Don't like the new format, at all. The Tholian Red Alert is seriously messed up. I have yet to complete one in the time allotted. I guess I'll have to grind my nukara marks on the ground.
How are you failing a Tholian Red Alert, most especially since it's queued and you're never alone?
Probably lack of teamwork, I'm guessing. Even under the old style, I've seen plenty of Tholian Alerts failed because each player went after a different group or players bounced from group to group and never entirely finished any of them off...
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." -- Q, TNG: "Q-Who?"
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
Count me in with the crew who just enjoyed a quick blastfest. On a good day with a good ship I was hoping to be alone, so I could go soloing, see how quick I can be. (Okay, only soloed Tholian once, thanks to interlopers joining during runs, but 'twas fun). As of now, the queues popped really quickly for me, but it already feels like a loss to even have the queueing window pop up.
The double XP for leveling ships will also be missed, of course, but not as hard as just the enjoyment of a bit of uncomplicated space pew with no strings attached.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
So new style RA's popped up tonight, and gotta say, im not a fan.
I think its great the Borg have some of thier teeth back and if your not careful they can make you look very silly indeed.
Having said that, im lamenting the loss of the XP boost and not at all a fan of the queing method.
Before the revamp i could get maybe 3-4 RA's done before hitting cooldowns, so far under the new method 1 it seems, is all you get.
In the tholian RA, the daily has also vanished. SO it seems a nerf all around.
Just wondered what everyone else thought.
Tbh OP i havent done RAs in a while , and if theres a line to get into them aka queue i will not even consider them, i havent played this game alot in recent months because of the queue system being as it is ...dead.
No PvP and the sandbox feel is stale at best, not to say im a PvP junkie ..i am not , but theres not a whole lot to do once youve fisnihed all the missions and finish all the reps.
Not a fan...at all. SO many changes seemingly due to consoles. Are you trying to drive away your PC fans? I have a PS4 with STO on it. I'm still on PC for a reason. Cryptic, I know you don't have a huge team, and the idea of running 3 code bases may be daunting, but if you kill the original PC version functionality to go after a 'theoretical' market...well, ever heard the old saying about a bird in the hand? Seriously... please don't try to turn PC gamers into consolers. We're here on the PC for a reason.
I'm not one of the BIG spenders in this game, but I'm a lifetimer that usually puts $5 to $20 additional cash into buying Zen per month, so as a regular paying customer, I'm asking you to please not push me in the simplified console direction. From all the posts I read prior to this one, it seems to be the shared consensus so far.
I still haven't done the nakul red alert, didn't want to mess with the queue for it. Not sure how I feel about the others being queue based, I haven't messed with one in a while.
Just saw the borg RA was up, transwarped there only to be put in a queue with 3 people waiting.... not waiting around for it.
Yea this stinks.
"Tickle us, do we not laugh? Prick us, do we not bleed? Wrong us, shall we not revenge?" -General Chang
Yeah waiting to start is just going to drive people away. There's already too many dead queues and adding more will not make things better.
Plus it goes against the idea of the RA:
"quick we have to rush to sector X to defeat the Borg",
turns into:
"ok we've detected a Borg fleet, but let's wait about here for a while with our thumb up our TRIBBLE to see if we can get five other ships together before we rush to save that system"
This is a big problem with Cryptic, they will take something like Red Alerts.. something that no one was having any issue with and making a silly change that no one wants for absolutely no reason at all.
Meanwhile, things that desperately need to be fixed or revamped continue to sit neglected. This is a big issue for me because the Red Alerts are just about all I ever do in STO anymore, I set up my DoFF/Admiralty missions and then fly out into sector space for some red alerts. The Red Alerts are the only actual game play that I really had to do as a quick 'for fun' type thing, and now it's replaced by a stupid queue system that I have no interest in.
As silly as it sounds, this change will likely mean I will hardly even touch this game anymore. I'm already struggling to find things to keep me interested after all these years and this change just takes away one of the very few things I enjoy. This is typical Cryptic, always 'fixing' problems that simply don't exist.
Stupid, ridiculous, unwelcome, asinine change. I like them buffing the Red Alerts but every other part of this change completely sucks.
