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Hive Onslaught
kekron42
Member Posts: 3 Arc User
Caution: Grief thread ahead
<Seinfield Voice>
So whats the deal with the updated Hive being neigh impossible to complete?
</Seinfield Voice>
Seriously, I feel that the regular Hive is as difficult as Elites these days. Anyone else have a similar experience?
Apparently now there are invisible cannons that just randomly blow you up?
I'm curious if anyone else has had similar kobayashi maru experiences with the revised Hive. Perhaps a bug on the devs part?
<Seinfield Voice>
So whats the deal with the updated Hive being neigh impossible to complete?
</Seinfield Voice>
Seriously, I feel that the regular Hive is as difficult as Elites these days. Anyone else have a similar experience?
Apparently now there are invisible cannons that just randomly blow you up?
I'm curious if anyone else has had similar kobayashi maru experiences with the revised Hive. Perhaps a bug on the devs part?
Post edited by kekron42 on
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Comments
They used to never fire their lance weapons, now they can fire it at you even if you are outside of the arc.
LTS, here since...when did this game launch again?
Get it back like it was at first, now wtf is the fun in getting 1 shooted without having been able to shoot 1 shot on anything with 100% shield and hull, spending component to repair ship than getting longer and longer respawn. Meanwhile you see you teammate getting 1 shooted too and in no time unimatrix ship is back up to 100%.
I like a challenge but at least but at least I'd like to shoot back a little before getting blown up.
E'Mc2 : Science Reman torp T'Varo, deadly annoyance :P
Kunmal: Tactical fed Klingon, ground specialist, USS Kanewaga
Ka -tet Tier 5 fleet fully completed Starbase and fleet property
***
>hive mind< we now have a weapon that can destroy any ship it hits, we shall equip this on all our unimatrix vessels and prepare for the assault on the alpha quadrant.
***1 month later***
>hive mind< we have 12 unimatrix ships equipped and ready, further assault fleet assets include 8 tactical cubes, 12 cubes, 16 spheres, 24 assault probes, 16 each tractor and regeneration probes.
we estimate alpha quadrant will be borg within 1 standard year.
***wolf 359 redux***
<Enterprise> we have the borg on long range sensors, they've just come within 20km of the flee....*BOOM*
***1 hour later in orbit of earth***
resistence is futile, we are the borg
***
if the borg have a weapon that can obliterate any ship at long range, they'd use it, they're not human, not klingon, they are practical, they will use what works. since the devs deemed that the borg do have an ultimate weapon...resistence is futile once you carry out what they'd do with that weapon. combine that one with the plasma bolts? yeah...i'd start looking for real estate in another galaxy somewhere, this one belongs to the borg.
in game terms, one shot kills are a LAZY game design mechanic, and as illustrated by the above point, make no sense in the STO universe especially if given to the borg. other races might hesitate to use a weapon of such destructive power...not the borg.
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
I couldn't agree more with these comments. Hive on launch was a challenge (even on normal), once that was under your belt, elite was another challenge.,.. getting all 3 optionals on elite was an occassion to celebrate... then the whining came... the inevitable nerf... more cries that it was now too easy... so insane spike damage was added.
Take it back to what it was previously... the borg did solid, CONSISTENT damage (limited spike (except the lances (which didn't target you if you were close to the queen).
I think if, in general, the NPC Damage should be increased by 20-30% on elite, maybe 10-15% on normal. But NOT SPIKE damage (i.e. Torp, Lance, etc) but their sustained fire damage.
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
Fight the good fight Johnny.
All motivation to continue posting that kind of feedback has been completely sapped from me.
I'm not sure why the devs in this game are so enamored with telegraphed one-shot kill mechanics that make both tanks and healers pointless, but they are.
So far, no amount of feedback on the subject ever seems to bring us a change to this issue.
So either Borg have really good stealth detection (even through Romulan battle cloaks) or there's a bug with the targeting.
And they shoot through the cloak like they have sensors skilled to 999. Had to cloak, so I could heal a bit (distance to Queen 20km), after a few second she just flew to me and used her torpedo spread on me after she was in shooting distance, and at least 8km away from me.
Thats how you make the one true Elite STF a farce...
Kaalina, Romulan Science officer, Captain of the U.S.S. Tesseract.
