I've noticed something that may be another piece of the puzzle.
When queued for Normal Difficulty random TFO's I am occasionally getting dumped into Advanced or Elite Difficulty random TFO's. I can tell by the rewards for the TFO's in question, even though the difficulty indicator in the UI is reading Normal Difficulty.
Is this happening to anyone else?
Is the Random TFO system meant to "jump" difficulty levels to fill empty slots regardless of the setting selected by the player?
If it is we may have a bug on our hands that is dumping unprepared players into TFO's they are not ready for which may explain the rise in Pooch Screws.
DISCLAIMER: I am NOT making a Bug Report here. I am conferring with other players in an attempt to determine if a bug exists and how widespread it might be. Please allow us to do so unimpeded.
Unless you click the "Show Only Selected Difficulty"; the system will queue you for BOTH Normal or Advanced at the same time when using the Random TFO Queue system.
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..."
@theboxisred Yes, I have had that happen to me before. I have everything set to normal, i click random tfo and have got thrown into an advanced tfo. Right at the start i knew its not a normal tfo and the team i was on did have a hard time, and it took a while to complete. It was the newer tfo based off fugiwara (sp?) with the venture down v'ger to the compilers. So this could be happening to players that unintentionally get put into an advanced or elite tfo.
Thanks for the details!
Hopefully we can get more feedback on this and possibly find a solution of at least get an accurate bug report into the system.
I've noticed something that may be another piece of the puzzle.
When queued for Normal Difficulty random TFO's I am occasionally getting dumped into Advanced or Elite Difficulty random TFO's. I can tell by the rewards for the TFO's in question, even though the difficulty indicator in the UI is reading Normal Difficulty.
Is this happening to anyone else?
Is the Random TFO system meant to "jump" difficulty levels to fill empty slots regardless of the setting selected by the player?
If it is we may have a bug on our hands that is dumping unprepared players into TFO's they are not ready for which may explain the rise in Pooch Screws.
DISCLAIMER: I am NOT making a Bug Report here. I am conferring with other players in an attempt to determine if a bug exists and how widespread it might be. Please allow us to do so unimpeded.
Unless you click the "Show Only Selected Difficulty"; the system will queue you for BOTH Normal or Advanced at the same time when using the Random TFO Queue system.
Thanks for the intel!
My understanding is that that check box applies only to the list of TFO's on our UI.
I am, however, going to test this for a few days to see what results I get.
If you are correct then this might be more than a mere bug, it may be a design flaw.
Now I'll have to figure out how to determine if it's working as intended, as well.
You could be right about intentional sabotage of Elites, or it could be lack of skill and someone jumping in trying to earn a few extra marks and dil off the backs of more competent Players?
The one that ilk's me when it fails is Defence of Rh'ihho Station, where People get hit by the Spider bots. That TFO is a cakewalk on Elite and should be easy marks and dil
You could be right about intentional sabotage of Elites, or it could be lack of skill and someone jumping in trying to earn a few extra marks and dil off the backs of more competent Players?
The one that ilk's me when it fails is Defence of Rh'ihho Station, where People get hit by the Spider bots. That TFO is a cakewalk on Elite and should be easy marks and dil
To be fair, those spiders if they respawn have instant activation, or insane 'jump' range. I saw one highly competent elite level captain i know get instant grabbed within 0.1 second of the thing spawning, cause he had the back luck of passing by a location (no idea why the spider respawned in so fast)
You could be right about intentional sabotage of Elites, or it could be lack of skill and someone jumping in trying to earn a few extra marks and dil off the backs of more competent Players?
The one that ilk's me when it fails is Defence of Rh'ihho Station, where People get hit by the Spider bots. That TFO is a cakewalk on Elite and should be easy marks and dil
Never seen it fail with the spider because the spiders on elite is an optional its not a failing condition.
C-Store Inc. is still looking for active members on the fed side. If you don't have a fleet feel free to contact me in game @stegi.
I followed the procedure as laid out by crypticarmsman and I was still jumped to a higher difficulty TFO. I even played with a cohort and we both received rewards at the higher difficulty level.
At this point I think I'll be reporting this as a bug as that may explain at least some of the appearance of sabotage in the TFO's.
My thanks to those who offered up leads to follow and details of their own experience!
