Thanks for the kind (and not so kind, lol) words everyone. It's been a blast here.

I'll be back in a couple years when I have something to say :)

Originally posted by nubadak

Hmmm nice review...but i supose he FORGOT to cover PvP like he wanted to...lolz!

ops!

Maybe there will be part 3?

 

I believe the item states quite clearly what happened to the PvP section, as does a post in this thread.

Bottom line: Limited impressions in part 3. However, it was too big of a subject for one article, so a full article on PvP is to follow separately from these previews.

Of course, if you'd prefer to think it's a conspiracy of some kind, please feel free.

Originally posted by Cerion

Dana wrote: Should players also be able to group inside a single ship? Some argue vehemently yes, and that's their opinion, but in my personal experience I never missed it.

Yeah, I remember back in 2003 when I never missed having a cell phone either.  Oh, and back in the 1990s, I never missed having a laptop computer. And when I was 5 years old, I never missed having a car.

Point being, how can you even make such a statement? It has no logical basis since you have nothing to compare your experience to.

 

On top of that, yet again, a MMORPG staff writer resorts to a strawman arguement to dismiss player crews by invoking the "minutia rationale".

That line is about me never feeling compelled to share my ship with anyone. I didn't think there was so much to do that there would be any added value in it.

Anyway, as hard as this is to believe, some people just don't agree with you. You're entitled to your opinion on player crews, it's a perfectly valid opinion, but not agreeing with you is just as valid of an opinion.

And last time this debate came up, I offered people the chance to write a response article that we'd publish on the website. A fully reasoned editorial on the argument for player crews.

Naturally, no one so much as bothered to email me on the subject. It's one thing to whine on a forum and call us names, but so far I've yet to see one person come up with a well reasoned editorial that explains how this would realistically work and why it would be fun to more than just a few hardcore Trek fans. I even offered to pay for the article. No takers, no surprise.

Originally posted by Raithnor

Control as autofirs is a holdover from the City of Heroes days.  Although with City of Heroes you usually either put Hasten or your Click Mez protection on auto-fire.

With STO it looks like putting phasers on autofire and manually controlling the crew abilities will be the start of a viable strategy.

I did have a question Dana.

Did you have access to multiple ships and did the different ships seem in scale to each other or other ships?  Did the ships within a given tier and specialty have any discernable differences?  The differences between the 3 tier 1 ships or the 3 tier 2 cruisers for example.

I recently saw some leaked footage on Youtube of Ship combat where an Akira-class rescued a Constitution class ship and the two ships seemed resonably in scale with each other.  At the very least the Akira seemed discernably larger than the Constitution.

I never got to the second tier of ships, nor did I run across any of them to the best of my knowledge. Those enemy ships that I saw that were "bigger" though seemed to be appropriately large in scale, without being over the top. In fact, my rant about scaling issues only applies to away missions. Space combat seemed... perfect. Not that I am a purist on these things, but I never noticed any scaling problems. In fact the very thought of scaling in space didn't even occur to me until you asked. So that's likely a good sign.

 The only reliably familiar thing I ran across was Deep Space 9... and it seemed quite nice from space. About how I'd imagined it/seen in the shows.

Originally posted by BlakeySGV

Man, how do you people sleep at night? You try and pass yourselves off as "gaming journalists", and then put out something like this that clearly shows you're in the pocket of some of these companies. Here you do it within the first paragraph.

I previewed the game that was, not the game that could be.

That's what a preview is. You play the game and report back on what you see. You don't whine and rant about elements that are not there.

But I imagine from your post you didn't read past paragraph one, which was... you know... an introduction.

There is an entire article on the site about their decision to scale back Klingons. Feel free to go read it.

Originally posted by Lanthir

Lookign froward to hearing about pvp and klingons

This is one thing I cannot help much with. Part three has some limited PvP impressions, but my article (which was supposed to be one part originally) was already too long and that would have required an article onto itself... So we made it one. Jon will be following up with a more complete PvP and Klingon preview shortly after part three. Dec 31 is my last day (nothing bad, just a new opportunity... a post on that should appear this week), or I'd have made this a four parter.

Originally posted by wootin

Originally posted by unicorngtm

My biggest complaint about this system is that this game really, really needs auto attack. Since 99% of your shots are from the 1 button, it's downright annoying to constantly spam it. Especially since it's not like one click is one shot. It tends to fire a phaser burst that takes a couple of seconds. ...

