so what if there only small hand of people still paying customers and they should add a elite mode for them doesn't hurt anyone and if you think you need to pay attention in the new crystal you got to be joking all i did was sit there press space-bar got first place won watching a movie at the same time lol. If you want face palm content go play single player game
If you want a challenge in STO shouldn't you just be playing Terradome right now anyways? It's still there, as challenging as always.
Wouldnt it be cool if you had to play the entity like a musical instrument? It would make certain noises, and you had to target specific crystal branches on it in a musical sequence to shatter it. 10 ships had to each hit the notes in a specific order, it would go through the absorbtion phase like 3 times and after each you had to play a counter tune where you are hitting higher notes by the third phase. It would play like 6 different sounds and players would have to know the 6 sequences of answer notes, and it wouldnt play the same 3 sounds every mission, it would rotate each playthrough so you had to use your collective ears to crack it like a safe. All while fighting off pesky tholians so maybe like 3 ships are providing overwatch against tholians while 7 players are playing the Entity's musical branches to defeat it.
STO: @AGNT009 Since Dec 2010
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
If they had made it harder you would see wining and raging threads as long as the Mississippi everywhere. People are getting destroyed at the end of the absorbing phase or by shards which they failed to destroy or evade. Even that little tactics this event demands are to hard to understand for a lot of people.
If it's fun, then I'd consider the re-design a success.
For this limited-time event, we didn't want to set the bar too high. All players should have a chance to succeed. Maybe we erred too far on the side of caution, but I'd much rather have tipped the scales to that end than to the opposite.
When the Crystalline Entity returns in the future, well after this limited-time Event has run its course, we fully intend to offer an Elite version for players that wish to have a greater challenge.
Also: We're currently investigating the bug related to the Matter Conversion Beam. Getting that to reliably deal its intended damage will raise the difficulty of the encounter a bit.
I had such a horrible experience as a new player doing this three years ago that I almost didn't give the new event a try. If not for the high rewards and your name attached I would have avoided it. Thank you for making it a playable experience and not a place where people shout and curse when others stumble in on their marathon efforts with no or bad information on strategy.
Most of my posts are complaints about something, so I wanted to make sure I took the time to say thank you here.
I think the AOE should be Elite Donatra level deadly, I've seen Escorts survive. SCI, and Cruisers its just a tap on the shoulders for them.
Might spice things up, and give players a reason to not fire when it says not to fire, or back off.
Actually, I'm guessing the shockwave was weak because very little damage was dealt by the players.
You see, the damage dealt by the shockwave scales based on the amount of fire the Entity absorbed.
Hint: Keep shooting at the thing as much as you can, then get to a distance of 10.1 kilometers or more by the end of the absorption phase. All the Tholians will blow up.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I think the difficulty level is about right for normal, but I'm begging for an elite version - at least double the power of stuff.
Pugging this is trivial, 10-15 minutes and no failure condition means you succeed every time. I'm assuming that was intentional, because it's really not difficult at all.
I would love an Elite version where I struggle in pugs - maybe the difficulty of KASE pugs, something around there. To do that, buff the shockwave, buff the shards damage output and add a few more tholians. That would be my suggestion.
On the whole, a good, fun event. Not something I can see myself playing regularly after the event ends unless there is an elite version with STF-level dilithium/mark loot. Doesn't have to be marks, could be a bag of loot like the old STFs (vendor junk) - but an elite version with more dil is a must for me.
I think in general the event is a nice thing.
There are like 2-3 things i would like to see to make it more interessting and fair.
-once the CE is in its absorb phase, all dmg done should be SUBTRACTED from the dmg counter to determine who makes first place
-the tholians are merely a nucence. In an elite version i would like to see much more tholian stuff such that you have to split the team and have some going after the tholians while the rest keeps attacking the CE.
-the CE should be moved a bit away from the planet. Whenever i fly around it my screen goes blank when i get to close to the planet like whenever you enter the athmosphere so i have to move the camera angle and than the CE is in the way
-there are some problems with the select method. I would like to have it go through all possible targets that could have been clicked on a clicked pixel such that we can select the larger fragments in front of the CE which is impossible right now
-i would like to see some smarter algorithm controlling the shards, especially the larger fragments or just more of them.
A) pewpew tholians pewpew entity
C) absorption phase, stop pewpew entity, pewpew tholians, and move out of AoE range.
D) Absorption ends, start again at A.
