Star Trek Online Discussion Thread - Delta Rising

I just picked up a Dauntless to level up for the Starship Trait. For now I will just transfer over the gear from my Vesta.

I looked up synonyms for dauntless, and chose one of those as my ships name. It's the U.S.S. Resolute.

 

Now that Delta Rising has been out for some time, what do you guys think of it? How does it fare against Legacy of Romulus?

Personally, I feel that LoR is the better expansion for the sole reason that gameplay and progression was natural. At no point did LoR try to force me to do anything. If there's a part of the game I did not feel like doing, like Tau Dewa patrols, I can just skip it. Not only that, the storyline was tied to the New Romulus reputation faction and its much coveted items. It served as a good carrot for encouraging players to be involved in the storyline, even if its the 10th character to have gone through the 4 featured episodes.

Delta Rising on the other hand felt clunky and gives me the feeling of trying to force uninteresting missions (I'm looking at you, patrol missions) down my throat just to pad out the number of missions and waste time having to wade through them. Also, it is an understatement to say most of the playerbase (who did not or could not test-play on tribble) were unpleasantly surprised by the sudden hike in difficulty. This is something I felt the dev team should have communicated clearly to the playerbase way before DR launched.

Then came the so called Tau Dewa Patrol exploit and Cryptic's reaction of simply deducting specialization points that players have earned by playing legitmately. To me an exploit is the same as a hack, which is to take advantage of bugs in the game in order to advance or gain an unfair advantage. With the TD patrols, there was no bug in the game. Players were spending time playing legitimate content as set out by the rules defined by Cryptic. Even though I did not get my specialization points deducted, I find the move to be unfair on Cryptic's part.

 

^^^
You've largely summed up my feelings on DR as well. It also feels like much more of a "collection" of content rather than a single cohesive expansion like LoR. The level cap, the specializations, the ship mastery, all those things have little to do with the delta quadrant. While some of them are definately nice additions, they don't do much to promote the core content, which should be the new sectors and missions.

Personally, I don't mind the patrol missions that much as they do have some story elements to them. It's just the lack of true story missions in between that disappoints me; what is there is nice, but it's nowhere near the epic story LoR brought us for the Romulans, and the xp grind needed to advance through them makes them seem even fewer than they are, as you need more time farming xp than you actually spend playing new content.

What I do like is the variety among the NPC tactics, the voice work (especially Ethan Phillips as Neelix), the Vaadwaur/Kobali story, and - hold on to your hats - the upgrade system. The artwork on the new ships and zones is nice, but it doesn't blow me away like LoR's did. I do like the work done on the NPC characters.

 

I think it was fair to assume that any Star Trek fan knows who and what the Romulans are, but Voyager doesn't seem highly thought of, even in hardcore fandom. I probably haven't seen an episode since "Endgame" aired in '01. I think they assumed a little too much familiarity. Had to go to memory alpha to find out who or what a "vadwar" or "kobaly" is.

 

They do tend to use the one-episode aliens a fair amount. Though if you read all the extra dialogue you do get a decent explanation of Voyager's episode.

 

Also, a lot of the species information blogs had notes saying "For more information about (this species), watch the following episodes:". Voyager had few aliens that featured in multiple episodes, especially during the later seasons, so I think the current setup is understandable. Most of the "recurring species", like the Borg, 8472 and Hirogen had already been done, so it's logical Cryptic would look to the others.

 

New hull material for T6 ships with the next patch: http://i4.minus.com/ibmUekrOfkYC6A.png

Also, Dyson ships will be able to use regular faction specific hull materials.

 

Yeah, but the only recurring DQ aliens that may have been more interesting are the Vidians. Otherwise you just have the Kazon, who are just low-tech Klingons without any Klingon-Style and then you have the Borg.

You don't get a lot of recurring races when you are always on the move.

 

Now we're talking! And I had so intended not to get any of them... oh, well.

 

Well, here is a Qib with a more traditional paint job:

 

on a similar note here are some images where someone has applied intel skins to the non-intel ships

http://imgur.com/a/v0S3S#0

 

Concerning acquiring Ancient Power Cells for Delta Alliance equipment projects. This may sound like a really stupid question, but where do I find 'Borg Unimatrix', 'Bug Hunt', and 'The Battle of Korfaz' in order in acquire them? Is there something I'm missing, or could it be that I'm not a high enough rank yet with my characters yet, who are at either level 54 or 55?

 

Then you are high enough to play Borg Disconnected. You find that in the PvE Queue system.

Bug Hunt requires you to play the mission Dragon's Deceit first which you may not yet have gotten to and Korfaz is level 60 only.

 

There is also a small chance of them in the delta alliance equipment requisition boxes, got a couple of them from the boxes.

 

I've been having trouble with one of the DPS readers. The one that works with Java. I've installed it, and did the 'combatlog' 1 and 0, but no combatlog in my files.

I did a few runs at Starbase 234, finding out that my Nebula/Megellan hybrid can go against a Multi-Mission Surveilliance even when 'she' has her powerful shield up....but I always run out on the timer when I finally get to the 'boss;'the starbase.

If I knew how much DPS I was dishing out, I would be able to modify my ship. (I already did my re-spec-ing, so my character should be fine for awhile).

 

So I've been leveling my Fed through the game because I never really could bring myself to get past level 40, but all the FE episodes and other additions past launch (and Delta Rising) have motivated me to push on.

I'm having a good time so far, but the Cardassian missions feel a bit boring to me so far, (escpecially the "rescue the ship from the wormhole mission" I just played through) which is kind of a let-down because I was really digging the Romulan/Reman missions.

 

The Cardassian and Romulan general leveling missions are the remainder of the old release day content, save for the feature episodes.

Cryptic wil eventually remaster them to streamline them and to bring them in line with the rest of the content.

 

The cardassian arc contains a lot of old missions that were not very well crafted. The good news is that you're almost played your way through the old and bad missions. Once you reach the final 5-6 missions in the cardassian arc, most of the remaining missions from that point onwards are either new or remastered and are considerably better.

 

The wormhole rescue used to be one of my favourites at the start.

Just switched from my Dyson hybrid to a Dauntless... played on Elite, but it's so much harder with a pure science ship than with the hybrid. Going to have to re-do my build, I think!

 

That's pretty normal. I've been playing the Delta Quadrant missions on my 23k dps Recluse on elite setting. It usually takes me a minute to take down a frigate or escort. If its a cruiser, it takes several minutes for me to slowly whittle down its shields and hull.

Even a simple patrol mission can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to complete.