Star Trek Online: Here We Go Again!

[jakonovski]

It was some kind of floating salvage, not mob kill loot.

It's their equivalent of mining node. Every mmo has people who think they're entitled to get them before you.

[Ratman_tf]

It was some kind of floating salvage, not mob kill loot.

Ah, ok.

I was called a prick by someone I didn't know, for doing something I didn't understand.

Is this your first MMOG? 

[tmp]

STO gave me mandatory PUGs with no warning or obvious way to shut it off.

I've got to try the game out today and there is notification you're added to open group on the load screen for the sector the mission takes place in.

To shut the auto-grouping off apparently you open the Grouping panel, go to "Options" tab and tick off "Auto-join groups" or something to this effect.

I'll happily rag on Cryptic for doing rest of the game their typical well, cryptic fare... but this one thing they have pretty intuitive, i think.

Then again, the most common question in Sol station chat is "where is X's office" (it is right in front of the player when they dock at station and it says "X's office" above the flashing door in huge letters) and "where is Y, X told me to talk to him" (Y is like 10 meters from X, in the same room)  Leads me to believe the quest helpers are rapidly advancing de-evolution or smth.

[01101010]

I've got to try the game out today and there is notification you're added to open group on the load screen for the sector the mission takes place in.

To shut the auto-grouping off apparently you open the Grouping panel, go to "Options" tab and tick off "Auto-join groups" or something to this effect.

I'll happily rag on Cryptic for doing rest of the game their typical well, cryptic fare... but this one thing they have pretty intuitive, i think.

Then again, the most common question in Sol station chat is "where is X's office" (it is right in front of the player when they dock at station and it says "X's office" above the flashing door in huge letters) and "where is Y, X told me to talk to him" (Y is like 10 meters from X, in the same room)  Leads me to believe the quest helpers are rapidly advancing de-evolution or smth.

I got to play a bit more today. Space combat is fun but I can see it getting to the point of "fuck this" later. Right now its fun, but in a backyard slide sorta-way. Ground combat is ... well, there is something along the lines of ground combat. Tolerable only because its day one I suppose, but lots of geometry bugs and glitches. I much rather do the space ship thing.

That auto-join is under the social and I left it on to see whats-what. I suppose it works in the game right now because everyone is practically the same load outs. I'd like to see what happens when it autogroups a  team of 5 science vessels or escorts. Not sure how that could impact. It had sort of a open server/"waiting to join" feel like I got in other games. Everyone clicks or you wait two minutes for the server to boot the idle people. Guess that's what happens when you instance the entire thing. I like not having to look for a group and wait till the perfect alignment of classes joins, and having 2 or more on some of those missions is the only way to get thru them. Reminded me a lot of public quests in WAR without having to press a join button.

Beta will be enough of a fill and this weekend the game will distract me enough to get to next week.

[SpaceDrake]

Yeah, the auto-grouper can be pretty keen but they really need to actually inform the player of it and how to turn it off if people so wish.

Anyway, my experience has been positive. I mean, I went in expecting something totally unplayable, but instead I get a refined version of SFC combat in space and a serviceable ground experience, and once you get out of the Sirius Sector Block the main story missions get really cool. I had a few crashes the first day of OB (none during my tail-end session of CB, oddly enough) but ever since then I've been rock-solid, even with massive play marathons.

I personally think it's a fair bit better than "just good enough" - there's been at least some care put into crafting the big set-piece content and they've gone out of their way to make things feel authentic. It might be launching a little early, but at the same time, that's the nature of the beast these days: especially after Perpetual ate so much of CBS' money, this beast had to get out the door in some fashion so it could begin to make money and support itself. It isn't Trek nirvana, but it's still quite good and enjoyable, and so long as they keep a decent flow of content up I can see myself playing for a long time to come.

[Tearofsoul]

You can absolutely turn off the auto-grouping.

[palmer_eldritch]

I like the way you can pick your crew, train them up and give them weapons and armour. It's a bit like building your party in a game like Baldur's Gate.

