Instakills are not part of the design, and will be addressed and removed as quickly as possible.
The mission is supposed to be challenging. Instakills are not a challenge, they are a frustration.
I agree with what some of the others have said
1. Yes, insta-kills gotta go, but not all of them. My own personal thought on this is: If you can counter it somehow (like shooting down the plasma balls), it should be able to kill you in one shot. If you CANNOT counter it, it should not be able to one-shot you.
An example: Queen's Iso Charge, you can't stop or resist that at all, so in turn, you can't stop it once she fires, meaning you are probably going to die no matter what. The same applies for much of her other abilities, like her aceton wave thing.
On the other end: Plasma Balls from the V'gers can be shot down, TBR'ed, and so on, but you CAN get rid of em. The biggest annoyance is the Regen probes healing them more than anything else.
(Much of this same thing can apply for the other STFs in space and on ground. Tough is good, insta-kills and un-counterabile things are not)
2. I like Johnny's idea, sustained DPS. I agree with that completely. Make the Borg do consistant DPS, instead of massive spike damage. Enough to really make someone sweat, but not dying instantly.
Have the Borg hit hard enough to make a tank really be a tank, and a sci or escort know that they gotta go if they get shot at. One good idea for all spheres, cubes, and probes is make their plasma beam arrays 360 degrees. Keep their torps the same at least for now. They wouldn't have to turn as much, but it'd keep the damage on their target much more often.
A longer-term idea that could be done in the future, is lower the damage that the Borg do considerably, but add more weapons for them, mostly plasma beams for again, probes, spheres, and cubes. Like a tac cube could be firing off 6 beam arrays all at once, especially if using a FAW. Each hit wouldn't be huge, but would quickly add up. I know that isn't easy or quick to do, but it'd keep everything challenging, without going overboard.
Hmm...this is about all I have on this at the moment.
Thanks for the feedback!!!! We'll be looking at the insta-kills and the rewards.... If you all could, would you please post how long it took you to complete this STF? Remember to post if your time is for a normal run or elite.
For myself and the group I was in, on the post in page 15, took us about 40-45 minutes. I wasn't really looking too much into it at the time so I dunno how close that is, but I think it's a good guess/estimate. It was an elite run though, and it was personally my first time doing it.
The first phase was just under 10 minutes (we barely made the optional, so I know that one for sure)
The second phase took around 10-15 minutes (it was at least the most hectic though and we didn't make the optional)
The Queen took any remaining time after that. (but we did make the optional)
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.
Thanks for the feedback!!!! We'll be looking at the insta-kills and the rewards.... If you all could, would you please post how long it took you to complete this STF? Remember to post if your time is for a normal run or elite.
It took me what, 40 minutes?
And I didn't even complete it - gave up when the unimatrix ships proved indestructible.
Ok,please drop the torp spread lll on the Unimatrix ships,having your team wiped by them on elite,its hard to try an get an optional,when you get wiped by a torpedo spread,on normal/encounters they are survivable,but on elite,when they can completely rip through a MKXll Maco shield,and two MXll +40 plasma resist consoles,that is really dumb.
Ok,please drop the torp spread lll on the Unimatrix ships,having your team wiped by them on elite,its hard to try an get an optional,when you get wiped by a torpedo spread,on normal/encounters they are survivable,but on elite,when they can completely rip through a MKXll Maco shield,and two MXll +40 plasma resist consoles,that is really dumb.
Plasma resist console wouldn't help you against the impact, only against the Plasma DoT. What you need is kinetic resistance.
And even MACO shields need to be buffed to survive the spread, but they can with Emergency Power to Shields.
First time ever attempting the mission was on Elite with 4 fellow players and one random guy. Took us about 30 minutes total, but without any optionals, although we believe they are very much doable with proper approach and should make the mission last for about 20 minutes with a good team.
Second time was on Normal with a complete random pve queue group. No problems whatsoever - done all the optionals and completed the mission in about 15 minutes or less. I was honestly surprised how easy that was, even for normal.
