Star Trek Online

[Insomniac]

So this fun MMO went free to play back on Jan 17. Anyone here started playing it then or before then?

[avwolf]

I haven't been back since they went free-to-play, but I played it shortly after the original launch. As such, I haven't gotten to play with the new ground combat (trust me, the old ground combat sucked so much, it's why I quit playing) or the new skill system, but I do have a Caitian Tactical officer sitting around on their servers waiting for me to someday start playing again.

[Insomniac]

Wow, the ground combat used to suck? What was it like? For me it's like an average third person shooter with rpg-style skills. I like having an away team, and I definitely like that you can give them weapons you prefer they use. I tend to load us all out with the phaser split beam rifle. I prefer the beam weapons because they cause me less video stuttering. When I try to use the bolt weapons my video slows down, even on the lowest video settings, and I think the blast weapons and pulsewave weapons are just too slow for the extra power to be worth it. As for space combat, I go with the beam arrays so I can use all my beams at once. I stick with torpedoes rather than mines because they reload faster and can be used from longer range.

[avwolf]

The ground combat used to be a lot more like WoW, both in control style and visual representation. It was frustrating and massively more difficult than space combat, but not in "whew, this is challenging, I sure feel satisfied when I succeed" ways. They tightened it up and gave it more of a Champions feel, from what I've heard, which is definitely more appropriate for what they wanted to go for. I've heard really good things about it since the huge set of changes around Christmas or New Years'. Previously, it was just a grind, either slogging through tons enemies that weren't really that challenging if you were slightly carefully or playing incredibly cautiously just to survive against enemies that would easily kill you if you aggro'd more than one group. I hated ground combat. I stopped playing the game after spending three hours being unable to beat a mission (and this was just a regular, solo-able mission, mind you), and realized that if I just wanted someone who made me angry enough to scream obscenities at my computer screen, I could find a political forum on the Internet and get that for free, instead of paying Cryptic for privilege.

Like I said, I've heard that things are much, much better now. No news yet on if they fixed the whole "we apparently never considered that there might be parties of more than one person when NPCs are engaged in conversation, even though our game will automatically party people up when they go to the same mission zones" bug. Have you seen it? Essentially, whenever anybody in the party talks to an NPC, the conversation window pops up on everybody's screen. Then, if you read through it and close it faster than someone else, when they change to a different dialogue option going through the conversation, it will reopen the conversation window on your screen. I've been really hoping they fixed that bug in the time I've not been playing, but since only one of my friends still plays the game very often, I haven't heard if they actually dealt with it.

STO was the most painfully unfinished game I've ever played when it was released (the Klingon side was even more obviously lacking in playable content at that point), and did nothing improve Cryptic's reputation in my eyes. (I played City of Heroes for a while, and once NCSoft bought the game wholesale from Cryptic, the response times of the development team and the speed at which they released patches and new content increased so dramatically that one has to wonder if Cryptic had been purposely holding CoH back so that people would change to Champions, which Cryptic was working on at the time.) Since then, though, they've managed to at least somewhat redeem themselves, because they clearly want STO to do well.

[Insomniac]

I've only been part of a team without realizing it for the first few minutes. I went into the Starbase 24 fleet action, and at some point during the massive battle four people teamed up with me. We didn't say anything to each other, but I'm pretty sure we were mostly blasting the same enemies.

You've played as Klingon? Dang dude, you must've played a while. Or was the requirement that one reach level 25 as star fleet before they can play Klingon a recent thing? I'm still at Lt. level 7, for the third time because I needed to make an informed decision about which ship to get at Lt. Commander.

[Envy661]

I played it for quite a while. I managed to get a Galaxy Class Cruiser, but that's as far as I ever got.

Honestly, now that TOR is out, and beings EVE Online is there too, there really isn't a reason to play anymore. TOR has better player combat, and EVE has better ship combat. To top everything off, STO was always a Microtransaction-heavy game, and MT games are killers in their own right for me. It should be obvious MT games are never going to succeed when ALL of them wind up going F2P.
If a game requires you pay extra money for the best stuff, it's always gonna be a fail in my book. Giving players unfair advantages isn't really cool....

Okay, essentially, I didn't hate STO, but with two significantly better non-MT based MMOs out there, I don't really see why people would wanna play it unless they're a die-hard Trekky or are looking for a sci-fi game to play for free and don't care how much the features are lacking for them...

[Insomniac]

If a game requires you pay extra money for the best stuff, it's always gonna be a fail in my book. Giving players unfair advantages isn't really cool....

