But peole keep saying "it's too hard if i can't zerg the boss and dps race it" (that's what the current STFs are), instead of admitting they can progress and learn some tips to overcome the challenges.
Normal Mode Hive was easily as difficult as previous mission Elites, and that's fine. Other games have this issue and the solution is usually just to improve the awards on the newer content. I think that's perfectly fair for these.
One thing I'm finding I don't like, however, is that there is simply no loot drop at all from the boss.
After finishing a climactic battle with the Borg Queen on ground and space, walking away from the instances with just a handful of tokens feels very unrewarding. There is typically a balance to be found with any type of token system of progression and actually having a physical loot reward as well. I realize all the major set components are being moved to the Reputation system at that is fine, but having the Queen drop, say, a blue quality VA console (completely random type) on normal, with one of better quality on Elite would not be an unwelcome move.
It really irked me to walk away from the fights empty handed. I realize that the Omega Marks are supposed to more than make up for no loot, but you are still leaving players in a position where there's no sense of immediate gratification in your new reward system, and that's a rather dangerous thing.
because it was a little challenging (some players died, not me)
the borg diamond certainly was fun to fight with all the different abilities it used and took some time to get its shields down.
i knew the map from a Foundry mission that i played about a year ago.
well at least the background graphics (skybox) is around for a while now.
but... there was a lack of regeneration on the Borgs end, there need to be more regeneration drones for the 2 B'Gers and the Diamond did not regenerate at all.
Did not play elite yet, maybe there will be more of that.
Anyway, i've beaten it on the first try ...with a pug.
That says to me, that this one is TOO EASY.
It's definitely tankable, I did so on a tankyish build on a rarely-used Engineer, though I forgot a few key abilities I lasted a good while; with a cooperative team (cross healing, focussing fire on the tank's target etc) I can see at least the battle with the tac cubes at the start being pretty satisfying, if not the entire STF.
I can't help but wonder though, if the sheer amount of heavy plasma torp spam is a subtle nudge by Cryptic for us all to buy point defense consoles 5 of those being chained across the team would be a nice immunity to them :P
Regen probes? Seriously? You had to include those? We were down two, so I didn't get a true feel of it's doablity, but regen probes, coming out of BOTH ships, was NOT helpful in the least. Couldn't beat it, had to abort.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
Hey everyone, first post here (i've been checking here everyday since i started plying thougth) to share what i learned so far.
1st part, pretty easy, just raw dps, while taking care not to agro more than a cube at a time (but well the crazy oddy npc will do it for you anyways...), cross heals on the one taking aggro should be used.
2nd part, easy too, the regen probes are pretty weak, and seem more interested in healing the other probes than the unimatrix. the trick i found is to stay all together, close to the diamond, with at least 2 or 3 TBR in the group. everyone will get protected from the energy bolts, the special beams and most damage from the probes. (a bit a coordination is required between the "repulsors" thougth)
3rd part, didn't make it....after the 3rd attempt, someone quit and the whole team followed shortly. But the queen feels a bit cheated, maybe putting bigger cooldows on it's iso charge and/or torp spread should make it better.
edit : when i say easy i mean like taking care of the probes, tac cube, and gate in ISE.
Overall, i really like it, it need a bit more reflexion and coordination than the other ones, i just find sad that, the devs didn't found any other way to make elite content than a lot of one shot weapons from NPCs.
FWI, i was flying a chimera, as an eng (full DHC/turrets) :
cmdr tactical = TT1, TT2, Canon spread 2, Canon rapid fire 3
Lt cmdr science = TSS1, TBR1, TBR2
LT science = HE1, HE2
Lt eng =EPTS1, RSP1
ens ENG = EPTS 1
Hope it helps some....And i really want to know if anyone found a viable stategy for the queen.
Oh, just a tgought for all who have a problem staying alive. If you notice your target is targeting you, stop shooting it. It will lose interest in a few seconds to target someone else.
This can even be used to ping pong the aggro between 2 tanks (yes, not easy without active TC abilities).
well I could not get into elite - I did normal in my tank oddy eng capt - fell asleep - it was that easy - 1 time they got my hull down to 75% but for 3/4 of the time never took my shields down all the way.
I have a tankyish build on my Nebula (which for some reason has gained an extra ensign universal slot over there. Not that I complain about such things.)