Agree whole heartedly on this one. I really hate clickfests, or let's click the exactly same key every 2-3 seconds ad nauseum. If I remember correctly, COX only had one "auto attack" ability at some point, which made me role my eyes. Do we want to play a game or carpal tunnel?

One totally unexpected feature that comes up often in away missions is the ability to pause the instance. Yep, you can pause in an MMO. This is a useful thing when you need to hit the head, and also helpful for the ability to analyze a situation and micro-manage your crew if that's your play style. It struck me as odd at first, even sacrilegious, but the truth is that I found myself using it in spite of myself. The pause button, by the way, is on a 45 second timer to prevent people from using it in group away missions to the point of annoyance.

Thank the MMO Gods for a pause button. Not exactly sure what the the "45 second timer" part means, but thank who ever will let me pause while I'm soloing, attending to the baby, etc. and not destroy my game experience.

 Edit - per Dana's post, there IS auto-attack, so nm :D

Hmm, I have to say that auto-attack on a per-weapon basis is a good idea. Being able to dedicate weapons to targets and have them fire as you maneuver is a good thing, provided you can also quickly cancel that command to save your cycle if your strategy doesn't work out. But for weapons with good arcs like phasers, it's pretty much a natural thing to expect to happen, and I'm surprised it's not like that.

Wonder if it can be put in as an "ability" on the tactical officer's part, perhaps one that works with the "Fire at Will" ability mentioned in the article?

 Edit: but I disagree about CoX's manual attack. To me, the system works perfectly as it actively engages you in the combat, and as you have a lot of varied abilities, you actually need to make choices for your character to do it's best.

My char is a blaster btw, and how simple is that to play? Yet I still need to actively decide which enemy to hit, whether to range or melee, whether to use my limited holds to keep an enemy still and avoid knockback effects which might aggro other groups, and whether to stay with the main attack or shift to protect the support people. It's a very dynamic gameplay style, so I don't  see how auto-attack would even work, really.

The reason I am happy auto-attack is in is that I found myself spending too much time trying to time my spamming of the number one and too little time paying attention to my NPC Bridge Officers and where I was standing. I'd just spam TAB when necessary and hit 1 to fire as frequently as possible. When I saw an opening, I'd hit 2, and occasionally use my kit abilities.

With auto attack, I can have my phaser firing on all cylanders and use that time to pay more attention to tactics, position and my own crew, as well as when to actually use the exploit abilities.

So... a mea culpa (which will appear with more prominence in par two):

Cryptic informs me, after a few pointed it out, there is in fact auto attack.

That fact that I never gleaned how is a problem unto itself, but it's there and my numb thumb is more angry at me than ever.

Turns out if you hold CTRL and click certain skills (say phasers) it auto fires. So that entire section where I complain about a lack of auto attack is BS. Apologies to Cryptic and you guys who read it.

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by Dana

There are two fore slots and one aft slot on the basic ship.

However, it's like equpping a sword. I cannot change in combat, but I can reoutfit the ship before I enter combat (which is pretty predictable given the 10k firing limit). So if sensors show one stronger ship, I run with two dual phaser banks up front as described in the article (no torpedos). If there are many enemies, I go the more traditional route.

How much of your ship can you reconfigure outside of a Starbase then?
 

 As much as you want, if you have the items. You can swap anything you want out whenever you're not in combat. You don't have to report to a starbase to change things.

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by Scrogdog

Originally posted by Drachasor

How many weapon slots did the ship have?  I was under the impression that going with two phasers means you would have no room for torpedoes.
 

 

Two forward slots and one aft for tier 1 ships.

When choosing your weapons there is a trade off; the more powerful, the less wide a firing arc (and vice versa). So, turning your broadside towards the enemy could concievably bring two phaser banks to bear (assuming 180 degree firing arcs) and still retain torpedos in forward slot two.

Read the article again, Dana clearly said he went to max range, and pelted the enemy with phasers while backing up.  So both of the front mounts had phasors.  Made the AI sound very poor as it didn't even try to change its facing when one shield got low.
 

 Well, to be fair to the AI, it did try to swirve and it did redirect power to the fore shields as well. The problem was it was trying to close the gap and wasn't properly set up when I attacked. The game tries to close the gap, because if that ship gets in close, it can probably wipe me out. I just had enough juice in those two dual phaser banks to rip through his front shields faster than he could fix them.

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by storm-dragon

Yeah I wouldn't  take the whole don't need Torps as gospel guy....it is the case now but we have already been told it's changing.

I think you misunderstood what I said.  I've gotten the impression that Torpedoes just aren't worth getting AT ALL.  It is just flat-out better to go with phasers.
 