Nerf the insta-kill iso charge and leave the rest as it is (aside from bug fixing). Hell, I wouldn't mind other "Elite" STFs being brought up to this level of challenge, honestly.
And as for people who complain about "too high" difficulty, having no idea about teamplay and cooperation, being too lazy to read a simple bridge officer hint dialogue - they might as well go back collecting rocks on New Romulus and dont bother with STFs.
Please Cryptic, don't nerf the only somewhat challenging missions in the game only because of some - for lack of a better term - casuals... These missions are supposed to be challenging and the Onslaught is a decent addition. It's NOT too difficult, and only needs a few minor tweaks, if anything.
On normal it was tougher than average, but I'd put that up to inexperienced players, the first run through was decent, 10-15 mins, the 2nd was painful with the group being wiped constantly by the unimatrix ships. The ships themselves don't have a problem, its the people flying, you can't fix stupid.
The queen flip flops agro randomly, is this normal? It also has too many one hit kills.
I wouldn't take anything but a good team on elite with this just yet.
Tactical cubes are easy enough, but a PUG will make a mess as everyone goes kirk on them.
Unimatrix ships torp spread hits frequently enough that on elite may cause some problems. The lance and plasma balls are avoidable, so thats ok. In a pug people have no ability to understand where they are matters, its just pew pew pew and complain when you die over and over the same way, changing doesn't enter their minds.
The queen is going to one hit you endlessly. It moves fast, has little warning over the big damage abilities and doesn't seem to lock on to one person. I'd imagine it is going to require some heavy debuffing to control properly.
yea i agree, i didn't get no loots drops from the fight, but them vger ships one shot kill was way overpowered, and then the queen was able to flip me around each time i come close to her and try to kill her, plus one time she somehow threw me across back the map to the respawn spot. Not sure how she did that but she was doing that a lot to the team i was on. Plus when we try to kill her, she was able to one shot kill us like the vger ships was doing to us. It a fun mission but a bit overpowered i think on normal mode, i think her and vger should be doing that on elite mode.
"I wouldn't take anything but a good team on elite with this just yet"
Therein lies the problem though - I suspect that I'll end up PuG-ing this more often than not, in which case - like any STF/Fleet action, getting a good team is down to luck.
Then don't fly with random pugs - simple as that. Find yourself a decent fleet, a group of good players, or just join any one of the numerous "Elite" channels, so that you can find yourself a group presumably better than your average casuals.
As the previous poster have said - "you can't fix stupid". And the worst thing Cryptic could do is nerf every single team mission in the game so that they could be finished by anyone without any effort. They might as well introduce an "I win" button while at it.
I'm sorry if this'll come out rude or blunt, but honestly, if you suck then you should stay out of any STFs. And if you don't then show some initiative and do something so that you won't be forced to play only PvE queues. There are numerous channels and fleets devoted to this kind of gameplay - I assure you such experience will certainly come out better than a complete random pug. And this way at least some challenge in the game could be saved, without resorting to "press F to complete the mission"...
Thanks for the feedback!!!! We'll be looking at the insta-kills and the rewards.... If you all could, would you please post how long it took you to complete this STF? Remember to post if your time is for a normal run or elite.
Normal, about 30 mins here. It was a proper fleet combo of 2 Eng tank, a good Sci, and 2 tactical. It was a nice battle and felt like a nice game. Perfect for normal. Most of the group was their first time too so I suspect this time will drop to 20 mins or less with a specialized group and tactics are perfected.
Elite, about 50 mins, however the group was inexperienced with no real tank. And about 37mins on a retry for me with another decent fleet combo. It still provided a good challenge. Minimal one shots, since the group did a good job at keeping those plasma torps/bolts away from everyone's hulls and the tanks spread out while dealing with the queen. This will probably fall to 30 mins after tactics are locked down and people are more familiar with it. Of course if you get an incompetent group it wont be completable (which I am glad of! Keep up this higher difficulty! It is very nice to have.)
The Iso charge is really the only thing needing a tone down, but is manageable either way as properly done it'll only hit 2 ships max, and with everyone greater than 5km away, the other powers were tankable.