Tried it on normal and felt it was way too easy. Completed it relatively quickly and shot off a few heals to the other team members. For once my Sci Team build paid off!!
Elite was a different kettle of fish as I kept getting one shot by the queen no matter what I did with resist consoles, and BOFF abilities.
When Season 6 came out, the Tholian Boss maps were a challenge, but you felt like you made progress and could complete it with team work. Being killed in one shot or possibly two just makes it uninteresting and the rest of the team ends up rage quitting.
Did it earlier today with 3 other fleet mates and one pug on elite. Got through the whole thing, including two optionals.
First part, the Tac Cubes weren't terrible. Honestly, aside from just dealing with several at once, they're just as big, dumb, and slow as they've always been. Spheres tended to be much more annoying because they would focus a lot, or so it seemed. Even with points in Power Insulators, when several spheres hit you with tachyon beam, you're gonna lose a lot of shields.
The Cubes themselves, again, just as big and stupid as ever, no real issue. Honestly, the Houston itself tended to be a problem since it would aggro them before we were ready. The pug did too, but we were expecting that. But one at a time, no trouble.
The V'gers...are annoying. Even focusing fire on one still took awhile, mostly because they spat out Regen probes so fast. Tractor probes and normal probes are a joke and barely even worth a mention. Still managed to get through them though.
Queenie took awhile, but while annoying, her ship itself, even as quick as it was, wasn't the issue. It was all her abilities she kept firing off constantly, same rather applies for the V'gers.
We got the timed optional, and the optional on the queen, since we always kept at least one person alive. Though like others have said, the loot was gotten for only one person.
Now, I feel the main problem here (aside from bugs) is that there is just 'too much'.
There is too much spam from the V'gers, they launch probes at an incredible rate, to the point it's a bit ridiculous. The plasma balls are tolerable, used to those from Red alerts.
There are too many instant-death attacks. We had this same issue with Cure Space, and massive Isometric charges. I want the Borg to hit hard, not an issue, but having SO many 'boom, you die now' attacks isn't hard, it's annoying and un-fun, and will make people just stay away from it in the first place, mitigating the point of having a new STF in the first place.
The Borg Queen has way too many abilities she can seem to use without cooldown, or very short ones. So she was able to use her stuff over and over, again, making her extremely annoying and while tough, not really and truly difficult.
Too many ships in general all at once. Having a lot of ships is fine, it's Unimatrix 01 of all places, but spreading them out wouldn't hurt. Have it go in a much more 'wave' like function:
1. Start MUCH further back than we do now, and the starting respawn point will be here at least. The first wave will consist of all those Borg spheres. Annoying with the dozen or so, but workable, just focus fire, and bring em down.
2. Wave two, the cubes/tac cubes. Instead of that rough diamond shape they were in (which caused a lot of clipping issues btw), have them be in lack a wall, or in rows. Such as a 2 cube tall, by 3 cube wide wall of those 6. It'd look VERY intimidating against such a group, or in rows, something like that.
3. Keep both V'gers, just tone down their insta-death attacks (or at least their lances and number of probes they spawn at once).
4. Borg queen is tough, and needs nothing else, but again, her insta-death is just a bit too high to be challenging without some mild toning down.
I don't think toning the insta-death down would ruin it at all. Hardly so, but if it isn't toned down, the mission will barely be played when it hits Holodeck (past the first week or so it's released).
Also, I feel the rewards (aside from being fixed of course) should at least be double any other STF. This one is longer and much more time-consuming, and the reward should show that as such. If another elite gives 50 marks and one Borg Processor, this should give 100 marks and two Processors, plus optional bonuses on top of that.
If it's meant to be hard and challenging, it is. It's meant to be the real 'end all' of the Borg story, and I like that, but if it's nothing but masses of instant-death, people are simply going to ignore it.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
Theres only one thing I have to wonder about the "story" tied to this STF...
This is Unimatrix 01... how did the Borg not detect 5 (or 6, if you count the Houston) full sized starships approaching... and even if they did miss the ships, how did they miss the transporter signatures?
Played on normal and liked it. balance seemed very good.
during the cutscene. when the command ship turn up there is a little animation of it firing its lance and then my ship exploded.
then when the cut scene finished, my ship was in once piece. unless it was a generic npc ship that just happened to look like mine, why was my ship blowing up?
