Very much enjoyed it. Was good fun. Looks awesome and the Voth were fun to fight. I feel there needs to be a better way to tell when there are allied segments under attack and where the rest of the players are. it would be nice to see all allied players whether they are teamed or not so you can get a feel of where the action is happening.
Does not seem to reset as far as i can see once someone has won the zone. either that or the reset is taking a log time.
beam to ship only seems to work in the command centre, so that a bit of a pain if you want to leave the zone quickly.
also is there any reason for the different symbols (one looks like a fireball things, one looks like the omega symbol) can we have a key added to the map if those symbols are important?
We're aware of the issue regarding the final bosses either not appearing/the zone not resetting. I apologize for this happening - I'll be looking into a fix for this.
Your feedback so far has been terrific, and we will be looking into all of it, such as making the buff icons more visible and getting better messaging that you've received the command credits.
Not being able to choose your BOFFs to go into the zone is a known issue. We will look into why some people are only getting one bridge officer when you arrive in the zone. The intent is that you will be able to choose which of your two BOFFs go into the zone with you.
We're aware of the issue regarding the final bosses either not appearing/the zone not resetting. I apologize for this happening - I'll be looking into a fix for this.
Your feedback so far has been terrific, and we will be looking into all of it, such as making the buff icons more visible and getting better messaging that you've received the command credits.
Not being able to choose your BOFFs to go into the zone is a known issue. We will look into why some people are only getting one bridge officer when you arrive in the zone. The intent is that you will be able to choose which of your two BOFFs go into the zone with you.
Again, thank you for your feedback!
Commander Ander, I think I can answer your question that I highlighted above.
There is a longstanding (albeit rather low-impact) issue in this game where if the *last* zone you were in was party-size constrained (such as New Romulus where the size is 1) and you enter another size-constrained zone with a higher party size in any way that doesn't go through the boff screen, the game brings your previous (size-constrained) party. This includes zones where the party size was zero.
This can occasionally result in the captain entering the zone with either no boffs (if their last zone was a no-boff zone like Nukara) or only one boff (if it was New Romulus for example).
Because of the very limited number of ways to bypass the boff selection screen, this issue rarely manifests in the game, but I've encountered it a number of times over the life of my toons.
When I tested the Battlezone, it limited me to only one bridge officer and selected the one I had last used on New Romulus, which leads me to believe that the battlezone 1-boff party issue is caused by this bug as well.
enemies that we could fight were interesting, but found a turret spawn inside of a wall shooting me while doing the shutdown artillery thing.
didn't have any boffs spawn when I beamed in although I did get a swarmed to play bodyguard during 1 of the submissions though the air for follows to close.
there were maybe was almost a full instance but the v-rex wouldn't spawn where it said.
a transport to base to resupply button would be nice
since the zone is persistent we could not get any further progress since vrex spawns seemed to be on an auto complete timer and there was only the 1 instance so was unable to try a fresh run. 1player fell under the map and even relogging wouldn't get him out.
overall - looks nice, fix some of the spawning issues and map holes, maybe give the zone a timer till it auto resets or more instances.
I got on around 2ish in the afternoon. I'm not sure if this event is only meant to be active sometime or if it always should be up and running, but clearly none of the main scripts were working. Couldn't get bosses to spawn, all the other zones were blue.
So I took the time to run around, and take a look at the zone, which i think was really cool. In the central city boss area I fell through the floor (twice) or maybe off the side (not totally sure how it happened but its clearly persistent), which wouldn't been a big deal but my character lived through the fall into nothingness, and was trapped in the zone, given that beam out/transwarp/stuck are all disabled. So something need to be done about that, just making sure you die if you fall off seems like the easiest solution to me, but do what you gotta do.
A few of the side events were working, I talked with the swarmers thing, got my pet swarmer, and did the engineering event. Are those supposed to hand out command Credit?
I like the buff stations thingies, and I like the feel the place, I look foward to seeing it once its active.
Okay, since so far I never got to do Storming the Spire (first no people who wanted to do it, now the game crashes) so this is the first time I got to see the Dyson sphere... Here is my big nitpick: It's not a Dyson Sphere. There is no star in the middle.:D
FKA K-Tar, grumpy Klingon/El-Aurian hybrid. Now assimilated by PWE.
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
Wow you've managed to do it again. The Battlezone was just like one of those Foundry EC grind missions. It's basically an AFK mission apart from that red force field dome that one of the dinosaurs puts out. Another epic fail from Cryptic. Those dinosaurs running about just made mission look totally Un-Trek. All I could think was Stupid, Stupid and more Stupid. I guess Cryptic's next big game will be Jurassic Park Online. No fun at all. Season 8 is shaping up to be the worst ever. Please put Trek back into Star Trek Online.
