The only 2 who could definitively identify you as The Other were T'Ket and L'Miran, T'Ket's only interest was keeping the war going for her vendetta, L'Miran on the other hand saw you in person once before you handed her the world heart, after M'Tara summoned her and T'Ket when we killed M'Tara, at the time she had other things than identifying the other on her mind.
From what I put together, the Iconians think the Other(s) were lost saving them, since Sela forcefully causes the portal to collapse, leaving the Other(s) alone on a planet being bombed to oblivion. So at best, you look like the Other, and lesser species all look alike for arrogant/xenophobic beings (even among a single species, "they all look alike" speeches happen).
Also, T'Ket doesn't care on who lives and who dies as long as she can avenge the fallen Iconians.
In Tales of War 9, she basically snaps at L'Miren when she brings the subject of the Other again, saying "Now you speak of ghosts. The Other has not been seen since the Day of Fire. We honor the memory of the Other, just as we honor all that was lost in unjust flames." Only L'Miren (surely) and M'Tara (mostly) care about hoping to see the Other again one way or another.
Considering how T'Ket cares about the fallen, it's safe to say she doesn't care about you, only about avenging you. It shows during Midnight where, when you bring the subject of what you did to save them, she deflects the subject to Sela's actions. I'm almost thinking she's infuriated to see you well and alive.
L'Miren changed her mind after M'Tara's death...
For a moment (which lasts a while, yes, even during Midnight "this is the moment of your extinction"), under the shock of M'Tara's death. When you stand down after retrieving the World Heart, she thinks you want to surrender and considers this a wise decision, so I assume she only wants to go with T'Ket's plans as long as you resist them, which is unlike T'Ket, who wishes to exterminate everyone, with their behavior towards the Iconians being irrelevant.
Also, to stay on-topic, the changes in level curve is welcome but it's not perfect. I thank the devs for doing this, but I still think it's a bit late and that it's missing the elephant in the room, the fact the skill point requirements for reaching lvl60 and specialization points starting from ~50-55 are insanely high.
Been wanting something like this for a while now, my biggest gripe with delta rising was that, in order to progress through the story, you had to grind your way to the next level to get a new mission, I didn't mind that you didn't go up 1 level per mission, just that there weren't enough missions to progress through the story.
Neelix is annoying as hell (seriously, I want to kill the character so much.)
I've wanted to kill Neelix since at least season 3 of Voyager, If not sooner. His cooking nearly killed the Ship on at least 1 occasion. Just how bad do you have to be to poison a Starship?
This is not a good change in the grand scheme because they'll undoubtedly create new paradoxes like one exits in leveling up new KDF toons: After friend or foe, you usually lack about 700 xp to open the next mission so you either have to go do some tutorial missions - yawn - or wait 30 minutes and do that one again because the mind numbing shoot them up on Rura Penthe is just not worth it. All it took to fix that particular bug was a pocket calculator and some free will. And they'll never get fixed as most minor bugs in this game never do, nobody cared to even look into it since the last episode mission xp nerf. I assume it is not by design because there's no such bug in fed side toon leveling.
This is false, and anyone who did Delta Recruits on both sides knows it. If you do the initial tutorial, KDF characters will likely experience no gaps until during the Delta Quadrant arc, while Starfleet characters will likely experience gaps at around level 10, level 19, and I believe level 29, if they're only using episodes to level. Starfleet characters might also get a new gap after the revamped Cardassian arc, since it's unlikely that the new 4 episodes will pay out as much as the 14 pisodes that they're replacing for Starfleet characters, even if those episodes were on the old low-paying scale. It probably will more than cover the subset of 7 episodes that KDF and Romulans had previously.
For enjoyability of the story, I think that would have been the lesser of two evils.
The BEST solution would have been to hold off on raising the level cap altogether until sufficient storyline material existed to level a player all the way to 60 without big gaps, AND/OR to not have raised the leveling requirements to the extremes that were chosen.
They did release Delta Rising with enough content for 10 levels at virtually any other level range in the game. This is especially true when you count the patrol wrappers and the side story on Kobali Prime. At nearly any other place in the game, the 9 story episodes that released with Delta Rising would get you about 9 levels, and maybe a bit more, but they specifically chose to pace the reward xp well below the xp required to level to slow us getting to the cap. Never mind that there was an "after the cap" progression system placed in at the same time that would have served the keeping people in the game and continual progression ends just fine on its own.
