Normal game before the patch i only managed 50 max and that includes flying around with nothing left to kill or close (with a good team) now iv been getting 60 with mirror ships and rifts all over the place, dont make any sense to me.
purple xii none fleet kit Hirogen H H Escort & never been taken out,,,,YET,,,lol.
Sounds like the mission is working as it was designed to. Funny, people ask for harder content, get it, then complain cause they simply can't walk over it anymore. Teamwork is actually required and a certain level of coordination.
I want more of this content to be brought in.
There is a right and a wrong place for everything.
A time gated mission people do just to get the event filled, often with multiple characters a day... thats definitely the wrong point for harder content. Especially since that problems happen on normal, if it were just elite, that would be a different story.
Ultimaltly it still just depends on team play. Its very hard to close rifts alone. You have to find someone for closing and someone to catch aggro. And thats something lots of ppl don't get.
Another "new" factor since the change is that at some point you actually (in most cases) have to defend the station.
Before the change is was essentially "Close rifts, ignore the ships out of range" and thats how people still handle it. Its wrong. If to many ships are there, 1 or 2 players of the team have to get rid of them.
Its really a weird mission at this point.
With randoms its REALLY fun as soon as you have at least 1 other player who has the slightest idea of what to do.
In 80 % of the cases.... that 1 other player isn't there. And then its 100% frustration.
I've found what gets the base killed is on pugs when no one generally even bothers TRYING to close rifts. I was in one where I closed maybe 11 rifts... out of 12 total. Yeah the base died like a sheep.
Had two science ships in the pug, and both were constantly attacking Mirror ships trying to be dps cowboys. I did what I could, but n a S'Golth ya really can't close the things fast.
As someone said before, pug for the transporters, do elite with fleetmates or friends for marks.
I think the biggest problem isn't the rifts being close together, spawning too fast, or people not closing them.
Instead it's the really dumb idea of having an event with interruptible actions and every enemy has FAW. Shadowing does no good when a stray beam stops you from closing the rift.
This right here. If there's even one ship bigger than a frigate within firing range of the rifts, you're not going to close ANY of them without an invulnerability shield (Vesta bubble, quantum shield, whatever). Because every single mirror ship bigger than a Miranda has at least one AOE attack that it will spam on cooldown, and even a single point of damage will reset the closing action.
Having a dedicated aggro magnet means NOTHING when the enemy can hit every player around them while still targeting the would-be tank.
I've been running this mission 14 times a day. Until recently, the mission was pretty easy. Still a little nice furball at times but very doable. Now we get 6-8 rifts all adjoining each other, with ships from each rift all making sure you can't close one without closing most of them.
Now add in the mechanic where no matter what you do, you will get a second chance after the anti tachyon whatsit goes off. This just begs people to afk until the dread appears.
Right now I'm seeing even good pugs who close 26-30 rifts lose the station and we only saved it with some damage once out of the last 25 runs or so. Whether I'm playing a scimitar or a bugship, whether I close many rifts or just several, we lose the station. I'm beginning to think that it's not worth fighting thru the first part anymore.
I used to be Shakkar with thousands of posts. My very identity was stolen from me so now I am originalshakkar, the original.
I've found what gets the base killed is on pugs when no one generally even bothers TRYING to close rifts. I was in one where I closed maybe 11 rifts... out of 12 total. Yeah the base died like a sheep.
Had two science ships in the pug, and both were constantly attacking Mirror ships trying to be dps cowboys. I did what I could, but n a S'Golth ya really can't close the things fast.
As someone said before, pug for the transporters, do elite with fleetmates or friends for marks.
Closed more than 25 rifts, base get killed. Know what ? Because closed rifts respawn immediately, and barely do anything at all in the end, as they start pouring ships again in a few seconds. And since there is a lot more rifts than players, some of them will successfully send ships to the station. When you are to the end, it means battleships.
And if you are really lucky (happen almost all the time), the rifts will respawn close to each to other, so close you'll need pretty much everyone to be able to close them. While others rifts are active. And when they are closed, they respawn. Pointless.
The only reason why I close rifts is for the marks. Don't be fooled, closed or opened, it doesn't matter when it comes to make it easier or not. In fact, having everyone around the station and protecting each side would probably be the best strategy, if you don't take the reward into account.
