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Official New Space Queue "Borg: Disconnected" Feedback Thread
coldsnapped
Member Posts: 520 Cryptic Developer
Please post here for all feedback and bugs involving the new 5 man Space Queue "Borg: Disconnected"
New Feature:
New Feature:
- New Space 5-Man Queue: Borg Disconnected
- This is a brand new PVE space queue for level 50 Captains.
- There are Normal, Advanced, and Elite versions of the queue.
- The Borg Queen has been revived in another Unimatrix in the Delta Quadrant and has started a plan to reunite the divided Borg.
- The Borg Cooperative need the Alliances help to keep the Borg free and put a stop to the Queen.
- More details can be found in the Borg Disconnected Blog: http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/7003293-borg-disconnected
- Cutscenes, text, rewards, and art are not in a final state for this mission.
- New PVE Queue Difficulty Options
- Standard Difficulty is unchanged.
- Players level 51 60 will be scaled down to level 50 for this queue.
- Advanced Difficulty replaces what was previously called Elite.
- Players level 51-60 will be scaled to level 60 for this queue.
- Elite Queues are now level 60 versions of PVE queues.
- Only level 60 players can queue for this difficulty setting.
- Currently, Borg: Disconnected is the only PVE queue with this setting.
- Standard Difficulty is unchanged.
Post edited by coldsnapped on
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Comments
I can already tell it's gonna be a challenge to get all the optionals when everyone starts playing elite mode.
I liked the fact that the enemies and allies scale up as you go on at each end.
I really enjoyed the final battle between the bosses of the three factions. It's gonna take coordination and skill to bring them down during specific instances for all the optional rewards.
I'll have to see if I can coordinate a run with my fleet on Tribble to see how this plays out with full team coordination.
I like the little touch at the end if you stick around until the exit timer kicks you from the map.
Joined January 2009
1) Advanced has dramatically buffed health on enemies. This made it difficult to destroy enemies before they destroyed us. Consider downgrading health to the same as Normal.
2) Enemies had player levels of DPS. This made it possible for them to swarm and kill us in seconds. Either make them glass cannons (easier to kill but equally likely to kill you) or remove entirely. Tanky high DPS is not fun to deal with.
3) Consider increasing dreadnought defeat timer for Advanced version to reflect the increased difficulty.
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
Normal -
Ran it 3 times on normal, because there was nobody queuing for the 'advanced' version. Overall, it was getting to know the mission and what I'm supposed to do, but from those runs, I can tell, that people are gonna be boned if they don't work together and don't cooperate, since we are both required to deal with the attackers AND save those Liberated Borg. I've seen it quite often, that literally everyone would keep fighting & not try to save the disconnected Borg ships.
I'd say it'll be interesting to see, as people become more seasoned with the mission. Definitelly doable on the normal setting.
Advanced -
Ran it once and I felt as if I was... well.. for lack of better word, getting ***** back and forth. Now, I noticed the mission sets your level to that of 60, so it seems to me that at current gearing & level, the mission is simply not possible to finish with more desirable results; especally as far as the three dreadnaughts at the end are concerned. If this is "just" advanced setting, then I'm really looking forward to real "Elite". I mean... I was getting owned left & right & I enjoyed every moment of it. Time to adapt, in order to proceed to kick some a....
So, overall... liking it, and want to disco more Borg from the Collective, as I just love causing ruckus to the Borg, but sadly need some sleep, damnit.
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I think the main failure reason for this may be that it seems to take 3 seconds to restore control to the Lib borg ship but you rarely get that time before you get shot by the over abundance of Borg there. Any idea what the perk is though when all three Dreads get vaped?
Still waiting to be able to use forum titles
I think the devs are trying to get us to use abilities such as Mask Energy Signature and Jam Sensors to get out of combat. My gut feeling is that players will evolve a strategy of using a single fast moving ship to rescue the liberated borg ships while the rest of the players distract the various incoming ships.
I actually found the mission to be easier after Undine/Voth invasions, as the enemy factions seemed to be at each other's throats as soon as a shot went off. In a Fleet Tempest, I was able to hold one section on my own, closing rifts and killing Marked Voth Frigates without any trouble while the other enemies fought in front of me.
I'll agree that there needs to be a bit more time on the Dreadnought Battle, as 2 out of 3 runs had me struggling to get all 3 in time while 1 was successful though without the quick-kill optional perks.
Mark rewards varied from 33 for a decent performance to 43 for a well done performance. For Normal, I think that's fine.
EDIT: The problem with level 51-60 players not able to queue needs to be fixed fast, as 4 or 5 runs could easily level a captain to 51 due o the enhanced combat XP and XP reward for the mission itself.
Just wanted to give a heads up: All the advanced and elite combat numbers are still in a heavy tuning/iteration phase. We recently tuned up the baseline difficulty of level 60 critters (as they were far too easy a few weeks ago), but this means that some Advanced and Elite critters may be absurdly tough. Feel free to point this out where you see it, but just know that we're working on it.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
We need smarter enemies, not super-buffed ones.
