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Star Trek: Online Beta Preview: Part 1
Star Trek MMO - The Final Frontier, these are the voyages of the Star Ship GameOn, Its mission? To Explore the strange new world of the Star Trek MMO and how many Cliché references I can add into a preview.
So here we go, this will be a short review which will be added to over the next couple of weeks to show how I am getting to grips with the game and while in beta, how I feel the game is getting on. In this first part I will be explaining how I am getting to grips with this new MMO, as well as what we think of this game.
Make it so number one. After a wonderful 7GB download and about a 100MB patch I finally got to load up the game for the first time and get started with the character creation. During this beta there are only two factions that are available to play: The Federation and The Klingon Empire. As it is getting you to the grips with the game, you can only start your character at the Federation and then later on you will be able to play as the Klingons.
In the Federation character selection you can select between three different unique classes. You can choose from a Science Officer, which will allow you to do healing, you can be an Engineer which will help boost your repair time on your ship as well as upgrading weapons easily and also creating weapon turrets. The final is Tactical; you get better offiensive capabilities in space as well as on the ground and get boosts to your health.
Once you have picked your class you can then customise this one step further by adding a species to your character. This will have unique boosts, ranging from increased health and attacks to better health regeneration. All of these will be added to which class you have picked. Finally you finish off your character by adding three unique boosts to help your character even more. These range from allowing you to get better resistance to certain weapons to increase your health regeneration and also allows you to get better boosts from your ship.
Once all of this is out the way you can then proceed to advancing on customising your character, this ranges from the look of your character, this is includes all the nitty gritty stuff like nose mouth teeth etc. You can ethier use the default options which uses simple sliders or you can go to a advanced mode and really tweak everything again. Also the uniform which you are wearing as default. You can either use this to make them look like yourself or what I like doing well you can see below in this screen shot.
Once you have ticked all your boxes you will then jump into the first few tutorial missions.
These missions will teach you the basics of combat on the ground, as well as in space. What you will notice is that a lot of the brief information you are given in this is quite concise and is information you will need to get ahead in the game. A lot of the battles and the action you can repeat as many times as you want giving you chance to fully stretch your legs before moving on. During the opening missions you will be fighting against the Borg, which have attacked a fleet of ships and are currently putting up a strong offence. During this mission you will be able to choose your first Bridge officer. These are Crew members which you can use to boost your current ship and how it performs. All the Bridge officers are divided up into the three original classes which you could choose for your character. Again these have different skills and its best to have a balanced crew.
So this is it after a few days of play I've already got a full crew of bridge officers and I'm currently doing missions to start levelling up my character. On the whole it really plays out like a normal MMO. I don't think the Star Trek universe takes anything way from this as you dont have to be a big fan of the Sci-fi genre or even a Trekkie to have fun. I must admit the bit I'm loving so far is the space battles and the amount of action that is on the screen at one time.
The fact that parties are joined if there is one or more of you on the mission is great too. This allows for the difficulty and the amount of enemies to rise up and gives bigger and more fantastic visuals throughout the game. The AI is pretty basic, but all enemies have different styles with which you need to attack them and this brings variety in what I would think would be a standard standoff in fighting. As most of the missions I have had are just go here do this, patrol this area, I thought there wouldn't be much variety, but I have been shocked. I currently fought Kilingons, been to strange new worlds and even had some awesome upgrades.
It's a great MMO and next time I'll be explaining how I'm getting on so far with the game and some of my best bits and worst bits I have found, so stay tuned.
i haven't finished reading Part 4 yet, but so far have enjoyed it reading it.
I wasn't planning on playing any MMOs till Star Wars comes out
but i am really tempted now to buy this
Again thanks for putting the time in to this one Si, will post again once i have finished reading part 4 (have to be tomorrow now)
Even though I would like to play a MMO right from launch, I've got too much going on in Feb and March, but I'll look at maybe pouring hours into exploring the galaxy in a starship in the summer
STO is great, my only reservation is the missions them selves are a bit too open, it can take an age to find where you're supposed to be, and even then take longer to find the one small speck in space that you need to attack/interact with.
HOwever, the feeling of joy when you finally take down 3 Klingon Birds of Prey with minimal structural integrity left, 70% casualties and no help whatsoever is fantastic.
THis is the first time I have felt I might just pay monthly for a game...
Even though I would like to play a MMO right from launch, I've got too much going on in Feb and March, but I'll look at maybe pouring hours into exploring the galaxy in a starship in the summer
STO is great, my only reservation is the missions them selves are a bit too open, it can take an age to find where you're supposed to be, and even then take longer to find the one small speck in space that you need to attack/interact with.
HOwever, the feeling of joy when you finally take down 3 Klingon Birds of Prey with minimal structural integrity left, 70% casualties and no help whatsoever is fantastic.
THis is the first time I have felt I might just pay monthly for a game...
Yes Some missions you can have a few problems on finding on what you need to do but most of it comes from checking the objectives and then look at the map for the flashing way points.
Totally agree on the combat though I haven't felt so good until you take down 3 or 4 ships even if they are a higher rank than you.
(Tried to create the Fleet myself the other day, before I read this thread.
The game is good, but I'm not sure it's "great" at the moment. Sure it's only been out a week, but Cryptic haven't exactly had a great reputation with MMOs.
It's interesting that they went for a single server set-up. OK, it's all instanced so it's not like Eve in that sense, but does seems to have caused some problems, mainly that I'm posting this now since I haven't been able to get onto the server since about 9pm when I got DCed while changing instances. The game seems to have been more popular than Cryptic thought it would be, and as such playing on weekend evenings seems to be a nogo situation (a bit like Eve sometimes).
My views? Space combat is great. Still get enjoyment out of firing torpedoes into unshielded ships!
Ground combat I find tedious. It's just a bit lack-lustre. As an engineering officer I can now make drones and turrets, but it takes a bit of preping before each fight and they aren't that great. Just does't feel I'm getting the same sort of achievement as with space battles (which is actually true XP/loot/reward wise).
Both get repetitive (as all MMOs do) and I've settled down into certain tactics, and this is one of my main gripes with the game. It's not very linear with character development. Your character gets a new skill at x3 (general space), x5 (class specific ground) and x8 (class specific space). That's seems great, but I hardly use any of them. It's the Bridge Officier powers that I use, and they only get levelled up when you reach a new rank (every 10 levels) with a new ship. With a new ship you can gain upto 3 space powers at once, and another 4 ground powers. Not to mention the extra stuff you new ship gets (more weapons and upgrade abilities). You get sod all during the 10 levels in rank, but all of a sudden it's all change when you get promoted. This means that after the novelty has worn off 2-3 levels into your new rank, nothing much is going to change until you hit that next rank in 7-8 levels. Just find it annoying that that's no real short term goals.
Anyway, that's just my opinion so far. My in game handle is my forum user name with "uk" after it if you want to look me up. I'll hopefully be in an Interpid class ship tomorrow if I can stay on the server long enough!
On another note, I have just popped the Klingon Preview up
You can find that here