Tag Archives: Star Trek Online

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August 4, 2023

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Beaming back to Star Trek Online after an extended leave

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Jeraddo. Its… oh, you know the rest. 

I’ve been in a bit of a rut when it comes to gaming. I play Guild Wars 2 a lot, dabble in The Elder Scrolls Online, and play some single-player games on the side (largely Tears of the Kingdom lately). Having a kid has made me prioritize known quantities in my gaming time; I hate feeling like I wasted my precious gaming time on an experience that wasn’t as fun as I had hoped, so I would rather play something comfortable. 

But sometimes I want something different. ESO’s action combat is fun, but not really relaxing, and its story focus means you kind of have to devote your full attention to it with your sound on, or you are missing half the game. GW2’s hybrid actiony-tab-target combat is my all-time favorite, but sometimes I want something a little more chill. Plus, to be honest, I’m a little concerned for its future, so my motivation to log in has waned a little, at least until the expansion drops.

I won’t bore you with the list of MMOs I tried and bounced off of — new games, old games, revisiting favorites, and dipping into games I have little to no history with — but I finally landed on Star Trek Online. I was there when this game launched (Cryptic Jank™ and all) and for a while I was in the habit of coming back every year or two, but it has been quite a while since I played it seriously. 

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds continues to be surprisingly good (the show they should have made instead of Discovery), handling heavy topics like the horrors of war and PTSD in Under the Cloak of War, but balancing it with goofy, lighthearted episodes like Those Old Scientists and Subspace Rhapsody, and somehow making it feel cohesive with well-written characters, even if those three episodes in a row did give me a bit of tonal whiplash. I’m not ready for the season to be almost over! 

Trek has been on my mind lately, and STO has a nice mix of well-voiced story content and mindless repeatable Patrol missions, not to mention duty officer missions that let me get XP and other regards while I’m offline. Plus it’s a game I’m already comfortable in. Exactly what I was looking for! 

My project last time I played was a new Tactical captain (an Aenar, before Strange New Worlds made it cool), and I tried picking up where I left off with her. I even used a free T6 ship coupon I had lying around to pick up the Lexington class for her, which is a variant of the recently-canonized Odyssey class (the class of the Enterprise-F, which appeared in Star Trek: Picard for about 30 seconds before biting the space dust) that can load dual canons and includes a hangar. Gotta love space pets! Unfortunately, there’s something about the Tactical class that I just don’t enjoy, so, while I got a little farther with her this time, ultimately I ended up rolling a new Science captain instead. Sure, I have a level 40-something Sci captain just sitting there, but I’m not feeling his look/theme anymore. It’s been so long that I either don’t remember or haven’t played most of the game’s existing story, so a fresh start was welcome anyway. 

I remembered that I also had the T6 Titan class sitting around. It’s one of my favorite ship designs (I even bought a little model of it, which is currently sitting in my office), so I nabbed it when it first came out, originally for the aforementioned Tac captain. Then, after flying it for a bit, I realized that, while it has the cool ability to flip between a Tac ship and a Sci ship at the push of a button, it’s much better at being a Sci ship, and while changing ship types mid-combat sounds cool, it’s not very useful in practice given that you can’t actually swap your gear or build or officers on the fly. But hey, it’s perfect for my new Sci captain! I miss having hangar pets, but there’s nothing stopping me from flying the Lexington later on with this new captain if I feel like it. 

When I played a lot back in the day (between launch and the Delta Rising expansion), I was a “broadside beam boat” player, with heavy, slow, tanky Engineering ships/captains that use phaser arrays on the front and back, turn the ship parallel to its target is in the overlap area of both the front and back weapons, and burn down enemies slowly but can basically never die. This time around, I am trying the opposite approach: I’m throwing everything forward with a bunch of torpedoes and one set of dual cannons on the front and all 360 degree turrets on the back. I was afraid that this wouldn’t work as well with the middle-of-the-road maneuverability of science ships as it does with the more nimble tactical ones, but it suits me just fine. I have my bridge officers loaded up with as many AoE exotic “space magic” abilities as I can, and it’s a lot of fun. Understanding of optimal character builds in this game has always eluded me, but the setup I have is fun and it gets me by, which is the important thing.

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October 30, 2017

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5 MMOs I Wish I Was Playing

Free time is a limited resource, and I can usually only budget my time into two, maybe three, games, MMO or not, before one or more of them get pushed out. Don’t get me wrong, I feel like I get plenty of gaming time in, but there are a lot of games out there that I’d love to be playing right now that I simply haven’t had time to get to, or haven’t gotten to in a while. Here are my top five right now.

