Star Trek Open Beta

A

Alastorr

New member
The open beta starts tonight at 20h00 South African time.

Is there any SAFA players thats going to play this game?
Would like to hear from you, maybe create a Fleet when the game launches on the 2nd of Feb?
 
I would love to play. I am such a big Star Trek fan, but I just don't have the time for an MMO.

I set myself some targets that I have to achieve before I will play STO, it will be my reward. So no, I will not be playing it yet, but I hope to play it in a few months. :)
 
I'd be counting since I can't rely on local bandwidth ... assuming there is a local server to download it from, of course.

Sadly - the thing about MMO's are that you can't really devote yourself to more than one at a time. And I have two :(
 
shadowfox said:
I'd be counting since I can't rely on local bandwidth ... assuming there is a local server to download it from, of course.

Sadly - the thing about MMO's are that you can't really devote yourself to more than one at a time. And I have two :(
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I've tried to play two MMO's at a time and it's pretty impossible like you say.
 
I had great hopes for Star Trek Online. But when I played the beta I was disappointed and didn't like the game all that much. Thus I decided not to buy Star Trek Online on release.

You might be surprised that I start this review with the conclusion, but actually most reviewers form an opinion first, and then write a review to fit that opinion. This is my very personal impression of Star Trek Online as experienced in the late closed beta, with no claim to either completeness or impartiality. I played about 12 hours, distributed over three days, which was enough to get a good general impression of the game, but certainly not all the details, thus this is just a "beta review".

Star Trek Online is based on two different engines, one for the space part, in which you control a ship not unlike the USS Enterprise, and one for the ground part, in which you control your avatar, and quite often a crew of NPC as well. Now you might remember reviews of Pirates of the Burning Sea telling you how nice ship combat was in that game, and how badly done the avatar part was. Star Trek Online unfortunately has the same problem. The space part and ship combat are nicely done, and different from classical MMORPG combat. But the avatars aren't pretty to start with, the animations especially in combat are wooden, and ground combat isn't much fun. One gets a definitive impression as if Cryptic Studios started with the design of the space part, did the avatar part much later, and ran out of time before they could make that part as good as the space part.

The world of Star Trek Online consists of various sectors of galaxy. In each sector you can see players flying around, stationary star systems, and mobile encounters. Thus gameplay consists of flying to one of these star systems or encounters, and entering its instance. Everything in Star Trek Online is instanced, even the galaxy sectors or the space stations exist in several parallel incarnations with a maximum number of players per instance. When you enter a star system or encounter instance, a scripted mission starts consisting of some sequence of space and ground tasks, which can be solo, group, or public quest. This is completely linear, you have to follow the script or the mission doesn't advance. For example you enter a system, get hailed by a freighter in distress, do space combat against some pirate ships attacking the freighter, beam down to the freighter to do some ground combat against the pirates in the ship, beam back up to the ship to fight off some more pirate ships, and mission done, warp back to the sector. If you enter the same sector again, the exactly same script starts, and you can do the mission again, over and over if you want. But you can also either hail Starfleet command, or visit them in the Earth space station, and get quests there. There are two sorts of Starfleet command quests I found, one a bit more elaborate versions of scripted missions, the other "visit X star systems in this sector and do the local missions there".

There are different types of rewards, two sorts of xp, two sorts of currency, two sorts of gear, plus you can get crew members as a reward. Experience points can be either for you, or for your crew. Your xp gain you levels, and every 10 levels a new rank, plus you can buy skills with them. The crew xp are a pool shared between all crew members, and it is you who decides the skills of which crew member you want to raise with them. Currencies are either energy credits to buy various gear with, or Starfleet merits to buy crew members and train them. Gear can be avatar gear to equip yourself or your crew members with, or various weapons, shields, consoles and devices to equip your ship with. Thus there is a lot of stuff to collect. You can also gather resources like alien artefacts from "anomalies" appearing in space systems and on the ground, which are used in "research" to upgrade existing gear.

Star Trek Online is not a bad game. It is somewhat unfinished in its current state, and still has some bugs, but that unfortunately appears to be the industry standard for MMORPGs on release. The space part with its ship combat is nice enough, and the general gameplay of doing missions, exploring systems, doing the two sorts of combat, and cashing in the rewards works reasonably well. However with everything being instanced, and the missions being heavily scripted, Star Trek Online feels very much like playing on rails. While theoretically you have the freedom to visit whatever star system you want, practically you'll only want to visit each system once, and that preferably as part of some patrol mission for greater reward. Thus you end up with a very linear checklist of things to do: Accept patrol mission, visit systems A, B, C, and D for that patrol, do the predefined script in each of the systems, get the reward, spend the reward on making yourself, your crew, or you ship better, and start over. This gets boring, repetitive, and "grindy" pretty fast.