I fail to see how Jurassic Park Online would be anything less than awesome, but I suppose that I also like fun so I may be biased.
Stayed up well past my bedtime to play this (YaY Wife Agro) so Ill have to keep it brief for now noticed that i only had one Boff with me and when we beat the big dino i did not receive a token had a question mark where the token icon would be and a note that said fill out a bug report HAHA so here I am....report filed
overall loved it
I had the same issue.
Though i didn't know where to fill out a bug report and I didn't recieve the wife rage
It looks like the textures are missing and I am only getting the base 3d model. Not sure if it's a bug or if you just left out the detail for the time being. I'll try to catch the name of the mob.
Edit: Voth Spec Ops and Bio Engineered Dankanasour, I could have sworn I went up against these guys before and they had full textures/models
Love the random pickups laying around.
I did also find the 'new skin' entertaining to fight against :P
Okay so lets start with the bugs I've found so far, all of them have been bugged via the bug system as well but can't have too many bug reports
a) V-Rex doesn't always appear. I'm willing to say this may be part of the holes in the environment that are in the known issues, but I'm not sure. The map will show the V-Rex with an up-arrow on it, which I've come to learn is above me, so it's either not dropping properly, or its falling through the environment would be my guess. Voth may be advanced, but they need to go find some Space Marines and learn how to do a proper combat drop from space.
b) The newest one is that I went into the Battleground (calling it BG for short from now on) and all the artillery generators are randomly closing and opening meaning you can't capture them. Even if they all close, they don't register as all closed, and the C-pod doesn't drop. As it randomly closes however, the consoles do light up, and you can interact with them, it just closes faster then you can actually go through the motions, and then it resets itself way to quick. This poses problems on point capture since you're constantly under fire. Capturing the devices does not slow this down, and I'm not seeing anything being recaptured by the Voth either.
c) City Side, North Central Artillery area, one of the generators is hidden by the environment. It's on the west side of the square, hidden behind one of those doorway thingies.
d) Outskirts (the SW map), the western most device area, you can capture it, but the map doesn't update showing it as captured.
e) the P-pods that drop have that cutting beam attack. Which is fine but you can't dodge it, and it'll shoot you through the environment. Not sure why the blast shields are there, if you can't use them to block the beam. It seems once it registers you as the target and starts it power-up cycle, you're going to be hit regardless. I've tried this a number of times, and it seems every time it's shot me through cover.
f) the little dinos do have a melee attack, and they have that pounce, knock down, maul attack which is cool, but they very rarely use it. The F-dinos never have used a melee attack that I can see, and the V-Rex seems to have a sweep attack, but I'm not sure what the animation is supposed to be because I've seen my BOffs simply fall back and never be touched by anything
g) Balance - The issue here is the power creep factor. Go in to the area with a level 50 with nothing but purple and blue mk xi's (I went in with the Jemmie Set mk xi and a purple sci kit) and it's balanced. Go in with any rep system top level gear (I took another character in with top end Omega rep gear) and it becomes too easy. Not sure how to fix this, since you either make it too hard for entry level 50s and balanced for the rep system, or you make it balanced for entry level, and too easy for those with rep system gear. My suggestion would be leave it as it is for the entry level 50s, but some will complain it's too easy. Guess that's the penalty we pay for power creep.
h)BOff's - I know it's a known issue, but clarifing. I've gone in twice now solo and gotten my Boffs, but they're always the same too. Thank goodness one is my healer, but the other is my Orion who 's seduce never seems to work on the Voth. No way to change it out. I've noticed that if I invite someone to a team before they get to the battleground, they always show up without a single BOff. I've had one who showed up with only one BOff once, not sure how that happened.
i) Invisible Token - Beat the big dino twice. Both times got the invisible token bug that says if you see this report the bug.
Other then that, I like the area a lot. Contrary to what the haters say, I do get a Star Trek vibe out of it, even with the Dino's with Lasers. Haters are going to hate, and many won't admit they were wrong, but yes, it does feel like Star Trek.
