Maybe they should not have revealed all the tactics we need to use. Let us find out by ourselves.
what tactics?
all you have to do is fire and back up to 10k when it discharges. its not rocket science.
its far too easy although having to do more than 14 times each toon maybe its a good thing that u can move in range and go afk. (smaler hulll ships may need to pop a heal every now and then)
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?
I am going to apologize now to anyone who have already said this, I have not read all 90 plus post. The reason it is easy right now is that you have the best player running to get the dilithium. Also the map is maxed out with players instead of the minimum amount. Give it a month and it will be harder. Because of the people in it and hopefully Cryptic will adjust accordingly.
Terradome is easy on elite and worth the dilithium reward. Problem it people go in it without hypos, don't read walkthroughs, don't have the patience in the beginning to wait for the coin flip.
Its just right, leave it alone or else I'd be the only one alive every time!
And I think once Cryptic repairs that funny pink beam it shoots, there's gonna be a LOT of dying.
Actually, the 'funny pink beam' isn't all that deadly, even when it DOES hurt me. Trust me, when my Defiant's shields can withstand multiple blasts...
Besides, all of my ships have at least 2 shield heals.
Defiant: ST1 (presumably), EPTS (1 or 2, the other number is ET), and there's 2 copies of TT1 just in case. Before anybody starts asking, I took ST instead of TSS because of the debuff removing.
Unknown recon science ship: ST1, RSF, MW, plus TT1.
Vo'Quv carrier: Tanky thing, has TSS, ES (not frequently used, thinking about swapping it out for something else), ST, and TT. Note that I'm only listing stuff that helps with shield tanking.
If I were to add hull heals, my Defiant would have ET, my sci ship would have ET and HE, and my Vo'Quv would have ET and HE.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I agree with the OP, but at the same time I didn't like Crystalline Catastrophe that much before either; it used to be a lot harder, but mostly because half the time you could some players spamming torpedoes even though it clearly wasn't helping (quite the opposite).
Now the entity's regeneration is non-existent, and we have some Tholians that just get decimated by a 10 player fleet, not exactly progress. The aim to bring more abilities into play is a good one, but the entity, like most enemies in PvE, still only deals spike damage, so there's no particular reason for dedicated tanks or healers, and it's still very much a case of damage, damage and more damage.
I'd like to see an elite version where the entity does a lot more damage but with frequent, weaker attacks, and regenerates fast enough that the team has to have at least five ships firing on it at all times. By dealing more damage overall there would be more need for tanks drawing threat onto themselves, and healers to support them team, so that the damage dealers can do what they do best.
There then needs to be more focus on Tholian groups while the entity is absorbing damage. Personally I'd do away with the crystaline shards flying around in the battle entirely, except as a visual effect, as they just create target spam that makes it very hard to aim at what you want to.
I dunno, it's nice to see the mission actually back, but there is zero challenge involved, and no reason to interact with your team whatsoever besides hoping that they shoot when they're able. I did the mission today and it took about 5 minutes from start to finish, and that was with a very mixed fleet; I expect a fleet of all escorts could do the mission in ridiculously quickly.
If bosses are going to be given abilities then more thought needs to be put into what they're used for and what play-styles they promote; the entity's abilities don't really promote anything since any light heal will fix you right up, while tactical team keeps your shields up the entire time while you just fire away. As terrible as the borg high level enemy mechanics are at least the threat of being rapidly killed at any moment keeps things interesting. I'm going to get my 14 shards then never play the mission again until the next time it's reworked, and it's a damn shame
I dunno, it's nice to see the mission actually back, but there is zero challenge involved
The challenge is to get first place. I personally find that more challenging then anything else in the game. I have gotten first place on a few characters but now I seem to be getting 3rd place a lot.
I'm going to have a tangental rant, because I'm on my man period.
Of course CE is too easy. The bulk of PvE in this game is too easy. If you have enough DPS (and DPS Escorts are the easiest thing to take from a cookie cutter build and make work in this game) you can be more tactically inept than Roy Hodgson and get away with it in nearly everything in this game.
Starbase Missions? Zergable. And even if you don't do well, you still get enough FMs out of them. Now Starbase Missions being easy wouldn't bother me since they are designed for lower rank players to be able to play them with their damage boosted to VA level (doesn't add weapons slots to their ships or unlock VA abilities for them though), except nearly everything else is easy too.
