Originally posted by Dana

So... a mea culpa (which will appear with more prominence in par two):

Cryptic informs me, after a few pointed it out, there is in fact auto attack.

That fact that I never gleaned how is a problem unto itself, but it's there and my numb thumb is more angry at me than ever.

Turns out if you hold CTRL and click certain skills (say phasers) it auto fires. So that entire section where I complain about a lack of auto attack is BS. Apologies to Cryptic and you guys who read it.

Don't sweat it, we're all just human.

I realize you're getting paid for this, but it is probably not easy to write a thing knowing exactly how it will be dissected and run through the cleaners. :)

Originally posted by Kontra

Originally posted by Dana

So... a mea culpa (which will appear with more prominence in par two):

Cryptic informs me, after a few pointed it out, there is in fact auto attack.

That fact that I never gleaned how is a problem unto itself, but it's there and my numb thumb is more angry at me than ever.

Turns out if you hold CTRL and click certain skills (say phasers) it auto fires. So that entire section where I complain about a lack of auto attack is BS. Apologies to Cryptic and you guys who read it.

 

I hope you will update the review then because that " no autofie" is definetly something that put a heavy weightbag in the "no go" end of my gaming scales and I'm sure it will do the same for others.

Its NOT a review.

its a preview and its ONLY part one.

My biggest complaint about this system is that this game really, really needs auto attack. Since 99% of your shots are from the 1 button, it's downright annoying to constantly spam it. Especially since it's not like one click is one shot. It tends to fire a phaser burst that takes a couple of seconds. ...

Agree whole heartedly on this one. I really hate clickfests, or let's click the exactly same key every 2-3 seconds ad nauseum. If I remember correctly, COX only had one "auto attack" ability at some point, which made me role my eyes. Do we want to play a game or carpal tunnel?

One totally unexpected feature that comes up often in away missions is the ability to pause the instance. Yep, you can pause in an MMO. This is a useful thing when you need to hit the head, and also helpful for the ability to analyze a situation and micro-manage your crew if that's your play style. It struck me as odd at first, even sacrilegious, but the truth is that I found myself using it in spite of myself. The pause button, by the way, is on a 45 second timer to prevent people from using it in group away missions to the point of annoyance.

Thank the MMO Gods for a pause button. Not exactly sure what the the "45 second timer" part means, but thank who ever will let me pause while I'm soloing, attending to the baby, etc. and not destroy my game experience.

Originally posted by unicorngtm

My biggest complaint about this system is that this game really, really needs auto attack. Since 99% of your shots are from the 1 button, it's downright annoying to constantly spam it. Especially since it's not like one click is one shot. It tends to fire a phaser burst that takes a couple of seconds. ...

Agree whole heartedly on this one. I really hate clickfests, or let's click the exactly same key every 2-3 seconds ad nauseum. If I remember correctly, COX only had one "auto attack" ability at some point, which made me role my eyes. Do we want to play a game or carpal tunnel?

One totally unexpected feature that comes up often in away missions is the ability to pause the instance. Yep, you can pause in an MMO. This is a useful thing when you need to hit the head, and also helpful for the ability to analyze a situation and micro-manage your crew if that's your play style. It struck me as odd at first, even sacrilegious, but the truth is that I found myself using it in spite of myself. The pause button, by the way, is on a 45 second timer to prevent people from using it in group away missions to the point of annoyance.

Thank the MMO Gods for a pause button. Not exactly sure what the the "45 second timer" part means, but thank who ever will let me pause while I'm soloing, attending to the baby, etc. and not destroy my game experience.

 Edit - per Dana's post, there IS auto-attack, so nm :D

Hmm, I have to say that auto-attack on a per-weapon basis is a good idea. Being able to dedicate weapons to targets and have them fire as you maneuver is a good thing, provided you can also quickly cancel that command to save your cycle if your strategy doesn't work out. But for weapons with good arcs like phasers, it's pretty much a natural thing to expect to happen, and I'm surprised it's not like that.

Wonder if it can be put in as an "ability" on the tactical officer's part, perhaps one that works with the "Fire at Will" ability mentioned in the article?

 Edit: but I disagree about CoX's manual attack. To me, the system works perfectly as it actively engages you in the combat, and as you have a lot of varied abilities, you actually need to make choices for your character to do it's best.

