I just wanted to post this because I am really impressed how Cryptic’s revised the character select screen. Showing off your ship, captain, and crew together looks so darn cool.
Picture of the Day: STO’s new character select
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Category Archives: Star Trek Online
Star Trek Online: Enter the Romulans
It’s not like the signs weren’t there. Players have been asking for a Romulan faction ever since the game launched, Denise Crosby recently came in to record voiceovers, and the last major update was all about building New Romulus. Still, the announcement of STO’s first expansion, Legacy of Romulus, is pretty exciting for the Trek faithful.
It remains to be seen how fleshed-out the Romulan content is. Players have been dubious of a Romulan faction because the Klingon PvE content has never been up to snuff yet. But now it looks as though you’ll be able to roll a Klingon from level 1, so I guess Cryptic’s figured out a way to give enough missions to each side.
I’m almost done with the Federation story missions, so I like the idea of rolling a Romulan (or perhaps a Klingon) to try out a different side of the game. I’m not a die-hard Romulan fan, but I do like their aesthetic more than the Klingons. Really, it comes down to whether you like green or red. The Borg aren’t happy that they have to share green with the Romulans, but I’ve always thought that the Collective would be better suited with, say, hot pink. “Resistance is fabulous!”
The improved UI, oddly enough, is the other thing that’s grabbed my attention. I’m all about making games look and handle better. STO’s UI isn’t horrible, but it can be cluttered and sometimes not as user friendly as it should be.
So good on STO for breaking the warp-expansion barrier. It’s a nice sign of a healthy game, and it’s definitely rekindled my interest in playing it.
Star Trek Online: Alternate history
For someone who left Star Trek 23 episodes into the first season of The Next Generation, Denise Crosby has been clinging onto her Star Trek connection like nobody else I’ve seen. She came back for a few episodes of TNG, did the Trekkies film series, and has been milking any Star Trek appearance she could get after that. So I guess it makes sense that she would pop up in Star Trek Online at some point.
I’m not complaining, mind you. Cryptic threw together a really cool third anniversary mission for players that enlisted Crosby to reprise Yar’s character, harkened to the classic TNG episode Yesterday’s Enterprise, gave us some awesome time travel, and delivered a brand-new ship to the game: the Ambassador-class starship (best known as the Enterprise-C).
I had a chance to log in last night to STO in the first time in a couple weeks, and really enjoyed myself. Even though the actual featured episode is somewhat short, it’s packed with goodness, interesting from start to finish, and gives out great rewards.
Spoilers from here on out!
So you begin by (of course) investigating some anomalies where starships of various types are popping in and out of existence. Then something weird happens when you see the Enterprise-C appear: Your starship transforms into a grubby freighter, and you’re suddenly a solo captain who’s working for the Tholian overlords. Yup, the time stream has been altered and not for the better.
The bulk of the mission takes place on the Tholian space station where you find out from a few people that the Enterprise’s return to the past went a little screwy and messed things up even worse than before. You see characters, such as the formerly new captain of the Enterprise-F, as slaves in an oppressive society with only a vague notion that something’s gone wrong. And eventually you bump into Tasha Yar and Castillo from Yesterday’s Enterprise, who want your help gaining access to the captive Enterprise-C before the Tholians dismantle it.
To do so, you need to convince someone to be a distraction to the guards, then you sneak into some tech tunnels to get to the ship. The mission throws you a loop by taking away the radar, and instead forcing you to rely on a hand map for a simple maze. I did get a chuckle when I discovered a corpse and got the achievement “He’s Dead, Jiim.”
Past that, getting onto the ship is pretty easy. It’s an incredible view, however, as you go from the control room through the docking arm and see this starship up close and very personal. Following that is a fight between you and a bunch of Tholians. That was more difficult, as the game just threw icons all willy-nilly on my hotbars and forced me to just slam them all over and over in the hopes that I’d win. I wouldn’t have, if a temporal Starfleet vessel didn’t show up to lend a hand.
Once things are set right, you go back to Earth Stardock and get your rewards: a new uniform and TWO Ambassador ships. One of the ships is a standard commander-level reward, and one is a limited-time admiral-level retrofit. I won’t be trading in my kitty carrier any time soon, but it’s nice to have these ships in the bank in case I want to start an alt some day. And two ships for one little mission? That’s an incredible deal, especially as Cryptic usually charges a lot for these admiral retrofits. Definitely worth doing even if you don’t play STO regularly.
