Think alot of you forget about the old stfs .. while long and fun they where broken.
You'd get desynched from your group and couldn't rejoin ...no fun in that and going by Cryptics current model they have no desire or plans to fix any of the old bugs.
But if you all want a major screwed up and bugged instance to come back then I'll give my thumbs up for this.
I didn't like the old STF's because of their length. The current STF era suits me fine. I just want more of what we have. Different maps, enemies, encounters, etc. But I do agree that there should be something for everyone. Why couldn't they re open the old STF's? They need to fix all the bugs first.
Bring back the old! They were much, much, very much funner than the no-relation-to-story-at-all current revamps. However, keep the new style in game too - for those who haven't hours to spend. Let us have the good of both! Old and new!
*reminisces on the sound of team leader snoring ... during the final Khitomer space part... after three hours run*
There once was a dev who basically put his all into the product... developed certain things and had enough pull with the team to get what he wanted.
He worked on the STF mechanics, and through his efforts we ended up with the FOUR stories and almost a Fifth. The problem was, there was no money to fix the forth, or finish the fifth.
Enter the new company. The new company decided "grind maps." And it was to be so. Rather than put the effort into making new grind maps to appease the new owners, the STFs were split and dumbed down to challenging grind maps.
And this... along with other things... made the dev very angry... so he left.
And when he left the knowhow to fix certain things, the understanding of how certain things worked, and how things were plumbed and wired under the sheetmetal went with him.
This included the knowhow to code-fix the Undine STF... And the knowhow to repair/rework the Borg STFs. If you look closely at Into The Hive you can see how that was intended to be a epic-scale STF but it was split and patched with cut-scenes.
While regrettable, this is how corporations work. You can have the best idea in the world... but without money and without management support it all comes to nothing.
As it stands now, look at the new season. Huge-TRIBBLE grind map. The management is NOT looking at 2-hour dungeon-crawls/epic raids... they want people grinding and grinding as that is what makes the money at the moment.
The old STFs were fun and a bit of challenge in part because we didnt have Ultra Rare MK XII stuff and passives, and traits and sets. We made them with MK X green items and you have to think what to use in each STF.
The currents NPCs (and the old ones) are not made to stand a chance against all the new and shiny stuff we have. It would not surprise me if we can finish an old Infected Vice Admiral in less than 30 mins now. Just Aux2bat the space part (less than 5 mins I guess) and ground is the same as the current IGE (less than 15 mins).
There once was a dev who basically put his all into the product... developed certain things and had enough pull with the team to get what he wanted.
He worked on the STF mechanics, and through his efforts we ended up with the FOUR stories and almost a Fifth. The problem was, there was no money to fix the forth, or finish the fifth.
Enter the new company. The new company decided "grind maps." And it was to be so. Rather than put the effort into making new grind maps to appease the new owners, the STFs were split and dumbed down to challenging grind maps.
And this... along with other things... made the dev very angry... so he left.
And when he left the knowhow to fix certain things, the understanding of how certain things worked, and how things were plumbed and wired under the sheetmetal went with him.
This included the knowhow to code-fix the Undine STF... And the knowhow to repair/rework the Borg STFs. If you look closely at Into The Hive you can see how that was intended to be a epic-scale STF but it was split and patched with cut-scenes.
While regrettable, this is how corporations work. You can have the best idea in the world... but without money and without management support it all comes to nothing.
As it stands now, look at the new season. Huge-TRIBBLE grind map. The management is NOT looking at 2-hour dungeon-crawls/epic raids... they want people grinding and grinding as that is what makes the money at the moment.
This^^
The people behind the STF's and the Doff system alike, left. You wont see much done with them until someone else learns all their foibles and methods on how they work..
Probably why we haven't seen very much done with them since....
The old STFers were far more fun and certainly epic as far as STO's plotline went. They were end game content as it should, not fleet event grinds. Completing one was cause for a small celebration (like launching fireworks).