Unlike some others here, I don't dislike the Delta Quadrant and Iconian stories, including Midnight, but the barriers to getting to it probably never should have existed. Let people get to 60 as quickly as they did in previous numeric levels, and put the slog into the specializations. It's basic psychology to give people an easy first few steps on something, giving them an appetite for more, but making the more harder to obtain. "Your first 10 spec points are (essentially) free, but the other 50 (at release, now 95) are going to cost you."
This is an MMO, not a Star Trek episode simulator. That would make for a terrible game.
I think every mission should have a fixed level, so players at a later level can claim lower level gear to equip alts more easily. Look at the exchange ... prices for gear between MK 2 and MK 8 is more expensive than gear between MK 9 and 12 ... that's silly in my opinion. Yes, you can craft things, but that takes time. Replaying a mission often takes less time and gives you more and better items in return (if your crafting level isn't high enough for let's say MK 6 or 8 items to turn out at least blue or better).
I wonder why the lower missions haven't had their level minimum checked as well. The Klingon War arc is fine, but between the Romulan and Breen story arcs, there are strange level jumps sometimes. Each episode should just be one level higher than the previous episode was. The Dyson episodes would then probably start at around Level 40-45, but that's okay. Delta would start at around 50 and end at 56 around that, and that's where the Iconian arc would begin up to Level 60 ... and if there is another story arc later on, it would even be possible to increase the maximum player level to 70 at some time and re-order the ranks in the lower area, for example:
The end of the Iconian war has given us a unique opportunity to revisit the progression path for the existing episodes.
I mean, yeah, without the end of the story line stuff couldn't be shifted around, as made obvious by the fact that stuff has never previously been shuffled aroun... oh wait it has.
Yeah, that one line from the blog really annoys me.
There is no unique opportunity. This could have been put into motion the very day that Delta Rising launched, when the problems were immediately obvious to everyone. Amusingly enough, Delta Rising was released October 14th, 2014. Today is the one year anniversary. Ignoring a problem for a year doesn't mean the opportunity to fix it didn't exist, it just means you ignored it for a year. And worse, there were "fixes" to various other things like, say, the DOff system which greatly nerfed XP gains, thus exacerbating the problem.
To be frank, this doesn't deserve a blog post celebrating it... it deserved to be filed in the patch notes about a week shy of a year ago when the problem should have been fixed.
There is no unique opportunity. This could have been put into motion the very day that Delta Rising launched, when the problems were immediately obvious to everyone. Amusingly enough, Delta Rising was released October 14th, 2014. Today is the one year anniversary. Ignoring a problem for a year doesn't mean the opportunity to fix it didn't exist, it just means you ignored it for a year. And worse, there were "fixes" to various other things like, say, the DOff system which greatly nerfed XP gains, thus exacerbating the problem.
To be frank, this doesn't deserve a blog post celebrating it... it deserved to be filed in the patch notes about a week shy of a year ago when the problem should have been fixed.
You expect Cryptic to make intelligent decisions right from the start? You'd probably have better chances of winning the lottery.
To me, the doff system feels like pointless busy work that adds very little to the player experience. It's about mind-numbing as filing paperwork. Makes me feel like a lowly bureaucrat. Now I know how Martok felt...
As for the XP nerfs, that was really a low blow on Cryptic's part to begin with. The grind-fest is tiresome and greatly reduces the quality and fun factor of the game. I can barely muster up the interest in creating another alt. Last time I did was only for the delta recruit event.
If they made every levelling experience as rewarding as the delta recruit event was, that might make things a little more tolerable... and maybe kill off Neelix for good measure.
The Star Trek Online development team is incredibly proud of all the stories we’ve been able to tell from launch until now. With the conclusion of the Iconian War episode arc we’ve been able to add a great conclusion to a story that’s been almost 6 years in the making.
Been wanting this to happen for a long time since leveling 55 - 60 take awhile so leveling will be much easier now and also glad season 11 will be out Oct 27th!
With Admiralty system, this decrease in levels required for episodes might just make it (barely) possible to advance throught to 60 without actually having to grind for xp.
One question regarding the Iconian arc though, are the episodes made skippable same as all older ones (barrind some of the introductory missions)?
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
With the episode now requiring level 60 to start you can't use the Dyson gateway in the beta quadrant to access it. For characters that did it during its featured episode run you can replay it under level 60.
However, there are a couple workarounds: as already suggested you can click the button next to the mission in your mission list to pay energy credits to transwarp directly to the mission starting point. Another option is if you have tier 1 in Delta Alliance reputation you can just transwarp directly to the Delta Quadrant.
Have you folks read the thread I linked?