I think so more than anything they wanted to get rid of the exp zone and this was a good excuse to do it. Since DR they have been slowly seeking out all outliers and stamping them down. Anything that was popular because it paid more than everything else. It's a shame because it definitely reduces my desire to get new ships for the traits. Instead of 1 borg and 1 tholian I now have to do either 8 patrol missions or a half hour of starbase 24. Roughly 4 times the amount of pointless grind. If you've bought a ship for the trait and have a modest 5 or 6 characters you're now looking at 3 hours of grinding dull patrols just to use your purchase. Does not compute.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Don't like the new format, at all. The Tholian Red Alert is seriously messed up. I have yet to complete one in the time allotted. I guess I'll have to grind my nukara marks on the ground.
Are you HEALING them?!? No seriously...
Because even moderately built ships can solo these. So unless you are ACTIVELY working against your team somehow...how is this even happening?!?
Well, what if no one on the team has even a moderately well built ship? There's a pretty big gulf in this game between a well geared player and someone who just uses the stuff they get as rewards and such...
I mean, realistically, a player has to wait almost two months between hitting level 50 (and thus able to do these) and being able to get decent reputation gear.
And they need to be able to do stuff like this to get the marks in the first place to get the gear.
Personally, on my two main federation characters, where I have a Paladin, I can do the Tholian pretty easily, chewing up even the recluses quickly and the two big ships take a while but are doable. But then on my alt, who is 57 and flying the same ship but with stock blue phasers can't even scratch the two capital ships.
If you end up with a team full of all ships like my alt (which I actually did tonight while playing him), then you simply cannot succeed because you can't kill the two capital ships. Not in the time allotted, anyway. Even with using Fleet Support.
Will never run them again. Not wasting my time sitting on my hands waiting for a blasted queue to pop. Cryptic once again out of touch with it's player base.
So new style RA's popped up tonight, and gotta say, im not a fan.
Before the revamp i could get maybe 3-4 RA's done before hitting cooldowns, so far under the new method 1 it seems, is all you get.
In the tholian RA, the daily has also vanished. SO it seems a nerf all around.
Just wondered what everyone else thought.
Don't you think the RA jumping is exactly why this was introduced?
I will admit that i often jumped from tholian alert to tholian alert to maximize the XP grab and I'm guessing i was not alone.
I like that with this setup there is at least a team of 5, although it is quite possible for a competent played to solo both Tholian and Borg Red Alerts and i also like the choice of marks for the Borg RA.
The dislikes have already been mentioned here and elsewhere: No more bonus XP zone, no more dailies and no longer the option to jump from Red Alert instance to RA instance thus reducing the XP gain.
I would prefer to see the more intense RA from the Alpha Quadrant set as the new standard especially with the power creep in mind and increase the rewards in dilithhium and marks to that of an advanced queue.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
This is a big problem with Cryptic, they will take something like Red Alerts.. something that no one was having any issue with and making a silly change that no one wants for absolutely no reason at all.
Meanwhile, things that desperately need to be fixed or revamped continue to sit neglected. This is a big issue for me because the Red Alerts are just about all I ever do in STO anymore, I set up my DoFF/Admiralty missions and then fly out into sector space for some red alerts. The Red Alerts are the only actual game play that I really had to do as a quick 'for fun' type thing, and now it's replaced by a stupid queue system that I have no interest in.
As silly as it sounds, this change will likely mean I will hardly even touch this game anymore. I'm already struggling to find things to keep me interested after all these years and this change just takes away one of the very few things I enjoy. This is typical Cryptic, always 'fixing' problems that simply don't exist.
Stupid, ridiculous, unwelcome, asinine change. I like them buffing the Red Alerts but every other part of this change completely sucks.
Yup, Cryptic just cannot leave stuff that works alone, yet cannot be bothered to fix the stuff that actually needs fixing!
"ok we've detected a Borg fleet, but let's wait about here for a while with our thumb up our **** to see if we can get five other ships together before we rush to save that system"
From a story perspective this makes sense however. IF a large enough fleet came across and every ship came flying at them at once, they'd make mincemeat. So you need to get enough of a force to have a chance of countering them. (Somewhat diluted by the fact that you could solo these).
