I would of liked a few more episodes, but the 6 we got were EXCELLENT. So not complaining too much.
This is not a personal attack or snide remark, but can someone explain to me how they find the missions "excellent" in this storyline? I'm not trying to single anyone out, just this was the most appropriate quote to pull. I keep seeing this statement, but I'm wondering what is behind it/why people feel this way. What about the missions is "excellent?"
I played through all the new ones currently available on my Jem'hadar, and I had mixed feelings about them. As completely stand-alone one-off stories, I could see them as good/enjoyable. As part of a story with background, I found them untrue to their source material or the game's own material.
My primary reasons for this:
- Massive villain decay of the Iconians. If a small handful of Ferengi can sneak aboard an Iconian flagship at whim, why didn't the alliance do this constantly during the war and just smuggle "future nukes" aboard? Apparently one Ferengi can one-hit kill just about every Iconian servant with a throwing knife, so have him teach a couple more and we'll be set. Better yet, "borrow" Dominion cloning tech. It's not like the other, peaceful Iconians jumped in to help, so this was apparently stuff we could have always done. A small bit of dialogue from Nog explaining that the "good" Iconians shared some secrets after the war could have partially closed this plothole, but it would still be extreme villain decay.
- Completely out of character behavior for a Jem'hadar, especially in the currently final episode, with odd dialogue from Odo seeming to beg a Jem'hadar to help the Founders who essentially helped put them all at risk. To a Klingon or Starfleet captain, it might make sense, but to the expansion's primary focal point it just didn't feel right to me at all.
- The Hur'q being essentially just drugged maniacs, I guess? I didn't understand this reasoning. They got hungry, and maybe drugged up, so they went on an interstellar buffet trip, and this was somehow a major threat to everyone? If they were driven insane, how did they still manage to operate and continue developing all of their technology? If they didn't continue developing, shouldn't the Dominion have surpassed their tech - or developed a counter - after well over 1,000 (being generous, seems like 2,000) years of study? This makes the Dominion look incompetent, the female changeling most of all.
- The female changeling overall, and this is the most serious one for me. Her ending was poor, but the biggest issue was the dramatic retconning of practically everything she did from the actual show. Basically, she was just a lying megalomaniac the entire series. Odo's crimes of being the first changeling to ever harm another, her insistence that Odo was worth more to the Founders than the entire Alpha Quadrant, the importance of the Great Link and commonality of all changelings, it was all lies and hypocrisy. She just wanted control.
I feel like this storyline is not true to its canon source material, nor to itself, so I can't really see it as "excellent" story. I'm genuinely interested in hearing another perspective, and if perhaps I've overlooked/missed details.
I've used the bank a couple of times and each time it spawned halfway into the floor.
The knives are ok although if you have them on autofire its almost impossible to get any other ability to fire off. The rage fire thing is fun but takes a long time to actually activate during which you're immobile. Used it on my sci jem and went back to the basic fire puddle you start with because its faster so it'll actually do a tick of damage before things keel over.
Past year we've seen a swathe of melee weapons added. The mekleth, torgs batleth, fed spear, tsunkatse gloves and now this new spear (knives are more short/close ranged than actual melee) yet we've not really any need or setting to really make use of them. One of the new enemies makes trying melee fairly pointless due to its aoe knockback.
These are just the first 6 episodes and not the entirety of VIL.
This was the initial launch, there is more coming. At the end of the 6th mission, it ended with 'To Be Continued..'
Plus lets not forget, with VIL we also got the Playable Jem'Hadar and Cardassians, level cap, new Queue, new ships and the Battlezone as well as the revamp of Deep Space 9 and the addition of the Gama Quadrant. It was more then just the 6 episodes.
Even comparing only launch missions ViL is pitiful compared to every other expansion this game has had.
Actually, (and as a TOS fan I find this sad) - It has MORE than the STO "Agents of Yesterday" expansion did.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
These are just the first 6 episodes and not the entirety of VIL.
This was the initial launch, there is more coming. At the end of the 6th mission, it ended with 'To Be Continued..'
Plus lets not forget, with VIL we also got the Playable Jem'Hadar and Cardassians, level cap, new Queue, new ships and the Battlezone as well as the revamp of Deep Space 9 and the addition of the Gama Quadrant. It was more then just the 6 episodes.
Even comparing only launch missions ViL is pitiful compared to every other expansion this game has had.
Actually, (and as a TOS fan I find this sad) - It has MORE than the STO "Agents of Yesterday" expansion did.