After the disastrous launch of LOR (what was it.. 11 or 12 days of maintenance in a row?) I would hope that you all learned something. The entire point of the test server is to test, so as to avoid any in game problems on the holodeck no? Instead of yet another special tribble, most likely for dyson marks, wasting even more bank space & making us wait the usual 3 months to get it, how about something really different for once? You have to admit yet another special tribble is not much incentive to log into the tribble test server & that is exactly what you need to give us... INCENTIVE. As is the game now discriminates against the individual player in that he/she must join a fleet in order to get a decent ship. That or spend real money in your Zen store. How about a token to claim any ship from the shipyard, regardless of weather you're in a fleet or not? Not a token to get any ship from the Zen store, just the shipyard ones with no restriction on fleet status/tier or membership. Also, how about giving it to us @ most a week after a tribble test weekend instead of the ususal 3 months? Offer that kind of incentive & you'll get so many people on the tribble test server it will crash, like it's supposed to. Then you can fix all the problems before you release season 8 on the holodeck. It seems to make sense to me, but what do I know... I've only been here since 02-02-10. Think about it Cryptic... what do you have to loose?
After the disastrous launch of LOR (what was it.. 11 or 12 days of maintenance in a row?) I would hope that you all learned something. The entire point of the test server is to test, so as to avoid any in game problems on the holodeck no? Instead of yet another special tribble, most likely for dyson marks, wasting even more bank space & making us wait the usual 3 months to get it, how about something really different for once? You have to admit yet another special tribble is not much incentive to log into the tribble test server & that is exactly what you need to give us... INCENTIVE. As is the game now discriminates against the individual player in that he/she must join a fleet in order to get a decent ship. That or spend real money in your Zen store. How about a token to claim any ship from the shipyard, regardless of weather you're in a fleet or not? Not a token to get any ship from the Zen store, just the shipyard ones with no restriction on fleet status/tier or membership. Also, how about giving it to us @ most a week after a tribble test weekend instead of the ususal 3 months? Offer that kind of incentive & you'll get so many people on the tribble test server it will crash, like it's supposed to. Then you can fix all the problems before you release season 8 on the holodeck. It seems to make sense to me, but what do I know... I've only been here since 02-02-10. Think about it Cryptic... what do you have to loose?
The problem isn't the Tribble, or the testing or the incentive. If you don't want to go test, don't, the rest of us will.
The problem is, when you put in a huge number of bug reports on bugs, and it goes live with the bugs still don't get fixed, and then they scramble 12 days in a row to fix what should have been fixed day one when the bug reports on the issue came in.
We don't need more testers exactly (though they couldn't hurt). Cyrptic needs to fix the bugs that the testers do find before gong live, and then scrambling for 12 days to fix them.
If you don't have enough people testing you don't find all of the bugs...seems pretty straight forward to me. The problem is two-fold, bugs that either don't get found and therefore don't get fixed until it goes live, and bugs that just don't get fixed because this company is in such a rush to push any new content out the door that they DO NOT DO THEIR DUE DILIGENCE.
The result is a lessened playing experience for all of us and customer service hell for everyone. including Cryptic. In fact, my experience with this company's so called customer service has been so sub par that I've pretty much given up on sending in tickets. "Your Cryptic ticket number is 1,567,342,876" I am sure someone is going to get to that sometime this year...and when they do I get told to send it somewhere else, or they will get to it eventually. To be honest I am beginning to wonder if either they don't care about sending out bugged content, either that or that the programming here isn't good enough to avoid it.
As for the rest, Epic, I LOVE this zone, and the enemies. THIS is how a tough enemy should be (Time to rethink the Borg guys...)
I was going to to say that either Defera Invasion needs to be more like this, showing Borg controlled areas as having being assimilated using "phasing tech" like in City of Heroes' Recluse's Victory zone, or maybe a new Borg Invasion zone could be added, like say, Vega Colony. Since based on the new tutorial it's just been left with all the invading Borg "bottled up" there.
If you don't have enough people testing you don't find all of the bugs...seems pretty straight forward to me. The problem is two-fold, bugs that either don't get found and therefore don't get fixed until it goes live, and bugs that just don't get fixed because this company is in such a rush to push any new content out the door that they DO NOT DO THEIR DUE DILIGENCE.
The result is a lessened playing experience for all of us and customer service hell for everyone. including Cryptic. In fact, my experience with this company's so called customer service has been so sub par that I've pretty much given up on sending in tickets. "Your Cryptic ticket number is 1,567,342,876" I am sure someone is going to get to that sometime this year...and when they do I get told to send it somewhere else, or they will get to it eventually. To be honest I am beginning to wonder if either they don't care about sending out bugged content, either that or that the programming here isn't good enough to avoid it.
Did you seriously have to bring down the thread? -_- While certainly dealing with bugs that crop up, this is a feedback thread for the new content, not rants against the general bug hunting process.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, perhaps you can update the Battlezone missions' text? They certainly state the objective clearly, but otherwise have no indication of where players have to go to get there. Those who read the patch notes know the contacts are on ESD/Qo'nos, but perhaps an extra line will help many out.