Bolded for emphasis.
And yeah, I've had the questionable pleasure of experiencing those lance one-shot kills in Hive Elite. At some point we just gave up. It was hilarious for a while, and we laughed a lot, each time a ship just went 'poof'. But that's about it. Gets old, gets very annoying. And suddenly those lance attacks hit like every time. Oh, and when the whole team was destroyed, the Cigar of death even did a little dance. I'm not joking, it was moving and jerking around, like it tried to back into a parking space..
Talking about lazy or weak game design - the behavior of the spheres in Infected Space Elite is ridiculous. Their movement is random and makes no sense at all, other than to annoy the players, which is pretty much the only thing it achieves.
You know, if it was all part of a well orchestrated tactic and all the spheres would coordinate their attacks.. well that might be challenging.
But right now it's just silly and a typical "oh let's mix things up a little - trolololol" game design fail.
Then there's also Donatra in Khitomer Vortex Elite, who now sometimes fires the Thalaron Weapon without chargeup time. One time she came out of cloak and within one second wiped out our whole team. That was fun! Not.
And while we're at it, - balance by excessive hp is also problematic. Why?
Well, the resulting balance could have dire consequences on anything PvP related. :eek:
This is so true. And so sad.
Hey Cryptic devs, at least make it so that there's a realistical chance to beat the encounter with skill. Like movement and smart usage of skills.
You know, like other successful MMO companies design their encounters.
Not some lame "hey, some of you will get killed. deal with it" TRIBBLE.
Or "we're totally gonna random this up to make it more challenging!" nonsense.
I played this one a few time when it first came out and found it to be fun, and only played a couple time after the update and found it not so fun (one team just fell apart). This time, it started slow (one person dropped out early, but someone else joined). We got to the big cigars and had the spike hits, but eventually took them down (lost optional, but kept going for mission).
The real fun began with the Queen; I think the majority of the time was spent with at least two player rezzing after the demonic spike strike blew us away with one hit. This was a mission with two cruisers, science ship and my tac ship (purple gear) and the Queen was taking as long to kill as the entire rest of the mission took to complete. I died so many times that the counter went back to 10 secs. This was the most ridiculous STF Space Mission I have ever seen. We all tried to keep range, and stay alive, but that doesn't help maintain the damage level needed to take down the Queen. The mission may have been intended to be the Ultimate OMEGA STF, but it really is just irritating and the fun is lost quickly. I will play any other STF other than this mess... hard is not the issue, but stupidly designed is the issue. :rolleyes:
I have done Elite with all but one optional objective once and that wasn't too challenging (I guess it was partly the strong team I had). But put me on Normal and I am space dust as soon as its down to the Unimatrix ships.
Some sort of fix needs to happen though as I have a lot of trouble getting into the mission. There are like 100 people each playing Infected Space Elite and Khitomer Space Elite and I struggle in an hour to get into a team to do Into the Hive on either difficulty. I haven't even seen the ground version yet!
It appears to be such a turn off for the player base something needs to happen!
I gave up doing hive after the 1st two gose with the new lance being added and it one shot pop'd u no matter were u was on the map inclueding being cloaked and over 30km away TOTALY SCREWED AND NEEDS a revamp / rework
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Cryptic Dev 2: So what do we do?
CD1: Leave them plug stupid but make them ridiculously fast and allow the unimatrix ships to OHKO from 20km away?
CD2: Sounds good, run the code then let's go get a beer.
Step 2: blow up
Step 3: multiple times
That is all
Then came the borking. And the insta-deaths at 20K range. I finally got fed-up and went back to speed running through KASE, ISE and CSE. For a time, I didn't even bother with the game anymore. But then on a lark I decided to switch-up from escorts to cruisers (had 3500 Zen sitting around from all that ESTF Dil I converted), grabbed a Fleet Excelsior Retrofit and learned about "aux2bat" configurations.
Now, I've decided to give HO another shot. I went in on Normal level and found the cubes and spheres to be a breeze - BFAW3 everywhere and things just started going "pop." But when I hit the lance ships, the one-shots started again. So in a final, seemingly futile attempt at conquering the unconquerable, I tried the "stay within 5k of queen" rule that you always heard about before the borking but simply ignored because it was way more fun to strafe the lance ship hulls in an APO3-buffed escort.
