Star Trek Online

CrazyJoe

So is anyone planning on checking this one out? I have been following it and it looks interesting. I am considering picking it up to try it out for a bit. The pre-order beta starts on January 12 and the preorder bonus differs based on where you order it from. The options are as follows:

GameStop: Exclusive ship: The classic USS Enterprise
Best Buy: Pet Tribble or Targ (based on faction)
Amazon: "Liberated Borg" Bridge Officer with "unique nanotechnology augmentations"
Direct2Drive: Multi-Spatial Personal Shield (regenerates itself and player health)
Wal-mart: Bonus Skill Points (bestows additional skill points)
Target: TR-116 ground weapon (micro-transporter beams projectiles to target, no line of sight required)
Steam: Chromodynamic Armor, improves critical hits and damage of energy weapons

CrazyJoe

Guess not.

pigflipper

I'm interested, but skeptical about it. Most MMOs completely suck, no matter how good source material (original or licensed) is, so, I will withhold judgement until I can actually get a shot at the game.

MaxenW

I'm pretty curious about it, but yes.. .like Pigflipper, have serious doubts about any MMO and I've been having trouble conceptualizing how a star trek MMO would even work.. like.. do you play an entire ship? or only the captain of a ship? a crewmember on someone else's ship? being a security officer or science officer on someone else's ship doesn't sound like a very fun job to me. How will it be different from Eve aside from the superficial naming changes and graphics?

Cyclonite

I preordered it for shits and giggles. I've fallen prey to AoC and Aion recently. Stopped playing both of those after a couple months. Might as well do it again, eh? I've always been a huge Star Trek fan. Shit, my name here used to be Trekky8472.

I have high hopes for it, but fear it's going to be terrible. Early access to the beta for preorders starts tomorrow. We'll see!

MaxenW

Cyclonite wrote:

I preordered it for shits and giggles. I've fallen prey to AoC and Aion recently. Stopped playing both of those after a couple months. Might as well do it again, eh? I've always been a huge Star Trek fan. Shit, my name here used to be Trekky8472.

I have high hopes for it, but fear it's going to be terrible. Early access to the beta for preorders starts tomorrow. We'll see!

Oh I'm a huge trek fan too.. if you look closely at my picture you can see the boxed set of ST:TNG behind me!

Please let me know how the game turns out.. I might fall for it yet.

CrazyJoe

I'm too much of a Star Trek geek to not try this out. I preordered from Amazon to get the Borg officer. Maybe we can hook up in game sometime and do some adventuring, Cyclonite.

_k

You can't even send red shirts on away missions to die. I watched a red shirt take like 50 billion phaser shots and keep living, how the hell a red shirt gets a borg personal shield goes against everything.

Cyclonite

Crazy Joe wrote:

I'm too much of a Star Trek geek to not try this out. I preordered from Amazon to get the Borg officer. Maybe we can hook up in game sometime and do some adventuring, Cyclonite.

Definitely!

CrazyJoe

Are you planning on playing Klingon or Federation?

CrazyJoe

The USS Icrontic is out roaming the galaxy... I'm having alot of fun in the short time that I've played so far...

Cyclonite

I really like the space battles. There's more strategy involved there than I expected. Keeping the side of your ship with more shields pointed at the enemy. Keeping enemies within the firing arc of your weapons. Timing photon torpedoes to get through enemy's shields after you bring them down but before they recharge and come back up.

The ground combat feels a little clunky to me, and I find a lot of the time certain actions are very buggy. Sometimes I won't see my phaser fire. Sometimes the enemy will get knocked back without an animation. All of a sudden he's on his ass, then all of a sudden he's standing again. I'm not sure if this is due to lag or not. Also, my sound gets really crackly when on the ground. In space, it's just fine. Not sure if it's my hardware or not.

Some of the menu systems and tutorial information is a bit clunky, but that's not necessarily an issue. It's early and they're looking for major feedback at this point.

