test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Official Legacy of Romulus 'Allies' Arc Feedback Thread
salamiinferno
Member Posts: 159 Cryptic Developer
This thread will cover the episodes "Stepping In" through "Tradecraft". Please leave all bugs, feedback, comments, and concerns here.
This content is only available to players in the Legacy of Romulus Closed beta.
This content is only available to players in the Legacy of Romulus Closed beta.
Post edited by salamiinferno on
0
Comments
Smash and Grab:
-Transporting between the frieghters 1 and 2 led to the bridge officers staying behind on the first one, while I was transported.
-Another bug just noticed, a federation phaser was placed into one of the bridge officer's hands during the cutscene following the actions after transport.
Tradecraft:
This was the only thing I noticed was the text for changing Weapons to Ship Parts had an extra weapon after so it would read Weapons weapon or Ship Parts weapon. Here is the screenshot I took at the time: http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/577861040702528335/64B80937CDC0596C6BC1C1591C27C03FD7179613/
You get introduced to a Fed Captain that you have a mission with, are given a bunch of Mark IV Rares in Phaser flavor, you are given a Fed BOFF, and when you go to get your ship you open the panel and all you see are Fed ships. It really creates a feel for a while that you are more a Fed than a Romulan.
I'd suggest that you need to visit your allies home base to be able to buy their ships/gear, that you not offer directly a allied BOFF at all, if we want them we can go get them, and that the tech offered be more generic, like shields, armor, consoles.
Also, if the freighter rescue mission could be made to look a bit less like the Shmar mission, that might be awesome. Different backdrop and/or music probably would do a world of difference.
Awesome work guys.
Problem:
When examining the data files and checking the information against our own database none of the information provided indicates which "change the text" option is the proper one. It's complete guess work. I would recommend having somebody revisit this section and find a way to indicate which selection is the proper one.
"Compisate" should be compensate.
Thanks!
This I have to agree with. I was Surprise when I saw those Fed ground phaser, ship beam phaser and the canon phaser. It doesn't make you feel like you are Romulan at all. I thought the whole purpose of the alliance is Fed were rather interesting in Romulan tech not the other way round.
And what's with the Fed BOFF as a reward. Please no fed BOFF as rewards, since am reporting back to republic fleet not starfleet.
Just wanted to add, other than this, I've found the missions, the story, the characters, the environment, basically everything, to be phenomenal. Even then, it was a bad mission, just seemed to stick out as an arbitrary way to highlight the whole fedrom/ kdfrom thing in a story perspective.
-As I noted in my comments about Neutral No More, the mission you chose to base this on (salvage dispute) is a good one, but I don't think you adequately camouflaged the mission. Experienced players will immediately recognize the recycled mission, while new players will likely be thrown off later when they get Salvage Dispute and think that it is the recycled mission. Unlike NNM, you did a good job here changing the mix of enemy groups, but the background was immediately recognizeable as Salvage Dispute. Moreover, you chose to use the same star system and recycled much of the "story" dialogue.
My recommendation is to relocate this mission to a different star system - which one you choose isn't really important but how's this for an idea:
Move this mission to Ker'rat. Use a similar layout (asteroid field, interference, mobs hiding in the field, defense satelites), but replace all of the set dressing with Borg. Rewrite the story to have the Romulan ship captured by the Borg - maybe even change the status bar on the ship from "salvaging" to "assimilating." On completion of this mission, serve up the tutorial mission for Ker'rat, so the player can get introduced to the Ker'rat warzone right away.
-The big problem however is that if you play this like salvage dispute, you will break the mission. In SD, the "gather intel" stage is optional. I didn't notice that it was mandatory (and the mission didn't really direct me to the intelligence gathering optional) so I cloaked and flew to the shipyard, took out the objectives, and was ready to call it a day. After backtracking and getting the intel, I couldn't complete the mission because I had already killed the mission-critical NPCs. I had to drop the mission.
My recommendations:
1) Make only the Romulan ship a kill objective.
2) Do not spawn the salvaged Romulan ship until the player completes the Gather Intelligence objective.
3) Either remove the drydock structure or modify it so that it is "transparent" to sensors. The drycock repeatedly broke my sensor lock, causing my weapons (i.e., overloaded plasma torp) to attack other targets.
Also, I noticed that the dialogue uses U.K. English (Defence vs. Defense) spellings. This was a little distracting since I'm used to playing this game with U.S. spelling conventions. Is this supposed to indicate that the characters are speaking with the "cultured villain" British accent? If so, putting VO in the mission might be a better way to accomplish the effect.
Multi-mission roleplaying accolade: Great idea! We need more 'deep' content like this
Overall, I really liked this mission. The new map was really attractive, the RP was good, the "suspicious activity" cutscene was great. Combat at the start was a teensy bit repetetive... maybe drop one of the Escort groups in the middle of the space segment just to tighten up the pacing a little?
Graphics Bug: The LOD texture on the consoles appears to have an issue - at distance, only half the screen shows, with the other half showing the texture of the back of the console. The missing part of the screen "pops in" when I approach. I believe this might be a pre-existing bug as I think I've seen it before on Holodeck.