For pre-50 characters, you should not need to spend 50k EC to access the Delta Quadrant.
However, the missions state that characters below level 50 can start the mission at the Dyson Sphere Gateway, but they cannot.
Post edited by inferiority on
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Once again as with the route TOR is taking, you all take it too and it is disappointment at best, the scaling of levels when doing content is stupid, I am sorry but it is, if you want to play it at 53 while you are 60 it should be optional drop down box to reduce your effective level to 53 instead of just being pushed into it.
Just because im level 60 and want to play the old content again I shouldn't be pushed into a lower effective level..
I mean this goes right up there with CAPTAIN Kagran telling a FLEET ADMIRAL what to go do with themselves in the first place during a military conflict.
In case you have been living under a rock for the past few years which it seems you have STO has had level sync for a few years now in most of the adventure zones we have in game you get busted down to the level of that zone this is nothing new in STO as for ToR it's a great thing to have so your not out leveling a planet and still get plenty of xp OMG people you would think the world is coming to an end with all this level sync happening but for some it's a blessing if you don't want to sync down log off and play some thing different.
Why not take the SWTOR model and just "sell" fully leveled characters at 60? Those guys are making a ton of money like that plus they also have 12XP bonus for almost a year to entice their F2P crowd to "sub" in. Really marketing this game needs some major buff.
the selling of full lvl 60's doesn't start till the 27th of Oct. and 12x xp goes away on the 22nd and although I'm sure they made a killing there were plenty ingame that thought that was a lazy way to lvl (12x XP) I used it like crazy, the most I've done in that game since it launched and will prolly do atleast one 60 but I'm not sure it would work here in STO for one the bimonthly xp weekends would conflict and having a leveled 60 purchasable just don't seem like the thing for this game the whole part of playing this game is getting involved with the story build up unless you have done it 31+ times because of 31 alts anyways I just don't think it would fit into STO game play.
Why not take the SWTOR model and just "sell" fully leveled characters at 60? [...]
I'd buy that.
Sometimes I wish I could take over their schedule and show them for atleast one season what kinds of money they miss out on each month based on putting all eggs into the rep/queue bucket. Way they have this xp grind and lack of non combat and pvp development there are vaults of gold out there in the world that could have been theres if they had a nudge in the proper direction. Plus I should put a disclaimer out there Star Trek fans are not flaming people they are just passionate about the range from what comes out in an update to this game versus the total potential they have with things they do or don't do in the game. Although I am sure they would love to make more money than they are making now but that is kinda the reason communication break down has occurred with the playerbase.
Why not take the SWTOR model and just "sell" fully leveled characters at 60? [...]
I'd buy that.
Sometimes I wish I could take over their schedule and show them for atleast one season what kinds of money they miss out on each month based on putting all eggs into the rep/queue bucket. Way they have this xp grind and lack of non combat and pvp development there are vaults of gold out there in the world that could have been theres if they had a nudge in the proper direction. Plus I should put a disclaimer out there Star Trek fans are not flaming people they are just passionate about the range from what comes out in an update to this game versus the total potential they have with things they do or don't do in the game. Although I am sure they would love to make more money than they are making now but that is kinda the reason communication break down has occurred with the playerbase.
To be honest, I really don't see any value in keeping the pvp system at all, unless they make it more of a war games scenario. We're not at war anymore, so I don't see us having skirmishes between one side or another. It just doesn't make sense the way it is currently.
I think they'll need a lot more than a nudge to take this game to greater heights. More like a new team, with a leader who isn't beligerent towards the players and doesn't condescend to us because he thinks he knows what we want more than we do. They've gotten a little too big for their breeches, imo.
^ That's why DR was more of a slap in the face than anything.
I don't think the grind will be as bad with the new curve. I have 3 in the works that is under Lv50. Usually I try to hit Lv50 by the time I do the 2800 part of the story arc. This way I can get the first ship set at that level. So I should be a good ways by time I hit Delta area.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Just a new battlezone to be released in the near future for the 'curved' players to slug it out with the Iconians or maybe even Tket herself drooling for revenge.
[...]
To be honest, I really don't see any value in keeping the pvp system at all, unless they make it more of a war games scenario. We're not at war anymore, so I don't see us having skirmishes between one side or another. It just doesn't make sense the way it is currently.[...]
PvP is framed as war games currently. So what are you talking about?
I'm pretty sure her qualifier here is MORE like. THAT would be what she is talking about. (•_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■)
That's just it, really. The current Fed vs. KDF doesn't feel like a war-games exercise. More like a dog fight between enemies, which doesn't really make much sense in the current grand scheme of peace. Not to mention, it's not exactly very challenging when both sides are sitting around cloaked waiting to surprise eachother.
