Star Trek: Online

So I plan to get this game this week, after I buy my new labtop -- I'm trying to learn up as much as I can between this, the dedicated wiki, and the website. But I have a question: do you create one character, who is your captain and you lead as him (/her)? Or do you also get to create the "bridge crew" -- so four people? It is Captain, Tactical, Engineer, Science officer? I get that you get that you get to pick for your captain one of those four as a focus -- but do you get to create your bridge crew from the start with the same "from scratch" selections, or is that just a main character thing?

 

I generally don't think that personal anecdotes are a way to judge a game's success. My experience has been just the opposite of yours, with people mostly complaining, leaving the game, bitching about nothing to do at level 45, etc.

That's not what I base the potential "problems" on. It's the fact that they aren't even six months in and the items that people paid extra to get special are now available to everyone for rock bottom prices. You don't do that just because you're "listening to your players", that's an attempt to keep people who might be riding the fence interested in playing your game. Otherwise it's nothing more than an attempt to piss off the people who paid for the $200 lifetime subscription or the $70 collector's edition or bought the TOS season 3 blu-rays for the TWoK uniform and such.

I also base it on the number of instances running now as compared to the number of instances running one month after launch. When you brought up the "change instance" option a month after launch, you could choose from between 15-20 different instances. Now, sometimes, you're lucky if there are two open at a time.

Again, personal anecdotes aren't an indication at all and every company lies about (or creatively fudges if you prefer) their numbers. No one knows what Star Trek's subscription rate is but their people. Even WoW lies about its subscription rates to the public/media.

This "example" is used a lot and it's just not true. It was far from perfect, but it was still pretty damn excellent. I'll freely admit most other MMOs have real issues 5 months in, but WoW was definitely at the top of the pack for best from launch MMO title.

And this is what has me optimistic. I want it to be better. I want it to be a great game. I want tactical to always be spelled tactical and not sometimes tacticle. The more they put into it the better chance it has to become something great.

I do have to call BS on this. Bioware was planning on implementing these things LONG before Star Trek came out. Maybe the ship combat and interiors bit is new, but I know the companion system was announced when ToR was announced.

I hope you're right. But I also hope it improves significantly.

I can see this happening. DDO has become very profitable since going this road and I think a lot of the less popular, struggling MMOs with passable gameplay like Star Trek may be going F2P. But we shall see.

 

You create your Captain. The bridge crew you meet through play or hire directly. You control their looks and nickname, but not their species. They come to you with a set of skills. You can have them trained in new skills, and you spend points to raise their skill levels in their skills.

There are three branches, Tactical, Science, and Engineering. Your boffs can be from any of these, and you control which ones you bring with you on missions so you can mix it how you like.

I bring two engineers, one tactical, and one science. I know people who bring four tactical. If you don't have four yet (which you won't right away when you start), the extra slots are filled with nameless redshirts. They don't have special powers, but they have phasers and a willingness to use them, and that's what counts.

 

There is a lot of customization built in for both people and ships. However, the game as it now stands is completely lacking in the adventure department. Lots of inflight battles, the starflight imagery is done very well IMHO, but they got carried away with shields et al. on ground senarios... the result is less than Star Trek. Their animation is also clunky, I also play Aion where everything is quite fluid...in fact you can watch the fabric of the character's costumes move when they breathe...I imagine WoW is the same...SToL should do this level of detail.

For me I burned out on space battles and and nonstar trek ship interiors, and left the game, but it's worth a look and has the potential IF they want to use it.

 

Has anyone bought the Galaxy Dreadnought yet?

 

Just so you know; WoW isn't anything resembling the same. WoW's graphics were deliberately not cutting edge in 2005; the game was designed to run on old PCs back then, and hasn't seen much change in this area.

 

nah, but i took these of an unsuspecting victim:

 

This is the first MMORPG I've played and I have to admit, even though it's not my usual type of game, I've quite enjoyed it so far.

I'm not sure if I'll subscribe to it full time as I tend to go through gaming phases and for me, it may not be worth it. Still, it's been fun

 

I have, no screenshots yet, though. I just secured it to give it to my newest character Trin when she becomes an Admiral.
She's an evil Bajoran in tight leather, infiltrating the normal universe.
She loves exploding stuff and beating up Klingons (KDF beware as soon as she gets her hands on a bat'leth).
her crowning achievement will be securing one of those Galaxy-X warmachines with the mean spinal phaser array, heavy dual cannons and a functional cloaking device.
With one of those, conquering the galaxy will be almost as easy as Empress Sato putting the Terran Empire under her thumb 200 years ago!