Valdus | Charn | Costello | Typhus | Thyran
Well, yes and no. You need different dynamics of combat design, which "smarter enemies" are one way to accomplish. What we've done with regard to stats and combat math, though, is vastly increase NPC health pools relative to their (and your) damage output on Elite. This makes it much much less effective to spam brainless AoE damage, and instead incentivizes doing high single-target sustained damage to pick off dangerous targets. This also mitigates the current Live-game situation where players can do enough AoE control and damage to completely avoid critter mechanics - when they have enough health to use their abilities, you have to actually answer the problems those abilities pose.
It's a common refrain on the forums that we need "better AI" or "smarter enemies". Did you know the Voth have all of that? Different ranks of Voth ships care about different things - Voth Frigates put a high target priority on players who deal damage to their friends, for instance. Voth Dreadnaughts have a high target priority on nearby players, if I recall correctly. Yet the only player reaction to smarter enemies with more finely-tuned AI is basically "That shield is annoying". When people say they want smarter enemies, what they're really saying is that they don't feel they have to outplay anything or think about what they're doing when they're fighting. We want to fix that - but combat numbers are actually a substantial part of the fix for that.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
yeah you're right. I actually like fighting the voth. I think when people talk about AI they're only talking about the old STFs and other older PvE content. I miss the spheres having tractor beams and longer EPtE but I know a lot of people hated it because it threw off their grind. I think a lot of the old content doesn't teach players how to play against newer enemies like the elachi and voth. The undine are actually easier compared to the elachi and voth.
I know it would be harder and probably out of the question but it would be nice if there was different AI for different difficulty levels. Make elite AI use more powers and debuffs and have normal be like how it is now.
What I would like to see is harder enemies but fewer of them, like the borg queen in hive space, but with less predictable powers. When the powers are too predictable the game plays more like a Super Nintendo game. I was even thinking it would be cool to have more enemy ships that complement themselves like how the elachi battlecruiser has the two support ships. One does the damage dealing, one healing, and the other debuffs. It would at least make one have to choose their target. Also having less enemies would mean AOE powers would be less efficient.
Maybe someone should make a tank. A REAL Tank. To draw all the agro while you burn down the enemys. A STF that makes its players think. Count me in!!!
Hawk, I'm going to again use drain mechanics as an example since that's what I know best. Yes, I do agree the Voth AI is smarter, but adding smarter AI and not having a sufficiently skilled and higher tier boff ability still makes it weak.
If the Voth throw a Tyken's Rift 1 with 1-100 flow caps skill and low-mid aux power my way, I'll just brush it off like if nothing was affecting me and kill them, even if they bring up the Voth shield which thankfully you gave a weakness to in NPCs.
Worse AI example, the Breen love to use that Energy Siphon 1 on players (which BTW ES1 is severely underpowered and the Breen set NEEDS some love and an upgrade path) and it does nothing meaningful to me.
NPC abilities without a meaningful effect on players is like the NPCs had no boff abilities on them, so players can just keep spamming that spacebar and making them go boom. The Luna Fed mirror ships and the Borg queen are only a couple of ships that I can say are a tad more annoying, but that is because they use FBP. The Borg spheres and gates with their hull and shield stripping abilities also pack a punch.
There is a second problem with the approach you're taking to making NPCs stronger. It keeps making PvE content a DPS arms race and keep rewarding players for being able to hike that DPS as high as possible, specially with the Borg where Sci system disables don't work. Maybe all that hike will make a lot of AoE DPS spammers in the 10K range have to do better, but I'm pretty sure the DPS 30K channel guys will still be able to do an Elite run quickly.
That would work IF the whole +/- Threat mechanic actually worked correctly or was adjusted to work better than it does now.
yeah...my poor Tal'Kyr support craft can pull agro from anyone by just existing
what i feel is that ai no matter the game is always designed around the same principles are goals for which it was assigned, to simply attack an enemy with no regard to itself. i wouldnt mind fighting an ai that is built to be smart and to its designed setup and role, it needs to be adaptive and learns from fighting the player over a duration of every 5 seconds, so eventually the skills are adjusted in such a way it mitigates any potential damage ability or it learns the best way to avoid being destroyed is using its healing abilities a bit better, and using evasive moves in conjunction with the frigate's ability to scramble sensors with a ghost, that means building a whole skill set for the ai to work with that unlocks the longer it survives. eventually the only way to defeat the enemy ship that is equal to you is a change of tactic and it would need to relearn everything again to adapt around it, force the human player to work for their worth and in turn force the ai to learn new ways to defeat their enemy.