My compliments for the reduction in level requirements for these two arcs. It is not appealing at all to have to play one or two episodes and then have to pick up the rest of the XP elsewhere. I took to simply ignoring the Delta arc altogether until I hit 60, so as to not keep hitting that same brick wall. This is a most welcome change and much appreciated.
Comments
From what I put together, the Iconians think the Other(s) were lost saving them, since Sela forcefully causes the portal to collapse, leaving the Other(s) alone on a planet being bombed to oblivion. So at best, you look like the Other, and lesser species all look alike for arrogant/xenophobic beings (even among a single species, "they all look alike" speeches happen).
Also, T'Ket doesn't care on who lives and who dies as long as she can avenge the fallen Iconians.
In Tales of War 9, she basically snaps at L'Miren when she brings the subject of the Other again, saying "Now you speak of ghosts. The Other has not been seen since the Day of Fire. We honor the memory of the Other, just as we honor all that was lost in unjust flames." Only L'Miren (surely) and M'Tara (mostly) care about hoping to see the Other again one way or another.
Considering how T'Ket cares about the fallen, it's safe to say she doesn't care about you, only about avenging you. It shows during Midnight where, when you bring the subject of what you did to save them, she deflects the subject to Sela's actions. I'm almost thinking she's infuriated to see you well and alive.
For a moment (which lasts a while, yes, even during Midnight "this is the moment of your extinction"), under the shock of M'Tara's death. When you stand down after retrieving the World Heart, she thinks you want to surrender and considers this a wise decision, so I assume she only wants to go with T'Ket's plans as long as you resist them, which is unlike T'Ket, who wishes to exterminate everyone, with their behavior towards the Iconians being irrelevant.
Also, to stay on-topic, the changes in level curve is welcome but it's not perfect. I thank the devs for doing this, but I still think it's a bit late and that it's missing the elephant in the room, the fact the skill point requirements for reaching lvl60 and specialization points starting from ~50-55 are insanely high.
I've wanted to kill Neelix since at least season 3 of Voyager, If not sooner. His cooking nearly killed the Ship on at least 1 occasion. Just how bad do you have to be to poison a Starship?
This is false, and anyone who did Delta Recruits on both sides knows it. If you do the initial tutorial, KDF characters will likely experience no gaps until during the Delta Quadrant arc, while Starfleet characters will likely experience gaps at around level 10, level 19, and I believe level 29, if they're only using episodes to level. Starfleet characters might also get a new gap after the revamped Cardassian arc, since it's unlikely that the new 4 episodes will pay out as much as the 14 pisodes that they're replacing for Starfleet characters, even if those episodes were on the old low-paying scale. It probably will more than cover the subset of 7 episodes that KDF and Romulans had previously.
They did release Delta Rising with enough content for 10 levels at virtually any other level range in the game. This is especially true when you count the patrol wrappers and the side story on Kobali Prime. At nearly any other place in the game, the 9 story episodes that released with Delta Rising would get you about 9 levels, and maybe a bit more, but they specifically chose to pace the reward xp well below the xp required to level to slow us getting to the cap. Never mind that there was an "after the cap" progression system placed in at the same time that would have served the keeping people in the game and continual progression ends just fine on its own.
Unlike some others here, I don't dislike the Delta Quadrant and Iconian stories, including Midnight, but the barriers to getting to it probably never should have existed. Let people get to 60 as quickly as they did in previous numeric levels, and put the slog into the specializations. It's basic psychology to give people an easy first few steps on something, giving them an appetite for more, but making the more harder to obtain. "Your first 10 spec points are (essentially) free, but the other 50 (at release, now 95) are going to cost you."
I wonder why the lower missions haven't had their level minimum checked as well. The Klingon War arc is fine, but between the Romulan and Breen story arcs, there are strange level jumps sometimes. Each episode should just be one level higher than the previous episode was. The Dyson episodes would then probably start at around Level 40-45, but that's okay. Delta would start at around 50 and end at 56 around that, and that's where the Iconian arc would begin up to Level 60 ... and if there is another story arc later on, it would even be possible to increase the maximum player level to 70 at some time and re-order the ranks in the lower area, for example:
Cadet (Level 1-3, Tutorial)
Ensign (Level 4-6)
Lt. Junior Grade (Level 7-9)
Lieutenant (Level 10-19)
Lt. Commander (Level 20-29)
Commander (Level 30-39)
Captain (Level 40-49)
Commodore (Level 50-54)
Rear Admiral (Level 55-59)
Vice Admiral (Level 60-64)
Admiral (Level 65-69)
Fleet Admiral (Level 70)
Original Join Date: January 30th, 2010
You Sir are a mind reader
You expect Cryptic to make intelligent decisions right from the start? You'd probably have better chances of winning the lottery.
