STO: Thoughts Following Beta

Post soundtrack: “Captain Bacardi” by Antonio Carlos Jobim

Well, the beta has finished (albeit with more than a little mass spawn-camping – I’d describe the end-of-beta event as more whimper than bang) which means it’s time to start girding my loins for the head-start in a few days.

I did manage to complete the primary goal I set myself; namely to reach Captain rank (level 21).  The questions now:  What class will I level as?  What class of ship will I specialise in?  What haven’t Cryptic shown us yet?  And most importantly, why do they insist that this severely instanced game is massively multiplayer when (if the beta was anything to go by) you’re unlikely to see more than a dozen people at any given non-mission location?

The last is probably the single thing I noticed most from the beta – hopefully it’s just a side-effect of it being beta, and numbers will be higher after launch.  But the game seems to lack the equivalent social spaces that capital cities in WoW are – the STO starbases are surprisingly tiny (like the opposite of the Doctor’s TARDIS, much smaller on the inside).  Again, though, I’ve yet to see how this server setup (fragmented though it may be) works with the numbers that the launch might (should?) bring – it’s the opposite of WoW’s setup, with one server which is divided into multiple shards for each location; all the shards for a location seem to share a single chat channel, however, and it’s simple to switch between shards.

The chat system is also irritating, especially after I’ve had time to get used to chatting with the WIM addon.  There appears to be a single chat window, but it’s possible to create additional tabs within in which you can filter different entries into (such as combat messages, team or fleet massages, specific channels and the like).

I didn’t play around with it that much, though, so I’m not sure just how configurable it is – I was mostly just solo-leveling, so didn’t miss it much.  (There’s a “Report Spam” right-click action available, which also sets that player as ignored – a positive sign, given the spamming I’ve grown accustomed to in WoW.)

There are group-PvE instances called Fleet Actions which have the potential to be fun, but the reward structure for completing them is currently completely broken; the highest dps participants are eligible for rare equipment as loot, which is quite blatant in its bias against cruiser and science vessel captains.

Plus this is the first game I’ve encountered that allows players to be spawn-camped by PvE mobs, thanks to a perfect storm of upwardly-adjusting mob level and numbers (the more players joining an instance, the more higher-level mobs spawn to match the players, but if players leave the high-level mobs remain there) and a single spawn location which has a PvE mob spawn adjacent to it (once I zoned in with my T2 escort and was flattened in seconds by 4 escorts and 3 frigates).  Spawn-camping also occurred in ground PvP matches – hopefully there will be some fixes coming for that.

Balance (especially in space combat) seems to be a work-in-progress, when I went from the ease of T1 ships, to challenge in my T2 escort, and then hitting something of a wall while working towards my T2 escort.  Perhaps my choice of captain skills, bridge officer skills and equipment is at fault - which brings me to my biggest complaint:

Cryptic seems to be not only the name of the developer, but also their documentation philosophy.  Seriously, if you want to work out a levelling strategy for your captain that won’t gimp you at higher levels, you’re going to need to rely on the forums.

The tooltips for your skills (even with the added information they now have, although it’s hard to believe they could have displayed less) offer minimal information about what they do and which abilities they affect, and the numbers they do offer are pretty useless without a baseline to compare it to:  “+5 to Photonics” means very little when they don’t say what Photonics actually is. 

Apparently, however, this is by design – if you’re a theorycrafter, the designers are going out of their way to frustrate you.  Fortunately I’ve picked up some useful information from skill discussions on the forums that I’m hoping will keep me from being the STO equivalent of a hunter wearing spellpower gear with +spirit gems.

Hopefully the servers will at least pretend to be stable, and the bugs won’t be too overpowering – I’d like to at least get my 30 days out of the game, as I’m not certain at this stage that the game will hold my attention long enough to get any subs out of me.  It’s entirely possible that there’s more content in the release version that wasn’t in the beta, and indeed I’m hoping that is the case.

Plus, release means people seriously starting to create fleets, along with a larger pool people to level with – that was probably the thing I missed most, people (ideally who I know, but I guess that comes with time) to talk with.

My plan?  So far, to level an Engineering captain in a cruiser, with a view to being a damage-sponge at higher level.  I might roll an escort captain (for the pew pew) as well, depending on how long-winded the leveling process is, but it’d depend on my enthusiasm.  Plus there’s always the option of rolling a Klingon captain as well, but with no quests and only PvP it would really depend on how entertaining post-release PvP turns out.