 

I'm not a huge min/maxer, but I found phasers were better against single targets and in PvP (see part two). That said, it's way too soon to tell for sure (balance will no doubt be changed over time).

Against multiple targets with less shields though, the key is to get rid of enemies as fast as possible while moving around. Phasers are not nearly as good there. Projectiles are needed because once you make a hole, it's important to capitalize and get a torpedo in there fast.

How many weapon slots did the ship have?  I was under the impression that going with two phasers means you would have no room for torpedoes.
 

There are two fore slots and one aft slot on the basic ship.

However, it's like equpping a sword. I cannot change in combat, but I can reoutfit the ship before I enter combat (which is pretty predictable given the 10k firing limit). So if sensors show one stronger ship, I run with two dual phaser banks up front as described in the article (no torpedos). If there are many enemies, I go the more traditional route.

Originally posted by Finbar

Keep in mind that the preview author is a self addmitted "OCD completionist" who doesn't read the in game quest content and only played the game for 20 hours (which is perhaps 3 or 4 days for the average player). Could you enjoy the game you are playing now if you played for only a few days and read none of the story content? Sounds to me like we just got a preview of what should/could be STO's free trial week, when played by a typical power leveler.  

I may not have been clear on the story comment. I typically ignore story in MMOs. I knew I was previewing this though, so I quite intentionally read much of it. Thus, the comments about it.

Also, I'm by no means a power leveler. A completionist spends as much time as is necessary to do every single mission regardless of the reward or necessity. A power leveler takes the most efficient path to max XP. I am the former.

Originally posted by Saerain

I don't see what the problem with a 45-second pause feature is, and I'd be surprised if it's not a configurable option just like the looting rules. Frankly, I couldn't be more thankful for it. Learning of it got a big smile out of me. I've never understood why it's such a taboo feature in multiplayer games of any kind.

'But it could be abused!' Yeah, and? If you can't trust who you're playing with, disable it or find better people.

Anyway, I wanted to comment on this:

 

---

The first thing you'll notice about Star Trek Online is the sound. Cryptic would have had to go out of their way to screw this up, and naturally they didn't. From the first loading screen, the music is dead on what you'd expect. Once in the game, the voice of the computer, the sound of phasers and doors is all exactly what you'd want it to be. The computer on your ship, which provides helpful tips like "Enemy's shields are down" either is the voice of the "computer," or someone who did a bang on impression.

---

 

I strongly doubt it was Majel. She died of leukemia in December of 2008, so the recording would have had to occur very early, indeed.

Me too, but it did sound like her a lot. And she never says anything she likely didn't say 1000 times in the various movies and films. So, I figured, it was possible that they just reused old voice samples, but that said, I honestly have no idea. The point is that it sounds authentic whatever it is.

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by storm-dragon

Yeah I wouldn't  take the whole don't need Torps as gospel guy....it is the case now but we have already been told it's changing.

I think you misunderstood what I said.  I've gotten the impression that Torpedoes just aren't worth getting AT ALL.  It is just flat-out better to go with phasers.
 

I'm not a huge min/maxer, but I found phasers were better against single targets and in PvP (see part two). That said, it's way too soon to tell for sure (balance will no doubt be changed over time).

Against multiple targets with less shields though, the key is to get rid of enemies as fast as possible while moving around. Phasers are not nearly as good there. Projectiles are needed because once you make a hole, it's important to capitalize and get a torpedo in there fast.

Originally posted by ArcAngel3

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by Gyrus

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

Originally posted by gekkothegrey

I was just wondering if any of you have played the Star Trek mmorpg yet, and how do you think its comming along as they are about a month from launch now?

Nice try.

Well actually - in another thread someone said this:

"...You take Star Trek Online for example you are talking about, as I just played it this afternoon for the first time and under NDA can't say nothing, but just to think that its coming out in 2 months time and what is available to test in closed beta is just mind baffling.. No PvP testing yet, no crafting implemented yet, and lots of stuff turned off.. Its not evena beta that you can play at your leisure, its like set times.. What are we testing? Not the game, the friggan game is just being developed and tweaked, lol..How can you call this a beta test at all? What are we really testing or changing? The whole friggan game should be closed to finished in a closed beta and should be a game very well done and being polished. In a super polish test phase and game mechanics super fun overhaul type of way.. Nope, not today, we learned how to scam a buck with the bare minimum work, and learned to exploit the needs of a beta.."