It wasn't you ship in the cutscene, it's Adm D'vak's ship.
Playing through this mission with Fleet 4 + 1 PuGger on NORMAL mode, I have noticed that this STF is perhaps a full order of magnitude more difficult than the normal STFs from Season 6 and down.
This, unfortunately, makes the STF nearly impossible to advance through. (Especially the 1 and 2 of 2 section) where the barrages are too frequent, the plasma charges move too quickly, and the borg lances are too deadly, particularly for a Normal STF.
Another issue, as others have mentioned, are the frequency of the regeneration probes which seem to regenerate plasma charges making them extremely difficult to kill. Also I am uncertain how plasma charges being 'healed' in flight makes sense...
The Borg Diamond seemed straightforward, although I noticed at some points I was getting hull heals, even though none of my teammates were healing me. I have no clue if this was intentional, but it appeared to be coming from the diamond itself.
Overall, this STF will require much toning down before it's made into Alpha material.
Finally got to run this on Elite with a proper pre-made team (two support cruisers, two escorts, and a healer sci ship), and I love it. This mission is going to be horrible to do in pug groups on Elite, but offers a very satisfying challenge to fleet groups.
Only things to tone down would be the torp spread of doom, and maybe provide a visual warning of some sort for the Queen's AoE plasma sphere.
Lot's of things I like about it. You need a balanced team, and hey, a real tank is required.
..... Communicate, read the suggested tactics, agree on who will be doing what. Be methodical and follow the lead of the tank instead of being a one ship deathstar, which most people are probably used to because the rest of the game can be played that way.
.
You say all this like its a good thing. In its current state I foresee this STF being less played than Cure. No pugging on this one, and it WILL cause lots of drama when a lot of tank cruiser pilots that "think" they know how to play realize they do not. As soon as its clear the tank(s) and/or sci vessels are not being played right we'll see a lot of warp outs.
Unlike others that love their rose colored glasses, I despise being tied to a specific team composition to get through content so my first impressions may be more negative than most.
What really worries me is that this feels a lot like the Gravitar fight in CO. For those unfamiliar with that fight, its meant to be an extremely challenging encounter. Fair enough I said. But instead of being challenging its a "build check" style of fight. If you can't take a certain amount of damage, you will fail. If you can't deal damage fast enough, you will also fail as people make more and more mistakes. There were some debuff powers the players were using to get through the fight but Cryptic decided that using debuff powers to debuff was just not right and made Gravitar immune to the debuffs. I bring this up because a lot of people are thinking that proper use of sci vessels is the key here, but of those sci powers are found to be effective at all we might just see the Borg NPCs become immune to them.... or worse yet, the sci powers might get nerfed again.
I like the Hive Onslaught. My Captain tier Assault class fed cruiser is useful against the Diamond Borg. It was a pleasant surprise.
Into the Hive Ground mission, bug#1: One time, the instance when I got revived by my teammate, a drone borg zapped me and held me permanently. But, my toon was missing and I couldn't move at all until the Scorpion Borg killed me.
bug#2: Borg Queen fell off the ledge. No game over. Someone else had already reported this.
Annoyance #1: The mobile Borg Queen shoots slower than Cure-Ground-Elite borg Armek, but has equally powerful shot, and this is in Normal difficulty.
Annoyance #2: The ground is so dark that it makes the 3D ledge looks flat so it is easy to step off the ledge.
Overall impression: Very nice UI and missions but I will only play this new, long mission on my day off.
The problem with the reomoval of the queen's iso charge is that it's her only serious attack. Without it she's inoffensive and puny. It would need some serious beam attacks to compensate the loss of this ability to make this boss interesting. I don't know why devs didn't make heavy but somewhat tankable damages instead of a deadly 5km zone. People are stupid, we'll always have someone not understanding this very elementary fact: don't get into the deadly zone. I've never seen a boss using beams dealing serious and dangerous damage amounts. Is it that hard to code? I'd say something wiping out poor builds and barely tankable by excellent players.
