New World Man

Star Trek Online is well underway and I can honestly say that I don’t know why I like it. Character creation is a blast. My Cardassian Science Officer and his crew are certainly a unique looking bunch, the graphics are fantasticly detailed, the space combat is fun, the episode missions so far have been quite story-rich, and the exploration missions have been a nice little aside, if not perfect, they’re still reasonably interesting.

But that’s the thing. “Reasonably Interesting” is the best I can muster in terms of praise for the game. It’s fun, and questing and levelling are as addictive as any other MMO.

Syp’s feelings on this pretty much mirror my own and I can’t really see me playing this in two months time. The only way I can see it happening is if we get something exceptional appearing on the horizon for end-game. Something a bit more solid than the borg queen 5-man they’ve announced (unless ofcourse, it’s truly epic in scope) – and proper crafting – all of which have been promised, but with almost no actual details.

On the other hand, it has been the first game where I’ve actually spent more than a day browsing the forums. Treading the flow of bile from whiners, and keeping my Troll detector on high alert notwithstanding, it’s been a mostly positive experience. There has been none of the Trekkie geekery we all feared would ruin the place, and most of what could be described as lore-whoring has been light hearted at best, and poe faced at worse. I’ve yet to see a single flame war erupt.

The most pressing issues on the forums this last week have been:

Fabulous Phasers, and yesterday’s patch that removed the ability to colour your powers

Missing Miniskirts, the inability to put Bridge officers in Pre-order bonus uniforms and the lack of dev response (until yesterday) over their inclusion.

Euro-woe for maintainence – People complaining that shutting the servers down at 2pm GMT to do maintainence is killing the game for Europeans. Get a damn job or get back to school. (Unless you’re a housebound cripple, then just go watch some TV). I do agree that Aussies get shafted though.

 

STO and Number Crunching

It was only a matter of time before someone decided to do some number crunching in Star Trek Online. The Engines Cannae Take It is a new blog with a couple of good articles on it regarding power levels and character basics, with a focus on number crunching the bewildering kerfuffle that is Cryptic’s latest MMO. This article on power levels is particularly good

Is this STO’s answer to Elitist Jerks? Lets hope so.

That reminds me, I really should finish my combat log analyser.

 

Screenshot of the Millenia

You’ve been attacked by the USS Fabulous!

From the STO Forums

 

Final Flight of the Fibonacci

So, it’s the end of Star Trek Online’s Beta period, the game starts proper on Friday for Pre-orders.

Here’s a collection of my best screenshots from Closed and Open Beta, featuring the crew of the USS Fibonacci (NCC 112358) and USS Napier (NCC 112358-A)

 

There’s only one direction, one world, one nation

Spinks has brought up the topic of pre-dawn gaming, and how much different the game feels when there are few people playing and it got me thinking.

Last month, after being abruptly awoken early, I found myself logging into the STO beta at 5am. It was still as full as it had been when I logged in 10 hours previously. Having (during my hard-core WoW days) played all night and witnessed first-hand the darkness creeping in and the quietening of the server, it was slightly jarring. Previously, servers went to sleep when I did, and awoke when I did. The thought that the server never sleeps made it seem kind of alien.

Star Trek Online is a one-world game.

The One-world model is growing in popularity. Games like Fallen Earth, Eve Online, Champions and soon to be Star Trek Online use it. There is no late-night wind-down of the servers. They always have people playing.
Although, it is hard at any time to describe Fallen Earth as ‘busy’.

Regardless, you’ll get exactly the same number of people online as you would at your local peak time (possibly more if you’re in Europe and logging on when the Americans are playing, or less if vice versa).

It certainly makes finding a clan difficult. You might wind up in one that’s 50% American, 50% European, and never the two will meet. Or one that’s predominately on when you’re not. You end up looking for regional clans, normally country based. As nice as playing with other Brits is, some of my best friends I’ve made through MMO’s have been continental Europeans, but they’re all joining country-specific clans too, so they can speak their own native languages. In a horrible irony, by uniting the world in one, they’re forcing players to create artificial means of separation.

So aside from the failed attempt to unite the world in harmony, why have companies like Cryptic and Icarus et al. chosen this model of allowing anyone to connect from anywhere?

Maybe it makes more economical sense to have these servers running constantly at full capacity. You may be replacing the server sooner than if you’d gone with a traditional architecture but you’d likely be using half as many servers as normal so it might balance out. In the long run it may well be cheaper. When you’re not sure of your subscription numbers (Like Fallen Earth), thus your income, such cost-cutting measures may be prudent and financially sound in order to break even quickly enough.

Did games like WoW have enough financial backing that the default model (that they really cemented) was worth it, or was it just that it was the *only* model. If WoW is anything, it’s not innovative. If WoW were coming out now though, would they have implemented the one-word model, or would circumstances and rapid growth have forced them into the realm model?

The one-world model, once the realm of the small indie gamer, is starting to hit the main stream. Will it stay? Will more games implement it? We have loads of MMO’s on the horizon that we’ll be finding more out about this year. Bioware’s The Republic Online, the eerily quiet Jumpgate Evolution, Lego Universe, APB – forgive me if I missed your favourite potential-mmo, (unless it was Stargate Worlds, that thing’s becoming like Duke Nukem, give up on it, I have)

 

We travel on the road to adventure

Stealthy as can be?

