Tribble storm brewing.

Raptr doesn’t track it, but I have been playing quite a bit of Star Trek Online recently, it’s just all been on the Tribble server. This is where the F2P testing is being done and I’ve been working on getting a new officer up to Lieutenant Commander so I can start playing around with the Duty Officer system.

If you’re interested in the game and you haven’t been reading the Path to F2P Dev Blogs, they’re worth checking out. For the most part, they’ve not contained a lot of new information, but they have been a good way to get a feel for the new interim Executive Producer, Stephen D’Angelo. The latest one, part 5, is about to cause a drama storm on the forums. Cryptic is planning to open the C-store for testing on Thursday, and as part of that testing they’re setting up Test Points for people to use to test out some of the F2P changes. Anyone with a character on Tribble will get some free points to spend, which is standard procedure. The other way people will get Test Points, is to buy Cryptic Points. Basically, if you buy a 500 point bundle for $6.25, you also get a matching 500 point bundle for Tribble.

Stephen explains this as a way for Cryptic to get a realistic idea of how well they’re doing with pricing for F2P, since if players had an unlimited pool of free points then they would just buy everything. Since they’ll be using points they actually paid for, then they’ll value Tribble purchases just as much as Holodeck purchases.

I can see the logic in that, but I don’t think it’s worth the bad PR that’s bound to come from it. The thread is here if you want to keep tabs on the community reaction.

Star Trek Online F2P Details

Following up on their promises from last week, Cryptic published their current F2P plans for STO today. There’s the standard feature matrix giving an overview of their F2P model and an FAW page. There’s also a new subforum to handle questions from current subscribers. There’s no mention of a date or timeframe beyond the “this year” in the initial leak.

The features list and FAQ both mention several times that the details of F2P are subject to change depending on testing and feedback. Overall though, I imagine most of what they’ve outlined will be how the change happens.

The C-store is getting an itemization and price review. The FAQ says that ship prices will not go up, but I assume that consumable prices will based on how Champions Online’s store changed. A few of the premium species will become free (Ferengi, Rigelian, Pakled, and Tellarite) and some will become earnable in-game (Liberated Borg, Joined Trill, and Federation Klingon).

Lifetime and monthly subscribers will become gold players and still have access to everything they do now. They’ll start receiving a stipend of 400 C-store points every month, as long as they continue to subscribe.

New players and former subscribers will be silver players. Silver players will have access to all content: sectors, missions, foundry missions, fleet actions, featured episode series, and special task forces. They can join fleets. There are no restrictions on Federation character career paths, and they will be able to roll a Klingon Empire character. Silver players are limited to two characters slots, will not be able to create Foundry missions, and will not qualify for Veteran Rewards. Former subscribers can keep any existing Veteran unlocks. They will have limits on their in-game chat and mail until they’ve played twenty hours total across all characters on the account or bought C-store points. This is one of the limitations that may change depending on how well it handles problems with spammers.

The initial level unlock for the Klingon faction is being changed from level six (pretty sure about that) to level 25. This means the starting level for Klingon Empire characters will be 25 and existing characters under that level will get bumped to 25 (no one will lose low-level characters). Cryptic states this is to improve the Klingon faction experience, and I assume this is a temporary change until Cryptic and Perfect World develop enough Klingon content to make it a full-fledged faction. It’s honestly not a large speed bump as it’s less than a week of effort to hit level 25, but I can imagine this being one change that the community doesn’t like.

Overall, I think Cryptic’s plan is pretty solid. Existing subscribers will see very little change except for whatever happens with C-store pricing, and free players will be able to access all of the content in the game without paying a penny. The limitations all revolve around customization and convenience items.

Personally being a lifetime subscriber, I’m happy to start accruing some free points to spend in the C-store. Were I a monthly subscriber, I’m not sure if I would drop to silver or not. Overall the only benefits to staying subscribed are the stipend and the Veteran rewards, everything else can be unlocked via purchase except the Foundry editor. It really comes down to whether or not I feel that $15 a month is worth it to support further development in the game, and that’s something I’ve always felt strongly about since I bought a lifetime subscription.

PW planning STO F2P by end of year.

I caught a bit of news this evening from a tweet by Altexist. Perfect World just released the transcript of their Q2 2011 earnings call that had several interesting tidbits regarding Cryptic but there’s one quote in particular that’s got the STO forums jumping:

And also Star Trek Online, after the acquisition, in fact Cryptic is working on the free-to-play model for Star Trek Online. This is going to be launched by the end of this year as well.

Unfortunately that’s all the detail we have just now, as Cryptic itself isn’t ready to make any announcements according to Dan Stahl (from forum post):

I can neither confirm nor deny anything (until given approval to).

Update: Except Dan did post again later in the same thread with this:

There are certainly a lot of questions you may have about this news. The team is working on an FAQ and side by side comparison details that will spell out very clearly what this means for Lifetime and Subscription members. Until then, please stay tuned as we confirm all the details.