---
"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
Thanks for the feedback!!!! We'll be looking at the insta-kills and the rewards.... If you all could, would you please post how long it took you to complete this STF? Remember to post if your time is for a normal run or elite.
On the friday testing thing I had a pug group that completed elite in about 40 minutes, first attempt for everyone. We missed two optional objectives (one of which, keeping 3 people alive on the unimatrixes, was entirely our own stupidity, we killed the first one fine and in crossing over to the second one we all blew up flying straight at it).
The first part (tac cubes): I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but it's easy to agro all of them with scatter volleys and torp spreads (which are very useful in other STFs and fleet actions). Expecting players to have single target builds just for this wouldn't be good, although you can pull the tac cubes solo and so on. Which goes to my second sub point, which is that I think you should push the cubes back a couple of Km from the spawn point, because it's easy to accidentally pull all the cubes onto the respawn point and death loop yourselves.
Unimatrixes. Seems like it's just a dps check, not a problem really.
The Octahedron is another matter. Fast, aggressive, easily one shots even a well geared bug we had in our group. Players really need to gang up on it, and even then it can chew through people. Unfortunately, this would be a great boss if you could have tanks and healers guaranteed in a group, but I could see a scenario where some groups just can't survive long enough to do any damage, and then pull her onto the respawn point.
Just a thought, but maybe have a repair freighter or something in the instance for the first couple of months, so people can actually patch themselves up while learning how to do it. Otherwise ship injuries could make this a bit problematic. A lot of ways to die and leave yourself incapable of surviving later into the encounter.
While it's an interesting challenge I think it highlights some of your core systems problems. You don't have 'tanks and healers' for example, or a least don't guarantee you will get competent ones in a pug, but then all your content needs to be designed for dps tanks or it seems insanely hard even when it isn't. Carrier pets can, will, and do, run off and agro stuff on their own, which is normally minor, but on tactical cubes it can be a nightmare. Being able to pull mobs to respawn points is usually not all that serious, but becomes a problem when those mobs can just utterly destroy anyone who spawns before they can react. 1 tactical cube on a spawn point is player stupidity, 6 tactical cubes on a respawn point is either an epic troll or bad design.
Thanks for the feedback!!!! We'll be looking at the insta-kills and the rewards.... If you all could, would you please post how long it took you to complete this STF? Remember to post if your time is for a normal run or elite.
I hope so! and while you are at it please consider a pass on the Torpedo Spread 3 spamming of the B'gers...
Insta kills are known for a year now and nothing has been done. I hope you take the feedback now more seriously and remove them once and for all.
As it stands now, I won't run Onslaught on Elite ever. Why should I attempt an STF which is simply ridiculous. I'd rather wait 30min for a Reset timer than to spend a whole evening trying to beat Onslaught... This Onslaught on my nerves just isn't worth it. Simple as that. Sorry for this wasted content.
To your question:
Normal: it took about 20minutes
Elite: 3 attempts, no single victory. Overall spend over 40minutes up to 1.2 hours on the latest try, before I gave up.
For elite, the bulk of the time spent in the run is waiting for the respawn timer to run and the slug fest involved with the +2 and+4 enemies.
1/3 of the run is just fighting off the Tactical cubes on the spawn. 1/2 is dealing with the Unimatrix guards and their regeneration probes. The Octahedron's Aceton Assimilator shockwave usually one-hits escorts WITH full shields. That and its shields take a really long time to bring down if less than three teammates have any shield debuffs or drains.
After running though this mission on Normal, with full MK XII borg weps, I'd have to say the mission needs to be toned back a bit. Being a Vet of hundreds of Elite runs, I can't even fathom this mission on Elite. Branflakes was also in our group in a vesta class, and also mentioned that the mission was a tad too hard. Other than that I absolutely loved the mission, it felt like Unimatrix 01. I also loved the borg Diamond, THANK YOU!!! !