Truth?  Or attention seeking?  You be the judge.

 

I'd imagine this guy is lying, because some of the things he says are just not true. There is PvP testing, for example. I spent all night last night in it.

I am working on a full preview, they had the test on 24/7 all weekend, and I got through the Lieutenant content and into some PvP. 

Also, they lifted the limited press NDA we had. The article should appear Wednesday.

I can't wait to read it.  I'm enjoying the coverage of this game.
 

Hey, any word on whether or not there will be an item shop?  I sure hope not.  I mean, I don't mind items like Capt. Kirk's 1966 boots or something, that have no combat advantages.  I just don't like paying a sub fee and then having to pay extra to get the biggest gun.

I don't have specifics, but yes, there looks like there will be a STO Store just like the Champions Store.

However, the philosophy on the Champions Store has largely just been cosmetics or "making it easier." There was nothing gameplay related you could buy that you couldn't earn. I see no reason they wouldn't stick to that.

Originally posted by Gyrus

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

Originally posted by gekkothegrey

I was just wondering if any of you have played the Star Trek mmorpg yet, and how do you think its comming along as they are about a month from launch now?

Nice try.

Well actually - in another thread someone said this:

"...You take Star Trek Online for example you are talking about, as I just played it this afternoon for the first time and under NDA can't say nothing, but just to think that its coming out in 2 months time and what is available to test in closed beta is just mind baffling.. No PvP testing yet, no crafting implemented yet, and lots of stuff turned off.. Its not evena beta that you can play at your leisure, its like set times.. What are we testing? Not the game, the friggan game is just being developed and tweaked, lol..How can you call this a beta test at all? What are we really testing or changing? The whole friggan game should be closed to finished in a closed beta and should be a game very well done and being polished. In a super polish test phase and game mechanics super fun overhaul type of way.. Nope, not today, we learned how to scam a buck with the bare minimum work, and learned to exploit the needs of a beta.."

Truth?  Or attention seeking?  You be the judge.

 

I'd imagine this guy is lying, because some of the things he says are just not true. There is PvP testing, for example. I spent all night last night in it.

I am working on a full preview, they had the test on 24/7 all weekend, and I got through the Lieutenant content and into some PvP. 

Also, they lifted the limited press NDA we had. The article should appear Wednesday.

Originally posted by Frobner

“If I sit back and wait for it to be perfect, frankly people aren’t going to wait around for it,” he added.

 

Ok... I stopped at this in the article.  That kinda proofs that this game has absolutly NOTHING to do with gamers...

These guys are ready to launch whatever buggy crap they have at launch day...  The fact is that playes would wait MUCH longer for a good and solid game.  

Be perpaired to see another AOC or WAR launch when this game releases.

To be fair to Jack, he was responding to a question about why they didn't just not launch with Klingon then include them as a more robust faction with full PvE options. He cited CoH where they did that, waited to have full fledged crafting and PvP for later, and no one gave the game a second look when they launched them. Thus, they felt with Klingons it was better to have them there in a limited form at launch as the basis for a larger system than later as a full fledged system.

Originally posted by Ingrod

Perhaps the neutral zone is a Space Sector Map with all the instanced War Zones, arenas and scenarios inside.

Exactly.

Originally posted by kobietruman

i don't care about advertising policies at all

what i want to know are details

we got - "that was fun" "this is instanced" "that isn't instanced"

so are you or are you not allowed to give any details - - - as this article stands, at least for me, it is worthless

 

as for the "parents" of STO, i did not play either of those games so that also was of no use descriptively

 

It was three hours. A more complex hands-on preview should follow next week. Up until now we've had very short windows to play. 

Cryptic COO Jack Emmert took some time to talk to MMORPG.com about the Klingon faction and what they're really all about. We got all the details on this controversial announcement that they'd be a PvP-centric faction, including the first reveal of exactly what races you get to pick from. It isn't just Klingons.

“With any video game there are always hard choices to make,” said Emmert by phone as he walked around their Los Gatos, California office complex. “It’s just a simple matter of you have a certain amount of time and you have a certain size team and you have to make decision about how you’d make the best product at launch.”

The decision was thus made to make sure that the Klingon faction was a big part of launch. He admitted that there was no way with an IP as big as Star Trek that they could do everything everyone, himself included, wanted. He lamented the lack of Romulan and Cardassian factions specifically as things he’d have loved to have included given unlimited time and money.

Read it all here.

Just an FYI, I'm talking to Jack Emmert in about 10 minutes about Klingons.

Story will follow later this evening.