However... I'm sick to the back teeth of fighting the Borg.
Sorry, without meaning to sound overly harsh, that is one of the most narrow-minded self-centred viewpoints I've read on these forums.
I'd LOVE to be able to set three hours aside to play STO. I can't, because I have a life. I see my children at weekends. I also enjoy spending time with my wife. Spending three hours playing a video game is not very high on my personal priorty list.
So PLEASE try viewing things from outside your own little bubble in the future, because the 'the game revolves around ME and what I want' attitude stinks to be honest.
Quoted for all the truth! A lot of players on these forums suffer from an issue of perspective.
And it's baffling how some folks think that doing a 3-hour raid with the only reward being the result of a random roll DOESN'T count as "grinding". Doing content over and over and over in the old Everquest/WoW/TOR model JUST to get a chance to roll for a drop is grinding, plain and simple.
At least this time we're guaranteed to get what we need if we put in the necessary time and resources thanks to the Rep systems. The costs may need to be balanced better and the rewards made less tiresome to acquire, but all in all the new system is better. I know folks who've played the game since beta, and prior to the Rep system had NEVER seen a piece of STF gear because they NEVER got the luck of the roll despite years of playing. That's no fun.
Okay ,I have established that some people want to spend more time on real people than with other gamers.
Whatever floats your mysterious and idiosyncratic boat ...
FOR US GAMERS whom have time to spend on STO, because videogaming is important, I honestly think Cryptic should add a super hard, long, demanding and rewarding PvE.
It would be something one would not necessarily PUG, perhaps NO pugging at all, but would be an amazing experience to do with friends, that may feel different every time.
Wifes ... meh ...
Hopefully I'll come back from my break; this break is fun; I play intellectual games.
This game is in serious need of moderately challenging end-game content... the new STFs are so easy a skilled team can do them in 10 minutes. No challenge there, and not much fun either. Even HSE has become a joke now that we've figured out the trick to beating 1-shot lances is carrier and mine spam.
I know for a fact that the old STFs still exist, they have merely been "turned off" and made inaccessible. I propose reactivating them, for those of us who are actually skilled enough to complete them.
Revamp the rewards so they give more Omega marks than the current "elite" STFs.
Don't bother adding them to the PvE queuing system, we'll make our own teams.
Give us skilled players something to use our skills on... the no-skill whiner PUGs can keep the current "Elite" STFs and think they are great players.
Uh, no. It's YOUR problem. Actually, it literally is your problem since you're asking for this content to be returned. Cryptic is clearly catering to the side that doesn't want to spend a quarter of their day sitting on their butts in front of the monitor, only to waste all that time because some Leeroy drove in with a skittle-boat. And Leeroys in skittleboats who can sink an optional because they forget to heal ship injuries is virtualoly proof that there is "challenge" in the current content. The challenge of getting together the gear you need and learning what "10% rule" means, among other things.
...
that there is the reason for wanting the old stf's back, as you so eloquently put yourself, all the new stf's fail the criteria of using your head for the right situation as it's always about DPS. You leeroy types on your skittle-boats would never survive the fresh open ocean waters with speedboats that are the old stf's. it's a shame your treated to something so shallow and hollow where the ultimate purpose is mind rot.
Sorry, without meaning to sound overly harsh, that is one of the most narrow-minded self-centred viewpoints I've read on these forums.
I'd LOVE to be able to set three hours aside to play STO. I can't, because I have a life. I see my children at weekends. I also enjoy spending time with my wife. Spending three hours playing a video game is not very high on my personal priorty list.
So PLEASE try viewing things from outside your own little bubble in the future, because the 'the game revolves around ME and what I want' attitude stinks to be honest.
ahh the common trait of man these days, i could troll a valid fact about it but then as you put it yourself, everyone is in it for themselves regardless of priority. you may not have the time but others do. so bring back the old stfs.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I'd like to see the old content brought back (mostly because I never got the chance to do it) because it sounds like it was a great deal of fun. I don't think they should remove any of the new stuff at all, since it serves its purpose for people who don't have a lot of time. Just because they don't have a lot of time, doesn't mean they need to be locked out of content.
