Its that time again. Another PvE event, this time the MIrror Invasion PvE, that I cannot resist doing with each of my characters to earn the oh so critical Dilithium (Which I will save for another topic). Now, let me say that I currently have 17 characters that I run this PvE event on DAILY. That is almost 200 times doing this mission in the approximate two weeks it runs. So I think my observations can be taken seriously. Now I have played this missions in many different scenraios using different ships and equips. The problem is that the mission is inconsistent and can sometimes lead to dangerous blood pressure increases. Let me describe a few scenarios good and bad:
1. The way too easy. This is the one where there are likely Uber ships on that can kill a whole squad of rift shifts in one shot. This of course makes the mission simple and usually leaves the team with about 5 minutes of inactivity waiting for the second stage. I am not sure why the devs did not design some type of algorithm that can A: Determine when there is no rift activity and move to second stage, or open more rifts. So far the record number of rifts in the FIRST stage I have encountered is 34. So if we have reached a maximum number of rifts that it will open, it should start stage two without making us wait five minutes doing nothing.
2. The average. This may be the run where you do not have those uber ships above, but a team that knows what it is doing and is able to hold its own. This often will still leave some minutes of inactivity waiting for second stage, or may be able to complete it just in time and still have no station damage.
3. The below average. This may be a team that struggles a bit and ends up having some station damage or rifts still open by the time stage two starts. This is may happen when a team does not work together. More often though this is because either someone left and the team is short a player OR you have someone who is not participating (An AFKer), who is just there to get credit (I report them every time, though I am not sure they do anything).
4. The nightmare. This is the scenario that I cannot wrap my head around. This is where the PvE seems to open all the rifts at once and dumps out more enemy ships than can be handled by the team. Remember there are only five players, so if the mission dumps out two dozens ships on one side and another two dozen on the other side with rifts overlapping. It makes it almost impossible to close rifts and prevent further enemy and the starbase is quickly overwhelmed. Now if you have the Uber players with thei one shot killships, this can sometimes be handled. But if you are an average team it makes things impossible.
Its the inconsistencies that really bother me. I have seen missions only open 20 rifts and then no more leaving a long duration of inactivity. I have also seen it where it opens the max rifts but spreads them out so it is more manageable for five average players. Then there is the nightmare that opens all the rifts at once.
One of my biggest pet peeves is the timing. If I am taking on a rift on my own as an average player. By the time I destroy those ships on ONE rift, the next squad appears and you do not get a chance to close. I have had it where I destroyed the first wave through that rift, I am closing it and the meter almost finishes (sometimes even looks like it does complete) yet the enemy appears in time to interrupt. During this time other rifts open and spill out more ships and it can soon get out of control. That is one of the most frustrating aspects is how easy it is to interrupt rift closing.
1. Small tiny fighters that the enemy releases are sometimes impossible to see unless firing, often times I just have to keep swinging camera around and hitting tab to try and find them. Yet these small gnat like fighters can interrupt a rift closing. That is ridiculous. Really rift closing interruptions should not be so black or white. Meaning they should not just automatically be interrupted when you are attacked. It should have more of a chance factor based on strength of attack, type of ship and how far along you are in the closing. If I am in a science ship they are gered towards closing, why they do it faster, but they often still cannot get a chance to on their own because by the time they kill the first wave of ships to close the rift, a second wave is coming through. So they should not be so easily interrupted from a closing. I am not saying that a closing interruption should not happen, but make it more like a 15-20% chance per hit. This way each hit has a chance of interrupting, but since a science ship closes faster, there are less opportunities for the hits to do so. If you are a tactical or engineering ship, they are not as geared to closing why it takes them longer. So the chance per hit interruption has more opportunities to do so.