If you include both TOS exclusive missions and faction agnostic missions, AoY had more.
the whole game suffers from what you're describing, and it's fine-it's a themepark railroad MMO, not a deep exploration of the setting you remember from television, as a result, a lot of it is "Kiddified". Think of it as what it is-a comic book version of the Trek reality, like "Sgt Fury" or "Weird War Tales", etc. etc.
I mean, it has "Holodeck" right in the name, an improbable rank-advancement curve, and events stacked superimposed to the point that the player captain would be hard pressed to find time for sleeping, eating, or even going to the bathroom over the last two years in-setting. The issues you bring up in your spoiler tag resolve themselves if you assume you're playing the fiction of the Star Trek universe-as in the in-universe fiction. A popular Holodeck series for the children of the Federation, with clear, simple divisions between good and evil and radically simplified or flat-made-up situations that are easily resolved in the space of an hour's playing time each week, wrapped around a moral lesson as determined by the Federation's council on education and public morality, where the only answer that's right, is the one that supports the official line from Paris.
Once you embrace that idea, it all makes a lot more sense, and becomes easier to look at the missions on a graphical and gameplay level.
and graphically, and in terms of gameplay, ViL is a significant improvement over the last two or three expansions, with mission options and maps that are actually better designed than Delta Rising, or the Iconian war, or the Temporal war.
but don't look for strong story content from Cryptic. as it is, the story content is significantly better than those examples, but it's still objectively pretty weaksauce and still a blatant railroad format. (Only one answer, the obvious one, only one perspective, the Starfleet one, only one outcome, the happy ending for the Federation, whom are always right, and even the shady things are justifiable because they support the Federation's current political direction.)
If I'm reading correctly, you're saying it's more a relative "excellent" than true "excellent?" (Add Mr. Burns tent fingers as necessary.) Along the lines of how every May/June there's some new pop song everyone says is great, but they don't mean Wagner, Elvis, Diana Ross, or any of the other true greats. Instead, it's "great" in the sense of a couple months of braindead memes and something new to dance to, then completely forget about.
Thank you for that clarification. I can understand that, though I don't agree with it. Even by those lower standards I don't think I can call these "excellent" because of the retconning. To me, that shows a true lack of understanding of the source material, professionalism, skill...something. I can't immediately think of any time they've done the same to established characters within this game. Feels more like that Vulcan Borg Queen from whatever game that was so many people hated. I think it would have been better to simply use a new, unique character.
For all the people parroting "quality over quanity", I have 1 very simple question for you:
What is the minimum number of missions you would accept for an "expansion"?
From LOR until now, STO's expansions are shrinking at an exponential rate. If the trend continues, the next expansion would have even less than 6 missions. Again, what is the absolute minimum amount of missions an "expansion" could have before "quality over quantity" just doesn't work anymore?
The answer to this question depends a lot on what the expected theme or intent of the expansion in question is to be. I wouldn't expect, say, an expansion based on revamping the Klingon faction's outfits, social zones, and ship models to include new story content, though they may touch up older missions.
However, STO's expansions are, historically, story-driven with an emphasis on new stuff. So while the answer of 0 is acceptable in principle, it's a bit disingenuous, since it ignores now four expansions worth of pattern, as well as the baseline fact that STO is fairly story-oriented.
For me personally, at launch, I would expect no less than five (5) new story missions. One or more missions should be added later, before the next season update (half-seasons are acceptable, given they typically coincide with said story-continuing mission releases). This is, of course, a bare minimum situation.
These are just the first 6 episodes and not the entirety of VIL.
This was the initial launch, there is more coming. At the end of the 6th mission, it ended with 'To Be Continued..'
Plus lets not forget, with VIL we also got the Playable Jem'Hadar and Cardassians, level cap, new Queue, new ships and the Battlezone as well as the revamp of Deep Space 9 and the addition of the Gama Quadrant. It was more then just the 6 episodes.
Reading comprehension skills seems to be lacking in these forums of late. It has been repeatedly stated that the VIL expansion consists of a lot more than 6 missions, with the 6 we have seen so far being just the beginning, and yet....
If that's true, why is each new patch billed as a fresh content pack rather than a continuation of the current expansion? But we have things like "Season N" and "Season N.5" instead of "More Of Agents of Yesterday's Content."
For all the people parroting "quality over quanity", I have 1 very simple question for you:
What is the minimum number of missions you would accept for an "expansion"?
Of course, we can't avoid the part where this is a f2p game, and "Expansion" doesn't necessarily mean anything other than "larger content release". It's not comparable to, say, an expansion in WoW that costs everyone $30-40.
(yes, they make a big deal out of 'expansion' here, and sell those Big Bundles. Still doesn't make it quite the same thing.)