That being said, I would think that if the old stuff was reintroduced, it would require an upgrade in terms of reward. Something like a "rep grind reducer ticket" or something, where once you got this consumable, you gained double marks for an hour if you do the 'normal version', and triple marks for an hour if you did the 'elite version', as an additional reward for doing the lengthy variant of the STF.
Sardak (Science Officer): Captain of a 23k DPS R'Mor Temporal Science Vessel, R.R.W. Vathos Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
ahh the common trait of man these days, i could troll a valid fact about it but then as you put it yourself, everyone is in it for themselves regardless of priority. you may not have the time but others do. so bring back the old stfs.
First the old STFs weren't any different then the new elite STFs. The only difference was they broke the space and ground apart and made to elite STFs.
As someone else above posted, the reason that they were so hard was because we didn't have anything for decent gear, and lets be honest they weren't that hard. Just like now as soon as you figured out what to do, you did it, and you'd keep doing it, every time you went in. The so called "3 hour" STFs, basically got boiled down to about an hour if you knew what you were doing.
Enter power creep.
But hey, right now, unless you absolutely NEED the cut scenes, I'll tell you how to make them harder for you. Take your shiny lockbox and c-store ships, and delete them. Go back to using a free ship. Take all those shiny purple gear and toss them, and go back to using only mk XI blue gear. No you're not allowed to use any lockbox hybrid weapons either.
Now go and do the two related stfs back to back. So basically do KASE and KAGE back to back with the same team.
Know what you'll find, it's not that hard because you know what to do. The stuff wasn't dumbed down, you became smarter, and you're shiny purple gear and lockbox and fleet ships don't help any.
They don't need old content brought back, they need NEW content.
Infected rewarded you the Borg Engine set piece and you also unlocked the next STF: The Cure.
The Cure rewarded you the Borg Shield set piece and you then unlocked the final Borg STF: Khitomer Accord.
Khitomer Accord rewarded you the Borg Deflector set piece.
At the time this was the best set available in the game and well worth the 3 hours it took per STF to get. The STFs also had a well developed story to them.
Then Cryptic changed them to the Encrypted chip TRIBBLE and split them up into 2 parts each. The Borg set was only obtainable by turning in the chips while the STFs rewarded you with useless TRIBBLE and a slim chance to get a random drop that would allow you to get the ground and space set pieces. This was a failure since people ran them hundreds of times and never got the dumb random drop for the set piece while other people got it in a couple runs.
Rather than return the STFs back to the original setup, cryptic introduced the TRIBBLE reputation stuff. This reputation TRIBBLE also saw the Borg console removed as a mission reward from "Assimilation" and added to the reputation TRIBBLE.
All of these changes to make complainers happy resulted in Gamma Orionis becoming a dead area of the game.
But hey, right now, unless you absolutely NEED the cut scenes, I'll tell you how to make them harder for you. Take your shiny lockbox and c-store ships, and delete them. Go back to using a free ship. Take all those shiny purple gear and toss them, and go back to using only mk XI blue gear. No you're not allowed to use any lockbox hybrid weapons either.
Now go and do the two related stfs back to back. So basically do KASE and KAGE back to back with the same team.
Let me expand this idea and take it to the whole new level :P
The current STFs should have elite ultra difficult setting. The reward of this difficultly level can be a MkXII purple Wrap core or some purple sci/eng console. But it comes with a price; You play STF in this difficultly using Mk I purple gear in Tier I ship.
In this way, you will have hours of fun and you can come as a diehard player if you are successful. You can even tell about those encounters to impress the ladies, and probably print a certificate and hang it on your wall.
You can stare at that certificate for hours during your bedtime till you are in dream world reliving the glory of those STFs.
Grinding for MkIV epic gear?
