Star Trek Online Open Beta Starts Today 309
Today Cryptic Studios will begin the open beta of Star Trek Online, opening their test servers to invitees and anyone who has pre-ordered the game. The beta will run through the 26th, and the game will officially launch on February 2nd; head-start players will be allowed in on January 29th. The game is set in the old universe (not the rebooted one from last year's movie), and takes place roughly 30 years after the events in Star Trek: Nemesis. There are two playable factions to start — the Federation and the Klingon Empire — and more may become available later on. There will be conflict between the two factions, but supposedly all PvP will be "optional and consensual." Players will be able to choose from a variety of ships, and they'll see cameos from familiar characters. Eurogamer has a hands-on preview of the game, and fans of the Trek universe will be pleased to hear that "Cryptic is clearly thinking about Star Trek first and MMO convention second." A number of gameplay trailers are available for viewing, and the official forums have a nice collection of facts.
A Quote from the "General Gameplay" FAQ (Score:5, Interesting)
"Where possible, the game will provide non-violent ways to resolve conflicts."
So in other words, this is Picard-style Star Trek. You Kirk-style players can stay logged into Eve.
Re:Level based or skill based? (Score:5, Interesting)
If WoW is getting boring, this will not hold you for more than a month unless you really love Star Trek and must buy this game in collectors edition (twice, so you have one to play and he other to display.)
I can't force myself to log into the game anymore. For one, it gets to be extremely tedious being confined to a small square box until you warp which zones you (with load screen) to a "warp zone" where you fly around and choose what zone you want to "drop out of warp" into. Add that to the extremely lackluster combat of flying circles around the enemy and occasionally turning around to distribute damage to the other shields and you have a really, really lackluster game.
Basically, it's the Champions Online game with ships instead of super heroes. Same engine, same zone structure (with instancing), and the same quest log/quest types. The only thing I can think of right now that they added is a "ship" inventory so you can upgrade shields, phasers, and such with items you will find during battles or apparently "research" by taking rare ores found in sectors to an NPC to process.
Also, Klingons are pretty much 99% PvP based so if you wanted to run a freighter or some other non-combat scenario for The Empire, you'll find yourself without. Land/ship based combat is your typical target and select 1, 2, or 3 to select your weapon/attack. But wow, you can decide if you are in attack mode or speed mode. Woo!
Keep an open mind (Score:4, Interesting)
- It has been in development for almost 5 years, the team is completely different than Champions
- Character animation looks pretty good to me, but what a minor thing to complain about. It'll get better over time too. I could personally care less if it uses ASCII graphics, as long as the gameplay is solid
- Klingon faction is currently mostly PVP -- they want to add more content later. Big deal! In fact, some players will like this.
- There's a lot more going on than just tank / healer / etc. You can equip modules in any way you want to give your ship a versatile configuration. Seam with team members for away missions. It may not be the most revolutionary game around but, it does do something different. I for one look forward to trying out the strategic space combat.
- It's only microtransaction in the same way that WoW is. You can buy items that don't really affect the gameplay.
- Initial reviews and impressions are much more positive than with Cryptic's previous offerings.
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Who knows, maybe it will suck, maybe it won't. We don't know yet.
Re:No thanks. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah this game is going to be crap. It won't last more than 2 years, and really I don't think they expect it to. There is no high end content and the plans for it are unclear. The pvp is a joke, the pve is dull and repetitive. Space combat may seem fun at first but it gets old fast.
In fact the ancient Earth and Beyond had space combat that felt more polished and actually looked better.
The graphics in this game are horrible. I do mean horrible. Now don't get me wrong, a great game can have bad graphics. But seriously, this is the ugliest mainstream MMO out there. The ship explosions are ugly. Freespace 2 looked way better - and that was more than 10 years ago.
I don't understand how anyone can be excited about this game. My friends who are all WoW and EVE veterans have zero interest in STO after playing it.
Re:Level based or skill based? (Score:4, Interesting)
To be honest, I found the combat at least a bit more engaging than WoW ever was, also with the last closed beta patch they significantly increased the difficulty level which made it more fun for me.
I think the game has a chance, especially if they improve it as they have been and add Bridges for warp travel instead of the silly warp sector.
Re:No thanks. (Score:3, Interesting)
Been in the closed beta for a bit. You need a proper interface now a days.
Might play it more now, but the PvP has been a long time coming and I am not sure how fun it will be. I haven't been able to even get high enough to play Klingon with only 3 hour play sessions, twice a week.
Then its the way its set up. Ok I understand its an MMO, but it doesn't seem like the group abilities or classes are well balanced. Going in its hard to understand how one class helps another and all the ground fights seem to be "everyone shoot as fast as you can" kind of situations. Its not even a good "trinity" You have to make you ship do all three if you want to do any of the missions. Case in point for the ground missions where your given a bunch of red shirts if you don't have enough named crew. I have to start out as a tank type and get a science officer as I just can't get the AI to tank properly. Without a threat/dps plug in, I am not even sure if my weapons are doing as well as they should.
