As far as I can tell from the FAQ on the site, they don't even know yet how they will sell the game. As in they don't know if it's going to be subscription based with a monthly fee or if it's going to be like Guild Wars where you buy once and play online for free. Not sure if there was talk about micro-transactions either.
This is an important issue as it will decide whether I'm going to get on board or not. I don't care for subscription based gaming. It's a hobby, not a service that is necessary. I have bigger projects coming up and I need my moneys. :D
I've signed up... still hoping to get into the Beta program, but who knows, chances are great that I won't be picked.
[QUOTE][URL="http://www.startrekonline.com/faq"]Star Trek Online will be available in North America on February 2, 2010. It will be available in Europe on February 5, 2010.[/URL][/QUOTE]
I suppose it will be both available in retail stores and online.
It actually is a service. For an MMO the game you install is just a dumb client with shiny graphics. The actual game is hosted by the company, and you subscribe to access to storing your character, bandwidth, cpu cycles, game masters who can fix your in game problems for you....
Or for $15 you can go see Avatar in 3D at an IMAX theater :D
The Beta servers are scheduled to go live on the 12th... and it looks like I won't be participating in the testing so I guess you can all breathe easy now.
Apparently plenty of people gobbled up enough beta keys, so for those of you "lucky" enough to have gotten in, you better get busy.
I'm not too disappointed as the client is said to be an 8GB download. That's a lot for a "client" and still quite a bit to funnel down a DSL connection if you ask me. Better make that a torrent. :D
At this point I would say yes. I am seeing marked improvements in the game over the last few weeks. Its coming together. Ill probably sit down tomorrow night and wright something up for you guys.
Well, looks like they've decided on a pricing structure after all. Not sure why this appeared to be such a secret. You can pre-order the game ([URL="http://www.play.com/Games/PC/4-/13069361/Star-Trek-Online-The-Gold-Edition/Product.html?cur=257"]play.com[/URL] for instance) and on the product page it says all you need to know.
The initial purchase price gives you a 30-day game time and then you have a "recurring monthly subscription required to play."
The amount of the recurring fee isn't mentioned, but I'm guessing it's going to be more than I'd be willing to pay.
That's been known for months, what hasn't been said is how much it will cost.
Glad I preordered from Amazon back when it was £18. Since then the price was increased (I still only pay £18) and it was turned into a special edition :)
Yeah, but I'm thinking of all the money I'm going to save by not buying the game. :D
Seriously though, I still have so many games to play, and so little time.
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
It doesnt bother me to be honest, for one thing it stops me spending it on other crap that I dont need ;)
My only real gripe so far is the fact that they're doing a character wipe between open beta and the early access. I know its to give everyone a level playing field when the goes live properly, but I dont want all that effort to go to waste.
The point of a beta is to finalize bug squishing. You are volunteering to be a tester :P
Doing a wipe after beta is also very standard.
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
Yeah I realize that, its just in any game it sucks to be a low level character so the enforced prospect of having to be one again at a later date it's terribly appealing ;)
Not that it'll stop me putting in any less time into the beta :p
Alright, Ive been trying to wright this for about an hour now. I keep starting and deleting because I'm a terrible writer and I want this to be fluid and understandable, but it probably wont be, sorry. At least Firefox is fixing my atrocious spelling. Here you go.
First impressions - I did not get into open beta right away. It took a bit. So when I finally did and logged in for the first time I was shocked at how generally bad the game looked. Now, I'm not generally the kind of person who looks at graphics first (but it is a first impression), if a game has solid game play I'm good. I seriously play Civ 3 to this day because I think its the best of the franchise. Anyways... I knew at least 1 other beta tester, long time gaming friend and we lamented that it was possible that the clients they let us have were holding back the high res textures for later testing. Finally we were proven right as this last weekend they gave us the high res texture maps.
Graphically its a beautiful game. I was on a mission two days ago (more on that later) and was circling a planet. In the past, the entire planets lit up as though they were self illuminating, now they take into account the position of the sun it orbits. There is a dark side and a light side and I gotta tell you, coming around the planet and seeing the sunrise across the horizon felt a bit like watching the space channel in High Def. They have some very talented artists working on the backgrounds.