My char is a blaster btw, and how simple is that to play? Yet I still need to actively decide which enemy to hit, whether to range or melee, whether to use my limited holds to keep an enemy still and avoid knockback effects which might aggro other groups, and whether to stay with the main attack or shift to protect the support people. It's a very dynamic gameplay style, so I don't  see how auto-attack would even work, really.

Originally posted by Scrogdog

Originally posted by Dana

So... a mea culpa (which will appear with more prominence in par two):

Cryptic informs me, after a few pointed it out, there is in fact auto attack.

That fact that I never gleaned how is a problem unto itself, but it's there and my numb thumb is more angry at me than ever.

Turns out if you hold CTRL and click certain skills (say phasers) it auto fires. So that entire section where I complain about a lack of auto attack is BS. Apologies to Cryptic and you guys who read it.

 

Don't sweat it, we're all just human.

I realize you're getting paid for this, but it is probably not easy to write a thing knowing exactly how it will be dissected and run through the cleaners. :)

Woot, that's excellent to hear. Now, if it's assignable per enemy, we'll really have some fun in fleets when things get all mixed up and you've got enemies all over the place.

Originally posted by wootin

Originally posted by unicorngtm

My biggest complaint about this system is that this game really, really needs auto attack. Since 99% of your shots are from the 1 button, it's downright annoying to constantly spam it. Especially since it's not like one click is one shot. It tends to fire a phaser burst that takes a couple of seconds. ...

Agree whole heartedly on this one. I really hate clickfests, or let's click the exactly same key every 2-3 seconds ad nauseum. If I remember correctly, COX only had one "auto attack" ability at some point, which made me role my eyes. Do we want to play a game or carpal tunnel?

One totally unexpected feature that comes up often in away missions is the ability to pause the instance. Yep, you can pause in an MMO. This is a useful thing when you need to hit the head, and also helpful for the ability to analyze a situation and micro-manage your crew if that's your play style. It struck me as odd at first, even sacrilegious, but the truth is that I found myself using it in spite of myself. The pause button, by the way, is on a 45 second timer to prevent people from using it in group away missions to the point of annoyance.

Thank the MMO Gods for a pause button. Not exactly sure what the the "45 second timer" part means, but thank who ever will let me pause while I'm soloing, attending to the baby, etc. and not destroy my game experience.

 Edit - per Dana's post, there IS auto-attack, so nm :D

Hmm, I have to say that auto-attack on a per-weapon basis is a good idea. Being able to dedicate weapons to targets and have them fire as you maneuver is a good thing, provided you can also quickly cancel that command to save your cycle if your strategy doesn't work out. But for weapons with good arcs like phasers, it's pretty much a natural thing to expect to happen, and I'm surprised it's not like that.

Wonder if it can be put in as an "ability" on the tactical officer's part, perhaps one that works with the "Fire at Will" ability mentioned in the article?

 Edit: but I disagree about CoX's manual attack. To me, the system works perfectly as it actively engages you in the combat, and as you have a lot of varied abilities, you actually need to make choices for your character to do it's best.

My char is a blaster btw, and how simple is that to play? Yet I still need to actively decide which enemy to hit, whether to range or melee, whether to use my limited holds to keep an enemy still and avoid knockback effects which might aggro other groups, and whether to stay with the main attack or shift to protect the support people. It's a very dynamic gameplay style, so I don't  see how auto-attack would even work, really.

The reason I am happy auto-attack is in is that I found myself spending too much time trying to time my spamming of the number one and too little time paying attention to my NPC Bridge Officers and where I was standing. I'd just spam TAB when necessary and hit 1 to fire as frequently as possible. When I saw an opening, I'd hit 2, and occasionally use my kit abilities.

With auto attack, I can have my phaser firing on all cylanders and use that time to pay more attention to tactics, position and my own crew, as well as when to actually use the exploit abilities.

Originally posted by Ontblod

Originally posted by Kontra

Originally posted by Dana

So... a mea culpa (which will appear with more prominence in par two):

Cryptic informs me, after a few pointed it out, there is in fact auto attack.

That fact that I never gleaned how is a problem unto itself, but it's there and my numb thumb is more angry at me than ever.

Turns out if you hold CTRL and click certain skills (say phasers) it auto fires. So that entire section where I complain about a lack of auto attack is BS. Apologies to Cryptic and you guys who read it.

