Captain’s Log 87868.74

Captain’s Log, Stardate: 87868.74

Captain Bryn Aen of the U.S.S. Lukas

At long last, I’m being promoted to Captain. The subspace message just came in from Admiral Quinn to return to Earth Spacedock in order to take care of the formalities. I am excited about the advancement, but also a little sad about moving on.

Becoming a full Captain means I’m going to be given a new command, which also means that I’ll no longer be flying the Lukas. The Akira class heavy escort has been a real challenge for me, and it has been only recently have I gotten comfortable with the proper strategies and tactics required. She’s a beautiful ship, both fast and powerful, but more delicate than I was expecting. It was a large adjustment from the Grace, which was a Nova class science vessel, and even though I could be getting a tactical escort, I’m pretty sure that Quinn will be putting me in command of a long range science vessel. My duty record aboard the Grace was much better than it’s my time on the Lukas, there have been quite a few trips to Spacedock for repairs and refits.

Captain’s Log, Supplemental

Captain Bryn Aen of the U.S.S. Auryn

The meeting with Quinn went well. As I expected, I’ve been given command of a Discovery class long range science vessel. In recognition of my Starfleet service I was allowed to christen the ship the U.S.S. Auryn. An auryn is a bird of prey from my homeworld known for it’s intelligence, grace, and curiousness.

While I will miss the Lukas, Auryn is a gorgeous ship and the first few shakedown cruises were very smooth. It did not take me long to switch my tactics back to what I’d used aboard the Grace, and I’ve quickly become comfortable with the science vessel.

The crew has settled in well. Prya and V’lel are missing the additional tactical capabilities, but are adjusting. Imaria and T’Rasu are very happy to have expanded roles on the bridge, although Imaria did have to do some retraining. Nayl and Meelok are also pleased, apparently they’re expecting easier duties now that they won’t be constantly working on repairs. While Auryn’s shields are impressive, I’m still expecting to pick up some scratches soon.

As per our tradition, we paid our respects at the monument in Wolf 359 before returning to the Tarod sector in Iota Pavonis. Our mission there was nearly completed before I received the order to return to Sol from Quinn, so we won’t stay there long.

I’ve already received a message from Captain Kurland at Deep Space 9 requesting assistance in the Bajor sector, once we’ve finished our investigations into the current Romulan issues we’ll set course for the Beta Ursae sector block.

U.S.S. Auryn, Discovery-class long rang science vessel

Founded the Federation News Service

The yesterday’s fleet forming attempt was a success! With Tipa as the Senior Editor, meet the founding staff of the Federation News Service.

Pictured from left to right: @Caylinn, @Aurangzeb, @BlueKae (me!), @Tipa, @khaaaaaaan!, and @Vannikar. Not pictured: @camenecium. These are all character handles so you can look us up in-game for an invite if you’re interested in joining.

I’m looking forward to having a group to fleet up with for a change and doing some task forces,  if I ever get promoted from Commander. My career has been stalled a bit and I’m not sure if it’s because of blowing off Admiral Grigori Yanishev when he requested I investigate a Romulan attack on a dig site or just coincidence.

Upate: Caylinn also has a writeup over at MMO Gamer Chick. Also, I wanted to mention that even though a lot of the current members are bloggers and Twitterers, that’s not a requirement.

Fleet Forming

Interested in joining a fleet? Tipa, Longasc, and myself are planning to form a fleet in STO soon (hopefully tonight). We’ve been making due with a custom chat channel up until now (stotwitter, if you want to join), but we’re missing out on a second uniform slot (which I want so I can toggle between modern and TOS era uniforms) as well as building some community for missions and taskforces.

Send me an email if you’re interested (it’s on the contact page), leave a comment below, or look me up in-game Bryn@bluekae.

Max Level Hero

A few weeks later than some and much later than others, the Silver Hunter reached the level cap in Champions online last night. This is only the second game where I’ve hit the level cap, with LotRO being the other. Unfortunately Twitter sharing didn’t seem to be working so the level advancement wasn’t broadcast. Good thing I have a blog then.

I also finished the Vibora Bay crisis mission last night. Until now, the Monster Island crisis has been my favorite mission in the game, but Vibora Bay’s blown it away. This is one of the few times I’ve ever wanted to finish a mission arc just to see how the story comes out. I’m very much looking forward to exploring the zone proper now that I’ve completed the crisis.

Now that Silver is max level, I also have access  to the Unity missions and Nemesis Confrontation, and I’m looking forward to trying them both out. Plus, I really should finish up the character post about Silver that I’ve been working on forever.

DAW: Cryptic Studios

“MMO forums: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”

Okay, so that’s not quite how Obi Wan cautioned Luke, but it’s no less accurate. Of course that makes this thread all the more impressive. It is a 46 post, 5 page, (as of this writing) thread started by a community member asking the devs to post a surprising fact about themselves. Quite a few of the Cryptic staff have posted and nearly all the player posts are on topic and respectful. There’s one person asking about a problem but the they were very apologetic about derailing the thread, most surprisingly no one followed up to troll them for it.