To me, the doff system feels like pointless busy work that adds very little to the player experience. It's about mind-numbing as filing paperwork. Makes me feel like a lowly bureaucrat. Now I know how Martok felt...
As for the XP nerfs, that was really a low blow on Cryptic's part to begin with. The grind-fest is tiresome and greatly reduces the quality and fun factor of the game. I can barely muster up the interest in creating another alt. Last time I did was only for the delta recruit event.
If they made every levelling experience as rewarding as the delta recruit event was, that might make things a little more tolerable... and maybe kill off Neelix for good measure.
Been wanting this to happen for a long time since leveling 55 - 60 take awhile so leveling will be much easier now and also glad season 11 will be out Oct 27th!
LOLZ !
I could totally see you responding like that too ! The look on your face in my mind's eye !
If I had bacon, I'd give it to you !
But my wife only buys turkey bacon, which I get to eat once a month, ..... and only If I remember to take out the garbage ...
One question regarding the Iconian arc though, are the episodes made skippable same as all older ones (barrind some of the introductory missions)?
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
Or do the missions before to give you access to the delta quadrant a then you have unlimited access to the dysom sphere and the kyana system
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
With the episode now requiring level 60 to start you can't use the Dyson gateway in the beta quadrant to access it. For characters that did it during its featured episode run you can replay it under level 60.
However, there are a couple workarounds: as already suggested you can click the button next to the mission in your mission list to pay energy credits to transwarp directly to the mission starting point. Another option is if you have tier 1 in Delta Alliance reputation you can just transwarp directly to the Delta Quadrant.
For pre-50 characters, you should not need to spend 50k EC to access the Delta Quadrant.
However, the missions state that characters below level 50 can start the mission at the Dyson Sphere Gateway, but they cannot.
In case you have been living under a rock for the past few years which it seems you have STO has had level sync for a few years now in most of the adventure zones we have in game you get busted down to the level of that zone this is nothing new in STO as for ToR it's a great thing to have so your not out leveling a planet and still get plenty of xp OMG people you would think the world is coming to an end with all this level sync happening but for some it's a blessing if you don't want to sync down log off and play some thing different.
the selling of full lvl 60's doesn't start till the 27th of Oct. and 12x xp goes away on the 22nd and although I'm sure they made a killing there were plenty ingame that thought that was a lazy way to lvl (12x XP) I used it like crazy, the most I've done in that game since it launched and will prolly do atleast one 60 but I'm not sure it would work here in STO for one the bimonthly xp weekends would conflict and having a leveled 60 purchasable just don't seem like the thing for this game the whole part of playing this game is getting involved with the story build up unless you have done it 31+ times because of 31 alts anyways I just don't think it would fit into STO game play.
Sometimes I wish I could take over their schedule and show them for atleast one season what kinds of money they miss out on each month based on putting all eggs into the rep/queue bucket. Way they have this xp grind and lack of non combat and pvp development there are vaults of gold out there in the world that could have been theres if they had a nudge in the proper direction. Plus I should put a disclaimer out there Star Trek fans are not flaming people they are just passionate about the range from what comes out in an update to this game versus the total potential they have with things they do or don't do in the game. Although I am sure they would love to make more money than they are making now but that is kinda the reason communication break down has occurred with the playerbase.
To be honest, I really don't see any value in keeping the pvp system at all, unless they make it more of a war games scenario. We're not at war anymore, so I don't see us having skirmishes between one side or another. It just doesn't make sense the way it is currently.
I think they'll need a lot more than a nudge to take this game to greater heights. More like a new team, with a leader who isn't beligerent towards the players and doesn't condescend to us because he thinks he knows what we want more than we do. They've gotten a little too big for their breeches, imo.
^ That's why DR was more of a slap in the face than anything.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
I'm pretty sure her qualifier here is MORE like. THAT would be what she is talking about. (•_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■)
That's just it, really. The current Fed vs. KDF doesn't feel like a war-games exercise. More like a dog fight between enemies, which doesn't really make much sense in the current grand scheme of peace. Not to mention, it's not exactly very challenging when both sides are sitting around cloaked waiting to surprise eachother.