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Forums > Home› Feedback› Feature Episodes, Events and PvE Content

A negative opinion of "Time in a Bottle"

gibsonunderscoregibsonunderscore Member Posts: 98 Arc User
in Feature Episodes, Events and PvE Content
The newest Featured Episode, "Time in a Bottle" featuring Captain Nog... has got to be the worst episode made yet. Wasteful map design, stale dialogue sounding like it's read off of a page instead of *voice acted*, and the irritatingly overpowered Iconian ground combat units come together to make this newest mission by far the mission I hate the most.

I've forgiven absurd premises by now, but I need to note that the story for this mission is so full of lame convenience that I just don't see the point in following it. I just skip dialogue now.

But when waves of Iconians, all with heavy doses of HP and FAR TOO MANY HEAVY KILL ATTACKS force me to respawn-die-respawn my way through the stupid timer, all with the fun bonus of the "safe" respawn point that Thralls can teleport into and f*k you over just for fun? I start making annoyed faces.

Plus, today, I got the privilege of redoing the ENTIRE STRETCH OF GROUND COMBAT on the Krenim moon because the Krenim dude simply decided not to be talk-to-able after the colony first appears, meaning I had to beam out, and start the whole moon encounter over again. I hate the ground combat enough as it is. This was TORTURE. Normal mode should NOT BE KILLING ME THIS MUCH.

Please. PLEASE. Devs. Can we PLEEEEEASE have a featured mission that isn't a pile of TRIBBLE dialogue separated by unbalanced combat?

Comments

  • tehbubbalootehbubbaloo Member Posts: 2,003 Arc User
    edited July 2015
    i thought qwen and his receptionist was pretty great voice work. nog... not so much. better then sela, but nowhere near the rockstar quality of neelix' voice work. maybe on par with worf and the others? all that being said, his voice work was good enough that i wasnt personally distracted by it.

    i found the HUGE unskippable cutscenes pretty annoying though. seriously, cryptic... stop that. there was no justifiable reason for making those unskippable.​​
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  • tempus64tempus64 Member Posts: 806 Arc User
    edited July 2015
    I enjoyed the episode, much more than the house of pegh one. Voice acting is a tricky thing to do. If you don't have someone directing it properly, you get a lot of the issues that exist in the game. Back when I worked in a game company, I had some excellent audio guys working for me. We'd have the talent listen to the audio leading up to their part and practice their parts so things flowed almost seamlessly. we also stitched audio together (think of how much better things would sound if they actually said "Captain, Admiral" etc) which required many takes before the talent would get it right. The issue is probably that the talent they're hiring are high priced, they don't have the time, and the people in charge are probably scared to tick them off lol

    As for the combat. Well. Yeah it's been damn tough especially for someone who's new and doesn't have great stuff. I looked at it as a challenge and changed tactics, tried out different things until I was able to actually complete it a couple times without dieing at all even with my weak engineer. At one point all my BOFFs were dead and yet I was able to defeat the remainder. Was very satisfying for me to be able to accomplish that. One "trick" for me was to not stand my ground but to move away from the area Nog said was "defensible" lol. Since the space combat was very easy, I also slotted all ground traits.

    My impression (having only done the 2 FEs so far and not the other Iconian missions yet), is that they are supposed to be very tough to fight. The sheltered respawn location to give you time to regroup yourself is a dead give away.
  • guljarolguljarol Member Posts: 980 Arc User
    The sheltered respawn location is nonsense, because when you leave you're placed right in the middle of them, and to me it makes no difference.

    But I agree that the area is NOT defensible. Nothing more harming than staying in a limited, closed space when fighting Heralds. You need space to avoid the red circles, so any closed space is a no-no.

    ​​
  • tempus64tempus64 Member Posts: 806 Arc User
    guljarol wrote: »
    The sheltered respawn location is nonsense, because when you leave you're placed right in the middle of them, and to me it makes no difference.​​
    While it's not a great location, it does give you time to buff up and rethink things. I just get myself ready and then run to a "better" area before engaging them. I suck at ground combat but it worked out pretty well for me once I started doing that. First couple runs I died probably 4+ times. Changed my strategy etc and managed to survive with my eng (don't have or use things like mines or mortars). My tac died once. Even with my 2 level 26/30 alts I managed to get through only dieing once with them by that point. I had a much harder time with house of pegh where you were more constrained being in an enclosed area.
  • gibsonunderscoregibsonunderscore Member Posts: 98 Arc User
    The sheltered respawn point is worthless, because if you respawn before all of your bridge officers are dead, the Thralls can teleport between your still-living officers down below, and the unprepared you up top in the supposed "safe spot". I was no-kidding murdered by a thrall who ported up to me and one-shotted me.

    ONE SHOTTING IS NOT A WAY TO INCREASE CHALLENGE.
  • markdb2011markdb2011 Member Posts: 61 Arc User
    Never got one shoted in this mission even my boffs don't. I ran this many times already and though it was fine. I wear the omega set and so does my boffs. Maybe I don't have trouble cause I am command/commando spec and my boffs are all command spec.
  • inferiorityinferiority Member Posts: 4,443 Arc User
    tehbubbaloo wrote: »
    i found the HUGE unskippable cutscenes pretty annoying though. seriously, cryptic... stop that. there was no justifiable reason for making those unskippable.​​
    Agreed. However, I feel the cutscenes should be unskippable on the first playthough so we see the story unfold. Replays of the mission should allow them to be skipped. Also, the 'first playthrough' is an account-wide thing. When I play the mission through for the first time on another character, I should be able to skip the cutscene.
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