Lot's of things I like about it. You need a balanced team, and hey, a real tank is required. Thank you, Cryptic, cruisers still have a purpose. Besides good tanking, coordinated healing/support, and some dps make this very doable...as long as you work together as a team. Charging in with all guns blazing and not noticing what your teammates are doing will definitely get you wiped. Communicate, read the suggested tactics, agree on who will be doing what. Be methodical and follow the lead of the tank instead of being a one ship deathstar, which most people are probably used to because the rest of the game can be played that way.
You say all this like its a good thing. In its current state I foresee this STF being less played than Cure. No pugging on this one, and it WILL cause lots of drama when a lot of tank cruiser pilots that "think" they know how to play realize they do not. As soon as its clear the tank(s) and/or sci vessels are not being played right we'll see a lot of warp outs.
Unlike others that love their rose colored glasses, I despise being tied to a specific team composition to get through content so my first impressions may be more negative than most.
What really worries me is that this feels a lot like the Gravitar fight in CO. For those unfamiliar with that fight, its meant to be an extremely challenging encounter. Fair enough I said. But instead of being challenging its a "build check" style of fight. If you can't take a certain amount of damage, you will fail. If you can't deal damage fast enough, you will also fail as people make more and more mistakes. There were some debuff powers the players were using to get through the fight but Cryptic decided that using debuff powers to debuff was just not right and made Gravitar immune to the debuffs. I bring this up because a lot of people are thinking that proper use of sci vessels is the key here, but of those sci powers are found to be effective at all we might just see the Borg NPCs become immune to them.... or worse yet, the sci powers might get nerfed again.
I actually do see this as a good thing. Many of us have been begging for 'balance'. Well here we finally have a mission that requires a semblance of such. One of my Normals didn't have support/healers so a truly balanced set up is not absolutely necessary. My teams were 3/4 fleeties + 2/1 pug, and we just grabbed whomever was available in the fleet. I'm confident that after Cryptic makes some refinements this will be very puggable in Normal even for those, as you say, that only 'think' they know how to play their tank/sci .
I also don't see anything wrong with having an Elite STF that requires a bit of pre-play planning. As long as it's not buggy and tightly time based like IGE or one that demands a solitary highly skilled dps'er like CSE (for Kang), players will want to test their mettle in a fun, non-stop, action filled mission. Will it be as popular as the super easy STFs? Will a lot of players who really don't have much of a clue how to play the game or their character routinely choose to undertake this mission? No, I doubt it, but hey is that really a bad thing?
You have legitimate concerns, however. I am not familiar with Gravitar in CO, but yes, Cryptic has been known to address alleged game playability 'problems' by severly disrupting the status quo and causing new problems. But I say we can't shy away from every situation that raises the bar on this game. Otherwise it will just be another soon-to-be mundane Season/addition. We should have a little more faith in Cryptic. After all, they have recently demonstrated a willingness to listen to player feedback, albeit not completely and certainly very selectively, but the game is improving. Let's give credit where credit is due. And likewise let's give this new STF a chance. Again, I'm not advocating no changes, just please don't nerf it down to the level of ISE/KASE/KAGE.
Aye, i've found how to beat the elite version really easily. With the following tricks it's a walk in the park now. :cool:
We had two escorts (one AFK, yes, even on tribble), two carriers (including mine), a chimera and an eng on an oddy witha healer/tank build. PuG group.
I runned the following build: science char, tholian recluse carrier with two wings of advanced peregrine fighers, crowd control build with a feedback pulse 2, TBR 3, gravity well 1, some low level heals, and 1 photonic officer 2. Equipement : polarized disruptor, + 1 plasma dot console from the embassy and a hull regen one (graviton generator and particle generator). Special consoles: graviton pulse generator, tholian web. Frontal DPS (DHCs and turrets). Doffs: 1 SNB.
- Unimatrixes. Everyone at the top of it, firing at very close range. Fighers on interecept mode will take care of the bolts, so everyone can ignore them. When regen probes appear, use TBR 3 or GW1 so that they heal eachother like idiots instead of healing cigares. If a bolt survives, use TBR. Our tank was in from of the unimatrix to do his job and get some aggro. Our team blown up both unimatrixes in less than 1:30 minutes using that strategy.
