Star Trek Online: Here We Go Again!

[Ingmar]

I wish the NDA was down but I suppose I'll know the answer to this tomorrow.

I was reading a preview article and the author talked about some kind of space battle that you could just wander across and be dynamically grouped up to fight in. To me it sounded alot like WAR's public quests which doesn't bring back fond memories.

Champions has these too, so I expect it basically is WAR's public quests, although it sounds like maybe with Blizzard's auto-battleground-grouping tacked on top.

[Venkman]

Didn't this just go open beta? And the NDA is still in place?

Anyway, RMT is where you're using real money to facilitate transactions that happen between players in the game. MTX is where you are paying the company for something from the developer's game marketplace. MTX games are already here as a business model while RMTers get chased down and banned (usually not for RMTing as much as spamming about it of course).   Yes, you can argue that the definitions should be switched and get all academic about it.

MTX can be anything though. Some people assume it's just XP modifiers and costumes, but it's maps, character slots, storage space, anything a company can nickle and dime you on because they gave away the game for free assuming you'd think the virtual crap was worth something.

If you are waiting for a big budget MMO to do MTX "right" though, keep waiting. Yes, some of them went F2P, but that was to stave off eventual closure from a lack of sufficient subs. MTX games are compelling to companies because they're either launching in Asia with it's huge already-conditioned market, or they're cheap games for kids in the west who don't have their anti-RMT preferences.

[Ghambit]

OB is tomorrow and NDA falls with it. 
In other news, STO forums and IRC are a veritable madhouse right now.  Game's got some marketing clout, that's for damned sure.  Kind of a shame really, because once the floodgates open the Trekkers will be taking no prisoners.  It wouldnt surprise me to get a delayed release after a few days OB.

[Venkman]

What is the difference between a Trekker and a Trekkie? I can never remember.

I also highly doubt this will get delayed. "Delay" connotes a sense that the foundation is fine and just needs adjustment. The complaints they'll get will be from people who you can never actually make a quality game for because they're not a big enough market for the budget you'd actually need to make it

[UnSub]

Ahh, it's an open beta for all those who have preordered plus existing closed beta testers.

As of 10:00 a.m. this morning, Closed Beta has ended and we are now in Open Beta.

So the NDA will drop 10am Pacific time.

[Count Nerfedalot]

 

[Ghambit]

The complaints they'll get will be from people who you can never actually make a quality game for because they're not a big enough market for the budget you'd actually need to make it

Categorically false.  It's been said time and time again that the Trek market alone is enough to make a quality "Trek" game for.  It's the largest TV market in history, bar none.  The problem is, they tend not to like being forcefed garbage.  If you make it, they will come though and you'll surely have a market large enough to support a AAA MMO, even if the non-trekkers dont like it.  Making a trek-game "non-trek" for some imaginary audience is a much bigger fail than making a solid trek game.  Tell that to Cryptic though   

As for trekkers vs. trekkies...  trekkers is now the P.C. term 

[Nebu]

The problem is, they tend not to like being forcefed garbage. 

You sure you don't want to rethink that one? 

[UnSub]

Making a trek-game "non-trek" for some imaginary audience is a much bigger fail than making a solid trek game.

[Draegan]

I'm a trek fan, but not a trekkie and that movie was better than almost all of the Next Gen movies.

[Riggswolfe]

I'm a trek fan, but not a trekkie and that movie was better than almost all of the Next Gen Trek movies.

FIFY

[Riggswolfe]

The problem is, they tend not to like being forcefed garbage. 

You sure you don't want to rethink that one? 

Considering that most Trek games have been garbage and have sold decently I'd say Ghambit has selective memory or is underestimating the obsessive nature of your typical Trek fan.

[Nebu]

Considering that most Trek games have been garbage and have sold decently I'd say Ghambit has selective memory or is underestimating the obsessive nature of your typical Trek fan.

Games, movies, spinoff tv shows, etc.  I feel for Star Trek fans.  They've done their best to remain devoted through decades of crap. 

[Riggswolfe]

Considering that most Trek games have been garbage and have sold decently I'd say Ghambit has selective memory or is underestimating the obsessive nature of your typical Trek fan.

