Star Trek Online: Here We Go Again!

[DaZog]

Fora lark, I gave one of my offiicers a fire extinguisher from the Researcher Rescue mission. He never helped put out any fires, but imagine my surprise when on a later ground mission, he repeatedly runs up to foozles and gives them a face full of fire retardant 

[Ghambit]

You can buy medical supplies and whatnot in the Sol system, from the commodities dude next to the personal gear vendor tables.

Did cryptic forget about replicators or something?

You used to be able to replicate those. They took them off the replicators and added the Sol vendors. Probably because the missions involving them just became "insert credits for mission complete credit"

Commodities like that are found throughout the game (in space and on ground), not just for certain quests.  If you vendor them instead of keeping them for later than yah, it's a pita. (oh noes, I has to click transwarp)

So yah, in other news:  I like STO more than Allods.  (shrug)

[jakonovski]

Oh god, they patched the launcher and now the Engage button is outside the window. Nobody can log in!

[Malakili]

Oh god, they patched the launcher and now the Engage button is outside the window. Nobody can log in!

If this problem persists, anyone who owns a copy can use the Champions Online launcher to launch STO.

[Ghambit]

Oh god, they patched the launcher and now the Engage button is outside the window. Nobody can log in!

wtf are you talkin about?  It's fine.  
Actually, it's badass... they made it like the LCARS

[Furiously]

So - who has a beta I can test drive?

[Montague]

"Miracle Patch" incoming - 790 mb  

[Ratman_tf]

"Miracle Patch" incoming - 790 mb  

Holy crap. That's a lotta stuff.

[jakonovski]

wtf are you talkin about?  It's fine.  
Actually, it's badass... they made it like the LCARS

Wasn't fine last night. In fact, I just loaded up STO and the first thing it did was patch the launcher again.

[01101010]

Bridge Officers will no longer pet tribbles constantly
Tribbles will no longer grow larger and larger.

NOOO!!   

That was the fun part.

[Riggswolfe]

Nice. And I realised something last night when I played briefly. The missions are shallow. The ground combat is iffy. But the space stuff? There's actually alot of depth and strategy there but it's kind of obscured by the shitty UI.

[01101010]

Nice. And I realised something last night when I played briefly. The missions are shallow. The ground combat is iffy. But the space stuff? There's actually alot of depth and strategy there but it's kind of obscured by the shitty UI.

I feel like all of its shallow, and there is a draw to that for me for some reason. Maybe its because I can log in and play a few missions for an hour and log out before the woman starts pacing with her crowbar. (yeah, she actually does play HL/HL2 still so I put that there as reference)

[fuser]

Updated the backdrop for the contact window so it's 150% sexier than the plain blue gradient.

 

[tmp]

Headline Updates!

Added 2 NPCs talking about sulu being admiral quinn's office

[01101010]

Headline Updates!

Added 2 NPCs talking about sulu being admiral quinn's office

ugh...  


--edit: unless they come up with some dialog that takes a cheap shot at how stupid people can be. Then I'll be on your page.

[Ghambit]

Game actually feels night and day different to me.  Much more polish.  Loads times are near instantaneous, game responds sooner, graphics arent as rough-edged (I'm fairly certain AA was disabled prior, now it's active).  Game just has a much better "feel" now overall.  Lots of little things like improved dialogs, nimoy's narratives, nice load screens, etc.
Lvl cap is lifted and everything is opened up, so you can visit Risa, andoria, Vulcan, Ds9, etc.

Risa is pretty much a pleasure island with nothing truly interactive to do.  You just stand around.  It's also not quite populated enough with art assets - yah, it's not finished.  (or maybe they plan on some sandbox)

Andoria is just a frozen valley wherein you duel people ala Amok Time for some Andorian ritual - yah, it's not finished.  Right now you can just stand there.

Vulcan?  same deal. 

DS9 is mostly operational.  Vendors, quarks, etc. all there.  I like that it's to scale (at least externally).

I believe most of these places have quests associated with them, but they're also supposed to have some social interactivity.  All of them scream sandbox content. (lot's of empty space)

They changed the UI again, but it's not necessarily better.  They seem to be responding to a lot of forum bitching all willy-nilly rather than really thinking it through.  If they just stuck with the original LCARS plan, they'd be winners.  Regardless of difficulty, everyone loved the LCARS.

Combat difficulty seems to have been lowered Cryptic-style so people can pound through the content.  I fully expect the mega-nerf before release.  But, in this case I dont mind because combat is fairly entertaining when you're challenged.

[Stormwaltz]

--edit: unless they come up with some dialog that takes a cheap shot at how stupid it is for a 2010 MMG to ship without a quest tracker. Then I'll be on your page.

FIFY

[jakonovski]

Updated the backdrop for the contact window so it's 150% sexier than the plain blue gradient.

 

 

[01101010]

Updated the backdrop for the contact window so it's 150% sexier than the plain blue gradient.

 

 

needs dreads and different ears, but yeah, that's close

[Azaroth]

Quark is still tending bar on DS9 sixty years later?

Fuck, he must be pissed.

