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My ideas on how to improve some of the older TFOs
somtaawkhar
Member Posts: 10,222 Arc User
While I've enjoyed most of the TFOs put out in the last 4 years or so, replaying many of the older ones makes it clear there are some obvious upgrades they could make, either to design, or rewards. Here's my suggestions on what could be done to improve them.
Picard TFOs
Picard TFOs
- Make rescued ships fly to the starbase instead of just hanging around in the danger zone, and thus dying when the zone closes.
- Mycelical Realm, and Best Served Cold, need advanced/elite versions.
- Gravity Kills: Decrease number of molecules needed from 10 to 7.
- Miner Instabilities: I don't know what it is about this TFO compared to other ground advanced TFOs, but the enemies just seem jacked in regards to HP and damage. They often manage to kill the Gorn/Federation miners before you can even get to them at full sprint. Lowering the enemy stats a bit would improve it dramatically.
- Days of Doom: The rather infamous "vanishing warpcore" problem this TFO has seems to be caused by people accidentally leaving the drop zone mid drop. Increasing the size of the drop field in front of the Doomsday Machine should help alleviate this problem.
- Assault on Terok Nor: In all the times I've played this TFO I don't think I've ever seen the computer hacker NPCs actually finish before the time runs out. They are way too easily interrupted, and have the HP of a gnat. Making them less able to be interrupted would actually make this a feasible objective.
- Counterpoint: While there is an objective to transport teams from DS9 to Terok Nor, I'm not sure this actually does anything, or really has much of an affect on the rewards. Making it increase the rewards, or making the reward increase more obvious, would help. Changing the Terok Nor damage % from 50% to 60% would make this objective more completeable for most teams.
- All three Iconian TFOs have the same fundamental problem. They don't reward worth jack compared to other TFOs. Brotherhood of the Sword, on advanced, with all optionals completed, gives out all of like 50 marks. Same thing with Gateway to Grethor. 40+ transports saved, all optionals completed... and like 80 marks. Other TFOs would give out at least 75 for BotS, GtG should be easily 100-120.
- Borg Disconnected: This is another TFO with bizarre rewards. While there is a scoring system in the TFO, the final score you get really doesn't seem to affect the final reward. Only if you complete the optionals or not. Making the reward more scalable with the final score would be nice. Also the three dreds at the end seem overly tanky for most groups.
- Bug Hunt: Counter to most enemy strength problems other TFOs have, the final boss of Bug Hunt is WAY too squishy in comparison, and goes down way to fast as a result.
- Viscous Cycle: Rewards are AWFUL, and many of the optional objectives/accolades are so random, and in the middle of nowhere, that many people don't even know they exist.
- Undine Infiltration: Same as above. Awful mark payouts.
- Storming the Spire: The super fast enemy ship glitch needs to be fixed. Voth troop transports could do with a little bit less HP. Allied troop transports could do with a little bit more HP. Mark payout needs to be increased.
- Azure Nebula Rescue: Captured ship respawn timers should be decreased, and the lowest tier ship should give two points, not just one, so its easier to get the optionals completed.
- Vault Ensnared: This whole TFO needs a graphical one over, and the intial objective of saving the Reman ships need to end once you save them all, rather then waiting for the timer to run out. Mark payout needs to be increased.
- Transdimensional Tactics: I don't think I've ever seen someone not accidentally trip the acid pool around the console, making that optional objective basically impossible to finish.
- Pretty much all the Borg ground TFOs just need to be scrapped and started over from scratch. They are all pretty awful, and largely consists of nothing more then running down a corridor killing enemies with little to no real other mechanics involved. The two remaining space TFO that didn't get updated previously, Cure and Hive Onslaught, just need minor visual/reward tweaks like Infected and Khitomer got.
- All of these needs advanced/elite version to make them worth playing at this point in time. Also add more enemy types to them to account for all the new enemies we have gotten since these came out.
Agents of Yesterday Arc issues, Klingon War Arc issues, Spectres Arc issues, Wasteland Arc issues, Romulan Mystery Arc issues, Cloaked Intentions Arc issues, Cardassian Struggle Arc issues, Lost Dominion Arc issues, Cold War Arc issues, Borg Advance Arc issues, New Romulus Arc issues, Solanae Dyson Sphere Arc issues, Delta Quadrant Arc issues, Iconian War Arc issues, Yesterday's War Arc issues, Future Proof Arc issues, New Frontiers Arc issues, Gamma Quadrant Arc issues, Age Of Discovery Arc issues, J'Ula's Discovery Arc issues, Klingon Civil War Arc issues, Terran Gambit Arc issues
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Comments
I agree with much of this list.
Reduce the number of particles needed at each stage. Slow down the respawn rate of the ships attacking the Jupiter.