I would digress though and say that the Diamond should not be stronger than the pair of V'ger ships that we fight. Also why is the queen in a Diamond, and not in a tactical Cube (since that is the supposed strongest Borg canon ship, although the Obelisk that was proposed for First Contact would have fit the bill.) What I suggest is having the Diamond trying out of one of the V'ger ships,, almost like a last ditch effort for the queen.
Loved the new mission, just a few short points
Edit: It took us about 25-35 mins on normal.
Sollaf: Join date Sep 2009, Lifer. Disgruntled with the JHSS, my Bug feels less shiny now.
I have played before and like most even on normal got wiped by the queens 1 shot kill. Last night however while attacking the unimatrixe's I would be between 5-8k from them and suddenly even though they were right in front of me target would show them at 10k + away from me and really got annoying when trying to use certain ranged abilities and suddenly they were interrupted OR didn't even fire due to this occurrence.
When doing an Elite Fleet run, We were massacred over and over again, It took us 3 hours to complete it. The Queen was coming onto me like a drunken prom date. She enjoyed seeing me spawn, oneshotted me, and then wait for me to respawn.
The only optional we were able to accomplish was the last one with keeping one alive against the Queen. The main issue we had when fighting the queen, is her shields did not drop or even diminish, and remained at full strength throughout the entire fight. Also her aoe weapons, and countermeasures consistently shot down our tricobalts.
The V'gers didn't seem to be less deadly when staying near the Queen to use as a shield.
I don't suck - I'm very aware of what I am doing, and my Sci in my Wells class is a pretty effective crowd controller. Fact of the matter is if you end up in a PuG with four clueless rainbow-boats, it doesn't matter if you are the crowned King of DPS - that mission is probably going to fail.
Equally, I've played STF's where the PuG was fantastic and we've steamrollered the Borg.
And I am a member a Fleet - but the sad reality is that I'm not always online at the same time as many of my fleet-mates. And even then, those online have got to WANT to play the same STF/Fleet Action as you - and this isn't always the case (and fair is fair, I don't expect four other people to play an STF just because I want to. However, when they are available the mission almost always goes
I guess I could join another fleet, but I am VERY fond of the one I am in.
What's the problem then? You win some, you lose some. The game gets really damn boring when all you do is win.
On a Normal run the queen was a real pain, until I told the sci on the pug to please subnuke the queen. Stripping her of buffs and extending the recharge timers for her really made a difference. We still died, but much less frequently.
The STF is now really easy since the last patch. Unimatrixes must have been nerfed (they lasted 15 seconds each in elite), and the queen deals almost no damage now. It's even more easier to swarm her with pets, i don't know what you did guys but she likes aggoing pets she can barely kill, except with what's left of her iso charge. The most difficult part is the first one with elite tac cubes. The queen has become a huge fat mob with a lot of hp and very few dps. Our pug team steamrolled the STF in elite in less than 15 minutes with all optional objectives. :rolleyes:
I got one hit from the new iso charge, and there was no instakill.
We got our rewards - 90 marks - and a borg neural processor.
The STF is now really easy since the last patch. Unimatrixes must have been nerfed (they lasted 15 seconds each in elite), and the queen deals almost no damage now. It's even more easier to swarm her with pets, i don't know what you did guys but she likes aggoing pets she can barely kill, except with what's left of her iso charge. The most difficult part is the first one with elite tac cubes. The queen has become a huge fat mob with a lot of hp and very few dps. Our pug team steamrolled the STF in elite in less than 15 minutes with all optional objectives. :rolleyes:
I got one hit from the new iso charge, and there was no instakill.
We got our rewards - 90 marks - and a borg neural processor.
Damn... toning down the isocharge would have been enough.
But I guess we all knew it would come to this, so everybody can "win" this mission.
Edit: You are right. Much, much easier. i tanked her without sweating and I didn't go into full tank mode for that.
