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STAR TREK ONLINE: The |OT| of Going Where No Gamer Has Gone Before....

DustoMan

Banned
Do you guys think that not letting players make Klingon characters until lvl 6 was a good design choice? I really don't think so. The die-hard Klingon fanatics would want to start a character from the get go and would probably not want to spend the 3-4 hours necessary to make it up to lvl 6 first. Is playing a Klingon that much different from being in the Fed and thus needing an already experienced player?
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
I look forward to the epic battles that pit GAFleet against the House of GAF, turning brother against brother, friend against friend in eternal bitter conflict.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
DustoMan said:
Do you guys think that not letting players make Klingon characters until lvl 6 was a good design choice? I really don't think so. The die-hard Klingon fanatics would want to start a character from the get go and would probably not want to spend the 3-4 hours necessary to make it up to lvl 6 first. Is playing a Klingon that much different from being in the Fed and thus needing an already experienced player?
I strongly believe they did it this way because they didn't have a full PvE system in place for the klingon. by making you go until 6 at least one time you don't need the intro levels, the tutorials, noob zones, etc. I mean yeah they don't really have ANY PvE content in the game for Klingons, but they'd have some really lost new players if they let you play a klingon from level 1 without any sort of tutorial as is the case right now.
 

dbed34

Neo Member
I agree with Borghe.. if they had fleshed out the PvE system then maybe you could jump right into the Klingons but with the content not really being there I think 6 lvl gets you past the noob stage persay. Although I too only see the hardcore Klingon lovers working to get their Klingons to Admiral rank. Too many others will be concentrating on getting their Fed to the highest level first because of the time put in already.
 

Zombiesaurus

Neo Member
DangerousDave said:
Nice, server down... it seems that I wont level to Lt Commander today.
Same here, I'd nearly finished a fleet action with just one little bar segment thingy to go before Lt. Commander when the server went kaput. I believe a KHAAAAAAN! is in order.

Oh and when it's back up - fleet me up, GAF! Ulysses Harker@Zombiesaurus
 

JWong

Banned
DustoMan said:
Do you guys think that not letting players make Klingon characters until lvl 6 was a good design choice? I really don't think so. The die-hard Klingon fanatics would want to start a character from the get go and would probably not want to spend the 3-4 hours necessary to make it up to lvl 6 first. Is playing a Klingon that much different from being in the Fed and thus needing an already experienced player?
It's a way to force players through learning the basics of the game without having to create a separate tutorial for Klingons.

In short, it's a good design choice for saving development costs.
 

Ryu

Member
I like the game, but this feels really MMO light with everything being instanced. I think if they took the time to really flesh out a great story, add voice acting, etc, it could be a great single player game (with coop options).

Granted, I'm only lt cmdr (11) right now, but I'm having a hard time seeing the lasting appeal since the missions are quite similar...

Still, <3 my escort. (sounds so dirty when I say it like that)
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
Ryu said:
I like the game, but this feels really MMO light with everything being instanced. I think if they took the time to really flesh out a great story, add voice acting, etc, it could be a great single player game (with coop options).
yeah, but this is a REALLY touchy topic. On the one hand it takes that typical MMO feel out of the game.. but on the other hand making it into a traditional well populated MMO takes the "star trek-ness" out of the concept. Each show was about a small focus on a starship crew and their regular adventures. Much in the same way putting Star Wars in that type of setting was failure.

I feel, just MHO, that this was the best way for them to go. Keep that feeling of the individual shows, and leave the TRUE MMO stuff for specific areas. Deep Space encouters, war zones, fleet actions, etc.

so far here are my only real complaints:

very basic roles - so far there doesn't seem like too many roles. I don't want to say classes because class in this game doesn't mean the same thing as in other games, but even outside of the classes there doesn't seem to be a lot of clearly fleshed out roles. They hit the talking points (DPS, tank, support) and that's about it. There's some flexibility there but not a ton. a game isn't about allowing 30 different classes, but as people hit the level caps (or before) they want to give it a shot with another character.