@theboxisred Yes, I have had that happen to me before. I have everything set to normal, i click random tfo and have got thrown into an advanced tfo. Right at the start i knew its not a normal tfo and the team i was on did have a hard time, and it took a while to complete. It was the newer tfo based off fugiwara (sp?) with the venture down v'ger to the compilers. So this could be happening to players that unintentionally get put into an advanced or elite tfo.
Thanks for the details!
Hopefully we can get more feedback on this and possibly find a solution of at least get an accurate bug report into the system.
I've noticed something that may be another piece of the puzzle.
When queued for Normal Difficulty random TFO's I am occasionally getting dumped into Advanced or Elite Difficulty random TFO's. I can tell by the rewards for the TFO's in question, even though the difficulty indicator in the UI is reading Normal Difficulty.
Is this happening to anyone else?
Is the Random TFO system meant to "jump" difficulty levels to fill empty slots regardless of the setting selected by the player?
If it is we may have a bug on our hands that is dumping unprepared players into TFO's they are not ready for which may explain the rise in Pooch Screws.
DISCLAIMER: I am NOT making a Bug Report here. I am conferring with other players in an attempt to determine if a bug exists and how widespread it might be. Please allow us to do so unimpeded.
Unless you click the "Show Only Selected Difficulty"; the system will queue you for BOTH Normal or Advanced at the same time when using the Random TFO Queue system.
Thanks for the intel!
My understanding is that that check box applies only to the list of TFO's on our UI.
I am, however, going to test this for a few days to see what results I get.
If you are correct then this might be more than a mere bug, it may be a design flaw.
Now I'll have to figure out how to determine if it's working as intended, as well.
screenshot the UI, document the TFOs you get and rewards. submit a ticket to the devs to see if it's WAI
@theboxisred Yes, I have had that happen to me before. I have everything set to normal, i click random tfo and have got thrown into an advanced tfo. Right at the start i knew its not a normal tfo and the team i was on did have a hard time, and it took a while to complete. It was the newer tfo based off fugiwara (sp?) with the venture down v'ger to the compilers. So this could be happening to players that unintentionally get put into an advanced or elite tfo.
Thanks for the details!
Hopefully we can get more feedback on this and possibly find a solution of at least get an accurate bug report into the system.
I've noticed something that may be another piece of the puzzle.
When queued for Normal Difficulty random TFO's I am occasionally getting dumped into Advanced or Elite Difficulty random TFO's. I can tell by the rewards for the TFO's in question, even though the difficulty indicator in the UI is reading Normal Difficulty.
Is this happening to anyone else?
Is the Random TFO system meant to "jump" difficulty levels to fill empty slots regardless of the setting selected by the player?
If it is we may have a bug on our hands that is dumping unprepared players into TFO's they are not ready for which may explain the rise in Pooch Screws.
DISCLAIMER: I am NOT making a Bug Report here. I am conferring with other players in an attempt to determine if a bug exists and how widespread it might be. Please allow us to do so unimpeded.
Unless you click the "Show Only Selected Difficulty"; the system will queue you for BOTH Normal or Advanced at the same time when using the Random TFO Queue system.
Thanks for the intel!
My understanding is that that check box applies only to the list of TFO's on our UI.
I am, however, going to test this for a few days to see what results I get.
If you are correct then this might be more than a mere bug, it may be a design flaw.
Now I'll have to figure out how to determine if it's working as intended, as well.
screenshot the UI, document the TFOs you get and rewards. submit a ticket to the devs to see if it's WAI
While I can imagine there are people out there who are awful and would willingly sabotage a mission if given the opportunity, I do think that the biggest problem is under-geared and inexperienced players looking for a free carry. Maybe one option could be making it so that captains don't get placed into groups that have players on their ignore list? That way, as you add players to your ignore list, you can avoid playing with them ever again. Please understand, I'm not advocating that captains should go on the your ignore list for arbitrary reasons, but there are definitely players out there that chronically run TFOs that they have no business running, are repeat "non-participants" and barely do anything or just trolls.
“Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning. ”― E. Rommel
Got thrown into an advanced or elite ground mission last night when queing up for a normal random tfo. It was the fugiwara ground mission on v'ger. Team constantly were going down and accumulating injuries. Not one player was geared for advanced or elite difficulty. I know my settings in in both the options menu and the tfo selection are set to normal only. Idk if someone had selected this tfo or if we were all randoms, either scenario there wasn't one player able to handle the difficulty. They were just tickling the enemies and not dispatching them. Im not convinced players are deliberately choosing advanced or elite and hence "sabotaging" the tfo, I think many of them may be hitting the random button and are getting thrown into these difficulties.