Oh...somebody thinks you need rep gear to make moderately well built ships. How cute. The fact you said that means you do NOT know how to build ships. In fact moderately well built means using good VR gear you can get off the exchange. With just rare bits, while you might not solo these, you should definately be able to with one other person with such gear...assuming once again your ship is built well and you don't fly like **** (and the same applies to the other guy). To do your part in a 5 man team...common is good enough. So yeah...no excuse as to you don't have access to the gear. What you lack is skill in building ships or piloting or both. Get better.
I think you and I are talking about different things when we use the words "moderately well built". Buying VR gear off the exchange can cost quite a few millions, which many of the more casual players don't have (if they know about the exchange in the first place). For me "moderately well built" would mean: living mostly off drops, maybe the odd rep or maybe even fleet thing, probably nothing crafted. If upgraded at all, then with no regards for special mods. If stuff from the exchange, then cost effective. But that combined with some understanding of the mechanics (so no Tetryon turrets next to Polaron arrays on the front of an escort) Which would still be enough to beat the queue - but probably not to solo it.
You could argue that your building level (not of your ship, what you describe) is still not necessarily a "great build", so should also be included under "moderately well built". You may even convince me. But you wouldn't convince me that it is necessary to be "moderately well". That starts earlier in my book.
(But you are right, VR XII - plus maybe a golden unique console you get with some ships - is enough to solo both of them. At least in the old settings, rumor has it, the new one has been buffed. Didn't really notice the one time I was playing them - I was not expecting much with a still leveling captain on the wrong type of ship for mastery purposes, and didn't get much)
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Thats bad. I think they saw that RA were populated while the queues are empty so they thought of pushing players to the queues leveling the ground with the RAs. Doing so they removed appeal to a fun part of the game without giving it to the rest. Bad idea, now the game as a whole has less fun. That's the problem with STO, we have lots of contents but badly built.
Just adding my voice to those who are disappointed. It seems like a petty way to reduce two of the only quick ways to gain xp left in the game. I won't be doing red alerts anymore...waste of time.
Update with a closer look after running them right now
Borg Red Alert
65 Omega Marks (10 Award plus 55 Daily) + 960 Dilitium in two 480 Dilitium awards
Marks Choice Box 5 Fleet (standard), 56 selected (1 Award plus 55 Daily) + 480 Dilitium in one award + Normal Queue R&D Materials
Tholian Red Alert
Marks choice from Fleet, Nakura, and New Romulus: 70 Fleet Marks (5 standard plus 10 Award plus and 55 Daily) + 960 Dilitium in two 480 Dilitium awards.
So the Borg now offers, in addition to Omega Marks, a Marks Choice Box with a very very low award and a Normal Queue R&D Box plus 1,440 Dilitium. The standard 5 Fleet Marks is also awarded
The Tholian no longer awards Nakura and New Romulus but added Fleet but you only get one of the three and 960 Dilitium and no Normal Queue R&D Box. The standard 5 Fleet Marks is also awarded.
The Na'kuhl (before it disappeared) awarded a Marks Choice Box with a varying number of the selected Marks up to 45 with a minimum of 25 based upon Freighter saves, 720 Dilitium, a Normal Queue R&D Box, and no standard 5 Fleet Marks.
Clearly the three 'Red Alerts' are not the same in their awards.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Don't you think the RA jumping is exactly why this was introduced?
I will admit that i often jumped from tholian alert to tholian alert to maximize the XP grab and I'm guessing i was not alone.
I like that with this setup there is at least a team of 5, although it is quite possible for a competent played to solo both Tholian and Borg Red Alerts and i also like the choice of marks for the Borg RA.
The dislikes have already been mentioned here and elsewhere: No more bonus XP zone, no more dailies and no longer the option to jump from Red Alert instance to RA instance thus reducing the XP gain.
I would prefer to see the more intense RA from the Alpha Quadrant set as the new standard especially with the power creep in mind and increase the rewards in dilithhium and marks to that of an advanced queue.
[/quote]
I think u misunderstand.
