Wanted to add to this because that line is gold for STF's

If you don't know how to play the STF, Please, For The Love Of All That Is Holy!!!! Don't Q Elites. Stick to the Pugfest that is normals and don't join elites til you feel norms are way to ez, and you have read what elites entail. Also want to state again what he's already said.

My worst experience was yesterday. I was in KA SE, Had taken out borg cube, and was defending right side, and picking away at generators, careful only to kill 1 on either side, and reduce the rest without killing(to avoid the cubes coming in right away) Notice other side is going slowly, and that the probes are not dieing far from the chroniton gateway, and ask if they need help, I'll switch someone....

The person that is supposed to be doing probes replies, "My ship isn't good at killing probes". I'm like blown away....needless to say, we managed to fail the optional(though with time I think we woulda been close to failing too probably), and by the time donatra spawns, we start fighting her, I'm tanking her, and noticing her life isn't dropping really....and as we fly around for a good 10 minutes, people just start disappearing. Overall, when I finally quit because I was the last 1 left, I think I was in that mission about an hour as my q was cd'd

If you don't know the stf, at least turn your chat screen on, If your not good enough to blow through normals, for pete's sake don't queue for elites.

In my opinion, it happens too much often. There is too much player who give up when it's time to fight Donatra. When 2 or 3 players leave after 10 minutes fighting with Donatra. I don't think it's because their mom asked them go to bed.

personally, I beleive the chat portion is probably the worst....

when you take the time to have a convo in the begining, everyone huddles around you as you type it out, and then halfway thru u notice that they still are not communicating thru team chat, only to realize, by meer habistance, looking at one of the individuals who has been goofing off like pee wee herman at a candy store that he HAS been talking the whole time, in ZONE chat.....

I just happened to turn around in a KA norm gnd,bout half way down into the dungeon of what is now unholy pain, and look at this 'person' to see a chat box appear above his head, with the words, and I quote "i've never done this before" ... followed by "what do we do now"...

which, by itself are perfectly acceptable, and welcome from any player, in the BEGINING, but above all in TEAM CHAT....
now i'm knee deep in borgified pain, and have no way of telling said player what to do, he is still running around AND has no weapon, none at all, trying to kirk foo his way past the borg to go to some corner that has nothing to do with anything only to return to me jump up and down for what felt like 10 mins, with said same zone chat box, in all caps.... "they wont die... they just wont die"
I dont think I have ever seen anyone die that much and still have the courage to return to the group and ask ... why....

my thought is, if we have to be forced into a PUG (by that i mean the 'teaming' portion when already ON a team)
can we also have it so that the chat controls also 'FORCE' you to have the team chat activated ? something along the lines of ...

I queue for INF space norm, the engage box is up, timer under 5 sec's, here we go...
as soon as the screen loads, BAM team chat is auto activated and SHOWING in your chat box, which of course is also FORCED OPEN to view......
now, I understand, this is not the all out solution, we will still have the 'i dont chat, i dont type, i dont communicate cause im too lazy to fiure out whats going on' people, but at least we would know that it is not because of the chat box, or settings that these people dont communicate.....

That's one thing I never liked about the UI. Every time I start a round, the chat box doesn't auto activate to Team. It changes to Team, but it doesn't activate it. And people wonder why I start every match with a random character or word. That's just me compensating for bad UI.

the chat system needs a revamp, sure before the fix you got to see everyone who opened a galor right accross the center of your screen in big yellow letters. But when a teammate is asking for help its in like 8pt font at the bottom left of my screen amidst the chaos of weapon fire, explosions, and ability activation graphics.

I for 1 miss the days of sully integrated audio in multiplayer games. Shoot the in game chat and audio for old school shooters (pre steam counter strike, etc) worked 100 times better than any current teamspeak like app now. that was well over 12 years ago tech, it's 2012 can't we have decent team communication?

back in those days you could pug all you wanted because you could easily communicate with each other through voice or chat and everyone on the team could see/hear it and react.