I don't know if it's sabotage or ignorance but I really wish people would read the dialog in Undine Infiltration and put out the fires.
If the fires are optional in lower difficulty level versions and the players think they are in one of those lower-level ones they may not bother doing it, especially if they are normally speedrunners (or have just always run the TFO with speedrunners, which seems to happen a lot). It is even possible that some people don't know there are fail conditions in advanced and elite even if they figure out part way through that they are in a higher level than they qued for (or possibly qued for elite to see how difficult it is without realizing that missing an objective fails the whole group).
It would be nice if there was some sort of definitive indicator of which difficulty level was in effect on the main screen instead of just often unreadable injury/persistent damage debuff indicators when killed.
While I can imagine there are people out there who are awful and would willingly sabotage a mission if given the opportunity, I do think that the biggest problem is under-geared and inexperienced players looking for a free carry. Maybe one option could be making it so that captains don't get placed into groups that have players on their ignore list? That way, as you add players to your ignore list, you can avoid playing with them ever again. Please understand, I'm not advocating that captains should go on the your ignore list for arbitrary reasons, but there are definitely players out there that chronically run TFOs that they have no business running, are repeat "non-participants" and barely do anything or just trolls.
The ignore list doesn't work like that.
They can't send you messages once you put them on ignore, but you most can still end up in a mission with them through a public queue.
Got thrown into an advanced or elite ground mission last night when queing up for a normal random tfo. It was the fugiwara ground mission on v'ger. Team constantly were going down and accumulating injuries. Not one player was geared for advanced or elite difficulty. I know my settings in in both the options menu and the tfo selection are set to normal only. Idk if someone had selected this tfo or if we were all randoms, either scenario there wasn't one player able to handle the difficulty. They were just tickling the enemies and not dispatching them. Im not convinced players are deliberately choosing advanced or elite and hence "sabotaging" the tfo, I think many of them may be hitting the random button and are getting thrown into these difficulties.
While I can imagine there are people out there who are awful and would willingly sabotage a mission if given the opportunity, I do think that the biggest problem is under-geared and inexperienced players looking for a free carry. Maybe one option could be making it so that captains don't get placed into groups that have players on their ignore list? That way, as you add players to your ignore list, you can avoid playing with them ever again. Please understand, I'm not advocating that captains should go on the your ignore list for arbitrary reasons, but there are definitely players out there that chronically run TFOs that they have no business running, are repeat "non-participants" and barely do anything or just trolls.
The ignore list doesn't work like that.
They can't send you messages once you put them on ignore, but you most can still end up in a mission with them through a public queue.
I understand the current ignore list does not work that way, thus the suggestion.
“Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning. ”― E. Rommel
While I can imagine there are people out there who are awful and would willingly sabotage a mission if given the opportunity, I do think that the biggest problem is under-geared and inexperienced players looking for a free carry. Maybe one option could be making it so that captains don't get placed into groups that have players on their ignore list? That way, as you add players to your ignore list, you can avoid playing with them ever again. Please understand, I'm not advocating that captains should go on the your ignore list for arbitrary reasons, but there are definitely players out there that chronically run TFOs that they have no business running, are repeat "non-participants" and barely do anything or just trolls.
The ignore list doesn't work like that.
They can't send you messages once you put them on ignore, but you most can still end up in a mission with them through a public queue.
I understand the current ignore list does not work that way, thus the suggestion.
@theboxisred thanks for the link, I did leave a comment but it's not much to go on because i don't have screenshot or video footage.
@startrekaeorro That scenario wouldn't surprise me at all, I'd bet that actually happens often. I don't think it's necessary for a new player because the crafting materials for those consoles and the consoles themselves can be bought off the exchange, as of recently they're not at an overly inflated price either. I think they're good consoles but certainly not a must have. Then again I don't understand the mentality or play styles of players that call themselves gamers these days anyways. Probably a product of the cell phone games generation. It's like they play because it's a chore and not a chance to relax, have some fun and play a game. So i'm not surprised at all players not qualified que for a match and expect that 1 player to carry all four of them.
