to give the players a why things are the way they are…
Hey does anyone have an opinion about the beta that’s going on? orionpax?
I’ve been hyped up by the videos going around, but my computer is currently in service to other work, and so I can’t install Boot Camp & etc.
Tomorrow is the final day of Open Beta. Open Beta ends at 6 PM PST on Jan. 26th. I haven’t read about any beta ending events, but I think the community is expecting something. Friday begins the Head Start, where the beta testers get a weekend jump on the official release date for Tuesday next week.
I’ve read that space combat is reminiscent of Pirates of the Burning Sea and maybe Earth and Beyond, but I’m not familiar with those games. The game is highly combat oriented (throw Picard’s TNG ideals out the window) as it takes place in all out war, but there are some noncombat missions. It’s somewhat funny though that when I finally upgraded my light cruiser (the USS Beagle, Miranda & ShiKahr mix) to my first real science vessel (The USS Resolution, Nova class with Aurora class struts) I went out for a quick exporation mission and got two noncombat quests in a row. And I really wanted to test the combat ability of my new ship. Like SWG, STO offers an space and a ground game but the space game is very different.
The infrastructure of the game is very similar, if not identical, to Champions Online. That is, it consists of one world server with appendable instances for every area. In Open Beta most instances were limited to 50 people, although some areas likely had a lower limit. Exploration areas in particular rarely saw over three people in the sector instances. That’s not to say you couldn’t jam more than three people in there with manual instance selection, and I’m not sure what the limit was. In the normal sector areas though, they seemed to cut off access after a population of fifty. The instance population limits have given a few people worries about hosting events in game. And obviously this differs dramatically from EVE’s one world server. Imagine being able to instance jump around gate camping… not that STO has allowed PvP everywhere; they haven’t.
The mission setups are pretty standard MMO monolog fare. I put in one or two posts on the forums asking for some Dragon Age or Mass Effect type dialog quests and Bridge Officer served quests, but I think they fell on deaf ears and were buried before anyone could or would appreciate them. Most “episodes” are a bit more involved than the classically boring kill-ten-rats deal. There are some repeatable generic and simplistic (maybe boring) noncombat quests out there like scan-five-anomalies or deliver-ten-specific-commodities, but there seem to be a good number of story driven quests too. Like LOTRO there is an underlying story arc in STO, but it’s not as obvious or perhaps not entirely cohesive with the other missions you can weave in between episodes. Will there be other stary arcs in the future? I do not know, but I imagine there will be.
Mission difficulty scales with group size and is very soloable. At least the space missions are scalable. I’m not so sure about ground missions. With a full five ship team, space missions can be… interesting. There are also Fleet mission areas, reminiscent of open missions from Champions Online, where you warp into a particular area with a bunch of other players (grouped or not) and you have a whole armada of enemy ships to fight. Granted you can break them down into small groups at a time to fight, but it’s easy to stray too close to another enemy group and attract reinforcements.
There currently is no real crafting system in place if you prefer that sort of play. Sometime down the road it may come along, as there was mention of recipes. For that matter, there is currently no kind of minigame or activity other than mission running (COMBAT, “exploration”, and FedEx) and PvP. There is a fledgling market in game, but that’s only for buying/selling loot drops with other players. The commerce system in STO seems needlessly convoluted for now; perhaps that will change down the road.
PvP is rather arena like. There are queues to get into a PvP match, and they don’t always seem balanced. PvP matches come in kill-the-other-team and claim/hold-territory flavors. There was also a “resource” type of PvP which was something of a fighting race to gather a “resource” (hostages) with some PvE fights in to mix it up. The resource battles were disabled when I tried them. PvP comes in both space and ground settings. Unfortunately today I read of space PvP battles where an entire Klingon side cloaked and waited out the clock until the Federation players got bore and left, whereby they ganged up on the last remaining Federation player. That struck me as pretty lame and I hope it doesn’t ctach on. Rest assured my Klingon isn’t going to wait out any clock. Hell, I’m not even sure how to check the time left in a match. Playing in the Klingon Alliance is pretty much an agreement to rely on PvP for advancement. Klingon PvE is sparse for now, although there are developers who enjoy the Klingon side and want to expand on the PvE content.
All in all it feels like any other fledgling MMORPG out there, a decent start with potential and much room to expand. It’s just one more option if you’re in the market for an MMORPG, even nicer if you enjoy the Star Trek franchise. There are plenty of tidbits that harken back to the movies and the television shows for the Trekkies among us. Just keep in mind STO takes place thirty years after Nemesis, so you’ll be dealing with children and grandchildren of the characters you know and love.
Thanks for the details! I am most curious about the solo & small team play. I haven’t played any other MMO’s, though I’ve seen the first two seasons of The Guild. 
The level-grinding aspect sounds a little like those Flash games on FaceBook, but with fancier graphics. That’s the big question for me: Do I try to do the battle part of the game, and get my ass handed to me by obnoxious 12-year-olds, or do the boring FedEx missions? I’m not sure yet.
Well you do have plenty of PvE combat missions you can do. You don’t have to jump into player vs player unless you’re in the Klingon Defense Force. The AI in player vs environment can be tricked into stupid mistakes, but if you play like you’d expect a normal starship captain it’ll flow quite well. I do find the AI enemies hiding behind asteroids from time to time to be annoying, but I see that as a perfectly valid tactic.
