Star Trek: Online

[Noname Given]

When do new weekly missions start and who are the foe?

That would be the kind of information Dan would have put in the December Engineering Report if he wasn't out.

Neither has been announced yet. I'll pop back over here and say something as soon as I hear.

All that's been confirmed (by the Dev Stormshade) is that they plan to start/release the next featured episode set in January 2011. No concrete details regarding it's storyline or possible start location have been announced or leaked as yet.

 

[syberghost]

Update:

Dan's back. He hasn't had time to put together his engineering report yet, but he posted the following about this month:

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?p=3261575#post3261575

While I don't have specific dates to share, I can show you what I have on my January Calendar:
Decision whether to turn Foundry on Holodeck or wait till next Foundry Update
Feature Episode Series 3 Starts this month! (featuring the _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _)
All Good Things Uniforms
Vulcan Player Ship
Prep for 1 year Anniversay on Feb 2
Prep for 400 day vet rewards Feb 19

Knowing Dan, it might be worthwhile to draw a conclusion from there being 8 underlines, and it might not. Enjoy.

 

[Commodore_Rook]

Well, just guessing off the top of my head, with 8 spaces, it could be about:

• Bajorans
• Romulans
• Tholians
• Hirogens
• Edosians

My money is on Tholians since they were working on concept artwork for them. Romulans are a close second, and Hirogens a distant third. The other two, who cares???

 

[Ronald Held]

I suppose I have to wait out the month.....

 

[Destructor]

That's not always true.
Some engines like Unreal Engine 3 (used in Unreal Tournament 3 and a ton of other games) are actually good enough that the virtual camera can easily switch from first-person to third-person without causing problems for the player.
In some cases it's even welcome to switch between them, since both perspectives offer different advantages to the player.

Games that use that engine that way mostly have maps with HUGE interiors, and only rarely a room that's small. When you're trying to tell your Science boff to target a guy in the back of the group you're facing, do you want the game putting you in First Person so you can't, just so a room could be small?

Back when Raven was making Elite Force, they actually took the blueprints of the Voyager bridge and made a perfect, precisely-to-scale digital copy of the bridge so that you could walk around in it. It was totally un-navigable. It was absolutely tiny, you basically had to turn off clipping to be able to do anything. So they redesigned it so that it FELT like the bridge, but in reality it was a LOT bigger than the actual bridge the actors worked on.

This seems to be what Perpetual have done, to a larger degree, with the STO environments.

 

[Rat Boy]

And considering how frustrating the movement controls can be, it's just as well.

 

[Bishop76]

Is this thing free to play yet?

 

[Aeolusdallas]

Is this thing free to play yet?

lol, no why would it be?

 

[Bishop76]

Is this thing free to play yet?

lol, no why would it be?

Because it's player base is tiny and getting smaller all the time.

 

[Destructor]

Is this thing free to play yet?

lol, no why would it be?

Because it's player base is tiny and getting smaller all the time.

I'm not disagreeing with you here, I don't know one way or the other, but do you have access to a source on that?

 

[Aeolusdallas]

Is this thing free to play yet?

lol, no why would it be?

Because it's player base is tiny and getting smaller all the time.

Please provide proof of that allegation.

 

[Aeolusdallas]

Here is a reply on the main site to someone claiming what Bishop claimed.

StormShade
Online Community Rep



Join Date: May 2009

I'm going to close this down. However, while I do so, allow me to simply state that not only are those numbers wrong, they're also very low when compared to fact.

Also, in case you missed DStahl's comment earlier in the week, we saw a pretty nice increase in subscribers over the last month. So, essentially what I'm saying is not only are our numbers good, but we're also growing as well.

Remember to be nice and helpful to all the new players everyone!

Thanks,

Stormshade
_______________

 

[Bishop76]

First off, no companies release their subscription numbers - they're all based on speculation. But, at launch estimates had them at 1 million subscribers, which was down to 100k after 3 months.

http://hailingfrequency.com/boards/...online-struggles-with-only-100k-subscribers!/

I'm guessing numbers have dropped off further from there.