Sorry if that all sounds jerky, i don't know how to paint a picture of a jerky scenario without sounding a bit like a jerk myself.
I think many of them may be hitting the random button and are getting thrown into these difficulties.
Sure
I don't like to complain but I sometimes think of my chars being thrown into higher difficulty TFOs against their will as of real heroes struggling with their rifles of the First World War against enemies geared with full auto guns of the late Second World War. Especially in cases where toxic human factors seem to prevail and some of other teammates seem to expect me to switch on my tactical thinking and kill ships (which like to travel in packs) one by one temporaly avoiding bigger ships for long minutes (this helps to keep a char alive) while some of teammates seem to have better equipment and do nearly nothing.
This is a funny and at the same time ugly situation when a player with "bad" equipment must do the work of those with "good" equipment while they demonstrate their behaviour and decide whether to end their higher difficulty TFO successfully or not.
The whole game is run on the normal difficulty for me. As for the TFOs, I've always used the normal difficulty and when I press "Join Random", I always have "Only Selected Difficulty" setting enabled.
This problem began for me in the second part of January, 2024. And happens nearly every day.
Also looks like some TFOs (e.x. "Tzenkethi Front", "Storm Chasers", "Leviathan", "Jupiter Iratus" and may be some other ones) which were previously played on the normal difficulty, were removed from the normal difficulty to the higher ones. It's from my experience only and I may surely be wrong.
There was also a case when I was thrown into a higher difficulty "Leviathan" and after it ended without a successful completion, I was "lucky" enough to still receive my normal lvl box
I surely can do an elite patrol with the green, blue and purple not upgraded equipment from the reps, factions and the giveaways from the official in-game events, with 92 or so perks gained from the endeavor system and without dying (thank you, my beloved Jem'Hadar Vanguard Warship with its designers and my "pilot tactics" with good enough countermeasures from AI ) but if I want only.
And if I want my tactical thinking and other "things" like that to be used, I personally play other games and I have my personal reasons for that. In STO I personally want to play on the normal settings (I think I can have my own reasons for this) which should work correctly if they're implemented in the game and weren't removed from it officially.
Er, I wanted to add one more thing which seems to be even more relevant to the problem of "sabotaging" Advanced and/or Elite TFOs.
Once I was thrown into the higher difficulty TFO called "Storm Chasers" while before that I surely chose the Normal Random TFOs. I personally like ground TFOs very much but not when I'm thrown into smth against my will because it isn't a real life and it's a game only for a casual player like me. So only after the briefing I noticed that smth was going wrong because one of my Jem'Hadar chars in fact has nearly no equipment at all (but nice minimum enough for more or less comfort playing in the normal TFOs nearly without dying, I mean the default Jem'Hadar equipment, surely, and a couple of things from the events and some in-game locations) and in that very TFO he was surely one-shot by a drone and took an injure. After that injure I decided to leave immediately but that was not the end of our sufferings He couldn't leave by pressing an icon at the left corner of the map because another angry bird drone began chasing him. So the best solution for me was to leave by pressing "Exit the Game".
So, OK, I "sabotaged" a higher difficulty TFO once by leaving it and suffering a 30-minute penalty notwithstanding the fact that I chose "Only Selected Difficulty" for the Normal one before that. But it wasn't my fault. It was that of the angry bird
Er, and if seriously, I personally would like to continue playing Random TFOs on the Normal Difficulty only no matter which equipment (white or orange) my chars have (and that both for ground and space). Because, as I've mentioned in my comment above, I'd like to be able to have my own reasons for that. If it isn't officially restricted in this particular game, surely
As said in the bug report thread for this, if folks can get some evidence to demonstrate there is a bug I will happily forward it along to the appropriate people. Evidence would need to demonstrate you clicked normal mode only and were then placed into a higher difficulty.
An example would be a video showing you queued for normal only, then at the end were given a reward for advanced as a hypothetical. While I can believe folks are seeing an issue, the team needs to be able to reproduce the issue in order to fix it. More info folks can give the better.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
Got thrown into an advanced or elite ground mission last night... Team constantly were going down and accumulating injuries... Not one player was geared for advanced or elite difficulty... there wasn't one player able to handle the difficulty... They were just tickling the enemies and not dispatching them... Im not convinced players are deliberately choosing advanced or elite and hence "sabotaging" the tfo, I think many of them may be hitting the random button and are getting thrown into these difficulties.
