Tzenkethi Battlezone

oblo42 · August 2017

Is it ever going to be in a somewhat playable state?

So I just got the Sompek Pulsewave (even upgraded it a little) and I want to try it with the Lukari ground set, this made me try the Tzenkethi Battlezone again... This has got to be the most frustrating experience in the game, really, just awful infuriating stuff. I mean the map is just fine, I have no problems with the objectives themselves or the enemies or whatnot, it's just... I've never ever seen it finished, that just feels wrong, especially considering I have actually never before failed the Voth or Badlands zone...

The run I just had was actually pretty close, we managed to get everything done except one last king of the hill point, so while a couple of captains get busy on that, the rest are flying around to check if nothing gets contested, one blockade did, so me and a few others fly as fast as possible overthere, as soon as we actually get there BOOM, half the map is red. I mean whaaaaattttt???!??? This was actually the closest I ever got to completing it... And yes, I did try many times before: on another toon I run the full Lukari Armaments, but thank god that didn't need as many Protomatter Microcontainers as I sure didn't get one from the battlezone. Like I said, the run I just had was the closest I ever got to finishing it, now I'm sure it's not impossible to finish if you get as many capable ships as objectives in there and everyone just keeps sitting at his/her point for the duration so it doesn't get turned... But really, good luck in getting that done in a PUG and also, we are supposed to be having fun playing the game no? I don't see how camping one objective in hopes the others won't mess things up is any fun.

So please devs, PLEASE, look into this, this zone could be great fun but right now it is far from it, I have not met a single player yet who thinks otherwise. Ease up on the timers or give better warnings before an objective is about to turn because as it is right now there's just no way of getting it done without half the players on there being bored for most of the duration sitting at one point and that is simply not good design in any way.

Thanks for reading.

/rant

postagepaid · August 2017

The zones been borked since they launched it and they've never really bothered looking at fixing its issues. If there was something that caused folk to be able to farm it for dilithium or xp they'd be on it so fast the laws of physics would break.

The characters I have the lukari ground set on was thanks to the mirror event and converting marks to protomatter each day. probably took about the same time as it would trying to get the BZ to complete.

lopequil · August 2017

The problem seems to stem from zones being recaptured too quickly and, as @postagepaid said, it's been like this since it was introduced to the game. I've only seen it completed twice, and one of those times was when the daily endeavour was to destroy Tzenkethi ships, so it was packed full.

warpangel · August 2017

Signs point to no

meimeitoo · August 2017

lopequil wrote: »

The problem seems to stem from zones being recaptured too quickly and, as @postagepaid said, it's been like this since it was introduced to the game. I've only seen it completed twice, and one of those times was when the daily endeavour was to destroy Tzenkethi ships, so it was packed full.

The problem seems to stem from Cryptic not giving a sh*t. The Tzenkethi Battlezone is horrendeously broken. I've completed it 4 times now, and half of those times it didn't even pay out those Protomatter Containers: not that I need them any more, but pretty lame, Cryptic. And yes, most of the time, when you're nearly done, suddenly half of the field is red again.

The only thing fun about the Tzenkethi Zone is that the Tzenkethi themselves are very weak (they couldn't put a dent in a piece of gum if they wanted to); so it's nice shooting gallery for mindless killing.

(Terrans, otoh, can be quite dangerous)

kodachikuno · August 2017

the ideas behind this bz were great, and the graphic look awesome.... it really was a shame it was broken to hell and they stopped trying to fix it almost immediately after giving it to us

postagepaid · August 2017

The biggest flaw is the king of the hill nodes where due to the mechanic of the enemy ships needing frontal assaults it just gets tedious unlike other combat where you find yourself surrounded and under constant attack for 10 minutes, such as MI when nooone else bothered to close rifts and you are taking on dozens of enemies at once rather than the spongy kethi vessels trickling in.

Especially unfun when you are able to counter the recapture and it happens anyway. The other objectives are actually quite interesting and enjoyable enough to revisit if the place wasnt banished to the dark recesses of a sector map.