It's sadly entirely too trivial.
Couldn't the same thing be said about the first CE, really? Its getting people to follow basic steps that is difficult.
First CE was:
pew pew CE @low health CE throws out small shards, evade and destroy
pew pew CE
It was easier, but impossible?
I don't know why literacy rates are like 99% but in STO hover around 10%
That said this CE is really pathetically easy. We took 10 from our fleet in the first time, not knowing what to expect and just shot at it and it died in 3-4 minutes. The next times I played I went in with a cruiser and it was even easier, then a ship with gravity well and it was so pathetically easy there shouldn't be any reward really.
If it's fun, then I'd consider the re-design a success.
For this limited-time event, we didn't want to set the bar too high. All players should have a chance to succeed. Maybe we erred too far on the side of caution, but I'd much rather have tipped the scales to that end than to the opposite.
When the Crystalline Entity returns in the future, well after this limited-time Event has run its course, we fully intend to offer an Elite version for players that wish to have a greater challenge.
Also: We're currently investigating the bug related to the Matter Conversion Beam. Getting that to reliably deal its intended damage will raise the difficulty of the encounter a bit.
Totally understandable. It's better to disappoint "hardcore" players during the event, rather than discourage casual players who might have not been able to complete a more difficult mission, thus missing the limited-time rewards.
Still, I have high hopes you can deliver some sort of Elite version of this mission, since the overall concept is quite interesting, even if it still favours dps over anything else.
Since this mission is (kind of) Tholian-themed, would it be possible for this Elite version to reward Nukara Marks for the upcoming new reputation?
I'm not saying your wrong but this is a very sad statement. Have most of us been spoon fed so much of our lives that this is what is wanted?
Everyone wants to have a challenge but when their is so much grinding people also want the grinding to be easier to deal with.
Harder missions should give only a slightly higher rewards as well as a special title. Having them give so much better rewards make people who have no business in them going in them and learning the hard way. Their has been so many times that I have been in ground missions that fail because their are people joining those elite missions when they have either never done the mission before and or don't have proper gear for them.
What I would do is to make multiple difficulty levels but keep rewards for them much closer together. Making easier missions give such crappy rewards compared to harder ones only makes the weaker players feel worse when they have to do the easier ones because they can't handle the harder ones with random people.
Until they make more challenging missions people need to do the harder ones and make their own challenges.
Wouldnt it be cool if you had to play the entity like a musical instrument? It would make certain noises, and you had to target specific crystal branches on it in a musical sequence to shatter it. 10 ships had to each hit the notes in a specific order, it would go through the absorbtion phase like 3 times and after each you had to play a counter tune where you are hitting higher notes by the third phase. It would play like 6 different sounds and players would have to know the 6 sequences of answer notes, and it wouldnt play the same 3 sounds every mission, it would rotate each playthrough so you had to use your collective ears to crack it like a safe. All while fighting off pesky tholians so maybe like 3 ships are providing overwatch against tholians while 7 players are playing the Entity's musical branches to defeat it.
People have a hard time laying off of generators at 10%, and you seem to think these same people could do what you just described?
You need to come back to reality. And take a good long look at who you are playing this game with.
When I read the blog posts, I was kind of excited. Tholians in the mix? A stacking damage buff that can only be removed by certain sci powers? Will science abilities actually be required to survive this thing? How much trouble will I have getting those 14 shards within the 21 days of the event?
That last sentence is I think the issue. Unfortunately, it's easy by design. They want even casual players to be able to finish it every day without much frustration, so that nobody is upset when they don't finish their Event Rep project. It's not quite as tedious as the winter race, but it's not much harder either.
I hope if it remains in the PvE queue permanently, it gets its difficulty ratcheted up. The only threats are the shockwave (easily avoided), and getting hit by chains of small shards. Even then, I would just Eng Team off the hull damage, or shoot them down, or avoid them. The entity's beam attack wasn't even worth my attention. Once in a PUG it seemed to get a good damage buff going, but I just hit RSP and continued to ignore it.
People have a hard time laying off of generators at 10%, and you seem to think these same people could do what you just described?
You need to come back to reality. And take a good long look at who you are playing this game with.
I know good and well. Casuals like me who arent min maxers, who dont have the best gear, who want a challenge that isnt the best DPSer with the best gear wins. Something middle difficulty and not as mindless as a minigame a 5 year old could do.