 

I hope you will update the review then because that " no autofie" is definetly something that put a heavy weightbag in the "no go" end of my gaming scales and I'm sure it will do the same for others.

 

Its NOT a review.

its a preview and its ONLY part one.

Okay, preview. But even in a preview a falsely negative statement can hurt the impression people will have of the product. And putting out unfairly negative comments, especially from a site with a popular reader base, is something that I believe should be addressed quickly and corrected before it does further damage to the games appeal to potential customers. It just seems like the responsible thing to do.

Dana succeded in sucking up to cryptic and completely, providing them, as you have other half-baked projects, a pass at their elementary accomplishment while disenfranchising real star trek fans and the mmo hopefuls in your first paragraph; "The Star Trek Online intellectual property is so huge that it is impossible for Cryptic Studios to please everyone. In fact, it's near on impossible for them to fully satisfy anyone. To meet the expectations of many hardcore fans, a Star Trek MMO would take hundreds of millions of dollars, at least a decade and no doubt a time machine more improbable than the red goo from the latest movie."

It is possible to please most, and for starters, they have lost more than they gained, imho, by reskinning champions online and added ship art for the most part, have accentuated the most mundane pve whack-a-mole style of game to as great a boring and mind-numbing extent as I had experienced in that bore of a game called Champions Online, their complete lack mmorpg (in my opinion) by making this game (sto) nothing more than an overly glorified single-player game with nothing but onslaughts of instanced that rips any player from the reality that this is supposed to be an open world of massively multiplayer subscribers as oppsed to an overly simplified single-player lobby game where your paying $15 a month to play a single-player experience, where the grind to reach any realizable accomplishement is far greater than any mmo (aside from asian grinders) than I have experienced in 10+ years of mmorpg gaming, where the redundency of the same missions over and over and over and over again are only beautified by the same quest again and again and again but with a change of pve combatants.

I find it hard to believe that this title will succeed at doing anything but being a footnote within the time-line of other mundane, pve centric mmorpgs released in the last few years, and with enough subscribers to garner as slight a sliver of market-share as most other borish titles available.  Absolutley no evoluation other than a costume change.

On the first page you talk about a lot of things needing polish, but aside from the land based combat you don't talk about anything that needs polish...It would have been nice to know how some of the systems of the game beside combat work...unless there just aren't any systems other than combat.

Man, how do you people sleep at night? You try and pass yourselves off as "gaming journalists", and then put out something like this that clearly shows you're in the pocket of some of these companies. Here you do it within the first paragraph.

Cryptic announced this game and right from day one promoted it as having two full factions with full content for both. They continued to promote it that way for over a year. In fact they're still promoting it that way over at their site. Now they're trying to slide half a game out by making one of the factions limited to a few PvP maps.

Now you decide to help them out and give that a pass by making it seem like no big deal and something that's common in game development? Just what did you get for throwing that in there for Cryptic anyway? It's clear they asked you to do it since it's exactly the same BS they've been trying to shovel since announcing they were going to release with only half the game finished.

Guess what pal,there's been a whole lot of people waiting for a very long time to get to play a Star Trek mmo as a Klingon that just had the game completely eliminated as an option for them, and saying "oh well, things get cut" when Klingons were supposed to be half the game is insulting to their intelligence. You were just doing a preview piece? Then why the heck throw that garbage in? Why don't you go out after Christmas shopping and see if you can get a deal on some integrity.

Control as autofirs is a holdover from the City of Heroes days.  Although with City of Heroes you usually either put Hasten or your Click Mez protection on auto-fire.

With STO it looks like putting phasers on autofire and manually controlling the crew abilities will be the start of a viable strategy.

I did have a question Dana.

Did you have access to multiple ships and did the different ships seem in scale to each other or other ships?  Did the ships within a given tier and specialty have any discernable differences?  The differences between the 3 tier 1 ships or the 3 tier 2 cruisers for example.

I recently saw some leaked footage on Youtube of Ship combat where an Akira-class rescued a Constitution class ship and the two ships seemed resonably in scale with each other.  At the very least the Akira seemed discernably larger than the Constitution.

Originally posted by Dana

So... a mea culpa (which will appear with more prominence in par two):

Cryptic informs me, after a few pointed it out, there is in fact auto attack.