This sort of thing has been happening for ages, many years prior to random elites being introduced or strange "goings on" that apparently puts players into the wrong difficulty. I don't think it's a bug but just the randomness of a team's composition that's coming in to play along with the fact that it's almost a tradition around here to NOT be prepared for ground missions. My teaming for Pahvo Dissension (ground) has been all over the place from really good to really bad and events are normal difficulty.
Sometimes on advanced difficulty you get a team that's bitten off more than they can chew. Randoms are random
I think people should carry lots of heals, hypos, and consumables in their inventory to enable a quick visual check of their essential supplies.
Some newer players don't seem to realize that the most powerful thing they carry isn't their phaser rifle but their kit modules.
As said in the bug report thread for this, if folks can get some evidence to demonstrate there is a bug I will happily forward it along to the appropriate people. Evidence would need to demonstrate you clicked normal mode only and were then placed into a higher difficulty.
An example would be a video showing you queued for normal only, then at the end were given a reward for advanced as a hypothetical. While I can believe folks are seeing an issue, the team needs to be able to reproduce the issue in order to fix it. More info folks can give the better.
This is the tricky part:
The random nature of team composition and mission selection in the Random TFO's means that this may appear to be one of those intermittent issues that's hard to track down when it may not be. That's why I'm noting the maps on which it occurs in the Bug Report that I made on the Level Jumping matter.
As it stands now what I suspect is happening is that Player A is queuing up for ADVANCED TFO X while Players B-E are joining a Random Queue and getting "Rando'd" into ADVANCED TFO X, or something similar.
I could be way off, though and reporting as a bug something that is intended because we, as players, don't get a real detailed look at the sorting and prerequisite protocols for the Random TFO system so we can't know for certain what the parameters are or how and when they may change and for which reason.
Meanwhile, outside of the potential bug concern, I've been paying more attention to other players on the rando teams and there does seem to be an uptick in those who die and stay dead until the end of the TFO, or those who fly off and just want to take in the view or something. When I notice them I imagine the many ways their parents have failed them. And this is at the Normal Difficulty Level because I've remained there while bug hunting.
So I played a couple of hours of normal difficulty randoms tonight just to take a peek at things. They consisted of both ground and space. Players seemed to range from casual to quite decently equipped. The weird H shaped Borg ships are everywhere. My new-ish toon got a lot of new accolades completed Nothing else to report.
Two higher difficulty random TFOs in a row again. "Jupiter Iratus" with a Terran Gravimetric Inducer in an advanced green box first and then "Leviathan" with a teammate who took 2 injuries after his or her respawning.
I checked "Current Team Settings" and the left corner of the screen where the list of my teammates is usually given and it was written EVERYWHERE that the difficulty was normal. Surely, I joined those random TFOs with "Only Selected Difficulty" option enabled.
There will be some trolls who sabotage, the bigger issue here is that people got away with just dps and being caried through fro years. Able to either afk full events or do bare minimum to get rewards.
The game has some skill checks and learnign curves, but most can be surpassed with buying. Or just emode events where you get paid out for doing nothing.
Each tfo which is outdated can be don easily with current powercreep, where people learn nothing go solo and pew pew to end.
Other timegated maps only need some dps to get rewards. Now random elite joining is added all these failures can freely join the elites. Enjoy, Yes the elitist can enjoy what otehrs have enjoyed since adv randoms joined. The game should have an unlock where characters must progress x times with succes before being able to join adv, and there have to do succes runs again untill unlocking elite option. Not that it would help the game, since the unlock would end up in the store, making it pointless.
"Reports of our depression are vastly exaggerated." "Anyaway, we don't often see a sense of humor in Section 31."
Comments
Unless you click the "Show Only Selected Difficulty"; the system will queue you for BOTH Normal or Advanced at the same time when using the Random TFO Queue system.
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..."
Thanks for the details!
Hopefully we can get more feedback on this and possibly find a solution of at least get an accurate bug report into the system.
Thanks for the intel!
My understanding is that that check box applies only to the list of TFO's on our UI.
I am, however, going to test this for a few days to see what results I get.
If you are correct then this might be more than a mere bug, it may be a design flaw.