Look the reason I bring this up is I just played a mission as a science ship. I do not have the Uber ship loadouts with epic weapons and epic consoles to make one hit kills on a group. I have an above average loadout, so I can hold my own and eventually destroy a compliment of ships, but the rifts spill out more before I can close. So here we start the misison and a rift opens right enxt to me, so I have enough time to start closing right away. For no reason I could tell the closing gets interrupted (frustrating), but as a science ship it closes pretty fast, so I start the process again. Only now the ships come through right when the second attempt is about to finish and they immediately interrupt it, even though the bar looked like it completed (More frustrating). So then I am under fire and I fight back. This is one where its a frigate and a cruiser and they do not stay to guard, so eventually they move past the 10km range and I try to close again before pursuing them. AGAIN for no reason I can see the closing is interrupted when it is almost done and the ships did not turn around and were still past 10km. So it took me FOUR tries to close one rift. So then same mission I move on and I see the entire team is on one side. So I go to the other side to turn on some satelites and to seek out rifts to close. Now as a science ship, it is best to try and sneak up to a rift and close. Either while team is engaging the ships or on unguarded rifts that the enemy left to head toward station. Yet when I reached the other side of station there were already a half dozen overlapping rifts that not only had about a dozen ships heading to station but still had 3-6 ships per rift guarding (How long that side had to pull ships through their rifts). So now as a science ship I have no way of getting close enough to close a rift without engaging and I certainly was not strong enough to take them on. I managed to single out a rift and try to close it, but again rift nearby spilled out ships that interrupted. It was infuriating. This ended up being one of those nightmare ones where the starbase lost half its health and we barely closed any rifts. (We did manage to get the defenses operational 5/5).
Now again, I have been through the easy runs, the decent runs and these nightmare runs. Before you all start spouting strategy and such. I know very well what the strategy should be. As I said run the mission 17 times a day for last two weeks (not to mention the times I ran it last time they had this event). I also have run the PvE with this same character, ship and loadout and had no problems. So as I said it is more the inconsistency. It is more the frustration of how they interrupt rifts. It really should not be so easy to interrupt rifts or the timing of how you kill the first wave of ships are closing rifts and the bar is almost compelte and the next wave interrupts. Bad enough when a rift opens up nearby and interrupts and suddenly you have two rifts that continually dump out shifts in a stagger, so as you defeat one the other brings more, then defeat those and the second brings more.
My point is Rift closing interruptions should still have a CHANCE to finish even if attacked. They could easily program a closing rift chance (just like they have a critical hit chance). Critical hit chances are affected by a lot of different variables, so they could apply the same idea for closing rifts. It certainly would help save the blood pressure. I am sure my neighbors have heard me curse "BS" when my rift closing got interurpted an outrageous number of times, especially when it always seems to happen at 98% of rift closing meter filled.
Okay I vented. I feel better.
1. The way too easy. This is the one where there are likely Uber ships on that can kill a whole squad of rift shifts in one shot. This of course makes the mission simple and usually leaves the team with about 5 minutes of inactivity waiting for the second stage. I am not sure why the devs did not design some type of algorithm that can A: Determine when there is no rift activity and move to second stage, or open more rifts. So far the record number of rifts in the FIRST stage I have encountered is 34. So if we have reached a maximum number of rifts that it will open, it should start stage two without making us wait five minutes doing nothing.
2. The average. This may be the run where you do not have those uber ships above, but a team that knows what it is doing and is able to hold its own. This often will still leave some minutes of inactivity waiting for second stage, or may be able to complete it just in time and still have no station damage.
3. The below average. This may be a team that struggles a bit and ends up having some station damage or rifts still open by the time stage two starts. This is may happen when a team does not work together. More often though this is because either someone left and the team is short a player OR you have someone who is not participating (An AFKer), who is just there to get credit (I report them every time, though I am not sure they do anything).
4. The nightmare. This is the scenario that I cannot wrap my head around. This is where the PvE seems to open all the rifts at once and dumps out more enemy ships than can be handled by the team. Remember there are only five players, so if the mission dumps out two dozens ships on one side and another two dozen on the other side with rifts overlapping. It makes it almost impossible to close rifts and prevent further enemy and the starbase is quickly overwhelmed. Now if you have the Uber players with thei one shot killships, this can sometimes be handled. But if you are an average team it makes things impossible.
Its the inconsistencies that really bother me. I have seen missions only open 20 rifts and then no more leaving a long duration of inactivity. I have also seen it where it opens the max rifts but spreads them out so it is more manageable for five average players. Then there is the nightmare that opens all the rifts at once.