Games, movies, spinoff tv shows, etc.  I feel for Star Trek fans.  They've done their best to remain devoted through decades of crap. 

Sometimes I wonder which fanbase is more insane, Star Wars or Star Trek fans. Right now I'm leaning towards Star Trek fans due to sheer volume and crap though a quality of crap argument can be made...

[fuser]

Checked with EB games, still no pre-order card, also see the offical forum thread on it. Just debating buying on Steam, thanks EB  

[Riggswolfe]

Amazon is having similar issues. I got my key yesterday at 2am but my wife still hasn't gotten hers. It's like the retailers have been hit with an attack of the incompetents or something.

[UnSub]

I'm a trek fan, but not a trekkie and that movie was better than almost all of the Next Gen movies.

Simply making the point that Abrahms intentionally threw it out to hardcore Star Trek fans that his movie wasn't for them. It did very well regardless.

I'm off to bed and will look forward to all NDA-released commentary when I wake up.

Also: STO site adds faction page with Cardassian and Romulan logos

[Draegan]

I'm a trek fan, but not a trekkie and that movie was better than almost all of the Next Gen movies.

Simply making the point that Abrahms intentionally threw it out to hardcore Star Trek fans that his movie wasn't for them. It did very well regardless.

I'm off to bed and will look forward to all NDA-released commentary when I wake up.

Also: STO site adds faction page with Cardassian and Romulan logos

Aaah.  I took your post exactly the opposite of what you were intending.

[Riggswolfe]

I know it's a silly thing but I'm totally jealous of those Klingon eyepatches that are bolted to your skull!

[fuser]

If anyone is interested fileplanet is now just giving away keys to anyone(just worked for me a non subscriber). Expect them to be gone soon!

[Malakili]

The Open Beta is officially underway.  I haven't seen any official word about NDA drop yet though.

[Montague]

Got mine, thanks Fuser.

[Khaldun]

Cryptic would probably be better off if they just kept their games under NDA permanently.

[Malakili]

Well, people are posting about the game already on Cryptics public forums (which have public areas for open beta feedback now), and several news sites are reporting that it is down, and I've seen a few people who have said Cryptic said it would be down at 10am Pacific today...so not only should it be down, it appears to be effectively down.  I am going to wait about 30 more minutes to see if I can find official word, after which I'm just going to post my thoughts.

[Kageh]

Cheers for the heads-up fuser, got one too! Sadly, Cryptic STO page seems to crap out at the moment.

[Malakili]

Ok - its official, I saw in IRC chat a community manage (WishStone) say that it has been lifted as of 10am Pacific, were all clear.

[CmdrSlack]

Heh, let's see if I manage to get a key. 35-ish mins have elapsed since fuser posted that link as far as I can tell. I'm thinking signs point to no.

[kildorn]

Since NDA is gone: shallow, but actually kind of fun. Like, it's amusing in spite of everything Cryptic has tried to do to make it Not Fun.

It's essentially a better Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Also content and infrastructure wise, it's about 2 months from release candidate worthy.

[Hawkbit]

Heh, let's see if I manage to get a key. 35-ish mins have elapsed since fuser posted that link as far as I can tell. I'm thinking signs point to no.

Keep trying.  Took me about five attempts till I got to the gamespy code screen.

[Malakili]

Alright:  Short Version - Its pretty much crap.


Long(er) Version:

1) Graphics - Not bad really, nice looking, if there is one thing the game does well, its the shiny.  It looks the part, at least.

2) Gameplay -  Basically, this is a combat game, and the combat is mediocre at best.  If you have grand visions in your head of captaining a starship and going where no man has gone before, this isn't the game.  You'll be grinding missions from here on in.   Their much hailed "Genesis" system for exploration is nothing more than a glorified random mission generator which will generate a "Kill stuff" mission or a "click on quest objects" mission.  

3) Like Champions Onine, this game is HEAVILY instanced.  You basically fly around in little boxes of space.  For players that have played EVE, this is going to be a major sticking point.  Lots of loading screens, very little feeling of anything being big.  

