Giving STO Another Try

[M'rk son of Mogh]

I've been playing off and on for a few years now.

Do NOT listen to anyone that says you have to grind and spend real money. I easily went through every level of the game having not spent anything on my own, all of the mission rewards build you up well enough.

And if a level gives you trouble, that's why we have communities like this, ask for help and a fellow officer is always there, willing and able.

Oddly, even though Voyager was my least favourite of the show, to me their stories were the most enjoyable. For a knowledgeable Trek fan, there are some very clever plot points, tying things in from one series to another that, for me at least, really worked well. I mean, the Tox Uthat alone ties into so much more Trek lore that actually makes sense, explaining some unresolved plot threads from other series.

 

[Tuskin38]

You can't play either game on a current Windows 10-based computer unless you buy the games in question from the online store GOG (GOG.com) and then download them into your PC.

Neither of those games are on GoG.

 

[thribs]

So who’s doing the Red Angel thing? Even though it was such a stupid thing, it’s something to do in the game. Haven’t looked into what it does but it should be interesting.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Neither of those games are on GoG.

They might be one day.

 

[Tuskin38]

So who’s doing the Red Angel thing? Even though it was such a stupid thing, it’s something to do in the game. Haven’t looked into what it does but it should be interesting.

There are videos out there and a blog

 

[thribs]

There are videos out there and a blog

I know it I want to find out for myself.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

I've been playing off and on for a few years now.

Do NOT listen to anyone that says you have to grind and spend real money. I easily went through every level of the game having not spent anything on my own, all of the mission rewards build you up well enough.

I've been playing DC Universe Online for a few years now, and when I first started (on the PlayStation III-I've resumed playing it on the Xbox One), all I did was grind my ass off by playing it all of the time, and I was well rewarded. Interestingly enough, it was with my female characters that I had success in leveling up.

 

[JD]

How hard is it to get bigger ships like a Luna, or Soverign class?
Do the story missions get more of an arc, or is it pretty much just stopping random attacks on ships and planets by whoever the current baddies are?

 

[thribs]

It’s been a few years but I think you get a tier 5 Sovereign once you reach level 50 or so. A tier 6 version of that and the Luna will cost additional money.
ive played the new missions but for some reason they played them out of order. I haven’t been playing the Discovery missions so I didn’t notice at first. You can tell they are trying a bit more ambitious with their level design but the limitations of the engine are showing. The second level is a bit of a mess at the end

 

[JD]

I haven't played this since I posted about playing, I ended up getting side tracked by Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last of Us Part II. I'm done with TLUPII, so once I finish up Horizon Zero Dawn I'll probably go back to it some.

 

[Felderburg]

How hard is it to get bigger ships like a Luna, or Soverign class?
Do the story missions get more of an arc, or is it pretty much just stopping random attacks on ships and planets by whoever the current baddies are?

When you reach rear admiral, you have a choice of free ship between Luna, Sovereign, and an STO escort (Captain gives you a choice of Intrepid, Galaxy, or Defiant classes). So not that hard... and if you spend $, even easier!

The main missions that the game guides you through are all part of various arcs. You start with Klingon/Fed war missions, then move to Iconian War, then Temporal War, and finally onwards to other items (basically). Many systems have a standalone "patrol" associated with them that you can do independent of the storylines, and as mentioned, other mission arcs like The 2800 are available in another part of the mission journal.

All the main story arc missions are now available as soon as you make it through the tutorial instead of being unlocked as you progress, which is weird to me, but you can still do them in the proper order. There are some TFOs (group events) that are technically part of the story, but because they're group queue events, they're no longer required for the arcs.

 

[STEPhon IT]

What I loved about TNG "A Final Unity" was the game wasn't about fighting all of the time. There were sections where the game had exploration and veer off to other things before going back to the main plot of the tale. A Star Trek Game needs some variety because it's just not Star Wars.

 

[Felderburg]

Yeah, that's a big problem with STO, but I'm not sure how it could be fixed in the current MMO paradigm. The first problem is that Cryptic's game engine is built to make traditional combat-based MMOs. Yes, they've got some good story telling in STO, but the game was created from the ground up with combat in mind. The second problem is the problem all MMOs face, that new content is gobbled up by players far faster than it can be created. I hadn't played STO for several years, and when I got back, there was *loads* of new stories to play, which was great! ...for a month, maybe. And that's why so many MMOs have that repetitive end game gear grind: it keeps players playing after they've gone through the story content.

