Thats true it is very focused on PvP, but the other options are being added to, not removed.

Then you must not have seen some of the recent patches. The last colony addition for example, building structures to support your colonies population and customize it. Ranches/farms, hyperwave transmitter towers, fusion plants. And a lot more to follow like appartment buildings, schools, immortrax centers, planetary weapons and shields.

Or the F-207 Valkyrie fighters for that matter. Jump from your ship onto a fighter, fly in formation with your buddies into a planets atmosphere, land and go check out the indigenous lifeforms while the rest of the crew stais on the ship in orbit staying on look out. Something I actually did a few hours ago.

Originally posted by thunder84

Originally posted by Nebless

Also what was with the one tag "Retro Bridge Look",  what retro was he looking at, cuz I couldn't place it.

To me, the bridge looked pretty "retro" Defiant-style, however it's been supersized.

Supersized would throw off the prespective, I'll have to watch the DS9 Tribble episode tonight to see what the bridge looked like.  When I think retro I go back to Classic Trek.  Now that would be one sweet choice.

Thanks for clearing that one up.

Originally posted by Nickr593

 

 

Looks pretty good, but I don't think I'm gonna try out STO. I just dislike the idea of everyone Captaining a ship at first. I like fully crewed ships, Players not NPCS, and the teamwork. I am not leaving my shell in SQO just to play basically alone on a ship.

Cryptic, You can do better

Especially with your Budget.

 

If you check out Champions Online you would realize that no, no they can't do any better.

STO closed beta started last month and it is scheduled to be released in February, not nearly enough time to get the bug reports and fixes needed for release date, and if they do the same thing that they did with the beta of CO, they will ignore the beta testers and release the game in all it's un-finished glory.

I'm not dismissing the game entirely, but I'm not going to bother with it until several months after release, hoping that by that time they might have started to add necessary content and fixed the inevitable imbalance issues.

To Cryptic:

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

If you pre-order the game from GameStop, you can get avaible the Classic TOS Constitution Class Heavy Cruiser.  The game provides the Movie Constitution Heavy Crusier as a option.  My question is will this SE version provide the proper bridge from the original series?

Originally posted by thunder84

Originally posted by talindar

" This collection game encourages people to seek out, create or trade for the officer with the ideal configuration of eight skills for them."

 

Hmm...wouldn't this basically lead to the selling of tradeable officers, thus creating a "slave market" so to speak?

This isn't your daddy's Star Trek...it's great grandpa's.

 

What exactly makes you think this would function as a "slave market" ?

Ever heard of an "Officer's Exchange Program" ? It's been seen/used in Star Trek, among others with Riker serving on a Klingon ship, and Worf's brother Kurn, serving on the Enterprise.

Sub-standard officers are sometimes transferred to other postings (such as Barclay). In neither of these cases, are the officers considered "slaves". The officers serve either within the Klingon Defense Forces, or within Starfleet. And thus ultimately are under the leadership of the Admiralty at Starfleet Command, or the Klingon High Command.

Not a huge fan of the "supersized" bridges in STO, but I do understand the merit of making them larger and able to accomodate more people/players.

I dont rember the Klingon captin offering a new hull or "Pimping new Warp nacells" for Riker to server aboard his ship... thats what will make it slavery ;p

Maybe I read it wrong but it didnt seem like you could trade officers for parts...more like trading officers for officers.

It's fun to see the trolls come out, hi trolls!

Anyways, as far as there being a "slave trade", I highly doubt there will be any rare skills, so getting the skills you like for your bridge officer shouldn't be a problem. Since they apparently can only have 1 ground and 1 space skill per level, that gives you 8 of each. How your officer performs will be based on what skills you outfit him with, not how rare he is.

This seems like a good way to have players customize the way they perform in combat, not to mention letting them change roles on the fly. If you're fighting a bunch of small ships, maybe you want your officer with the torpedo spread. If you're fighting the battlecruiser, maybe you want to swap him out with an officer that can drain shields.

DANA wrote:

" Bridge Officers provide players with a more iconic and complete Star Trek experience. Part of the fantasy is to be the Captain and while some out there would no doubt love to travel the galaxies in the role of Ship’s Doctor, that’s not exactly compelling gameplay for the average player.  "

Informative article over all, but then you had to take it down ten notches by parroting this over-used strawman argument.  First of all, no Ship's Doctor class/profession was ever developed, so how do you know if something is compelling or not if it wasn't even created?

You also say "part of the fantasy" is to be a Captain. Well 'part of the fantasy' is to run ones ship from an interior. Another 'part of the fantasy' is to have player crews. Cryptic, and journalists, have created this circular argument that is beyond frustrating. Without proof or evidence, its assumed that being a Captain is the ONLY part of the fantasy that matters.

