Hat's off to the captain who brought a mega-well to the event this evening. Most everything on the map including the largest npc ships just went flying into this gigantic thing that must have been on global. Nothing more for the rest of the team to do but park and heap abuse into the furball. Nicely done sir/mam ...you don't see that kind of gravity well every day.
No advanced or elite...but that is a GOOD thing in my book as I can avoid this mission in the random option at advanced level. Because other than for the event, I really don't wanna do this mission...because reason above.
I hadn't thought of that.. I withdraw my complaint about no Advanced/Elite.
I’m going to revise my initial thoughts and say after a few runs it’s actually not too bad. The combat is generic and non-threatening but the scenery and voice overs help to make it feel more “real” than just the usual pew pew somehow.
Grav well is you friend here, as is anything AOE you can shoot into it. So exotic torp builds should have good fun here. I do quite like the rabble of Klingon ships though, makes them feel more like the different houses they are as oppose to a unified force in layer time periods.
I think I’d still have preferred only 25 tougher enemies to go against than endless spam mobs though.
One last thing though, it appears time gated at first but you can actually progress faster if the team is good enough. Rewards good players and still allows less able people to complete the mission too. That’s a step in the right direction for mission design and would be a welcome change for MI too if it’s possible.
Actually, I have to agree. Making it a PvP battle might've been pretty cool. FED protecting the Shenzhou, KDF protecting the Sarcophagus, and everyone shooting at each other.
it would never pop. There aren't enough KDF players left who even KNOW HOW to PvP to make that viable, and it's doubtful you'd be able to get enough KDF players at any given time to get it to pop in the first place. (our numbers are A LOT smaller than they were in 2012, even adding in KDF-Romulans).
The devs want it to succeed, ergo, it is fed-focused PvE.
It doesn't HAVE to be klingon players, but any player (Fed, KDF, Rom, Dom) playing AS Klingons in this map since the ships would get an overlay anyway.
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.
As usual, a lot of truths here. I don't know what metrics Cryptic use but I seriously doubt it's the duration of TFOs.
Missions being routinely designed to require nothing but time to complete indicates you're wrong. Look at the First Contact Day event, with it's fixed timer and optional gameplay that affects nothing at all, and say it isn't intended primarily to keep players in there for X minutes a day. Or remember the Breach event's famous shortcuts, that they've rushed to fix instantly every time despite being completely harmless. Usually such minor bugs in events don't get fixed until the next time it runs, if at all. In fact, there are still holes in the invisible walls in Breach that they haven't fixed, because they're in positions where going through won't make it go faster.
They clearly do care about the time spent in events.
Not an enjoyable STF/TFO with the endless weak NPC swarms, time gates, and general pointless nature of mission objectives. They need to split it into a normal and advanced version, with the advanced giving much greater reward if optionals are accomplished. The graphics are awesome at least.
Mirror invasion advanced remains my favorite space event, and I've done it probably hundreds of times by now, and Arena of Sompek my favorite ground event. I hope they take cues from these missions and model new ones after these.
The more I have to sit through the audio clips the more tkuvma goes from angry black dude to tinpot african dictator with a mouthful of marbles.
Getting very tempted to team my f2p & lts accounts, queue up and have one follow the other. Mainly due to the pregnant pauses and that longwinded cutscene which outwore its welcome after the third time. Probably won't because I prefer to only do that with some of the worse/overly long missions whereas this would be to aleviate boredom by being able to do something else that isn't sto faster.
Another report from the lower decks... in our second day, several people in the group died (especially during the "get close to lots of respawning BoPs" rescue-the-pods phase), and we just missed finishing the 60/60 'kill Klingons' stage before the timer ran out.
I can see getting tired of the cutscenes & pauses within a couple more plays. But my DSC alt needs some more marks for her reps, and 144/run is pretty good.
The more I have to sit through the audio clips the more tkuvma goes from angry black dude to tinpot african dictator with a mouthful of marbles.
Since I don't watch TRIBBLE, this was my first time actually hearing him talk. I now better understand what people mean when they complain that the awful rubber suits hinder their actors' performance.
That being said, as a hammy Saturday morning cartoon-level, T'Kuvma actually reminds me of a lot of the other named foes we've had in STO. Perhaps not quite as shrill as Hakeev or Cooper, but definitely in the same stupidly over-dramatic boat.
"There will never be enough blood to wash away my need for vengeance! A single world...I could destroy a million worlds and it would not be enough! Your existence is an insult to the memory of my people! I will continue my fight, even if I must fight alone!"
For me, personally, I don't like the idea of Featured TFO's. We don't need some of the current TFO garbage being hyped for another piece of gear to collect inventory space or as a means to put more grind into the game.