Now I'll have to figure out how to determine if it's working as intended, as well.
The one that ilk's me when it fails is Defence of Rh'ihho Station, where People get hit by the Spider bots. That TFO is a cakewalk on Elite and should be easy marks and dil
To be fair, those spiders if they respawn have instant activation, or insane 'jump' range. I saw one highly competent elite level captain i know get instant grabbed within 0.1 second of the thing spawning, cause he had the back luck of passing by a location (no idea why the spider respawned in so fast)
Never seen it fail with the spider because the spiders on elite is an optional its not a failing condition.
I followed the procedure as laid out by crypticarmsman and I was still jumped to a higher difficulty TFO. I even played with a cohort and we both received rewards at the higher difficulty level.
At this point I think I'll be reporting this as a bug as that may explain at least some of the appearance of sabotage in the TFO's.
My thanks to those who offered up leads to follow and details of their own experience!
EDIT: Bug Report Filed.
screenshot the UI, document the TFOs you get and rewards. submit a ticket to the devs to see if it's WAI
Thanks nixie50!
If the fires are optional in lower difficulty level versions and the players think they are in one of those lower-level ones they may not bother doing it, especially if they are normally speedrunners (or have just always run the TFO with speedrunners, which seems to happen a lot). It is even possible that some people don't know there are fail conditions in advanced and elite even if they figure out part way through that they are in a higher level than they qued for (or possibly qued for elite to see how difficult it is without realizing that missing an objective fails the whole group).
It would be nice if there was some sort of definitive indicator of which difficulty level was in effect on the main screen instead of just often unreadable injury/persistent damage debuff indicators when killed.
The ignore list doesn't work like that.
They can't send you messages once you put them on ignore, but you most can still end up in a mission with them through a public queue.
I have created a bug report about this level jumping issue.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1272951/tfo-difficulty-level-selection-error
By all means review it and add any missing details you can think of.
I understand the current ignore list does not work that way, thus the suggestion.
Sorry, my bad. I read your post too quickly.
@startrekaeorro That scenario wouldn't surprise me at all, I'd bet that actually happens often. I don't think it's necessary for a new player because the crafting materials for those consoles and the consoles themselves can be bought off the exchange, as of recently they're not at an overly inflated price either. I think they're good consoles but certainly not a must have. Then again I don't understand the mentality or play styles of players that call themselves gamers these days anyways. Probably a product of the cell phone games generation. It's like they play because it's a chore and not a chance to relax, have some fun and play a game. So i'm not surprised at all players not qualified que for a match and expect that 1 player to carry all four of them.
Sorry if that all sounds jerky, i don't know how to paint a picture of a jerky scenario without sounding a bit like a jerk myself.
Sure
I don't like to complain but I sometimes think of my chars being thrown into higher difficulty TFOs against their will as of real heroes struggling with their rifles of the First World War against enemies geared with full auto guns of the late Second World War. Especially in cases where toxic human factors seem to prevail and some of other teammates seem to expect me to switch on my tactical thinking and kill ships (which like to travel in packs) one by one temporaly avoiding bigger ships for long minutes (this helps to keep a char alive) while some of teammates seem to have better equipment and do nearly nothing.
This is a funny and at the same time ugly situation when a player with "bad" equipment must do the work of those with "good" equipment while they demonstrate their behaviour and decide whether to end their higher difficulty TFO successfully or not.
The whole game is run on the normal difficulty for me. As for the TFOs, I've always used the normal difficulty and when I press "Join Random", I always have "Only Selected Difficulty" setting enabled.
This problem began for me in the second part of January, 2024. And happens nearly every day.
Also looks like some TFOs (e.x. "Tzenkethi Front", "Storm Chasers", "Leviathan", "Jupiter Iratus" and may be some other ones) which were previously played on the normal difficulty, were removed from the normal difficulty to the higher ones. It's from my experience only and I may surely be wrong.
There was also a case when I was thrown into a higher difficulty "Leviathan" and after it ended without a successful completion, I was "lucky" enough to still receive my normal lvl box
I surely can do an elite patrol with the green, blue and purple not upgraded equipment from the reps, factions and the giveaways from the official in-game events, with 92 or so perks gained from the endeavor system and without dying (thank you, my beloved Jem'Hadar Vanguard Warship with its designers and my "pilot tactics" with good enough countermeasures from AI
And if I want my tactical thinking and other "things" like that to be used, I personally play other games and I have my personal reasons for that. In STO I personally want to play on the normal settings (I think I can have my own reasons for this) which should work correctly if they're implemented in the game and weren't removed from it officially.