no role differentiation in the PvE game - the thing I love about WoW is that even in PvE your game feels different from character to character. Are you going for your epic flying form? a welfare-epic? whatever it was, WoW had you feel like you were more than just [character 3032095] going on this quest again. Obviously there were a ton of repeat quests, but there were enough class specific quests to make you feel like the game was tailored to THAT character.

run of the mill ground combat - we've beaten this horse to death. just including it for completeness. They've essentially made every mission at least a 5-man raid with bots (where a mission is no-team). Well, the thing about a raid is that precision strategy is required.. if that's what they're shooting for, we need more strategy.

no ship interior missions - this is a pretty big one IMHO. They've locked us out from the ship interiors except for the bridge.. I say fine, EXCEPT then use that opportunity to give us adventures in the parts that they are taking complete control of by not letting us go to them.

no captain's quarters - we should be able to use the captain's quarters as housing. It is brilliant and instantly solves an mmo's typical housing complaint.

my only final complaint being that it looks like the wife isn't going to let me grab the DDE version on top of my collector's edition.... TNG mini-skirts please..

There actually might be more, but those are the issues that stick out in my head.. well, aside from client and server stability.
 

Chris_C

Member
Anyone having trouble saving their ship customisations? Everytime I make a customisation I can't seem to save it, I just get booted back to my ugly ass Miranda.
 

Zzoram

Member
Chris_C said:
Anyone having trouble saving their ship customisations? Everytime I make a customisation I can't seem to save it, I just get booted back to my ugly ass Miranda.

Some customizations cost money. If you're using those, you may not have the money for it. Look at the bottom middle to see the Energy Credit cost.
 

gyrspike

Neo Member
So close to hitting Lt. Commander 6 before I had to leave for work today. Having a great time with Anbyr my Alien Engineer using a Science ship.

A good way to get a lot of skill points(xp) is to do the Defend missions from Sulu.

You can get really nice gear by completing the Explore missions and turning in badges. You get 75 badge points for completing an explore mission. Then you can spend them at the Earth starbase. Ship weapons and consoles cost 77 badges, shields about 225 badges, and ground combat weapons/shields/gear around 25-40 badges.


If anyone needs any Mk I to MK III ship gear, I have a ton of it in my bank.
 

Zzoram

Member
gyrspike said:
So close to hitting Lt. Commander 6 before I had to leave for work today. Having a great time with Anbyr my Alien Engineer using a Science ship.

A good way to get a lot of skill points(xp) is to do the Defend missions from Sulu.

You can get really nice gear by completing the Explore missions and turning in badges. You get 75 badge points for completing an explore mission. Then you can spend them at the Earth starbase. Ship weapons and consoles cost 77 badges, shields about 225 badges, and ground combat weapons/shields/gear around 25-40 badges.


If anyone needs any Mk I to MK III ship gear, I have a ton of it in my bank.

You can deposit stuff you don't need into the GAFleet Bank. If it runs out of space, you can swap out the bad items with better ones, sell/break down the crappy items, and then donate the Energy Credits into the GAFleet Bank to be used for purchasing more Bank space.
 

Chris_C

Member
Zzoram said:
Some customizations cost money. If you're using those, you may not have the money for it. Look at the bottom middle to see the Energy Credit cost.

Yeah, I had more than enough credits, but when I click "save", it doesn't seem to take.
 
Chris_C said:
Yeah, I had more than enough credits, but when I click "save", it doesn't seem to take.

Sometimes there is some lag, between 10 and 30 seconds, in the changes. Save and wait some seconds before exit.

Finally I got my cruiser, but for today is enough STO. I spent to much time in the custom of the ship. Tomorrow I'll look for some Mk III and MK IV and I'll kick some gorn asses.
 
Did they fix the Steam issue? Will I be able to open it up tomorrow and get my retail code without it trying to completely reinstall the whole game?
 

DustoMan

Banned
dbed34 said:
I agree with Borghe.. if they had fleshed out the PvE system then maybe you could jump right into the Klingons but with the content not really being there I think 6 lvl gets you past the noob stage persay. Although I too only see the hardcore Klingon lovers working to get their Klingons to Admiral rank. Too many others will be concentrating on getting their Fed to the highest level first because of the time put in already.