Of course, hopefully my copy of Mass Effect 2 will be delivered soon as well, so STO may face some stiff competition for my time.  We’ll see (but I suspect ME2 will win, at least briefly).

One last query of my handful of readers – are any WoW bloggers giving STO a try, who would be interested in forming a fleet?  “Azeroth’s Pride” has a certain appealing ring to it…

/wave

A Break From WoW Means More STO

Post Soundtrack: “Star Trekkin’” by The Firm.

Gosh, it’s been a while since I posted…  I guess I should explain.  My enjoyment of WoW has been in sharp decline (again – sorry Blizzard, but Icecrown just hasn’t done it for me, and chain-running 5-mans was never an particularly appealing alternative), so in my attempts to cast around for a distraction I decided to invest some bandwidth in the Star Trek Online open beta.

Meet my latest time-waster, Lt. Commander Nuobe, my Federation-side character in the Star Trek Online open beta.

I’ve leveling Nuobe to L15 and a Horde, I mean Klingon, captain to L13 so far, and I think (despite having run into some quite amusing bugs so far, most of which will hopefully be getting patched pretty soon) I’d likely get my money’s worth from picking it up when it launches.

I’ve stopped raiding for the time being (I let the healing officer know of my decision – fortunately they have sufficient healers that they’ve been able to continue in IC without me), and basically just log on to do transmutes and make cloth while I take my break.  Needless to say, I suspect my WoW posts will be few and far between while said break transpires.

However I’ll probably post a little about my STO experiences, as it’s proving to be an entertaining little timewaster (and there’s room to get into the game mechanics a little bit, from what I’ve seen so far – the documentation is pretty awful from my experiences so far, hopefully something else that’ll be improving when the game goes live).  It’s certainly a change after so much time spent with WoW, but with my dissastisfaction with my dwarven horde it’s come at a good time to have a solid chance.

Between the PvE-focussed Federation missions, the PvP-focussed Klingon equivalent, and of course the possibility of PvP between the Feds and Klingons there appears to be enough content (and with enough variety) to keep me busy for a while, and it might even be fun.

I’ve also been spending a good few hours playing Defender Chronicles on my ipod touch, and it’s a blast – well worth giving it a try, if you’re a fan of RPGs or tower defense games.

I’ve not forgotten about WoW, however – I’m planning on doing an update to my Disc Priest PvP gear guide after the next arena season starts, and I’ll probably also update my disc priest levelling series once I…  well…  do some more levelling of her.

So be patient, stay tuned, and live long and prosper.

/vulcan salute

Of Rogues and Oculus

Post Soundtrack: “A Banana Split For My Baby” by Louis Prima

I’ve been working on OldDingle lately, with a view to getting him to 80 and doing a multitude of random heroics to buy Phingle a set of heirloom gear to speed up her leveling.  Sure, it’s not the most time-efficient way to do it, but it’s an interesting experience viewing the leveling grind from a non-dwarf perspective (and an effective distraction).

OldDingle is currently sitting in Thrallmar, having logged off before the server reset with only a half-bar more XP needed to reach 60 and buy a flying mount (which won’t be the undead drake mount pictured).  His gear has been improved by the handful of quest reward greens he’s picked up so far, but it’s still a long way to go to 80 – flying training will help the process, though (although epic flying is still some way off).

With the reduction in expert training and regular flying mount cost that came with patch 3.2.2 (taking them down to 250g and 50g respectively), it was easy to pick up sufficient gold through the AH to cover this expense – OldDingle and Phingle are currently sitting on around 1k between them.  Speaking of Phingle, she’s sitting at level 24 in Tarren Mill, patiently waiting for her heirloom items while complaining about the decor of the inn.  (It’s a good thing she’s the patient type)

Alliance-side, Ringle has purchased her 2nd hippogryph (and is only three more days away from becoming an exalted champion of her fifth and final tournament faction) and Mingle is slowly working towards having enough rep to be able to buy the awesome pants pattern from Ashen Verdict (she has the primordial saronite to purchase it, and only needs 1650 more rep – she’ll also be able to upgrade to the revered rep ring at the same time).  Ringle also has some Ashen Vanguard rep under her belt, but as an alt has had less time in Icecrown than Mingle – she’s picked up the first rep ring, but the second is some time away.