Im not talking about some exploit, i talking about the different sector Borg alerts.
There are a number of different one ( you even got a accolade for doing them all ) an at times you could get 3-4 or more different ones in the different instances you get left in once you finished one.
Thats another thing, anyone who was part through getting that accolade, is left up the creek without a paddle now this change has dropped
I don't like this new queue system for RAs, at all. They took away the double XP bonus, which was one of my main reasons for doing it. Plus I used to be able to instantly jump right into them, as long as I wasn't on cooldown. But now that's gone too, and I have to wait for a queue that may or may not come up. This sucks and I don't even bother doing them anymore.
Comments
Probably lack of teamwork, I'm guessing. Even under the old style, I've seen plenty of Tholian Alerts failed because each player went after a different group or players bounced from group to group and never entirely finished any of them off...
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
The double XP for leveling ships will also be missed, of course, but not as hard as just the enjoyment of a bit of uncomplicated space pew with no strings attached.
Tbh OP i havent done RAs in a while , and if theres a line to get into them aka queue i will not even consider them, i havent played this game alot in recent months because of the queue system being as it is ...dead.
No PvP and the sandbox feel is stale at best, not to say im a PvP junkie ..i am not , but theres not a whole lot to do once youve fisnihed all the missions and finish all the reps.
Also, the XP Bonus needs to come back.
I'm not one of the BIG spenders in this game, but I'm a lifetimer that usually puts $5 to $20 additional cash into buying Zen per month, so as a regular paying customer, I'm asking you to please not push me in the simplified console direction. From all the posts I read prior to this one, it seems to be the shared consensus so far.
Not sure how I feel about the others being queue based, I haven't messed with one in a while.
Just saw the borg RA was up, transwarped there only to be put in a queue with 3 people waiting.... not waiting around for it.
Yea this stinks.
-General Chang
Plus it goes against the idea of the RA:
"quick we have to rush to sector X to defeat the Borg",
turns into:
"ok we've detected a Borg fleet, but let's wait about here for a while with our thumb up our TRIBBLE to see if we can get five other ships together before we rush to save that system"
This is a big problem with Cryptic, they will take something like Red Alerts.. something that no one was having any issue with and making a silly change that no one wants for absolutely no reason at all.
Meanwhile, things that desperately need to be fixed or revamped continue to sit neglected. This is a big issue for me because the Red Alerts are just about all I ever do in STO anymore, I set up my DoFF/Admiralty missions and then fly out into sector space for some red alerts. The Red Alerts are the only actual game play that I really had to do as a quick 'for fun' type thing, and now it's replaced by a stupid queue system that I have no interest in.
As silly as it sounds, this change will likely mean I will hardly even touch this game anymore. I'm already struggling to find things to keep me interested after all these years and this change just takes away one of the very few things I enjoy. This is typical Cryptic, always 'fixing' problems that simply don't exist.
Stupid, ridiculous, unwelcome, asinine change. I like them buffing the Red Alerts but every other part of this change completely sucks.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Well, what if no one on the team has even a moderately well built ship? There's a pretty big gulf in this game between a well geared player and someone who just uses the stuff they get as rewards and such...
I mean, realistically, a player has to wait almost two months between hitting level 50 (and thus able to do these) and being able to get decent reputation gear.
And they need to be able to do stuff like this to get the marks in the first place to get the gear.
Personally, on my two main federation characters, where I have a Paladin, I can do the Tholian pretty easily, chewing up even the recluses quickly and the two big ships take a while but are doable. But then on my alt, who is 57 and flying the same ship but with stock blue phasers can't even scratch the two capital ships.
If you end up with a team full of all ships like my alt (which I actually did tonight while playing him), then you simply cannot succeed because you can't kill the two capital ships. Not in the time allotted, anyway. Even with using Fleet Support.
so nice to solo it
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Don't you think the RA jumping is exactly why this was introduced?
I will admit that i often jumped from tholian alert to tholian alert to maximize the XP grab and I'm guessing i was not alone.
I like that with this setup there is at least a team of 5, although it is quite possible for a competent played to solo both Tholian and Borg Red Alerts and i also like the choice of marks for the Borg RA.