Aside from that, I find the game fun so far. I have other minor gripes, but it still has the word "Beta" at the end. I'm excited to see where they take this.

CrazyJoe

I concur. The first battle Borg Cube and then with the Orion pirates were very close and it was pretty tense for your first few battles. I am excited as well about it. It should defintiely keep getting better and is definitely one of the best Trek games that has been made.

Thrax

I wish they had never diverted from their original game design.

/me sighs.

Winfrey

Thrax wrote:

I wish they had never diverted from their original game design.

* Thrax sighs.

holodeck sexytimes?

lordbean

Honestly I'm too skeptical about this game to want to try it. Games based on TV or movies usually don't turn out well, even if they get off to a good start. Lately, I've begun playing EVE online, and I seriously doubt this new star trek MMO will be able to offer the same kind of depth of gameplay as EVE in the long run.

CrazyJoe

Thrax wrote:

I wish they had never diverted from their original game design.

* Thrax sighs.

What was the orginal game design?

Thrax

Your character started as a cadet in SFA, and worked his way through lesser vessels until ultimately becoming a captain of a flagship. A captain could recruit his own crew of actual players, each which had their own role on the ship. Each ship's crew was essentially a small guild that worked together on the ship. Think tactical officers with exclusive weapons control, or engineers which worked to keep the shields and engines going, a comm officer to handle communications/signals, and a captain to orchestrate all the work with a HUD/command interface.

I had friends lined up to play with me under this model, but we all dropped it like a sack of bricks when they threw cruisers at everybody.

CB

Thrax wrote:

Your character started as a cadet in SFA, and worked his way through lesser vessels until ultimately becoming a captain of a flagship. A captain could recruit his own crew of actual players, each which had their own role on the ship. Each ship's crew was essentially a small guild that worked together on the ship. Think tactical officers with exclusive weapons control, or engineers which worked to keep the shields and engines going, a comm officer to handle communications/signals, and a captain to orchestrate all the work with a HUD/command interface.

That sounds like an MMO I would actually be willing to pay monthly for.

Snarkasm

Real teamwork? Hell yes.

Cyclonite

Wow, now I'm disappointed in the route it went. I'm not going to drop it yet though. I didn't get a chance to play last night, and I'm dying to try some more missions.

CrazyJoe

That definitely would have been alot cooler, but I'm still enjoying the game as it is.

Winfrey

The way the game was originally setup the game could easily create its own history. There could have been entire chronicles for each crew. Fellow Federation officers could swap stories about the first captains they worked for, where they had to go, what kind of sticky situations they got themselves into and which nameless member of the away team was killed during missions.

It could have been the whole Star Trek experience, perhaps that was too ambitious.

ardichoke

The original design sounds like a good idea. In theory. Really though who is going to want to play a cadet or anything like that? No one. Everyone wants to be Kirk, no one wants to be the red shirt. The people at the top would have a hell of a time finding enough people willing to play the lower ranks to staff a ship and eventually everyone would move so far up the ladder that the game would become unplayable. Or at least that's what I would expect to happen.

Snarkasm

I'd be an engineer voluntarily. Screw being captain.

Cyclonite

Snarkasm wrote:

I'd be an engineer voluntarily. Screw being captain.

dadaas

Where can this game be played, always wanted to play good Star Trek game but i have try many and none was good. I dont like RTS Start Trek, is this RTS?

CrazyJoe

No, it's an MMO. The game is currently in Open Beta that you have to get a beta key to enter (there are websites out there that are giving away keys.) The game is scheduled to launch on February 2nd.

Zanthian

I tried to play with Joe on Friday Night, but there servers where having a lot of problems keeping me connected.

CrazyJoe

Which is very strange, because I was not having any issues during that time. They have said that they are getting more servers sooner thant they thought because they have had alot more interest in the Open Beta than they expected.

CrazyJoe

Today is the start of the Preorder Head Start so I will be getting some quality Star Trek online going tonight!! Anyone else preorder it besides myself and Cyclonite?