Yea, that all makes sense. This game really wasn't on my radar until the open beta, before that I didn't really give it much thought. When reading up on the development history, I was actually pretty surprised that the game really only started development when Cryptic got the license in August 2008. That's not much time between then and now. I guess they had to cut some corners to make a shipping product.
 

StUnNeR H2K

Member
Commander on the bridge! Got my new ship before I logged tonight....

uss_eridanus.jpg
 

Truant

Member
Is the game out?

I kinda want to play this. How is loot and stuff handled in this? The only thing I've enjoyed about Star Trek is the new film, and it made me want to pilot a ship, and phase some guys.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
Truant said:
Is the game out?

I kinda want to play this. How is loot and stuff handled in this? The only thing I've enjoyed about Star Trek is the new film, and it made me want to pilot a ship, and phase some guys.

The headstart is on for preorders, the game goes live proper tomorrow.

Loot is handled like most RPG's, you have a full assortment of slots on your ship (Fore & Aft weapons, various control consoles and gadgets), slots on your character (weapons, shields, armor, kit) and for each of your bridge crew (weapon, shield, armor).
 
Zzoram said:
You can deposit stuff you don't need into the GAFleet Bank. If it runs out of space, you can swap out the bad items with better ones, sell/break down the crappy items, and then donate the Energy Credits into the GAFleet Bank to be used for purchasing more Bank space.

This. Or you can sell the item itself and put the creds directly into the Fleet account if its worse than what's in there. Tabs are expensive, so every little bit the members can donate is less I have to pay out of (virtual) pocket for a new one.

For those who care about such things, we're up to 42 members. :)
 

Delio

Member
I've been tossing credits into the fleet bank when i can. Trying to save up for a Intrepid alongside my free Cruiser lol. I have to say though the Crystal Entity really needs to be fixed. Sitting there and getting blues all day is insane and will be bad for the Exchange. I hope Cryptic looks into that.
 

JWong

Banned
Bitter lies!

They said 5 mins until maintenence, but it really was 30 seconds. >_> Almost finished that damn mission too.
 

Darklord

Banned
Delio said:
I've been tossing credits into the fleet bank when i can. Trying to save up for a Intrepid alongside my free Cruiser lol. I have to say though the Crystal Entity really needs to be fixed. Sitting there and getting blues all day is insane and will be bad for the Exchange. I hope Cryptic looks into that.

It should have a cool down time for the player so you can only verse it once every 5 hours or so.
 

Truant

Member
Sinatar said:
The headstart is on for preorders, the game goes live proper tomorrow.

Loot is handled like most RPG's, you have a full assortment of slots on your ship (Fore & Aft weapons, various control consoles and gadgets), slots on your character (weapons, shields, armor, kit) and for each of your bridge crew (weapon, shield, armor).

Alright. Is it true that you don't really need other plays for the main dungeons and exploration stuff? You can just use your away team composed of NPC's? If so, that's pretty cool.
 

Walshicus

Member
Lonewolf_92 said:
This. Or you can sell the item itself and put the creds directly into the Fleet account if its worse than what's in there. Tabs are expensive, so every little bit the members can donate is less I have to pay out of (virtual) pocket for a new one.

For those who care about such things, we're up to 42 members. :)
Would be nice if we could keep each tab tier-aligned. That is, Tab 1 has Tier 1 equipment, Tab 2 has Tier 2 etc...
 
Truant said:
Alright. Is it true that you don't really need other plays for the main dungeons and exploration stuff? You can just use your away team composed of NPC's? If so, that's pretty cool.

Its true, you can get by with your NPC officers, they have said that some end game content will be locked to 5 players tho so you will need to team up to play those.
 

panda21

Member
is there a way to assign your bridge officer actions to keys? i'm getting tired of frantically trying to click on them
 
panda21 said:
is there a way to assign your bridge officer actions to keys? i'm getting tired of frantically trying to click on them

P for powers window, drag it to the desired key. In space, of course... in ground you can pause the game.
 