So my thanks and today’s DAD go to the Cryptic Studios staff (community and dev), for their follow through on their promises of better communication with the community. It’s made the last two months of Champions Online much more enjoyable.

If you haven’t already, go checkout Scarybooster’s Developer Appreciation Week posts, and if you’re doing any yourself please send me and Scary a link.

DAW: Allan “Orion” Maki

For Developer Appreciation Week, I’d like to thank Allan “Orion” Maki, Senior Game Designer from Turbine.

I’ve enjoyed Lord of the Rings Online since it was released in 2007 and have always been impressed by the level of detail from the books that Turbine was able to include in the world. Yet, the game had some rough edges in the earlier zones that don’t exist in the later content (looking at you Lonelands).

This brings me to why I’m singling Allan out specifically, he’s done a lot of work to redesign and polish up the early game experience in Middle-earth. Most recently was a revamp of the Lonelands, which are much much improved, and making the Volume 1 epic quest line solo-able. Even better though, was the way he went about the epic quest change. Orion didn’t just nerf the quest line so that it is solo only. He implemented a character buff called Inspired Greatness that scales based on the size of the fellowship. It’s always a good thing to more options for completing quests, and this buff allows players to solo if they want or duo or still go with a full fellowship.

Head over to Orion’s My Lotro page and leave him a thank you if you’ve enjoyed any of the updated zones of the Volume 1 quest change.

If you haven’t already, go checkout Scarybooster’s DAW posts he’s doing a full week of them.

Great Idea: Dev Appreciation Week

Scarybooster had an excellent post yesterday where he thanked game developers for all their hard work and made an effort to look on the positive side of MMOs. Today, he had an even better idea and declared next week is Developer Appreciation Week. To join in, just pick a day and post something that a developer has done that you enjoyed.

CoH Revisited

City of Heroes recently offered a free weekend to former subscribers. Even though I don’t play any longer, I always like to take the opportunity to revisit my characters.

I loved this game when it first came out. I played from beta on for about three years before I cancelled. I didn’t quit because I hated the game or anything, I was just ready to move on to other things. I had always planned to return but somehow I never did. I just didn’t have an urge to revisit the superhero genre until Champions Online came out.

This was actually my second (free) retry of CoH since CO launched. The first time I really just revisited my characters and checked out the Mission Architect, but I didn’t really play. This second try, I spent a couple of hours playing my level 28 energy blaster, Silver Hunter, and my level 20 tank, Blue Ram.

I had a lot of fun, but I don’t plan to resubscribe because of the differences in the two combat systems. I prefer the combat mechanics and pacing in Champions over City of Heroes. The combat is faster paced, better incorporates positioning and movement, and is overall more action-oriented. City of Heroes is just less engaging for me. Blocking in Champions is a very simple mechanic, but it has really changed my mindset. Several times when fighting with gangs in Paragon City and I kept trying to block attacks.

The other thing that keeps me from resubscribing is the archetype system. This is something I’ve never been happy with. Back when CoH was originally being designed the skill system was going to be open. At some point that was changed because it was too easy for players to design an unplayable character. So they created the archetype system and locked different powersets into them. Unfortunately this limits on what kinds of heroes you can create. I enjoyed my tank character, but I always wanted him to be a bit more of a brute than he was. The Going Rogue expansion will make it possible to make a villain and then redeem them to become a hero, so I could get around that, but frankly that sounds like too much effort.

In Champions the powers are all open to you, there’s more freedom to build themed heroes. Of course you can still create an underpowered hero, but I’m willing to accept that risk. With the ability to undo recent powers or just completely retcon using either in-game resources or real money, I much prefer having more options and less structure.

As much as I loved being in Paragon City again, I’m not planning to move back.

Postscript: By the way, if you haven’t seen it yet, go over to Dusty’s blog and check out the excellent Dual Pistols video he made.

BSG the MMO

So Battlestar Galatica is coming to the MMO genre. I’m not surprised by that. The remake has been very popular and profitable for the SF network (that’s as close as I can bring myself to use their new name), so it makes sense that they’ll look for more ways to capitalize. I wasn’t a big fan of the show, so I’m not excited about the announcement. Besides that, though I wonder how successful they’ll be able make a game that appeals to fans of the show.

For people who loved the show, this is a pretty iconic image.

The characters, the relationships, and the drama were what made the show popular. These are not the kinds of things that MMOs have done well so far.

This is an image from the console game that was released a little while back.

I’m not referencing the game specifically, just pointing out that combat is primarily what MMOs focus on, and that is not what most fans of the show will be interested in.

Hopefully, I’m being overly critical and it’ll turn out well for the developer. Ironically, if it turns out to be a semi-realistic physics based space combat simulator, I’ll be more interested than if it is closer to what made BSG popular.