So hats off to Cryptic and Denise Crosby for a fun time, and I’m most definitely looking forward to the big content coming this spring (Romulan faction? Maybe…).
Picture of the Day
Star Trek Online website’s “wrong page” screen
Star Trek Online: On my kitty carrier
While I had anticipated spending a lot of time gaming over the break, the truth is that I really didn’t get that much in. I had some time, to be sure, but taking my nephews and niece Geocaching, watching It’s A Wonderful Life, and playing with my new titanium spork took precedence.
The MMO that got the most time, actually, was Star Trek Online. My online Christmas present to myself was the purchase of an endgame Atrox carrier, aka the kitty carrier (so named because a cat-race designed it. I’ll let that slide, as I’m not a cat person but really wanted a carrier.). Carriers aren’t as easy to come by in the game as other types of ships, either requiring real money purchase or some lengthy rare currency grind. It just looked pretty darn cool, and I’m quite satisfied with the purchase. Not only does the ship look insanely sleek (and atypical for most Federation starships), but it can spit out a dozen fighters and fire off six turret guns like a wolverine of the stars.
I also went through the whole Breen featured episode series again, this time to get the Breen bridge officer that Cryptic brought back for a limited time. Right now I have 8 rare BOs that jockey for my love and affection, although the Breen dude might just top them all.
As much fun as I’m having in STO, I don’t really know what I’ll do when I finish out the Cardassian, Borg, and Undine story arcs. There’s always task forces and foundry missions, but I’m not feeling attracted to them. Chances are that I’ll be putting my ship in mothballs until the next featured episodes come out, whenever that is.
That might be for the best, since I’ll want to free up that fifth MMO slot for some of the gaming goodness coming out next year. One day at a time, O captain… one day at a time.
Bow before me, Starfleet!
Last night I hit max level (50, or Vice Admiral) in Star Trek Online for the first time. Man, I’m on a roll this past month or something! Actually, that’s not so much of a personal accomplishment as it is a testament to how the duty officer system can just rocket you up through the levels. I’d say I probably earned about 20 of the 50 levels through normal questing. Maybe 25.
That’s okay; levels kind of feel less substantial. More like a gatekeeper for ships. But I don’t feel the endgame wall or anything, as I have scads of featured episodes left to do.
I decided that once I hit 50, I was going to take stock of my game and do a lot housekeeping that I’ve been putting off. I was pretty much throwing bridge officers into slots, neglecting their training, and not trying to squeeze the most out of the resources I had. No longer.
The first step was to upgrade to a Vice Admiral-level ship. Typically with STO’s free-to-play, you don’t get one for free like the previous levels, but have to either buy one from the cash shop, from the player exchange, or earn one somehow. Fortunately, I’ve been sitting on the free anniversary Odyssey cruiser from last January, so that problem was solved. It’s a bit of a boat, as my fleet calls it, but it’s a heavily armed boat.
Actually, what I *really* want is a carrier ship. Those aren’t the easiest to come by, but I’m doing my homework and trying to save up enough store currency to buy one. Carrier ships always appeal to me in sci-fi settings for some reason. But that goal is going to be a ways out, I’m afraid, unless I break down and plop cash into the game.
So the next step was to equip my new ship, which I did with the purchase of five Mark X turrets. I prefer turrets on cruisers, not just for their cool pew-pew-pew look, but also for their 360-degree firing arc. That way I can throw them into the aft weapon slots and always have them be firing while I load up my front weapon slots with torpedoes and cannons.
Bridge officers were next on the to-do list. Man, I had been neglecting them. I even had two purple candidates that I hadn’t activated. I deleted the non-rare ones from my staff, promoted a couple, and made sure that I had everyone at the right station.
Finally, I had to redo all of my hotbar skills, which took a while because there’s just so dang many of them at level 50 and only three visible bars to use. I grouped them by maneuvering skills, weapon skills, shield heal skills, hull heal skills, and random buffs/attacks.
It’s definitely a good feeling to do that spring cleaning, although I know that I have some more research to do and a lot of tweaking in the future. My gear is also pretty subpar, although considering how many missions I have in front of me, I’m not worried. My only regret is that STO is running a promotion that if you complete the Breen featured episode series, you get a cool Breen bridge officer — and I’m two series behind that right now. Don’t think I’ll be able to get through that before the promotion goes away. Oh well.