As for the mission itself, yeah, it really is just a pew pew mission that really didn't need to be. It's not very creative, the dialog has poor quality any time they use it directly from a show, it's tedious and boring, there's no need to do anything that even resembles working as a team. It's just so... bland. This is basically a foundry mission on a really nice background, with audio that some one had recorded on their phone while watching the episode.
The T'Kuvma english, from the show itself doesn't help either. It reminds me of how hollywood used to make native americans speak in movies from the 70's but he has a chunk of something in his mouth anytime he says anything. Is that just me? It's a terrible accent, regardless. I'm sure i'm deducting points here for Disco's mistakes, as well as the missions flaws but over all, this is just uninteresting and makes no sense in any aspect. It's just pew pew pew in a disco skin.
In all fairness, I DO like the map, and the item you get DOES seem interesting. I just think this was probably VERY rushed to meet the demand of CBS. If anything, they really should have hammered home more story to this, if they're going to cut back on fun or replayability. They should have better reasoning for tossing us into just a lack luster mission, like saying this is a section 31 kind of thing, to catch us up on our new (easily forgettable) enemy from the Disco timeline. Give us some better story or explanation as to WHY we are running this scenario and use it to tie our non-disco characters into the upcoming Disco content.
At this point, I would even suggest throwing it out to the Foundry community and just saying "hey, we messed up. Here are the assets, make us a mission that is less than fifteen minutes, ties into this moment, and is built to be a repeatable weekend event." It could be a contest, where the winner gets Discovery themed prizes.
What? There's dialog?? I keep my Kraken's plugged in and the sound muted so I wouldn't know if anyone said anything in any bad accent at all.
'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.'
Waiting out a timer I wouldn't call " a round with some meat to it." For anyone.
Perhaps not but that requires the omission of what's taking place during that time period. Ie. gameplay.
Consider priorities, if you're looking for a speed run for completion's sake (never mind this game what we're ostensibly playing) then time gates are a problem. If you're looking to play something, they do have advantages in TFO design. Overperforming players don't strip the combat out, their impact is buffered.
Cryptic is required by their corporate overlords to show their new content releases and events are "successful." The way to do this is to show that people are playing them a lot. And since Cryptic is, for whatever reason, unwilling to require players to play events more than once per day, the only way to increase play-time is to make sure they spend more time per run.
This makes no sense. From what plane did you pull the notion that the senior folks at PWE/Cryptic/Illuminati care most about the duration of TFO's? Cryptic could go to FAR greater extremes in design to maximize this parameter if it was the all and all. Just take the old STF structure. We're no where near that level of padding and yet we're supposed to be living under the regime of corporate overlords who hold precisely that quality as supreme? (not, say, anything that has a material impact on their financial success? Again, it doesn't matter how long someone plays an event TFO provided they're playing them consistently and that isn't having a knock-on effect on player engagement with STO as a whole and microtransactions in particular [per the reductionist corporate view of game design]. And under those circumstances a popcorn queue like Borg RA is easier to justify. It isn't actively challenging the player to take part in gameplay, just participate with the skinner box of minimal effort (repeated) -> reward.)
Hell, just compare Battle at Binary to Mirror Invasion. The timegating is less severe and overt despite the possible escalation that could have taken place. Why? Because Cryptic's improving gameplay design. Here we have 3 stages, mixed objectives, scaling optionals, and an added focal point (the Sarco and Shenzou) which you can strategize around (science magic the sarco away, DPS it to sleep, or focus on objectives that aren't near it.) They are getting better at using time gates as a buffer to scale gameplay difficulty (in a very immediate and non-exclusionary way) while providing a variety of other objectives and foci.
Should the next TFO be another space-based killing pit? No, even a good TFO doesn't stand to be repeated ad infinitum but for the Battle at Binary the design is very appropriate and Cryptic has done quite a lot to make it more interesting than the minimum of "Argala but with DSC Klingons."
Haha awesome Duncan, you should go into politics.
As usual, a lot of truths here. I don't know what metrics Cryptic use but I seriously doubt it's the duration of TFOs.
I think we can make an educated guess on what they would be interested in.
1. Number of folks logged in at various times
2. Amount of time they are logged in for
3. Event participation, ie are they actually doing something other than sitting in sol running admiralty or playing space barbie
4. Average microtransactions per player per hour
5. Zen orders received as a function of players logged in, or something along those lines.
Maybe a few others, such as % of different factions being played, popularity of certain events, apparent difficulties of new events or all events after a DPS hike or enemy adjustment, etc, I would imagine different departments look at different data sets and then meet up to discuss results so as to enable future planning. My guess is that the duration of the TFO may have an effect which events are popular, but as this is a temporary event and you must play it to get the reward then it probably skews the figures somewhat.