That fact that I never gleaned how is a problem unto itself, but it's there and my numb thumb is more angry at me than ever.

Turns out if you hold CTRL and click certain skills (say phasers) it auto fires. So that entire section where I complain about a lack of auto attack is BS. Apologies to Cryptic and you guys who read it.

Dana,

Good that you clarified this :)

also Right click should work ;)

Just a shame people are being so negative about all this, some of the attacks are quite laughable, Roll on Open Beta is all I can say, think the Cryptic Team are going to be mad busy for the next few Weeks.

Looking forward to part 2

Great article in my opinion.  Other than the excuse in the begining saying you cannot satisfy everyone. This is a bit unrelated and already known in this case. Yes, "The Star Trek Online intellectual property is so huge that it is impossible for Cryptic Studios to please everyone", at the same time you cannot use this as an excuse. This has to be a known limitation that your production team itself uses so it can set proper goals.

And to all the nay-sayers talking about how he did not talk about all the other negative stuff we already know about... well that is kind of the point right there. We heard about it over and over again. It is a reporter's job to stay objective as possible. Just play the game and spit out what you find with no hesitation. Researching flaws in content is something that would take quite a long time and would in itself be bias due to the closed beta status.But it seems so many dont want bias for the good stuff however do not mind it for the bad.

Everyone knows about the content short commings already with the ground combat/Klingon/crafting/ mmo issues. All of which is better suited for an interview or playing the game yourself.

However with that said. Please tell us more about the player interaction as an MMO. Large scale battles with groups of other players if possible, and exploration of some sort :) Thanks. Great job with the details of how quests go and the transition from space to ground combat.

Hell in 2 weeks we can see for ourselves either way, but I doubt open beta will be "open"

Note** This post is impossilbe to please anyone I made sure of that ;)

Originally posted by BlakeySGV

Man, how do you people sleep at night? You try and pass yourselves off as "gaming journalists", and then put out something like this that clearly shows you're in the pocket of some of these companies. Here you do it within the first paragraph.

I previewed the game that was, not the game that could be.

That's what a preview is. You play the game and report back on what you see. You don't whine and rant about elements that are not there.

But I imagine from your post you didn't read past paragraph one, which was... you know... an introduction.

There is an entire article on the site about their decision to scale back Klingons. Feel free to go read it.

Originally posted by Raithnor

Control as autofirs is a holdover from the City of Heroes days.  Although with City of Heroes you usually either put Hasten or your Click Mez protection on auto-fire.

With STO it looks like putting phasers on autofire and manually controlling the crew abilities will be the start of a viable strategy.

I did have a question Dana.

Did you have access to multiple ships and did the different ships seem in scale to each other or other ships?  Did the ships within a given tier and specialty have any discernable differences?  The differences between the 3 tier 1 ships or the 3 tier 2 cruisers for example.

I recently saw some leaked footage on Youtube of Ship combat where an Akira-class rescued a Constitution class ship and the two ships seemed resonably in scale with each other.  At the very least the Akira seemed discernably larger than the Constitution.

I never got to the second tier of ships, nor did I run across any of them to the best of my knowledge. Those enemy ships that I saw that were "bigger" though seemed to be appropriately large in scale, without being over the top. In fact, my rant about scaling issues only applies to away missions. Space combat seemed... perfect. Not that I am a purist on these things, but I never noticed any scaling problems. In fact the very thought of scaling in space didn't even occur to me until you asked. So that's likely a good sign.

 The only reliably familiar thing I ran across was Deep Space 9... and it seemed quite nice from space. About how I'd imagined it/seen in the shows.

well i cant say anything in this piece is  wrong, its a nice piece its just a bit misleading in an optimistic direction.

I found STO currently  lacking in all areas except hack and slash.

while there is scientific and engineering  content  its as thin and weak as paint on a chinese toy.

I didnt notice any crafting   or  bairly any exploring   no real scientific exploration  no real engineering   no trading or transport or hauling  other than the  procedural misson after misson after misson

I think that this STO is  a shallow and so dumbed down that  anyone older than 10  has set their  star trek bar very very low.  it seems to be another fleecing game aimed at loyal STO fans.

STO is such a dissapointment  its bairly still on my intrest list any more.

be wary  and do your research about this game  before you drop 50-70$

THIS IS NOT THE STAR TREK GAME YOU WERE HOPING FOR.