So I’ve gotten back on the Fallen Earth Wagon several months after quitting in a fit of annoyance.

Why was I annoyed? I was one of those unfortnate to suffer the random Crash To Desktop errors that caused no end of hassle.

So why did I rejoin?

Firstly, I really enjoyed the simplicity of the game. Yes, simplicity. While the levelling system, powers, skills and minuté of the character development process is incredibly complex, the rest of the game is very simple. Simple, and beautiful.

Secondly, any developer worth their salt would have fixed the crash-to-desktops by now, and added alot more to the game.

Thirdly, they just did their big spangly graphics update.

So I brushed off Dave here and plunged head-first back into the Apocalypse.

As level 19 hurtles its way towards me, I’m faced with the prospect of leaving the Plateau and heading onto Northfields, and everything that entails.

New Flagstaff. Kinda looks like the south side of Glasgow

I actually took a jaunt into Northfields today, a bit premature maybe, but I was curious. I checked out the faction towns and the main city, New Flagstaff, which looks like a more friendly version of Glasgow’s south side.

It is at this point that I realised something. Something that sets Fallen Earth apart from other MMOs.

In World of Warcraft, or in Champions Online, or in LOTRO, every town, every enemy, every building, every nook and cranny, every hill and valley are involved in a quest. Not only that, but it’s likely to be involved in a quest that you have, is easy to get, or are indicated to go there by some other NPC. You are discouraged from exploring by the pure fact that in all likelyhood you will go there for a quest anyway. You find somewhere new, with unusual enemies. You might kill a couple then go off, there really isn’t any reason to be there, you think “there’s probably a quest for these guys somewhere”, and go off and look for it.

Not so in Fallen Earth. In New Flagstaff there are countless redundant buildings. They’re just ‘there’. They have no use because there is no-one to use them. You really get the feeling that this is all there is, what you see is all that’s left. None of this warcraft lore that Stormwind holds 100,000 residents when you all you see is maybe 50 vendors and 50 guards and a few cottages. Those towns you see really do only have 20 people living in them. You’re encouraged to explore these places to see what you can find. To see if you can find people. When you do you’re always rewarded, normally with a quest or two, but sometimes with a vendor, sometimes, even, with a small town.

Not every town is marked on the map in Fallen Earth. It’s not like any other MMO in that you have your map written for you, by someone else. It’s full of scribbled notes of new towns, old towns fallen into hostile hands and miscelaneous grafitti, but the person who made the map hadn’t been everywhere, or they had written it some time in the past. There are white square nodes where ’something’ is along roadways. Usually it’s just a Respawn point and a garage, sometimes it’s a settlement over-run by bandits, but there are a few out there that are full, working towns and quest hubs that just havn’t been added to the map. The Oasis for one, a north-plateau outpost of Franklin’s Raiders, or the tragic story of Roads End, wiped out by marauding mutants, with only one mouring survivor hoping for revenge. Not only that, but not every road is marked, just the main highways. I found an offshoot road with a tunnel guarded at either end by opposing but friendly families, lots of quests to be had there too, from bandit attacks to a hidden love afair involving pies.

You are encouraged to explore, find things out for yourself. Open your eyes and look. To hit the road and have an adventure. It’s something missing from most sandbox games, that sense that by following the plot you’ll miss out on so much.

Exploring is something I love, which is why I’m currently training my crafting up so I can start making better vehicles, so that I can go off into the wild yonder and just look for things.

Obligitory sunset picture

 

Star Trek Online Video Review

I put together an audio review of Star Trek online and edited in footage of the game. I’ve decided I’m not a very good narrator so this will likely be the first and last review I put up, atleast, with a voice over

 

Teething Troubles

Currently, the Star Trek Online Open Beta is suffering the dreaded server overload syndrome. Servers are fit to bursting at the moment making it nigh on impossible to log on. The worst part? The game still suffers from random disconnects, so should you find yourself on the wrong end of one you likely won’t be able to get back in.

According to Stormshade (the community Rep), the problem is server capacity, they’ve express ordered new servers for the full launch. He even admited he can’t log in himself.

What does this say? That Star Trek Online is definitly being hit by countless players wanting to try it out, whether or not they all stay when the game is released relies on their experience in the Beta. I for one will be staying. I’ve found it different enough and fun enough to play alongside other MMO’s.

Anyway, must dash, I need to keep hitting ‘log in’ until I get back in game.

 

These are the voyages…

These are the voyages of the starship Fibonacci. Our continuing mission, to explore a strange new MMO, to find new bugs and new graphical errors. To boldy go where no Beta Tester has gone before.

To the left you will see the current crew of the U.S.S. Fibonacci (NCC – 112358) exploring the Delta Volanis Cluster.

Through the time I’ve been in the Closed Beta the game has changed so much. Seriously, people thought that Cryptic couldn’t add in all the stuff they were promising two months ago, and while yes – they have fallen a bit short – they’ve definitely completed about 80% of what they said they’d do.