Maybe to defeat it you had to play the first few notes of popular musical pieces. Music to soothe, or rather kill, the savage beast. Maybe two of the 6 tunes to defeat it are the first few notes of the TOS and TNG themes
But Cryptic doesnt know how to program actual fun that isnt DPS oriented, so I know Im just wasting my breath here :rolleyes:
STO: @AGNT009 Since Dec 2010
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
I think if the stacking damage buff (from small shard returns) could only be removed every X seconds instead of all the time using appropriate abilities, then the increase in damage or rather working to ensure that the increase to damage does not ramp up, would offer more tactical gameplay to the event.
The original CE was so hard that i never played it, reading all those players who were complaining about how difficult it was. Now it's too easy? I actually enjoy it alot, and I will not tell the Devs to change the whole STF just because i feel a certain way.
I can't even really consider this 'fun'. Just a grind. I just returned yesterday after a 3 month hiatus and am completely ungeared and running a non-Zen ship on each of my characters. Just ran it 3 times and I think I may have hit my space bar 12 times through the whole engagement.
CE doesn't do enough damage to even warrant moving out of range anyways...it seemed like majority of the time my groups have just kept firing in the absorption phase and I still just stood there pewpewing even after the energy is dissipated and it did less then 50% hull damage; a few seconds and abilities later I' maxed back out just pew pewing.
Would love to see a challenge mode inplace before the end of the event that would award extra shards..or something.. since right now it's just a 'oh need to login and do this blahhhhhh' moment to me
I must say I really like the Tholian tie-in with the crystalline entity! I'm looking forward to future storylines to reveal their relationship to the entity and their reason for protecting it.
Perhaps when beefing up the encounter's difficulty the tholians themselves can play a part. Like using an energy beam (HE or TSS) to charge up the entity's shockwave. Or let their ships act as a relay to refract the entity's matter conversion beam allowing it to reach player ships up to 20km away.
Wouldnt it be cool if you had to play the entity like a musical instrument? It would make certain noises, and you had to target specific crystal branches on it in a musical sequence to shatter it. 10 ships had to each hit the notes in a specific order, it would go through the absorbtion phase like 3 times and after each you had to play a counter tune where you are hitting higher notes by the third phase. It would play like 6 different sounds and players would have to know the 6 sequences of answer notes, and it wouldnt play the same 3 sounds every mission, it would rotate each playthrough so you had to use your collective ears to crack it like a safe. All while fighting off pesky tholians so maybe like 3 ships are providing overwatch against tholians while 7 players are playing the Entity's musical branches to defeat it.
Oh sure, really cool. Imagine yourself slowly melting into a sea of rage while trying to get 9 other players to pay attention to you explaining how the CE needs to be defeated while some griefer is intentionally hitting the wrong notes.
I just played it and wow was it a let down, I remember the old one, THAT was a challenge, I spent upwards of an hour trying (in the end gave up trying) to kill that one and this goes down in no time at all, yet another DPS race, I now find this about as interesting and challenging as pressing the "go" button on my helm panel, nice work...
Well, I finally died in it. Once it was down to thirty percent, I was suddenly swarmed with large and small shards, with absolutely zero time to heal. Dunno if I've just been lucky before or something's been changed to make this happen.
If it's fun, then I'd consider the re-design a success
Thing is, not everyone finds "easy" to be synonymous with "fun". I think the pendulum swung the complete opposite direction for the redesign.
There's a lack of external threats from the Tholians, they are little more annoying than a fly, and just as easily swatted.
Then there's the predictability of the Entity itself, with the Absorption Phases locked down at 66% and 33% health, with very too long absorption charge up timers with almost zero risk as long as you are outside 10 km range.
Since the Tholians spawn at 66% and 33% when the Absorption Phase starts, it would make sense if they tried to lock down player ships in the vicinity of the entity, to try to prevent players from escaping outside the 10km radius.
Then there's the matter of the beam/offensive power of the entity, which hardly does anything at all. An idea would also be to add a "gravity well" like effect during the Absorption Phase which pulls player ships towards the entity, unless you make an effort to get away.
This overall isn't about making the encounter hardcore enough for the 1%, but making it interesting and challenging for more then the level of amoeba.
Aside from the aspect that healing apparently also gives you a chance to get 1st place, or get high in the ranking at all, they made another Event a simple DPS grind, thats all it is.
First attempt, finished in 3 minutes without needing a single heal from a 'healer'.