But anyway, for a Federation character you can find plenty of PvE combat if the PvP fights go south for you.
hey all, i’d just made a post down in the gaming forums about STO, sorry i didn’t see this first.
i’m new around here, but will be playing STO and hoping to find a good group of folks to play with. I’m a WoW raider right now (chiliana on bloodhoof) but will be splitting time with STO starting tomorrow
me and a few friends are going to be playing, and hope to find a group to hang out and do missions with. Would love to get to know some of y’all and group up some.
i’ll be cam@uubergeek and chil@uubergeek in game starting tomorrow
I’ll be picking up STO a little after the launch (I’d like to avoid the drama of the initial rollout), but I was hoping to find some GWC’ers for team play. I’ll look you up.
I’ll be in STO with the same handle from CO… @Cwynlaen if you want to look me up.
Oh, and if anyone doesn’t already know, STO & CO (same company) handles DO NOT have to be the same as your actual login name. I’d recommend the extra layer of obfuscation in choosing a (forum) @handle that is different than your login name.
I’ve been pretty much addicted to this game for the last month (was in closed beta). There gets to be a lot of repetition, but it’s not much different than having to level in any other MMO, but the combat is more dynamic and involved than most of the other MMORPGs I’ve played.
As for crafting, there is something sort of like it that you can do. As you explore, you can scan anomalies that turn out to be alien artifacts or mineral samples. You can trade these anomalies in for advanced items at Memory Alpha. After a while, you choose a specific research to redeem the anomalies at. So, there are science, engineering, etc. arms of the research facility, but the advanced researchers won’t accept your anomalies until you’ve done more work for the general researchers. Eventually, you become specialized in a certain field. So it’s not really crafting, per se, but it’s a close approximation.
Ah, and instead of evil capitalism with “money” and whatnot, it’s been replaced with a morally advantageous ‘barter’ system! 
Haha, yeah. Instead of earning cash, you get “Starfleet Merits.” Which, I suppose make sense – do a mission, get more Merits (ala more respect, which gets you access to better equipment). I just don’t get how ya can really rationalize ‘selling’ weapons you ripped from other ships for additional merits. Makes me laugh every time.
I’m playing this too if anyone wants to look me up. Game name is paleo@paleogamer
I’m flying this
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6246501.html?tag=nl.e579
"Star Trek Online Open Beta Hands-on
We experienced more space and hand-to-hand combat when we got a chance to play through the first few Federation missions in Star Trek Online’s open beta."
For anyone who never played the beta.
I’ve been playing the game for a week or two now, and I’ve figured out a couple things: Firstly, ground combat is fairly repetitive. The bad guys can generally see you coming, and they’ve generally let me set up some phaser turrets before the action begins. It’s nice of them to always let me get the first shot in, but the computer AI could use some work.
Secondly, there are about 20 different types of “money”, as mentioned before. There’s energy credits, starfleet merit, badges of exploration (of multiple levels), bridge officer points, marks of honor, various data & objects from anomalies… I just can’t remember them all. That’s the part of the game I like the least.
The game is definitely fun, especially the space combat & fleet actions. Having your friends on skype makes it that much more so. The first borg mission you do definitely takes you back to ST:TNG. Getting noticed by a Borg Cube and having it zap you on all your shields at once is unnerving.
On that subject, Wolf 359 is in the game, and it’s a ship cemetery. It’s a somber place. I don’t know if there are any missions in Wolf 359, but it’s a nice callback to the series.
I’ve done only a little of the PvP section of the game, and I got my ass kicked thoroughly. All my Klingon foes concentrated their fire on my light cruiser, and I died quick. I have a better ship now, but running missions seems like more fun.
The missions have an episodic feel to them. There’s not a lot of talking amongst the bridge crew for obvious reasons, but I started doing several missions in a row from Admiral Quinn, and there’s definitely a direction to the plot. I’m curious as to whether the other mission-givers are like that.
While this game has nowhere the depth of EvE, I am enjoying the game play and it has potential to be extremely fun.
Here’s my latest ride the Galaxy class, USS-Resolution. I also bought a Vigilant Class (Defiant) but I decided to switch it up this go around. While the below ship does not have the bang of a tactical escort, it more then holds it’s own, and last a heck of a lot longer in fights with multiple enemies.
For those who are playing feel free to look me up in game Rand@Ryeko. If you are a lower level then myself, I’m sure I’ll have some gear you can have free of charge of course.
Going to hit STO hard in a week or so. Played all the way up to Captain on my laptop…but i have a GTX 295 waiting at home. I want the pretty. GIVE ME THE PRETTY.
New patch is live!
Hey Camelpope, I was thinking it would be nice to have a GWC fleet. I don’t have enough friends playing to make a fleet of my own, so maybe we can set something up with the “extended family”, to use the parlance of the meetup podcast.
TBH this is why i’m waiting to join a fleet. Would love to be in a fleet from this group.
Talk to me about it in a week. I haven’t played in like 3 weeks. Been deployed to Miami in support of Haiti stuff but will be back to my real computer then.