There are other indicators too. Cryptic's other MMO, Champions online has gone free to play, STO's head developer left (voluntarily?), the price of the game itself is about $2.50 on Amazon, and the fact that for smaller MMOs like STO the free to play model is far more profitable (See again Champions, LotRO, DDO)

Also, I was just curious because it's an okay game but not worth paying subscription fees for.

 

[Aeolusdallas]

First off, no companies release their subscription numbers - they're all based on speculation. But, at launch estimates had them at 1 million subscribers, which was down to 100k after 3 months.

http://hailingfrequency.com/boards/...online-struggles-with-only-100k-subscribers!/

I'm guessing numbers have dropped off further from there.

There are other indicators too. Cryptic's other MMO, Champions online has gone free to play, STO's head developer left (voluntarily?), the price of the game itself is about $2.50 on Amazon, and the fact that for smaller MMOs like STO the free to play model is far more profitable (See again Champions, LotRO, DDO)

Also, I was just curious because it's an okay game but not worth paying subscription fees for.

I think you will find some pretty strong disagreement with that.

 

[Bishop76]

With what part of it?

 

[Aeolusdallas]

With what part of it?

All of it but particularly the "it's not worth 15 bucks a month." I mean really that's less than most people spend on soda's in a month. It's like a fifth of a monthly cable bill. It's less than the cost of a single person going to an hour and a half movie. etc.... Plus the changes they have made over the last few months are extraordinarily.

 

[Bishop76]

Well, I do find that people disagree with my subjective statements a bit more than my objective. So, what have they done to improve it? My experience with it was that I levelled very quickly to RA5 (I believe they've gone beyond that now) and there was no endgame content other than a few dailies that got real old, real fast. I did try the first "episode" of content, but was just as unimpressed.

It's not an all around failure of a game - the ship combat is pretty tight, but it fails in almost every other regard. The away team missions are abysmal, the quests are uninspired, and even the stories that I have seen were almost embarrassing.

So, again, sell me on it. What has made it a better game?

 

[Aeolusdallas]

Well, I do find that people disagree with my subjective statements a bit more than my objective. So, what have they done to improve it? My experience with it was that I levelled very quickly to RA5 (I believe they've gone beyond that now) and there was no endgame content other than a few dailies that got real old, real fast. I did try the first "episode" of content, but was just as unimpressed.

It's not an all around failure of a game - the ship combat is pretty tight, but it fails in almost every other regard. The away team missions are abysmal, the quests are uninspired, and even the stories that I have seen were almost embarrassing.

So, again, sell me on it. What has made it a better game?

Lets see there are the new sector maps which are beautiful. The weekly missions which really are amazing. The replay missions, several of which have new rewards.. The TOS hand weapons, the massive number of new ships, uniforms etc...
The Diplomacy missions are a nice distraction and the new crafting system is so much better than the old.
Really all of the season 3 stuff is way above and beyond what one normally expects for an MMO in the first year.
Then there is the foundry system which is still in beta but shaping up nicely.

My brother is going nuts over the new Gorn ship and is bouncing off the walls waiting for the new Gorn character customization to hit live.

EDIT and by new sector maps I mean all of the sectors were redone.

 

[Bishop76]

Sounds like they've done a lot of work. I'm still a bit skeptical. See, I want to like this game - really, I do - it just wasn't a $15/month experience when I played it.

Maybe once I get bored with Cataclysm, I'll swing back in and give it a try for a month if it isn't free to play by then.

 

[Aeolusdallas]

Sounds like they've done a lot of work. I'm still a bit skeptical. See, I want to like this game - really, I do - it just wasn't a $15/month experience when I played it.

Maybe once I get bored with Cataclysm, I'll swing back in and give it a try for a month if it isn't free to play by then.

It's not going to go free to play anytime soon if ever. So you can drop that idea.