The biggest disappointment for Star Trek fans is that STO reduces the drama, dialogue and interaction of characters of the series to combat. Star Trek Online is a simple combat game; the only non-combat interaction possible in the game is getting close to an object or person and pressing "F". In most cases there are no dialogue options beyond the choice to either accept or cancel quests; there are very few quests in which you have to talk with NPCs and do a little multiple-choice dialogue to solve the quest. There is nothing to do on the bridge (as of the beta), nobody to talk to, and if you want to sit in the captain's chair you need to stand on it and use a /sit emote. And instead of boldly going where no man has gone before, we will quickly see some website listing all the quests on all the systems.

So while Star Trek Online is certainly playable, there is a chance that you might be disappointed by its linearity and shortcomings. I am posting this review at the time where the NDA drops and the open beta starts. So I can only recommend you play the open beta yourself, and form your own opinion of Star Trek Online.
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source

I wouldn't mind checking it out, but doubt i'll be there for release.
 
Thanks for posting the review JKR. I'm disappointed that they turned Star Trek into a simple combat game. I was hoping for so much more. :(
 
I think that the review is one sided and that the person who wrote it has not spend really enough time in CB and OB. That is just my view. I think it has the makings of a great game, but then again to each his own preference.

I think what needs to be understood is that Cryptic has build a game where the Federation and the Klingon Empire are at war...no time to paly airy fairy about that. Yes it has combat, yes it still has exploration yes it has missions where you dont fire one shot.

Does the missions / quest need some polish, hell yeah, but this is an MMO...what MMO was perfect at launch? Not even the Mighty WOW was good at launch (or so I am told....I have never played it, but once again it is just my prefference)
 
I noticed the following words in the review : avatars aren't pretty, combat isn't much fun, instanced, linear, boring, repetitive, and "grindy"

If STO stays in ^this state then it will flop. These are specifically the words the majority of MMO players do not want to see in MMO's... some players won't mind about some or any of that, but believe me - the experienced MMO gamers will have a problem or 7.

Kinda sad really, I hope it gets better.
 
I've read some more first impressions now. Apparently creating a character is excellent. All the main Star Trek "species" are there plus you have the ability to create your own.

The graphics are really good and some parts feel like Star Trek which is big bonus.

The biggest problem according to most is that everything is instanced and that it takes away the whole sandbox gameplay, opting more for a linear path. It's more like WoW than Eve. Which is very unfortunate.

Space combat seems to be good but ground combat is annoying apparently.

Oh skills and leveling up and all that is done well.

I am going to hold my thumbs that it gets better before release but it does sound like it's disappointing at the moment.

*edit*

I read that the combat feels like a dumbed down mmo version of Mass Effect combat.
 
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Double Post, but it's for new information.

In South Africa we will only get the Gold Edition which contains:

Map of the Universe
Star Trek Online Design T-shirt
Downloadable Content Code for In Game 'Deep Space Nine' Uniform Set
5 Art Postcards
Collectors Box

For a retail price of around R350.

That's not bad at all! :D
 
Solitude said:
Double Post, but it's for new information.

In South Africa we will only get the Gold Edition which contains:

Map of the Universe
Star Trek Online Design T-shirt
Downloadable Content Code for In Game 'Deep Space Nine' Uniform Set
5 Art Postcards
Collectors Box

For a retail price of around R350.

That's not bad at all! :D
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Its very cheap. I expect regular editions of games to be R350 these days, so its a welcome surprise.
 
I'm liking what I've been seeing on mmorpg.com so far in terms on screenshots etc.

I'll wait for some reviews and opinions after release before I decide. Playing a game from release is always nice, but the last few major MMO releases have been such fails and have been unable to retain players. So I'll wait!
 
So STO it went live yesterday. Is anyone playing? I'm starting a new job now so I just don't have the time for an mmo. If I make it through the trial contract (2 months) then I'm definitely getting STO though.

If anyone is playing, please let us know how it is.
 
Ok I am assuming for those that already playing this... that you buy the game and you can play online without paying monthly fees right??? Because honestly to pay for such an expensive game and then you have to pay fees i think is quite bs...
 
sycogrim said:
Ok I am assuming for those that already playing this... that you buy the game and you can play online without paying monthly fees right??? Because honestly to pay for such an expensive game and then you have to pay fees i think is quite bs...
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It has monthly fees unfortunately. :(

Monthly Per Month Total
1-Month 14.99 USD 14.99 USD
3-Month 13.99 USD 41.97 USD
6-Month 12.99 USD 77.94 USD

Quite an expensive game to play. But it's Star Trek! Oh noes, I'm a fanboi.
 
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