Destiny 2
This is, of course, the big new game in the genre. Yes, it’s an MMO-shooter hybrid, and I’m not really into shooters, but I loved the Mass Effect games, and couldn’t stop thinking how great those games would be as an MMO. Destiny 2 isn’t Mass Effect, but I think it could give a similar feel.
I played the PC beta, and, to be honest, I wasn’t terribly impressed by the story presentation. It wasn’t awful, but they did a very poor job explaining who these people are and why I should care about anything that’s happening. Maybe there are some things in the live game that I didn’t get in the beta?

Warframe
Speaking of MMO-shooter hybrids, there’s also Warframe. I gave this game a try a while back when Twitch Prime gave away a free ‘frame (promos work!), and was surprised by how much fun I had. I was especially impressed smoothness of the gameplay (running into a room, sliding, and headshotting a bunch of enemies with my bow before I stop is oddly satisfying). After the initial story arc I was a little lost as to what I was doing, ended up getting destroyed by some missions that were likely too high for me, and never got back around to it.

WildStar
I wrote a whole post on this not long ago, so I won’t rehash it here. Suffice it to say that I’ve been thinking about this game a lot lately, and I think I might just have to go back before the excellent Halloween event is over.

Guild Wars 1
I never played the original Guild Wars when it was in its heyday, but since I’ve been into Guild Wars 2, I picked this game up as well. I’d like to play through the Nightfall campaign, as it shares a location (and, apparently, some themes) with Guild Wars 2’s new Path of Fire expansion. Guild Wars is one of those games that seems fun, but I’ve always had trouble finding a class that I can get into. Hopefully one of these times I’ll go back and find one that clicks.

Star Trek Online
I used to make at least an annual pilgrimage back to this game, but I haven’t really played seriously since I played through the Legacy of Romulus expansion. I love Star Trek, but was really disappointed by Discovery. I’m not sure if that makes me want to come back for a dose of “good” Star Trek (not that STO is always high quality or canonically consistent by any stretch of the imagination), or stay away from it because inevitably there will be ST:D (seriously, CBS, you really need to think about your acronyms. There are five other space shuttles you could name your show after, you know) crossover content.

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February 18, 2016

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Licensed IP MMOs Aren’t A Bad Thing

Licensed MMOs
I saw a player proclaiming in Guild Wars 2 the other day that he or she would never play a game based on an unoriginal intellectual property. Their reasoning was the usual; since the creators do not “own” the story, they are limited in what they can do with the lore. It also opens the developers up to all sorts of criticism for “breaking lore” (don’t bring up the Rune-Keeper in LotRO global chat; it’s still a huge sore spot in the community over seven years later). As someone who just got back into Lord of the Rings Online for the umpteenth time, I actually disagree with this rather strongly. While ultimately gameplay is what makes a game good or bad, I think a licensed IP can actually be a really good thing for a game.

The License Sells The Game
Let be honest, MMOs are businesses, businesses need to market their products, and brand recognition is huge. I know it’s hard to imagine, but there are people out there–gamers even–who have never played an MMORPG and know absolutely nothing about Guild Wars, EverQuest, or possibly even (gasp) World of Warcraft. Those people, however, can probably identify several super heroes and have seen at least some of the Star Wars movies. Unless this hypothetical person has a friend who plays, there’s not much of a chance a game like Guild Wars 2 will catch their eye at Walmart, but if they recognize a franchise they like they’re significantly more likely to give it a try.

Many Players Already Know The Lore
I still feel fairly lost as to the lore of Guild Wars 2 after playing it for a couple of years, but as soon as I stepped into Lord of the Rings Online, I already knew the world because I had read the books and seen the movies (yes, in that order). The enjoyment in exploring Tyria is discovering new locations, whereas the enjoyment of exploring Middle-Earth is all of the moments that make you say “Oh! These are the trolls that Bilbo defeated!” or “Hey, this is the spot where Frodo got stabbed by a Nazgul!” or “Man, the Old Forest is a huge pain to find your way around in, just like Tolkien described it!” Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but I tend to prefer the latter a little, mainly because I don’t have to trawl dev posts and wikis to learn the lore. The game may have to fill me in on the current political climate of The Old Republic era or the fallout of the destruction of Romulus, but the game world at large is already familiar to me long before launch day.