Normal STFs? Zergable.
Elite STFs? Starting to become zergable due to the power creep, although you do actually need tactics if you want the optionals, but you can still implement those tactics very sloppily and get away with it.
Defera Hards? Lol. Can be done by 3 people instead of 5.
Nukura? Looks cool and is harder than Defera, but not exactly difficult either.
Crystalline Entity? Zergable. In 15 attempts at this, I've had one group stall around the 35% mark once for about 2 minutes. And that's it. Yes, I get there's a challenge in coming first, but that challenge is being provided by other players, not by the content itself. You'd need 7 or 8 players to be clueless in order to fail or get stuck on the mission itself.
Other Fleet Actions? Do people play these? Also, generally zergable. The only way I've failed one of these is simply not having enough people, or when they were broken with obnoxiously close mobs.
That's pretty much the bulk of group PvE content. C'mon Cryptic, give us something else. Rethink and rebalance the STFs, or make new ones. Just give us something please. You can leave some of the conent zergable if you want to, but not all of it.
And yes we can always play Terradome and NWS that pose a challenge, but that's it. Two missions. And to be honest, if you're fully geared, Terradome is just longer than the other STFs rather than more difficult. And NWS is miles above the next hardest thing in the game, there needs to be something between NWS and Elite STFs in terms of difficulty.
And I'm not a super elite super player either. I have about 40 names on my friends list, and at least 25 of them are better than me at STO. I'm almost exactly average at this game.
Its not the pink beam that is deadly, its the shards. They are hard to see and hard to target, and they really hurt even trough full shields.
Hard to see and hard to target?
Me, I only really have trouble when I'm under 1 kilometers of the thing - because then the shards spawn before I can react to them, and there's a chance that several of them will go after me, blowing me up before I can bring my heals to bear.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
The challenge is to get first place. I personally find that more challenging then anything else in the game. I have gotten first place on a few characters but now I seem to be getting 3rd place a lot.
I haven't come lower than 3rd place; I'm not sure how well self-healing/tanking counts, but I can easily survive anything the entity throws out while still dealing strong damage in return. I pretty much just take up position and pour firepower into it, and only manoeuvre or change targets if it's in absorb mode or I've strayed close enough that the fragments are coming at me. There's no dynamism to it at all, and the Tholians are, as usual, more of an annoyance than a real threat.
I'd much rather than the entity's absorb mode's duration was based on the lifetime of a Tholian reinforcement group, so you have to destroy it as quickly as possible while baiting any crystal fragments to reduce how much the entity can heal by in that time. Have the absorb mode tied to the Tholians with the entity draining power from them (visually) or something. Currently the absorb mode just delays victory, rather than adding a new dynamic to the battle. An alternative would be for the Tholians to produce a web around the entity, making it invulnerable until the Tholians are destroyed, allowing the web to be targeted to get access to the entity again.
I'd also rather see the fragments be removed entirely in favour of just making the main entity more powerful and threatening on its own, as the fragments just produce spam and cause the game engine to start hiding things; for 90% of the mission I can't actually see the main entity on my current graphics settings, which is a bit silly as they're not that low. They also don't really add anything to the confrontation that the entity's main attacks should be doing; an alternative would be to make the fragments function more like torpedoes, with the larger ones being heavy but small ones non-targetable, which would actually make them more dangerous.
I think it would be funny if it were the case that people who did not cease fire on the entity during an absorption phase actually gained a negative modifier towards their final place ranking.
I like the new reworked CE, I agree its very easy, but not everything needs to be super hard. You could always make it hard by going in there with only a couple of friends, try to beat it with 3 or 4 people.:)
What I don't particularly like are the Tholian ships accompanying it, they don't really add anything to the encounter besides being a slight nuisance. And the CE's beam attack should be way more damaging. Atm when it focuses on you, simply popping an EptS is enough to survive unscathed. Ideally you should have friendly support to survive it imho, which would also make going healer a bit more rewarding in the encounter instead of being a deadweight.
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.
It isn't fun it is boring. I only am doing it myself for the 14 shards, after that I will never touch it again and I'm sure that's the same for a great many other players that don't touch Klingon Scout Force or Gorn Minefield (outside of the daily).
