Anyone In or waiting for STO Closed Beta

[StingingVelvet]

Indeed, though I found Brosnan the second-best, especially if you forget Die Another Day happened. Very sad that Die Another Day could end up being the last real Bond movie, since it was terrible... almost as terrible as Moonraker, the worst Bond film ever made IMO.

I am weird in that I liked Dalton too in The Living Daylights. That was a good Bond movie I thought and it had a little of the more serious Craig Bond in it while still being a real Bond movie. Licence to Kill sucked though.

[Seawalker]

Anyword, anyone in Beta? Would love to find out how the game runs in triple screen.

[StingingVelvet]

The closed beta seems to be insanely closed, I usually know people in them but this time I got nothing.

The open beta starts in 5 days though and I should be in on day one with my amazon preorder.

[StingingVelvet]

Star Trek Online open beta is on now, got my key from Amazon this evening. Downloading the client from file planet... looks like it will take about 1,000 years.

[StingingVelvet]

Download finally complete, took like 7 hours, and then... "servers down for maintenance, please be patient."

I hate MMOs despite never playing one other than trials and this crap does not help. I also read today the game forces you into groups in some missions even if you never make any request or movements toward working in a group, which angers me because I was going to play the game solo. Combine all that with my changing from a Star Trek mood to a Doctor Who mood and you have the makings of a canceled preorder unless this rocks my socks tomorrow.

[StingingVelvet]

Still can't play, I made a character but it won't load the game, says it is "full"... lordy. I guess they have a limited amount of Beta participants on at once?

I can tell you from the background of the menu the game is Hor+ though.

[DaFox]

Still can't play, I made a character but it won't load the game, says it is "full"... lordy. I guess they have a limited amount of Beta participants on at once?

Their servers probably have an artificial limit on the number of users online at once so that the servers do not get overloaded. If they are always full they probably didn't expect the beta to be such a 'hit'. Open betas are largely server stress tests too, so they are probably playing with the number of servers, the user cap per server etc.

[Wiz33]

Server are currently down for a patch for all the map full, disconnect issues. Should be back up within an hour.

[StingingVelvet]

Finally played the game and I REALLY like it, but two notes: 1) I am a Star Trek fanboy, and 2) I have never been into MMOs at all, so old innovations feel new to me.

That said the game basically plays like Dragon Age with no pausing, the graphics look decent on the ground, awesome in space. The fact there are a hundred people in every area with me seems almost like background animation, I don't even pay attention to them. I plan to play it "singleplayer" and do all the main "episode" quests as they described them, then quit. I am pretty jazzed.

That said I only did the tutorial so it might crash and burn afterward.

[Wiz33]

Finally played the game and I REALLY like it, but two notes: 1) I am a Star Trek fanboy, and 2) I have never been into MMOs at all, so old innovations feel new to me.

That said the game basically plays like Dragon Age with no pausing, the graphics look decent on the ground, awesome in space. The fact there are a hundred people in every area with me seems almost like background animation, I don't even pay attention to them. I plan to play it "singleplayer" and do all the main "episode" quests as they described them, then quit. I am pretty jazzed.

That said I only did the tutorial so it might crash and burn afterward.

If you are a Trek fan, wait till you see the episodic missions. They are full of references and stuff pulled from all the old trek episode and they are a lot of fun. I made it to LT CMDR 4 at the end of closed beta and my last episodic mission have me going WOW WOW WOW many times. They seems to have some true Trek fans in the dev team and they have put in references and nods to the franchise all over the place.

P.S. If you need a hand on some of the tougher mission, look me up, I'm @Wiz33 in game.

[StingingVelvet]

Cool, I'm the same name as here.

I couldn't play last night but I plan to tonight. Can't wait to see more!

[StingingVelvet]

Go to load... "emergency server maintenence"... jesus, are MMOs like this after launch or is this purely a beta thing?

[BHawthorne]

Go to load... "emergency server maintenence"... jesus, are MMOs like this after launch or is this purely a beta thing?

Most MMO launches are total train wrecks. In the case of that emergency downtime tonight, all day the servers have been having some rather pathetic server side lag. Considering how much this game uses instances, there should be no excuise for that much server side lag to occur. So far STO seems to me to be a really dumbed down Eve Online. Everything about STO seems so linear though. The instanced mechanics remind me a lot of DDO but with sci-fi theme.