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Sorry dude but your mental health isn't really my priority. If that post really dragged you down that much you may want to try some Prozac. I know the drill around here by now and its the pedantic fan boys who always defend this company that help keep the status quo what it is.
Cryptic should be striving for less glitches and better quality programming straight out of the box. Its better for them and its better for us. I don't think that's hard to understand. Some of us get on them to try to help improve the content before it comes out. Maybe you enjoy glitchville and two straight week of maintenance? And in case you hadn't noticed for the past three years history always seems to repeat itself around here. Always being the nice guy doesn't work with these guys.
That said I think Cryptic does an amazing job with game development and art...top notch. However, they are horribly lacking in programming and customer service and that's not even really debatable...its just a sad fact.
Love the zone, totally lost track of time in it. Voth are tough without feeling cheap and look great. I wonder, however, if this will finally be the last straw that makes you guys fix knock back chaining with swords. Totally hilarious to watch your big Dino's be immobilized by chain knock back by just spamming 22222222222222222222 with a sword.
Sorry dude but your mental health isn't really my priority. If that post really dragged you down that much you may want to try some Prozac. I know the drill around here by now and its the pedantic fan boys who always defend this company that help keep the status quo what it is.
Cryptic should be striving for less glitches and better quality programming straight out of the box. Its better for them and its better for us. I don't think that's hard to understand. Some of us get on them to try to help improve the content before it comes out. Maybe you enjoy glitchville and two straight week of maintenance? And in case you hadn't noticed for the past three years history always seems to repeat itself around here. Always being the nice guy doesn't work with these guys.
That said I think Cryptic does an amazing job with game development and art...top notch. However, they are horribly lacking in programming and customer service and that's not even really debatable...its just a sad fact.
I make a fairly legit answer to your post, and your first reaction is say my mental health isn't your priority, and implicate that I enjoy all the glitches?
Sorry to say, but that answer reflects poorly on you, not me
But to answer your question, I neither enjoy it nor hate it. I've been here since Open Beta, and my answer is the lower aspects aren't as bad as people claim. They're not top notch, certainly, but they're not that bad either. I say this with all seriousness, because to me, it is a fact.
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Sorry dude but your mental health isn't really my priority. If that post really dragged you down that much you may want to try some Prozac. I know the drill around here by now and its the pedantic fan boys who always defend this company that help keep the status quo what it is.
Cryptic should be striving for less glitches and better quality programming straight out of the box. Its better for them and its better for us. I don't think that's hard to understand. Some of us get on them to try to help improve the content before it comes out. Maybe you enjoy glitchville and two straight week of maintenance? And in case you hadn't noticed for the past three years history always seems to repeat itself around here. Always being the nice guy doesn't work with these guys.
That said I think Cryptic does an amazing job with game development and art...top notch. However, they are horribly lacking in programming and customer service and that's not even really debatable...its just a sad fact.
Beyond what I consider to be an insulting tone, I would say you completely missed the point of a test server. Are there bugs? Clearly. When I was in the beta for wow, I saw loads of bugs. Weeks after launch it was still buggy as mad, that cycle continued with every expansion and/for every other game I have played. Yes this is new content, yes there are things that need to get fixed. But your gross exaggeration simply negates any weight your points might have.
This will be a great addition to STO, it will take the game in direction I had almost despaired of seeing it go in. So I am very pleased. I do think getting the rewards active on this map is very important. For so long Space has returned so much more then ground, I really hope that trend might be reversed.
Played a bit earlier and noticed the bugs with V-Rex failing to spawn and the zone not resetting. But I see that's been noted already.
One problem I noticed is that didn't get a boff at all. This may be because, before I entered the battlezone, I teamed with a friend who was already there. And I saw players running around with their full away team.
Voth on the ground are challenging and interesting to fight. Perhaps a bit too challenging for us, as I think we had fewer people on Tribble than the encounters were scaled for. A lot fewer. It also wasn't always clear what needed to be done, though I may have skipped a briefing or two.
One person's idea of challenging and interesting is another person's idea of difficult and annoying, and I fear that if this is too much, people may not do it in large numbers. And with too few people it'll be all the more difficult for everyone.
I like it so far but it feels like it needs more variety.
At the moment there are three different things to capture territories but a few other variations would go a long way to making it a more enjoyable game play experience.
I think there are a lot of lessons learnt with Defera that could be applied to this zone such as mini missions like the defera easy and medium missions or Probe where you have to kill each of the Assimilated Gorn.
Maybe something like on Nimbus III where at certain points a task appears like slaying a boss or something would be cool. Maybe even have mini multi choice mark boxes.