Grammar: The console hacking cutscene says "if someone stands in front of the camera, the console could be TRIBBLE." While the sentence isn't grammatically incorrect, passive voice isn't the most precice and clear way to write. How about instead saying "If someone stands in front of the camera, we could hack the console" ?
Great touch at the end with the missile turret. Those Ferengi missiles are a neat piece of gear that doesn't show up in actual gameplay enough.
The ending: I know it's not going to happen, but I really wish you would give the player an option to join the Star Empire. It wouldn't be my first choice, but it's a choice a lot of other players would really want to make - and one I'd love to run on an alt character. The mission seems to end on a note suggesting the player will get that choice, but the promotional material and game mechanics lead me to assume otherwise -- which is too bad. Sometimes playing the heel is fun.
Dialogue backgrounds: one thing I started to notice last mission and saw again here was the inconsistency of the boff backgrounds - in particular, switching from a scenic background to a black background and vice versa throughout a conversation. You may want to consider making these more consistent for the final release version.
Technical stuff: This mission doesn't appear to have a working transwarp button. I had to slow-boat it back from Eta at warp 6
Having said that - great concept. I'm loving how most of the mission make me feel like I'm at the center of the story, rather than just being kind of swept along by events. I do regret that this mission eliminates the possibility of using that beautiful tutorial map as a social zone, but it's not the end of the world.
Good job with pacing the initial segment. I was concerned the 5 freighters meant 5 enemy space groups to fight, which would have got tedious. I was going to recommend you drop it to 3.... but it turned out there were only 3 enemy groups. Looks good.
Long-term bug noted: Individual Nausicaan fighters are labelled "stingers" instead of "stinger." While Nausicaan fighters almost never show up in game, this naming convention issue already exists in the Holodeck build. Perhaps STOLOR would be a good time to delete that extra "s" from the name?
Technical issue: Got a crash while beaming to the colony. Looks like the long-running HOGG corruption problem is alive and well. While the problem normally manifests with bad textures on Holodeck, this time it was a CRC fail on the geo bin for the Virinat colony map. File verification through the launcher did not resolve the problem. I have deleted the corrupted HOGG and will re-download. I will post a follow-up reply with my thoughts on the rest of the mission once I am back in-game.
I received the 'closed beta invite' in my yahoo email today. Went to log-in to Tribble, saw the 4067MB 'patch/download - which went smoothly as I received some 2.6+ gig download and the rest was patched and after it finished I went into Tribble.
I saw the icon for the Romulan Legacy - but I didn't start a character right away - I went into one of my characters and looked over the new interface where I saw the expert work showing my Bridge Officers and my own Character interface 'moving' - even the graphics are amazingly much improved on my system where I thought it was excellent already.
I was checking out my character and bridge officers - 'Traits' - another excellent feature and very well thought out, etc., for a while. I then tried to create a Romulan Character using the Romulan icon next to the Klingon one, which was next to the Fed one, but nothing happened?
Shortly after trying to create a Rom character, Tribble is closed down for 'maintenance'. - This close occurred about 7:10pm east coast USA time. I thought all of STO was closed down, but I usually check back every 30 mins - meaning I try a login and was able to get into Holodeck no problem, so it was only Tribble that close down.
Approximately four (4) hours later - after another 300+ patch/download - I try Tribble again, but now there is NO Romulan icon to try to create a character?
Something I missed? Little help? Another friend in my fleet says he also got the email, and was able to create a new Rom character just fine.
Sincerely,
Bogle@celloman
Ground segment - the map is attractive and the scanning objectives logical and interesting. Consider dropping the "kill 5" objective, since some players might prefer sneaking and the existing objectives already impose sufficient time investment.
Dead ends: There are a few dead end paths. Consider putting something interesting on these or blowing up some buildings to access parallel roads. Extensive backtracking is never fun, and it's especially un-fun for new players.
Rival Captain: Good job touching on why Romulans might fight other Romulans in PVP without creating a situation where the story introduces an actual permanent schism in the Romulan Republic faction.
Transporter FX: When I beamed back to my ship, my federation BOFF played the blue Federation beam-out animation instead of the green Romulan animation.
So... another pretty solid mission. There are a couple areas for improvement, but I don't see anything seriously wrong here. Keep up the good work!
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=626101
Since there was no official thread at the time.
Transport #1: It's not really clear how to beam to the next ship. The pop-up dialogue started minimized for me - probably because I was still in combat when it triggered? Perhaps make sure the pop-up to beam to the next ship doesn't appear until the player's captain is out of combat?
Transport #3 - disappearing boffs: When I beamed to transport #3, I ended up alone. I presume by boffs are still hanging out on transport #2. Status monitor says they are all 155m away.
Not a bad mission - I liked some of the set dressing like the broken door with the fire behind it - but not as engaging as some of the other missions.