I'm not really sure how to fix that in a Star Trek MMO. They did have the randomized exploration clusters, but that resulted in some oddities, and got repetitive. I mean, sure, they could take the time and effort to make a "Final Unity-like" experience, but then once someone plays through it... what keeps them coming back and paying $ to keep the servers online? Obviously a sandbox style game like EVE Online doesn't have that problem, but it's an entirely different game type in concept, and I'm not sure what sort of "sandbox" would work for Star Trek.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

As far as I know, EVE online is basically a survival game in a sandbox universe.surviving is the story.
That concept is incompatible with Star Trek.
In STO your characters have a huge infrastructure behind them and the plot drives the story.
Ironically, if you want to build a game like that in the Trek universe, a Voyager like setting would work best, where your goal is survival in unknown regions of space.

 

[Kor]

While I find these MMOs really interesting, the main deterrent to me when it comes to this type of game is the amount of disc space taken up. My computer has pretty good graphics processing for gaming, but not a huge hard drive. If I installed this, along with Star Wars: TOR and then one other similar game, I would be completely out of space!

Kor

 

[Mage]

Star Wars: TOR
Kor

Speaking of.... Have you played the free version and is it worth it? Ive been considering it for a while now.

 

[Kor]

Speaking of.... Have you played the free version and is it worth it? Ive been considering it for a while now.

I have not played it. I started installing, but I killed it when I saw that the game installation alone was going to take up 30 GB or so.

Kor

 

[Felderburg]

While I find these MMOs really interesting, the main deterrent to me when it comes to this type of game is the amount of disc space taken up. My computer has pretty good graphics processing for gaming, but not a huge hard drive. If I installed this, along with Star Wars: TOR and then one other similar game, I would be completely out of space!

Small external hard drives are relatively cheap. But yeah, even on a larger drive, games taking up space can be a problem... or it can be a benefit, since it means you can only focus on a few (or one) game at a time, and not spend all your waking hours staring at the screen

As far as I know, EVE online is basically a survival game in a sandbox universe.surviving is the story.
That concept is incompatible with Star Trek.
In STO your characters have a huge infrastructure behind them and the plot drives the story.
Ironically, if you want to build a game like that in the Trek universe, a Voyager like setting would work best, where your goal is survival in unknown regions of space.

Yeah, as I noted EVE is an entirely different thing, but it's a successful sandbox MMO because of how it's different. The big question is how to get some sort of sandbox like or emergent content in a Star Trek game, and I just... don't think it's possible to actually have a Star Trek "feel" and do that. I mean, sure, there could be random anomalies and stellar phenomena, but at some point players will want that "first contact" experience, or something with dialog. And unfortunately that can't really be good with any sort of depth, by being procedurally/randomly generated.

I mean, I suppose it could? But it would take a LOT of work, and why do that when that sort of effort could go into scripted stories that use Star Trek actors to reprise their roles? The storylines with Odo and Kira for example, are great, and of course we get the final performances of Rene Auberjonois and Aron Eisenberg saved in perpetuity. I think I'd rather have that than a repetitive randomly generated thing.

 

[137th Gebirg]

It should be stated that Cryptic has been having major problems deploying releases while breaking existing functionality. My personal experience has been with the Xbox platform, built in looking at the ArcGames forums, it’s been a growing problem in the COVID era across all platforms, to varying degrees.

For example, a number of the accolades/achievements/trophies have been disabled due to the removal of certain single-player missions after new ones have been added. They really seem to be having problems with a lot of these updates recently, and it’s made especially bad for the consoles when companies like Microsoft or Sony only allow periodic updates, leaving some bugs unfixed for a month at a time or longer.

The one exception I’ve noticed recently was a catastrophic system failure at the server level when nobody could log into the shard servers for several days (again, on Xbox). They needed to do some emergency patch and have Microsoft fast-track it to the user base. I love playing the game, but it has gotten a bit frustrating in the past year, as the developers seem to be doing everything from home and may not have all the proper resources they need to deliver a proper release.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Does this play OK on a console? I have never tried it but was thinking about it recently.