The event was barely fun at first, now it's one of the worst queued mission I have to play.
I've been running this mission 14 times a day. Until recently, the mission was pretty easy. Still a little nice furball at times but very doable. Now we get 6-8 rifts all adjoining each other, with ships from each rift all making sure you can't close one without closing most of them.
Now add in the mechanic where no matter what you do, you will get a second chance after the anti tachyon whatsit goes off. This just begs people to afk until the dread appears.
Right now I'm seeing even good pugs who close 26-30 rifts lose the station and we only saved it with some damage once out of the last 25 runs or so. Whether I'm playing a scimitar or a bugship, whether I close many rifts or just several, we lose the station. I'm beginning to think that it's not worth fighting thru the first part anymore.
Closed more than 25 rifts, base get killed. Know what ? Because closed rifts respawn immediately, and barely do anything at all in the end, as they start pouring ships again in a few seconds. And since there is a lot more rifts than players, some of them will successfully send ships to the station. When you are to the end, it means battleships.
And if you are really lucky (happen almost all the time), the rifts will respawn close to each to other, so close you'll need pretty much everyone to be able to close them. While others rifts are active. And when they are closed, they respawn. Pointless.
The only reason why I close rifts is for the marks. Don't be fooled, closed or opened, it doesn't matter when it comes to make it easier or not. In fact, having everyone around the station and protecting each side would probably be the best strategy, if you don't take the reward into account.
The event was barely fun at first, now it's one of the worst queued mission I have to play.
Yeah, the few good runs I've done since the update, where the team was working well together closing rifts, got 30+ rifts closed, but the station was wrecked anyway. Then there were some where we just gave up after about a dozen and defended the station against the endless onslaught until time ran out.
Yes, they've all been pugs, and yes, I'm not the greatest captain ever but...
These matches were all on Normal!
A handful of bad matches can be attributed to people not knowing what they're supposed to be doing, but I haven't had a single afk player in my games since the patch and we've gotten clobbered pretty much every time.
I've actually found that my cruiser captains using the Galaxy-X and Ambassador can do a fairly good job of tying up large numbers of ships at once when rifts get out of hand.
Towards the end I usually end up with 20-30 ships being kited around while I heal the station.
It was hard going at first, but the past few days I've noticed that one person with a strong ship cleaning up the center of the map around the base prevents it from getting too swarmed at the end. I've been protecting the base lately while others close rifts, and it's worked every time. The base doesn't go offline. This is elite with PublicEliteSTF groups.
Getting the station defences back online is the first and important goal. That push back works on all and the biggest ennemies. A couple of guys should help defend the base then, while two other go chase rifts. Just my idea about tactics.
I perform the best with my Kamaraq cruiser. I can take damage, deal some good and with cloak, I can go in range and activate a satelite. This decloakes me, but in most cases I get the satelite active, or a rift closed, before I get aggro.
My Chell Brett also does fine. Again it can take some punishment, but it can also bite. I struggle the most with my science ships. At some point I do get aggro. Although I have good defenses, I cannot do much more than holding aggro; in fact getting caught in a fight, locks me out.
This right here. If there's even one ship bigger than a frigate within firing range of the rifts, you're not going to close ANY of them without an invulnerability shield (Vesta bubble, quantum shield, whatever). Because every single mirror ship bigger than a Miranda has at least one AOE attack that it will spam on cooldown, and even a single point of damage will reset the closing action.
Having a dedicated aggro magnet means NOTHING when the enemy can hit every player around them while still targeting the would-be tank.
Yeap, my thoughts exactly. Sadly this aweful mechanic is been intorduced in S9 on some undine content too. If Cryptic really wants that their game content not to be played by the majority of players then why they dont just say so??? Simply not playing it beats alot beening frustrated and annoyied.
This event, and now this "update" its feels like a slap in the face of players. Ok, I get that the pro l33t, powerfull etc. players want a challange. Fine, they can beat each other (or the PvE content) with a stick... They can have the elite version(s). But why not make the normal version... normal, you know?? There isnt any diference in rift spawns, base lvls or rarity and number of ship spawned between the elite and normal version. Other ppl seek this game to relax, not for a challange. Its this concept to hard to grasp? But I guess the idiotic mentalitiy "my kind of fun is the only fun any1 can have in this game" is strong (and i saw this mentality alot at the PvPers too).
