Star Trek Online: Here We Go Again!

[koro]

It's basically impossible to find any actual info like skill setups, bridge officer skill layouts, detailed breakdowns of game mechanics, guides, etc. on the forums because every subforum in that goddamn place is filled with either PvPers bitching, PvPers discussing PvP, PvPers shit-talking each other, or just general threads of people making feature suggestions that would be unfeasible for Cryptic to implement even if they had a live team the size of Blizzard itself.

I mean, yeah, "welcome to MMO forums" but god damn.

[01101010]

I just fly around and shoot shit - then retrain my drones and go shoot more shit. PvE is not too bad.

[01101010]

Having just finished my free month and not subbing in hopes that it should go f2p soon and my shit will still be there, I gotta say I actually found the game fairly fun. It took a bit of doing, and yes it gets repetitive in parts, but when I changed my play style to actually fit a more episodic feel for the game, it really took off. It also helped a ton to have the Q bonus (huge xp increase for four hours, refreshable) the last three days which leveled me up at ludicrous speed from commander to rear admiral and get my assault cruiser, which by far was so much better than that silly heavy cruiser. If you play it as episodes, the game shines. Hell some of those were awesome enough to color me impressed enough to care about the dialog. And those were the development episodes. Some of the player-created episodes were, simply put, incredible. I seriously hope this goes f2p as I will be right back in... but now, I can't justify the monthly on it.

And for whatever reason, I had 500 atari tokens and yet never spent more than the Steam special $4 on the game. With that, I opted for a bad ass ship. Sadly, my pc is on the way out, so this shot of the H.P. Lovecraft is sad, but I hope to zoom around in it again. $4 well spent...

[Modern Angel]

I really had a soft spot for it, even at release. There was plenty of stuff not 100% to my liking but it was fun in short bursts.

[Der Helm]

If you play it as episodes, the game shines.

Could you explain what you are talking about ?

[01101010]

If you play it as episodes, the game shines.

Could you explain what you are talking about ?

I can try to. I played most MMOs as the get all the quests and go out and do them in such a way as to finish them all in the least amount of time and running around - then turn them all in at once. Rinse and Repeat ad nauseum. Dungeons were a crap shoot and only if I felt like investing the time to be latched to my pc. In STO, most of the missions seem designed around 45minutes to an hour long - patrol missions, story-line missions, etc. You can pick them all up, but doing them paced it out. For example, there was a main story-based set of missions based on the Romulan/Reman conflict which was similar to a main thread in a TV show - a set of missions all tied together in a progressive series. It developed a story nicely in which the story propelled me along as if I was playing the TV show. However, I played it out like watching a TV show- finish one and was actually interested in finishing the rest but wasn't all that pressured to do it right now. You could also stop playing at any point and come back and finish it later - you could actually log out mid-way and when you logged in you could pick it up at that point or go do something else and come back and pick it back up at that point. So I'd play a mission and stop for a bit to take care of real life stuff or play on if I felt like it. I think the being able to quit whenever and pick it back up at that point was a pretty big positive in my book...

This whole thing is probably influenced by my mother who was a huge TOS trekkie which seemed to rub off on me - in that the STO universe had a certain familiarity to it (unlike other MMOs with the generic sword and slash play). Most importantly I figure was the ability to do it all solo. There were main missions that involved a fleet and I did some of those but they felt like one-offs rather than a huge series where you needed groups to progress.

I also found, most importantly, that there was hardly a purple set of stuff that was needed to be the best - at PvE at least. Aside from the borg stuff which influenced how your ship looked, everything was pretty standard. Looking at the weapons, greens, blues and purples were only marginally better than their white counterparts in that whites were the baseline and rarity only added increased stats and not overall dmg increases. It might mean something to the competitive PvPer, but in PvE, it meant very little - to me at least.

[kildorn]

Last time I played, a blue level whatnot cannon did a lot more damage than a white level whatnot cannon. But the loot isn't particularly RARE, and it's easy to cap out a ship in minutes. Mostly people ran around grinding for vanity items (a level whatnot gun that shot a different colored beam than everyone else's, and such) more than grinding to have the best ship.

I'm curious what the ground combat redesign looks like, since it goes live in a week. Someone elsewhere was trying to compare it to Mass Effect, which actually interested me. Ground combat was such a slog in STO.

[01101010]

Last time I played, a blue level whatnot cannon did a lot more damage than a white level whatnot cannon. But the loot isn't particularly RARE, and it's easy to cap out a ship in minutes. Mostly people ran around grinding for vanity items (a level whatnot gun that shot a different colored beam than everyone else's, and such) more than grinding to have the best ship.

I'm curious what the ground combat redesign looks like, since it goes live in a week. Someone elsewhere was trying to compare it to Mass Effect, which actually interested me. Ground combat was such a slog in STO.

As it stands right now, all the weapon dmg was standardized so that a white beam weapon had the same dmg as a blue or purple. The difference was in the stats where some increased accuracy, some had a chance dmg modifier, crit modifier, etc. The next patch there was a big thing on the forums about STO moving to more of a gear based model with % dmg increases based on rarity. I didn't pay attention to it frankly because I liked the way it is now and my free month was up.