The spawn rate and timers for things are all based on the somewhat arrogant assumption that people will be willing to travel to the armpit of the alpha quadrant and keep the number of players above 3.

djf021 · August 2017

I agree. I've only tried it once when it was new. Exactly once. It was horrible. I REALLY want to play it more, and cannot understand why they haven't tried to fix it.

aspartan1 · August 2017

I've spent over six hours in there on near nonstop fighting before enough people where there to finish the map long enough for the dreads to release. Many times the map was 90%+ but things flipped fast. I think on average there were maybe six to ten of us in there any one time. I was there again today for over an hour and gave up after controlling nearly all of the map four times.... They need to double the timers... Or at least let a dread spawn every 35% or so.....

seaofsorrows · August 2017

Cryptic has clearly given up and abandoned it...

Players have done the same.

oblo42 · August 2017

azrael605 wrote: »

Odd, I've never had any problems there.

Then I guess you're the exception that proves the rule. ;-)

antonine3258 · August 2017

azrael605 wrote: »

Odd, I've never had any problems there.

Was it with a pre-planned group? Even the best will in the world to respond to Tzenkethi flipping stuff back always seems to have them flip before you can respond when I visit - though I was last there with the Tzenkethi endeavor.

risian4 · August 2017

oblo42 wrote: »

Is it ever going to be in a somewhat playable state?

So I just got the Sompek Pulsewave (even upgraded it a little) and I want to try it with the Lukari ground set, this made me try the Tzenkethi Battlezone again... This has got to be the most frustrating experience in the game, really, just awful infuriating stuff. I mean the map is just fine, I have no problems with the objectives themselves or the enemies or whatnot, it's just... I've never ever seen it finished, that just feels wrong, especially considering I have actually never before failed the Voth or Badlands zone...

You can't use pulsewave assault weapons in a space battlezone. This is working as intended

(I'm surprised no one else commented on this

)

postagepaid · August 2017

risian4 wrote: »

oblo42 wrote: »

Is it ever going to be in a somewhat playable state?

So I just got the Sompek Pulsewave (even upgraded it a little) and I want to try it with the Lukari ground set, this made me try the Tzenkethi Battlezone again... This has got to be the most frustrating experience in the game, really, just awful infuriating stuff. I mean the map is just fine, I have no problems with the objectives themselves or the enemies or whatnot, it's just... I've never ever seen it finished, that just feels wrong, especially considering I have actually never before failed the Voth or Badlands zone...

You can't use pulsewave assault weapons in a space battlezone. This is working as intended

(I'm surprised no one else commented on this )

They're after the luraki protomatter containers in order to buy the rep ground set so they can try that with the pulsewave on ground maps elsewhere.

At least that's the way I read it.

risian4 · August 2017

On a more serious note:

I too find the Tzenkethi Battlezone a bit frustrating at times. I guess they wanted to try and make it more dynamic, with faster recapture by the Tzenkethi.

The problem is, by the time you get a warning that a zone is at risk, it's often already too late. Sometimes the zone will either get instantly lost, or it will be lost no matter what you do when you do manage to arrive before it's captured by the enemy.

It's definitely more challenging than the other zones - but unfortunately they made it more challenging by not having the player's action make any difference. Which is possibly the worst thing you could do when designing a game, it's supposed to be interactive after all: the actions and input of the player should matter.

oblo42 · August 2017

risian4 wrote: »

You can't use pulsewave assault weapons in a space battlezone. This is working as intended

(I'm surprised no one else commented on this )

postagepaid wrote: »

They're after the luraki protomatter containers in order to buy the rep ground set so they can try that with the pulsewave on ground maps elsewhere.

At least that's the way I read it.

This.

I though it was pretty obvious that's what I meant from the rest of my post.

risian4 · August 2017

oblo42 wrote: »

risian4 wrote: »

You can't use pulsewave assault weapons in a space battlezone. This is working as intended

(I'm surprised no one else commented on this )

postagepaid wrote: »

They're after the luraki protomatter containers in order to buy the rep ground set so they can try that with the pulsewave on ground maps elsewhere.

At least that's the way I read it.

This.

I though it was pretty obvious that's what I meant from the rest of my post.

It was, don't worry

oblo42 · August 2017

Aight, it's all good then...