Maybe a variant boss battle would be nice rather than fight the V Rex all the time, something like a hero in a robot suit or something to break things up a bit.
Maybe some specific accolade tasks that are keyed to a career like in the standard missions such as Stranded where completing it gets you career specific accolades.
Maybe collection particle samples scattered throughout the map?
I think with something like this form of variety is the key to making it a continued success.
I think there are a lot of lessons learnt with Defera that could be applied to this zone such as mini missions like the defera easy and medium missions or Probe where you have to kill each of the Assimilated Gorn.
There are mini-missions in the zone, but they are incredibly non-challenging. One even gets you a temporary pet swarmer. None of them are that hard, and even a few you don't even move, click the right person, stand still, kill two minion Voth, mini-mission complete. I'm hoping that they're just fillerish, and going to be expanded.
Maybe a variant boss battle would be nice rather than fight the V Rex all the time, something like a hero in a robot suit or something to break things up a bit.
There are Generals and bigger Dino's wondering around the zones that respawn pretty quick, and are pretty difficult is small teams. Issue is, they don't give you anything at all, so there is literally no reason to fight them if you can avoid them. Fight them about six times (because it's tribble two each zone) I can honestly say twice I got nothing, twice we got white trash stuff, once we got a white weapon, and once a green weapon. So while ther are hero battles in game, there's no reason to fight them.
Maybe some specific accolade tasks that are keyed to a career like in the standard missions such as Stranded where completing it gets you career specific accolades.
This idea I like.
Maybe collection particle samples scattered throughout the map?
I think with something like this form of variety is the key to making it a continued success.
Yellow coloring is my responses. Personally I'd like to see the take a page out of Guild Wars, in the way you kind of say as well, and every so often randomly run an event or expand out the mini-missions that are there. Instead of the Researcher that you click, it kneels and you kill two Voth, make it walk the area, and make it so if you succeed the BG as a whole (or at least that section of it) gets a bonus to something. Get it so when you get the Swarmer pet, you don't get just one, but the ability for a one time power that you lose if you don't use it in an hour, to call in an actual smarm of swarmers on your enemies. Give it so that if I take down the general or the LT Dino in the park, I get extra credits to call in more reinforcements.
And like you said, lets do career mini-missions, where if I do them I can create extra reinforcements, fixed turret implacements, or speed up the capturing process of zones and slow down the Voth capture times.
Yellow coloring is my responses. Personally I'd like to see the take a page out of Guild Wars, in the way you kind of say as well, and every so often randomly run an event or expand out the mini-missions that are there. Instead of the Researcher that you click, it kneels and you kill two Voth, make it walk the area, and make it so if you succeed the BG as a whole (or at least that section of it) gets a bonus to something. Get it so when you get the Swarmer pet, you don't get just one, but the ability for a one time power that you lose if you don't use it in an hour, to call in an actual smarm of swarmers on your enemies. Give it so that if I take down the general or the LT Dino in the park, I get extra credits to call in more reinforcements.
And like you said, lets do career mini-missions, where if I do them I can create extra reinforcements, fixed turret implacements, or speed up the capturing process of zones and slow down the Voth capture times.
Maybe incorporate something like the fleet MACO reinforcements? Kill a wandering boss and next time you request reinforcements you get MACOs?
You might even be able make something like that career specific, so say tacts get maco teams, engineers call in turrets, sci speed up capture time, etc. Just really play on the mixed career team dynamic. Doesn't have to be game breaking just something fun.
I think the zone is on the right track but just little things could make a big difference.
Sorry dude but your mental health isn't really my priority. If that post really dragged you down that much you may want to try some Prozac. I know the drill around here by now and its the pedantic fan boys who always defend this company that help keep the status quo what it is.
Cryptic should be striving for less glitches and better quality programming straight out of the box. Its better for them and its better for us. I don't think that's hard to understand. Some of us get on them to try to help improve the content before it comes out. Maybe you enjoy glitchville and two straight week of maintenance? And in case you hadn't noticed for the past three years history always seems to repeat itself around here. Always being the nice guy doesn't work with these guys.
That said I think Cryptic does an amazing job with game development and art...top notch. However, they are horribly lacking in programming and customer service and that's not even really debatable...its just a sad fact.
Just ignore the clowns they don't actually play the game
Just ignore the clowns they don't actually play the game
I wouldn't make that assumption; I have 7 characters in-game, all max level Though max everything else is still on-going, coming and going due to time, willingness and such
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
I wouldn't make that assumption; I have 7 characters in-game, all max level Though max everything else is still on-going, coming and going due to time, willingness and such
Maybe incorporate something like the fleet MACO reinforcements? Kill a wandering boss and next time you request reinforcements you get MACOs?