- The queen: She pops, use the tholian web console. It'll take 15 seconds before she can destroy it (it looks like her dps comes from special abilities only, and she has very few regular attacks, so it's a great glitch), and she'll aggro the nodes in the meantime (they have a very high threat value). Carriers launch their fighters, and fighers will take the iso charges and aoe torps. No one can be blown up. SNB, debuff, snb, debuff, use the tholian web, constantly launch new fighers wings. Fighers will of course torp her to death before they get killed. And she died in less than 2 mins.
Elite? Sorry, cryptic, try again.
How you could improve it: iso charge isn't necessary here. It's very easy to avoid with a proper build. Instead of that the queen could have PDS consoles or 10 or so turrets with CRF III to deal with figher wings and other pets. She sould also be able to select multiple targets instead of just one.
I'd say it is elite, ok maybe queenie should have more standard attacks but as always a good team working together can pull it off easily, I did normal a few minutes ago and found the requirement for a degree of teamwork and strategy gave it some actual difficulty, this is one STF I will happily do again.
Nice work Cryptic, if the NPC firepower is as I expect in elite it could probably use a little tone down but I'll give my verdict on that once I've done it
2. the also mentioned pathfinding of the cubes is messed up.
3. the houston is aggroing everything, but doesnt do anything useful beside looking pretty and avoiding attacks.
4. couple of times the own ship is set to an intercept-course bug. means, no control over the own ship and steering towards the target.
5. sometimes the queens diamond seems acting overpowered on normal, like it is set to elite in some of the hive instances and oneshotting everybody in range. happened like 2 or 3 times in all the runs. slicing through the cubes and spheres pretty easily, defeating both of the unimatrix vessels in like 2 minutes, the queen engaged in combat and boom - whole squad dead, took like half an hour to take her down. all that plus the missing rewards afterwards felt like a big disappointment
Replayed it on Elite i na PuG group which went surprisingly well.
We finished the Cube squad within Optional time.
The Houston is indeed aggroing everything which should make it very easy for the team to pick them off one by one. That is her actual purpose, draw fire from us, not blow everything up for us.
Second phase was more of a struggle for me. Was flying an Engi/Sovereig build to tank, but I was to slow to escape the tractor beams and plasma bolts. That is a flaw in my build that can be changed.
Could tank the Queen just fine. Against her I only died once by an invisible one shot. At least I didn't see anything, I suppose it must have been the Isocharge.
Comments
Yeah... what he said! +1
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
Normal Mode Hive was easily as difficult as previous mission Elites, and that's fine. Other games have this issue and the solution is usually just to improve the awards on the newer content. I think that's perfectly fair for these.
One thing I'm finding I don't like, however, is that there is simply no loot drop at all from the boss.
After finishing a climactic battle with the Borg Queen on ground and space, walking away from the instances with just a handful of tokens feels very unrewarding. There is typically a balance to be found with any type of token system of progression and actually having a physical loot reward as well. I realize all the major set components are being moved to the Reputation system at that is fine, but having the Queen drop, say, a blue quality VA console (completely random type) on normal, with one of better quality on Elite would not be an unwelcome move.
It really irked me to walk away from the fights empty handed. I realize that the Omega Marks are supposed to more than make up for no loot, but you are still leaving players in a position where there's no sense of immediate gratification in your new reward system, and that's a rather dangerous thing.
...we did beat it
it was fun
because it was a little challenging (some players died, not me)
the borg diamond certainly was fun to fight with all the different abilities it used and took some time to get its shields down.
i knew the map from a Foundry mission that i played about a year ago.
well at least the background graphics (skybox) is around for a while now.
but... there was a lack of regeneration on the Borgs end, there need to be more regeneration drones for the 2 B'Gers and the Diamond did not regenerate at all.
Did not play elite yet, maybe there will be more of that.
Anyway, i've beaten it on the first try ...with a pug.
That says to me, that this one is TOO EASY.
thought on normal the difficulty was just fine. have not been able to get into an elite run so unsure there
I can't help but wonder though, if the sheer amount of heavy plasma torp spam is a subtle nudge by Cryptic for us all to buy point defense consoles
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
1st part, pretty easy, just raw dps, while taking care not to agro more than a cube at a time (but well the crazy oddy npc will do it for you anyways...), cross heals on the one taking aggro should be used.