...I do wonder how budgeting goes. How much did having a zillion major/minor character voice actors cost, and how much value do people put on that. (I've got nothing but a feeling, but have the number of show actors they have in each major story arc been increasing? More in Delta than in LoR, more in ViL than in Delta? Eh, could just have a terrible memory. )
I also play Rift (another F2P game), and each expansion has added a large continent with several zones. Each zone has several dozen quests, with its own storyline that connects into the expansion's overall story. Each expansion has included a few new dungeons/raids as well - this is, of course, in addition to new abilities that completely change the way any given build plays. And guess what? Rift players consider this to be extremely sparse and an indication that the game is in maintenance mode. Oddly, STO's expansions are minuscule by comparison, but it looks much healthier than Rift.
LoR was a good expansion, but I thought DR was far superior in terms of a story. It was certainly better in it's initial iteration before it got chopped and changed with the little side stories. As for ViL, the story has been great and the expansion has not been finished off being released. People thinking that 'that is it' need to be patient. There's more coming soon.
And once again, let's not forget guys, this game is FREE!
This game is not free. It uses the "Free To Play" financial model. There is a world of difference between these two terms.
exactly as @coqaunandos117#2576 predicted, no one is brave enough to actually answer this question because they know how ridiculous it will sound to say they would be happy with something called an expansion that has even less than 6 missions.
Someone already responded to it, and I will also.
An expansion can have literally NO new missions, and I would be fine with it so long as whatever new mechanics and systems they added in it were good enough. Several games and MMOs have done just that.
It's a good thing VIL has six missions instead of none, then, because I haven't seen any new mechanics or systems.
I think we also need to point out that the vast majority of this new expansion is completely free, including the principal new race choice. I've played other F2P MMOs and to me nothing compares to what Cryptic gives us. Now of course a buffed-up Jemmie or a Cardie (who'd want to play a Cardie anyway? ) might cost you something, but you can always grind the Dil and get it free anyway.
The only reason I really invest some RL cash into this game is to support the team and help ensure a healthy future for STO. I could go completely F2P and still enjoy the vast majority of the game.
So to me, saying the last expansion was a good deal for our money is a grave understatement. The new missions are awesome and really happy with where this game's going. Less missions at first launch but with great new content all around, I'm all for it.
My two cents.
"grind the Dil and get it free anyway"
I'm sorry, what? You can spend time and effort to earn a resource, trade it with someone for a different resource that they acquired by exchanging yet another resource they got from different work, and then... it's free? That is the opposite of free. When Cryptic offers a giveaway and you can acquire a new item by just logging in and claiming it, that is free.
For all the people parroting "quality over quanity", I have 1 very simple question for you:
What is the minimum number of missions you would accept for an "expansion"?
From LOR until now, STO's expansions are shrinking at an exponential rate. If the trend continues, the next expansion would have even less than 6 missions. Again, what is the absolute minimum amount of missions an "expansion" could have before "quality over quantity" just doesn't work anymore?
Yeah, you aren't going to get any "honest" answers to your question. The previous poster just tried to side-step it with their "zero" answer. But the truth is, we all know calling 6 episodes(great or not) an "expansion" is getting ridiculous. The white knights would defend a 1 episode expansion and still shout "quality over quantity!".
I love it when anything which can't be measured in 'number of episodes' is supposedly a 'zero' answer. Whereas the latter is exactly the warranted answer: an expansion is not just about the amount of extra episodes. An expansion, loosely defined, is 'A substantial addition to the game; one which materially impacts the flow and content of the game -- beyond mere patches or the odd occasional new episode.' And that's exactly what ViL is. New ships/bundles, new ship mechanics (wingmen), a new 'Fraction', new leveling, higher Mk, and, last, but not least, new content. Good content.
Let's use your definition, then. Do new ships materially impact the flow and content of the game? No; you'll still be doing the same content in much the same way (leaning on the spacebar). How about new ship mechanics? Well, I hadn't even heard of wingmen before now, but I see it's a C-Store ship feature. Reading the news page about them makes them sound like nothing more than an extra bridge officer with an actually useful (damage) space trait. I might have considered this to materially impact the flow of the game, but damage, heal, and shield damage abilities are not new concepts. A new "Fraction" (faction)? I don't know about you, but my Gamma Recruit is KDF. That is an old faction. My Temporal Recruit is Starfleet, another old faction. There's no difference between a character from one of these "factions" and anyone else. No impact on the flow and content of the game there. New leveling - obviously no impact, seeing as how you could hit 65 within a few minutes of logging in after the patch entirely by accident. None of the leveling perks are noticeable, either - just another bland damage increase for tac, and that's the "good" one. Higher Mk isn't even arguably a new mechanic or content. It's just padding a number. Since enemies scale up with character level, it makes about as much difference to the game as a fresh version number. New content? Yes! VIL has that! Is it good? That's a matter of opinion. Personally, I didn't think much of epic space battles that NPCs win for me and maps where my bridge officers can't even go through a simple doorway, to say nothing of another "everything is caused by <current enemy>" retcon just like we had with Iconians.