I don't know what some of you are talking about this being easy. I have XII Purple fleet weps full XII maco space set. Fleet MVAE with 5 XII purple tac consoles and running 2 XII purple Electro hull plates and the Spheres were one shoting me. The plasma was burning me out in 10 sec. Died 5 times in 5 min. As soon as we got in wep range we were dead. It was not this way on the 1st day season 7 came out but today the mission was impossible. We all just dropped once we all were up to 90 sec cool downs. Everyone in my Fleet is talking about how the Plasma is stronger or our resistance has been nerfed. This one shot TRIBBLE has got to go. I want STFs to be hard but not like this. Perhaps if the cool downs wernt so long. or get rid of the one shot torps. Or put the plasma damage/resistance back the way it was.
Ok I can't speak to elite, I haven't tried it yet. But it's advertized as 'moderate' difficulty for levels 45-50. I'm sorry... I don't even want to think how a level 45 would handle this thing on Normal. I tried in 4 separate pugs yesterday and each time we spent over 20 minutes trying to do it before folks started leaving the instance in disgust. It is ridiculously hard for a 'normal' mode encounter.
It'd be nice if devs kept in mind not everyone has full purple XII gear on their ships yet and anyone just coming up that's 45th level isn't gonna be even close. I have pretty much full purple XI gear as a level 50 in a fleet science research vessel.
The initial encounter against the guard cubes is just about perfect. The two unimatrix ships and the queen, however, are impossible unless you're fairly organized or your pug is made up of a bunch of folks sporting XII purple escorts that can just shred things instantly. If your pug is weaker setups you're in for a long painful fight and, odds are, it'll be futile, especially when folks don't know to stay the hell away from the queen initially.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too hard. Ive tried about a dozen times now and not once have we made it past even one of the unimatrix ships. 20 min or so (and 20 deaths) in and people start rage quitting. This is ridiculous. I had stopped playing STO because the STFs had become painfully difficult and hoped that season 7 would be fun again. It is not even a little fun. One shot kills, 2 min re-spawns and being defeated over and over and over again is not fun. Dial it back a bit! The point of a game is to enjoy it. You do want people to continue to play right?
Won't be doing this mission again, at least on Elite. Too many 1-shot kills. Like a couple others I got 1-shotted just after respawning. Nope. Sorry "programmers" but you screwed up on this one. Just daring to try Elite should bag you 5 or 6 Neural Processors at the least.
I'll stick to the slightly more sane Normal version and the old STF's.
Well managed to finish this mission twice out of 25 attempts. And Both times no optionals achieved. died 22 times spent I dont know how many components. Yeah this mission needs reworked. Make the Tac cubes the same as the TAC cube at the Begining of KA. and the spheres like the ones in Infected and it should be okay. As it is now you can tell the Borg are on Steroids on this mission. Way harder that the same ships on "red Alert" or other STF's. Come on guys just make them all the same and then we could stand a chance.
Have had a number of runs with the Fleet on Normal and a total of 3 runs on Elite.
Normal ent fine, and we discussed tactics and seemed to have a workable plan. Thought we were ready for Elite. Total chaos. Dying like crazy and going through Components like Tic-tacs. Ended up with 3 cubes and I don't know how many spheres in our spawn area. Not good, but we struggled through and overcame in the end.
Had our 3rd Elite run this evening. Missed the first optional by a few seconds and that was the only problem. No mess, no fuss. I died once at the start. First Unimatrix went down fast. Too fast for one guy, who didn't get clear in time.
We'll iron out the kinks with the start of the STF to ensure we get all the optional and I imagine we will be blasting through it like we do with Cure Elite.
On a side note, some of us like the fact that the combat with the Borg is harder than pre-Season 7. Space STFs had lost their challenge and we were sleepwalking and/or blasting our way through them.
I don't mind a challenge, I don't mind opponents being several levels upon me; but, I really dislike insta-one-shot-kills. It seems kinda... cheap, you know? I get that the borg are supposed to be incredibly challenging as an adversary, but there should be a balance between offensive vs defensive abilities. If I'm flying around in a tank, with max shields and max hull, I categorically shouldn't be insta-killed. As a player, I have zero defence for that and the borg have the supreme advantage. It's cheap for that very reason, because as an engy in a tank cruiser, I hould have the ability to counter that sort of strike with something. As it stands, I don't even have time to hit miracle worker. So, that deprives me, and I'd argue every other player any ability to sufficiently defend themselves.