[tmp]

I like the way you can pick your crew, train them up and give them weapons and armour. It's a bit like building your party in a game like Baldur's Gate.

I thought it'd be like some kind of space version of Pokemon since apparently each bridge officer comes with random selection of skills per-tier picked from a larger pool. But then they allow to replace any of these skills with ones you select manually so it seems you can make the exact kind of officer you want which pretty much removes this aspect.

On the other hand having experienced the lottery that's LotRO legendary weapon system maybe this is lesser of two evils...

[SpaceDrake]

This is true; the real draw of the game for is being able to put together my own crew visually and have crazy space adventures not just with a captain but a crew and practically a ship of my own devising. Cryptic really knows how to draw in the people who like to play with digital dollies, that's for damn sure.

[Lantyssa]

What do you do with anomolies?  The lady said to bring them back to her, but when I do she doesn't give me any option to reasearch them further.  She just gives the same bring me anomolies to study line.

[palmer_eldritch]

What do you do with anomolies?  The lady said to bring them back to her, but when I do she doesn't give me any option to reasearch them further.  She just gives the same bring me anomolies to study line.

Click "store", which I think is the top option when you talk to her, and she will show you a list of items and the anomalies needed to create them. Even then, it doesn't make much sense to me but that's where to start.

[Stormwaltz]

Ummm, the game has one of the most maleable grouping mechanics out there.  Everything from grouping or not (you're not always forced to group - it just defaults to this), scalable ai, to need/greed, master loot, etc. are all there for you to choose.

<snip>

Ingame explanations arent there

So -- let me see if I follow your logic here -- my aggravation that they didn't tell me about this or how to shut it off is "moot" because... it works fine, but they didn't tell me about this or how to turn it off?

[ahoythematey]

I'd say the aggravation lies in you complaining about grouping with other people in a MMO.  That's me, though.

[tmp]

So -- let me see if I follow your logic here -- my aggravation that they didn't tell me about this or how to shut it off is "moot" because... it works fine, but they didn't tell me about this or how to turn it off?

I think it may be viewed as "moot" beacuse it's kind of thing which seem to quickly become a standard in MMOs. Much like say, the profanity filter in chat and the games having sound. These things are put in the game preferences for the player to disable and/or otherwise toy with and it's presumed intuitive enough to have it in there, without explicitly teling the player about it. Not to mention this particular features to certain degree functions precisely because it's being enabled by default.

[Riggswolfe]

Hmm...the forums are beginning to melt down. The two camps are forming and are pretty hardcore. The "this game needs more beta time because of x, y, z" and the "you just suxxor! go back to wow noob! This is a beta!" fanboys. I'm firmly in the first group but will probably play my free month. There is some fun in the game I just don't know if it will be salvageable in the long run.

 Oddly, I find the ground combat really, really growing on me. Something about the expose and exploit system combined with flanking makes it feel really active. I'm always moving in ground combat. Space combat is still good though sometimes it gets a bit old.

[Ghambit]

Ground combat was more enjoyable when it wasnt care-beared up.  They lowered the difficulty pretty significantly when OB opened up.  But, isnt that pretty par for the course with betas?  Earlier in beta many times you'd have to pull some shenanigans out your ass just to survive... kiting, redshirt sending, rally points, weapon switches, all kinds of pots, etc.  But now, not so much.  It's a bit more mindless button pushing 'cause you're never in trouble.

Reminds me of the difficulty Tabula Rasa had with combat balance.  They had a pretty good combat system, but it was never realized because the vocal retardation in the forums convinced the devs to lower the difficulty so much that their original vision of combat was no longer valid.  Then they cranked it up too high.  Then too much grind.  Then end of game.

Regardless though, there's something about a plasma rifle set on "spray pattern" that just touches me in the right places.

[Khaldun]

Based on Champions Online, I'd say that whatever you see that's not so good in the current design? It's going to remain. You'll probably see some stability fixes, but that's about it.