[Wiz33]

This is why they do open beta. We rarely saw any lag/rubber banding during closed beta since the servers are never loaded to extreme. They will continue to do load balancing till they get it working right. For the record, it was quite smooth last night after the patch and they fixed most of the dis-connect issues. I'm sure tonight patch probably have something to fix the lag/rubber banding but as with all patch the result are quite unpredictable at times.

[BHawthorne]

My whole problem is the game is a pale immitation of Eve Online. At least Eve Online scales up to hundreds of players at once in battles. The scaling at the moment is bad. I rubber band all over the place with the lag also. The rubber banding around they can address, but the dumbed down mechanics are a core design issue that is too late to address. This game is targeted at a more casual player than Eve Online is, that much I can gleam from 48 hours of play.

IMHO, right now the only thing that this game has going for it is that is a casual sci-fi game with the Star Trek theme. That probably is the only reason why it will succeed. Those that know Trek will either love it or hate it. There is no continuity with timeline. People are running around with every era of ship and uniform and as people can custom color uniforms there are some pretty non-trek people running around looking like day-glow pink.

[Wiz33]

My whole problem is the game is a pale immitation of Eve Online. At least Eve Online scales up to hundreds of players at once in battles. The scaling at the moment is bad. I rubber band all over the place with the lag also. The rubber banding around they can address, but the dumbed down mechanics are a core design issue that is too late to address. This game is targeted at a more casual player than Eve Online is, that much I can gleam from 48 hours of play.

IMHO, right now the only thing that this game has going for it is that is a casual sci-fi game with the Star Trek theme. That probably is the only reason why it will succeed. Those that know Trek will either love it or hate it. There is no continuity with timeline. People are running around with every era of ship and uniform and as people can custom color uniforms there are some pretty non-trek people running around looking like day-glow pink.

But pretty much everything in EVE is boring except for large scale fleet PvP. This is with a toon of over 100 mil skill points. ;-P

[BHawthorne]

[quote]My whole problem is the game is a pale immitation of Eve Online. At least Eve Online scales up to hundreds of players at once in battles. The scaling at the moment is bad. I rubber band all over the place with the lag also. The rubber banding around they can address, but the dumbed down mechanics are a core design issue that is too late to address. This game is targeted at a more casual player than Eve Online is, that much I can gleam from 48 hours of play.

IMHO, right now the only thing that this game has going for it is that is a casual sci-fi game with the Star Trek theme. That probably is the only reason why it will succeed. Those that know Trek will either love it or hate it. There is no continuity with timeline. People are running around with every era of ship and uniform and as people can custom color uniforms there are some pretty non-trek people running around looking like day-glow pink.

But pretty much everything in EVE is boring except for large scale fleet PvP. This is with a toon of over 100 mil skill points. ;-P

Then you can see some of the parallels I see. What I'm asking is what about STO makes it more "fun" than Eve Online? I've got 60mil SP myself on Eve. I do like the away team and station walk around ability, but even Eve will have station walk-around soon. Ships are configurable like Eve, just less options and more of a linear progression through them. STO is most definitely a theme park game, not a sandbox. I'm having a hard time seeing what the staying power will be when one reaches the end game with STO. As everything is a linear progression, I'm not so sure the end-game will be that rewarding.

[StingingVelvet]

IMHO, right now the only thing that this game has going for it is that is a casual sci-fi game with the Star Trek theme. That probably is the only reason why it will succeed. Those that know Trek will either love it or hate it. There is no continuity with timeline. People are running around with every era of ship and uniform and as people can custom color uniforms there are some pretty non-trek people running around looking like day-glow pink.

I have never really played an MMO before so I was surprised to see it plays just like Dragon Age. I plan to play it through to the "end", whatever that may be... it has episodes and an overall arc supposedly. It's a Star Trek RPG and while I wish it was singleplayer I can suffer the MMO-ness of it.

The outfit thing you mention does annoy me. I see a lot of people as I play who are obviously more playing it as a Cryptic MMO than a Star Trek game. I just ignore them though, and most have altered their suits and such so much I can just pretend they are visiting aliens on a ship or station. It seems like all the missions are able to be done in a solo manner so far, and if later ones force teams of some sort I can find a logical way out of a mental breakdown.

[Jupix]

Well, I'm a few hours into the open beta now and one thing's clear, STO is nothing like EVE, except for a few things.

I actually like the dumbing down, this game seems pretty easy to learn but browsing through customization menus, lists of items, amount of NPC's etc. it seems there's a huge amount of game beneath the pretty exterior.