Seriously when you design something a player in even just decent equipment can sit 5km away from spamming the space bar and tactical abilities and get 1st place every damn time with a tactical character in an escort and not even bother to move or stop firing and not even lose shield on the energy absorption burst how is that fun? In fact a great many decently geared players DELIBERATELY keep firing on the entity during the absorption because they know they will survive it and the casuals that aren't paying attention will get wiped out on the burst thereby widening their dps points lead as the other respawn.
When are you going to stop TRIBBLE over Engineers, Cruisers, Science characters, and science ships and actually give them a place and equal rewards in this game? Every damn thing you do is a DPS race and reward, the easiest and laziest thing to design. (8 year encounter and map designer.)
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
Clearly that wasn't a challenge, because a challenge implies that you have a chance of winning. An event that people spend an hour + and 90% of the time still can't win is not a challenge, it's a pointless waste of resources, because no one will bother with that content.
The current CE is IMO on the easy side, but at least it's content that people are actually playing. Plus they said that after the event they would be releasing a elite version.
One that will cause nearly constant complaints here, because you'll have all the same issues you currently do with STF's.
I was one who always loved the challenge of the CE, and eachtime I failed, I adapted.
I find the new ce aw an iinsult to the memory of the old ce, I do love the visuals update and carrier pet negation towards the CE.
No. Badly designed encounters are for the most part worth ignoring. Which is what the bulk of the player population did with the old CE. It wasn't a good design.
I was one who always loved the challenge of the CE, and eachtime I failed, I adapted.
Adapted how? Most of the time failure had nothing to do with one player.
Also, how are you doing these days with No Win Scenario and Terradome? You pine for the lost days of CE, but do you currently engage in the two very hard encounters that are left in the game? And if so, how's it going with them?
There are probably a lot of players with mk XI or even mk X gear. Imagine this, then some of those haven't an optimal cookie-cutter built and a group of that kind of players must also have a fair change of succes. So there you probably have your problem when you have mk XII gear and a specialized built. It is a walk in the park.
I wonder sometimes about this game mechanic. We have it in every game the gear progress and gear treadmill and it is in fact horrible for game balance.
My best gear is the mk XI jem haddar set. Then I have some green and blue weapons. My characters have a balanced built, a kind of jack-of-all trades. I failed the mission one time, everybody had left and I was twice third in doing damage, a tac in an armitrage and a science captain also in an armitrage.
There are probably a lot of players with mk XI or even mk X gear. Imagine this, then some of those haven't an optimal cookie-cutter built and a group of that kind of players must also have a fair change of succes. So there you probably have your problem when you have mk XII gear and a specialized built. It is a walk in the park.
The mathematical difference between Mk X and Mk XII gear is not nearly as significant as players make it out to be. In an encounter like this it may be the difference between first and second place but that's only because of Cryptic's metrics for rewards. It's still a very tiny difference in gameplay. The difference between Mk I and Mk X is that Mk X is double the base output of Mk I. That's how small an impact the gear's level ends up having.
If you want to have more challenge in game use weaker ships. Use lower grade gear. Don't have any duty officers on active duty. You will probably need to do stuff like that to have the challenge you want because I don't think they will make missions be very hard because not everyone has the best gear and stuff to make missions easier. Also a lot of people who play are not hard core gamers. A lot of people who play also use public queues and if things are made to be very hard most people wont be able to finish the missions with random people.
Even then its not a challenge... >_> I turned my escort, on my ground toon, into a torp boat using nothing but green torps and it was still no challenge... and i'm not even that great in space, or at least I don't think so. Plus my ground toon has an extremely high death rate in space, meaning it dies a lot, and I didn't die once in the mission.
I rate the new CE: laughable at best, with a side of a big huge joke.
On the bright side, this will be the easiest fleet marks and dilithium I have ever gotten and I can get it on all 10 of my toons without even doing anything challenging. ^_^
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"Working as intended"... 1 year later they "fix" it.
On the bright side, this will be the easiest fleet marks and dilithium I have ever gotten and I can get it on all 10 of my toons without even doing anything challenging. ^_^
Serious question time. What content are you doing to obtain fleet marks or dilithium that is challenging?
Because I don't see any such challenge existing in the wide variety of ways people hit their 8k Dil Cap each day.
Mining asteroids? Doing STFs? Answering the same trivia questions at the academy that you knew the answer to over a year ago?
Well, I have played it a couple of times and I am going to say a couple of nice things. It is short, the whole mission takes only a couple of minutes so it can't be boring. Something is boring if it goes on for too long. If you get bored with something like this and this timespan, you are pretty fast bored with things. How fast is your real life? Very fast I presume, so why are you playing a game like this in the first place.