Update 2: Another follow up post from Dan:

The goal has been to leave subscriptions alone and ensure that you enjoy all the same benefits you have today (if not more). There will be more details on this soon.

Based on Dan’s comment, I assume we’ll see something official fairly soon.

I don’t think anyone’s surprised by the announcement, I’m certainly not. I’ve assumed that Champions successful shift to F2P meant STO would follow. I originally figured six months would be the “wait and see” time before Cryptic decided of the Champions experiment was a success. I’m sure the delay has been because of the Atari to Perfect World transition.

I do feel bad for the STO team that PW leaked the news in an earnings call, I’m sure there’s some scrambling going on in Los Gatos this evening.

I’m back!

It seems appropriate that my last post before taking time off was about a lack of excitement. I hadn’t actually intended to take a break but I’m glad I did. I’d hit a dead spot gaming-wise and myself having nothing to say. Not to mention, I had my family summer vacation (took the wife and little Kae to Michigan, it was amazingly fun).

Even though I took my netbook with me and had some small Steam games loaded on it as well as Minecraft and a copy of my current single player world, but I didn’t end up playing anything. I also didn’t miss playing MMOs while I was gone. Which surprised me.

Instead I was mostly unplugged for the week, and read a lot.Although you can’t tell from the massive pile my backlog of books makes. I swear it grows even faster than my backlog of games.

So now that I’m back, what’s going on?

  • There’s a demo is out for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine and it looks amazing. I played a bit last night and had an absolute ball taking a chainsword to hordes of orcs. If the rest of the game plays the same it will be a ton of fun.
  • A surprise MMO came of of Gamescom this year: Wildstar. The videos I’ve seen look great and the features I’ve read about sound promising. The studio, Carbine, has a good pedigree and some experiences people, but the publisher is NCSoft and that gives me pause. NCSoft is infamous for killing games quickly and having security issues. Granted they’ve given a lot of support to ArenaNet and I haven’t heard much lately about account hacks, so maybe they’ve learned from prior mistakes. I also agree with MMOGC and would almost prefer to see the IP done as a feature-length movie instead of a game. Either way, I’m keeping my eye on it.
  • Stargrace made a very excellent point about games being a way for people to entertain themselves. I’ve actually worked on a post similar to hers talking about how lazy some players seem to be. There seems to be a growing expectation that a gamer should be able to sit back and almost be forced to have fun, kind of like watching TV, instead of having to invest some effort in the experience.
  • Big news at STO… the Perfect World acquisition is finally completed. The game had been in an odd limbo state since the release of Season 4. Because of the acquisition, Dan Stahl and the other developers had been much quieter than usual and the game had kind of stalled out content-wise with the Foundry being offline because of bugs. The floodgates have opened though. Dan posted a very interesting response to one community member talking up PW’s confidence and interest in STO, and Cryptic seems to be following up by posting a lot of job openings. Add in the fact that the Foundry is finally back to 100%, and I think the rest of the year should be pretty smooth sailing.

I’m likely forgetting some things but those are the major events I wanted to catch  up on.

Starfleet Academy

Starfleet Academy was up on Tribble yesterday and is now live on Holodeck. Just warp to Earth and then you can beam down to San Francisco.

The map is gorgeous. There’s tailor, exchange, and mail services on the map right now. According to Dan Stahl (here) there are plans to use the map for a ground Fleet Action and as a starting zone for neighborhood missions. Eventually it will also be the starting point for the new tutorial.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7jYazOgSwY’]

 

Part of the fun when I was on Tribble last night was the party happening on the roof of Building Two. There’s a glitch where if you log out while standing on top of the plaque over looking San Francisco, then when you log back in you’re on the other side of the fence and can literally get behind the scenes. It takes a little running, but it’s possible to get around the edge of the map and up onto the roofs of the building.

Enterprise-F Revealed

Cryptic and CBS unveiled the new Odyssey-class Enterprise-F design today on StarTrek.com in a blog post written by STO Executive Producer, Dan Stahl. I still like the design, but I have mixed feelings about how the reveal was done.

I like seeing the ship textured as I finally have an idea of the scale of the ship and it does indeed seem massive. I also like that the ship’s class name references journeys and exploration over combat.

I don’t like the angle chosen for the initial screenshot. It makes the ship look whale-like by over-emphasizing the secondary hull and dish and marginalizing the dual necks. Were this the only image I’d seen of the new ship I wouldn’t event realize how different the overall design if from the Sovereign. Besides the bad angle, the image itself is not very large and I’ve found no links to higher resolution images, or to additional images from other angles.

My guess as to why they did the photo this way is that they want to keep the ship still partially under wraps until it’s revealed in-game for the first time. That’s understandable but it doesn’t give a good first impression. Fortunately we still have this image.

Gorny

I keep meaning to roll a Klingon faction character, but I never quite get around to it. While I think Klingons are an interesting species, I’ve never cared much for them as a faction. For me Star Trek has always been about the Federation. A month or two ago my interest in the KDF was rekindled when Matt Highison, Lead Character Artist for STO, posted some art for the new Gorn coming in Season 4. I’m sure TOS fans don’t like them, but I really like the new design.