Finally, "Bridge officers provide players with a more iconice and complete Star Trek experience..." More iconic than what? Not having them?  And if Iconic was so damn important, then Cryptic would have developed a system for player crews because that is even MORE Iconic.

It should be noted that in all of those bridge screenshots, the ship's viewscreen is displaying the planetoid known as Memory Alpha: memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Memory_Alpha

Also, those bridges look way, way, way, WAY too huge. They look too huge at the point of being utterly unrealistic and very immersion breaking for me. If I'm flying a Defiant class ship (which these bridges all appear to be) I want the bridge to feel like the small spartan warship the Defiant is supposed to be. I know this game is in beta, but please, please, please Cryptic, scale the bridges back to something more reasonable.

Originally posted by Cerion

DANA wrote:

" Bridge Officers provide players with a more iconic and complete Star Trek experience. Part of the fantasy is to be the Captain and while some out there would no doubt love to travel the galaxies in the role of Ship’s Doctor, that’s not exactly compelling gameplay for the average player.  "

Informative article over all, but then you had to take it down ten notches by parroting this over-used strawman argument.  First of all, no Ship's Doctor class/profession was ever developed, so how do you know if something is compelling or not if it wasn't even created?

You also say "part of the fantasy" is to be a Captain. Well 'part of the fantasy' is to run ones ship from an interior. Another 'part of the fantasy' is to have player crews. Cryptic, and journalists, have created this circular argument that is beyond frustrating. Without proof or evidence, its assumed that being a Captain is the ONLY part of the fantasy that matters.

Finally, "Bridge officers provide players with a more iconice and complete Star Trek experience..." More iconic than what? Not having them?  And if Iconic was so damn important, then Cryptic would have developed a system for player crews because that is even MORE Iconic.

 

Exactly.

I've seen fan pages devoted to Dr. Julian Bashir. I'm willing to bet that the fan who made that page would prefer to be like her hero rather than a captain. Why are all these people assuming that everone just loves the captains and wants to be one of them? What about all thev fans of Scotty or Data or Spock? They're being left out in the cold because people like Cryptic are making brash assumptions that really have no basis in reality. And that does not bode well for this game...

if i go klingon i want the option to shoot my bridge officers to force the others to perform better.

Originally posted by Xondar123

Originally posted by Cerion

DANA wrote:

" Bridge Officers provide players with a more iconic and complete Star Trek experience. Part of the fantasy is to be the Captain and while some out there would no doubt love to travel the galaxies in the role of Ship’s Doctor, that’s not exactly compelling gameplay for the average player.  "

Informative article over all, but then you had to take it down ten notches by parroting this over-used strawman argument.  First of all, no Ship's Doctor class/profession was ever developed, so how do you know if something is compelling or not if it wasn't even created?

You also say "part of the fantasy" is to be a Captain. Well 'part of the fantasy' is to run ones ship from an interior. Another 'part of the fantasy' is to have player crews. Cryptic, and journalists, have created this circular argument that is beyond frustrating. Without proof or evidence, its assumed that being a Captain is the ONLY part of the fantasy that matters.

Finally, "Bridge officers provide players with a more iconice and complete Star Trek experience..." More iconic than what? Not having them?  And if Iconic was so damn important, then Cryptic would have developed a system for player crews because that is even MORE Iconic.

 

 

Exactly.

I've seen fan pages devoted to Dr. Julian Bashir. I'm willing to bet that the fan who made that page would prefer to be like her hero rather than a captain. Why are all these people assuming that everone just loves the captains and wants to be one of them? What about all thev fans of Scotty or Data or Spock? They're being left out in the cold because people like Cryptic are making brash assumptions that really have no basis in reality. And that does not bode well for this game...

Hmm, there should have been something along the lines of personalities for the crew at least.  Not only can you not play Bashir, you can't even have him on your crew.  All doctors are the same, more or less, after all.
 

I almost wonder (well, instant brainstorm) if they shouldn't have done something where you don't play anything in particular per se.  You aren't a member of the crew, you aren't the ship, you aren't quite all of them together either.  Instead are identified with a ship and crew, and you can control the ship (in combat for instance) or a member of the crew, but only one at a time.  Then quests and such basically pit you with problems that you have to solve utilizing the crew, but the crew will act independently of you to an extent (based on their personalities).  That let's some crew members doing boring stuff that takes a long time while you control one of the people more involved in the action at the moment (and later you can get the info from the guy doing the boring stuff).  Sometimes the focus of things might be on a planet, sometimes it might be in space, sometimes it might be on the ship, and sometimes a combination of all of those, but in any case you can zoom in on the action and control one of your "people/things" to help resolve the situation.  If you use that person to talk to someone else, then the dialogue options are appropriate for that person's personality (if you have Worf try to be a diplomat it won't be nearly as effective as Picard..unless perhaps they are Klingons or something).  I think that might have been pretty awesome to play.  A lot of potentially for very interesting multi-player interaction.