Ship models got a nice update as well, they look good, although I don't care for some of the coloring options. I understand why they added them, it gives players the ability to customize their star ship, but I think Eve did fine without that option. I just find an Akira painted yellow kinda funny looking and distracting from the immersion.
Now, despite the graphical allure, the interface is lifted straight from other Cryptic games. My wife, a casual gamer came in the office while I was playing and asked "Is this made by the same people who did City of Heroes?". Your chat windows, and mission windows and such look very much like City of Heroes, down to the color scheme and font. Subtle differences but not much. For the most part, they act the same too.
Now, pretty graphics alone just make for a screen saver, you need to have some game play elements as well. Star Trek Online has two. Its not secrete that there is ship to ship combat, but avatar (away missions) as well. They felt compelled to include the away mission as part of your in game experience.
I guess I will start with explaining missions. They want missions to play out like episodes. So generally most missions are multistage missions, they have you do several different things to complete them. They start off easy and progress to conclusion. Unfortunately they can be very repetitive. Go here, blow up X amount of ships, beam to (insert planet, other ship, starbase), (insert kill/rescue), (insert Klingon's, Gorn, Hostages, Scientists), beam back to the ship and kill much bigger ship. Contact Starfleet, collect reward.
Now, realistically most missions/quests in any MMO are repetitive. If Cryptic had found a way to make them not they would be doing something no one has accomplished to date in the MMO world. Now missions are done in instanced zones, and when you enter one such zone any other players that also enter around the same time as you (say about 5 minutes or so) automatically join your team and can help you complete the mission. Its a nice feature really. Also anyone you specifically invite to your team can join you at any stage of a mission, regardless to if they have that mission or not. Now, if they have it, they still have to complete it in order, but say you are having a hard time fighting the final ship, and your buddy hasnt done the mission yet, he can warp to you and zone in and help you kill it, warp out, warp back in and do the mission himself.
While its a nice feature it leads to one of my problems with Star Trek Online. Where is the vastness of space? Its no where to be found in this game. Station sectors are crowded now (in a beta I might add) with ships everywhere. Sector space (more on that later) is a jumbled mess of people everywhere. Doing the missions "Secure X Sector of Space" can have over 20 people in them at one time. So I ask again, where is the vastness of space. I know some people don't like it, but I love Eve's open sandbox feel to it. You can play that game for years and never complete one mission (in fact I think I have), and take hours exploring the game flying from sector to sector. Even the world of Azeroth in WoW feels incredibly large and traveling from one end to another can take hours without the flight points. Star Trek Online doesn't have that. Which brings me to one of my largest pet peeves of the game. Sector Space.
Sector space is Star Trek Online's answer to "How do we make it so you can get from place to place without it taking forever?" When you start the game (after the tutorial) you are at the Space station orbiting Earth. That is all of the exploring of our solar system you can do. You can't fly to Mars or Jupiter, you are contained in the Earth/Space Station area. In order to go to (lets just use as an example) Vulcan you warp to sector space. Here you are on a map board of the entire sector you are in. Pressing M, brings up a 2D map with little circles on it that highlight each solar system in the sector. You fly to the one you want to go to and then click on it to enter that solar system. Its here that you are treated to a "warp in" cut scene. I dislike this method of travel very much. I feel it takes you out of the game because it doesn't feel natural for a space exploration game and it really doesn't feel natural for a Star Trek game.
I understand why they went with this. Its easy on the code. Each solar system in the game is one zone. Each sector of Sector space is one zone. Every place you go in the game is one self contained zone. That means lots of loading screens, and that means they don't have to code it so they are all connected and fluid. Now im fully aware that each solar system in Eve is one zone. And each major area in WoW are zones. But both of those game are much more fluid in how you enter them, and neither requires you to see a loading screen. Wow transitions are seamless, Eve makes you see the warp jump but it doesn't pull you out of the immersion like sector space does.
Part of me likes the fact that in the eve Universe distance actually means something. You can't mobilize a fleet and be half way across the galaxy in 5 minutes. But in Star Trek Online, that's how long it takes to get from Earth to anywhere. DS9 in Bajoran space, 5 minutes. Want to fly all the way to Kronos in Klingon territory 5 minutes, Deep Space K7 at the edge of the Neutral Zone 5 minutes. I just feel like the game should be bigger.