Actually, it doesn't. The only things that cost real money or "C-Points" are some of the races and a few ships that aren't any more powerful than the ones you can get through rank advancements or Dilithium, and you can get Dilithium through giving your officers assignments and certain missions, respectively all and many of which are repeatable. You don't need to spend one dime to get the best things. You just have to put in enough time and all the powerful things will come to you. Just a few cosmetic differences and some of the races cost money. Oh, and the "Cardassian Lock Boxes" that you pick up all over the place can only be opened with special keys that cost real money, and have a chance to reward you with a special ship called the Cardassian Galor class ship. Don't know if it's better or worse than the best ships that you get through advancement.

[Edit]After looking it up, the only thing it has over other ships is the Spiral Wave Disruptor. The Mk. X torpedoes are available as early as Rear Admiral, Lower Half, with the current level cap being Vice Admiral. And the spiral wave disruptor doesn't have a Mk. suffix because it scales its power to player lever to make up for anyone with money having a random chance to get it, so it's only the most powerful weapon if you're high level. If you get it at a low level, there's still gonna be several fleets of people higher level than you with more powerful weapons. Your only advantage would be the Mk. X photon torpedoes, though I don't think you can even equip them before you're the right level. I know you can't buy them before the right level/rank, so I doubt one can equip them early.

[Envy661]

You don't need to spend one dime to get the best things. You just have to put in enough time and all the powerful things will come to you.

This is what I'm getting at though. You can spend money to buy more bridge office slots, EXP boosts, and some unique ships already outfitted. Meanwhile everyone else has to work their [censored] off to get to that point. In fact, some of those features are ONLY available to people who pay the money.

I know it's been a while, but I know there are a lot more items on there giving players with money a bigger advantage than you or even I am letting on. (Mainly because I forgot :p).

Essentially, it kills fun for me though when you pull out of port next to someone the same level as you, work your [censored] off for days, finally hit captain, and see the other guy who bought the EXP buff there as well but Rear Admiral Upper Half or something like that.

Also, you have to pay actual money to respec your skills. And beings there are hundreds of abilities on that tree, you have a higher chance to invest in something you may realize later on that you didn't want.

In the end, I'll be sticking with TOR.

[Insomniac]

You don't need to spend one dime to get the best things. You just have to put in enough time and all the powerful things will come to you.

This is what I'm getting at though. You can spend money to buy more bridge office slots, EXP boosts, and some unique ships already outfitted. Meanwhile everyone else has to work their [censored] off to get to that point. In fact, some of those features are ONLY available to people who pay the money.

I know it's been a while, but I know there are a lot more items on there giving players with money a bigger advantage than you or even I am letting on. (Mainly because I forgot :p).

Essentially, it kills fun for me though when you pull out of port next to someone the same level as you, work your [censored] off for days, finally hit captain, and see the other guy who bought the EXP buff there as well but Rear Admiral Upper Half or something like that.

Also, you have to pay actual money to respec your skills. And beings there are hundreds of abilities on that tree, you have a higher chance to invest in something you may realize later on that you didn't want.

In the end, I'll be sticking with TOR.

Honestly? The other players only matter if you're into PvP, which I ain't, so I really couldn't care less about exp boosts and the like. As far as the skills go, I read ahead. So far, I've only invested in the skills that have immediate impact on my ground and space stats. Weapon and shield based skills, mostly, along with bridge officer skills. I pick the skills that let me do more damage faster and take less damage better, and the skills that fit the type of officer I picked (in this case Engineering), forgoing the more science based skills like the one that makes your energy siphon/drain skills work better because that's a skill I'm not likely to use in the first place. Example, under tactical skills for Lt., I focused entirely on Weapons Training rather than Attack Patterns, under Engineering I focused on Hull Repair and I might pay points into Driver Coil to reduce the drain on my systems during Full Impulse, but am not paying any points into starship batteries because I don't use them. I might pay points into Flow Capacitors, but only if I decide I want to use Tachyon Beam. Honestly, I'm more of a 'blast until boom' type, and I bolster my shield and armor to make up for my lack of...finesse. On the ground, I'm keeping the points balanced between Weapons and Demolitions, because I like the Engineering kits that let me spawn explosives. Even more effective than the Tactical Photon Grenade kit, if you plan right. Plan ahead, and you have a higher chance of not regretting your skill point allocations.

[avwolf]

You've played as Klingon? Dang dude, you must've played a while. Or was the requirement that one reach level 25 as star fleet before they can play Klingon a recent thing? I'm still at Lt. level 7, for the third time because I needed to make an informed decision about which ship to get at Lt. Commander.

