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Do you want to see the failure condition in Tzenkethi red alerts removed?
fleetcaptain5
Member Posts: 5,051 Arc User
In the blog post that announced the current red alert event, as well as in the previous one, the devs mentioned that they may remove the failure condition in Tzenkethi red alerts (which is that no torpedoes are allowed to reach the planet) in the future.
Do you support removing this failure condition or not?
Do you support removing this failure condition or not?
Do you want to see the failure condition in Tzenkethi red alerts removed? 37 votes
Yes
10%
4 votes
No
70%
26 votes
Other / indifferent
18%
7 votes
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Situational awareness, which you really need in elite level queues.
If it is way too easy for some prick to come in and fail you on purpose... then yes. Yank those fail conditions. Don't give the trolls the satisfaction of ruining a whole group's enjoyment of the game.
However if it is more situational awareness or something that cannot be used against the rest of the group, then no. Leave them in.
They are considering removing it because you don't get daily progress for the event if you fail the mission.
(My opinion on that is that this isn't a very good reason - a player can always complete a Borg RA instead in a few minutes.)
Regarding your second question: there were missions like Infected: Manus and Undine infiltration where this happened a lot.
In general though, no. Players don't really try to cause grief in this game. Very few missions allow for that anyway and in the few missions where it is possible, I haven't seen it happening for a long time.
I'd like them to keep the RA as it is. If you could just ignore the torpedoes, very little challenge would remain as you could basically ignore a significant part of the targets then. It's nice to have a mission where players need to co-operate a bit.
The failure condition also isn't very problematic for the event as this RA is the only one to have such a condition.
I haven't seen this for quite some time. But back when fail conditions were more common... yea. I saw it. Even subjected to it myself by some prick who wanted to go looking for his "spec point" one time in Infected space.
Every game will have its Trolls. The question is just how easy is it for said Trolls to do their Trolling?
Right now its not easy for Trolls to impact you except maybe via harassment in social zones, and maybe underperforming in queues on purpose.
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.'
Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Gravity Kills, anyone?
Counter Argument: No plan survives contact with the enemy.
Back when Delta Rising launched, even the old Borg TFOs, back then still referred to as STFs, had fail conditions that were actually QUITE EASY to exploit. Normal accepted tactics for Infected was for the whole group to go left, then right after taking out the Transformer. The fail condition for Advanced back then was to NOT let the Nanite Probes repair the Transformer. AT ALL. Even if it was at 99% HP, a Nanite Probe so much as POKES the Transformer... Mission Failed.
How did Trolls exploit this? Go off on their own to the side where everyone else is not, destroy a generator, and cause an outright scramble to try and prevent the fail condition from triggering, thus ensuring the group fails because it now lacks the DPS to do it because its forced to spread out. And all they had to do was pop one thing... and they effectively frakked the entire run and slapped 4 other players with a 30 minute lockout.
Its a fine line between stupidity and malice. NEVER underestimate a Troll. They will find ways to have fun at the expense of others.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
So that being said removal of a failure means that there was no risk involved in losing which means there was no point in playing if there was no challenge or feeling of any kind of accomplishment. So while some may need less thinking involved for some players I think there need to be a few changes to Tzenkethi the way they work. Also for that I believe one thing that would be good to encourage raider game play being that the bonus for raiders is the flanking aspect of their intended design that it shouldn't be negated by the Tzenkethi buffs that make it where they are only weak toward their forward facing. Also chances of gravity wells as an option in some form that they reduce the damage resistance to them so that these npc's in relation to the failure of playing the content cannot be trolled with intentional or unintentional use of certain abilities.
However I am all for them dropping things in lockboxes that allow a single player to bypass certain things so that people who have no idea what they are doing can be left unscathed from unknowingly angering other players with their lack of knowledge. So I am still waiting for the abilities to hit 3 consoles at once by myself and being able to destroy those things in Khitomer ground while inside the control room. Or rather them adding in a new strategy that eliminates those old mechanics being how the game has changed from disabling any console or force field as a new option to complete the TFO. Sometimes they just need to add in another way so the failure outcome can be avoided.
But to mirror some other comments, more fail conditions would be nice in addition to other mechanics.
E.g. your vessel could get assimilated for a duration after dying in the Borg RA.
-R
This is very true of course. But it also shows why it doesn't have to really hurt anyone if it is kept as it is.
No one will have trouble completing the event if this failure condition is kept in. Indeed, they may have more 'trouble' completing the event by even queuing up for the Tzenkethi RA instead of another one...
I largely left STO for two or three years around the time the Iconian war storyline started, being unhappy with the direction the game was taking, but at that point the approach to Infected @rattler2 described was still in play at least in any organised group, with a coordinated elimination of the generators. In PUGs you certainly saw the example you describe by heading to the other side, but you would equally see some players head left as expected, then immediatedly start on the generators without waiting for the rest of the team to catchup, again putting the run at risk. On balance, back then, I think it was equal parts malice aforthought with the former but also sometimes simple ignorance and lack of experience with the latter.
Imagine my surprise in my first Infected when I returned, that most organised tactics had gone out the window. With the wonders of powercreep and Uber builds we now have you often see a single player split from the team and take on a Transformer alone. Sometimes they pulled it off in style, sometimes they just about managed, and then of course some just plain screwed up and failed the run for everyone, at least until the the most recent condition changes were made. I don't doubt that some deliberate trolling was taking place, but the idea that DPS solves everything and never mind the objectives appears to have increasingly taken hold, and while there were players who really were good enough to pull it of in style, as it were, sometimes they just thought they were and of course failed the run.
I think you are absolutely correct that it is a fine line between stupidity and malice. And its unfortunate that even without fail conditions, for whatever reason, some people manage to find a way to spoil the experience for others. You might not fail outright, but if someone causes the marks reward you needed to be reduced by their actions, its still disruptive to you if you now need to find the time for another run. And of course we now have the additional risk from plain indifference and lack of consideration when someone for example steamrolls through an Infected virtually solo, just because they can and are in a hurry, never mind the poor player who gets an AFK penalty because they don't have chance to inflict a fraction of the damage.
Sorry, rant over. I think I am still frustrated over the number of To Hell with Honor runs I ran during the event where someone sat AFK in a corner, or spent all their time fighting Jula instead of actually completing the objectives.
Even with all of the above in mind I think I prefer to see fail conditions remain or even be added, on balance, for the sense of accomplishment granted when you succeed. However, on anything other than Elite I do think they need to be judged carefully so that a single item missed is not cause for a failure - for example given the lag issues we can experience at the worst possible moment its all too easy to miss something like a single torpedo in spite of your best efforts. And even on Elite I would rather see fail conditions that reward the cooperation and team coordination you really should have at that level rather than hinging on DPS output.
It shouldn’t all be about DPS and how quickly an operation can be “bum rushed.” Other classes outside of tactical have abilities and roles that should be featured as well. Maybe you need a gravity well or tyken’s rift some missions or an aceton beam and a boarding team for others.
Maybe the game would benefit from alerts for smaller teams? If you have ever played Lord of the Rings Online they have a fantastic skirmish system where you and one or two friends team up for what amounts to a small scale raid. You have fun, learn to do, get unique rewards. and never have to worry about frustrating others...
I just want to have fun and not be in anyone's way. I don't really know how to play these alerts like a champ yet or have the in game resources to excel at them. That makes me really hesitant to try some of them in the que as the alert community seems kind of angry / frustrated in threads around the boards...