Why can actually be a real diference between the elite and normal?
The only difference between before the patch and after is, before the patch a really noob team could win the bonus marks optional objectives, easily most of the times. Now, you really need people in your team that knows how the mission works to make this happen.
Because now, you can have literally 3 rifts spawning ships in the same spot. In that case, its IMPOSSIBLE for ANY ship to kill the 3 spawning spots and close those 3 rifts before a lot of ships keep spawning again. So if you dont go with at least 2 guys, killing and closing, its just impossible.
Thats the only difference, before the patch you chould just go alone and even go back to help your mates after you close a couple of rifts. Now you cant do that. If your team is noob, the only thing you can do now is to fight without any chance to close almost any rift lol.
thats all very well but when 99.9% of the other missions in sto are so easy "a really noob team could win" its a bit much to turn what is suposed to be a fun event into a expert teams only event.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
I only got bonus marks for the station's health once and that was the 1st or 2nd time I have played MI elite.
Since then the station always gets disabled after the mission has been updated, that has basically taken the fun and challenge out of the mission. That basically makes it a chore to get the inter-dimensional thingy reward.
I read in a post that the mission gives 2k dilithium as a reward... which is news to me. If that is the case, and Mirror Invasion becomes a repeatable mission after the Mirror event is over, then I just might think about pugging that mission. The ground rule would be everyone AFKs until it is time to defeat the Terran Dreadnought. If I can earn 2k dilithium parking my starship somewhere safe while doing chores like cleaning dishes, then I think I will be okay with that.
Maby its not the mission but your sucking to much !!
This right here. If there's even one ship bigger than a frigate within firing range of the rifts, you're not going to close ANY of them without an invulnerability shield (Vesta bubble, quantum shield, whatever). Because every single mirror ship bigger than a Miranda has at least one AOE attack that it will spam on cooldown, and even a single point of damage will reset the closing action.
Having a dedicated aggro magnet means NOTHING when the enemy can hit every player around them while still targeting the would-be tank.
You must be doing it wrong, then. Remember, cloak is your friend: approach the rift from behind, start 'Close Rift' while you're cloaked even, and even on my Fleet Ark'if (which has no close-bonus) I get to close most of them, without even firing a single shot. Doesn't always work, but often enough.
Also, set a pet on nearby foes. That will help destract them.
Still can't fathom why ppl are 'analyzing' this mission: it's not here to stay, and will be gone soon; but whatever.
You must be doing it wrong, then. Remember, cloak is your friend: approach the rift from behind, start 'Close Rift' while you're cloaked even, and even on my Fleet Ark'if (which has no close-bonus) I get to close most of them, without even firing a single shot. Doesn't always work, but often enough.
Also, set a pet on nearby foes. That will help destract them.
Still can't fathom why ppl are 'analyzing' this mission: it's not here to stay, and will be gone soon; but whatever.
people complained about crystalline entity event even though it was originally not here to stay, cos it had too many enemy ships and they reduced the maximum number.
now with the update they have effectivly created a situation in mirror where there are too many enemy ships, if they reduced the speed at wich the rifts respawn or the rate of ships that come from them or put a cap on the maximum number of enemy ships like they did with CE it would be much better.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
It does not seem as if the rifts closed has any impact on the number of enemies present. We've closed 58 rifts in the first round alone....the base died anyway. On the flipside, we've closed a grand total of 3 rifts...the base survived unscathed and enemies were nowhere to be seen. I have no idea where these guys come from, but they don't appear to correlate in any way with rift closure or not-closure.
people complained about crystalline entity event even though it was originally not here to stay, cos it had too many enemy ships and they reduced the maximum number.
now with the update they have effectivly created a situation in mirror where there are too many enemy ships, if they reduced the speed at wich the rifts respawn or the rate of ships that come from them or put a cap on the maximum number of enemy ships like they did with CE it would be much better.
Would be awesome if they made the mission permanent, but I'm not holding my breath for it.
Like doffingcomrade said, "It does not seem as if the rifts closed has any impact on the number of enemies present." And that is indeed weird.
A couple things here. I've seen a squad of three ships pop up with no rift anywhere near them before. Closing rifts is good, but it won't end the ship swarm.