That's the crux of the matter now a days. In WoW I can get the Recount plug-in and Omen to figure out if one build works better than another. They built their interface, from day one, to be as configurable as possible. But in STO? They spent months telling use "The interface is the last to get developed" Really? Most of WoW's innovations came FROM the community of plug-in's. I cannot imaging playing wow without a raid grid let alone without recount. With the current interface STO has, I can't see managing more than 10 players reliably. As it is now, most "group" missions are free for all's anyway.
Its just, I kind of gave up most of the way in the beta. It was hard just playing maybe 6 hours a week. Then you go to the forms and see all the people wining about how its either not good enough or that its a wow/CO clone without giving any kind of true comparison. Sure your the captain of a star ship, but it also feels constrained somehow.
The new 3.3 patch from WoW comes out, it became fun to PLAY it. After 4 hours I finally have an 80 and doing high level stuff now. I never have to hunt for a group for heroics, no more being dropped because I can only do 2k DPS just because I am starting. I bet they will be setting up raids with this system at some point as well. Heck, even though I play Blackrock ALL THE FREAKING TIME on my 51 pally, at least I can GO there. I always skip it because I could never find groups for it.
STO have been arguing for the last 6 months about how "the interface is the last to be implemented" That kind of thinking is the reason most people get turned off in the first week of a MMO:P
Re:I'm on it (Score:3, Interesting)
EQ (and I assume star trek) was a good solid source of hookups.
Join a guild which is serious but "fun" (not a guild full of swearing assholes).
Pick a good looking avatar.
Flirt.
Go to your guild parties and any conventions for the game.
Re:Already a disappointment (Score:3, Interesting)
The real surprise is why more companies develop Windows only MMOs. For a single player game, or even an online FPS I can understand a company wanting to save money by targeting only the largest market, but the economics for MMOs are different. For an MMO you want a group of people to all go out and buy a copy each - that's how MMOs get successful. Right now there are established groups in (for example) WOW who are looking at different MMOs to play. Even if only a small fraction of their users are on Macs, STOnline is not going to be an option for them since they would have to leave people behind.
I can't understand it myself. MMOs seldom push any graphical boundaries and have modest system requirements - you would think that making a cross-platform client would be easy enough. WOW is still fantastically successful, and part of that is due to their forethought in development.
Re:Awesome. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're not going to support PvP well in a Star Trek game, make it single-player. Otherwise it's little more than a jag-off love fest with no real excitement. Yes, PvE is easier. Just like making people grind fishing in a lake every day is easy. Just like making people fly dragons around in circles for hours is easy. Just like making someone run dozens of FedEx quests is easy. Just like making someone fight the same boring thing over and over and over is easy. There are lots of easy things to do in a game and most of them stink.
And what I'm attacking is the apparent disclosure that Klingons will be asking permission to get into a fight. What's their new motto? Today is a good day to request permission to argue in strong terms?
WoW is fine. EQ is fine. They're not my cup of tea, but plenty of people enjoy them. What pisses me off is that they're doing it with Star Trek. A well done Star Trek MMO would pull me away from Eve in a heartbeat. Years of training and I'd cancel all three accounts tomorrow if there were a really great Star Trek MMO. Instead, what's announced is beta testing for Klingons asking permission to fight. It's a pussy game and until it grows a pair, it will continue to be a pussy game.
Re:Already a disappointment (Score:3, Interesting)
It makes sense for every type of application, except MMOs. For every one person who can't play your game, you may lose 5 other sales that you would have made from friends.
To take another example: imagine what Facebook (or slashdot for that matter) would be like if it only worked on IE. Sure it would get a lot of sign ups, but a large minority would use something else and pull their friends with them.
I am shocked that in 2010 WOW is still the only major MMO that seems to understand this.
Re:Awesome. (Score:3, Interesting)
You get a lot less of that in Eve Online mainly because the skillpoint system allows for enormous variability. What's more, someone who's been playing a week could easily kill someone who's been playing for years in the right circumstances. Stick you in a destroyer, them in a frigate, you can probably kill them off pretty easily.
Why would someone who's been playing for years be flying in a frigate? Maybe they're just moving through to somewhere and don't want to risk a pricey ship. Maybe they're low on isk and are just doing tackling for others. Maybe they're testing something. Maybe they don't have better ships in the area and the local market has bad prices on most things. Either way, it's not just theoretically possible for a new player to kill an old player in Eve; it's downright practical.
Re:Already a disappointment (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes but you are deliberately ignoring the point - that one Linux-only or Mac-only user is an acceptable loss. The odds are good that those five people they could have reached out to have Windows and are already playing it. And if they're not, then they have more Windows friends playing it. Linux and Mac combined are less than 10% of the population and in many instances, their users don't play games game (Photoshop jockeys) or also own a Windows machine, or have a Windows partition to boot into. Hell thanks to stuff like Wine and Parallels, the geeks will do your work for you in making it run on those alternative platforms. To say nothing of the fact that these platforms typically don't have sales for squat.
Large minorities don't pull people with them. You think Facebook didn't have competition? You think Twitter didn't have competition? WoW had tons of competition.
WoW won because it was really popular and good. Not because it had non-Windows clients.