4) Ground combat is also quite mediocre.  I guess they deserve some credit for having a space and ground game actually functioning, but thats about where it ends.  It suffers from the exact shooting people in the face with a phaser problem we've been discussing.

A few random things:

 Your friends list is persistent through STO and CO, the kind of cool thing is that private chats are also.  If you have, for instance, a private chat room set up in Champions Online, you can join and talk to people in it from Star Trek Online.  Granted, the downside being that you need to actually be playing these games to take advantage of this feature.

The leveling system is slightly interesting.  Instead of gaining experience points, you are awards skill points for completing missions (and sometimes for killing stuff?), and you can put them into various skills that give you mostly passive bonuses.  When you have invested enough total skill points you rank up (like from Lt. to Lt. Commander), and gain access to new ships.  I think the system isn't actually bad in principle, but I don't like the way it actually functions.

Basically, if you could make a list of all the things that could be done wrong with the Star Trek IP, this game would have most of them.  In fact, most of our fears people have listed in this thread have come to pass.  Avoid the game.  If all you want is to shoot lasers at stuff with a Star Trek skin, this game will maybe hold your interest for a bit.

[Riggswolfe]

Since NDA is gone: shallow, but actually kind of fun. Like, it's amusing in spite of everything Cryptic has tried to do to make it Not Fun.

It's essentially a better Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Also content and infrastructure wise, it's about 2 months from release candidate worthy.

By infrastructure do you mean server hardware and such or something else?

[kildorn]

Since NDA is gone: shallow, but actually kind of fun. Like, it's amusing in spite of everything Cryptic has tried to do to make it Not Fun.

It's essentially a better Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Also content and infrastructure wise, it's about 2 months from release candidate worthy.

By infrastructure do you mean server hardware and such or something else?

Servers still crash and burn at random. According to the forums, there's a MAP FULL error plaguing the first minutes of open beta.

Essentially yeah, I don't think they have enough hardware to survive the open beta, which will mean a lot of canceled preorders followed by having too much hardware/opex costs for their playerbase.

The doom of a smaller MMO: you need burst capacity to survive the beta without serious server strain, but not too much to deal with the lower player count in live when they have to pay for it.

Content wise, I mean even minor things, like the Klingon level to 11 achievement's text is "Hello."

[Riggswolfe]

Ok, so far we have shallow but fun and "crap". Oh, and Schild "it's a Cryptic game" which could range from COX to CO I guess. Anyone else want to comment?

[Riggswolfe]

Servers still crash and burn at random. According to the forums, there's a MAP FULL error plaguing the first minutes of open beta.

Yep. I made a character and that's about it. Took me about 5 times to make a character without a login disconnect. So far I'm quite pleased with the character creator but that's literally all I can say about the game.

Essentially yeah, I don't think they have enough hardware to survive the open beta, which will mean a lot of canceled preorders followed by having too much hardware/opex costs for their playerbase.

The doom of a smaller MMO: you need burst capacity to survive the beta without serious server strain, but not too much to deal with the lower player count in live when they have to pay for it.

Hmmm...yeah. The good news is even if I keep my preorder I won't be logging on during day 1. I'll be too busy with ME2. Open Beta will definitely be a make or break for my preorder. I tend to be less jaded than you guys so if I think there is enough fun for the free month I'll keep the preorder and play it by ear after that.

Content wise, I mean even minor things, like the Klingon level to 11 achievement's text is "Hello."

Lol, that's bad news. I've seen alot of folks posting on the forums today with "It's a beta people!" The problem is, that Open Beta, to my mind is pretty much "load test the servers, get some positive word of mouth." By open beta the game is already being manufactured so it's really past the pure beta stage. I'll stay on the fence for another few days probably. I just want enough time to at least play a little and see if it's fun enough to justify a box.

Edit: Lol, their forums have crashed!

[kildorn]

This is a beta, it's just not a release ready beta. This is up to the "expect people to post rumors of a magic secret client we're not testing that has all the tooltip issues and such fixed"

I do think space combat is fun, but I think Cryptic has no concept of polish in their games, and keeps shoveling things out based on hard release dates that aren't grounded in any form of reality.