But I am real serious about my original post though. To me the other battlezones are some of the best fun I have in the game when it comes to multiplayer with random captains (a lot of STF's are great too, but waiting for those queues to fill up: not so much), I run them even when I don't need the rewards in any way just because I enjoy the chaotic battles that up to 20 ships flying around can provide. So I feel it's really sad that what could potentially be the best of them is left in this far from ideal state and apparently it's been like that since the release of it? I wasn't around for that, actually came back about a month ago after a two year hiatus (Delta recruitment got me burned out of the game back then, turns out lvl'ing 3 toons at once as fast as possible wasn't the best idea), loving the game just as much as I used to again right now (kinda stings that I missed out on the AOY recruit stuff but yeah... Can't have it all), lots of improvements all around imho, just makes me wonder why Cryptic doesn't feel like there's a problem with this battlezone when like 99% of the playerbase avoids it like the plague...

rattler2 · August 2017

I have to agree that the zones flip too quickly. It almost feels like you MUST leave someone in each zone to defend it, and even then it will probably flip anyways.

nikephorus · August 2017

I went a handful of times. I went after it was released and the zone wouldn't even spawn any ships. I went again after Cryptic claimed to have fixed it in a patch and some of the zones wouldn't capture. I went again after another fix, but the zones were very wonky. The zones would revert to the Tzenkethi very quickly so the team I was on decided to leave a ship behind to guard the zone, but even then the zone would just revert to them anyway. Even with all this TRIBBLE going wrong I managed to complete the zone once and I never went back.

aspartan1 · August 2017

nikephorus wrote: »

I went a handful of times. I went after it was released and the zone wouldn't even spawn any ships. I went again after Cryptic claimed to have fixed it in a patch and some of the zones wouldn't capture. I went again after another fix, but the zones were very wonky. The zones would revert to the Tzenkethi very quickly so the team I was on decided to leave a ship behind to guard the zone, but even then the zone would just revert to them anyway. Even with all this **** going wrong I managed to complete the zone once and I never went back.

I did as well after a six hour marathon but sadly I did not get the accolade for the third dread as it seems a lot of people warped in to attack them (irked me to no end) so that is why I keep going back to kill the final ship.

oblo42 · August 2017

azrael605 wrote: »

Now I will say that thus far I have only been able to solo one type of point in the Tzen BZ, but with time & practice I'll get the others figured eventually, just like I did for Voth, Undine, Kobali, & Terran (which takes a lot more work than the others).

Solo'ing a point isn't my problem though, that's very much doable, keeping them all ally controlled, that's what the problem is... So are you saying you never had any problems there doing objectives or actually finishing the map? Big difference.

meimeitoo · August 2017

oblo42 wrote: »

azrael605 wrote: »

Now I will say that thus far I have only been able to solo one type of point in the Tzen BZ, but with time & practice I'll get the others figured eventually, just like I did for Voth, Undine, Kobali, & Terran (which takes a lot more work than the others).

Solo'ing a point isn't my problem though, that's very much doable, keeping them all ally controlled, that's what the problem is... So are you saying you never had any problems there doing objectives or actually finishing the map? Big difference.

Solo-ing a Tzenkethi point is the easiest thing ever.

Like I said, the "Tzenkethi themselves are very weak (they couldn't put a dent in a piece of gum if they wanted to)." Seriously, unlike the Terrans, which seem to have some dangerous Feedback Pulses**, and nasty torp salvos, the Tzenkethi don't fight back, at all. Except maybe for those Dreads in those shield-protected areas: there I have to be careful too. Those areas are primarily hard to solo, though, because of those connector points veering back.

** Tzenkethi have FBP too, but they don't do squat.

redspecter23 · August 2017

I'll echo what most others are saying. I've tried that zone a handful of times. Never completed it. It's just not on par with other battlezones. You basically have to have an actual player character camp out areas after they are clear just so they don't get retaken. This isn't required of any other battlezone. At least not on the scale that it's required here. You really have no time to get to an area to secure it after getting the notification unless you're basically there already. I think this is the major issue. The enemies are not particularly difficult. The reflipping of the zones is just amazingly fast.

A 3 - 5 man team would have great difficulty managing the entire zone just because they simply can't be everywhere at once. Even a 10+ person group would need some sort of coordination to keep campers at certain spots and that's just not fun. You're standing around while others are doing the actual fighting. This level of coordination just isn't feasible in pug dominated battlezones. A coordinated premade group should do fine, but is that really the target audience for battlezones? I'd have to assume yes, at least for this one.

tunebreaker · August 2017

I have found myself in Tzenkethi BZ pretty often and yes, I have to agree with what others have said so far. The rate of capturing zones back is way too fast. I remember countless times when the handful of players finally managed to get the map down to 3 red areas, when suddenly: boom, whole map was suddenly red again.