The MAIN metrics the Cryptic suits care about:
1) Has the ST: D content and other updates brought new players/reinvigorated current player interest?
2) Has the new content bother increased player retention/what percentage of these new players are spending Real World Currency for Zen?
They could care less what the players are actually doing/seeing as we could be mouse-clicking over a Test pattern for all they care, as long as people are spending real money for Zen.
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..."
We played it multiple times Friday night as a fleet. Everyone was laughing and having a good time. A couple of folks blew up and I've seen my fair share of dark players in the team list since then. That tells me it isn't as much a pushover as is being represented here.
I'd say it was a hit with my group and I personally like it too. I do agree that fewer, bigger, ships would give it a different feel and might make it even better. But I'm thinking that wouldn't be in line with the feel of that DSC episode which felt very chaotic with lots of small Klingon ships flying around supported by a few big cruisers. But it's been a while since I've seen it so maybe I'm mistaken.
the 3 bonus spec boxes are only awarded if you finish the assignment... ie turn in 14 event marks... and it's once per account.
at least with featured episode you get it up front once a week by doing the episode.
now you need to grind it out for 14 days to get 3 spec boxes.
since the summon support device all share a cool down with other summon support devices... no just no. I'll wait for the winter event. if this is a taste of things to come for more grinding of task force ques... cant wait till you guys get a new EP to change course from this.
Yeah, after running it a couple days I thought to myself "Wasn't I supposed to get a weekly first run bonus?"
Hat's off to the captain who brought a mega-well to the event this evening. Most everything on the map including the largest npc ships just went flying into this gigantic thing that must have been on global. Nothing more for the rest of the team to do but park and heap abuse into the furball. Nicely done sir/mam ...you don't see that kind of gravity well every day.
In one run, I brought my Tholian build with all the webby consoles. Someone complained about it, so I had to pop them even faster. Not sure what there was to complain about. It's just 15 minutes of pointless pew-pewing.
Sometimes I think I play STO just to have something to complain about on the forums.
It seems like typical featured episode play. The audio is atrocious and the cut scene with the ram kill is absolutely vacuous. Seriously, proximity sensors don't exist, and ignore all damage inertia, and mass would exert on your ship if you did something this moronic in space......
Apparantly, while the mission is timed, it s not strictly time-gated.
The beginning phase seems to be time-gated, but both the rescue pod sequence and the scene afterwards complete before the timer runs out if you complete the optional objectives. There is still some semblance of time-gating there, since each pod rescue takes a time, and Klingon ships need to respawn before you can kill them, but you can definitely get things done more quickly with a good team.
Overall, i also like the optional objectives. It seems much clear than in many previous task forces what the objectives give you, and the reward for it isn't bad, either.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I absolutely guarantee you that 2 of them are, how many folks are logged in at any one time and how much Zen they are selling. See my other list for the rest of the likely ones.
Reasonable assumptions. You weren't the one taking 'wild swings' at guessing what Cryptic wants from players though.
The pod phase can be done pretty fast since the ships always stop at the same spot and thats where the pods will spawn.
Head over during phase 1 and you're good to just sit and F them up. Got 41/40 pods yesterday between myself and another player. Grav wells still work with some timing for distance to reduce core popping although repulsors are a wee bit safer.
The way the ships spawn in encourages being lazy as there's zero variety in where they arrive and they don't uncloak they just appear.
Comments
I hadn't thought of that.. I withdraw my complaint about no Advanced/Elite.
The combat is generic and non-threatening but the scenery and voice overs help to make it feel more “real” than just the usual pew pew somehow.
Grav well is you friend here, as is anything AOE you can shoot into it. So exotic torp builds should have good fun here.
I do quite like the rabble of Klingon ships though, makes them feel more like the different houses they are as oppose to a unified force in layer time periods.
I think I’d still have preferred only 25 tougher enemies to go against than endless spam mobs though.
One last thing though, it appears time gated at first but you can actually progress faster if the team is good enough. Rewards good players and still allows less able people to complete the mission too. That’s a step in the right direction for mission design and would be a welcome change for MI too if it’s possible.
It doesn't HAVE to be klingon players, but any player (Fed, KDF, Rom, Dom) playing AS Klingons in this map since the ships would get an overlay anyway.
They clearly do care about the time spent in events.
Mirror invasion advanced remains my favorite space event, and I've done it probably hundreds of times by now, and Arena of Sompek my favorite ground event. I hope they take cues from these missions and model new ones after these.