When in packs the enemies will coordinate in a wolf pack menality if you like and if there is a support ship around it will change its focus from attack the enemy player to heal the team while several enemies engage, pull back, a cruiser comes up engages and keeps the healer alive, the cruiser gets hit enough, the frigates come back while the cruiser withdraws, and so on. i mean proper challenge for a player to face.
right now its just a hull buff or some new convoluted attempt to patch the cracks the wall in a rather antique ai system, facerolling is a grueling business. The whole thing needs to be done away with. and frankly so does the ai pets, it all needs a new system, one more challenging.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Although the threat mechanic is really buggy, I was finding that 3 Fleet Embassy Sci consoles with -Th was actually helping during my runs of this new queue. Once more than one group of enemy NPC showed up they would usually gladly shoot at each other while I sat there, motionless, just freeing incoming spheres and cubes. This was when I was alone on a point with no other players to draw aggro for me.
But of course I did use the word "usually." There was also a case where there was an Oddy drawing aggro for me, and it was working fairly well, and I was freeing the incoming ships and I was even able to spam some FAW without drawing any of the aggo away from the Oddy, but then another wave of enemies appeared and half of them immediately went after me even though I had switched to doing nothing at all and not firing anymore. I tried waiting a few moments for the Oddy's aggro to kick in but it didn't work and I had to take out the whole wave before I could interact.
And then once the boss fight phase started I swapped the -Threat consoles out for my regular console loadout.
So yeah, the threat mechanic is hit or miss.. it works great sometimes, and other times it doesn't work at all.
Joined January 2009
Shame, the Voth ships are my favourite NPC ships in the game. Aceton and feedback barriers dealt with the awesome power of FAW (as did the Voth palaside clones), transphasics and SNB combated the crazy shield resists people were getting. I actually had to reposition my ship on a few occasions, so that I wouldn't kill myself.
Really excellent work on those.
I felt the Undine were a step back from that. They had higher resists and heals, but all that did was delay the inevitable for a few seconds. You went into the Undine battlezone and spammed FAW without even using emergency power to shields to protect yourself (T4 and T5 undine rep making that even easier to do).
In a three way fight between the Borg, Undine and Voth as they are now, I'd guess they'd before best to worst in this order:-
1) Voth - The SNB would likely be useless vs the Borg and the Undine, but I can see the acetons and grav wells destroying all those heavy plasma projectiles from both of them. Simillarly the grav wells and charged particle burst would make both the Borg and Undine pretty easy to take care of. Oh and the chroniton-tranphasics.
2) Borg - Middle of the road really and only really keep this spot due to the shield neutralizer (which they lose in the STFs)
3) Undine - Depends on the ship really. I'd say some of the larger undine frigates would win vs a Borg sphere, but a Borg cube would own pretty much everything else Undine due to the shield neutralizer skill (unless they're immune to that).
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
My only gripe with Voth is that they always shoot down Targetable torpedoes. That is...extremely annoying.
Targetable torpdoes are really in a bad place right now, with so many enemies spamming FAW and other AOE attacks.
Doesn't this kill tanking even more though? Not say it mattered in this game much anyway but wouldn't it be nice to have my tank be able to "soak" damage from all dangerous targets while my team does majority of the DPS. Now it seems I have to switch my build to do more single target. I did a run yesterday, we got the Queen but couldn't finish off the Voth in time and I had a pretty good team too and this was on normal, something is off here. Either the time allotted is wrong or the STF needs a change.
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1 guy was AFK - on the test server - boggles my mind.
Nevertheless we met all objectives on normal with a 2 - 1 -1 player spread on the 3 objective zones.
It allows for interesting 1 draws fire, the other clicks and liberates teamplay. But also for a lone player it's quite manageable as it turns out.
The Borg Queen just lost her shields when we disconnected. Might have only destroyed her in time, but not the Voth ship as well.
I very much like this STF, even if I find the meeting of Voth, Undine and Borg a bit odd, even if it is well explained.
Thank you so much for the great feedback on the queue, please keep it coming!
As Hawk said, Advanced and Elite modes are still in a wibbly-wobbly state and the numbers there are not final.
Please continue giving us feedback and any suggestions you may have for the event, especially if it involves finding glaring holes. Also, please keep posting the strategies that you find work! Those are fascinating to read, and it's great to hear all of the inventive ways you guys come up with to deal with the problems set up in the queue.
Not just targetable torpedoes. Any sort of small craft goes down too - I remember being rather fond of the Obelisk before S8 unleashed the Voth upon it. Sort of ironic, seeing as the Obelisk's introduction directly preceded S8's content...
Of course, one season later, the Undine get buffed and can render carriers inert with only a bit more effort than the Voth...
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Yeah, in my run I took the Xindi carrier, and was basically useless between the Voth and the FAW. I knew as soon as the first Voth ship popped that was going to be the case, though; carriers and seeker builds just don't work well against them between the FAW, Grav Wells and Aceton Fields. The end result? Don't use those builds here, I guess. Just like carriers and seekers are super useful against the CE, direct fire (probably direct AOE) builds will work better here.
I for one approve this change. More grav wells, tykens, and FBP on NPCs please.