I can see why they might go the route they are on, but I don't really like it - as it wasn't really a gear grind and the game fueled itself - but I suppose with the de-emphasis on missions and more on gear goals and "raiding" it will come back in line with traditional MMO modeling - sadly. It should also prove to be a hell of a flash point once it goes thru for the pvpers which will create the inevitable disparities between haves and have-nots. I doubt it will affect pve though.

[Tannhauser]

Yeah, I think I'll resub.  Ground combat sounds better and I was always moderately happy with space combat.

[01101010]

Yeah, I think I'll resub.  Ground combat sounds better and I was always moderately happy with space combat.

I'd wait till those changes go into effect. Ground combat still blew ass and was not a happy-fun time, save for the dialog bits along the questline. Grenade, plasma burning grenade, AoE Polaron orb to the head, and hey look, his shield is almost gone  .

[jakonovski]

When is the ground combat patch supposed to come out? I still haven't activated my game.

[01101010]

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=220124

July supposedly.

[Strazos]

I might activate this during the weekend (3 day weekend, wooo).

I like pew pew, but Eve is just too much BS.

[Surlyboi]

I like STOs space combat better than Eve's. It's not nearly as deep, sure but it's fun, fast and twitchy.

[Tannhauser]

How does the Peregrine fighter work?  Is it a 'pet' ship for your main ship?

[Stormwaltz]

There's two "Peregrines" you get by purchasing it. One of them is a cosmetic pet you can launch from your main starship (it's an inventory item). The other is a flyable shuttle-type vessel.

In STO, a shuttle essentially a really fast, maneuverable player ship with understrength weapons and shields/hull (in missions - on the strategic map they behave like a standard starship).

[Tannhauser]

How does that work?  Can you do normal space missions with them if they are underpowered?  How do you do Away Teams when the fighter only carries two crew? 

[01101010]

One of the main story line missions sends you to an Admiral on SB 39 (IIRC) and you get a free req for a shuttle. Smallest crew I thought was 5. Either way, free shuttle and you take that to the instance and fly that around inside a huge space station. They are formidable against other like-fighter shuttles, but die horribly to main ships. However, that req you get from the admiral you keep, so you have a shuttle craft in your ship count. Never tried to take it out for an actual patrol mission or anything. You do however equip it just as you would a full vessel... engines, shields, weapons, albeit a lighter load out. And yes, you can take your main gear and swap it into the shuttle. They are speedy and very maneuverable but are really paper airplanes.

[Strazos]

Is there ever a good reason to use one?

[Rishathra]

There are two specific missions that require them, otherwise, no.  The devs have stated that they plan on adding more shuttle-centric missions and game mechanics, though.

[Stormwaltz]

There are two specific missions that require them

And one of those is a grind to get... another shuttle.

The weekly mission inside the Romulan starbase was pretty keen, though.

[01101010]

There are two specific missions that require them

And one of those is a grind to get... another shuttle.

The weekly mission inside the Romulan starbase was pretty keen, though.

The whole line was actually pretty fun. The shuttle part, I didn't like as much though... it wasn't bad, just wasn't my play style.

[Amaron]

I'm still bitter that my star ships didn't have shuttles and there were no talking heads on the main screen.   I'm weird but an assortment of stuff like that mattered more to me than ground combat.   Excessive ground combat in a star trek MMO feels so blah anyways.

[jakonovski]

 Excessive ground combat in a star trek MMO feels so blah anyways.

I feel I know exactly what the devs went through with that. They started out thinking that away teams are a must for any ST MMO. So they decided the game would have two halves, flying in a ship and beaming onto planets and such. But then reality struck them: what else is there to do in an MMO except to slaughter mobs? They probably went through all the five stages of denial until they accepted that combat was all they could do.

[5150]

Is there ever a good reason to use one?

Other than 'The Vault' and 'Crafting The Delta Flyer' currently no but they devs have said they want to add more 'shuttle' content.

If you do the Delta Flyer daylies (~10 of which are required to complete the parent mission) you'll probably learn first hand how terrible they are against 'standard' ships one on one (although you can defeat the Romulan bird of prey at the end of 'The Vault' in one but you dont have to)

Currently shuttles have no interior either (so you need to swap back to a full star ship to access the mission reply terminal in your ready room) but the recently revamped diplomatic mission has a [partial?] class 8 shuttle interior so its obviously something they are working on. To be fair the only 'shuttles' that would have more than a single room interior would possibly be the captains yacht (vet reward) and the runabout.

[UnSub]

 Excessive ground combat in a star trek MMO feels so blah anyways.

I feel I know exactly what the devs went through with that. They started out thinking that away teams are a must for any ST MMO. So they decided the game would have two halves, flying in a ship and beaming onto planets and such. But then reality struck them: what else is there to do in an MMO except to slaughter mobs? They probably went through all the five stages of denial until they accepted that combat was all they could do.

There were some non-combat ground missions, but that was greeted by parts of the player base with, "WTF? I landed and then didn't have to shoot anything? What a waste of time!".