It is fast. You have to be alert on the blast wave, get out of its range. Be alert on the Tholian ships and fight them. So, I think, there is enough to do. You may be so strong to just sit and shoot it out and that is good for you, but I doubt if that brings you a high score.
I have fun with it and I know fun is a very personal thing, by trying out different set ups with my ships and captains. The other day I was third with a sci captain and and the Korath. I did no healing, running on high aux and dishing out GW and Tyken's Rift.
Finally, this event is a God send for smaller fleets. I have two one man fleets on tier one and this event is going to bring them on tier two and perhaps and embassy tier.
Adapted how? Most of the time failure had nothing to do with one player.
Also, how are you doing these days with No Win Scenario and Terradome? You pine for the lost days of CE, but do you currently engage in the two very hard encounters that are left in the game? And if so, how's it going with them?
Actually the NWS is a bit easier than the old CE, but it's a lot more stressful since it's a spike DPS race. And Terradome is just a walk in the park.
the problem before was that doing a pug of the mission was nearly impossible. however, when i was with my old fleet, i organized runs of the mission using plans put out by other players, which we adjusted with each attempt. A fleet is better able to organize the use of powers to bring down the entity more efficiently and protect its ships, so in the style of their new fleet oriented content I think cryptic could add a seperate "fleet" event, where the entity is attacking your starbase because some stupid redshirt antagonized it and it followed him or something. It could hand out a ton of fleet marks or dilithium. The event could use the old difficulty, with graphics updates similar to the current mission so we can actually see the small shards returning to the entity (this used to be invisible). I lead a very small fleet, but would be glad to bring in players outside of the fleet to run a more difficult CE.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Wake@phoenixrw, Supreme Chancellor of Roughneck Alpha Fleet.
Comments
what tactics?
all you have to do is fire and back up to 10k when it discharges. its not rocket science.
its far too easy although having to do more than 14 times each toon maybe its a good thing that u can move in range and go afk. (smaler hulll ships may need to pop a heal every now and then)
can kdf even do terrodomes?
Terradome is easy on elite and worth the dilithium reward. Problem it people go in it without hypos, don't read walkthroughs, don't have the patience in the beginning to wait for the coin flip.
If you're having issues because you have max level gear, it's your issue. Do something else if it's not challenging enough for you.
Previously known as MGDawson.
Lifer since April 2010, and open beta tester.
Say "NO" to the Tier 5 Constitution!
And I think once Cryptic repairs that funny pink beam it shoots, there's gonna be a LOT of dying.
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Support the "Armored Unicorn" vehicle initiative today!
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Yep.
Actually, the 'funny pink beam' isn't all that deadly, even when it DOES hurt me. Trust me, when my Defiant's shields can withstand multiple blasts...
Besides, all of my ships have at least 2 shield heals.
Defiant: ST1 (presumably), EPTS (1 or 2, the other number is ET), and there's 2 copies of TT1 just in case. Before anybody starts asking, I took ST instead of TSS because of the debuff removing.
Unknown recon science ship: ST1, RSF, MW, plus TT1.
Vo'Quv carrier: Tanky thing, has TSS, ES (not frequently used, thinking about swapping it out for something else), ST, and TT. Note that I'm only listing stuff that helps with shield tanking.
If I were to add hull heals, my Defiant would have ET, my sci ship would have ET and HE, and my Vo'Quv would have ET and HE.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Now the entity's regeneration is non-existent, and we have some Tholians that just get decimated by a 10 player fleet, not exactly progress. The aim to bring more abilities into play is a good one, but the entity, like most enemies in PvE, still only deals spike damage, so there's no particular reason for dedicated tanks or healers, and it's still very much a case of damage, damage and more damage.
I'd like to see an elite version where the entity does a lot more damage but with frequent, weaker attacks, and regenerates fast enough that the team has to have at least five ships firing on it at all times. By dealing more damage overall there would be more need for tanks drawing threat onto themselves, and healers to support them team, so that the damage dealers can do what they do best.
There then needs to be more focus on Tholian groups while the entity is absorbing damage. Personally I'd do away with the crystaline shards flying around in the battle entirely, except as a visual effect, as they just create target spam that makes it very hard to aim at what you want to.