I don't want to have to sign in to a secondary app and try to find the right channel so i can hear what a teammate is saying. I want to be able to start a game, hit a button on my mic and say "can everyone hear me?" and go from there. is that so much to ask?

change the interface scale. it sounds like you have it at about .6

I moved the galor notification spam box to the very bottom of the screen under the chat box in the left hand corner. It's doubtful the broken system will be fixed any time soom. They banned shuttles from the STF's and I was suprised they went that far.

Evey other night or as often as needed while I'm working my 4 days on I send a text message to George Noory on Coast to Coast AM asking him to get back on topic. I tell him we want to hear Ghost and UFO story's. Maybe a little something about Mel's Hole in Washingtom State. I tell him 'Enough Politics.' Everyone knows the new system is broken. And occasionally Mr. Noory listens. Last night was a whole night of USO stories about under water UFO's.

So, Can we get back on topic? Everyone knows the current system it's broken. Bad STF stories are more fun. I'll even post one myself when I go to days's off. :p

I don't really have any bad STF stories now as things don't end disastrously enough for me to log it.

What's depressing is how all boring STFs are compared to running a marathon Elite episode mission replay with a lady from Germany. We went zero to level 40 in literally 2 days flat and the social and gameplay experience definitely far surpassed the endless grind of STFs.

Some missions were incredibly challenging too as the mission scaled with difficulty level chosen and team size. We used Klingon raider tactics to do hit and runs on mission objectives instead of slogging through 100 odd enemy ships.

This was also the time to demonstrate team support and efficient ship building techniques to prepare new pilots for successful STF runs... which we'll probably do tomorrow :3

OK, My turn.

So i have been doing STFs for a few months now, pretty well geared and knows all the tactics. this new guy in my fleet comes up through the ranks and wants to try an STF. I offer to escort him, because we are cool like that. Managed to get one more fleetmate in on it, but we have to pug the last two.

Dear god, was that mistake...

So, we spwan, me in my RSV, my green fleetmate in a Fleet escort, and my other fleet mate in a new Catian Carrier. Our Pugs was a DSSV and a Klingon Carrier. We were doing Infected space elite, so he can learn. WE went over the basic tactics with him before we queued, 10% rule and everything.

We waste the first cube easy, so i rush in and start debuffing the left cube over the transformer. it goes down within 30 seconds. After it pops, i send out a confrimation hails saying "10% rule, Everyone." hoping that it would remind some people about it. I get an enthusiastic hail from the new guy and no one else. Oh well, it happens.

I park on the front left generator and start peeling away at it. The klink carrier rolls up and starts to wail away on the one I was working on, leaving the fore right one untouched. Whatever, I roll over to the over generator and start to hit on it. I just got there, I only have it at 80% when i glance over my shoulder to see the klink carrier was still firing on a almost dead generator.

"{Players name} CEASE FIRE!!!"
BOOM!

And out comes the spheres -___-

OK, no big deal. mistakes happen. We all charge in and start mopping up the mess. Grav well and tractors everywhere. it was a mess. Sadly, one of the Nanites heals the transformer. Oh well, Optional lost. I'm not mad. It happens and it was a sticky situation. So we clean up the mess and take down the transformer. I type out. "It's ok guys. Lets just make sure that doesn't happen again." No response.

Second verse.. just like the first, but a little bit louder and a little bit worse.... Again, the Klink carrier pops early, even after i was yelling at him to stop firing at 25% health. We pop the generators all un even so it was a a messy stream of spheres and probes, a few people die and respawn and come back in the fight.

Except the klink... He was sitting out in the respawn point, at 33.7 km out from the combat. not moving, not taking damage nothing. He was sitting there for a full minute. It does NOT take that long to heal damage. We take out half the spheres without his help.

"Oi! you honorless targ! Get your *** back into combat!"

No Response. Finally after the tac cube spawns he jumps into the fray.

I don't mind mistakes in STFs, i made a few of them myself. Heck, one of my favorite STFs was where we FAILED the optional, but we picked ourselves back up and kicked ever loving ***. But when you make a mistake, and then do NOTHING to correct it, that is when I get ****ed.