In two months they managed to redesign every space station and indoor interior to make it more ‘Trek’ (alot of the Fed ship interiors had huge corridors), redesign patrol and explore missions to be more variable, impliment Klingon PvP, expanded Earth Spacedock to make it more easy to navigate, redesigned the UI, added more uniforms, more races, more customisation to characters.

I say hats off to Cryptic for doing all that, but the game is still undoubtably unfinished. By perhaps a month or two, but unfinished none-the-less

Noteably missing are Bridges (although you can choose them), Klingon PvE (but they said they’d canned that for release), and a number of glaring exploits and bugs still remain (hopefully by the end of Open Beta these bugs will be addressed)

My only worry is that Cryptic will start moving developers off STO and get them working on content for Champions Online (which sorely needs it though) and STO will be left for a long while before anything new is added. I’ve yet to see what the end-game is for STO but it’ll have to be alot better than CO’s daily missions and lacklustre instances to keep peoples attention.

It’s still a pretty fun romp so far. Even redoing missions I’ve previously completed (many many many times in Closed Beta)  are still entertaining, which is a good sign.

I leave you with another screenshot from the closed beta, the Original crew of the Fibonacci.

The Closed Beta crew of the Fibonacci

 

Worst Dungeon Day Ever.

I have, since the first week of Ulduar, been using [Living Flame] as my Trinket of choice. Purely because of the massive +hit. I’ve been using +hit trinkets since time began as they’re always the easiest way to reach the hit cap, but recently – thanks to tier gear and the likes, I’ve been creeping upwards in terms of +hit recently and I was finally in a position last night to be rid of it.

All it needed was 20 more Emblems.

That is 4 instances tops if doing it from the Random Dungeon Finder.

Culling of Stratholme was the first. We had two people drop out without word (I can kind of get why, the start is quite slow, but still, it’s 15 minutes wait compared to a 20 minute dungeon run). After that was a really good nexus run, quick, efficient, excellent tank. So much so that we queued for another random dungeon. It became what can only be described as the worst Old Kingdom run I’ve ever seen. The tank and one DPS were convinced they could do the first boss achievement – killing the boss without killing any of the adds that make him immune. We had a good tank (really good), good DPS and a decent healer (myself), but were short one person (the second tank). Thank the RNG we got a Death Knight (surprise) and we explained what to do. We failed. Turned out he didn’t speak much english, and when we said ’stand here, where I’m jumping, on the stairs, and tank the adds’ what he thought we said was ’stand over there by the boss and tank the adds’. After two wipes and much hate, the votekick came and he was out. In comes another Death Knight! Hurrah! First thing he says is “I am Polish, I can speak no English”, and proceeds to spout Polish at us.

Out of votekicks, and running out of patience, through a mix of trickery and dumb luck, the tank managed to get the guy to type /camp and it kicked him out. I manage to rope in a tank from guild – a decent tank, one that just last night helped us clear ICC 10 – we fail again, the MT ragequits and the whole thing falls apart.

Next up is the lovely Azjol Nerub. 15 minutes, bish bash bosh, 4 more badges. 8 of 20 so far.

Next I go back to Old Kingdom with a fresh group. All goes well until we get to the elemental trash pulls. Major source of problems here is pulling a patrol while fighting. This happened, we wiped, the votekick is used against – bizzarely – the hunter. She had done nothing wrong so I vote no (as, aparently at least one other did) and she stayed in, but took the hint and left us. Our shadowpriest goes out to repair while we wait. We get a mage in who instantly ports out to org saying ‘he just needs to get reagents’. The priest gets back and stands in the entrance, while the tank is shouting at him to get a move on to both him and the mage. Meanwhile, I’ve alt tabbed to check my mail, next thing I know the tanks pulled a patrol and wipes us. Mage and priest still nowhere in sight. The pally DPS quits, as do I. 10 badges out of 20. I’m only half way there.

Halls of Reflection. Aparently I’m filling in for a dps who just quit. Not a good sign. First wipe is on trash because the healer isn’t keeping the tank up. I mean, he’s healing, certainly, the tanks health is hovering at 20%, it is going up as well as down, it’s just not filling up. Eventually we reach the first boss, and we get a badge! Hurrah. But back on the trash, it’s wipe city, the healer once again failing to keep the tank topped up. The tank quits, the healer blames the tank and then I quit.

Utegard Pinacle. Fast, efficient and fun. 16/20 – 4 more badges, one more instance.

Occulus. Fuck.

Tank and DPS quits instantly, we get two new people in, who also quit.

I snap.

Tank gets a torrent of abuse from myself before I quit out.

Frustrated and tired, all I want is my trinket. Four more damn badges. I resign to one last instance before I damage someone.

ToTC. Finally, an easy, simple, non-hissy-fit-inducing instance. Atleast, that’s what it normally is. Mounted and buffed we get ready to start, only one of us is running in circles confused. The tank has obviously not noticed and started the event, and the rest of us manage to guide our confused friend to the lances then to the riding wolves before we kill the second group of trash.

Despite fearing the worst, the run was successful. I got my badges, and I got my new trinket.

No pain no gain they say, but why does it have to be the same in computer games?