Star Trek Online Launches! Read my Review! A Bold new MMO!
Posted by Honvik on 01/29/2010 18:29
A Bold, Action Packed, not lacking content but some bugs!. This is my review of Star Trek Online and its well worth a read and for you to consider trying it out. I've tried my best with what time I have to formulate some thoughts on the game and things what Cryptic are planning to add soon...... so without further a do check it out now! (Hit Read More)
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Extended News
Star Trek Online is the new Mass Multiplayer RPG by Cryptic Studios using the Champions Online graphical Engine. The journey started two years ago when Star Trek Online was first announced after Cryptic purchased the rights to the game from Perpetual who originally started the work on the game. Cryptic has done a good job in making an MMO within a two-year time frame and has really tried to make it as Star Trek Like as they can. The one thing that people may find odd is that STO is heavily instanced and therefore at max you will see up to 40 people in one area. Cryptic’s justification for this is to allow one world server and keep server performance up to as good as it can. This will mean that should the game lose members you’ll never see a server merge but on the plus it means you will meet many different people from all over the world. To me the downside is huge events wont take place and it can be awkward to get your Fleet Members all in one zone.
Star Trek Online starts with you making your character using Cryptic’s excellent customised you can pick a race or make up your own alien race. You can change the normal features i.e. looks, colour, uniform etc as well as pick your traits as well for your character. The screen also allows you to pick your profession and in Star Trek Online you can pick one of three. The professions are Engineer, Tactical or Science each will give you some advantages later on with special enhancements to your character as you level up but briefly this is what they do. For now at the start you can only play Federation but you get to unlock your Klingon at level 6 or by completing the quest ‘ Stop the Signal’, no one is sure why they did this.
Tactical - This is basically your damage dealer who enhances combat in space and on the ground. They normally fly the ‘Escort’ Class vessel and can enhance your Bridge Officers (see later).
Engineer - These are people who buff, repair hull and what we would call ‘tank’ they tend to fly the Cruiser class ships
Science - These are your debuffers, shield repair and what we would consider the ‘healer’. These fly mostly science vessels
Once you have selected your character, named him/her, named your Ship you are ported into the game to be greeted by a ‘In game Movie’ of the story that will set the wheels in motion. You are advised that a war has erupted, Romulans have lost their homeworld and are nicely narrated by someone Legendary. The next part is the tutorial where you are thrust into a middle of a battle to teach you the skills of the ground system and the space fighting no other then the Borg. To me this tutorial was not a bad thing although people need to understand its purpose is to get you into the ‘mix’. Once you have completed this the galaxy is now your oyster!
Star Trek Online also allows you to customise your ship including your officers. Each ship has an amount of officers it can have plus limited to how many skills your Bridge officers can use. The general thing is that Escorts = Tactical, Cruiser = Engineering, Science = Science but what this allows is you to use your class to enhance your ship/bridge officers. What’s more if you fancy a skill a new bridge officer have you can train an existing officer with that skill instead of replacing them. Bridge officers can also be customised with weapons for ground missions, shields, armour and skilled up using the universal bridge officer pool. You can gain bridge officer points from missions or killing enemy NPC’s or ships.
[u][b]Space Combat[/b][/u]
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Space combat is robust and really enjoyable. Your ship is armed with phaser’s, torpedoes and many more weapons but the big thing is that it can be customised by swapping weapons over that you acquire to changing shields. In addition you can change the look and name of the ship to make you stand out and yes I seen Pink hulled ships. Space Combat is pretty much like some previous games and certain elements do remind me of the Star Fleet Command games since your main goal is to take down a shield to send in your projectiles into its hull. This is where your bridge officer’s skills come in useful since they enhance your ship further and provide special devastating attacks. Space ships are turned using the keyboard and depending on what class of ship you have it structures how many weapons and type of weapons you can have for example Escorts can only use Cannons compared to other ships. What I would say is it pays to have one of each class in a group since you can enhance each others abilities in missions or PVP and the game really shines once you do especially in space.
[u][b]Ground Combat[/b][/u]
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Ground Combat in STO reminds me of Mass Effect its pretty basic and it can be enjoyable but its defiantly clear ground combat is a work in progress since it does feel ‘clunky’ at times. It does seem to me that most the development time went into the space combat rather then ground but since being in Closed Beta I have seen vast improvements. Ground functions to me as a thing to link everything together so it is just as important as the main part of the game as after all what is space without the ability to explore the planets? Moving on the ground is pretty much like any MMO and once again your Bridge Officers come in handy here by using their skills for the same in Space either, healing, damage etc. The Ground system also allows you to explore your own bridge as well as iconic landmass like Starbases to planets.
