noise of the green squares jumping around, and the general lighting tone in the room. If I'm up close at personal to her I should be worried about threat, and getting smacked in the face, if I'm mid range I should be worried about some sort of mid range bolt attack or the like, at long range I should be trying to avoid the ground targeting effect copied from the second room, but as it is I have no real motivation to care about my range getting me much of anything, I just don't stand in green squares and shoot more. It doesn't even seem to matter where I place the targeted ground effects*.
Admittedly I only did this once (and that was on elite), but I found that when inside a big green square of doom I couldn't always tell which direction was 'out' because the decal itself has black areas in it, and the height of the edge particle effect makes it hard to get a sense of depth. This might not actually be a problem once you've seen the effect a few times, but with the dark lighting on a dark floor and having dark patches inside the green square it made it less easy to see than it should be to where where I should be going.
I guess my main problem is that the last boss and her gorn should do things I'm aware of them doing, and have to meaningfully react to. Have her randomly possess a player and that should matter to me even if I'm not that player (do I tank that player, CC him, heal his target, dps something etc..). Maybe have her resurrect all of the borg you've been fighting and they can stupid vulnerable zombie borg but a lot of them and we get to AOE them all down or... someone needs to tank the gorn or not just have him fall over dead before anyone really processes that the gorn is big and supposed to be scary.
*this is I suspect, an engine problem. There are enough problems with lighting and effects not showing (gravity well anyone) that having a persistent deadly ground effect that randomly doesn't show up isn't an option. That sort of thing seems like it seriously constrains your designs
'Penultimate' means one before the final one - just sayin'
Good post.
I would presume that space is actually a final fight. I don't know the story, but we're inside a cube, so shouldn't we kill the borg queen and enrage the borg and have a desperate struggle to escape the surviving borg ships?
One might presume that, but AFAIK, Into The Hive has only ever been mooted as a ground map and there seems to be no intent from Cryptic to deliver a space segment - this is the grand finale to the other 6 STFs...
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
The new voice acting is now standard for STO - i.e. horrible... The queen doesn't sound intimidating. She sounds bored...
As for bugs, I noticed my cordazine hypos and medic (the one summoned by doff) healings were not working most of the time and I couldn't figure out why.
Also, the new respawn mechanic may be clever, but in the end is annoying, especially when the system forces players to die AGAIN only to respawn the whole team together (twice as much injuries).
Moreover, the initial cut-scene can be skipped by pressing Escape. Not sure if intended, but if even one person does so he can start the battle while others are still watching (they can take damage in the meantime due to this).
First room, its ok, die a few times but its ok.
Boss fight, nice fight but very easy, even on Elite. Queen and Gorn not doing much damage, the Elite Drone is more dangerous than this guys.
Electrified floors are ok, i like them.
Overall easy and short STF.
C'mon gimme a challenge! is the Queen!
www.divisionhispana.com
Pros:
the two rooms actually look nice, a tad better then foundry stuff,
jumping is OK fun, although not very challenging, much less then INfected Ground
Cons:
Its way too easy, I m sure you can actually solo this.
The map is small, and has very little of to offer, besides the Super Mario JnR element. The queen fight doesn't make any sense, team work is not required.
it is too short.
It doesn't make any sense.
No space!?!?!?
If we are in a tac cube how come there are about 2-5 borg coming for us in waves, with us doing nothing about preventing the borg from just beaming us to space, or overrunning....arghhh
All we needed was a shuttle.......
Cut scences are bad for STFs, its nice looking at it for the first three times but after 300 i just want to kill myself.
Not enough teamplay element, no reason for changing gear or weapons, or team composition
Assimilation properly scaled to 5 players makes a better STf then this.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
YEAH ZEROCOOL This is a Strategy for everyone using the Queues.
Solo DAXX:P
No Space? now the space/ground is unleveled.
Very short really dissapointed with that.
Map is pretty dull to be honest.
Please forget about adding jumping into them, havent you learned from the Crappy Infected?
Way too easy.
Can not believe this took 3years to make, Foundry could make it in few days.
NOONE ever lets you out at the end if you do die, let it auto open after few minutes, remeber its for fun, the devs seem to make things anoying, FUN.
TBH whole thing is a letdown , need i say anymore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-yo4fe0mrA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7UerXQpyWE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P4lRG_E1UM&feature=related
Seconded.
This last stf needs to be way more epic than it is currently.
Many assets and maps already exist, why wouldn't you use them? I think most of us could even wait one or two more months before seeing this STF in game if it allows you to make it even better!
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Haven't run elite yet, honestly I'm not going to try on tribble unless I manage to rope in some people who know what they are doing. I'm an average player, and I think the above was more luck than skill.
Nouveau riche LTS member
My character Tsin'xing
Possible idea:
A team vote to kill all members and start from the last spawn point where all members have to agree for the team to be killed. this could be started by the team leader of that STf and then everyone agrees? Opinions?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Proud Member of: Fubar Inc.
Seconded
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Proud Member of: Fubar Inc.
My suggestion would be to have a couple of red shirts beam down with the team and add a cut cinematic showing them get vaporized by the floor. The visual aid should help enforce the idea that you need to watch the floor.