2nd part, easy too, the regen probes are pretty weak, and seem more interested in healing the other probes than the unimatrix. the trick i found is to stay all together, close to the diamond, with at least 2 or 3 TBR in the group. everyone will get protected from the energy bolts, the special beams and most damage from the probes. (a bit a coordination is required between the "repulsors" thougth)
3rd part, didn't make it....after the 3rd attempt, someone quit and the whole team followed shortly. But the queen feels a bit cheated, maybe putting bigger cooldows on it's iso charge and/or torp spread should make it better.
edit : when i say easy i mean like taking care of the probes, tac cube, and gate in ISE.
Overall, i really like it, it need a bit more reflexion and coordination than the other ones, i just find sad that, the devs didn't found any other way to make elite content than a lot of one shot weapons from NPCs.
FWI, i was flying a chimera, as an eng (full DHC/turrets) :
cmdr tactical = TT1, TT2, Canon spread 2, Canon rapid fire 3
Lt cmdr science = TSS1, TBR1, TBR2
LT science = HE1, HE2
Lt eng =EPTS1, RSP1
ens ENG = EPTS 1
Hope it helps some....And i really want to know if anyone found a viable stategy for the queen.
Cheers
Uriel
This can even be used to ping pong the aggro between 2 tanks (yes, not easy without active TC abilities).
Not on normal - I was pretty much carrying that group myself - but i hear elite is a HUGE step up - so if that is the case definitely.
Tried it on normal and felt it was way too easy. Completed it relatively quickly and shot off a few heals to the other team members. For once my Sci Team build paid off!!
Elite was a different kettle of fish as I kept getting one shot by the queen no matter what I did with resist consoles, and BOFF abilities.
When Season 6 came out, the Tholian Boss maps were a challenge, but you felt like you made progress and could complete it with team work. Being killed in one shot or possibly two just makes it uninteresting and the rest of the team ends up rage quitting.
First part, the Tac Cubes weren't terrible. Honestly, aside from just dealing with several at once, they're just as big, dumb, and slow as they've always been. Spheres tended to be much more annoying because they would focus a lot, or so it seemed. Even with points in Power Insulators, when several spheres hit you with tachyon beam, you're gonna lose a lot of shields.
The Cubes themselves, again, just as big and stupid as ever, no real issue. Honestly, the Houston itself tended to be a problem since it would aggro them before we were ready. The pug did too, but we were expecting that. But one at a time, no trouble.
The V'gers...are annoying. Even focusing fire on one still took awhile, mostly because they spat out Regen probes so fast. Tractor probes and normal probes are a joke and barely even worth a mention. Still managed to get through them though.
Queenie took awhile, but while annoying, her ship itself, even as quick as it was, wasn't the issue. It was all her abilities she kept firing off constantly, same rather applies for the V'gers.
We got the timed optional, and the optional on the queen, since we always kept at least one person alive. Though like others have said, the loot was gotten for only one person.
Now, I feel the main problem here (aside from bugs) is that there is just 'too much'.
There is too much spam from the V'gers, they launch probes at an incredible rate, to the point it's a bit ridiculous. The plasma balls are tolerable, used to those from Red alerts.
There are too many instant-death attacks. We had this same issue with Cure Space, and massive Isometric charges. I want the Borg to hit hard, not an issue, but having SO many 'boom, you die now' attacks isn't hard, it's annoying and un-fun, and will make people just stay away from it in the first place, mitigating the point of having a new STF in the first place.
The Borg Queen has way too many abilities she can seem to use without cooldown, or very short ones. So she was able to use her stuff over and over, again, making her extremely annoying and while tough, not really and truly difficult.
Too many ships in general all at once. Having a lot of ships is fine, it's Unimatrix 01 of all places, but spreading them out wouldn't hurt. Have it go in a much more 'wave' like function:
1. Start MUCH further back than we do now, and the starting respawn point will be here at least. The first wave will consist of all those Borg spheres. Annoying with the dozen or so, but workable, just focus fire, and bring em down.
2. Wave two, the cubes/tac cubes. Instead of that rough diamond shape they were in (which caused a lot of clipping issues btw), have them be in lack a wall, or in rows. Such as a 2 cube tall, by 3 cube wide wall of those 6. It'd look VERY intimidating against such a group, or in rows, something like that.
3. Keep both V'gers, just tone down their insta-death attacks (or at least their lances and number of probes they spawn at once).