Another thing that takes me out of the game is it reads like fan fiction. They name drop more often a bad Star Trek novel. So far I have met Naomi Wildman (the first child born Voyager), Miral Paris (Tom and Belana's daughter), Akira Sulu (great grandson to Hikaru), seen the Starships USS Kirk, McCoy and Montgomery Scott, been referenced to Picard, Data, Sela, Commander Donatra, the Riker maneuver (in the Briar Patch) and so on. I get it, its the Star Trek Universe, does it have to hit me over the head with references? By the way, after meeting Naomi Wildman (who I think is on DS9 btw if I recall) I had a thought. I didn't watch Voyager, but were there only 2 babies born on the whole ship in 7 years? I figure one of 3 things went on there. Either Starfleet has the best prophylactics in the Universe, The Doctor was pro-choice or no one was having sex on that ship. Since she who shall not be named was all up in everyone's business all the time, I'm gonna go with C.
So I have talked this much about the game, and have yet to delve into real gameplay. Ill start with the part I don't care for all that much. Away missions.
When you beam down to a planet/space station/another starship etc... you have your user created Avatar and your away team. Whats nice is you can set up your away team to either be your bridge crew, or random red shirts. Since I subscribe to the philosophy of "Kirk knows this is the most dangerous planet in the Universe so the Away Team will Consist of myself, Mr Spock, Bones, Sulu, Uhura and Ensign Ricky", I bring my entire bridge crew. Once you get to the planet surface its obvious that the developers have had the Kirk vs Picard debate as well. Well Kirk won. You won't be talking your way out of much. Shoot first, shoot again, and if anyone is left alive you didn't do your job well enough. There is actually a reason to bring your bridge crew on away missions, they have combat special moves they can pull off. They range from recharging your personal shield to knockbacks of enemies, stuns and holds etc. Its clear to me that while at lower levels its a grand melee of phaser fire but at higher levels there will be some tactical gameplay required and here you will develop into the classic tank/dps/crowd control/healer mode of gameplay. While your npc bridge crew perform adequately they are hampered by poor pathfinding and decision making ability. Thankfully the enemy suffers from the same. Any time you are in a team your away missions are done together. Your away team members will be replaced by the other Captains in your team. So unfortunately you can't overwhelm an enemy with numbers. Besides I imagine it being seriously more hectic with 5 captains and 5 full bridge crews. Away mission combat will look familiar if you have played City of Heroes. You can identify which character falls into the tank/controller/healer specs. Your character is based on which primary tree you selected during creation Tactical, Science or Engineering. Same with your bridge crew. You can outfit yourself and bridge crew with new weaponry, body armor personal shields, devices (think single use enhancements) and a kit that includes certain special moves.
I don't think away team combat is all that special. It really feels like City of Heroes with phasers. It is what it is.
So ship to ship combat. One would think that in order to be a success as a Star Trek game this part needs to be spectacular. Unfortunately I had this game build up a lot in my head, and it doesn't measure up to how great I wanted it to be. That said, its not bad. Much like avatar combat, at early levels its very much a grand melee. When you get to higher levels ship specialties start to make roles become very important. Some ships cruisers/heavy cruiser will make for good tanking ships, escorts will be your dps class with science ships rounding out the controller/healer side. Your ships have shields, specifically port, starboard, fore and aft (that left right front and back to you non naval types), no ventral or dorsal shields exist (top and bottom). You can redistribute shield power. If your heading straight at an enemy you can pull power from your other shields to reinforce the front. You can also vary power distribution from your warp core to the following systems, weapons, shields, engines and auxiliary. Auxiliary is essentially your hull and the ability of your crew to repair your hull. All weapons have firing arcs, so you have to maneuver your ship to bring your weapons to bare on your enemies. Your bridge crew also has special abilities that can be used, things like emergency power to all shields, weapon buffs, even boarding parties.