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
First the old STFs weren't any different then the new elite STFs. The only difference was they broke the space and ground apart and made to elite STFs.
That's not quite true - IIRC "The Cure" had its map shrunk, and Khitomer Accord lost an entire (major) space battle as the players defend Vega colony.
The old STFs' major bonus was they were coherent narratives that advanced the overall storyline. Plus, since you only "needed" to play each once per alt for the best gear, they never became a grind. The new missions are fine for grinding but just lack a narrative thread.
Personally, I think it would be nice if the original versions of the STFs were still there for newer players to pick up that narrative.
Comments
More like 3 mins
great for grinding dilithium, awful for challenge.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
You'd get desynched from your group and couldn't rejoin ...no fun in that and going by Cryptics current model they have no desire or plans to fix any of the old bugs.
But if you all want a major screwed up and bugged instance to come back then I'll give my thumbs up for this.
*reminisces on the sound of team leader snoring ... during the final Khitomer space part... after three hours run*
Hilarious times...
There once was a dev who basically put his all into the product... developed certain things and had enough pull with the team to get what he wanted.
He worked on the STF mechanics, and through his efforts we ended up with the FOUR stories and almost a Fifth. The problem was, there was no money to fix the forth, or finish the fifth.
Enter the new company. The new company decided "grind maps." And it was to be so. Rather than put the effort into making new grind maps to appease the new owners, the STFs were split and dumbed down to challenging grind maps.
And this... along with other things... made the dev very angry... so he left.
And when he left the knowhow to fix certain things, the understanding of how certain things worked, and how things were plumbed and wired under the sheetmetal went with him.
This included the knowhow to code-fix the Undine STF... And the knowhow to repair/rework the Borg STFs. If you look closely at Into The Hive you can see how that was intended to be a epic-scale STF but it was split and patched with cut-scenes.
While regrettable, this is how corporations work. You can have the best idea in the world... but without money and without management support it all comes to nothing.
As it stands now, look at the new season. Huge-TRIBBLE grind map. The management is NOT looking at 2-hour dungeon-crawls/epic raids... they want people grinding and grinding as that is what makes the money at the moment.
The currents NPCs (and the old ones) are not made to stand a chance against all the new and shiny stuff we have. It would not surprise me if we can finish an old Infected Vice Admiral in less than 30 mins now. Just Aux2bat the space part (less than 5 mins I guess) and ground is the same as the current IGE (less than 15 mins).
Division Hispana
www.divisionhispana.com
This^^
The people behind the STF's and the Doff system alike, left. You wont see much done with them until someone else learns all their foibles and methods on how they work..
Probably why we haven't seen very much done with them since....
However... I'm sick to the back teeth of fighting the Borg.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Quoted for all the truth! A lot of players on these forums suffer from an issue of perspective.
And it's baffling how some folks think that doing a 3-hour raid with the only reward being the result of a random roll DOESN'T count as "grinding". Doing content over and over and over in the old Everquest/WoW/TOR model JUST to get a chance to roll for a drop is grinding, plain and simple.
At least this time we're guaranteed to get what we need if we put in the necessary time and resources thanks to the Rep systems. The costs may need to be balanced better and the rewards made less tiresome to acquire, but all in all the new system is better. I know folks who've played the game since beta, and prior to the Rep system had NEVER seen a piece of STF gear because they NEVER got the luck of the roll despite years of playing. That's no fun.
Whatever floats your mysterious and idiosyncratic boat ...
FOR US GAMERS whom have time to spend on STO, because videogaming is important, I honestly think Cryptic should add a super hard, long, demanding and rewarding PvE.
It would be something one would not necessarily PUG, perhaps NO pugging at all, but would be an amazing experience to do with friends, that may feel different every time.
Wifes ... meh ...
I hope STO get's better ...
Agreed by 10 ^ 80 times, after that I cannot; there are no atoms left in the universe for me to agree on.
My attempt at a joke, for anyone that asks.