4. Borg queen is tough, and needs nothing else, but again, her insta-death is just a bit too high to be challenging without some mild toning down.
I don't think toning the insta-death down would ruin it at all. Hardly so, but if it isn't toned down, the mission will barely be played when it hits Holodeck (past the first week or so it's released).
Also, I feel the rewards (aside from being fixed of course) should at least be double any other STF. This one is longer and much more time-consuming, and the reward should show that as such. If another elite gives 50 marks and one Borg Processor, this should give 100 marks and two Processors, plus optional bonuses on top of that.
If it's meant to be hard and challenging, it is. It's meant to be the real 'end all' of the Borg story, and I like that, but if it's nothing but masses of instant-death, people are simply going to ignore it.
This is Unimatrix 01... how did the Borg not detect 5 (or 6, if you count the Houston) full sized starships approaching... and even if they did miss the ships, how did they miss the transporter signatures?
It wasn't you ship in the cutscene, it's Adm D'vak's ship.
This, unfortunately, makes the STF nearly impossible to advance through. (Especially the 1 and 2 of 2 section) where the barrages are too frequent, the plasma charges move too quickly, and the borg lances are too deadly, particularly for a Normal STF.
Another issue, as others have mentioned, are the frequency of the regeneration probes which seem to regenerate plasma charges making them extremely difficult to kill. Also I am uncertain how plasma charges being 'healed' in flight makes sense...
The Borg Diamond seemed straightforward, although I noticed at some points I was getting hull heals, even though none of my teammates were healing me. I have no clue if this was intentional, but it appeared to be coming from the diamond itself.
Overall, this STF will require much toning down before it's made into Alpha material.
Only things to tone down would be the torp spread of doom, and maybe provide a visual warning of some sort for the Queen's AoE plasma sphere.
You say all this like its a good thing. In its current state I foresee this STF being less played than Cure. No pugging on this one, and it WILL cause lots of drama when a lot of tank cruiser pilots that "think" they know how to play realize they do not. As soon as its clear the tank(s) and/or sci vessels are not being played right we'll see a lot of warp outs.
Unlike others that love their rose colored glasses, I despise being tied to a specific team composition to get through content so my first impressions may be more negative than most.
What really worries me is that this feels a lot like the Gravitar fight in CO. For those unfamiliar with that fight, its meant to be an extremely challenging encounter. Fair enough I said. But instead of being challenging its a "build check" style of fight. If you can't take a certain amount of damage, you will fail. If you can't deal damage fast enough, you will also fail as people make more and more mistakes. There were some debuff powers the players were using to get through the fight but Cryptic decided that using debuff powers to debuff was just not right and made Gravitar immune to the debuffs. I bring this up because a lot of people are thinking that proper use of sci vessels is the key here, but of those sci powers are found to be effective at all we might just see the Borg NPCs become immune to them.... or worse yet, the sci powers might get nerfed again.
Into the Hive Ground mission, bug#1: One time, the instance when I got revived by my teammate, a drone borg zapped me and held me permanently. But, my toon was missing and I couldn't move at all until the Scorpion Borg killed me.
bug#2: Borg Queen fell off the ledge. No game over. Someone else had already reported this.
Annoyance #1: The mobile Borg Queen shoots slower than Cure-Ground-Elite borg Armek, but has equally powerful shot, and this is in Normal difficulty.
Annoyance #2: The ground is so dark that it makes the 3D ledge looks flat so it is easy to step off the ledge.
Overall impression: Very nice UI and missions but I will only play this new, long mission on my day off.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
I actually do see this as a good thing. Many of us have been begging for 'balance'. Well here we finally have a mission that requires a semblance of such. One of my Normals didn't have support/healers so a truly balanced set up is not absolutely necessary. My teams were 3/4 fleeties + 2/1 pug, and we just grabbed whomever was available in the fleet. I'm confident that after Cryptic makes some refinements this will be very puggable in Normal even for those, as you say, that only 'think' they know how to play their tank/sci .
I also don't see anything wrong with having an Elite STF that requires a bit of pre-play planning. As long as it's not buggy and tightly time based like IGE or one that demands a solitary highly skilled dps'er like CSE (for Kang), players will want to test their mettle in a fun, non-stop, action filled mission. Will it be as popular as the super easy STFs? Will a lot of players who really don't have much of a clue how to play the game or their character routinely choose to undertake this mission? No, I doubt it, but hey is that really a bad thing?