Now, I suppose some people might try to claim STO is this, but without personalities for the crew and with the fact it identifies you as the captain and no internal ship problems, it loses out a lot (fails in other ways too).  That said, not having personalities is the major loss as you're simply not going to identify as strongly with the crew.  They should have spent another year or two and developed some procedural technology for personalities and crew interactions at the very least. 

Originally posted by maelstorm1

if i go klingon i want the option to shoot my bridge officers to force the others to perform better.

I'd be more worried about them shooting you if you fail that mission... Klingons often earn promotions through assassination...

Originally posted by Xondar123

Originally posted by maelstorm1

if i go klingon i want the option to shoot my bridge officers to force the others to perform better.

 

I'd be more worried about them shooting you if you fail that mission... Klingons often earn promotions through assassination...

That was my thought exactly.
 

Nice article, the game sounds better everytime I read something new...I will be trying this out.  Hopefully it can keep my attention for more than 3 months :)

---

They won’t have full blown personalities like side-kicks in single-player RPGs like Dragon Age, but they won’t be anonymous peons either.

---

Hmm... Doesn't sound good to me. Based on the TV shows, what could be more important than the character interaction between the captain and the crew? By having crew members without distinct personalities, I feel like this suggest that there will be a lack of story and character development in the game overall. Does it make any sense that you will have more meaningful interactions with random quest NPCs than you'll have with your own crew? And look at the screenshot on this article - the two female crewmembers look like they have the exact same head and face. Weak.

I'm not saying that I need elaborate back-stories like in Dragon Age, but if the crew has no personality than they're nothing more than a stat item to help you go fly around and shoot stuff better. Ho hum. Not interested.

I dont see why player crews are constantly being brought up. They have several reasons why they didnt go that route. The biggest being what happens when a specific player isnt needed??? Say you are the doctor of a ship. What are you supposed to do when the ship is warping to the next mission??? What if the next mission doesnt call for your character or abilities????? "Hey lets bring Counselor Jax cause she hasnt gone on any missions yet".

The reason they made everyone a captain is because 99.9% of the classic Trek episodes revolved around Kirk.

Originally posted by Xondar123

Originally posted by Cerion

DANA wrote:

" Bridge Officers provide players with a more iconic and complete Star Trek experience. Part of the fantasy is to be the Captain and while some out there would no doubt love to travel the galaxies in the role of Ship’s Doctor, that’s not exactly compelling gameplay for the average player.  "

Informative article over all, but then you had to take it down ten notches by parroting this over-used strawman argument.  First of all, no Ship's Doctor class/profession was ever developed, so how do you know if something is compelling or not if it wasn't even created?

You also say "part of the fantasy" is to be a Captain. Well 'part of the fantasy' is to run ones ship from an interior. Another 'part of the fantasy' is to have player crews. Cryptic, and journalists, have created this circular argument that is beyond frustrating. Without proof or evidence, its assumed that being a Captain is the ONLY part of the fantasy that matters.

Finally, "Bridge officers provide players with a more iconice and complete Star Trek experience..." More iconic than what? Not having them?  And if Iconic was so damn important, then Cryptic would have developed a system for player crews because that is even MORE Iconic.

 

 

Exactly.

I've seen fan pages devoted to Dr. Julian Bashir. I'm willing to bet that the fan who made that page would prefer to be like her hero rather than a captain. Why are all these people assuming that everone just loves the captains and wants to be one of them? What about all thev fans of Scotty or Data or Spock? They're being left out in the cold because people like Cryptic are making brash assumptions that really have no basis in reality. And that does not bode well for this game...

By heart I fully agree. I have many fav Trek characters who are NOT captains. I love Trek mostly for the crew interaction and I could not care less for space combat.

By brain however I wonder, what would someone as, say, Medic do all day? Be in sick bay and tend people? Or a  Chief Engeneer? Stand in engeneering all day & press buttons to raise warp efficiency? I admit I can't really see anything to do for such ideas. I can imagine however a part of the game which has some quests on board starships or space stations. I am as unhappy with the idea that the players are all captains, but truth be told, I cant really imagine a working concept otherwise.

Originally posted by Elikal

By brain however I wonder, what would someone as, say, Medic do all day? Be in sick bay and tend people? Or a  Chief Engeneer? Stand in engeneering all day & press buttons to raise warp efficiency? I admit I can't really see anything to do for such ideas. I can imagine however a part of the game which has some quests on board starships or space stations. I am as unhappy with the idea that the players are all captains, but truth be told, I cant really imagine a working concept otherwise.

No one reads Drachasor's long posts (or even medium-length ones).  Sad now.  : (