That's not an unreasonable requirement and it's not something that needs fixing either. If, out of five players, two don't understand some very simple mechanics and everyone fails to try and communicate (like reading team chat), it's not the mission that's the problem.
For the rest of the list, it's a bit of a mix. I think it's obvious that glitches (of the Voth ships for example) need to be fixed.
A lot of the other things aren't really things that need to be fixed. They work fine, it's just the players that need to change tactics if things don't work out.
- Azure Nebula for example: it's not a problem at all to complete the optionals. You may just need to save that Tarantula until the timer resets for the second optional in a bad team, but it is easily doable on a good team. They're optionals for extra rewards, these things don't need to be handed to the players without effort. One above average player or some smartness are enough to get them already, it doesn't need to be made easier.
- Same for Assault on TN: most players don't seem to get that they need to draw attention by, for example, using threatening stance or using things like shields or stuff like medical generators to draw attention away from them. The only fix needed here is that the hackers may need to draw less aggro, but that's about it. The rest is up to the players and there's enough stuff you can use to protect, heal or divert attention away from them.
For the fleet TFO's: Fleet alert could indeed use an update and have newer enemies included. Same for starbase incursion.
Perhaps also a solution: add a patrol mission based on these TFO's that can be played by a single player. Make the TFO versions playable by fewer than 5 players or add more rewards - few people play these missions anymore and that's probably because the only reward can be obtained from many other missions.
Lastly, I would say that some missions - like Borg Disconnected - need to have its times be made conditional. By that I mean, if players save 15 ships before time is up, let them move on to the next phase. If they don't, they move to the next phase after the timer has finished, so the mission will progress the way it currently does.
Too many missions are drawn out by time gates, making it pointless for a team to perform better by killing stuff or completing objectives faster. Players' actions should matter the most; if players get better and do things faster, they should benefit from this.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
They need to make the Voth less tanky, and they need to tone down the swarmers too. Anything other than an AoE beam build suffers when the swarmers come out, and the Voth themselves are beefy as all hell. Then we have the Allied "transports" which have paper thin shields and armor, despite looking like various starships like the Excelsior. They could replace the Excelsior transports with actual transport ships like the Kobayashi Maru/D5 Tanker models. Then it would at least feel a bit more acceptable for them to be thin skinned.
I also have one non STO/TFO gripe. The lack of Romulan Republic NPCs on New Romulus. The majority are in civilian clothes, or wear RSE uniforms, and all are listed as RSE rather than RR. I know New Romulus came out before LoR expansion and playable Romulans, but still... New Romulus needs an NPC facelift.
Well said. I got to play Khitomer in Stasis yesterday and it was simply a pleasure to run this gem.
It's a very special moment for me when a new character receives their first Cordrazine Hypo from a Borg ground TFO. :
Kudos to Cryptic for acknowledging their own excellence in mission design by leaving this classic in place.
Perhaps they could add a little pop up at the start telling players to open their chat window and switch to team chat?
Shirley all that's needed is the addition of a little pop up at the start telling players to open their chat window and switch to team chat?
Sometimes it's the little things that count and encouraging good basic habits such as this will pay of in spades for newer STO players in their years of game play yet to come.
Just like teaming up for missions on Defera is a great way to familiarize folks with the benefits of working as a team versus the Borg.
I think you're mixing up Azure Nebular with Tholian Red Alert. Azure Nebula is actually RNG whether you get to complete any of the optionals or not, because the optionals are based on point gain from the ships that spawn in. The ships take a while to respawn to be rescued, and as it does happen, if it chooses to spawn in mostly the smallest ship, and never spawns in a Scimitar to rescue, then the optional is failed through no fault of the players. Its physically impossible to complete unless they give you the right ships and ship spawns are RNG
Its not as easy as that.
Khitomer Ground is the easiest of the three classic Borg TFOs to PUG. But it still requires some level of communication and coordination to finish. Whoever is the room monkey bringing the barriers down needs to be able to work with the people outside on which ones are to be targeted. At the same time the strike team taking out the targets need to be coordinated enough to focus fire on the same target quickly, and coordinate with the room monkey on which barrier to bring down.
While simply saying something like "A1" can convey which one to bring down even with a language barrier... it is still dependant on someone willing to pay attention to chat, and not there to just muck around and push buttons randomly.
I believe the audio cue is something along the lines of "Intruders detected in the vicinity of Node Alpha One."
I never said that the Borg TFO's have interesting mechanics. I said that it's one of the few missions where you have be careful what you're shooting, it's not pressing buttons and run through as you're saying. Some targets have priority, some stuff you need to learn before you can do it.