The other thing that kills this mission is the freaking afk'rs. If you have a full team, odds are you won't do too bad. When you're missing just one(or god help you even more than one) ship you're gonna get hit and hit hard.
I like the added difficulty......IF you have no afk'rs in your group. That's usually the exception though and not the norm. That could be your biggest problem right there. Its what got me to avoid this mission rather than use it to mark out my newer characters.
You must be doing it wrong, then. Remember, cloak is your friend: approach the rift from behind, start 'Close Rift' while you're cloaked even, and even on my Fleet Ark'if (which has no close-bonus) I get to close most of them, without even firing a single shot. Doesn't always work, but often enough.
That works when there's ONE rift. Post-patch, other than the first 60 seconds of the mission, there is never just ONE rift anymore. If there's more than one, the repops from one will defend the other, and that'll be the end of it unless you have enough firepower to wipe out everything. Most players do not.
We're picking this mission apart because it sets a VERY bad precedent. When most of the teams in the game are random pugs, "teamwork required for success" will TRIBBLE the mission EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. End of discussion. You have to build for your entire playerbase, not just the handful who can blaze through the current game blindfolded.
We're picking this mission apart because it sets a VERY bad precedent. When most of the teams in the game are random pugs, "teamwork required for success" will TRIBBLE the mission EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. End of discussion. You have to build for your entire playerbase, not just the handful who can blaze through the current game blindfolded.
Then don't pug it. Add the channel PublicEliteSTF and gather a team.
Besides, you could let the base die and still get a transporter for the run. Teamwork isn't NEEDED for the event rep credit.
Then don't pug it. Add the channel PublicEliteSTF and gather a team.
Besides, you could let the base die and still get a transporter for the run. Teamwork isn't NEEDED for the event rep credit.
getting the transporter for the run is not the issue, most players would like to have a chance of actually succeeded in holding off the attack and getting a decent score.
its human nature to want to win and when you are faced with a situation where you cant win its no fun.
sure in the real world everyone has faced a no win scenario or two at some time in there life and we have delt with it as best we can but in a game like sto unless you are playing a mission that just happens to be called "no win scenario" you expect there to be a 90%-95% chance of winning.
as it stands there is maybe a 2% chance at best of getting the maximum score on mirror.
the only reason they tweeked the mission was to avoid the lull in action at the end of the first part, i am sure if they looked at the average score they would find that it is drastically lower since the change and i dont belive that the change was made to penalise players for not being the best of the best as is obviousley the result.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Rifts are still the priority, especially right at the beginning. So long as the team splits into 2x2 with a pair taking care of each side, tag-teaming the rift aggro/rift closing, with 1 floater protecting station from stragglers, and so long as the first priority right from the start of play is closing rifts, there are never enough ships to overwhelm the floater, the station stays safe (even more so if people power it up when they can, but that's less of a priority than rifts).
I think the marks game is won or lost in the first couple of minutes according to whether the earliest rifts are closed as soon as possible. If that happens, Typhoon spam never happens, the station stays healthy, rifts continue to be closed, station continues to be powered up, and marks flow.
I should add: by "tag teaming" I mean something specific. As a pair, it doesn't matter who closes rifts and who grabs aggro. First rift: A grabs aggro, B closes rift, while A finishes mobs off, B scoots on to next rift and grabs aggro, A sneaks in and closes rift, B finished off mobs, A scoots on to next rift and grabs aggro.
Ok before, we had a very short while of nothing if we had a FULL team of extremely powerful players Now no matter how hard we try we are swarmed with mirror ships and base ALWAYS dies, even if lucky enough to have a decent team. The ONLY way to do it now and save the base is if we have a pre-made team with a strategy beforehand.
Thanks but no thanks...The mirror event is no longer fun....you guys patched the fun out of it.:mad:
Before, the longest I sat was over 6 min. With nothing at all to do. With *average* players, not a 5 good scimitar group or something. Over 5 min of nothing was common and unless the team was utter fail you had at least a 2 min break.
Now, we fight up until the boss comes, often closing more than 40 rifts (over 60 is the most I recall).
The biggest difference now is that it takes at least one very powerful player to defend the base or the base will go to 0/10 even if you close 20 rifts and power the station 5/5. Its not possible to do all 3 tasks without at least one strong player.