This is not a star trek game, sadly.  I doubt its even an mmorpg, as stated in their faq.  Content is king in either an mmo or mmorpg, and for this game to be relatively void of content, other than the re-dressed quests that are clones of each other, I dont think that remotely passes for content. 

This game will play like a single-player lobby game, but the catch is you have to pay $15/month to play it; way to over-priced for an asteroids-type space shooter.

Speaking of no content, the other major faction of the game doesnt get any pve content.  Its bad enough that your game-play on the federation side is frought with performing the same quest but with different copy-writing to the quest text. . .on the klingon side there is absolutely no pve content; what!  lol.  Whoever at cryptic decided to make a mmo or mmorpg with absolutely no pve content, and subject the player-base to nothing more than dumbafied cage-match pvp should be looking for a job in a different industry.

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by wootin

Originally posted by unicorngtm

My biggest complaint about this system is that this game really, really needs auto attack. Since 99% of your shots are from the 1 button, it's downright annoying to constantly spam it. Especially since it's not like one click is one shot. It tends to fire a phaser burst that takes a couple of seconds. ...

Agree whole heartedly on this one. I really hate clickfests, or let's click the exactly same key every 2-3 seconds ad nauseum. If I remember correctly, COX only had one "auto attack" ability at some point, which made me role my eyes. Do we want to play a game or carpal tunnel?

One totally unexpected feature that comes up often in away missions is the ability to pause the instance. Yep, you can pause in an MMO. This is a useful thing when you need to hit the head, and also helpful for the ability to analyze a situation and micro-manage your crew if that's your play style. It struck me as odd at first, even sacrilegious, but the truth is that I found myself using it in spite of myself. The pause button, by the way, is on a 45 second timer to prevent people from using it in group away missions to the point of annoyance.

Thank the MMO Gods for a pause button. Not exactly sure what the the "45 second timer" part means, but thank who ever will let me pause while I'm soloing, attending to the baby, etc. and not destroy my game experience.

 Edit - per Dana's post, there IS auto-attack, so nm :D

Hmm, I have to say that auto-attack on a per-weapon basis is a good idea. Being able to dedicate weapons to targets and have them fire as you maneuver is a good thing, provided you can also quickly cancel that command to save your cycle if your strategy doesn't work out. But for weapons with good arcs like phasers, it's pretty much a natural thing to expect to happen, and I'm surprised it's not like that.

Wonder if it can be put in as an "ability" on the tactical officer's part, perhaps one that works with the "Fire at Will" ability mentioned in the article?

 Edit: but I disagree about CoX's manual attack. To me, the system works perfectly as it actively engages you in the combat, and as you have a lot of varied abilities, you actually need to make choices for your character to do it's best.

My char is a blaster btw, and how simple is that to play? Yet I still need to actively decide which enemy to hit, whether to range or melee, whether to use my limited holds to keep an enemy still and avoid knockback effects which might aggro other groups, and whether to stay with the main attack or shift to protect the support people. It's a very dynamic gameplay style, so I don't  see how auto-attack would even work, really.

 

The reason I am happy auto-attack is in is that I found myself spending too much time trying to time my spamming of the number one and too little time paying attention to my NPC Bridge Officers and where I was standing. I'd just spam TAB when necessary and hit 1 to fire as frequently as possible. When I saw an opening, I'd hit 2, and occasionally use my kit abilities.

With auto attack, I can have my phaser firing on all cylanders and use that time to pay more attention to tactics, position and my own crew, as well as when to actually use the exploit abilities.

Reviving dead thread, but ... auto-attack is essentially out for all intensive purposes. Explanation:

• there are 2 space weapons auto-attack
• you first ship upgrade, you get 4 weapon slots, for me at least, and I think that goes up to 8
• you're essentially spamming your "all weapons" key anyways, so the auto-attack is almost useless, except for 2 weapons

It's very bad situation for the user interface in that the user is usually i) always firing all weapons ii) always turning iii) concentrating on doing something else like shield management or some other ability. While not necessarily the intent, end result is an interface one of the biggest clickfests in memory.

COX is definitely different that most classes didn't require auto-attack to be usable; STO space combat has so many abilities that could/should be auto-fire, that it's all but a design error.