At first I didn't like the controls much but now they seem passable. They're very consoley in that you need to use excessive amounts of buttons and mouse dragging to move around, and in combat you need to lock a target and click-click-click-click-click buttons over and over again. It's tiresome and inaccurate in a hack-n-slash sort of way, meaning there doesn't appear to be a lot of player skill involved in whether you win or lose a fight, it's more about how careful you are and how well your char/ship is skilled and equipped. Well, sorta like EVE in that respect.

By now I've had a chance to warp around the universe and I kinda like the system. Just like EVE you don't get a chance to slowboat your ship into a direction and jump to warp in that direction, but rather you click a button which basically unloads your current location and loads an interactive map thingy which is like a scaled-down version of normal spaceflight, in which you warp around and can see surrounding star systems and drop out of warp there. I was a bit disappointed I didn't get to "just warp in whatever direction and explore" like I wanted to, and the scale of distances seems alarmingly small in that it takes about 3 seconds to warp from star system to another, at least here in the beginning, but overall, warp travel in this game beats the EVE jumpgate system hands down.

One thing I need to mention is the amount of settings, it's just staggering. Beats some whole-hearted hardcore PC games easily. Quickly glancing over the settings it looks like damn near everything is adjustable.

I'm still very confused with some of the game mechanics, bridge officers and away team coordination for example, so can't really comment on those.

Just have to say, in space combat, EVE is boring compared to this, there's just a lot more to think about here, because you have to manually operate shield emitters, power output, weapon banks etc. while while steering the ship. So like you'd expect I will describe STO as a better game for dogfights (I suspect those are the only thing we're getting with instancing), and EVE as better for tactical warfare.

Overall I like the casual mentality. I like I don't have to stress over hardcore difficult gaming or ruthless game mechanics. I don't need another EVE. STO is a game you fire up after a hard day at work, and RP in. And it appears you don't have to think there are masses of others right around the corner, because there's enough space for some solemnity.

Oh, and the graphics are nice. Which is nice for a Star Trek game.

[Wiz33]

Then you can see some of the parallels I see. What I'm asking is what about STO makes it more "fun" than Eve Online? I've got 60mil SP myself on Eve. I do like the away team and station walk around ability, but even Eve will have station walk-around soon. Ships are configurable like Eve, just less options and more of a linear progression through them. STO is most definitely a theme park game, not a sandbox. I'm having a hard time seeing what the staying power will be when one reaches the end game with STO. As everything is a linear progression, I'm not so sure the end-game will be that rewarding.

Quite a few things.

1) Combat is fun and does take some skill (and some crazy mouse click too ;-P). It makes you feel that your effort (in training yourself and your BOff) really have an impact. Pickup teams, easy to team up with others to tackle more difficult missions. Since there is no death penalty in STO, you can get PvP fleet actions anytime you want (with a pickup team)

In Eve, you might need a bit of skill to web and scramble but after that, it pretty much a done deal. NPC combat is more of a joke, My Tengu and Nighthawk can solo all level 4 mission without a sweat. Salvaging is boring since you spend more time salvaging after the mission than the mission itself at times. For Fleet action, it takes forever for everyone to setup their ship and get to location (like a gate camp or roaming gank). We are talking about a commitment of hours at a time.

2) Episodic contents, The episodic contents usually have a pretty good story and some trek lore thrown in. Plays like a TV episode, advance the overall story arc. Yes, a power player may run out of them fairly fast but a casual player will take awhile to run thru them and by then more should be available.

The overall background story of the Eve universe doesn't really affect you as a player (unless you are in the militia and even then not much), even the so called storyline mission have no real impact except for your faction standing.

2) Simple crafting makes it easier and gives you rewards more often. I like the more traditional loot system where the loot rarity is based on the what kind of NPC you defeat, not where.

To get decent loots in Eve you pretty much will have to commit to the 0.0 lifestyle (full time PvP). The crafting/invention in Eve is so complex that you almost need to open a step by step guide on a second screen to get through. It takes forever to gather material and resource to build any Tech II components and unless you have a BPO and is using it to make isk. You might just as well buy it from market and we won't even get into the whole invention and cap ship construction thing.

3) Travel speed, you can get from one side of the universe to the other side fairly quickly with the transwarp tubes.This make meeting up with corp/fleet member easy and it's easier to get help if you need it.

In Eve anything beyond a few jumps will take a fair bit of time sitting around not doing anything else (unless you afk on auto). Even after being in Eve since launch, I have probably only seen no more than 10% of the universe since small corps usually work in a small region.

I have more to say but need ot get some work done, be back in a bit.