Once I was thrown into the higher difficulty TFO called "Storm Chasers" while before that I surely chose the Normal Random TFOs. I personally like ground TFOs very much but not when I'm thrown into smth against my will because it isn't a real life and it's a game only for a casual player like me. So only after the briefing I noticed that smth was going wrong because one of my Jem'Hadar chars in fact has nearly no equipment at all (but nice minimum enough for more or less comfort playing in the normal TFOs nearly without dying, I mean the default Jem'Hadar equipment, surely, and a couple of things from the events and some in-game locations) and in that very TFO he was surely one-shot by a drone and took an injure. After that injure I decided to leave immediately but that was not the end of our sufferings
So, OK, I "sabotaged" a higher difficulty TFO once by leaving it and suffering a 30-minute penalty notwithstanding the fact that I chose "Only Selected Difficulty" for the Normal one before that. But it wasn't my fault. It was that of the angry bird
Er, and if seriously, I personally would like to continue playing Random TFOs on the Normal Difficulty only no matter which equipment (white or orange) my chars have (and that both for ground and space). Because, as I've mentioned in my comment above, I'd like to be able to have my own reasons for that. If it isn't officially restricted in this particular game, surely
An example would be a video showing you queued for normal only, then at the end were given a reward for advanced as a hypothetical. While I can believe folks are seeing an issue, the team needs to be able to reproduce the issue in order to fix it. More info folks can give the better.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
This sort of thing has been happening for ages, many years prior to random elites being introduced or strange "goings on" that apparently puts players into the wrong difficulty. I don't think it's a bug but just the randomness of a team's composition that's coming in to play along with the fact that it's almost a tradition around here to NOT be prepared for ground missions. My teaming for Pahvo Dissension (ground) has been all over the place from really good to really bad and events are normal difficulty.
Sometimes on advanced difficulty you get a team that's bitten off more than they can chew. Randoms are random
Some newer players don't seem to realize that the most powerful thing they carry isn't their phaser rifle but their kit modules.
This is the tricky part:
The random nature of team composition and mission selection in the Random TFO's means that this may appear to be one of those intermittent issues that's hard to track down when it may not be. That's why I'm noting the maps on which it occurs in the Bug Report that I made on the Level Jumping matter.
As it stands now what I suspect is happening is that Player A is queuing up for ADVANCED TFO X while Players B-E are joining a Random Queue and getting "Rando'd" into ADVANCED TFO X, or something similar.
I could be way off, though and reporting as a bug something that is intended because we, as players, don't get a real detailed look at the sorting and prerequisite protocols for the Random TFO system so we can't know for certain what the parameters are or how and when they may change and for which reason.
Meanwhile, outside of the potential bug concern, I've been paying more attention to other players on the rando teams and there does seem to be an uptick in those who die and stay dead until the end of the TFO, or those who fly off and just want to take in the view or something. When I notice them I imagine the many ways their parents have failed them. And this is at the Normal Difficulty Level because I've remained there while bug hunting.
I checked "Current Team Settings" and the left corner of the screen where the list of my teammates is usually given and it was written EVERYWHERE that the difficulty was normal. Surely, I joined those random TFOs with "Only Selected Difficulty" option enabled.
> Going by my last few Brotherhood of the Sword runs it looks like people just don't know they need to do the objectives.
Bingo. This is the main reason.
Doesn't that one fail the moment someone touches the acid?
The game has some skill checks and learnign curves, but most can be surpassed with buying. Or just emode events where you get paid out for doing nothing.
Each tfo which is outdated can be don easily with current powercreep, where people learn nothing go solo and pew pew to end.
Other timegated maps only need some dps to get rewards. Now random elite joining is added all these failures can freely join the elites. Enjoy, Yes the elitist can enjoy what otehrs have enjoyed since adv randoms joined. The game should have an unlock where characters must progress x times with succes before being able to join adv, and there have to do succes runs again untill unlocking elite option. Not that it would help the game, since the unlock would end up in the store, making it pointless.
"Anyaway, we don't often see a sense of humor in Section 31."