I hope STO get's better ...
that there is the reason for wanting the old stf's back, as you so eloquently put yourself, all the new stf's fail the criteria of using your head for the right situation as it's always about DPS. You leeroy types on your skittle-boats would never survive the fresh open ocean waters with speedboats that are the old stf's. it's a shame your treated to something so shallow and hollow where the ultimate purpose is mind rot.
ahh the common trait of man these days, i could troll a valid fact about it but then as you put it yourself, everyone is in it for themselves regardless of priority. you may not have the time but others do. so bring back the old stfs.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
That being said, I would think that if the old stuff was reintroduced, it would require an upgrade in terms of reward. Something like a "rep grind reducer ticket" or something, where once you got this consumable, you gained double marks for an hour if you do the 'normal version', and triple marks for an hour if you did the 'elite version', as an additional reward for doing the lengthy variant of the STF.
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
First the old STFs weren't any different then the new elite STFs. The only difference was they broke the space and ground apart and made to elite STFs.
As someone else above posted, the reason that they were so hard was because we didn't have anything for decent gear, and lets be honest they weren't that hard. Just like now as soon as you figured out what to do, you did it, and you'd keep doing it, every time you went in. The so called "3 hour" STFs, basically got boiled down to about an hour if you knew what you were doing.
Enter power creep.
But hey, right now, unless you absolutely NEED the cut scenes, I'll tell you how to make them harder for you. Take your shiny lockbox and c-store ships, and delete them. Go back to using a free ship. Take all those shiny purple gear and toss them, and go back to using only mk XI blue gear. No you're not allowed to use any lockbox hybrid weapons either.
Now go and do the two related stfs back to back. So basically do KASE and KAGE back to back with the same team.
Know what you'll find, it's not that hard because you know what to do. The stuff wasn't dumbed down, you became smarter, and you're shiny purple gear and lockbox and fleet ships don't help any.
They don't need old content brought back, they need NEW content.
Infected rewarded you the Borg Engine set piece and you also unlocked the next STF: The Cure.
The Cure rewarded you the Borg Shield set piece and you then unlocked the final Borg STF: Khitomer Accord.
Khitomer Accord rewarded you the Borg Deflector set piece.
At the time this was the best set available in the game and well worth the 3 hours it took per STF to get. The STFs also had a well developed story to them.
Then Cryptic changed them to the Encrypted chip TRIBBLE and split them up into 2 parts each. The Borg set was only obtainable by turning in the chips while the STFs rewarded you with useless TRIBBLE and a slim chance to get a random drop that would allow you to get the ground and space set pieces. This was a failure since people ran them hundreds of times and never got the dumb random drop for the set piece while other people got it in a couple runs.
Rather than return the STFs back to the original setup, cryptic introduced the TRIBBLE reputation stuff. This reputation TRIBBLE also saw the Borg console removed as a mission reward from "Assimilation" and added to the reputation TRIBBLE.
All of these changes to make complainers happy resulted in Gamma Orionis becoming a dead area of the game.
Let me expand this idea and take it to the whole new level :P
The current STFs should have elite ultra difficult setting. The reward of this difficultly level can be a MkXII purple Wrap core or some purple sci/eng console. But it comes with a price; You play STF in this difficultly using Mk I purple gear in Tier I ship.
In this way, you will have hours of fun and you can come as a diehard player if you are successful. You can even tell about those encounters to impress the ladies, and probably print a certificate and hang it on your wall.
You can stare at that certificate for hours during your bedtime till you are in dream world reliving the glory of those STFs.
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
That's not quite true - IIRC "The Cure" had its map shrunk, and Khitomer Accord lost an entire (major) space battle as the players defend Vega colony.
The old STFs' major bonus was they were coherent narratives that advanced the overall storyline. Plus, since you only "needed" to play each once per alt for the best gear, they never became a grind. The new missions are fine for grinding but just lack a narrative thread.
Personally, I think it would be nice if the original versions of the STFs were still there for newer players to pick up that narrative.