So with that information you should be able to understand the concept of how combat in space can be quite tactical. You have to keep your enemy on the side of your ship with the strongest shields, yet be able to bring your weapons in range to fire on him. All the while managing your energy and keeping your ship in one piece. Large space battles can be quite hectic. Ships will flank you, get behind you and attack you on all sides to prevent you from distributing power to one set of shields.
Now what I don't like about ship to ship combat is you are not fighting on a true 3D plane. Sure you can pitch up and down and change your Z level, but you can't pitch completely over or do a barrel roll. Now again, this is Star Trek not Star Wars, and these are capitol ships not fighters, but ships like the Defiant have been shown to be more agile and capable of doing things like that. So the lack of ability in my mind is a big hindrance. Also it can be a pain in the ass to bring your weapons on target if they are off plane from you because you can't pitch up far enough. Also don't expect to be performing any Picard Maneuvers here (no warp in combat), its pretty much tank and spank combat. Ships just like your avatars have upgrades, the ability to put on new weapons, shields, engines, deflector dish, bridge consoles (stations for your crew to manage and bonuses to your starship) and devices (again think CoH enhancements). Items for both ships and your avatars are dropped as loot during those types of encounters. Meaning dont expect to find new photon torpedoes on an away mission. They can also be purchased from vendors at various locations throughout the universe.
I mentioned before ships can be customized, and I don't much care for the extent of it. Your starter ship is the Miranda. You can swap it out for 2 others in total or you can mix and match starship parts from all 3. This seems to hold true at every level. For my first new starship I chose the cruiser. It gives me a choice between the Constitution class, the Excalibur class and one other. There is no tactical difference between them, they are all just considered cruiser. Again you could mix and match parts between all 3 ships and then add colors and a design to its paint job. Im sure some people are all excited about this. Me not so much. The only thing I care to do is rename it and change the registry. Registry numbers though are forced to be long, and renaming costs.
There are multiple types of in-game currency. Starship credits, given when you hit a major rank. Starfleet credits, used for renaming ships and promoting your bridge crew. Energy credits, used for buying from vendors and working with the replicator (which is the in game crafting mechanism that I have not played with).
I never talked about leveling. As there are only really 6 ranks in Starfleet, they had to make it so you level up often (the feeling of accomplishment so many gamers demand) but within the context of Star Trek. Each rank comes with 10 grades. So for example at the end of beta I am a Lt Commander grade 2. 8 more grades and I make full Commander. New tiers of ships comes with new ranks.
Other thoughts, ship scales should be better. Some ships don't look as big as they should. All torpedoes are on the same cooldown. Meaning you can't fire front torps, turn and fire rear torps before the cooldown wears off. Dont care for that. Not much to explore yet. I haven't played long enough to get into the endgame style content. Endgame content in CoH was a joke. I commented on that already in this thread. It remains to be seen the replayability of this game. Missions need to be laid out better to push you through level appropriate content. Fewer loading screens would be fantastic.
So far, the game experience has been overall positive. There is room for improvement. I wish the game felt bigger. But as whole its fun. Space combat is hectic and enjoyable. Teaming up with others is fun, and easy.
I will be playing for a little bit, mostly because as you level the incentive is to get the next ship. We will see if the end game content (which by the way is currently the Borg) is good enough to make me stay and overlook the things I don't like. Look to see the USS Agamemnon in action.
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
Nice review SpiritOne, I think you've picked up on a lot of the same things I have. I gotta say I disagree with you about CoH tho, I really enjoy it :p
From what I've heard it sounds like they hope to go with a similar expansion plan as CoH, so hopefully they might add new sectors/ships/crafting detail later on. Whatever else you think of CoH, you gotta admit the amount of stuff they've added in post-launch is pretty big. Sure a fair bit of it like the arenas and crafting probably should have been in there at the start, but hopefully STO will learn those lessons and get them in early
Coming in from a game designer perspective a lot of the things you don't like I think were smart decisions.
Compartments (sectors in sto, solar systems in eve, etc) are not made for ease of client code, but for server load balance. In EVE Jita gets its very own cpu. If it was seamless flight it would be much more difficult to manage system load.
Full 3D flight is very difficult for a lot of people. Maintaining orientation on a plane is difficult enough for many. Giving full 3d flight would alienate many players.