That is OK. You still get decent marks if you do a decent job. But many "shoot it all" teams get low marks now... and refuse to learn. By now people should have figured out the new strategy, but nope, they still just zoom in and get into long battles against 3-4 rifts.
And its still bugged. 2 bugs atm ... tractor mines on the boss before he fades to a rift prevent his escape, but you cant shoot him either, ... timer runs out. And dead enemy shoot you with their beams one last time a lot, either due to lag or a bug. You almost have to wait 10 sec before closing the rift so the corpses will stop shooting you.
All in all I like the rifts until the boss change but there could be about 10% fewer of them.
i have no problem with rifts respawning right up to the end of the 1st half and i have no problem with ships comming out of the rifts right to the end of the 1st half.
what i have a problem with is the rate at wich the rifts respawn and the number of ships that emerge from them.
there is only a 5 player team in mirror and when you cant see any detail on the mini map for the carpet of enemy ships that are on it i cant see its very fair.
they must have thought it wasnt very fair in crystalline entity to be outnumbered to that extent when they reduced the number of enemy so how is it fair here.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Before, the longest I sat was over 6 min. With nothing at all to do. With *average* players, not a 5 good scimitar group or something. Over 5 min of nothing was common and unless the team was utter fail you had at least a 2 min break.
Now, we fight up until the boss comes, often closing more than 40 rifts (over 60 is the most I recall).
The biggest difference now is that it takes at least one very powerful player to defend the base or the base will go to 0/10 even if you close 20 rifts and power the station 5/5. Its not possible to do all 3 tasks without at least one strong player.
That is OK. You still get decent marks if you do a decent job. But many "shoot it all" teams get low marks now... and refuse to learn. By now people should have figured out the new strategy, but nope, they still just zoom in and get into long battles against 3-4 rifts.
And its still bugged. 2 bugs atm ... tractor mines on the boss before he fades to a rift prevent his escape, but you cant shoot him either, ... timer runs out. And dead enemy shoot you with their beams one last time a lot, either due to lag or a bug. You almost have to wait 10 sec before closing the rift so the corpses will stop shooting you.
All in all I like the rifts until the boss change but there could be about 10% fewer of them.
I like the revamp of it. It was fun melting everything and getting a perfect run EVERY time with my fleet and having 4 minutes to sit around! IT WAS THE BEST!
Seriously now, When it comes to powerful players, I'm by far not the highest, but in terms of most people in game, I'm defiantly towards the top. When I run this queue now, we typically do decent, we can keep the base at least 5/10, and 30+ rifts closed, a respectable run. At times there are soooo many ships that it gets to the point where we can't get to a rift and we get distracted by having fun melting as many ships as we can FAWIII for the win! I'm glad cryptic boosted it, but I'm also glad I'm not pugging at the same time, If I did, I'd probably think differently
TheGrateLordeCheesus Ship build coordinator for The Breakfast Club http://WWW.TBCSTO.COM Doesn't Owe AnyoneEC Kirks Prot
I like the revamp of it. It was fun melting everything and getting a perfect run EVERY time with my fleet and having 4 minutes to sit around! IT WAS THE BEST!
Seriously now, When it comes to powerful players, I'm by far not the highest, but in terms of most people in game, I'm defiantly towards the top. When I run this queue now, we typically do decent, we can keep the base at least 5/10, and 30+ rifts closed, a respectable run. At times there are soooo many ships that it gets to the point where we can't get to a rift and we get distracted by having fun melting as many ships as we can FAWIII for the win! I'm glad cryptic boosted it, but I'm also glad I'm not pugging at the same time, If I did, I'd probably think differently
You SHOULD. I challenge you to PUG it both normal and elite mode. It will be an enlightening experience to do a couple of times, just to SEE what we are talking about.
You must be doing it wrong, then. Remember, cloak is your friend: approach the rift from behind, start 'Close Rift' while you're cloaked even, and even on my Fleet Ark'if (which has no close-bonus) I get to close most of them, without even firing a single shot. Doesn't always work, but often enough.
Also, set a pet on nearby foes. That will help destract them.