One of my biggest pet peeves is the timing. If I am taking on a rift on my own as an average player. By the time I destroy those ships on ONE rift, the next squad appears and you do not get a chance to close. I have had it where I destroyed the first wave through that rift, I am closing it and the meter almost finishes (sometimes even looks like it does complete) yet the enemy appears in time to interrupt. During this time other rifts open and spill out more ships and it can soon get out of control. That is one of the most frustrating aspects is how easy it is to interrupt rift closing.
1. Small tiny fighters that the enemy releases are sometimes impossible to see unless firing, often times I just have to keep swinging camera around and hitting tab to try and find them. Yet these small gnat like fighters can interrupt a rift closing. That is ridiculous. Really rift closing interruptions should not be so black or white. Meaning they should not just automatically be interrupted when you are attacked. It should have more of a chance factor based on strength of attack, type of ship and how far along you are in the closing. If I am in a science ship they are gered towards closing, why they do it faster, but they often still cannot get a chance to on their own because by the time they kill the first wave of ships to close the rift, a second wave is coming through. So they should not be so easily interrupted from a closing. I am not saying that a closing interruption should not happen, but make it more like a 15-20% chance per hit. This way each hit has a chance of interrupting, but since a science ship closes faster, there are less opportunities for the hits to do so. If you are a tactical or engineering ship, they are not as geared to closing why it takes them longer. So the chance per hit interruption has more opportunities to do so.
Look the reason I bring this up is I just played a mission as a science ship. I do not have the Uber ship loadouts with epic weapons and epic consoles to make one hit kills on a group. I have an above average loadout, so I can hold my own and eventually destroy a compliment of ships, but the rifts spill out more before I can close. So here we start the misison and a rift opens right enxt to me, so I have enough time to start closing right away. For no reason I could tell the closing gets interrupted (frustrating), but as a science ship it closes pretty fast, so I start the process again. Only now the ships come through right when the second attempt is about to finish and they immediately interrupt it, even though the bar looked like it completed (More frustrating). So then I am under fire and I fight back. This is one where its a frigate and a cruiser and they do not stay to guard, so eventually they move past the 10km range and I try to close again before pursuing them. AGAIN for no reason I can see the closing is interrupted when it is almost done and the ships did not turn around and were still past 10km. So it took me FOUR tries to close one rift. So then same mission I move on and I see the entire team is on one side. So I go to the other side to turn on some satelites and to seek out rifts to close. Now as a science ship, it is best to try and sneak up to a rift and close. Either while team is engaging the ships or on unguarded rifts that the enemy left to head toward station. Yet when I reached the other side of station there were already a half dozen overlapping rifts that not only had about a dozen ships heading to station but still had 3-6 ships per rift guarding (How long that side had to pull ships through their rifts). So now as a science ship I have no way of getting close enough to close a rift without engaging and I certainly was not strong enough to take them on. I managed to single out a rift and try to close it, but again rift nearby spilled out ships that interrupted. It was infuriating. This ended up being one of those nightmare ones where the starbase lost half its health and we barely closed any rifts. (We did manage to get the defenses operational 5/5).
Now again, I have been through the easy runs, the decent runs and these nightmare runs. Before you all start spouting strategy and such. I know very well what the strategy should be. As I said run the mission 17 times a day for last two weeks (not to mention the times I ran it last time they had this event). I also have run the PvE with this same character, ship and loadout and had no problems. So as I said it is more the inconsistency. It is more the frustration of how they interrupt rifts. It really should not be so easy to interrupt rifts or the timing of how you kill the first wave of ships are closing rifts and the bar is almost compelte and the next wave interrupts. Bad enough when a rift opens up nearby and interrupts and suddenly you have two rifts that continually dump out shifts in a stagger, so as you defeat one the other brings more, then defeat those and the second brings more.
My point is Rift closing interruptions should still have a CHANCE to finish even if attacked. They could easily program a closing rift chance (just like they have a critical hit chance). Critical hit chances are affected by a lot of different variables, so they could apply the same idea for closing rifts. It certainly would help save the blood pressure. I am sure my neighbors have heard me curse "BS" when my rift closing got interurpted an outrageous number of times, especially when it always seems to happen at 98% of rift closing meter filled.
Okay I vented. I feel better.