Storytelling Limitations Aren’t Necessarily Bad
Licensed IPs are like the storytelling equivalent to Twitter; some people prefer it because of its limitations. And really, it’s not that limiting. There are still plenty of stories to be told in the Marvel universe or the Star Wars universe. If there weren’t, there wouldn’t be an ongoing franchise beyond the game. Furthermore, the vast majority of the individual writers, even in a game with an original IP, have a story pretty much handed to them. They may have the freedom to add a few minor characters or create events that change the world in small ways, but for the most part, by the time the game is a few years old the people who wrote the original story likely doesn’t even work there anymore, and if they do, you can be they don’t write every day-to-day quest added into the game. At that point the writers for a game based on an original IP is basically the same boat as someone who’s writing a story for a game whose IP is owned by a major movie studio. Yes, there may be more red tape and approval process for the licensed game, but either way they don’t have total freedom/

All of that said, I agree that there are downsides to licensed IPs. The biggest and most obvious downfall is the license itself. If Lord of the Rings Online was an original game it could go on indefinitely, maybe shifting into maintenance mode at some point, but still there for the loyalists to hang out in. I don’t mean to bring this up every time I post about LotRO, but its Tolkien license comes up for renewal next year, and I think there’s a real question as to whether or not all parties involved will feel like it’s worth their time and money to renew it. The other downside is that, for every player the IP attracts, there will be one more that it pushes away, like the player mentioned at the start of this post. I’ve played some pretty awful movie tie in shovelware games in my day, and I can see why players would associate those games with games like LotRO, SWTOR, or DCUO.

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October 21, 2015

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Three Features Every MMO Should Have: Star Trek Online

This is a part of my Three Features Every MMO Should Have series.

Unique space combat
STO Space CombatI know, I know, every game can’t have space combat. What I mean here is that, in a genre where the best way to say what’s unique about a given MMO is to describe how its combat differs slightly from WoW, STO has come up with a completely different (if sometimes a little frustrating) combat system, that is, ship-to-ship space combat. It doesn’t mean you have to throw out traditional MMO combat, but it would be nice to have something different to break things up when combat gets monotonous. The only game I can think of off the top of my head that has done something like this is Star Wars: The Old Republic, albeit a little halfheartedly, with its starfighter combat. I say halfheartedly because SWTOR’s space combat is basically a minigame, but minigames with reasonable rewards are a welcome distraction in my book.

Character creator
Character CreatorI can safely say that Star Trek Online is the only MMO I’ve played where I’ve spent more time in the character creator than in PvE. With enough fiddling on the ridiculous number of face and body sliders, you can make your character look like just about anything you want, especially the design-your-own alien species. I’ve seen some really convincing characters, from various Doctors from Doctor Who to an excellent Na’vi from Avatar to a variety of recreated Star Trek characters, both human and alien. It’s unfortunate that there is a general lack of clothing options for the game. Yes, I get it, Starfleet et. al. are supposed to be military organizations, so realistically there should be one uniform for everyone, the only variance from person to person being maybe a recolor to identify your section, but that wouldn’t go down well in a video game. STO’s sister MMO, the now all-but-dead Champions Online, has a great variety of costume pieces for your superhero (most of the more interesting ones are, of course, locked in the cash shop), but, ironically, I’ve always felt like it could use a little more customization of your actual character. I guess they’re trying to limit your superheroes to human mutants only, but I’d love to play a more exotic-looking hero. Maybe their secret future project will be somewhere in between?

Optional shooter mode
STO ShooterTab target? Action Combat? Why not both? At launch, Star Trek Online’s ground combat was slow, boring, and a bit flaky, especially compared to space combat. Well, it’s still flaky, but when Cryptic overhauled the combat and added shooter mode in 2011 (was it really that long ago? I’m old), it made ground missions a lot more bearable. Since you really only have three weapon skills and a handfull of cooldowns anyway, shooter mode really doesn’t feel like a disadvantage most of the time. The best part is that it’s completely optional, and can be toggled on and off with a single keystroke. There’s even a small damage buff for using shooter mode versus tab targeting, since there’s a chance you can miss targets. I tend to do a lot of combat in shooter mode, then switch to MMO mode when I’m out of combat. It was a little weird when I briefly gave Cryptic’s other MMO, Neverwinter, a try and it was permanently locked in shooter mode. It was kind of a turnoff for me to be honest, but I’m sure there are lots of people who prefer it, and I imagine it makes things easier to develop with one combat mode instead of two.

Side note here: I picked the features I planned on talking about for each game before I even started this series, and, as if they read my mind (or at least my blog notes), Guild Wars 2 has recently announced a system very similar to this one that will be added as part of their Heart of Thorns expansion. I’m excited, because Guild Wars 2 has always seemed like the perfect game for this, since it’s always had something of an action combat flavor to it. Can’t wait to try it out this Friday!

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November 4, 2014

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Monthly Gaming Check-In: October

During my blogging hiatus (see previous post), I plan to give at least monthly check-ins about what I’ve been playing lately. Here’s the first, catching you up on what I did in October.