[Venkman]

Hmm...the forums are beginning to melt down. The two camps are forming and are pretty hardcore. The "this game needs more beta time because of x, y, z" and the "you just suxxor! go back to wow noob! This is a beta!" fanboys. I'm firmly in the first group but will probably play my free month. There is some fun in the game I just don't know if it will be salvageable in the long run.

What systems do you think are largely complete but just need more refinement? Or did you mean "alpha"?

[Lantyssa]

Either the game is buggy that it simply happened twice in two different play sessions, or if you set your team options to closed or accept invite only, then your away team doesn't beam down with you.  It brought up the box to assign them, it just dropped me on the planet solo.

[Surlyboi]

Click on the "request reinforcements" box.

[Lantyssa]

There wasn't one.

[jakonovski]

Approaching level 10 and there's all of a sudden like zillion broken quests. As in, you can't do them because the game crashes, objectives never spawn or the enemy ships are like 10 levels higher than the quest level.

[jayfyve]

Either the game is buggy that it simply happened twice in two different play sessions, or if you set your team options to closed or accept invite only, then your away team doesn't beam down with you.  It brought up the box to assign them, it just dropped me on the planet solo.

Devs on IRC confirmed that was a bug. The quick fix is log out then back in while on the ground.  When you log back in, the crew spawn. Of course, that's not a good idea with the servers being full at the moment.

[Tannhauser]

I'm level 16 and not seeing the broken quests you are.  At least at the amount you imply.  What does nag me is players hang back and wait for some sucker to go in first.  He gets his ass tore off and then they rush in, vulture-like, to get some kills. Like the above poster, I prefer ground combat over space, at least for now.  Fllanking, tactical positioning, use science officer as tank (regen shields) and hang back and pew pew pew.  

But I am still in 'Oooo shiny' mode so there's that.

[jakonovski]

I'm level 16 and not seeing the broken quests you are.  At least at the amount you imply.  What does nag me is players hang back and wait for some sucker to go in first.  He gets his ass tore off and then they rush in, vulture-like, to get some kills. Like the above poster, I prefer ground combat over space, at least for now.  Fllanking, tactical positioning, use science officer as tank (regen shields) and hang back and pew pew pew.  

But I am still in 'Oooo shiny' mode so there's that.

It's not very many in the grand scheme of things, but right now I'm level 9 and the only working quests I have are the generic Patrol and Secure missions. It deflates one's enthusiasm.

[taolurker]

I'm level 16 and not seeing the broken quests you are.  At least at the amount you imply.  What does nag me is players hang back and wait for some sucker to go in first.  He gets his ass tore off and then they rush in, vulture-like, to get some kills. Like the above poster, I prefer ground combat over space, at least for now.  Fllanking, tactical positioning, use science officer as tank (regen shields) and hang back and pew pew pew.  

That's because the AI is crap, and the first ship into the fray actually gets targeted and attacked by every enemy, and no any amount of tanking or self heals will save his ass... Therefore everyone hangs back waiting for the first to attack, and not wanting to be that person.

I don't know how in fact to actually level since every time I decide to play I get one of a hundred different messages from the launcher, unable to retrieve characters once the game loads, or have the game come up non responding when it's loading something in the tutorial. I have also been attempting to play when servers are full, down, or having some kind of emergency something. So, basically I've been struggling to play in ten minute bursts, and am more gaming the hell that is their forums.

[kildorn]

I'm level 16 and not seeing the broken quests you are.  At least at the amount you imply.  What does nag me is players hang back and wait for some sucker to go in first.  He gets his ass tore off and then they rush in, vulture-like, to get some kills. Like the above poster, I prefer ground combat over space, at least for now.  Fllanking, tactical positioning, use science officer as tank (regen shields) and hang back and pew pew pew.  

That's because the AI is crap, and the first ship into the fray actually gets targeted and attacked by every enemy, and no any amount of tanking or self heals will save his ass... Therefore everyone hangs back waiting for the first to attack, and not wanting to be that person.