Still can't fathom why ppl are 'analyzing' this mission: it's not here to stay, and will be gone soon; but whatever.
you got me good with that april fool gag "start 'Close Rift' while you're cloaked even" so I cloaked up right from the get go and the first rift that I approached looked clear then as soon a I started to close the rift 'BAM' I had decloaked automatically and some enemy ship from who knows where had opened fire on me killing the rift close then half a dozon of his mates joined in the fray from that point on I was totally unable to recloak being under a constant barrage from every direction I managed to take a few out but with that constant pummelling the inevitable happened and boom - time to respawn.
by the time I had spawed back in there were so many ships even 20 players would have not stood much hope.
I am still chuckling to myself for falling for that line, now I realise naturally you cannot close rifts while cloaked, I guess the joke was on me.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Stop telling people to use cloak. THAT DOESNT WORK. Period. If you have lucky, one of five times you will be able to close the rift cuz those 2 or 3 extra seconds the cloak gives you but again, that doesnt work most of the times and you end wasting more time trying that. Sometimes you can close the rifts if you are far enough, without being noticed, but that doesnt mean the cloak worked.. you can do that without even using cloak. The only cloak that works is the romulan T5 reputation skill, and you can only use it once for about 5 minutes, so.
But yes. I noticed that now, its almost impossible to keep the area not filled with ships. The rifts appear almost one every 5 seconds, and the problem is, they dont have a specific spot to do so, they just appear randomly in the map, so you can have 4, 5 or more rifts at the same time and you in the middle.. lol. Eventually, all the map will be filled with enemy ships and the base will be destroyed.
I tried in normal difficulty to see if something changes, but its the same. LOL.
Comments
purple xii none fleet kit Hirogen H H Escort & never been taken out,,,,YET,,,lol.
There is a right and a wrong place for everything.
A time gated mission people do just to get the event filled, often with multiple characters a day... thats definitely the wrong point for harder content. Especially since that problems happen on normal, if it were just elite, that would be a different story.
Ultimaltly it still just depends on team play. Its very hard to close rifts alone. You have to find someone for closing and someone to catch aggro. And thats something lots of ppl don't get.
Another "new" factor since the change is that at some point you actually (in most cases) have to defend the station.
Before the change is was essentially "Close rifts, ignore the ships out of range" and thats how people still handle it. Its wrong. If to many ships are there, 1 or 2 players of the team have to get rid of them.
Its really a weird mission at this point.
With randoms its REALLY fun as soon as you have at least 1 other player who has the slightest idea of what to do.
In 80 % of the cases.... that 1 other player isn't there. And then its 100% frustration.
Had two science ships in the pug, and both were constantly attacking Mirror ships trying to be dps cowboys. I did what I could, but n a S'Golth ya really can't close the things fast.
As someone said before, pug for the transporters, do elite with fleetmates or friends for marks.
This right here. If there's even one ship bigger than a frigate within firing range of the rifts, you're not going to close ANY of them without an invulnerability shield (Vesta bubble, quantum shield, whatever). Because every single mirror ship bigger than a Miranda has at least one AOE attack that it will spam on cooldown, and even a single point of damage will reset the closing action.
Having a dedicated aggro magnet means NOTHING when the enemy can hit every player around them while still targeting the would-be tank.
Now add in the mechanic where no matter what you do, you will get a second chance after the anti tachyon whatsit goes off. This just begs people to afk until the dread appears.
Right now I'm seeing even good pugs who close 26-30 rifts lose the station and we only saved it with some damage once out of the last 25 runs or so. Whether I'm playing a scimitar or a bugship, whether I close many rifts or just several, we lose the station. I'm beginning to think that it's not worth fighting thru the first part anymore.
And if you are really lucky (happen almost all the time), the rifts will respawn close to each to other, so close you'll need pretty much everyone to be able to close them. While others rifts are active. And when they are closed, they respawn. Pointless.
The only reason why I close rifts is for the marks. Don't be fooled, closed or opened, it doesn't matter when it comes to make it easier or not. In fact, having everyone around the station and protecting each side would probably be the best strategy, if you don't take the reward into account.
The event was barely fun at first, now it's one of the worst queued mission I have to play.
Yeah, the few good runs I've done since the update, where the team was working well together closing rifts, got 30+ rifts closed, but the station was wrecked anyway. Then there were some where we just gave up after about a dozen and defended the station against the endless onslaught until time ran out.