When I played, the level requirement was only like 5 or 7 or something. I really didn't play that much. I'm not a big MMO player. But at that point, Klingons were pretty much just a couple PvP zones and very little else. No missions beyond PvP and a couple training missions, nothing.

In my experience, to be top of the pile, you have to know what you're doing and pay in. In general, somebody who claws and scrabbles their way to success will get more respect, and generally beat, somebody who paid in to get their gear. And considering that just about everybody, including WoW, features some amount of free-to-play (EVE being a notable exception) I don't know if that's such a damning thing. I can understand disagreeing with microtransactional systems, but it suits my personal play style (which features me not playing the game for weeks or months on end) much better than paying monthly costs, so I appreciate it.

[Envy661]

You've played as Klingon? Dang dude, you must've played a while. Or was the requirement that one reach level 25 as star fleet before they can play Klingon a recent thing? I'm still at Lt. level 7, for the third time because I needed to make an informed decision about which ship to get at Lt. Commander.

When I played, the level requirement was only like 5 or 7 or something. I really didn't play that much. I'm not a big MMO player. But at that point, Klingons were pretty much just a couple PvP zones and very little else. No missions beyond PvP and a couple training missions, nothing.

In my experience, to be top of the pile, you have to know what you're doing and pay in. In general, somebody who claws and scrabbles their way to success will get more respect, and generally beat, somebody who paid in to get their gear. And considering that just about everybody, including WoW, features some amount of free-to-play (EVE being a notable exception) I don't know if that's such a damning thing. I can understand disagreeing with microtransactional systems, but it suits my personal play style (which features me not playing the game for weeks or months on end) much better than paying monthly costs, so I appreciate it.

Well you have to understand the difference between a Free to play Feature and a Free To Play game. Free to play features are limited in a sense that, like in WoW, you can't go beyond a certain point unless you create another account and another character, and I believe that cap was level 20, so there really isn't much breathing room. Meanwhile Free to Play games are MT-heavy, have smaller communities, and are basically drastically limiting on features unless you sign up for something in some form or another. The only two games that fit this style that AREN'T MT-Heavy games would be Pirates Online and Runescape, and you know just how much, at the very least, Runescape lacks in free content.

And as for Klingons being 25 instead of 5 now - That's a cost of the F2P system. It was 5 up until the point it went F2P actually.

[Insomniac]

Looks like our friends at Extra Credits have a good handle on how MT games ought to be run, especially if they're F2P. Now if only developers could figure this out.

On another note, I noticed something a little off putting. As I said before, I'm an Engineer this time around. After I hit Lt. Commander and leveled my bridge officers up from ensign to Lt., I noticed that while they can all use their Lt. skills on the ground, only my engineer can use his Lt. skill in space, while my Tactical officer and my Science officer are limited to their ensign skills. Is this normal? Do only the bridge officers with the same career as you get to use their skills beyond ensign? If so, I am severe disappoint.

[Envy661]

Looks like our friends at Extra Credits have a good handle on how MT games ought to be run, especially if they're F2P. Now if only developers could figure this out.

On another note, I noticed something a little off putting. As I said before, I'm an Engineer this time around. After I hit Lt. Commander and leveled my bridge officers up from ensign to Lt., I noticed that while they can all use their Lt. skills on the ground, only my engineer can use his Lt. skill in space, while my Tactical officer and my Science officer are limited to their ensign skills. Is this normal? Do only the bridge officers with the same career as you get to use their skills beyond ensign? If so, I am severe disappoint.

It's based on the ship you're using. If you're using a Cruiser, it's Engineer-oriented. Science Vessel is Science Officer, and Escort is Tactical Officer.

My Galaxy-Class had (If I remember Correctly) 1 Engineer Slot to Commander Rank, 1 Engineer, Tactical Officer, and Science Officer at the rank below that. So at the level for a Galaxy-Class, everyone had at least 2 abilities, but I could equip 2 engineers and one had the use of three abilities.

My Advice - Plan abilities according to this.

[Insomniac]

I've also paid some points into Flow Capacitors because I kinda like the sound of Tacyon Beam. Does one have to be a science captain to use that ability?

[Envy661]

I've also paid some points into Flow Capacitors because I kinda like the sound of Tacyon Beam. Does one have to be a science captain to use that ability?

No. At least when I played before it became Free to Play, You could use any ability, unless is specifically said otherwise. What class you are and what ship you have don't matter unless the abilities are for your officers like I stated before regarding ships.