My understanding is that you do not have to do missions, you can also progress your character through pvp and other methods. IIRC in the closed beta the most efficient way to advance your character was though pvp, not missioning.
Population density is important for a themepark mmog such as sto. The vastness of space is more appropriate for a niche sandbox game. With the StarTrek IP though I would want to capitalize on it as much as possible.
But we'll see when my partner (a long time WoW player) and me (longtime Eve player) play when open beta starts tomorrow.
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
Why do you need to download two copies Entil'Zha? Surely you can just download one and copy it to another computer? Thats what I did, downloaded it on my laptop overnight(s!), then put it on an external hd and installed it on my pc
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
[QUOTE=croxis;186279]Compartments (sectors in sto, solar systems in eve, etc) are not made for ease of client code, but for server load balance. In EVE Jita gets its very own cpu. If it was seamless flight it would be much more difficult to manage system load.[/QUOTE]
From a technical viewpoint, I disagree with this. Modern technologies make it quite easy to move execution contexts between physical computing resources without any interruption of service. Compartments are easier, and simplify game design, but not having compartments does not make load balancing difficult.
Comments
The grand army of Zog? Perhaps too much Superman..
The best name for our fleet should simply be "GREEN!"
This is an important issue as it will decide whether I'm going to get on board or not. I don't care for subscription based gaming. It's a hobby, not a service that is necessary. I have bigger projects coming up and I need my moneys. :D
I've signed up... still hoping to get into the Beta program, but who knows, chances are great that I won't be picked.
[QUOTE][URL="http://www.startrekonline.com/faq"]Star Trek Online will be available in North America on February 2, 2010. It will be available in Europe on February 5, 2010.[/URL][/QUOTE]
I suppose it will be both available in retail stores and online.
Or for $15 you can go see Avatar in 3D at an IMAX theater :D
Apparently plenty of people gobbled up enough beta keys, so for those of you "lucky" enough to have gotten in, you better get busy.
I'm not too disappointed as the client is said to be an 8GB download. That's a lot for a "client" and still quite a bit to funnel down a DSL connection if you ask me. Better make that a torrent. :D
The initial purchase price gives you a 30-day game time and then you have a "recurring monthly subscription required to play."
The amount of the recurring fee isn't mentioned, but I'm guessing it's going to be more than I'd be willing to pay.
Glad I preordered from Amazon back when it was £18. Since then the price was increased (I still only pay £18) and it was turned into a special edition :)
Worf
Seriously though, I still have so many games to play, and so little time.
My only real gripe so far is the fact that they're doing a character wipe between open beta and the early access. I know its to give everyone a level playing field when the goes live properly, but I dont want all that effort to go to waste.
Doing a wipe after beta is also very standard.
Not that it'll stop me putting in any less time into the beta :p
Alright, Ive been trying to wright this for about an hour now. I keep starting and deleting because I'm a terrible writer and I want this to be fluid and understandable, but it probably wont be, sorry. At least Firefox is fixing my atrocious spelling. Here you go.
First impressions - I did not get into open beta right away. It took a bit. So when I finally did and logged in for the first time I was shocked at how generally bad the game looked. Now, I'm not generally the kind of person who looks at graphics first (but it is a first impression), if a game has solid game play I'm good. I seriously play Civ 3 to this day because I think its the best of the franchise. Anyways... I knew at least 1 other beta tester, long time gaming friend and we lamented that it was possible that the clients they let us have were holding back the high res textures for later testing. Finally we were proven right as this last weekend they gave us the high res texture maps.
Graphically its a beautiful game. I was on a mission two days ago (more on that later) and was circling a planet. In the past, the entire planets lit up as though they were self illuminating, now they take into account the position of the sun it orbits. There is a dark side and a light side and I gotta tell you, coming around the planet and seeing the sunrise across the horizon felt a bit like watching the space channel in High Def. They have some very talented artists working on the backgrounds.
Ship models got a nice update as well, they look good, although I don't care for some of the coloring options. I understand why they added them, it gives players the ability to customize their star ship, but I think Eve did fine without that option. I just find an Akira painted yellow kinda funny looking and distracting from the immersion.