[tmp]

--edit: unless they come up with some dialog that takes a cheap shot at how stupid it is for a 2010 MMG to ship without a quest tracker. Then I'll be on your page.

FIFY

There is quest tracker. But you're talking about people who cannot see a huge "admiral's office" sign when it's right in front of them when they arrive at the station. To actually use the said quest tracker is like, two magnitudes above what their brain is capable of.

Unless by "quest tracker" you mean just "a fucking huge arrow showing me where to go"?

[Azaroth]

Isn't that standard in MMOs now?

[HaemishM]

MMO's not based on the Star Trek IP, yes.

[Count Nerfedalot]

This one confused me:

If you have multiple cannons (Player and Critters), sometimes hitting fire all will allow all your cannons to fire one pulse – adding bonus damage. Only one cannon should be able to be fired at one time. This bug applies to critters with multiple cannons as well.

Not being in beta and all, is there some weird reality distortion field at work in their depiction of the Star Trek universe?  Does it really say that there is a fire all button that is only supposed to fire one cannon?  wtf?  I understand all the words in that paragraph, I just have no clue what the writer meant when he typed them up in some apparently random order.

[Stormwaltz]

Unless by "quest tracker" you mean just "a fucking huge arrow showing me where to go"?

Yes. As seen in LotRO and WoW.

I don't use them because i'm hardcore unf unf I actually read the quest text and explore, but they seem to be the New Hotness with AAA titles.

[tmp]

Yes. As seen in LotRO and WoW.

Having playing the WoW trial recently i honestly cannot remember if they have the retard mode arrows built into the default UI? Under vague impression i didn't see anything of the sort, could be wrong though.

[Montague]

This one confused me:

If you have multiple cannons (Player and Critters), sometimes hitting fire all will allow all your cannons to fire one pulse – adding bonus damage. Only one cannon should be able to be fired at one time. This bug applies to critters with multiple cannons as well.

Not being in beta and all, is there some weird reality distortion field at work in their depiction of the Star Trek universe?  Does it really say that there is a fire all button that is only supposed to fire one cannon?  wtf?  I understand all the words in that paragraph, I just have no clue what the writer meant when he typed them up in some apparently random order.

Cannons and torpedoes have a shared cooldown, meaning you can only fire one at a time even if you have 2 or 3 of them installed.

[Riggswolfe]

Cannons and torpedoes have a shared cooldown, meaning you can only fire one at a time even if you have 2 or 3 of them installed.

Which is actually a huge nerf to escort class ships. That said, some people on the forums are claiming you can fire the canons in a certain sequence and keep up a near constant stream of attacks.

[Ratman_tf]

I don't use them because i'm hardcore unf unf I actually read the quest text and explore, but they seem to be the New Hotness with AAA titles.

Exploring is cool. Wandering over the same terrain for hourse because some quest text was mistaken or misleading is not so fun.

[Malakili]

I don't use them because i'm hardcore unf unf I actually read the quest text and explore, but they seem to be the New Hotness with AAA titles.

Exploring is cool. Wandering over the same terrain for hourse because some quest text was mistaken or misleading is not so fun.

Yeah, but then again, this is why I enjoy when the game makes going out and doing things rewarding in themselves, instead of having to tack on an item and xp reward at the end. 

[Montague]

"Servers are full. Please try again later."

 

For all the bitching on the beta forums there's an awful lot of people playing. Word of mouth seems to be pretty good... methinks Cryptic is going to sell a lot of boxes. Of course, Emmert will then strangle it in the crib shortly thereafter with a boneheaded nerf mechanic.

[tmp]

Could be just me but advancement pace seems to slow down quite a bit as soon as you get into the tier 2 ships, i dread how it scales farther.

Ground combat gets worse and worse as the enemies gain in health and you spend long time watching the nearly non-existent character animations as the health bars get sloooowly chipped away...

[UnSub]

Unless by "quest tracker" you mean just "a fucking huge arrow showing me where to go"?

Yes. As seen in LotRO and WoW.

I don't use them because i'm hardcore unf unf I actually read the quest text and explore, but they seem to be the New Hotness with AAA titles.

Cryptic used them in CoH/V and then attracted complaints that there was no exploration in the game. So they've used more vague approximations in ChampO and just use signposts in STO.

"Where is Sulu?" is a bit of a joke given he's in the same room as the main guy you have to talk to at the end of the tutorial. I can see why people have missed him, but once you talk to him once you can spend the rest of the time hailing him from your star ship.

New patch added a lot in. I played a mission where I was beamed down to a planet that was covered in a sandstorm that cut down visibility and had to run around and find some sensors to activate (loosely shown on the map). I'm sure you could fiddle with the graphics settings to turn the sandstorm off, but it really added to the feel of the mission. It was a great planet environment and was even a non-combat mission.

With the level cap coming down I expect to see a flood of bug reports about all that content post-lvl 16.

[Draegan]

Don't tell me this game is worth buying.

Of course I go to try it tonight and it's down for maintenance.

[Malakili]

Don't tell me this game is worth buying.

Of course I go to try it tonight and it's down for maintenance.

Hey, its only beta.