If you, like I have played STO for a long time, we sorta pride ourselves on *NOT* dying in these engagements, and we'll use everything at our disposal to keep firing and survive to do so.
This is why insta-one-shot-kills suck.
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Comments
I agree with what some of the others have said
1. Yes, insta-kills gotta go, but not all of them. My own personal thought on this is: If you can counter it somehow (like shooting down the plasma balls), it should be able to kill you in one shot. If you CANNOT counter it, it should not be able to one-shot you.
An example: Queen's Iso Charge, you can't stop or resist that at all, so in turn, you can't stop it once she fires, meaning you are probably going to die no matter what. The same applies for much of her other abilities, like her aceton wave thing.
On the other end: Plasma Balls from the V'gers can be shot down, TBR'ed, and so on, but you CAN get rid of em. The biggest annoyance is the Regen probes healing them more than anything else.
(Much of this same thing can apply for the other STFs in space and on ground. Tough is good, insta-kills and un-counterabile things are not)
2. I like Johnny's idea, sustained DPS. I agree with that completely. Make the Borg do consistant DPS, instead of massive spike damage. Enough to really make someone sweat, but not dying instantly.
Have the Borg hit hard enough to make a tank really be a tank, and a sci or escort know that they gotta go if they get shot at. One good idea for all spheres, cubes, and probes is make their plasma beam arrays 360 degrees. Keep their torps the same at least for now. They wouldn't have to turn as much, but it'd keep the damage on their target much more often.
A longer-term idea that could be done in the future, is lower the damage that the Borg do considerably, but add more weapons for them, mostly plasma beams for again, probes, spheres, and cubes. Like a tac cube could be firing off 6 beam arrays all at once, especially if using a FAW. Each hit wouldn't be huge, but would quickly add up. I know that isn't easy or quick to do, but it'd keep everything challenging, without going overboard.
Hmm...this is about all I have on this at the moment.
For myself and the group I was in, on the post in page 15, took us about 40-45 minutes. I wasn't really looking too much into it at the time so I dunno how close that is, but I think it's a good guess/estimate. It was an elite run though, and it was personally my first time doing it.
The first phase was just under 10 minutes (we barely made the optional, so I know that one for sure)
The second phase took around 10-15 minutes (it was at least the most hectic though and we didn't make the optional)
The Queen took any remaining time after that. (but we did make the optional)
Edit: I'd also like to add I made this thread here, for possible further balancing of the other STFs in the future: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=6410071#post6410071
It took me what, 40 minutes?
And I didn't even complete it - gave up when the unimatrix ships proved indestructible.
Oh, and played Elite.
Plasma resist console wouldn't help you against the impact, only against the Plasma DoT. What you need is kinetic resistance.
And even MACO shields need to be buffed to survive the spread, but they can with Emergency Power to Shields.
Second time was on Normal with a complete random pve queue group. No problems whatsoever - done all the optionals and completed the mission in about 15 minutes or less. I was honestly surprised how easy that was, even for normal.
Nerf the insta-kill iso charge and leave the rest as it is (aside from bug fixing). Hell, I wouldn't mind other "Elite" STFs being brought up to this level of challenge, honestly.
And as for people who complain about "too high" difficulty, having no idea about teamplay and cooperation, being too lazy to read a simple bridge officer hint dialogue - they might as well go back collecting rocks on New Romulus and dont bother with STFs.
Please Cryptic, don't nerf the only somewhat challenging missions in the game only because of some - for lack of a better term - casuals... These missions are supposed to be challenging and the Onslaught is a decent addition. It's NOT too difficult, and only needs a few minor tweaks, if anything.
The queen flip flops agro randomly, is this normal? It also has too many one hit kills.
I wouldn't take anything but a good team on elite with this just yet.
Tactical cubes are easy enough, but a PUG will make a mess as everyone goes kirk on them.
Unimatrix ships torp spread hits frequently enough that on elite may cause some problems. The lance and plasma balls are avoidable, so thats ok. In a pug people have no ability to understand where they are matters, its just pew pew pew and complain when you die over and over the same way, changing doesn't enter their minds.