Some folks need to keep in mind, that this is just the start of the ViL. It's been said plenty of times now that this isn't all there is going to be and that there WILL be more episodes coming. The expansion will be just 2 weeks old tomorrow. No modern mmo releases everything at once, with World of Warcraft being a well known example. By definition an expansion is adding additional content that wasn't there previously. As such even a 1 episode expansion would be considered an expansion. At the end of each of the previous expansions we've had a fair amount of episodes to go along with queues, battlezones etc. From when we first hit the Delta Quadrant to the time we fought the Iconians at Midnight was Delta Rising. From just after Midnight to the time we fought the Tzenkethi for the first time was AoY.
IMO several people are trying to compare the start of Victory is Life that we have now to the fully completed Delta Rising, AoY, and LoR expacs and not looking at the bigger picture. It's like comparing the foundation of a house to the fully completed product, obviously the house that is fully built will have more to it than the house that's still only a foundation.
beyond this it seems like some folks are wanting very specific answers to questions that are very subjective in nature and i'm not sure what folks want to hear.
Like I said above, we don't get to call them "Featured Episodes" and "Season N" and "Season N.5" but still consider them as being part of what the expansion is offering. Sure, those are things that might appear between this expansion and the next, but this expansion already launched, this is what it is offering, and this is what we are evaluating. Imagine someone telling their spouse that, sure, this birthday gift is a $5 Amazon gift certificate, but it'll be updated in the coming months with a personalized card and chocolate (on Valentine's), a dinner out (on their anniversary), and a new recliner (on Christmas). So that's actually a great birthday gift! Eventually! Counting everything else in some kind of weird AoE!
> @somtaawkhar said:
> azrael605 wrote: »
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> Not perfect yes but a huge step up from the random hand and arm motions and unsynched or non existent mouth movement of older missions.
>
>
>
> the lack of mouth movement is largely due to an animation bug stemming from AoY.
That had an effect too but replay Boldly They Rode and watch the conference cutscene (unless thats been updated due to Garak's inclusion) and watch Shon flail about for no reason, compared to that the cutscenes in ViL include appropriate body language, facial movement beyond just the mouth, changing facial expressions, etc.
DO NOT REPLAY "BOLDLY THEY RODE." It is a DS9 mission that has had trouble with the introduction of the new DS9 map. According to the 6/5 patch notes, you can even get "trapped" there if you do something wrong, and it's not even clear what players should look out for or what we should do to ensure we don't run into problems. Since it's not mentioned in subsequent patch notes, I have to assume it's still broken, with no word on if/when it'll be safe again.
If you include both TOS exclusive missions and faction agnostic missions, AoY had more.
They also recycled more maps and employed simpler objective sets. Personally I think these comparisons are moot because while we can quantify mission quantity we can't quantify quantity sufficient to definitively test if equivalent effort is being applied. What's left: what any given person reckons. That's feedback but there's only so far we can take it in group discussion.
Do you think the quantity trade off is worth it, based on your personal appraisal of quality? Yes/No
Okay.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Keep in mind that LoR brought in a new faction, or sub faction if you prefer.
and? so did this one. in fact a faction with far, far less content. i'm not seeing a point to pointing that out
Reading comprehension skills seems to be lacking in these forums of late. It has been repeatedly stated that the VIL expansion consists of a lot more than 6 missions, with the 6 we have seen so far being just the beginning, and yet....
Reading comprehension skills are doing just fine for everyone in this thread, but using common sense for people making this excuse seems to be an issue. 'alot more than 6 missions' according to who exactly? If you think they're going to put out alot more missions as part of this expansions you're nuts. The reality is that the expansion has already launched, you'll be lucky to get one or two missions in the next six months at the absolute most and that will just be to end the expansion storyline and start moving toward whatever is supposed to come next. People are reading far too much into that stupid 'to be continued' nonsense, if they think it means anything significant is coming
ViL is the first expansion since KDF back in 2010, that did NOT have faction exclusive mission content for that new faction. (the introduction scene maybe counts? not sure.)
What? Yes it did, the very first mission. It was a pointless repeat of an already existing mission but it was there
Actually, as Cryptic said before, they wanted to do that for the Iconian War, but everything else they were doing meant there was just no time for it.