Yes, they've all been pugs, and yes, I'm not the greatest captain ever but...
These matches were all on Normal!
A handful of bad matches can be attributed to people not knowing what they're supposed to be doing, but I haven't had a single afk player in my games since the patch and we've gotten clobbered pretty much every time.
Towards the end I usually end up with 20-30 ships being kited around while I heal the station.
I perform the best with my Kamaraq cruiser. I can take damage, deal some good and with cloak, I can go in range and activate a satelite. This decloakes me, but in most cases I get the satelite active, or a rift closed, before I get aggro.
My Chell Brett also does fine. Again it can take some punishment, but it can also bite. I struggle the most with my science ships. At some point I do get aggro. Although I have good defenses, I cannot do much more than holding aggro; in fact getting caught in a fight, locks me out.
Yeap, my thoughts exactly. Sadly this aweful mechanic is been intorduced in S9 on some undine content too. If Cryptic really wants that their game content not to be played by the majority of players then why they dont just say so??? Simply not playing it beats alot beening frustrated and annoyied.
This event, and now this "update" its feels like a slap in the face of players. Ok, I get that the pro l33t, powerfull etc. players want a challange. Fine, they can beat each other (or the PvE content) with a stick... They can have the elite version(s). But why not make the normal version... normal, you know?? There isnt any diference in rift spawns, base lvls or rarity and number of ship spawned between the elite and normal version. Other ppl seek this game to relax, not for a challange. Its this concept to hard to grasp? But I guess the idiotic mentalitiy "my kind of fun is the only fun any1 can have in this game" is strong (and i saw this mentality alot at the PvPers too).
Why can actually be a real diference between the elite and normal?
thats all very well but when 99.9% of the other missions in sto are so easy "a really noob team could win" its a bit much to turn what is suposed to be a fun event into a expert teams only event.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Maby its not the mission but your sucking to much !!
You must be doing it wrong, then. Remember, cloak is your friend: approach the rift from behind, start 'Close Rift' while you're cloaked even, and even on my Fleet Ark'if (which has no close-bonus) I get to close most of them, without even firing a single shot. Doesn't always work, but often enough.
Also, set a pet on nearby foes. That will help destract them.
Still can't fathom why ppl are 'analyzing' this mission: it's not here to stay, and will be gone soon; but whatever.
people complained about crystalline entity event even though it was originally not here to stay, cos it had too many enemy ships and they reduced the maximum number.
now with the update they have effectivly created a situation in mirror where there are too many enemy ships, if they reduced the speed at wich the rifts respawn or the rate of ships that come from them or put a cap on the maximum number of enemy ships like they did with CE it would be much better.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Would be awesome if they made the mission permanent, but I'm not holding my breath for it.
Like doffingcomrade said, "It does not seem as if the rifts closed has any impact on the number of enemies present." And that is indeed weird.
The other thing that kills this mission is the freaking afk'rs. If you have a full team, odds are you won't do too bad. When you're missing just one(or god help you even more than one) ship you're gonna get hit and hit hard.
I like the added difficulty......IF you have no afk'rs in your group. That's usually the exception though and not the norm. That could be your biggest problem right there. Its what got me to avoid this mission rather than use it to mark out my newer characters.
That works when there's ONE rift. Post-patch, other than the first 60 seconds of the mission, there is never just ONE rift anymore. If there's more than one, the repops from one will defend the other, and that'll be the end of it unless you have enough firepower to wipe out everything. Most players do not.
We're picking this mission apart because it sets a VERY bad precedent. When most of the teams in the game are random pugs, "teamwork required for success" will TRIBBLE the mission EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. End of discussion. You have to build for your entire playerbase, not just the handful who can blaze through the current game blindfolded.
Besides, you could let the base die and still get a transporter for the run. Teamwork isn't NEEDED for the event rep credit.