Furthermore, all the arbitrary timegates when capturing a zone can be very off-putting for many players.

And it's really ridiculous that only times I've ever seen bosses even pop is when I announce in TSC that "hey, there are only few areas left to capture and then we see the bosses" and then (hopefully) group of experienced players show up to help me and the few others who were on the map to finish it up.

While I personally enjoy the map, it still shows a bad design when average players are unable to complete it. Battlezones should be oriented towards normal players, imo.

risian4 · August 2017

tunebreaker wrote: »

I have found myself in Tzenkethi BZ pretty often and yes, I have to agree with what others have said so far. The rate of capturing zones back is way too fast. I remember countless times when the handful of players finally managed to get the map down to 3 red areas, when suddenly: boom, whole map was suddenly red again.

Furthermore, all the arbitrary timegates when capturing a zone can be very off-putting for many players.

And it's really ridiculous that only times I've ever seen bosses even pop is when I announce in TSC that "hey, there are only few areas left to capture and then we see the bosses" and then (hopefully) group of experienced players show up to help me and the few others who were on the map to finish it up.

While I personally enjoy the map, it still shows a bad design when average players are unable to complete it. Battlezones should be oriented towards normal players, imo.

I'll admit, I'm one of those players who usually only show up after you announce it. Otherwise this zone is just not worth the effort, there's no fun in trying to recapture the same map three times, only to lose it again before the bosses spawn.

I hate to admit that I'm only showing up when some work has already been done by others; but that's the truth. I do feel bad at times that I'm basically free riding on others' efforts. Fortunately I don't really need the rewards so at least there's that to easy my conscience and I'm happy to help anyway. Just need to know that it's not all for nothing.

Those announcements are definitely heard; and I'm afraid that you and most other people here are correct in their assessment that such communication, as opposed to PUGging is the only way to actually complete the zone. Which is a shame, really. The other battlezones work so well, which makes me wonder why they did it different this time.

ltminns · August 2017

You're my heroes.

Problem was the inconsistentcy in the award of the Protomatter Containers. Two or three times we defeated all three Dreadnoughts and the final award contained no Containers.

postagepaid · August 2017

For a sci captain in a carrier or flight deck ship the asteroid push is a doddle as photonic fleet acts as a defensive barrier to their pushing. At least it did last time I was there and since the devs don't care about the BZ it probably still does.

Even without that its a simple matter of pushing more than one at a time into the goal and clearing bigger enemies on the return journey.

Speed and staying fairly central is important for the shields one and king of the hill just requires a boatload of coffee to keep you awake. Command spec and dumping a cruiser near one can help keep the channel bar from progressing as amazingly they do actually get interupted.

Guessing TSC is a custom channel but might be worth mentioning its full name so more folk are aware of it, assuming of course its not an invite only affair.

tunebreaker · September 2017

risian4 wrote: »

tunebreaker wrote: »

I have found myself in Tzenkethi BZ pretty often and yes, I have to agree with what others have said so far. The rate of capturing zones back is way too fast. I remember countless times when the handful of players finally managed to get the map down to 3 red areas, when suddenly: boom, whole map was suddenly red again.

Furthermore, all the arbitrary timegates when capturing a zone can be very off-putting for many players.

And it's really ridiculous that only times I've ever seen bosses even pop is when I announce in TSC that "hey, there are only few areas left to capture and then we see the bosses" and then (hopefully) group of experienced players show up to help me and the few others who were on the map to finish it up.

While I personally enjoy the map, it still shows a bad design when average players are unable to complete it. Battlezones should be oriented towards normal players, imo.

I'll admit, I'm one of those players who usually only show up after you announce it. Otherwise this zone is just not worth the effort, there's no fun in trying to recapture the same map three times, only to lose it again before the bosses spawn.

I hate to admit that I'm only showing up when some work has already been done by others; but that's the truth. I do feel bad at times that I'm basically free riding on others' efforts. Fortunately I don't really need the rewards so at least there's that to easy my conscience and I'm happy to help anyway. Just need to know that it's not all for nothing.

And I don't blame anyone who does this, quite the opposite. I'm happy when you (and others) turn up, even if it's only after someone calling.

postagepaid wrote: »

Guessing TSC is a custom channel but might be worth mentioning its full name so more folk are aware of it, assuming of course its not an invite only affair.

Full name is "The Science Channel", and it's an open channel.

Tzenkethi Battlezone

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