Now, despite the graphical allure, the interface is lifted straight from other Cryptic games. My wife, a casual gamer came in the office while I was playing and asked "Is this made by the same people who did City of Heroes?". Your chat windows, and mission windows and such look very much like City of Heroes, down to the color scheme and font. Subtle differences but not much. For the most part, they act the same too.
Now, pretty graphics alone just make for a screen saver, you need to have some game play elements as well. Star Trek Online has two. Its not secrete that there is ship to ship combat, but avatar (away missions) as well. They felt compelled to include the away mission as part of your in game experience.
I guess I will start with explaining missions. They want missions to play out like episodes. So generally most missions are multistage missions, they have you do several different things to complete them. They start off easy and progress to conclusion. Unfortunately they can be very repetitive. Go here, blow up X amount of ships, beam to (insert planet, other ship, starbase), (insert kill/rescue), (insert Klingon's, Gorn, Hostages, Scientists), beam back to the ship and kill much bigger ship. Contact Starfleet, collect reward.
Now, realistically most missions/quests in any MMO are repetitive. If Cryptic had found a way to make them not they would be doing something no one has accomplished to date in the MMO world. Now missions are done in instanced zones, and when you enter one such zone any other players that also enter around the same time as you (say about 5 minutes or so) automatically join your team and can help you complete the mission. Its a nice feature really. Also anyone you specifically invite to your team can join you at any stage of a mission, regardless to if they have that mission or not. Now, if they have it, they still have to complete it in order, but say you are having a hard time fighting the final ship, and your buddy hasnt done the mission yet, he can warp to you and zone in and help you kill it, warp out, warp back in and do the mission himself.
While its a nice feature it leads to one of my problems with Star Trek Online. Where is the vastness of space? Its no where to be found in this game. Station sectors are crowded now (in a beta I might add) with ships everywhere. Sector space (more on that later) is a jumbled mess of people everywhere. Doing the missions "Secure X Sector of Space" can have over 20 people in them at one time. So I ask again, where is the vastness of space. I know some people don't like it, but I love Eve's open sandbox feel to it. You can play that game for years and never complete one mission (in fact I think I have), and take hours exploring the game flying from sector to sector. Even the world of Azeroth in WoW feels incredibly large and traveling from one end to another can take hours without the flight points. Star Trek Online doesn't have that. Which brings me to one of my largest pet peeves of the game. Sector Space.
Sector space is Star Trek Online's answer to "How do we make it so you can get from place to place without it taking forever?" When you start the game (after the tutorial) you are at the Space station orbiting Earth. That is all of the exploring of our solar system you can do. You can't fly to Mars or Jupiter, you are contained in the Earth/Space Station area. In order to go to (lets just use as an example) Vulcan you warp to sector space. Here you are on a map board of the entire sector you are in. Pressing M, brings up a 2D map with little circles on it that highlight each solar system in the sector. You fly to the one you want to go to and then click on it to enter that solar system. Its here that you are treated to a "warp in" cut scene. I dislike this method of travel very much. I feel it takes you out of the game because it doesn't feel natural for a space exploration game and it really doesn't feel natural for a Star Trek game.
I understand why they went with this. Its easy on the code. Each solar system in the game is one zone. Each sector of Sector space is one zone. Every place you go in the game is one self contained zone. That means lots of loading screens, and that means they don't have to code it so they are all connected and fluid. Now im fully aware that each solar system in Eve is one zone. And each major area in WoW are zones. But both of those game are much more fluid in how you enter them, and neither requires you to see a loading screen. Wow transitions are seamless, Eve makes you see the warp jump but it doesn't pull you out of the immersion like sector space does.
Part of me likes the fact that in the eve Universe distance actually means something. You can't mobilize a fleet and be half way across the galaxy in 5 minutes. But in Star Trek Online, that's how long it takes to get from Earth to anywhere. DS9 in Bajoran space, 5 minutes. Want to fly all the way to Kronos in Klingon territory 5 minutes, Deep Space K7 at the edge of the Neutral Zone 5 minutes. I just feel like the game should be bigger.