[5150]

 Excessive ground combat in a star trek MMO feels so blah anyways.

I feel I know exactly what the devs went through with that. They started out thinking that away teams are a must for any ST MMO. So they decided the game would have two halves, flying in a ship and beaming onto planets and such. But then reality struck them: what else is there to do in an MMO except to slaughter mobs? They probably went through all the five stages of denial until they accepted that combat was all they could do.

There were some non-combat ground missions, but that was greeted by parts of the player base with, "WTF? I landed and then didn't have to shoot anything? What a waste of time!".

99.9% of the diplomatic missions are [still] non-combat (par for the course) as are some of the ones you get doing the exploration missions in the fringe sectors (the ones with dynamic anomolies instead of static systems)

[Amaron]

There were some non-combat ground missions, but that was greeted by parts of the player base with, "WTF? I landed and then didn't have to shoot anything? What a waste of time!".

That's really a fault of their engine and shitty budget though.    I guess the silver lining is that it isn't an NGE problem at least.    The current ground system is almost totally fucking devoid of any redeeming qualities.   If their new eastern overlords give them a bunch of fat sacks of cash they could try to fix it without pissing off their current user base.

[01101010]

Those ground missions where you basically scan dumb item #1 and then go scan 4 more dumb items were easy xp, but did feel like a waste of time. There was no story or reason given other than a slight "we have to scan these new dumb items for the Federation." Not to mention they were all pretty much in the same pattern on every map. Dunno how you go about fixing that part without putting in some trivial fauna to kill or expand out the scanning with some anomaly on the last one or third one that leads you to explore a cave and expand out the mission from there. They were quick and easy though... but highly inconsequential.

[Tannhauser]

Yeah, at least have two factions that you talk to.  Then you decide on a course of action and you gain or lose rewards based on that.

You know, do like Bioware and pretend there's a choice. 

[Spiff]

But then reality struck them: what else is there to do in an MMO except to slaughter mobs?

They could've gone a different route (especially with this IP); used more puzzles for instance or better writing, but that requires more of an effort.
They didn't put in the effort.
Case closed.

When I recently tried it out again I was pleasantly surprised by some of the new/revamped episodes (and even more so by some of the player-generated stuff), I could see glimpses of more creative solutions than: 'scan 5 random red dots no one gives a shit about' or 'shoot some trash and then shoot some more'.

Far too little far too late for me though.
Props to the current live team and all, but I sometimes still felt I was playing something that shouldn't even be in beta yet, no amount of patching is going to save that.

[01101010]

But then reality struck them: what else is there to do in an MMO except to slaughter mobs?

They could've gone a different route (especially with this IP); used more puzzles for instance or better writing, but that requires more of an effort.
They didn't put in the effort.
Case closed.

When I recently tried it out again I was pleasantly surprised by some of the new/revamped episodes (and even more so by some of the player-generated stuff), I could see glimpses of more creative solutions than: 'scan 5 random red dots no one gives a shit about' or 'shoot some trash and then shoot some more'.

Far too little far too late for me though.
Props to the current live team and all, but I sometimes still felt I was playing something that shouldn't even be in beta yet, no amount of patching is going to save that.

Just like to point out that some of those player-made missions were simply incredible. Two of them were actually puzzles and I believe one of the main Romulan/Reman missions had a puzzle worked into it. IIRC you beamed into a satellite and had to figure out a simple puzzle to unlock three control panels to override a tractor beam. Those were pretty fun IMHO.

[Amaron]

You know, do like Bioware and pretend there's a choice. 

People always give Bioware such crap for this.   The purpose of all that dialog stuff is to let you enjoy the main character.   It's not there to let you choose different paths.   As such it would be basically worthless to copy without a bunch of storyline to go with it.

[5150]

But then reality struck them: what else is there to do in an MMO except to slaughter mobs?

They could've gone a different route (especially with this IP); used more puzzles for instance or better writing, but that requires more of an effort.
They didn't put in the effort.
Case closed.

When I recently tried it out again I was pleasantly surprised by some of the new/revamped episodes (and even more so by some of the player-generated stuff), I could see glimpses of more creative solutions than: 'scan 5 random red dots no one gives a shit about' or 'shoot some trash and then shoot some more'.

Far too little far too late for me though.
Props to the current live team and all, but I sometimes still felt I was playing something that shouldn't even be in beta yet, no amount of patching is going to save that.

Just like to point out that some of those player-made missions were simply incredible. Two of them were actually puzzles and I believe one of the main Romulan/Reman missions had a puzzle worked into it. IIRC you beamed into a satellite and had to figure out a simple puzzle to unlock three control panels to override a tractor beam. Those were pretty fun IMHO.

The Breen series also has a couple of puzzles in missions

[Strazos]

So, I am mildly amused by this so far, even if the starter ship sucks. A lot.

Also, I mistakenly hired another Tactical Officer, when I should have had him teach someone something - my first TacOff seems just better, and the other guy's first skill is (what looks to me to be) a useless AE Torpedo attack.

Also...how do I make Engineering Officers not useless? Seems my first one kind of sucks, but I didn't see a better alternative.