It's annoying that the EU retail version is out on Friday instead of today. I was all up for picking it up and playing it all night. =/
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
Truant said:
Alright. Is it true that you don't really need other plays for the main dungeons and exploration stuff? You can just use your away team composed of NPC's? If so, that's pretty cool.
It is like any modern MMORPG. You can get to the top level by soloing exclusively, or you can team up with friends/others. Some things are solo only I believe, or at least auto-teaming is turned off. Not sure if you can share those missions or not. Other things are team only (mostly deep space missions and fleet actions). The rest has auto-team turned on by default which you can leave or turn off.

After about 7-8 hours with the game I'd rate it like this (out of 10)

PvE: Space 9/10, Ground 6/10
PvP: Space 8/10, Ground 6/10
Itemization: 7/10 (too many overlaps, no clear cut progression path)
Ambiance: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

The game is solid but definitely has areas that could stand to improve. They need more content, especially for Klingon PvE, they need more structure to the archetypes, and need more interesting PvP.

As for cryptic themselves... people bitch that they supposedly have 4 MMORPGs in development... at this time we know of 3 specifically (CO, STO, and the next one) while Blizzard has two simultaneous games in development at the same time as WoW and is handling it fine. So frankly I don't give a shit about what Cryptic has in development, just what they have planned for STO. To me they have a spotty record (COH is still content-lite to this day despite a solid system backing it) but at the same time that record stems from being a first time project AND a pre-WoW MMORPG to boot (let's admit facts.. the game changed when WoW entered the picture). So we'll see how this goes.
 

Luthair

Member
I'm stuck in math class at college :-( I really want to play!!! I'm about a hour away from level 11. I dunno if I want a escort or cruiser ship. I love the looks of cruisers but escorts seem more useful...
 
Escorts are beasts, im stuck at work for another 6 hours and im still only liet 8, no need to rush tho as I have 2 days off after today to play all day long to my hearts content.

Whats peoples view on the C-store charging for Fed Klingons and Ferengi? I like the fact that they will be a bit rarer than the other species but will feel a bit of a mug running around as one as everyone knows you have paid for it!

Also apparently there is a special redeem character title up, Ambassador, no ones sure how it is unlocked tho so some people have it some don't.
 

Sqorgar

Banned
borghe said:
As for cryptic themselves... people bitch that they supposedly have 4 MMORPGs in development... at this time we know of 3 specifically (CO, STO, and the next one) while Blizzard has two simultaneous games in development at the same time as WoW and is handling it fine.
Cryptic apparently has four games in development (CO, STO, Neverwinter Nights - hinted at during DDO's f2p issues with Atari, and some sort of Cthulhu one based on concept art posted on Cryptic's website). And during the last month of STO's open beta, CO has been more or less ignored completely and has had so many bugs put into live that it is unplayable for a lot of people (I haven't been able to log in in a month). The difference between CO and STO, right now, could not be more clear.

I treat CO and STO as two different games. Just because I am unhappy with CO right now does not mean I hate STO (or vice versa, should that ever happen). But at the moment, it does not appear that Cryptic has the ability to manage two different MMO services simultaneously, much less adding more on top of that.

At least, STO seems to be genuinely popular - something that I haven't seen since WoW launched.
 

Mystic

Neo Member
kyo_daikun said:
Post you @account name and I or someone else will add you to the fleet (I dont get home from work for another 8 hours)

@Suprnova17

Dont need the character name do ya?
 

nataku

Member
Anyone else have issues where the patcher goes on a crashing spree? I've tried to launch it 10 times now and every time it crashes.

Eventually it'll start working fine, but I've had this same thing happen before and I have no idea what is causing it.

EDIT: Well, eventually it used to fix itself after a few crashes. I'm sitting at try #32 now and it's still crashing.
 

nataku

Member
So is anyone currently playing the game? Or played it at all this morning? Are the servers down and they just haven't updated their website?

I'm guessing they're still up due to the lack of complaining on the forums, but I still can't even get the patcher to work.
 

Luthair

Member
nataku said:
So is anyone currently playing the game? Or played it at all this morning? Are the servers down and they just haven't updated their website?

I'm guessing they're still up due to the lack of complaining on the forums, but I still can't even get the patcher to work.
I just logged on with no problemo. o_O
 
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