I dunno, it's nice to see the mission actually back, but there is zero challenge involved, and no reason to interact with your team whatsoever besides hoping that they shoot when they're able. I did the mission today and it took about 5 minutes from start to finish, and that was with a very mixed fleet; I expect a fleet of all escorts could do the mission in ridiculously quickly.
If bosses are going to be given abilities then more thought needs to be put into what they're used for and what play-styles they promote; the entity's abilities don't really promote anything since any light heal will fix you right up, while tactical team keeps your shields up the entire time while you just fire away. As terrible as the borg high level enemy mechanics are at least the threat of being rapidly killed at any moment keeps things interesting. I'm going to get my 14 shards then never play the mission again until the next time it's reworked, and it's a damn shame
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
The challenge is to get first place. I personally find that more challenging then anything else in the game. I have gotten first place on a few characters but now I seem to be getting 3rd place a lot.
Of course CE is too easy. The bulk of PvE in this game is too easy. If you have enough DPS (and DPS Escorts are the easiest thing to take from a cookie cutter build and make work in this game) you can be more tactically inept than Roy Hodgson and get away with it in nearly everything in this game.
Starbase Missions? Zergable. And even if you don't do well, you still get enough FMs out of them. Now Starbase Missions being easy wouldn't bother me since they are designed for lower rank players to be able to play them with their damage boosted to VA level (doesn't add weapons slots to their ships or unlock VA abilities for them though), except nearly everything else is easy too.
Normal STFs? Zergable.
Elite STFs? Starting to become zergable due to the power creep, although you do actually need tactics if you want the optionals, but you can still implement those tactics very sloppily and get away with it.
Defera Hards? Lol. Can be done by 3 people instead of 5.
Nukura? Looks cool and is harder than Defera, but not exactly difficult either.
Crystalline Entity? Zergable. In 15 attempts at this, I've had one group stall around the 35% mark once for about 2 minutes. And that's it. Yes, I get there's a challenge in coming first, but that challenge is being provided by other players, not by the content itself. You'd need 7 or 8 players to be clueless in order to fail or get stuck on the mission itself.
Other Fleet Actions? Do people play these? Also, generally zergable. The only way I've failed one of these is simply not having enough people, or when they were broken with obnoxiously close mobs.
That's pretty much the bulk of group PvE content. C'mon Cryptic, give us something else. Rethink and rebalance the STFs, or make new ones. Just give us something please. You can leave some of the conent zergable if you want to, but not all of it.
And yes we can always play Terradome and NWS that pose a challenge, but that's it. Two missions. And to be honest, if you're fully geared, Terradome is just longer than the other STFs rather than more difficult. And NWS is miles above the next hardest thing in the game, there needs to be something between NWS and Elite STFs in terms of difficulty.
And I'm not a super elite super player either. I have about 40 names on my friends list, and at least 25 of them are better than me at STO. I'm almost exactly average at this game.
Hard to see and hard to target?
Me, I only really have trouble when I'm under 1 kilometers of the thing - because then the shards spawn before I can react to them, and there's a chance that several of them will go after me, blowing me up before I can bring my heals to bear.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I'd much rather than the entity's absorb mode's duration was based on the lifetime of a Tholian reinforcement group, so you have to destroy it as quickly as possible while baiting any crystal fragments to reduce how much the entity can heal by in that time. Have the absorb mode tied to the Tholians with the entity draining power from them (visually) or something. Currently the absorb mode just delays victory, rather than adding a new dynamic to the battle. An alternative would be for the Tholians to produce a web around the entity, making it invulnerable until the Tholians are destroyed, allowing the web to be targeted to get access to the entity again.
I'd also rather see the fragments be removed entirely in favour of just making the main entity more powerful and threatening on its own, as the fragments just produce spam and cause the game engine to start hiding things; for 90% of the mission I can't actually see the main entity on my current graphics settings, which is a bit silly as they're not that low. They also don't really add anything to the confrontation that the entity's main attacks should be doing; an alternative would be to make the fragments function more like torpedoes, with the larger ones being heavy but small ones non-targetable, which would actually make them more dangerous.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
What I don't particularly like are the Tholian ships accompanying it, they don't really add anything to the encounter besides being a slight nuisance. And the CE's beam attack should be way more damaging. Atm when it focuses on you, simply popping an EptS is enough to survive unscathed. Ideally you should have friendly support to survive it imho, which would also make going healer a bit more rewarding in the encounter instead of being a deadweight.