Another thing that takes me out of the game is it reads like fan fiction. They name drop more often a bad Star Trek novel. So far I have met Naomi Wildman (the first child born Voyager), Miral Paris (Tom and Belana's daughter), Akira Sulu (great grandson to Hikaru), seen the Starships USS Kirk, McCoy and Montgomery Scott, been referenced to Picard, Data, Sela, Commander Donatra, the Riker maneuver (in the Briar Patch) and so on. I get it, its the Star Trek Universe, does it have to hit me over the head with references? By the way, after meeting Naomi Wildman (who I think is on DS9 btw if I recall) I had a thought. I didn't watch Voyager, but were there only 2 babies born on the whole ship in 7 years? I figure one of 3 things went on there. Either Starfleet has the best prophylactics in the Universe, The Doctor was pro-choice or no one was having sex on that ship. Since she who shall not be named was all up in everyone's business all the time, I'm gonna go with C.
So I have talked this much about the game, and have yet to delve into real gameplay. Ill start with the part I don't care for all that much. Away missions.
When you beam down to a planet/space station/another starship etc... you have your user created Avatar and your away team. Whats nice is you can set up your away team to either be your bridge crew, or random red shirts. Since I subscribe to the philosophy of "Kirk knows this is the most dangerous planet in the Universe so the Away Team will Consist of myself, Mr Spock, Bones, Sulu, Uhura and Ensign Ricky", I bring my entire bridge crew. Once you get to the planet surface its obvious that the developers have had the Kirk vs Picard debate as well. Well Kirk won. You won't be talking your way out of much. Shoot first, shoot again, and if anyone is left alive you didn't do your job well enough. There is actually a reason to bring your bridge crew on away missions, they have combat special moves they can pull off. They range from recharging your personal shield to knockbacks of enemies, stuns and holds etc. Its clear to me that while at lower levels its a grand melee of phaser fire but at higher levels there will be some tactical gameplay required and here you will develop into the classic tank/dps/crowd control/healer mode of gameplay. While your npc bridge crew perform adequately they are hampered by poor pathfinding and decision making ability. Thankfully the enemy suffers from the same. Any time you are in a team your away missions are done together. Your away team members will be replaced by the other Captains in your team. So unfortunately you can't overwhelm an enemy with numbers. Besides I imagine it being seriously more hectic with 5 captains and 5 full bridge crews. Away mission combat will look familiar if you have played City of Heroes. You can identify which character falls into the tank/controller/healer specs. Your character is based on which primary tree you selected during creation Tactical, Science or Engineering. Same with your bridge crew. You can outfit yourself and bridge crew with new weaponry, body armor personal shields, devices (think single use enhancements) and a kit that includes certain special moves.
I don't think away team combat is all that special. It really feels like City of Heroes with phasers. It is what it is.
So ship to ship combat. One would think that in order to be a success as a Star Trek game this part needs to be spectacular. Unfortunately I had this game build up a lot in my head, and it doesn't measure up to how great I wanted it to be. That said, its not bad. Much like avatar combat, at early levels its very much a grand melee. When you get to higher levels ship specialties start to make roles become very important. Some ships cruisers/heavy cruiser will make for good tanking ships, escorts will be your dps class with science ships rounding out the controller/healer side. Your ships have shields, specifically port, starboard, fore and aft (that left right front and back to you non naval types), no ventral or dorsal shields exist (top and bottom). You can redistribute shield power. If your heading straight at an enemy you can pull power from your other shields to reinforce the front. You can also vary power distribution from your warp core to the following systems, weapons, shields, engines and auxiliary. Auxiliary is essentially your hull and the ability of your crew to repair your hull. All weapons have firing arcs, so you have to maneuver your ship to bring your weapons to bare on your enemies. Your bridge crew also has special abilities that can be used, things like emergency power to all shields, weapon buffs, even boarding parties.
So with that information you should be able to understand the concept of how combat in space can be quite tactical. You have to keep your enemy on the side of your ship with the strongest shields, yet be able to bring your weapons in range to fire on him. All the while managing your energy and keeping your ship in one piece. Large space battles can be quite hectic. Ships will flank you, get behind you and attack you on all sides to prevent you from distributing power to one set of shields.