The queen is going to one hit you endlessly. It moves fast, has little warning over the big damage abilities and doesn't seem to lock on to one person. I'd imagine it is going to require some heavy debuffing to control properly.
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As the previous poster have said - "you can't fix stupid". And the worst thing Cryptic could do is nerf every single team mission in the game so that they could be finished by anyone without any effort. They might as well introduce an "I win" button while at it.
I'm sorry if this'll come out rude or blunt, but honestly, if you suck then you should stay out of any STFs. And if you don't then show some initiative and do something so that you won't be forced to play only PvE queues. There are numerous channels and fleets devoted to this kind of gameplay - I assure you such experience will certainly come out better than a complete random pug. And this way at least some challenge in the game could be saved, without resorting to "press F to complete the mission"...
Normal, about 30 mins here. It was a proper fleet combo of 2 Eng tank, a good Sci, and 2 tactical. It was a nice battle and felt like a nice game. Perfect for normal. Most of the group was their first time too so I suspect this time will drop to 20 mins or less with a specialized group and tactics are perfected.
Elite, about 50 mins, however the group was inexperienced with no real tank. And about 37mins on a retry for me with another decent fleet combo. It still provided a good challenge. Minimal one shots, since the group did a good job at keeping those plasma torps/bolts away from everyone's hulls and the tanks spread out while dealing with the queen. This will probably fall to 30 mins after tactics are locked down and people are more familiar with it. Of course if you get an incompetent group it wont be completable (which I am glad of! Keep up this higher difficulty! It is very nice to have.)
The Iso charge is really the only thing needing a tone down, but is manageable either way as properly done it'll only hit 2 ships max, and with everyone greater than 5km away, the other powers were tankable.
"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
On the friday testing thing I had a pug group that completed elite in about 40 minutes, first attempt for everyone. We missed two optional objectives (one of which, keeping 3 people alive on the unimatrixes, was entirely our own stupidity, we killed the first one fine and in crossing over to the second one we all blew up flying straight at it).
The first part (tac cubes): I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but it's easy to agro all of them with scatter volleys and torp spreads (which are very useful in other STFs and fleet actions). Expecting players to have single target builds just for this wouldn't be good, although you can pull the tac cubes solo and so on. Which goes to my second sub point, which is that I think you should push the cubes back a couple of Km from the spawn point, because it's easy to accidentally pull all the cubes onto the respawn point and death loop yourselves.
Unimatrixes. Seems like it's just a dps check, not a problem really.
The Octahedron is another matter. Fast, aggressive, easily one shots even a well geared bug we had in our group. Players really need to gang up on it, and even then it can chew through people. Unfortunately, this would be a great boss if you could have tanks and healers guaranteed in a group, but I could see a scenario where some groups just can't survive long enough to do any damage, and then pull her onto the respawn point.
Just a thought, but maybe have a repair freighter or something in the instance for the first couple of months, so people can actually patch themselves up while learning how to do it. Otherwise ship injuries could make this a bit problematic. A lot of ways to die and leave yourself incapable of surviving later into the encounter.
While it's an interesting challenge I think it highlights some of your core systems problems. You don't have 'tanks and healers' for example, or a least don't guarantee you will get competent ones in a pug, but then all your content needs to be designed for dps tanks or it seems insanely hard even when it isn't. Carrier pets can, will, and do, run off and agro stuff on their own, which is normally minor, but on tactical cubes it can be a nightmare. Being able to pull mobs to respawn points is usually not all that serious, but becomes a problem when those mobs can just utterly destroy anyone who spawns before they can react. 1 tactical cube on a spawn point is player stupidity, 6 tactical cubes on a respawn point is either an epic troll or bad design.
I hope so! and while you are at it please consider a pass on the Torpedo Spread 3 spamming of the B'gers...
Insta kills are known for a year now and nothing has been done. I hope you take the feedback now more seriously and remove them once and for all.