If you want to talk about a DPS slog, that's Into the Hive. It's literally nothing but 'stand here, shoot stuff' for most of the mission, with only three small rooms.
As for the conditional timers: it's fine that you disagree. It's a fact that the missions that can be completed faster depending on how the team performs, are and have been for years the most popular ones (think ISA, Cure found, Crystalline entity and so on).
Regarding Azure nebula: with a good team, optionals rarely fail. With a reasonable good team, you can easily deal with a bad round of only T'Liss' by not releasing a Scimitar or Ha'apax and overshoot the previous 10 points, saving it until the timer resets.
And even if it happened, a good team can still make it work. Many people can clear the enemies by themselves in less than 30 seconds. That gives you plenty of time to release the beams and wait for the rest. There are 4 points, meaning you can get four points in about 1 minute even if there are only T'liss's. One round lasts 4 minutes.
It only becomes a problem if five low-DPS players are spending a full minute or more shooting enemies and then disabling beams to get one point. But even then you could still do it with some teamwork, when two people are disabling beams in like 20 seconds while the rest pushes enemies away or distracts them. So then it's still doable.
It has never happened to me that we only got T'liss's and Dhelan's. Maybe once, or twice but I've played that mission hundreds of times. It more often fails because players who can't shoot stuff fast enough, are also not saving ships until when they're needed.
Besides that, ships usually don't immediately reset if the ghost ship bug strikes (see explanation here: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1255577/azure-nebula-rescue-reset-issues-with-ghost-ships). But even that can be solved if players wouldn't fly off to nowhere or keep circling in the centre, but check a base when the resetting takes too long. (Obviously, as stated above, such bugs need to be fixed nevertheless.)
Seriously, most often these optionals fail because players are hardly concerned about them or, when they do, because they aren't thinking tactically. A full mission of only T'liss's and Dhelan's rarely happens, if ever. And even then, it's not an automatic fail either. There is no issue that needs fixing here (besides the ghost ship thing), players need to get better (no, that doesn't just mean 'more DPS'; although that is a solution, just being aware of what is going on would be a huge improvement too).
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
No, I'm not mixing up anything - I know what I'm talking about, see my just-added post above.
Saving the Tarantula refers to a tactic that may be too complicated to comprehend for most players (as I've observed during my many runs of Azure nebula) - but again, that's not Cryptic's fault or bad design that needs to be fixed or anything.
As said, T'liss-only runs rarely happen - and even a T-liss-only run doesn't mean that failure is unavoidable. This is simply not true.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
That's correct.
I agree with others that adding some visual indicator would be an improvement though. I'm usually not plugged in with ear-phones so I don't hear the hints either. (Now, I don't need them, but others may need those hints and they shouldn't only be audible cause audio-only hints are nowhere else in the game a thing.)
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
Yeah, well... nothing was fixed in 'into the hive'. That mission was the most straightforward of all ground Borg TFO's. Walk to console, shoot borg. Get to next room, wait for Borg to appear, shoot Borg. From there on, it's just more 'wait for enemies to appear, shoot them'.
The only thing they fixed was the bug where the Queen could fall off the platform in the final room, making the mission (yes, in this case truly physically) impossible to complete.
Nothing else was 'fixed', they just added more pointless stops between rooms.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
Agreed. Players need to pay attention. It's not that complicated.
Adding visual hints in one room in Khitomer ground so that players know which node is which one or moving some personnel around in Infected ground so that players see what happens the first time they cross a certain line, would be an improvement.
Besides all this, if players don't like the Borg TFO's: don't play them. I don't like Battle of Procyon V so I don't play it either. It's fine to suggest that some flaws in the design need to be corrected - but it's too simple to suggest that anything that may require the smallest amount of teamwork or some awareness from the player, is a flaw.
Not everything needs to be dumbed down or made easier for everyone just because some players might have some trouble comprehending something. At some point you're just going to have to accept that some content may simply not be the right kind of content for those players who have difficulties understanding something.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
> Agreed. Players need to pay attention. It's not that complicated.
>
> Adding visual hints in one room in Khitomer ground so that players know which node is which one or moving some personnel around in Infected ground so that players see what happens the first time they cross a certain line, would be an improvement.
>
>
> Besides all this, if players don't like the Borg TFO's: don't play them. I don't like Battle of Procyon V so I don't play it either. It's fine to suggest that some flaws in the design need to be corrected - but it's too simple to suggest that anything that may require the smallest amount of teamwork or some awareness from the player, is a flaw.
>
>
> Not everything needs to be dumbed down or made easier for everyone just because some players might have some trouble comprehending something. At some point you're just going to have to accept that some content may simply not be the right kind of content for those players who have difficulties understanding something.
Thank you for this post Risian. Easy to agree with.
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