The model of a modern rear admiral
“Captain on the deck!” the yeoman’s voice shrilled, but I took no notice of it. I think it’s her only job anyway, and that gets confirmed when she shrinks back into her cubby and sits quietly with her hands in her lap until the next time I depart and then return.
I ask my first officer for a status report, but he along with the rest of the bridge crew are standing there with their mouths hanging open.
“We… thought you abandoned us!” he gasped. “We’ve been floating out here in space for months, literally months, without any leadership! Where did you go?”
I rolled my eyes. No initiative, these goonies. “A little Guild Wars 2, some Secret World, what’s it to you? Now status report before I airlock the lot of you.”
They catch me up to speed. We’re still in some sort of crisis with the Romulans, although apparently that whole society put the crisis on hold until I came back. That’s stupidly considerate. I refamiliarize myself with the complex controls of this multi-billion credit starship, which is to say that I locate the “F” key to pick up crap and the spacebar to shoot crap. We lay in a course and go to warp.
On the way, one of the bigshots from Earth Spacedock hails me and says that there’s some sort of big crisis and would I be attending? I would not be, I tell him back, realizing that as a rear admiral, I don’t have to take this kind of order nonsense any longer, and besides, what kind of military organization are they running when captains get a choice in what missions they will and won’t accept?
I’ve long since abandoned wearing any semblance of Starfleet uniform, preferring my mercenary duds. I only keep the logo on the ship because I get a discount at Space GAP when I present my service card. All around me in stellar space, ships with such daunting names like Iwannaseeyounekkid and the U.S.S. Nose Picker show me how far this organization’s sunk. That’s okay. I was thinking of cutting a deal with the Borg and carving out a slice of my own space empire where we will use actual currency, act like normal people, and once in a while use a toilet.
We arrive at our destination and I assemble my away team. They’re a little rusty, but they’ve kept that mean edge I do so love about them. At my side in the transporter room is an ex-Borg commando, a Reman superhero-wannabe, and a dour Jem’Hadar. As you might expect, the talent show night on the ship is just a hoot and a holler with this crowd.
We beam down and a wheedly faced man comes running up to us. “Oh thank goodness, it’s Starfleet! We need help with the…”
I push a rifle barrel up his left nostril. “Can it. Where’s the gold-pressed latinum, and quickly, chump.”
He blinks. “You’re robbing us?”
I shrug. “Gotta pay for that 2500 Cryptic Point starship somehow. Starfleet pays replicator peanuts. You ever work for an outfit that has some sort of weird moral compunction against using money? We’re just supposed to do all this for the nobility of it all. Now look in my eyes and ask me if I’m an interstellar Santa Claus or if I actually care about a retirement plan.”
Our treasure in tow and a large portion of the base burning from the exploding insectoid race rampaging through its halls behind us, we depart for our next conquest.
Picture of the Day: Space Elf Cleavage
So hard fighting gravity with that handicap, space elf. I sympathize.
Parodied hilariously on Escher Girls (courtesy of Lis).
Play Diary: Busting the Vault (#sto )
Yesterday was mostly Star Trek Online day, as I haven’t put much time into that game lately yet was feeling the itch to get back into space. What really prompted me is when I found out that a new daily mission had been added to the game that allowed players to mine for dilithium (the main in-game currency that can be exchanged for store points or used to buy nifty stuff). As I’m dilithium-poor, I thought it was worth checking out.
The mining mission is actually pretty nifty. You suit up in an EVA outfit, then head out to the surface of an asteroid and look for shards of dilithium. When you find one, you can activate a little minigame that requires you to use the arrow keys to rotate and resize a triangle to match what’s on screen. The quicker you do it, the more dilithium is mined. I think my best was 753 in a minute.
I went to exchange my dilithium for Cryptic Points, and found that the market was currently around 253 per point, which seemed high but I have no idea. For people who like to play the market, there’s some money to be made selling high and buying low, but I don’t have the patience for that.
Next up on my agenda was to continue the Romulan featured series arc and hope that it would nudge me over the line from 39 to 40. I want me a new ship, darn it! While that didn’t happen, I did encounter one of the coolest episodes in the game to date (and that’s saying something). I’m just constantly amazed with how inventive and different STO missions can be, especially the featured ones, and this one is a great example.