The entity can be doing very random damage. Once it deals little, other time it takes down even a bortasque quickly. Now the latter style is challanging enough for me.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
The entity can be doing very random damage. Once it deals little, other time it takes down even a bortasque quickly. Now the latter style is challanging enough for me.
I had something very similar happen last time I played the CE. I got one-shot in my tank spec'd cruiser.
As far as the CE event itself, I think it's great that it has been changed, but I would definitely welcome an "elite" version for those of us who have maxed out ship gear.
How many of you challenge-seekers are gathering together to do Terradome? It still exists in its very challenging format. What's stopping you from doing that as your "I want to be challenged" content?
Comments
To my mind, the best thing to do, rather than creating elite modes of all pve as proposed, would be to add hard optionals objectives like in stf.
Completing optionnals could then give fleet marks, as you rather ask your team fleet to jump in, rather than hoping for a wonderfull pug team.
If you want a challenge in STO shouldn't you just be playing Terradome right now anyways? It's still there, as challenging as always.
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
Might spice things up, and give players a reason to not fire when it says not to fire, or back off.
I had such a horrible experience as a new player doing this three years ago that I almost didn't give the new event a try. If not for the high rewards and your name attached I would have avoided it. Thank you for making it a playable experience and not a place where people shout and curse when others stumble in on their marathon efforts with no or bad information on strategy.
Most of my posts are complaints about something, so I wanted to make sure I took the time to say thank you here.
Actually, I'm guessing the shockwave was weak because very little damage was dealt by the players.
You see, the damage dealt by the shockwave scales based on the amount of fire the Entity absorbed.
Hint: Keep shooting at the thing as much as you can, then get to a distance of 10.1 kilometers or more by the end of the absorption phase. All the Tholians will blow up.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Pugging this is trivial, 10-15 minutes and no failure condition means you succeed every time. I'm assuming that was intentional, because it's really not difficult at all.
I would love an Elite version where I struggle in pugs - maybe the difficulty of KASE pugs, something around there. To do that, buff the shockwave, buff the shards damage output and add a few more tholians. That would be my suggestion.
On the whole, a good, fun event. Not something I can see myself playing regularly after the event ends unless there is an elite version with STF-level dilithium/mark loot. Doesn't have to be marks, could be a bag of loot like the old STFs (vendor junk) - but an elite version with more dil is a must for me.
Great work devs!
Kirk's Protege.
There are like 2-3 things i would like to see to make it more interessting and fair.
-once the CE is in its absorb phase, all dmg done should be SUBTRACTED from the dmg counter to determine who makes first place
-the tholians are merely a nucence. In an elite version i would like to see much more tholian stuff such that you have to split the team and have some going after the tholians while the rest keeps attacking the CE.
-the CE should be moved a bit away from the planet. Whenever i fly around it my screen goes blank when i get to close to the planet like whenever you enter the athmosphere so i have to move the camera angle and than the CE is in the way
-there are some problems with the select method. I would like to have it go through all possible targets that could have been clicked on a clicked pixel such that we can select the larger fragments in front of the CE which is impossible right now
-i would like to see some smarter algorithm controlling the shards, especially the larger fragments or just more of them.
Couldn't the same thing be said about the first CE, really? Its getting people to follow basic steps that is difficult.
First CE was:
pew pew CE
@low health CE throws out small shards, evade and destroy
pew pew CE
It was easier, but impossible?
I don't know why literacy rates are like 99% but in STO hover around 10%
That said this CE is really pathetically easy. We took 10 from our fleet in the first time, not knowing what to expect and just shot at it and it died in 3-4 minutes. The next times I played I went in with a cruiser and it was even easier, then a ship with gravity well and it was so pathetically easy there shouldn't be any reward really.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
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Totally understandable. It's better to disappoint "hardcore" players during the event, rather than discourage casual players who might have not been able to complete a more difficult mission, thus missing the limited-time rewards.
Still, I have high hopes you can deliver some sort of Elite version of this mission, since the overall concept is quite interesting, even if it still favours dps over anything else.
Since this mission is (kind of) Tholian-themed, would it be possible for this Elite version to reward Nukara Marks for the upcoming new reputation?
Everyone wants to have a challenge but when their is so much grinding people also want the grinding to be easier to deal with.