As it stands now, I won't run Onslaught on Elite ever. Why should I attempt an STF which is simply ridiculous. I'd rather wait 30min for a Reset timer than to spend a whole evening trying to beat Onslaught... This Onslaught on my nerves just isn't worth it. Simple as that. Sorry for this wasted content.
To your question:
Normal: it took about 20minutes
Elite: 3 attempts, no single victory. Overall spend over 40minutes up to 1.2 hours on the latest try, before I gave up.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
On an elite run with random players: ~1 hour.
On an elite run with Fleetmates: ~45 minutes.
For elite, the bulk of the time spent in the run is waiting for the respawn timer to run and the slug fest involved with the +2 and+4 enemies.
1/3 of the run is just fighting off the Tactical cubes on the spawn. 1/2 is dealing with the Unimatrix guards and their regeneration probes. The Octahedron's Aceton Assimilator shockwave usually one-hits escorts WITH full shields. That and its shields take a really long time to bring down if less than three teammates have any shield debuffs or drains.
I would digress though and say that the Diamond should not be stronger than the pair of V'ger ships that we fight. Also why is the queen in a Diamond, and not in a tactical Cube (since that is the supposed strongest Borg canon ship, although the Obelisk that was proposed for First Contact would have fit the bill.) What I suggest is having the Diamond trying out of one of the V'ger ships,, almost like a last ditch effort for the queen.
Loved the new mission, just a few short points
Edit: It took us about 25-35 mins on normal.
It still suffers from the same problems most space STFs suffer from, in that it's rather simplistic.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
The only optional we were able to accomplish was the last one with keeping one alive against the Queen. The main issue we had when fighting the queen, is her shields did not drop or even diminish, and remained at full strength throughout the entire fight. Also her aoe weapons, and countermeasures consistently shot down our tricobalts.
The V'gers didn't seem to be less deadly when staying near the Queen to use as a shield.
Only one player received marks and the processor.
What's the problem then? You win some, you lose some. The game gets really damn boring when all you do is win.
I got one hit from the new iso charge, and there was no instakill.
We got our rewards - 90 marks - and a borg neural processor.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Damn... toning down the isocharge would have been enough.
But I guess we all knew it would come to this, so everybody can "win" this mission.
Edit: You are right. Much, much easier. i tanked her without sweating and I didn't go into full tank mode for that.
It'd be nice if devs kept in mind not everyone has full purple XII gear on their ships yet and anyone just coming up that's 45th level isn't gonna be even close. I have pretty much full purple XI gear as a level 50 in a fleet science research vessel.
The initial encounter against the guard cubes is just about perfect. The two unimatrix ships and the queen, however, are impossible unless you're fairly organized or your pug is made up of a bunch of folks sporting XII purple escorts that can just shred things instantly. If your pug is weaker setups you're in for a long painful fight and, odds are, it'll be futile, especially when folks don't know to stay the hell away from the queen initially.
- Damn the torpedos! Full speed ahead!
I'll stick to the slightly more sane Normal version and the old STF's.
Normal ent fine, and we discussed tactics and seemed to have a workable plan. Thought we were ready for Elite. Total chaos. Dying like crazy and going through Components like Tic-tacs. Ended up with 3 cubes and I don't know how many spheres in our spawn area. Not good, but we struggled through and overcame in the end.
Had our 3rd Elite run this evening. Missed the first optional by a few seconds and that was the only problem. No mess, no fuss. I died once at the start. First Unimatrix went down fast. Too fast for one guy, who didn't get clear in time.
We'll iron out the kinks with the start of the STF to ensure we get all the optional and I imagine we will be blasting through it like we do with Cure Elite.
On a side note, some of us like the fact that the combat with the Borg is harder than pre-Season 7. Space STFs had lost their challenge and we were sleepwalking and/or blasting our way through them.
If you, like I have played STO for a long time, we sorta pride ourselves on *NOT* dying in these engagements, and we'll use everything at our disposal to keep firing and survive to do so.
This is why insta-one-shot-kills suck.
Lag Watch:
Delta Rising: Warning
Anniversary Event: Severe
Iconian Season: Critical