You might even be able make something like that career specific, so say tacts get maco teams, engineers call in turrets, sci speed up capture time, etc. Just really play on the mixed career team dynamic. Doesn't have to be game breaking just something fun.
I think the zone is on the right track but just little things could make a big difference.
You know the odd thing is I've seen Federatino MACOs and Klingon OMEGA's wandering around in full gear (and yes they're named NPCs and not players) and they're like only slightly harder to kill then the vanilla feds, rommies, and klinks in the game. Mind you a couple have saved me when they wander by while I was fighting P-pods and C-pods and the respawn on Voth roamers kicked in, and once they were useful in me capturing a point in the outskirts, but otherwise... meh...
I do think the reward issue is one worthy of and necessary to discuss.
One of the reasons many folk don't focus on ground is that it lacks the resource rewards of space. I mean that in terms of Raw EC. This is an opportunity to correct that imbalance. Add drops worth sufficent EC to make it even with space. I don't mean on the exchange i mean to vendors, drops that like shields, engines and dishes that are worth 30-50 thousand ec. It not going to unbalance anything, that level of reward is active in game right now, it just means players will be reward equally for ground missions as space missions.
Comments
Does not seem to reset as far as i can see once someone has won the zone. either that or the reset is taking a log time.
beam to ship only seems to work in the command centre, so that a bit of a pain if you want to leave the zone quickly.
also is there any reason for the different symbols (one looks like a fireball things, one looks like the omega symbol) can we have a key added to the map if those symbols are important?
We're aware of the issue regarding the final bosses either not appearing/the zone not resetting. I apologize for this happening - I'll be looking into a fix for this.
Your feedback so far has been terrific, and we will be looking into all of it, such as making the buff icons more visible and getting better messaging that you've received the command credits.
Not being able to choose your BOFFs to go into the zone is a known issue. We will look into why some people are only getting one bridge officer when you arrive in the zone. The intent is that you will be able to choose which of your two BOFFs go into the zone with you.
Again, thank you for your feedback!
Commander Ander, I think I can answer your question that I highlighted above.
There is a longstanding (albeit rather low-impact) issue in this game where if the *last* zone you were in was party-size constrained (such as New Romulus where the size is 1) and you enter another size-constrained zone with a higher party size in any way that doesn't go through the boff screen, the game brings your previous (size-constrained) party. This includes zones where the party size was zero.
This can occasionally result in the captain entering the zone with either no boffs (if their last zone was a no-boff zone like Nukara) or only one boff (if it was New Romulus for example).
Because of the very limited number of ways to bypass the boff selection screen, this issue rarely manifests in the game, but I've encountered it a number of times over the life of my toons.
When I tested the Battlezone, it limited me to only one bridge officer and selected the one I had last used on New Romulus, which leads me to believe that the battlezone 1-boff party issue is caused by this bug as well.
enemies that we could fight were interesting, but found a turret spawn inside of a wall shooting me while doing the shutdown artillery thing.
didn't have any boffs spawn when I beamed in although I did get a swarmed to play bodyguard during 1 of the submissions though the air for follows to close.
there were maybe was almost a full instance but the v-rex wouldn't spawn where it said.
a transport to base to resupply button would be nice
since the zone is persistent we could not get any further progress since vrex spawns seemed to be on an auto complete timer and there was only the 1 instance so was unable to try a fresh run. 1player fell under the map and even relogging wouldn't get him out.
overall - looks nice, fix some of the spawning issues and map holes, maybe give the zone a timer till it auto resets or more instances.
So I took the time to run around, and take a look at the zone, which i think was really cool. In the central city boss area I fell through the floor (twice) or maybe off the side (not totally sure how it happened but its clearly persistent), which wouldn't been a big deal but my character lived through the fall into nothingness, and was trapped in the zone, given that beam out/transwarp/stuck are all disabled. So something need to be done about that, just making sure you die if you fall off seems like the easiest solution to me, but do what you gotta do.
A few of the side events were working, I talked with the swarmers thing, got my pet swarmer, and did the engineering event. Are those supposed to hand out command Credit?
I like the buff stations thingies, and I like the feel the place, I look foward to seeing it once its active.
Thanks!
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
DELTA PRICE RISING
I fail to see how Jurassic Park Online would be anything less than awesome, but I suppose that I also like fun so I may be biased.
I had the same issue.