Harder missions should give only a slightly higher rewards as well as a special title. Having them give so much better rewards make people who have no business in them going in them and learning the hard way. Their has been so many times that I have been in ground missions that fail because their are people joining those elite missions when they have either never done the mission before and or don't have proper gear for them.
What I would do is to make multiple difficulty levels but keep rewards for them much closer together. Making easier missions give such crappy rewards compared to harder ones only makes the weaker players feel worse when they have to do the easier ones because they can't handle the harder ones with random people.
Until they make more challenging missions people need to do the harder ones and make their own challenges.
So Cryptic cannot please everyone, and they know it.
At the very least, there's objective proof on Massively that 80% of Cryptic's hate comes from 10 players...
"Last Engage! Magical Girl Origami-san" is in print! Now with three times more rainbows.
Support the "Armored Unicorn" vehicle initiative today!
Thanks for Harajuku. Now let's get a real "Magical Girl" costume!
People have a hard time laying off of generators at 10%, and you seem to think these same people could do what you just described?
You need to come back to reality. And take a good long look at who you are playing this game with.
That last sentence is I think the issue. Unfortunately, it's easy by design. They want even casual players to be able to finish it every day without much frustration, so that nobody is upset when they don't finish their Event Rep project. It's not quite as tedious as the winter race, but it's not much harder either.
I hope if it remains in the PvE queue permanently, it gets its difficulty ratcheted up. The only threats are the shockwave (easily avoided), and getting hit by chains of small shards. Even then, I would just Eng Team off the hull damage, or shoot them down, or avoid them. The entity's beam attack wasn't even worth my attention. Once in a PUG it seemed to get a good damage buff going, but I just hit RSP and continued to ignore it.
I know good and well. Casuals like me who arent min maxers, who dont have the best gear, who want a challenge that isnt the best DPSer with the best gear wins. Something middle difficulty and not as mindless as a minigame a 5 year old could do.
Maybe to defeat it you had to play the first few notes of popular musical pieces. Music to soothe, or rather kill, the savage beast. Maybe two of the 6 tunes to defeat it are the first few notes of the TOS and TNG themes
But Cryptic doesnt know how to program actual fun that isnt DPS oriented, so I know Im just wasting my breath here :rolleyes:
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
CE doesn't do enough damage to even warrant moving out of range anyways...it seemed like majority of the time my groups have just kept firing in the absorption phase and I still just stood there pewpewing even after the energy is dissipated and it did less then 50% hull damage; a few seconds and abilities later I' maxed back out just pew pewing.
Would love to see a challenge mode inplace before the end of the event that would award extra shards..or something.. since right now it's just a 'oh need to login and do this blahhhhhh' moment to me
Perhaps when beefing up the encounter's difficulty the tholians themselves can play a part. Like using an energy beam (HE or TSS) to charge up the entity's shockwave. Or let their ships act as a relay to refract the entity's matter conversion beam allowing it to reach player ships up to 20km away.
Oh sure, really cool. Imagine yourself slowly melting into a sea of rage while trying to get 9 other players to pay attention to you explaining how the CE needs to be defeated while some griefer is intentionally hitting the wrong notes.
Hey! You've reinvented the original CE mission!
Sigh. I hope they do more CE events later in the year...
Thing is, not everyone finds "easy" to be synonymous with "fun". I think the pendulum swung the complete opposite direction for the redesign.
There's a lack of external threats from the Tholians, they are little more annoying than a fly, and just as easily swatted.
Then there's the predictability of the Entity itself, with the Absorption Phases locked down at 66% and 33% health, with very too long absorption charge up timers with almost zero risk as long as you are outside 10 km range.
Since the Tholians spawn at 66% and 33% when the Absorption Phase starts, it would make sense if they tried to lock down player ships in the vicinity of the entity, to try to prevent players from escaping outside the 10km radius.
Then there's the matter of the beam/offensive power of the entity, which hardly does anything at all. An idea would also be to add a "gravity well" like effect during the Absorption Phase which pulls player ships towards the entity, unless you make an effort to get away.
This overall isn't about making the encounter hardcore enough for the 1%, but making it interesting and challenging for more then the level of amoeba.
First attempt, finished in 3 minutes without needing a single heal from a 'healer'.
Chinese Farming FTW!
I had something very similar happen last time I played the CE. I got one-shot in my tank spec'd cruiser.
As far as the CE event itself, I think it's great that it has been changed, but I would definitely welcome an "elite" version for those of us who have maxed out ship gear.