I don't know how in fact to actually level since every time I decide to play I get one of a hundred different messages from the launcher, unable to retrieve characters once the game loads, or have the game come up non responding when it's loading something in the tutorial. I have also been attempting to play when servers are full, down, or having some kind of emergency something. So, basically I've been struggling to play in ten minute bursts, and am more gaming the hell that is their forums.

Everyone wants to avoid being the first person into the fight because of the alpha strike issue, yes, but is IS possible to survive it if you know how the mechanics work. I frequently ate alphas as an escort in fleet actions against 5 battleships and up. The last phase with multiple dreads, yeah whoever gets threat is dead, but I think that's intentional.

I will say that surviving an alpha strike costs you loot and points because you can't focus on taking out a target. You abuse things like rotate shield frequencies for the -30% damage buff and shield regen, take the disruptors to the forward shields, start reinforcing side, take the torps to the side while you turn away, pop evasive and reinforce rear shields while finally facing away from the pack. At this point you'll still have threat from a few, but your allies should have engaged, and you survived the alpha by popping 2-3 cooldowns. It's a bad mechanic, but it works for large fleet actions.

I will say that there are problems with things like shield regen >>>>>> shield size, so any ship can "tank" because a larger shield size is just buffer, while shield regen is the actual "tank" stat.

[DaZog]

Either the game is buggy that it simply happened twice in two different play sessions, or if you set your team options to closed or accept invite only, then your away team doesn't beam down with you.  It brought up the box to assign them, it just dropped me on the planet solo.

I had that happen to me too. Very obnoxious.

[ezrast]

That's because the AI is crap, and the first ship into the fray actually gets targeted and attacked by every enemy, and no any amount of tanking or self heals will save his ass... Therefore everyone hangs back waiting for the first to attack, and not wanting to be that person.

"This AI is total crap - it actually kills players instead of spreading damage around uselessly!" 

[Draegan]

Stormwaltz you should just probably log off the internet and never log in ever again.  That or stop playing online games.

[Jherad]

If you beam down to a station/planet, and your away team isn't there - wait for your character to finish loading completely (ie. your weapons have appeared, and you don't look like your spaceship), then type:

/fillpetteamlist

[Montague]

A word of warning: Watch your CPU/graphic card temps while playing the beta. I noticed my comp blowing out very hot air before the power supply burned up. It was a crappy Dell PSU that already had issues so this wasn't entirely unexpected but there are some threads in the STO tech support forums about getting high temps while playing.

[Lantyssa]

Although I did get it to work the third time, I solved future problems by deciding the game doesn't interest me beyond the Star Trek name.  It's utter rubbish.

At least Cryptic is fortunate enough to have the IP for an initial surge of box sales.  I suspect this will be even more disappointing than SWG to its fanbase.

[Ratman_tf]

Although I did get it to work the third time, I solved future problems by deciding the game doesn't interest me beyond the Star Trek name.  It's utter rubbish.

At least Cryptic is fortunate enough to have the IP for an initial surge of box sales.  I suspect this will be even more disappointing than SWG to its fanbase.

Unpossible. Much as I liked SWG, it was much further from it's source than STO.

[Riggswolfe]

Hmm...the forums are beginning to melt down. The two camps are forming and are pretty hardcore. The "this game needs more beta time because of x, y, z" and the "you just suxxor! go back to wow noob! This is a beta!" fanboys. I'm firmly in the first group but will probably play my free month. There is some fun in the game I just don't know if it will be salvageable in the long run.

What systems do you think are largely complete but just need more refinement? Or did you mean "alpha"?

Space combat for one. Ground combat is almost there. The exploration missions are borked though. Other missions desperately need balancing like the stupid briar patch "die and have to fly slowly through the nebula all over again" mission. I don't know, I'm torn on my preorder. Beta started Tuesday, I played the hell out of it until about Friday, and I haven't logged in since. I've been telling myself it's because I don't want to play too much and get bored when it hits live. Then I remember WOW where I played beta for something like 2 months and was counting the minutes until the server came up on live. I think the game is shallow and it just doesn't hold the interest long term.