The Fleet actually seems fairly active. I teamed up with charmtrap earlier today and gave him a hand with the mission. Folks are occasionally chatting in the channel. There’s money and items in the Fleet bank too.
To correct myself: there are one or two skills that behave like Passive skills in, say, WoW. They don’t affect player abilities directly, but will give a boost to all repairs, or will increase your starship’s defense, or will increase your hull strength.
Hey, some of the user generated content is pretty good. I played a mission last night called Dereliction Duty that was good enough to be “legit”, if you will. It has some detective work, some puzzle solving, some ship to ship combat and some ground combat - but ends on a cliffhanger, so I’ll be waiting for the next installment anxiously.
There are a bunch of really good ones that feel “Trek.” Don’t forget to pick up the daily mission, forget what it’s called, that gives out a big Dilithium reward for completing three Foundry missions. And also check the daily schedule (just click the mission icon). Sometimes you can get bonuses for doing Foundry missions.
Check out the STO forums for reviews and listings or Starbase UGC.
Mission creators also advertise new missions at Starbase UGC. These aren’t reviews as much as PR for new content. Some even create YouTube videos by way of advertising.
Are the user created missions any good? The ones in CoH were mostly horrible XP farms.
Yeah, there are a ton of good ones. Imagine all the Trekkers out there who really love and respect this setting compared to the horde of fans of the CoH setting…wait, nevermind. Also there aren’t really big rewards for creating or playing the Foundry missions so that is gone from the mix. That said, some folks have created farms for killing certain kinds of ships or taking a particular kind of damage to get the title/XP rewards. But they don’t seem anywhere as prominent.
The editor is also much more powerful and flexible so players can get fairly creative in how they go about structuring missions, maps, and dialogue. Architect was easier to use but only because it was incredibly dumbed down.
Man, you guys are jerks for rezzing this thread. So tempting. But what I’m really glad you’re not doing is posting pictures of your ships. That would be dirty pool.
-Tom
See, no ships! I can follow orders.
This chic’s outfit is sadly not in the C Store.
I think Tom’s gone so it’s okay to post pictures of our ships now.
Ha ha, you all fail. Those pictures don’t make me want to play at all! Although Rucker deserves points for composition.
I actually liked the ground-based stuff. It felt really sloppy until I got a handle on wrangling an away team. But once that happened, I liked getting all the pieces to work together, and equipping everyone, and positioning, and whatnot. A bit like a sci-fi version of Dragon Age. Still, not as much of teh sexxy as the spaceships.
-Tom
EDIT: RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!1!
Ground’s actually my favorite thing. Because I specced for it and love just mixing it up with different away teams to see how they function. But because I specced for ground I’m at my best in a big tough ship so space is usually just a matter of attrition in my cruiser. I may try an alt in an escort one day but I tend to be a one-character-per-game kind of player.
i’ve really fallen back into the grind, rolling a new character up to RA in 3 days, lol. 36 hours played in the last 2 weeks… D:
its the damn loot and equipping , first I get a new rank and ship , but that needs level appropriate gear, and so does my main character, and my entire bridge crew!
What’s PvP like in this game?
WarrenD
1715
Man I’m worried now, it all sounds so insidious to a weak willed gamer such as myself, you guy’s are all enablers.
From an MMO vet and a STO noob, I’m really enjoying this. STO is the first game in ages where I’ve logged in and didn’t feel like I already knew the deal. There are so many interesting systems that its totally sucked me in.
The Space and ground missions are both fun. The duty officer mission system is interesting and rewarding. I haven’t dug into the crafting yet, but it seems pretty deep if you want to really get into it. Plus there are warzones, and pvp and player made missions and special events and and and good lord, so much to do! And the best part? It’s free! They really don’t hit you over the head with the store. And because of that I’m already eyeing some upgrades that I might purchase (more inventory space among other things).
I’m enjoying myself, although I have trouble finding a lot of time to play. The duty officer system delights me. For something meant to be done in between other things, it’s responsible for a great deal of the game’s I’m-a-real-starship-captain flavor.
More tellingly, one of my friends (a Trek fan, but very, very MMO-averse) is also having a good time with it.
I still stand by my assessments, all along, that the game needs meaningful exploration (and the “meaning” would come out of more unpredictable variables, as well as a little more scientific literacy, that engage the imagination) and functional multi-player bridges because that bridge crew is, essentially, the natural adventuring party of Star Trek.
However, I agree that the new Duty Officer system is the meat on the bones that gives STO most of its Trek flavor.
The next step I’d take would be to build on that. Create more branching, interdependent, missions (like events in Crusader Kings or King of Dragon Pass) which currently exist but are fairly rare.
Also integrate Duty Officer missions with ground and space based missions so that they can lead to and from each other.
You might be analyzing some spectral trace as a generic Duty Officer astronomic mission, for example, and on a critical result instead of just getting bonus crafting materials possibly pick up one of several related space or ground missions (determined randomly). Maybe the crew detected an Undine incursion that now needs to be dealt with?
Conversely, let NPC foes in regular missions drop unique Duty Officer missions as well. Say you fell a Klingon Swordmaster and the game rolls well on the treasure table. Up comes a unique espionage mission for your DOs.
They don’t have to, and really shouldn’t, explicitly link together just play into one another. A player’s imagination will create all the narrative tissue he needs as events naturally play out.
I’m really loving my new Commander ship:
But I can’t seem to figure out how to use the alternate versions of the ship design. There’s a really sweet black version of this Cruiser with a pyramid-looking saucer on the front that I want to use, but it won’t stick. Are the alternate versions only for Gold accounts?
Go to a shipyard (usually at Earth Spacedock) and find the NPC who lets you customize your ship. You can swap in-and-out different parts, but it will cost you energy credits, which you don’t have to pay real money for. (You get them from completing quests and missions, as well as selling gear on the exchange.)
Each ship class has three variants to it, and if you click on the advanced tab in the customize screen, you can really get in the nitty gritty of swapping parts from all three variants around, as well as color schemes and colors.
There are ship classes that are premium that you have to pay C-Store points for (which are Cryptic’s version of Xbox Live Points). But each of those premium ship classes has three variants in it, and once you pay to unlock a class, you have access to all of its variants. Though, again, any modifications you make will cost energy credits; the more modifications, the more expensive.
The key is to hit Purchase when you’re done, not Save.