 

Nice thing about MMOs is they never delete you account, or your characters, so if you find they've added something new and interesting, you can come back for a month, try it out, and pick up right where you left off.

 

Thanks. That's useful to know as I'll probably want to revisit it from time to time

 

Really? I've never played it, but have heard so much from WoW'ers that I thought it must really be something... That saved me a few bucks, thank you sir!

Regards,
Chuck

 

I would love to get the game, but I have a mac, so I would have to use boot camp to play it, and its always a hassel using it, I heard that its pretty buggy as well, is it really worth it?

 

^ The game itself is good, Cryptic however are a different story

I've been playing since the open beta, and only just have I gained Captain I'm so slow. Cryptic are kinda annoying now, they don't release anything on time, and people are constantly having issues with certain parts of the game. I'm still wondering if it's a good idea to move to Tribble or not.

 

1) Cryptic is (to date) te most commuicative MMO developer in that they actually talk to (and not at) the STO playerbase, and of late base the malority of new content and mew or refined STO game mechanics on player feedback.

2) The 'lateness' is often due to the fact that they try to let the playerbase know just what they're working on adding to the game; and giving projected timelines on when players can expect to see the changes on the Tribble test server for testing; and after getting feedback, pushed to the Live server. (Been playing MMOs since Meridian 59; and I've NEVER experienced an MMO developer this open and up front with the playerbase - including Cryptic itself when they were th primary developer for City of Heroes back from 2003 - 2006). They'v never missed a new content 'push' date by more than a week or so, so far.

3) Does STO have bugs? yep. But, overall, it's no more or less 'buggy' then any other subscription based MMO atm. Hell, I can count on one hand the number of times I've had the game client actually crash on me outright since the Headstart days.

4) They are adding content (and good content too) FASTER than any Dev team I've seen. They added stuff quickly during the beta too; and I honestly thought they wouldn't be able to maintain the pace; but 5 months post launch, they have. There was the large Season One patch about two months after launch (and there was a 1.1 and 1.2 patch also over the next two months); and now Season 2.0 (their largest content patch to date) is just now going to the Tribble Test server; and is expected to go to the Live server after 3 - 4 weeks on Tribble. So, that'll be two major content updates in the first 6 months post STO launch.

Personally, I think they're doing a pretty decent job with the game. Is it, and are they perfect? No. But they do generally listen to what the playerbase; and again are more willing to discuss and be more upfront with the playerbase then ANY OTHER MMO developer I've seen in the last 13 years.

 

Disagree. NCsoft Norcal (CoH's devs that stayed when Jack Emmert broke away with the Cryptic name to make Marvel Universe Online) have been far more communicative, social and helpful.

GM tickets in STO can take days to get a form response and some I've submitted have yet to be resolved and I have never been updated with their progress. One in particular had been submitted by multiple people, but the dev Dscotty said he'd never seen any of the reports when Peregrine asked him about it and encouraged him/her to create a forum thread about it in the bug forum.

On the other side, back at NC Norcal, I submitted a bug ticket (Not GM request) that the shield patterns were not working and they replied that day with a thank you for letting them know of the issue and an assurance they would be working on it, replied again that the issue was more complex than anticipated and that it may take a bit, replied once again that it was being escalated up the chain, then replied again to say that the reason for the bug was found and that the fix would be coming in a patch within a week or two.

 

Huh, the STO Devs have stated up front they don't respond to Bug Tickets personally; and as for GM tickets, haven't had to submit one since STO closed beta, so I couldn't say; (but yes, I've heard that some GM tickets have taken a while to be responded to), but if you look at the Dev Tracker on the official CoH forums as compared to the Dev tracker on Star Trek Online Forums; I think you'll notice that:

a) The STO Dev team posts more often.

and

b) The STO dev team posts more about what's upcoming in the game development cycle.

Both teams do a lot of 'spam' posts promoting stuff. But as a closed beta tester for CoH (back in December 2003); the level of Dev to Player communication on the STO forums is now (and was during closed beta) way move active then in either the CoH closed beta, or at six months post launch for CoH.

 

thanks guys you've been really helpful, I think I'm going to go for it

 

Well if you haven't got one already just PM me with your e-mail address and I can get you one of those buddy keys.

 

Hi guys, I was thinking of playing STO, but I have one question:

From reading about it during it's development I got the impression that STO is set in the same continuity as all the post-nemesis novels. I'm currently slowly catching up with the novels but I'm still somewhere in 2006. So will playing the game spoil the novels like Destiny etc? Apologies if this has been discussed already but I'm wary of reading STO threads for fear of the same spoilers