They have had plenty of time since and haven't added any
Patrols were never part of the leveling process, and always 100% optional.
No, they were a required part of the DR arc at the time, which you needed to do to level up, which you needed to do to open up the next mission
The fact that the Cardassians are more expensive, is also logical. They unlock for both factions. And players are likely less motivated to buy Vanguards because you can already play free Jem'hadar demand is likely smaller.
No it isn't logical, its an attempt to rip people off. If demand for jem'hadar is lower than cardassians common sense says they should have made a cardassian faction instead
- Massive villain decay of the Iconians. If a small handful of Ferengi can sneak aboard an Iconian flagship at whim, why didn't the alliance do this constantly during the war and just smuggle "future nukes" aboard? Apparently one Ferengi can one-hit kill just about every Iconian servant with a throwing knife, so have him teach a couple more and we'll be set. Better yet, "borrow" Dominion cloning tech. It's not like the other, peaceful Iconians jumped in to help, so this was apparently stuff we could have always done. A small bit of dialogue from Nog explaining that the "good" Iconians shared some secrets after the war could have partially closed this plothole, but it would still be extreme villain decay.
- Completely out of character behavior for a Jem'hadar, especially in the currently final episode, with odd dialogue from Odo seeming to beg a Jem'hadar to help the Founders who essentially helped put them all at risk. To a Klingon or Starfleet captain, it might make sense, but to the expansion's primary focal point it just didn't feel right to me at all.
- The Hur'q being essentially just drugged maniacs, I guess? I didn't understand this reasoning. They got hungry, and maybe drugged up, so they went on an interstellar buffet trip, and this was somehow a major threat to everyone? If they were driven insane, how did they still manage to operate and continue developing all of their technology? If they didn't continue developing, shouldn't the Dominion have surpassed their tech - or developed a counter - after well over 1,000 (being generous, seems like 2,000) years of study? This makes the Dominion look incompetent, the female changeling most of all.
- The female changeling overall, and this is the most serious one for me. Her ending was poor, but the biggest issue was the dramatic retconning of practically everything she did from the actual show. Basically, she was just a lying megalomaniac the entire series. Odo's crimes of being the first changeling to ever harm another, her insistence that Odo was worth more to the Founders than the entire Alpha Quadrant, the importance of the Great Link and commonality of all changelings, it was all lies and hypocrisy. She just wanted control.
This sums things up rather nicely. The entire story was borderline nonsensical at best, and utterly inconsistent with anything in the tv series its supposed to be based off of. Not only that, it even goes against one of those fiction blogs where the changeling refused to rejoin the link because it knew they were losing the war and couldn't hide that knowledge from the rest of the changelings if they linked....yet apparently the female changeling is killing all these other founders, secretly creating and hiding what the hur'q are doing and why and acting like a psycho and manipulative the entire time, to the point of admitting to being guilty of the very thing she adamantly chastised odo for. Don't even get me started on the whole weyoun thinking he could order his jem'hadar to kill odo. Yeah, sure, they would just jump on that order. He's lucky they didn't shoot him on the spot, it wouldn't be the first time he got shot for doing something stupid with his own men. Don't get me started on the 'kill iconians with a throwing knife' nonsense either. That whole mission was all kinds of stupid. They're in the middle of a battle....and the ship is almost deserted...and they go around killing iconians with knives...when they could barely do squat to to any iconian forces during the war. The fact that an entire group of people could infiltrate and walk around an iconian ship - the flagship no less, in the middle of a major battle is ludicrous
I doubt you have any familiarity to be honest. You certainly haven't demonstrated any. There are over 10,000 missions in the foundry, I have been playing foundry missions for over 7 years now in STO, even I have barely scratched the surface of what is there.
I can name a hundred good foundry missions, off the top of my head if I want to, a thousand with little effort
Like he said, name one. Frankly I haven't seen a single decent one either. and claiming that 75% of them are good? Yeah right. Not a chance
you can even get "trapped" there if you do something wrong, and it's not even clear what players should look out for or what we should do to ensure we don't run into problems. Since it's not mentioned in subsequent patch notes, I have to assume it's still broken, with no word on if/when it'll be safe again.
……Feels more like that Vulcan Borg Queen from whatever game that was so many people hated. I think it would have been better to simply use a new, unique character.
That would be Star Trek Legacy....there were so many issues with that game, on PC for me I think it skipped some cutscenes, and maybe a level or two.
Game also had space combat a cross between bridge commander and SFC III (Even had ships from that one!) … much like how STO has somewhat, but we can actually move around. Visuals were..."okay".
