As I mentioned the other day, Longasc gave me a 10-day key for Star Trek Online. Unfortunately, something is glitched with Cryptic’s system and I was unable to gain any content beyond what was already available in the Unlimited Demo (which I highly recommend for anyone curious about the game). I had been looking at a few options of purchasing the game, but wasn’t entirely satisfied with any. Direct2Drive and Steam are both still full-price at $50 for the standard digital edition, while the Atari Store has it for $30 but the fine print makes it seem that I only have download rights for 30 days unless I spend another $4 for download access for two years. I foresee all of Cryptic’s games converted to a hybrid “freemium” model inside two years anyway, but that’s not really the point. So, while I was out yesterday doing some mandatory shopping I picked up the DVD version for $30. I’m a little annoyed at having the physical box which will just end up stacked in the closet collecting dust, but whatever.
I added the Retail Key to my Cryptic Account and swoosh! off we go into Federation Space! I logged in my demo character, Science Officer Sarvranthus who was last seen aboard the USS Raptor floating aimlessly in the Sirius Sector with nothing to do. Suddenly the full gamut of STO content is available so I hailed Starfleet and made some new NPC contacts who had several missions for Sarvranthus.
One of the missions sent me into another star system where I was attacked by several enemy ships. (Sorry, can’t remember the mission name or specific details.) What I did appreciate about that mission was that the star system itself was essentially Star Trek’s take on WAR’s Public Quest system, only better. One of my gripes about WAR was: how is it a “public” quest if I still have to get invited or join a group doing it? Sure, there’s a UI frame specifically for handling that, but I still felt all that defeated the purpose of having the “public” label. In STO, it’s simply “open grouping” with auto-joining, so anyone who warps into that sector automatically joins the group and the difficulty scales based on the number of players. What I have not learned yet is: do these missions scale immediately or not? My gut reaction is “not” because the first time I went into the system there were several other players but by the time I got to the action (I’d forgotten how to engage Full Impulse speed and mistakenly thought simply pushing my throttle forward was maximum impulse speed) the other players had taken care of business with me only getting a shot or two per enemy which was not enough to count towards my own mission completion. More enemies warped in to fight just as the other players warped out because their mission was finished and I was left drastically outnumbered in the USS Noobmobile. I stumbled across the Warp to Sector Space button just before the Raptor exploded — talk about an “Oh Shit!” button! Whew!
Longasc came online then and joined up with me to finish the mission. STO scales not only based on number of players but also by level so it seemed to split the difference between Sarvranthus being level 3 and Longasc being… way up there. It wasn’t like your run-of-the-mill DIKU game where I would never have been able to even hit the enemies; I could hit them just fine and was holding my own while Longasc pretty much flew around me giving some buffs and the occasional heal (I know, that sounds silly for space combat but in practice it works well) though if he did decide to open up with a barrage of phaser blasts, he pretty much one-shotted everything in sight.
After a few more space missions, I was assigned an away mission on a planet surface. I took one or two of my NPC crew and Commander Riker Longasc brought along his brand-new Holographic Bridge Officer, appropriately named HOBO. Once again, while the mission did scale to compensate for our vast difference in levels, I was still able to contribute as if everything was on-level while Riker Longasc with his (level cap?) gear and uber-HOBO pretty much laid waste to everything in sight.
All in all, so far I am having a pretty good time with STO. Music and sound effects are straight from the films and television shows and the graphics are decent enough. The few issues are relatively minor, namely the engine seems like it isn’t always quite sure about the camera angle so it jumps a bit. Hopefully something Cryptic can iron out soon (I notice it in the Champions Online demo as well). I do find myself wishing that it controlled… better. By better, I mean more like a… I suppose a third-person shooter, to a degree. Mass Effect 2 would probably be a great example of how I wish STO handled. I don’t know what it is but when I see my character with a gun, I want to shoot the gun not tab-lock onto a target then press 1,2,3 on a hotbar to watch the gun being fired then wait out a cooldown. Despite the game more or less being Yet Another DIKU MMO, the UI is completely non-standard, thereby eliminating any complaints of another MMO “cloning” the Asheron’s Call 2 World of Warcraft UI and layout. This is a good thing; I find STO’s UI to be perfectly acceptable and fitting for the setting after I learned where things were and what they did. I am still very much a noob and have a ton more to learn but I think this might be a good diversion from all the standard fantasy MMO’s.
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You gotta do some “Deep Space Encounters” and “Fleet Actions” like Starbase 24.
I am not too happy about the “squad/sidekick” system. It is supposed to scale down Bridge Officer powers and weapon level. Even then my ship would simply have more powers and better gear and have a huge advantage with such a huge level difference.
I wonder if the feature is working or working as intended!
I get Admiral level mobs when I enter lower rank nebulas like the early Delta Volanis Cluster, and they are really Admiral level NPC ships.
Scaling you up to Admiral rank works better, you will get extra hull and shields, but you are still only in an early tier ship with little weapon slots.
Season 2 is next and the QA dudes that are often in #TTS are probably not too focused on this, but I think the “squad system” needs to work better. Otherwise it is only somewhat useable for a +/- 10 levels range.
I’m not a huge FPS or TPS player, but I did really enjoy ME2′s combat and cover system. It would be very interesting to see Cryptic try and incorporate some of those mechanics into the ground combat system.