I repeatedly left Drozana prematurely on this one, first when it said to hail Chavra and then when it said that we needed to go to Azha. While the mission tracker clearly says what to do next, I don't normally look at that when I get clear instructions. It might be worth while clarifying the instructions so players don't jump ahead and then have to backtrack to Drozana to continue the mission.
RSVP - sticky map - on warp in to Azha for "RSVP," I became unable to transfer maps. The game ignored clicks on both the 'beam to listening post,' and 'return to sector space' buttons. I logged out and logged back in and was then able to continue. Not sure if this is just the game engine being quirky or a map property... I sometimes encounter this bug in the Fleet Starbase system on Holodeck.
This is another mission that blanks out my boff station assignments and immediately puts me into combat... strongly recommend you resolve the scripting issue that causes this problem before the expansion goes live.
This mission had some fun moments, though it wasn't quite as engaging as some of the early RP missions like the one with the Reman colony or the tutorial (which to be fair is hard to beat). Interested in seeing how the storyline continues.
1) There was a floating scarf in Chavra at the last cut scene.
2) The Tal Shiar station should look a little more "Romulan".
3) The dialogue said there would be a Starfleet ships coming to the rescue in the final space battle but it looked like it was all Romulans.
4) Didn't like having to shuffle to correct the records.
I'm not sure if it is meant to represent your allies but when the R.R.W Hyperian shows up it is a fed ship.
This is a little confusing. especially as the view screen suggest the commander is on a romulan ship. perhaps the ally ship should be romulan vessel, and the extra support ship remain a fed to show the alliance.
If not, just better explain it, and if possible have them sitting on a fed bridge.
I also noticed that my warp trails out of the Donatu system were blue, I'm flying a Rommie ship not a fed one, again this has to change
Also it says go to your ready room, but a lot of new players wont know how to get there. a more detail description in the overview or the mission tracker might be a good idea.
My Rom does not always tap her wrist when transporting out.
Duty officers did not collect at lvl 11 but did at lvl 18 and only gave me 3 Doff. lvl 20 gave me the 1st set of doff I was ment to get at lvl 11.
Tradecraft mission gave mk ii stuff when my lvl should of given me mk iv.
Sleepers mission could not use hazard emitters there was greyed out when fighting the borg cube and the full 3 missions after. Promotion to subcommander wont complete all the boxs are ticked.
It wont let me drop or continue doing main missions so guess this is a end of testing the new stuff for me.
They'll decloak at your signal"
What a minute decloak? STARFLEET? Since when?
If that's the mission I'm thinking of, that statement is kind of misleading: the fleet that decloaks to assist you is mostly Romulan ships with a handful of Defiant-class escorts.
Apparently so, it would however be nice if it weren't so misleading
-=Pre Episode=-
-Noticed the assignment of Department Heads is not available with Romulan starting Boffs.
-Romulan players are able to get a free level 10 KDF ship via the "Test of Mettle" Mission. Not sure if this was intentional or not.
-=Stepping In(KDF)=-
-No issues encountered. Perhaps a tooltip/more elaborate introduction about environmental hazards would be nice for this mission.
-I was contacted by Lieutenant Ferra about duty officers despite being a KDF aligned Romulan.
-=The Price of Neutrality(KDF)=-
-Tricking the camera was a clever and amusing concept.
-The missile turrets were a great touch... but really made me want them even more as a standard weapon type.
-The Klingon reinforcement ship warped out with a blue/federation warp trail instead of traditional klingon red.
-=(Minor Interlude)=-
-Romulan R&D shows phasers instead of plasma weapons. I presume this is still using federation stuff as a placeholder.
-New Romulus Command's map looks a bit rough.
-New Romulus Command vendors sell federation/phaser items instead of romulan/plasma.
-New Romulus Command crafting stations are.. nonsensical.
-New Romulus Command Officer Vendor sells Starfleet Officer candidates - even to KDF aligned Romulans.
-=Memory Lane(KDF)=-
-A remix of Virinat's original music would probably have been a great touch to add extra emotional weight to being back here.
-No issues encountered, otherwise.
-=Smash and Grab(KDF)=-
-An unknown Lethean face was shown during the text desscibing the contents of the fourth cargo hold on the first transport.
-I was able to beam to the bridge of the second transport without activating the first transport's self-destruct.
-An unknown Klingon was shown for the display asking whether I wished to change between each transport ship.
-Personally and candidly speaking, I found the the mission a bit eye-rolling and it was a bit disconnecting that Tovan could be THAT naive.. (I was tempted to introduce him to the airlock a couple times.)
-=Tradecraft(KDF)=-
-The listed rewards for this mission included two Mark II items despite my character being level 16 at the time. The third reward(Radiant Plasma Torp) was appropriately listed as Mark IV.
-Typo found, second paragraph, "File: Virinat Intelligence File": "There is no evidence showing that D'Tan was collecting information regarding [Enemy Faction]'s Water Reclaimation." Looks like there was an issue with calling the faction string.
-^Additionally, most of the faction strings inconsistently bounce between displaying "Federation" and "Klingon Empire".
-As someone who greatly enjoys space combat, I found the skirmish to be quite enjoyable - both the buildup and the actual engagement.