I hopped onto Holodeck a few days ago and rolled my first KDF, Rress the Gorn.

He looks okay, but not great. He just doesn’t have the bulk and menace I expect from a Gorn.

This is what he looks like after the Season 4 update. Now, Rress looks like he could rip the arms of a Wookiee.

Enterprise-F

I missed posting about the second Dev Diary regarding the new Enterprise, as it came out during my Android obsessive period a few weeks ago. It’s worth reading though if you have any interest in Trek starship design. Part three is out now though and features a beautiful in-game model draft of the ship. She’s going to be a cruiser, as expected, and a Vice Admiral level ship. I now have quite a bit of motivation to get my Engineer Nal working hard for promotion (he’s only Lieutenant Commander now).

Crossfired Up!

It’s here! It’s here! It’s here!

Even though I’ve been playing quite a bit on Tribble over the last few weeks, it’s still really good to have the ground combat update on Holodeck. It’s completely a perception issue on my part, but knowing I’m playing on Holodeck gives me more of a sense of permanence that’s just not there when I play on Tribble. Tribble is like Vegas. You go there to have fun and goof off, but it doesn’t count.

I logged in on my main Bryn and headed out to Gamma Orionis. One of the things I’ve been waiting to do is replay Assimilation. This mission is part of the Undine front missions and includes the Universal Assimilated Module, which was added as part of the Borg equipment set after I’d finished that chain of missions.

Pre-Season 4, Assimilation was one of my least favorite of the story missions. There’s a ton of Borg ground combat in that mission, and I remember dying while playing it. Possibly it was just because I was Science, possibly I wasn’t doing something correctly, but I think it was because of the way ground combat worked. Melee enemies tended to run up on me, so battles largely consisted of running backwards in circles trying to shoot enemies. Not fun.

Now that Season 4 is here, I picked up the replay from my Ready Room console and headed to NGC-4447. After completing a few space objectives, it was time to beam in with Bryn’s team. I started playing the mission completely in shooter mode but part way through I had to change that to just toggling into shooter mode before starting combat after accidentally clicking my mouse a few times and shooting Borg’s in alcoves. Turns out they don’t like that.

The new content was fun enough that I started out just clearing out all of the Borg I ran across  even if they weren’t hostile. I only started switching my Boffs to passive mode and leaving Borg alone once I saw how late it was.

I had a lot more fun than the first time I ran the mission. I made it all the way through the mission without dying once, although I did have to resuscitate my two tactical officers a few times. The pacing was faster, the battles were more engaging, and dodging behind walls worked well to break aggro and give my personal shields time to recharge. The kits are much more effective as well.

I hadn’t really noticed on Tribble, but I was using a Physicist Kit and dropping an Exothermic Induction Field (EIF) on a group of Borg did a noticeable amount of damage. Pre-Season 4, most of the DoT’s in Science Kits seemed more like bonus damage than actual attacks. Often, I would just use the roots and shield debuffs and that was it. Now though, using EIF or Hyperonic Radiation, has a noticeable effect. There were several instances where DoTs killed Borg that were down to a quarter of their life who had adapted their shields before I was able to remodulate my weapon.

I know there are issues with Season 4, especially for the Foundry, but I’m still really happy with the update. I’m really looking forward to leveling up my alts now that I can look forward to both types of combat in the game.

Season 4 Tomorrow!

Star Trek Online is coming down for maintenance tomorrow morning:

We will be bringing down Holodeck on 7.7.2011 from 6:30 AM to 9:00 AM PDT (2330 – 0200 UTC) in order to perform maintenance and apply the Season 4 patch. We will provide an update once the maintenance has been completed.

Patch notes for Season 4 are significant. There’s a few surprises on there too (my comments in blue):

  • Whenever you join a team or fleet, you will automatically be added to a voice chat channel. I didn’t realize we’d be able to use voice for fleet chatting, I just assumed it was for teams like in LotRO.
  • All existing characters will get a free respec token due to the significant changes to ground combat. I still have some saved from ranking up, but one more won’t hurt.
  • An auto loot option has been added to the options screen. This will be nice to have, I always seem to fly to far from loot and have to make a second pass to get it after the battle.
  • A ship selector has been added to all ship/shuttle transporter rooms. Players can now swap ships without having to fly to a starbase. This will be nice to have. No more having to go back to a starbase to switch to a shuttle for doing sampling missions.

There’s a lot more in Season 4 and I highly recommend checking out the section on ground combat changes so you understand what the new keybindings are. Even if you don’t intend to use shooter mode, you’ll want to know how to toggle it off if you accidentally engage it (press B).

I’ve actually been holding off on doing anything with my two alts since I saw the ground combat upgrades on Tribble, and I’ve been itching lately to get back to them. Hopefully I get a chance to check in with them tomorrow.