Lazarus learn to read I said 75 percent were ****. I said 10 percent were excellent. As for naming good ones
First Cause, Then Effect
The Hundredth
Parallel Intentions
Admiral Bobo goes to War (just for the humor).
I can do this all day.
The Hundredth could be cleaned up and made into an actual mission now, and it would fit in somewhat for the Jem'Hadar to deal with and Loris could be the contact for it.
Also side note, while playing as a Jem'Hadar aligned to the Klingon side, I've determined I hate dialog written in that feels stupid from coming from my Jem'Hadar crew about the home world/other TRIBBLE. I feel like they could have done better long ago in having a 3rd dialog for Romulans and any half-factions added that do not feel jarringly out of character for their faction just because they have aligned with one of the two. This yanks me out of whatever episode storyline I'm playing and go "why the TRIBBLE would I say that? Why would my non-Klingon Crew say that?!?!?!" …to the point that I try to skip dialog if I know the episode bound to have stupid dialog, to the point if I think I can skip the episode(worthless gear, non-content unlock required episode) I do.
Boldly they Rode wasn't broken, Storm Clouds Gather was, and it was fixed in the patch on the 14th.
There are several issues including missing VO with the 2800 Arc. At the end of Boldly They Rode, players can become trapped if they do not complete the mission on the older Deep Space Nine map.
Sounds like Boldly They Rode was/is broken. As I said, it's not clear exactly what a player should do to avoid a problem there, and if they've fixed it, it hasn't been communicated in the patch notes.
Now level scaling is broken in "many PvE queues" (a friend of mine reported that a previously-reasonable Elite queue is now "nearly impossible"), and PvP for characters above level 60 (anyone who has logged in and done anything) is simply inaccessible, according to the known issues in the most recent patch.
Comments
This is not a personal attack or snide remark, but can someone explain to me how they find the missions "excellent" in this storyline? I'm not trying to single anyone out, just this was the most appropriate quote to pull. I keep seeing this statement, but I'm wondering what is behind it/why people feel this way. What about the missions is "excellent?"
I played through all the new ones currently available on my Jem'hadar, and I had mixed feelings about them. As completely stand-alone one-off stories, I could see them as good/enjoyable. As part of a story with background, I found them untrue to their source material or the game's own material.
My primary reasons for this:
- Completely out of character behavior for a Jem'hadar, especially in the currently final episode, with odd dialogue from Odo seeming to beg a Jem'hadar to help the Founders who essentially helped put them all at risk. To a Klingon or Starfleet captain, it might make sense, but to the expansion's primary focal point it just didn't feel right to me at all.
- The Hur'q being essentially just drugged maniacs, I guess? I didn't understand this reasoning. They got hungry, and maybe drugged up, so they went on an interstellar buffet trip, and this was somehow a major threat to everyone? If they were driven insane, how did they still manage to operate and continue developing all of their technology? If they didn't continue developing, shouldn't the Dominion have surpassed their tech - or developed a counter - after well over 1,000 (being generous, seems like 2,000) years of study? This makes the Dominion look incompetent, the female changeling most of all.
- The female changeling overall, and this is the most serious one for me. Her ending was poor, but the biggest issue was the dramatic retconning of practically everything she did from the actual show. Basically, she was just a lying megalomaniac the entire series. Odo's crimes of being the first changeling to ever harm another, her insistence that Odo was worth more to the Founders than the entire Alpha Quadrant, the importance of the Great Link and commonality of all changelings, it was all lies and hypocrisy. She just wanted control.
I feel like this storyline is not true to its canon source material, nor to itself, so I can't really see it as "excellent" story. I'm genuinely interested in hearing another perspective, and if perhaps I've overlooked/missed details.
The knives are ok although if you have them on autofire its almost impossible to get any other ability to fire off. The rage fire thing is fun but takes a long time to actually activate during which you're immobile. Used it on my sci jem and went back to the basic fire puddle you start with because its faster so it'll actually do a tick of damage before things keel over.
Past year we've seen a swathe of melee weapons added. The mekleth, torgs batleth, fed spear, tsunkatse gloves and now this new spear (knives are more short/close ranged than actual melee) yet we've not really any need or setting to really make use of them. One of the new enemies makes trying melee fairly pointless due to its aoe knockback.
foundry is no Option. there is no reward other than ec and dili - and 99% are just TRIBBLE.
The Foundry is a system that gives us a means to tell our own Trek stories, it is NOT a substitute for official, Cryptic produced missions.
So YOU decide how familar i am with foundry missions? Tell me 10 excellent foundry missions and i give u 999 bad ones in return.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
If you include both TOS exclusive missions and faction agnostic missions, AoY had more.