Getting very tempted to team my f2p & lts accounts, queue up and have one follow the other. Mainly due to the pregnant pauses and that longwinded cutscene which outwore its welcome after the third time. Probably won't because I prefer to only do that with some of the worse/overly long missions whereas this would be to aleviate boredom by being able to do something else that isn't sto faster.
I can see getting tired of the cutscenes & pauses within a couple more plays. But my DSC alt needs some more marks for her reps, and 144/run is pretty good.
Since I don't watch TRIBBLE, this was my first time actually hearing him talk. I now better understand what people mean when they complain that the awful rubber suits hinder their actors' performance.
That being said, as a hammy Saturday morning cartoon-level, T'Kuvma actually reminds me of a lot of the other named foes we've had in STO. Perhaps not quite as shrill as Hakeev or Cooper, but definitely in the same stupidly over-dramatic boat.
As for the mission itself, yeah, it really is just a pew pew mission that really didn't need to be. It's not very creative, the dialog has poor quality any time they use it directly from a show, it's tedious and boring, there's no need to do anything that even resembles working as a team. It's just so... bland. This is basically a foundry mission on a really nice background, with audio that some one had recorded on their phone while watching the episode.
The T'Kuvma english, from the show itself doesn't help either. It reminds me of how hollywood used to make native americans speak in movies from the 70's but he has a chunk of something in his mouth anytime he says anything. Is that just me? It's a terrible accent, regardless. I'm sure i'm deducting points here for Disco's mistakes, as well as the missions flaws but over all, this is just uninteresting and makes no sense in any aspect. It's just pew pew pew in a disco skin.
In all fairness, I DO like the map, and the item you get DOES seem interesting. I just think this was probably VERY rushed to meet the demand of CBS. If anything, they really should have hammered home more story to this, if they're going to cut back on fun or replayability. They should have better reasoning for tossing us into just a lack luster mission, like saying this is a section 31 kind of thing, to catch us up on our new (easily forgettable) enemy from the Disco timeline. Give us some better story or explanation as to WHY we are running this scenario and use it to tie our non-disco characters into the upcoming Disco content.
At this point, I would even suggest throwing it out to the Foundry community and just saying "hey, we messed up. Here are the assets, make us a mission that is less than fifteen minutes, ties into this moment, and is built to be a repeatable weekend event." It could be a contest, where the winner gets Discovery themed prizes.
Phase 1: keep the NPCs from dying
Phase 2: interact with escape pods.
Phase3: shoot Klingons.
My character Tsin'xing
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.'
I'm pretty sure I haven't seen that thing's HP bar go down at all, yet.
The MAIN metrics the Cryptic suits care about:
1) Has the ST: D content and other updates brought new players/reinvigorated current player interest?
2) Has the new content bother increased player retention/what percentage of these new players are spending Real World Currency for Zen?
They could care less what the players are actually doing/seeing as we could be mouse-clicking over a Test pattern for all they care, as long as people are spending real money for Zen.
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..."
I'd say it was a hit with my group and I personally like it too. I do agree that fewer, bigger, ships would give it a different feel and might make it even better. But I'm thinking that wouldn't be in line with the feel of that DSC episode which felt very chaotic with lots of small Klingon ships flying around supported by a few big cruisers. But it's been a while since I've seen it so maybe I'm mistaken.
My character Tsin'xing
Yeah, after running it a couple days I thought to myself "Wasn't I supposed to get a weekly first run bonus?"
In one run, I brought my Tholian build with all the webby consoles. Someone complained about it, so I had to pop them even faster.
You can argue all you want, but you're all doing nothing but guessing.
Yeah, and?
It'd be pretty silly to not think that Cryptic wants:
Obviously, 'have fun' is not on the list.
Cirran
The beginning phase seems to be time-gated, but both the rescue pod sequence and the scene afterwards complete before the timer runs out if you complete the optional objectives. There is still some semblance of time-gating there, since each pod rescue takes a time, and Klingon ships need to respawn before you can kill them, but you can definitely get things done more quickly with a good team.
Overall, i also like the optional objectives. It seems much clear than in many previous task forces what the objectives give you, and the reward for it isn't bad, either.
I can't really think of much to counter that point.
Reasonable assumptions. You weren't the one taking 'wild swings' at guessing what Cryptic wants from players though.
Head over during phase 1 and you're good to just sit and F them up. Got 41/40 pods yesterday between myself and another player. Grav wells still work with some timing for distance to reduce core popping although repulsors are a wee bit safer.
The way the ships spawn in encourages being lazy as there's zero variety in where they arrive and they don't uncloak they just appear.
Briefing 1:00
Wait 2:00
Wait another 2:00
Status update 0:20
Wait 4:00
Cutscene
Wait 4:20
You win