Though i didn't know where to fill out a bug report and I didn't recieve the wife rage
I did also find the 'new skin' entertaining to fight against :P
FYI: this new game play is awesome!
a) V-Rex doesn't always appear. I'm willing to say this may be part of the holes in the environment that are in the known issues, but I'm not sure. The map will show the V-Rex with an up-arrow on it, which I've come to learn is above me, so it's either not dropping properly, or its falling through the environment would be my guess. Voth may be advanced, but they need to go find some Space Marines and learn how to do a proper combat drop from space.
b) The newest one is that I went into the Battleground (calling it BG for short from now on) and all the artillery generators are randomly closing and opening meaning you can't capture them. Even if they all close, they don't register as all closed, and the C-pod doesn't drop. As it randomly closes however, the consoles do light up, and you can interact with them, it just closes faster then you can actually go through the motions, and then it resets itself way to quick. This poses problems on point capture since you're constantly under fire. Capturing the devices does not slow this down, and I'm not seeing anything being recaptured by the Voth either.
c) City Side, North Central Artillery area, one of the generators is hidden by the environment. It's on the west side of the square, hidden behind one of those doorway thingies.
d) Outskirts (the SW map), the western most device area, you can capture it, but the map doesn't update showing it as captured.
e) the P-pods that drop have that cutting beam attack. Which is fine but you can't dodge it, and it'll shoot you through the environment. Not sure why the blast shields are there, if you can't use them to block the beam. It seems once it registers you as the target and starts it power-up cycle, you're going to be hit regardless. I've tried this a number of times, and it seems every time it's shot me through cover.
f) the little dinos do have a melee attack, and they have that pounce, knock down, maul attack which is cool, but they very rarely use it. The F-dinos never have used a melee attack that I can see, and the V-Rex seems to have a sweep attack, but I'm not sure what the animation is supposed to be because I've seen my BOffs simply fall back and never be touched by anything
g) Balance - The issue here is the power creep factor. Go in to the area with a level 50 with nothing but purple and blue mk xi's (I went in with the Jemmie Set mk xi and a purple sci kit) and it's balanced. Go in with any rep system top level gear (I took another character in with top end Omega rep gear) and it becomes too easy. Not sure how to fix this, since you either make it too hard for entry level 50s and balanced for the rep system, or you make it balanced for entry level, and too easy for those with rep system gear. My suggestion would be leave it as it is for the entry level 50s, but some will complain it's too easy. Guess that's the penalty we pay for power creep.
h)BOff's - I know it's a known issue, but clarifing. I've gone in twice now solo and gotten my Boffs, but they're always the same too. Thank goodness one is my healer, but the other is my Orion who 's seduce never seems to work on the Voth. No way to change it out. I've noticed that if I invite someone to a team before they get to the battleground, they always show up without a single BOff. I've had one who showed up with only one BOff once, not sure how that happened.
i) Invisible Token - Beat the big dino twice. Both times got the invisible token bug that says if you see this report the bug.
Other then that, I like the area a lot. Contrary to what the haters say, I do get a Star Trek vibe out of it, even with the Dino's with Lasers. Haters are going to hate, and many won't admit they were wrong, but yes, it does feel like Star Trek.
The problem isn't the Tribble, or the testing or the incentive. If you don't want to go test, don't, the rest of us will.
The problem is, when you put in a huge number of bug reports on bugs, and it goes live with the bugs still don't get fixed, and then they scramble 12 days in a row to fix what should have been fixed day one when the bug reports on the issue came in.
We don't need more testers exactly (though they couldn't hurt). Cyrptic needs to fix the bugs that the testers do find before gong live, and then scrambling for 12 days to fix them.
The result is a lessened playing experience for all of us and customer service hell for everyone. including Cryptic. In fact, my experience with this company's so called customer service has been so sub par that I've pretty much given up on sending in tickets. "Your Cryptic ticket number is 1,567,342,876" I am sure someone is going to get to that sometime this year...and when they do I get told to send it somewhere else, or they will get to it eventually. To be honest I am beginning to wonder if either they don't care about sending out bugged content, either that or that the programming here isn't good enough to avoid it.
I was going to to say that either Defera Invasion needs to be more like this, showing Borg controlled areas as having being assimilated using "phasing tech" like in City of Heroes' Recluse's Victory zone, or maybe a new Borg Invasion zone could be added, like say, Vega Colony. Since based on the new tutorial it's just been left with all the invading Borg "bottled up" there.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, perhaps you can update the Battlezone missions' text? They certainly state the objective clearly, but otherwise have no indication of where players have to go to get there. Those who read the patch notes know the contacts are on ESD/Qo'nos, but perhaps an extra line will help many out.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Cryptic should be striving for less glitches and better quality programming straight out of the box. Its better for them and its better for us. I don't think that's hard to understand. Some of us get on them to try to help improve the content before it comes out. Maybe you enjoy glitchville and two straight week of maintenance? And in case you hadn't noticed for the past three years history always seems to repeat itself around here. Always being the nice guy doesn't work with these guys.