If I'm reading correctly, you're saying it's more a relative "excellent" than true "excellent?" (Add Mr. Burns tent fingers as necessary.) Along the lines of how every May/June there's some new pop song everyone says is great, but they don't mean Wagner, Elvis, Diana Ross, or any of the other true greats. Instead, it's "great" in the sense of a couple months of braindead memes and something new to dance to, then completely forget about.
Thank you for that clarification. I can understand that, though I don't agree with it. Even by those lower standards I don't think I can call these "excellent" because of the retconning. To me, that shows a true lack of understanding of the source material, professionalism, skill...something. I can't immediately think of any time they've done the same to established characters within this game. Feels more like that Vulcan Borg Queen from whatever game that was so many people hated. I think it would have been better to simply use a new, unique character.
The answer to this question depends a lot on what the expected theme or intent of the expansion in question is to be. I wouldn't expect, say, an expansion based on revamping the Klingon faction's outfits, social zones, and ship models to include new story content, though they may touch up older missions.
However, STO's expansions are, historically, story-driven with an emphasis on new stuff. So while the answer of 0 is acceptable in principle, it's a bit disingenuous, since it ignores now four expansions worth of pattern, as well as the baseline fact that STO is fairly story-oriented.
For me personally, at launch, I would expect no less than five (5) new story missions. One or more missions should be added later, before the next season update (half-seasons are acceptable, given they typically coincide with said story-continuing mission releases). This is, of course, a bare minimum situation.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
If that's true, why is each new patch billed as a fresh content pack rather than a continuation of the current expansion? But we have things like "Season N" and "Season N.5" instead of "More Of Agents of Yesterday's Content."
I also play Rift (another F2P game), and each expansion has added a large continent with several zones. Each zone has several dozen quests, with its own storyline that connects into the expansion's overall story. Each expansion has included a few new dungeons/raids as well - this is, of course, in addition to new abilities that completely change the way any given build plays. And guess what? Rift players consider this to be extremely sparse and an indication that the game is in maintenance mode. Oddly, STO's expansions are minuscule by comparison, but it looks much healthier than Rift.
This game is not free. It uses the "Free To Play" financial model. There is a world of difference between these two terms.
It's a good thing VIL has six missions instead of none, then, because I haven't seen any new mechanics or systems.
"grind the Dil and get it free anyway"
I'm sorry, what? You can spend time and effort to earn a resource, trade it with someone for a different resource that they acquired by exchanging yet another resource they got from different work, and then... it's free? That is the opposite of free. When Cryptic offers a giveaway and you can acquire a new item by just logging in and claiming it, that is free.
Let's use your definition, then. Do new ships materially impact the flow and content of the game? No; you'll still be doing the same content in much the same way (leaning on the spacebar). How about new ship mechanics? Well, I hadn't even heard of wingmen before now, but I see it's a C-Store ship feature. Reading the news page about them makes them sound like nothing more than an extra bridge officer with an actually useful (damage) space trait. I might have considered this to materially impact the flow of the game, but damage, heal, and shield damage abilities are not new concepts. A new "Fraction" (faction)? I don't know about you, but my Gamma Recruit is KDF. That is an old faction. My Temporal Recruit is Starfleet, another old faction. There's no difference between a character from one of these "factions" and anyone else. No impact on the flow and content of the game there. New leveling - obviously no impact, seeing as how you could hit 65 within a few minutes of logging in after the patch entirely by accident. None of the leveling perks are noticeable, either - just another bland damage increase for tac, and that's the "good" one. Higher Mk isn't even arguably a new mechanic or content. It's just padding a number. Since enemies scale up with character level, it makes about as much difference to the game as a fresh version number. New content? Yes! VIL has that! Is it good? That's a matter of opinion. Personally, I didn't think much of epic space battles that NPCs win for me and maps where my bridge officers can't even go through a simple doorway, to say nothing of another "everything is caused by <current enemy>" retcon just like we had with Iconians.
Like I said above, we don't get to call them "Featured Episodes" and "Season N" and "Season N.5" but still consider them as being part of what the expansion is offering. Sure, those are things that might appear between this expansion and the next, but this expansion already launched, this is what it is offering, and this is what we are evaluating. Imagine someone telling their spouse that, sure, this birthday gift is a $5 Amazon gift certificate, but it'll be updated in the coming months with a personalized card and chocolate (on Valentine's), a dinner out (on their anniversary), and a new recliner (on Christmas). So that's actually a great birthday gift! Eventually! Counting everything else in some kind of weird AoE!