[u][b]Missions[/b][/u]
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The Missions in STO are called Episodes; these are generally a series of missions that send you to places in a chain for a nice reward with some back-story. In STO there is a main story (which I won’t spoil) that seems to run through the entire game with some in-game cut-scenes to boot! STO also employs the usual ‘repeatable’ missions including patrol missions and exploration missions. What STO does offer is these Exploration missions that you fly to a nearby cluster and whets great is each mission is automatically random generated so you could find a new alien species or a nice rich area to collect things to barter in (see later for info). In addition when doing exploration missions you get medals, which you can hand in for ‘gear’ but one feature I never did get to find, was originally you could re-visit these locations to take your friends! The final set of missions are ‘Deep Space Encounters’ and each zone has them where players are either dragged into marauding enemy or you join in the fight. This is where you have to kill X squads or enemy warships and at the end you get a reward in XP and merits to buy more officers. The last thing I will say on missions is that the game is structured that you complete each zone in order but the option is explore is there. I would be careful with exploring as you could end up being whacked by very big ships but it was enjoyable I couldn’t rush through and skip things as I think we would of missed some of the ‘story’. STO offers a group system that can contain up to 5 players but the nice touch is if you go to a location to do a quest you can ‘auto’ join a group should you wish to do that or set your settings to ‘open group’ and anyone can slide into the mission with you for extra help, this being said all missions SCALE to number of players in there so if you do it solo it will be easy but having 5 it will be very hard indeed.
Fleet Actions are something they seem to have ported from Warhammer Online where anyone can join into the fun, which is split into one per zone. Fleet Actions are a mission based mass raid like system that either makes you defend a location against an attack or work as a big group to complete the objectives. Fleet actions will then dish out rewards based on contribution but what I do not know is if it is based on damage or something else, nevertheless the top few will get a healthily reward for being there!
Warzones are STO’s answer to some ‘open pvp’ now I use open since it is still instanced but there is no queues to wait to get in but you travel to the location on the galaxy map to join. Currently STO has over 4 of these split into 2 of each type in the Klingon Neutral Zone and here is where 20 Federation Players vrs 20 Klingon Players can compete for objectives and reap a reward for doing so.
[u][b]PVP[/b][/u]
STO’s PVP system is also in addition to the Warzones split into Battleground instances where klingons can fight federation players on the ground or in space. The winners will take home a greater reward and awards you medals that you can trade in for gear it is another way to ‘level up’ should you wish to go down that path. The actual battlegrounds are pretty fun and decent and well worth giving it a go as some of the battlegrounds do require some ‘thinking’ that being said its best to go in a pre-made and especially with different classes and ships.
[u][b]Klingons[/b][/u]
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The Klingons in STO are mostly a PVP faction since there PvE content is VERY limited but the good news is that Cryptic have said more will be coming post launch. The Klingons do have some pretty nifty things like ‘Battle Cloak’ and their ships tend to be powerful in attack but weaker in defence. The one thing I will say is when I played Klingon they have far the most atmospheric starting area with a full view of their homeworld. The Klingons do feel rushed but we will see later how things progress.
The one thing people ask me is STO’s crafting and sadly what I thought crafting was it isn’t! STO handles crafting via barter where in missions you see anomalies and alien artefacts. The goal is to collect these samples and once you have enough ‘trade it in’ for gear and items. The key thing is a theory these can ‘crit’ giving you a rare but this is unproven. Cryptic has said this is a work in progress but so far it is functional and provides another way to obtain bits for your ship.
Endgame in STO is a bit unknown to be but what we do know is it contains 5 player content that is difficult and large fleet action content as well.
Conclusion
I’ve tried to give you a brief overview of the game and its good points and bad points but I’ve really enjoyed the game so far and I only reached Level 21. There is definitely a lot of areas I’d love to see improved including Realm vrs Realm PvP, Crafting and functionality for Fleets (Guilds) to build their own defendable Starbases but Cryptic has announced already what its working on including difficult 5 man content. My wish is that STO does introduce some raiding content but for now its fairly polished it just needs that extra.
[u][b]Whats to come?[/b][/u]
Cryptic have already announced over the next few months tons of new content for both Federation and Klingon Players alike here is some highlights! to be fair its extensive and it showing they REALLY giving it a good crack.
5 man hard content and plenty of it see the borg in action!
klingon Fleet Actions
More PVP Battlegrounds
More Federation Fleet Actions
Full Info [url]http://www.startrekonline.com/upcoming_content[/url]
I rate this game 7.5/10.
So why not give it a go? [b]WE ARE RECRUITING PLAYERS NOW![/b]