The dislikes have already been mentioned here and elsewhere: No more bonus XP zone, no more dailies and no longer the option to jump from Red Alert instance to RA instance thus reducing the XP gain.
I would prefer to see the more intense RA from the Alpha Quadrant set as the new standard especially with the power creep in mind and increase the rewards in dilithhium and marks to that of an advanced queue.
Yup, Cryptic just cannot leave stuff that works alone, yet cannot be bothered to fix the stuff that actually needs fixing!
Oh well, I used to enjoy these, too....
From a story perspective this makes sense however. IF a large enough fleet came across and every ship came flying at them at once, they'd make mincemeat. So you need to get enough of a force to have a chance of countering them. (Somewhat diluted by the fact that you could solo these).
I think you and I are talking about different things when we use the words "moderately well built". Buying VR gear off the exchange can cost quite a few millions, which many of the more casual players don't have (if they know about the exchange in the first place). For me "moderately well built" would mean: living mostly off drops, maybe the odd rep or maybe even fleet thing, probably nothing crafted. If upgraded at all, then with no regards for special mods. If stuff from the exchange, then cost effective. But that combined with some understanding of the mechanics (so no Tetryon turrets next to Polaron arrays on the front of an escort) Which would still be enough to beat the queue - but probably not to solo it.
You could argue that your building level (not of your ship, what you describe) is still not necessarily a "great build", so should also be included under "moderately well built". You may even convince me. But you wouldn't convince me that it is necessary to be "moderately well". That starts earlier in my book.
(But you are right, VR XII - plus maybe a golden unique console you get with some ships - is enough to solo both of them. At least in the old settings, rumor has it, the new one has been buffed. Didn't really notice the one time I was playing them - I was not expecting much with a still leveling captain on the wrong type of ship for mastery purposes, and didn't get much)
Borg Red Alert
65 Omega Marks (10 Award plus 55 Daily) + 960 Dilitium in two 480 Dilitium awards
Marks Choice Box 5 Fleet (standard), 56 selected (1 Award plus 55 Daily) + 480 Dilitium in one award + Normal Queue R&D Materials
Tholian Red Alert
Marks choice from Fleet, Nakura, and New Romulus: 70 Fleet Marks (5 standard plus 10 Award plus and 55 Daily) + 960 Dilitium in two 480 Dilitium awards.
So the Borg now offers, in addition to Omega Marks, a Marks Choice Box with a very very low award and a Normal Queue R&D Box plus 1,440 Dilitium. The standard 5 Fleet Marks is also awarded
The Tholian no longer awards Nakura and New Romulus but added Fleet but you only get one of the three and 960 Dilitium and no Normal Queue R&D Box. The standard 5 Fleet Marks is also awarded.
The Na'kuhl (before it disappeared) awarded a Marks Choice Box with a varying number of the selected Marks up to 45 with a minimum of 25 based upon Freighter saves, 720 Dilitium, a Normal Queue R&D Box, and no standard 5 Fleet Marks.
Clearly the three 'Red Alerts' are not the same in their awards.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Don't you think the RA jumping is exactly why this was introduced?
I will admit that i often jumped from tholian alert to tholian alert to maximize the XP grab and I'm guessing i was not alone.
I like that with this setup there is at least a team of 5, although it is quite possible for a competent played to solo both Tholian and Borg Red Alerts and i also like the choice of marks for the Borg RA.
The dislikes have already been mentioned here and elsewhere: No more bonus XP zone, no more dailies and no longer the option to jump from Red Alert instance to RA instance thus reducing the XP gain.
I would prefer to see the more intense RA from the Alpha Quadrant set as the new standard especially with the power creep in mind and increase the rewards in dilithhium and marks to that of an advanced queue.
[/quote]
I think u misunderstand.
Im not talking about some exploit, i talking about the different sector Borg alerts.
There are a number of different one ( you even got a accolade for doing them all ) an at times you could get 3-4 or more different ones in the different instances you get left in once you finished one.
Thats another thing, anyone who was part through getting that accolade, is left up the creek without a paddle now this change has dropped
That is all.