Finally, with the number of random dungeons I’ve under my belt since the patch, it was with no small interest that I came across news that Oculus is to get a loot buff (in an attempt to reduce the number of players dropping group when they arrive).  The extra couple of badges will probably be handy, but the chance of getting the Reins of the Blue Drake is pure icing.  I just hope the chance of them dropping is higher than for the Reins of the Blue Proto-Drake which allegedly drops from Skadi in Utgard Pinnacle – I say allegedly because I’ve never seen it drop, in all the months I’ve run it on my various alts.

It’s actually interesting how much more often I’ve entered an old instance (it usually happens in Gundrak, HoS and Oculus) and one or two people drop group immediately – it’s usually the tank, and equal chance of one of the dps (if I’m on my healer) or the healer (if I’m on my rogue).  I doubt they’ll be adding additional rewards to the other dungeons – Oculus has been unpopular pretty much from launch (my issue with the place was that I never enjoyed the mounted combat), and I think its’ negative reputation has only worsened since then.  With the growing number of people bailing from instances (at least in my limited experience), getting players to stay is a battle I don’t envy Blizzard.

For now, though, it’s time to flee for the safety of my bed before the sun rises – funny how time flies when you’re busy (or attempting to look like you are).

/wave

If This Is The Future, Where Is My Flying Car?

Post soundtrack: “Almost” by The Rongetz Foundation

I suspect a “Happy New Year” is in order, it being January 1st.  But this whole lack of a flying car thing really is bugging me – I wonder if my future is faulty?

I’ve been making the most of the non-raiding holiday lull, and aside from doing the Tournament dailies on Ringle (to get enough champions marks to buy the other two hippogryph mounts – about 185 to go)…  And doing the random daily dungeon for frost emblems on Ringle and Mingle…  And more random dungeons to get Pringle geared up…  Oh, and playing the AH to get enough Primordial Saronite to purchase the pattern for the Sandals of Consecration and and make a pair for Mingle (which I did yesterday – yay!)..  And OldDingle has a shiny new Ravasaur.  (Grats Mr. Troll)

Um…  Ok, so I haven’t been quite as idle as I thought.  But aside from those, I’ve been kicking back a little and trying to enjoy what looks to be a pleasant summer down here in my little corner of the antipodes.

Now that Pringle is getting fairly well-geared (after gearing Ringle up to Icecrown level), I’m tempted to either bring prot warrior Dingle out of semi-retirement, or perhaps try either tanking or healing on nubpally Bingle (although a lot of research would be needed before I’d try any dungeons on Bingle – and her healing gear is pretty awful).  I could also try my hand at huntering on Kringle, but I’m kind of ambivalent about using him for anything more than farming old reagents and doing daily gem transmutes.

Another possible goal (admittedly a long-term one, and purely cosmetic) would be to get Mingle her tier 5 set as around-town gear – while Mingle now has her first piece of T10 (the shoulders), I’m rather…  underwhelmed with their appearance, especially the colour of the entry-level set (seriously, green?).  I managed to finagle my way into a Lady Vashj kill last week, but had to pass on the helm token that dropped in favour of a lower-level character who was going to use it for leveling – it was a little disappointing, but at least it was going to be put to good use.

As an aside, I’m finding that while the LFD tool has been great for farming badges, it’s actually proving quite isolating.  I mean, it’s rare to have people saying more than “Hi” and “Thanks, bye” and the start and end of a run (something I’m prone to, to be honest, but then I’m usually not the most loquacious individual).  But on the plus side, it’s just so incredibly convenient…

I wonder what the long-term effect of this change will be?  Will 5-mans become a lottery you do with strangers for badges for non-raiding characters and gearing up new alts, and raid content become the majority of content you do with people you know?  It’ll actually be interesting to see how Cataclysm goes, with the new 5-mans you’ll be able to access as you’re leveling.

For now, though, it’s time to make another coffee and get those dailies done on Ringle – hippogryphs don’t purchase themselves, after all.  Oh, and WoWModelViewer has been updated again (hence the image of a well-dressed Mingle above, now that the program is working with the new 3.3 data) – it might just be time to update my banner.

/wave