But now I'm in a cruiser, running aux2bat, and I have more raw power than my subsystems know what to do with. So I gave the 5K rule a shot. I parked right next the queen, started my keybind cycle and basically BFAW3 continuosly for several minutes while hitting every offensive and defensive buff I had at my disposal.
And low and behold, the lance ships slowly went down. Not without a fight, mind you. I had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at me, and more than one team member inquired as to how the hell I was not dying while taking on *both* lance ships simultaneously.
But the truth is, without the lance one-shots (which get blocked by the close proximity to the queen), they aren't that hard to take down. Continuous pressure damage, even when they're regenerating, has always been the trick for me. And now that my 21.3 second (47% uptime) BFAW3 cycle can take out the majority of the supporting flak (probes, regen probes and even plasma bolts) in one or two shots, it comes down to tanking ability and persistence.
And when I finally got to the queen I found her to be remarkably easy to tank. I spent most of the enounter circling her at 3-6K range, and only rarely did I have to EM away or even switch sides to let a shield facing regen. Basically, it was one, long, slow grind to nothing and then the win.
Of course, I still die from time to time - mostly from getting one-shot on the way into queen "airspace" after getting caught outside. And given that I run PUGs almost exclusively, I often find myself as the only ship still alive and thus get overwhelmed sometimes while tanking the two lance ships (it's "fun" when you're doing 10-11K DPS with 7-10M damage while the next best player is doing 1.2K and hasn't cracked six figures).
Now that is a tight spot since, if you EM out of range to heal, you'll likely get lanced either on the way out or when you try to return. But overall, I'm finding HO to be fun again, at least on Normal difficulty. Cutting a swath of destruction through a sea of spheres and cubes is now more satisfying than ever, and the queen - once the most difficult part of the mission for me - has become a clinic on the benefits of flying a well-designed aux2bat beam boat.
As for HOE? Well, that's a beast of a different color. The cubes and spheres aren't the problem. It's finding a PUG that can hang with me in queen air space so I don't take ALL of the heat from everything. Between the inbound one-shots and the higher DPS output of the uprated NPCs, I'm still trying to get past the lance ships on that one. Perhaps with the right pre-made team...
RCK
It's not the gear. It's the tactics. If you're doing 5K DPS or better, and you have similar team members, you can do Hive Onslaught at non-Elite level. Just remember to hide by the queen and get everyone else to join you.
Or find me in a PUG...
RCK
This!!! ^^^
It's all about tanking and 360 degrees of AoE. Especially once you get to the lance ships. Just park next to the queen, buff and unload until they're dead (or your are).
I used to run Elite in a Fleet Patrol - but that was before the lance borking when you could still hug the hull and unload with DHCs while buffing/healing. Not anymore - now it's one-shot insta-kill before you've finished your first volley.
Wondering if Cryptic didn't design this mission just to frustrate escort captains, many of whom have become way too big for their britches...
BTW, I've actually *survived* being lanced on a few occasions. Was approaching the combat area and suddenly my hull went from a freshly spawned 100% with full shields to 12-15%. I then limped into queen air space and did my best to heal while avoiding another lancing. I actually managed to stay alive to the end in at least one of those situations, though it wasn't pretty (barely got the hull back to 50%), and I had to EM away from the queen for a minute or two once she went active.
Bottom Line: The lance may be an uber weapon, but it's survivable (barely). Wondering if my 2x Fleet Neutroniums made a difference. Or perhaps the Leech.
Does anyone know what type of energy those lances are using?
RCK
Upsetting to me because this used to be my favorite STF.
Yes, you can park next to the Queen and not get lanced but even getting to the queen can be a challenge and once there you still are fighting off instakill plasma torps from 2 directions.
Well, *something* hit me at 15K+ range and took away nearly 90% of my hull in one shot. There were no plasma bolts anywhere nearby, and nothing else the lance ships can throw at me does that sort of damage.
Maybe it's because I was in regular HO and not Elite? Is there a difference in lance weapon output/damage between the two mission versions?
UPDATE: I just got hit with something similar as soon as the queen when active. What is she firing that could do this sort of damage? I survived it, but had to EM away for a minute to heal.
RCK