DO NOT REPLAY "BOLDLY THEY RODE." It is a DS9 mission that has had trouble with the introduction of the new DS9 map. According to the 6/5 patch notes, you can even get "trapped" there if you do something wrong, and it's not even clear what players should look out for or what we should do to ensure we don't run into problems. Since it's not mentioned in subsequent patch notes, I have to assume it's still broken, with no word on if/when it'll be safe again.
They also recycled more maps and employed simpler objective sets. Personally I think these comparisons are moot because while we can quantify mission quantity we can't quantify quantity sufficient to definitively test if equivalent effort is being applied. What's left: what any given person reckons. That's feedback but there's only so far we can take it in group discussion.
Do you think the quantity trade off is worth it, based on your personal appraisal of quality? Yes/No
Okay.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
and? so did this one. in fact a faction with far, far less content. i'm not seeing a point to pointing that out
Reading comprehension skills are doing just fine for everyone in this thread, but using common sense for people making this excuse seems to be an issue. 'alot more than 6 missions' according to who exactly? If you think they're going to put out alot more missions as part of this expansions you're nuts. The reality is that the expansion has already launched, you'll be lucky to get one or two missions in the next six months at the absolute most and that will just be to end the expansion storyline and start moving toward whatever is supposed to come next. People are reading far too much into that stupid 'to be continued' nonsense, if they think it means anything significant is coming
What? Yes it did, the very first mission. It was a pointless repeat of an already existing mission but it was there
They have had plenty of time since and haven't added any
No, they were a required part of the DR arc at the time, which you needed to do to level up, which you needed to do to open up the next mission
No it isn't logical, its an attempt to rip people off. If demand for jem'hadar is lower than cardassians common sense says they should have made a cardassian faction instead
This sums things up rather nicely. The entire story was borderline nonsensical at best, and utterly inconsistent with anything in the tv series its supposed to be based off of. Not only that, it even goes against one of those fiction blogs where the changeling refused to rejoin the link because it knew they were losing the war and couldn't hide that knowledge from the rest of the changelings if they linked....yet apparently the female changeling is killing all these other founders, secretly creating and hiding what the hur'q are doing and why and acting like a psycho and manipulative the entire time, to the point of admitting to being guilty of the very thing she adamantly chastised odo for. Don't even get me started on the whole weyoun thinking he could order his jem'hadar to kill odo. Yeah, sure, they would just jump on that order. He's lucky they didn't shoot him on the spot, it wouldn't be the first time he got shot for doing something stupid with his own men. Don't get me started on the 'kill iconians with a throwing knife' nonsense either. That whole mission was all kinds of stupid. They're in the middle of a battle....and the ship is almost deserted...and they go around killing iconians with knives...when they could barely do squat to to any iconian forces during the war. The fact that an entire group of people could infiltrate and walk around an iconian ship - the flagship no less, in the middle of a major battle is ludicrous
Like he said, name one. Frankly I haven't seen a single decent one either. and claiming that 75% of them are good? Yeah right. Not a chance
According to a livestream they did this was not the result of new tech, rather it was the skills of a new animator they hired.
That would be Star Trek Legacy....there were so many issues with that game, on PC for me I think it skipped some cutscenes, and maybe a level or two.
Game also had space combat a cross between bridge commander and SFC III (Even had ships from that one!) … much like how STO has somewhat, but we can actually move around. Visuals were..."okay".
The Hundredth could be cleaned up and made into an actual mission now, and it would fit in somewhat for the Jem'Hadar to deal with and Loris could be the contact for it.
Also side note, while playing as a Jem'Hadar aligned to the Klingon side, I've determined I hate dialog written in that feels stupid from coming from my Jem'Hadar crew about the home world/other TRIBBLE. I feel like they could have done better long ago in having a 3rd dialog for Romulans and any half-factions added that do not feel jarringly out of character for their faction just because they have aligned with one of the two. This yanks me out of whatever episode storyline I'm playing and go "why the TRIBBLE would I say that? Why would my non-Klingon Crew say that?!?!?!" …to the point that I try to skip dialog if I know the episode bound to have stupid dialog, to the point if I think I can skip the episode(worthless gear, non-content unlock required episode) I do.
Sounds like Boldly They Rode was/is broken. As I said, it's not clear exactly what a player should do to avoid a problem there, and if they've fixed it, it hasn't been communicated in the patch notes.
Storm Clouds Gather could also break, but it was fixed a few days ago.
The new queue was broken, too, but it was fixed within a few days.
Now level scaling is broken in "many PvE queues" (a friend of mine reported that a previously-reasonable Elite queue is now "nearly impossible"), and PvP for characters above level 60 (anyone who has logged in and done anything) is simply inaccessible, according to the known issues in the most recent patch.