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getting the transporter for the run is not the issue, most players would like to have a chance of actually succeeded in holding off the attack and getting a decent score.
its human nature to want to win and when you are faced with a situation where you cant win its no fun.
sure in the real world everyone has faced a no win scenario or two at some time in there life and we have delt with it as best we can but in a game like sto unless you are playing a mission that just happens to be called "no win scenario" you expect there to be a 90%-95% chance of winning.
as it stands there is maybe a 2% chance at best of getting the maximum score on mirror.
the only reason they tweeked the mission was to avoid the lull in action at the end of the first part, i am sure if they looked at the average score they would find that it is drastically lower since the change and i dont belive that the change was made to penalise players for not being the best of the best as is obviousley the result.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
I think the marks game is won or lost in the first couple of minutes according to whether the earliest rifts are closed as soon as possible. If that happens, Typhoon spam never happens, the station stays healthy, rifts continue to be closed, station continues to be powered up, and marks flow.
I should add: by "tag teaming" I mean something specific. As a pair, it doesn't matter who closes rifts and who grabs aggro. First rift: A grabs aggro, B closes rift, while A finishes mobs off, B scoots on to next rift and grabs aggro, A sneaks in and closes rift, B finished off mobs, A scoots on to next rift and grabs aggro.
That way, time is min-maxed.
Before, the longest I sat was over 6 min. With nothing at all to do. With *average* players, not a 5 good scimitar group or something. Over 5 min of nothing was common and unless the team was utter fail you had at least a 2 min break.
Now, we fight up until the boss comes, often closing more than 40 rifts (over 60 is the most I recall).
The biggest difference now is that it takes at least one very powerful player to defend the base or the base will go to 0/10 even if you close 20 rifts and power the station 5/5. Its not possible to do all 3 tasks without at least one strong player.
That is OK. You still get decent marks if you do a decent job. But many "shoot it all" teams get low marks now... and refuse to learn. By now people should have figured out the new strategy, but nope, they still just zoom in and get into long battles against 3-4 rifts.
And its still bugged. 2 bugs atm ... tractor mines on the boss before he fades to a rift prevent his escape, but you cant shoot him either, ... timer runs out. And dead enemy shoot you with their beams one last time a lot, either due to lag or a bug. You almost have to wait 10 sec before closing the rift so the corpses will stop shooting you.
All in all I like the rifts until the boss change but there could be about 10% fewer of them.
what i have a problem with is the rate at wich the rifts respawn and the number of ships that emerge from them.
there is only a 5 player team in mirror and when you cant see any detail on the mini map for the carpet of enemy ships that are on it i cant see its very fair.
they must have thought it wasnt very fair in crystalline entity to be outnumbered to that extent when they reduced the number of enemy so how is it fair here.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Which is why I just started doing them on Normal.
Seriously now, When it comes to powerful players, I'm by far not the highest, but in terms of most people in game, I'm defiantly towards the top. When I run this queue now, we typically do decent, we can keep the base at least 5/10, and 30+ rifts closed, a respectable run. At times there are soooo many ships that it gets to the point where we can't get to a rift and we get distracted by having fun melting as many ships as we can FAWIII for the win! I'm glad cryptic boosted it, but I'm also glad I'm not pugging at the same time, If I did, I'd probably think differently
Ship build coordinator for The Breakfast Club http://WWW.TBCSTO.COM
Doesn't Owe Anyone EC
Kirks Prot
You SHOULD. I challenge you to PUG it both normal and elite mode. It will be an enlightening experience to do a couple of times, just to SEE what we are talking about.
you got me good with that april fool gag "start 'Close Rift' while you're cloaked even" so I cloaked up right from the get go and the first rift that I approached looked clear then as soon a I started to close the rift 'BAM' I had decloaked automatically and some enemy ship from who knows where had opened fire on me killing the rift close then half a dozon of his mates joined in the fray from that point on I was totally unable to recloak being under a constant barrage from every direction I managed to take a few out but with that constant pummelling the inevitable happened and boom - time to respawn.
by the time I had spawed back in there were so many ships even 20 players would have not stood much hope.
I am still chuckling to myself for falling for that line, now I realise naturally you cannot close rifts while cloaked, I guess the joke was on me.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
But yes. I noticed that now, its almost impossible to keep the area not filled with ships. The rifts appear almost one every 5 seconds, and the problem is, they dont have a specific spot to do so, they just appear randomly in the map, so you can have 4, 5 or more rifts at the same time and you in the middle.. lol. Eventually, all the map will be filled with enemy ships and the base will be destroyed.
I tried in normal difficulty to see if something changes, but its the same. LOL.