I know this is probably news to you all, but there’s this little-known company called BioWare that makes really good games. What? You knew that already? Well apparently I didn’t. I’ve owned Mass Effect for a while now–I got it and its sequel free for filling out some survey about Origin (summary: Steam is better, don’t bother trying)–but never played it past the opening level. Ever pick up an older game go “holy crap, why didn’t I play this years ago”? That’s what I just did with Mass Effect. I’ve been hearing for years about how it’s the crowning achievement of humanity, but I’ve been told that about a variety of games that I’ve been unimpressed by (Skyrim, I’m looking at you). But a few weeks ago I was bored and looking for something new and different, so I figured I’d give it a shot, and I was blown away. The depth of the story, the quality of the graphics (MoCap!), the voice acting… it all blends together into one incredibly immersive package. Better yet is that they’ve done a masterful job of keeping the gameplay and story feeling fluid, thanks in large part to the conversation wheel. I don’t feel like I’m stopping to watch a cutscene, I feel like I’m there helping make the decisions that determine how the story plays out. And many of the decisions aren’t easy, either; I’ve had to stop and think about what to do, and I’ve even found myself reloading because things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to. I also love the idea that your save from the previous game loads into the next one to continue your story and relationships with your teammates.

Speaking of BioWare, Mass Effect reminded me of how much I missed Star Wars: The Old Republic. I played it a lot when it first came out in late 2011. It’s one of the few games I’ve ever actually paid a subscription fee to, and it’s probably the most excited I’ve been for a new MMO launch. Sadly, though, a few months after release, the new content dropped off, and so did I. I’ve never been back since, mostly due to the rather overly restrictive F2P. But there’s been an expansion since then (plus the starfighter and housing updates, both of which sound pretty cool), and another one on the way next month, so I figured I’d give life as an F2P a try. As I mentioned, free game is pretty restrictive, even compared to F2P early adopters like LotRO. Here’s my breakdown of restrictions:

Kind of terrible:

  • A few of the raids must be purchased.
  • The raids that are available are restricted to a few plays per week, as are PvP arenas, unless you buy a weekly pass.
  • Restrictive gold cap with no way to unlock other than subscribe (seriously, I’d gladly pay $5-$10 for this, but apparently you don’t want my money).
  • Must purchase the right to wear purple gear. This one probably bothers me the most. Worth the $20ish to remove it for all characters? I haven’t decided yet.

Not so bad:

  • Can only play as the three most boring races, namely Humans, Cyborg Humans, and Zabrak (aka horned Humans with face tats).
  • Small inventory and bank. Expansions must be purchased.
  • Several cosmetic options must be purchased (hide head piece, unify colors to match chest, etc.).
  • Must pay to unlock hotbars. This one is just silly. Sure, as a preferred player I can have four, which is all I ever used four when I subscribed, but it’s still ridiculous that they expect to make money off of adding a box to the interface.
  • Only two crafting skill slots. You really only need two to craft gear, but to craft augments (not unlike gems in WoW), you need a third.

Note that I’m a former subscriber; many of the restrictions on people who haven’t payed a dime are worse. BioWare will tell you that a lot of these restrictions (most notably the gold cap) are to cut down on gold farmers/sellers/spammers, but it just feels like I’m being punished for not paying the game tax. But F2P isn’t completely without merit; I can play the story to my heart’s content, and that’s where the game really shines anyway.

I had a few Cartel Coins (premium currency) lying around as a reward for subscribing prior to the F2P transition, and, rather than doing something sensible like saving for the epic gear unlock, I bought the Cathar species, because why wouldn’t I want to play as a cat person? I’ve rolled an Imperial Operative, because it’s almost universally regarded as the best story and I never got very far with my sniper last time around, and a Jedi Sage, because I miss wielding a lightsaber (even if I’m mostly a caster, it still looks cool). Yes, both of those are healer classes. Apparently Guild Wars 2’s “everyone is a healer, therefore no one is” policy made me really miss healing. Both are still pretty low level, but I’m having a lot of fun.

Speaking of recent expansions to licensed sci-fi MMOs, Star Trek Online just released its Delta Rising expansion. I was excited about this one, but somehow it isn’t pulling me in the way I thought it would. I was playing it for about a month before the expansion hit (during the bonus XP time), and sadly I think I got just enough of a taste of the game before the expansion hit for the fun to wear off and remind me of the frustrations that caused me to drift away the last time. Star Trek Online is one of those games I can’t seem to get away from for too long, despite its faults, so I’m sure I’ll be back to play the new content eventually, just not right now.

October also saw the release of Super Smash Bros 3DS. My excitement for this game warrants an entire post for itself, but for now, suffice it to say that I’m a long time Super Smash Bros. fan, and I’m absolutely in love with this game. It feels so much more well-balanced than any previous game, and the online play actually works most of the time (as long as the person you’re playing isn’t on the other side of the ocean and/or have really bad Wi-Fi reception). Playing the game on the 3DS’s circle slider and tiny buttons is no substitute for the almighty Gamecube Controller, but it took surprisingly little adjustment. Can’t wait to play the Wii U version in a couple weeks!