That said I think Cryptic does an amazing job with game development and art...top notch. However, they are horribly lacking in programming and customer service and that's not even really debatable...its just a sad fact.
Vanilla Ground PvP information
Sorry to say, but that answer reflects poorly on you, not me
But to answer your question, I neither enjoy it nor hate it. I've been here since Open Beta, and my answer is the lower aspects aren't as bad as people claim. They're not top notch, certainly, but they're not that bad either. I say this with all seriousness, because to me, it is a fact.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Beyond what I consider to be an insulting tone, I would say you completely missed the point of a test server. Are there bugs? Clearly. When I was in the beta for wow, I saw loads of bugs. Weeks after launch it was still buggy as mad, that cycle continued with every expansion and/for every other game I have played. Yes this is new content, yes there are things that need to get fixed. But your gross exaggeration simply negates any weight your points might have.
This will be a great addition to STO, it will take the game in direction I had almost despaired of seeing it go in. So I am very pleased. I do think getting the rewards active on this map is very important. For so long Space has returned so much more then ground, I really hope that trend might be reversed.
One problem I noticed is that didn't get a boff at all. This may be because, before I entered the battlezone, I teamed with a friend who was already there. And I saw players running around with their full away team.
Voth on the ground are challenging and interesting to fight. Perhaps a bit too challenging for us, as I think we had fewer people on Tribble than the encounters were scaled for. A lot fewer. It also wasn't always clear what needed to be done, though I may have skipped a briefing or two.
One person's idea of challenging and interesting is another person's idea of difficult and annoying, and I fear that if this is too much, people may not do it in large numbers. And with too few people it'll be all the more difficult for everyone.
At the moment there are three different things to capture territories but a few other variations would go a long way to making it a more enjoyable game play experience.
I think there are a lot of lessons learnt with Defera that could be applied to this zone such as mini missions like the defera easy and medium missions or Probe where you have to kill each of the Assimilated Gorn.
Maybe something like on Nimbus III where at certain points a task appears like slaying a boss or something would be cool. Maybe even have mini multi choice mark boxes.
Maybe a variant boss battle would be nice rather than fight the V Rex all the time, something like a hero in a robot suit or something to break things up a bit.
Maybe some specific accolade tasks that are keyed to a career like in the standard missions such as Stranded where completing it gets you career specific accolades.
Maybe collection particle samples scattered throughout the map?
I think with something like this form of variety is the key to making it a continued success.
Yellow coloring is my responses. Personally I'd like to see the take a page out of Guild Wars, in the way you kind of say as well, and every so often randomly run an event or expand out the mini-missions that are there. Instead of the Researcher that you click, it kneels and you kill two Voth, make it walk the area, and make it so if you succeed the BG as a whole (or at least that section of it) gets a bonus to something. Get it so when you get the Swarmer pet, you don't get just one, but the ability for a one time power that you lose if you don't use it in an hour, to call in an actual smarm of swarmers on your enemies. Give it so that if I take down the general or the LT Dino in the park, I get extra credits to call in more reinforcements.
And like you said, lets do career mini-missions, where if I do them I can create extra reinforcements, fixed turret implacements, or speed up the capturing process of zones and slow down the Voth capture times.
Maybe incorporate something like the fleet MACO reinforcements? Kill a wandering boss and next time you request reinforcements you get MACOs?
You might even be able make something like that career specific, so say tacts get maco teams, engineers call in turrets, sci speed up capture time, etc. Just really play on the mixed career team dynamic. Doesn't have to be game breaking just something fun.
I think the zone is on the right track but just little things could make a big difference.
Just ignore the clowns they don't actually play the game
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Eh yeah like I said
You know the odd thing is I've seen Federatino MACOs and Klingon OMEGA's wandering around in full gear (and yes they're named NPCs and not players) and they're like only slightly harder to kill then the vanilla feds, rommies, and klinks in the game. Mind you a couple have saved me when they wander by while I was fighting P-pods and C-pods and the respawn on Voth roamers kicked in, and once they were useful in me capturing a point in the outskirts, but otherwise... meh...
One of the reasons many folk don't focus on ground is that it lacks the resource rewards of space. I mean that in terms of Raw EC. This is an opportunity to correct that imbalance. Add drops worth sufficent EC to make it even with space. I don't mean on the exchange i mean to vendors, drops that like shields, engines and dishes that are worth 30-50 thousand ec. It not going to unbalance anything, that level of reward is active in game right now, it just means players will be reward equally for ground missions as space missions.