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It isn't fun it is boring. I only am doing it myself for the 14 shards, after that I will never touch it again and I'm sure that's the same for a great many other players that don't touch Klingon Scout Force or Gorn Minefield (outside of the daily).
Seriously when you design something a player in even just decent equipment can sit 5km away from spamming the space bar and tactical abilities and get 1st place every damn time with a tactical character in an escort and not even bother to move or stop firing and not even lose shield on the energy absorption burst how is that fun? In fact a great many decently geared players DELIBERATELY keep firing on the entity during the absorption because they know they will survive it and the casuals that aren't paying attention will get wiped out on the burst thereby widening their dps points lead as the other respawn.
When are you going to stop TRIBBLE over Engineers, Cruisers, Science characters, and science ships and actually give them a place and equal rewards in this game? Every damn thing you do is a DPS race and reward, the easiest and laziest thing to design. (8 year encounter and map designer.)
Clearly that wasn't a challenge, because a challenge implies that you have a chance of winning. An event that people spend an hour + and 90% of the time still can't win is not a challenge, it's a pointless waste of resources, because no one will bother with that content.
The current CE is IMO on the easy side, but at least it's content that people are actually playing. Plus they said that after the event they would be releasing a elite version.
One that will cause nearly constant complaints here, because you'll have all the same issues you currently do with STF's.
I was one who always loved the challenge of the CE, and eachtime I failed, I adapted.
I find the new ce aw an iinsult to the memory of the old ce, I do love the visuals update and carrier pet negation towards the CE.
But it's only here for a short time so It's not too bad. If they bring it back again it could do with tweaking a bit.
No. Badly designed encounters are for the most part worth ignoring. Which is what the bulk of the player population did with the old CE. It wasn't a good design.
Adapted how? Most of the time failure had nothing to do with one player.
Also, how are you doing these days with No Win Scenario and Terradome? You pine for the lost days of CE, but do you currently engage in the two very hard encounters that are left in the game? And if so, how's it going with them?
Basically, this.
"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!
I wonder sometimes about this game mechanic. We have it in every game the gear progress and gear treadmill and it is in fact horrible for game balance.
My best gear is the mk XI jem haddar set. Then I have some green and blue weapons. My characters have a balanced built, a kind of jack-of-all trades. I failed the mission one time, everybody had left and I was twice third in doing damage, a tac in an armitrage and a science captain also in an armitrage.
The mathematical difference between Mk X and Mk XII gear is not nearly as significant as players make it out to be. In an encounter like this it may be the difference between first and second place but that's only because of Cryptic's metrics for rewards. It's still a very tiny difference in gameplay. The difference between Mk I and Mk X is that Mk X is double the base output of Mk I. That's how small an impact the gear's level ends up having.
Even then its not a challenge... >_> I turned my escort, on my ground toon, into a torp boat using nothing but green torps and it was still no challenge... and i'm not even that great in space, or at least I don't think so. Plus my ground toon has an extremely high death rate in space, meaning it dies a lot, and I didn't die once in the mission.
I rate the new CE: laughable at best, with a side of a big huge joke.
On the bright side, this will be the easiest fleet marks and dilithium I have ever gotten and I can get it on all 10 of my toons without even doing anything challenging. ^_^
"Working as intended"... 1 year later they "fix" it.
Serious question time. What content are you doing to obtain fleet marks or dilithium that is challenging?
Because I don't see any such challenge existing in the wide variety of ways people hit their 8k Dil Cap each day.
Mining asteroids? Doing STFs? Answering the same trivia questions at the academy that you knew the answer to over a year ago?
It is fast. You have to be alert on the blast wave, get out of its range. Be alert on the Tholian ships and fight them. So, I think, there is enough to do. You may be so strong to just sit and shoot it out and that is good for you, but I doubt if that brings you a high score.
I have fun with it and I know fun is a very personal thing, by trying out different set ups with my ships and captains. The other day I was third with a sci captain and and the Korath. I did no healing, running on high aux and dishing out GW and Tyken's Rift.
Finally, this event is a God send for smaller fleets. I have two one man fleets on tier one and this event is going to bring them on tier two and perhaps and embassy tier.
So my thumbs are up here.
Actually the NWS is a bit easier than the old CE, but it's a lot more stressful since it's a spike DPS race. And Terradome is just a walk in the park.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.