You have legitimate concerns, however. I am not familiar with Gravitar in CO, but yes, Cryptic has been known to address alleged game playability 'problems' by severly disrupting the status quo and causing new problems. But I say we can't shy away from every situation that raises the bar on this game. Otherwise it will just be another soon-to-be mundane Season/addition. We should have a little more faith in Cryptic. After all, they have recently demonstrated a willingness to listen to player feedback, albeit not completely and certainly very selectively, but the game is improving. Let's give credit where credit is due. And likewise let's give this new STF a chance. Again, I'm not advocating no changes, just please don't nerf it down to the level of ISE/KASE/KAGE.
We had two escorts (one AFK, yes, even on tribble), two carriers (including mine), a chimera and an eng on an oddy witha healer/tank build. PuG group.
I runned the following build: science char, tholian recluse carrier with two wings of advanced peregrine fighers, crowd control build with a feedback pulse 2, TBR 3, gravity well 1, some low level heals, and 1 photonic officer 2. Equipement : polarized disruptor, + 1 plasma dot console from the embassy and a hull regen one (graviton generator and particle generator). Special consoles: graviton pulse generator, tholian web. Frontal DPS (DHCs and turrets). Doffs: 1 SNB.
- Unimatrixes. Everyone at the top of it, firing at very close range. Fighers on interecept mode will take care of the bolts, so everyone can ignore them. When regen probes appear, use TBR 3 or GW1 so that they heal eachother like idiots instead of healing cigares. If a bolt survives, use TBR. Our tank was in from of the unimatrix to do his job and get some aggro. Our team blown up both unimatrixes in less than 1:30 minutes using that strategy.
- The queen: She pops, use the tholian web console. It'll take 15 seconds before she can destroy it (it looks like her dps comes from special abilities only, and she has very few regular attacks, so it's a great glitch), and she'll aggro the nodes in the meantime (they have a very high threat value). Carriers launch their fighters, and fighers will take the iso charges and aoe torps. No one can be blown up. SNB, debuff, snb, debuff, use the tholian web, constantly launch new fighers wings. Fighers will of course torp her to death before they get killed. And she died in less than 2 mins.
Elite? Sorry, cryptic, try again.
How you could improve it: iso charge isn't necessary here. It's very easy to avoid with a proper build. Instead of that the queen could have PDS consoles or 10 or so turrets with CRF III to deal with figher wings and other pets. She sould also be able to select multiple targets instead of just one.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
I'd say it is elite, ok maybe queenie should have more standard attacks but as always a good team working together can pull it off easily, I did normal a few minutes ago and found the requirement for a degree of teamwork and strategy gave it some actual difficulty, this is one STF I will happily do again.
Nice work Cryptic, if the NPC firepower is as I expect in elite it could probably use a little tone down but I'll give my verdict on that once I've done it
1. the already mentioned missing rewards.
2. the also mentioned pathfinding of the cubes is messed up.
3. the houston is aggroing everything, but doesnt do anything useful beside looking pretty and avoiding attacks.
4. couple of times the own ship is set to an intercept-course bug. means, no control over the own ship and steering towards the target.
5. sometimes the queens diamond seems acting overpowered on normal, like it is set to elite in some of the hive instances and oneshotting everybody in range. happened like 2 or 3 times in all the runs. slicing through the cubes and spheres pretty easily, defeating both of the unimatrix vessels in like 2 minutes, the queen engaged in combat and boom - whole squad dead, took like half an hour to take her down. all that plus the missing rewards afterwards felt like a big disappointment
We finished the Cube squad within Optional time.
The Houston is indeed aggroing everything which should make it very easy for the team to pick them off one by one. That is her actual purpose, draw fire from us, not blow everything up for us.
Second phase was more of a struggle for me. Was flying an Engi/Sovereig build to tank, but I was to slow to escape the tractor beams and plasma bolts. That is a flaw in my build that can be changed.
Could tank the Queen just fine. Against her I only died once by an invisible one shot. At least I didn't see anything, I suppose it must have been the Isocharge.