It’s called The Vault, and I’ve seen it mentioned many times on other MMO blogs. The backstory is that the Romulans have a massive secret facility where they’re doing… something… and you’re called to break into it and find out what’s going on. Instead of using your ship or a ground assault team, the game requires that you hop into a shuttlecraft (or if you’re rich — which I’m not — a Delta Flyer or Runabout) and make like a mouse. Shuttlecraft missions are really interesting, because they make you so much more vulnerable and limit your options, which definitely ratchets up the tension. In this case, I knew that practically everything could squash me like a bug, so my best chance was to be stealthy.
Just getting into the Vault was tricky, because it’s got ships and a sensor net around it (and the facility is the size of “a small moon”). Your bridge officers give you a few options of how to do so, and I chose the path that had me jetting over to an asteroid, cutting off a piece, pushing it through the sensor net and following it in. Honestly, I really did hold my breath going through the net, certain that I was going to be spotted.
Once inside — and again, the place is HUGE — the next step is figuring out how to open a chamber door. I think there’s a couple ways, but I found a code that allowed me to head on in. It’s fairly straight-forward for a while, as all you have to worry about is disabling tractor beams and dodging these shield-damaging beams. But once I got to the very end and found out the TERRIBLE SECRET that the Romulans were hiding, I was discovered and had to make my escape.
This got awesome in a hurry, because you’re not only going through all the traps that you had to dodge before, but you’ve got fighters on your tail and the occasional Big Ship that cannot be fought but must be avoided. I was destroyed once, but just once, and after a few nail-biting moments, I was scott-free.
Honestly, I wish more games had missions like this, because that was completely engaging even though the combat aspect was minimal. MMOs can and should be about more than just fighting, and this is proof as to how they can achieve it.
Play Diary: Walking on sunshine and vacuum (#STO )
As Garfield and the Aztecs predicted, Mondays are there to conspire against me. I was really hoping to get a good chunk of game time on my day off, but a hundred more “responsible” things clamored for my attention to the point where I only really had time to finish up the latest Star Trek Online featured series.
I’ve held off talking about this series — The 2800 — until I was done with it, but now that it’s over I’ve got a bunch of thoughts. It’s the first STO featured series I’ve ever experienced, and overall, I liked it quite a lot. Believe it or not, STO has some of the most interesting mission designs I’ve seen in MMOs, and if you stick to the featured episodes and series, it almost never feels like you’re grinding out FedEx/Kill 10 Rats tasks. The writers come up with a lot of variety within these missions, and The 2800 exemplified this.
The story takes a hanging thread from Deep Space 9 and runs with it: What if the giant Dominion fleet that got detained in the wormhole by the wormhole peeps was allowed to continue on to the Alpha quadrant, many years after the war was over? The answer would be: Chaos and the rebirth of a war that nobody really wants to fight. As the Federation’s forces are spread thin on multiple fronts, they’re powerless to stop the takeover of DS9, and only one person — and one ship — can make wrong things right. Unfortunately that ship is off on another mission, so it’s up to you.
Speaking of variety, during this series the game had me:
- Pandering to diplomats by making them happy
- Fighting through a jailbreak
- Going on a spacewalk across DS9′s hull in a suit
- Going into the Gamma quadrant in a shuttle
- Flying into the interior of an asteroid
- Getting to know the life and times of Bajor’s people
- Fighting a Changling in hand-to-hand combat
- Engaging in an epic space battle that was pretty tough at times
Apparently the fate of future Featured Series development is up in the air at this point, and that’s a shame because the team did such a great job with this that I was literally looking forward to the next installment each and every week this ran. It had a great Star Trek feel that wasn’t just about mindless combat, but it had you thinking through situations, solving puzzles, and approaching problems through a variety of means.
My one big complaint, however, is the voice acting. Now, I know people defend STO’s voice acting (such as it is) by saying that it’s probably done in-house, but whether it is or not, it’s almost uniformly awful. Overacting and hammy deliveries with Shatner-worthy pauses all over the place coupled with disjointed lip synching awful. I mean, I’m glad they made the effort — voice is much more involving than just text — but it was a weak spot in an otherwise strong series.
I won’t complain about the rewards, however. We got lots of purples for the chain, including ship items and weapons. Probably the two best rewards were a purple Jem’Hadar bridge officer and an item that lets you project two holographic copies of yourself to confuse enemies in combat.
Star Trek Online remains a casual MMO for me, but I’m almost always glad to go back to it when I do. I’m looking forward to trying out some of the other featured series when they come back up on the rotation so see what I’ve missed.