Now what I don't like about ship to ship combat is you are not fighting on a true 3D plane. Sure you can pitch up and down and change your Z level, but you can't pitch completely over or do a barrel roll. Now again, this is Star Trek not Star Wars, and these are capitol ships not fighters, but ships like the Defiant have been shown to be more agile and capable of doing things like that. So the lack of ability in my mind is a big hindrance. Also it can be a pain in the ass to bring your weapons on target if they are off plane from you because you can't pitch up far enough. Also don't expect to be performing any Picard Maneuvers here (no warp in combat), its pretty much tank and spank combat. Ships just like your avatars have upgrades, the ability to put on new weapons, shields, engines, deflector dish, bridge consoles (stations for your crew to manage and bonuses to your starship) and devices (again think CoH enhancements). Items for both ships and your avatars are dropped as loot during those types of encounters. Meaning dont expect to find new photon torpedoes on an away mission. They can also be purchased from vendors at various locations throughout the universe.
I mentioned before ships can be customized, and I don't much care for the extent of it. Your starter ship is the Miranda. You can swap it out for 2 others in total or you can mix and match starship parts from all 3. This seems to hold true at every level. For my first new starship I chose the cruiser. It gives me a choice between the Constitution class, the Excalibur class and one other. There is no tactical difference between them, they are all just considered cruiser. Again you could mix and match parts between all 3 ships and then add colors and a design to its paint job. Im sure some people are all excited about this. Me not so much. The only thing I care to do is rename it and change the registry. Registry numbers though are forced to be long, and renaming costs.
There are multiple types of in-game currency. Starship credits, given when you hit a major rank. Starfleet credits, used for renaming ships and promoting your bridge crew. Energy credits, used for buying from vendors and working with the replicator (which is the in game crafting mechanism that I have not played with).
I never talked about leveling. As there are only really 6 ranks in Starfleet, they had to make it so you level up often (the feeling of accomplishment so many gamers demand) but within the context of Star Trek. Each rank comes with 10 grades. So for example at the end of beta I am a Lt Commander grade 2. 8 more grades and I make full Commander. New tiers of ships comes with new ranks.
Other thoughts, ship scales should be better. Some ships don't look as big as they should. All torpedoes are on the same cooldown. Meaning you can't fire front torps, turn and fire rear torps before the cooldown wears off. Dont care for that. Not much to explore yet. I haven't played long enough to get into the endgame style content. Endgame content in CoH was a joke. I commented on that already in this thread. It remains to be seen the replayability of this game. Missions need to be laid out better to push you through level appropriate content. Fewer loading screens would be fantastic.
So far, the game experience has been overall positive. There is room for improvement. I wish the game felt bigger. But as whole its fun. Space combat is hectic and enjoyable. Teaming up with others is fun, and easy.
I will be playing for a little bit, mostly because as you level the incentive is to get the next ship. We will see if the end game content (which by the way is currently the Borg) is good enough to make me stay and overlook the things I don't like. Look to see the USS Agamemnon in action.
From what I've heard it sounds like they hope to go with a similar expansion plan as CoH, so hopefully they might add new sectors/ships/crafting detail later on. Whatever else you think of CoH, you gotta admit the amount of stuff they've added in post-launch is pretty big. Sure a fair bit of it like the arenas and crafting probably should have been in there at the start, but hopefully STO will learn those lessons and get them in early
Compartments (sectors in sto, solar systems in eve, etc) are not made for ease of client code, but for server load balance. In EVE Jita gets its very own cpu. If it was seamless flight it would be much more difficult to manage system load.
Full 3D flight is very difficult for a lot of people. Maintaining orientation on a plane is difficult enough for many. Giving full 3d flight would alienate many players.
My understanding is that you do not have to do missions, you can also progress your character through pvp and other methods. IIRC in the closed beta the most efficient way to advance your character was though pvp, not missioning.
Population density is important for a themepark mmog such as sto. The vastness of space is more appropriate for a niche sandbox game. With the StarTrek IP though I would want to capitalize on it as much as possible.
But we'll see when my partner (a long time WoW player) and me (longtime Eve player) play when open beta starts tomorrow.
From a technical viewpoint, I disagree with this. Modern technologies make it quite easy to move execution contexts between physical computing resources without any interruption of service. Compartments are easier, and simplify game design, but not having compartments does not make load balancing difficult.