Star Trek Online: Still Trekkin' Across The Universe

WMDogma

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Star Trek Online: Still Trekkin' Across The Universe

After numerous updates and a switch to free to play, Star Trek Online is going strong four year later.

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ShadowGandalf01

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Oct 3, 2011
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I occasionally play it on and off. I'm not a hardcore player, more of a casual, but my love of Star Trek is certainly hardcore. I just don't have that much time to put into STO.
 

TorchofThanatos

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Dec 6, 2010
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hmmmm... why haven't I tried this yet? Does anyone know if the Mac version runs fine b/c if it does maybe I will give this game a try.
 

LordMonty

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Jul 2, 2008
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I enjoy it and have been a lifer since beta, i'll admit real life pulled me away from the game a couple of months into its life and i came back just prior to the free to play launch so um :p i missed the dry spell of content. But as of late they've been giving a constant stream of things to do but there are problems. The lack of balanced or accesable pvp, i can partake and not totally suck but i've got a lot of things from rep grinds/fleets/zen(mostly from my lifer sub) to give me an edge. I think a pvp system should be a level playing feild or ranked, atm its just a very elite nutters who gain joy from a very flat deathmatch. End game needs more love but hey I enjoy what i get its not terrible its just a bit thinand therefore just makes the game very casual.

Overall not many better free to play games out there than sto, its character creator makes it worth a go just for it alone.
 

008Zulu_v1legacy

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Sep 6, 2009
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Might be worth mentioning that The Foundry seems to break every few months and/or game updates, and stays broken for weeks at a time.

I think end game content for any MMO is a big problem. With each of the episodes in game, you have a narrative to draw you along with a sense of accomplishment at the end. Right now it's just raids or going back to repeat certain missions in the chains to get better versions of reward gear.
 

shintakie10

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Sep 3, 2008
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Ah STO. You are still my second favorite MMO behind WoW. You're butt ugly, your ground mechanics are piss poor at best, your voice acting is so atrocious that I literally cringe when I hear it, and yet there's this sort of weird charm to you that just keeps me comin back. Not for long obviously. I'll play you for a couple hours a week then leave you for a month or two, but I'll always come back eventually.
 

leviticusd

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Mar 19, 2009
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Was a lifetime subscription available at launch? If so, I am really surprised I didn't buy it. I bought the Lord of the Rings one and love it. I don't play all the time anymore, but it's nice to know it's there. I really enjoyed STO at first and I know I had a year subscription initially and it seems that was the best I could have gotten. I may be miss-remembering.

I've always thought about giving it another go. I only made the early mid-level stage and I enjoyed my ship and my highly customized captain. Even with all the bugs and repetition, I saw the potential of a good game. I kind of felt like STO ripped off the Pirate's MMO that Sony ended up with (I can't even remember the name any more...how sad is that). The ship battles used the same mechanics and away missions were similarly lame on both version. Pirates of the Burning Seas (that is what is was called I think) however had a much more interesting economy and I LOVED creating my own flags and sails for the ship (my avatar pic is one that I created...though they would never approve it no matter how many times I tried to sneak it past the mods!).

Somehow I missed this had gone free to play, though I'm not surprised. I wonder if having a year's membership at the beginning counts for anything (or if my guy is still available)?
 

immortalfrieza

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May 12, 2011
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I'm an off and on player. I like the fact that you can simply wander around aimlessly and find stuff to do, I wish more MMOs (and I'm especially hoping that ESO will be like this) would do this.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

I never asked for this
Sep 8, 2011
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It's so full of things that a Star Trek fan can enjoy, I find myself going back to it, usually during the summer for some reason. It makes me feel like a kid again. I grew up on Star Trek. It's really a blast. And f2p model isn't bad at all.
 

latiasracer

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Jul 7, 2011
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leviticusd said:
Somehow I missed this had gone free to play, though I'm not surprised. I wonder if having a year's membership at the beginning counts for anything (or if my guy is still available)?
As far as i know, there have been no Character wipes - So he should still be there!

Also, you might be interested to know, since the f2p launch in Jan2012, Lifetime subscribers get 500 Zen/C-points each month. So you should have roughly around 13,000 Zen/C-store points... That's $130 USD worth ..(For perspective, End game ships are 2500 each, and 3 packs 5000!)

If you do get back into it, i'd replay all the older original episodes, alot of them have been remastered and are very much improved.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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wombat_of_war said:
well there isnt technically much to do when you finish all the story missions unless you like grinding missions to get gear for the sake of it but its still enjoyable to just potter about in doing bits and pieces
I'm approaching the 2000 hour mark I believe, and I'll say that to be honest there are probably story missions I haven't done, largely because I found most of them poorly constructed and annoying. I've got quite a few top level characters to say the least and honestly I've taken to using the "shortcut" of running mirror universe incursions to max out new characters as fast as I can.

Despite how it sounds I'm fairly casual, I mostly keep playing to mess around with different ship configurations, see if I can accomplish missions in various ways, and oddly enough watch my fleet gradually increase in power and it's holdings expand (while far from the first to get there, we're just now approaching tour Tier 3 Spire and have everything else maxxed out, at which point we'll doubtlessly begin stockpiling for the next fleet holding).

I guess it's not for everyone though, truthfully I juggle multiple MMOs nowadays as opposed to playing one hardcore like I did with WoW. STO tends to keep me very occupied though as I've had a consistent presence in it longer than most games, and a quick visit to play with a few things rapidly turns into an exercise in "just one more mission or special task force". :)

To be fair, I do not think STO could sustain me (or many people) as their one and only MMO habit. A lot of players I know doing it also play Cryptic's other games at least part time (Champions, Neverwinter, etc...) and periodically bounce into other MMOs a lot like I do.


While I'm rambling though, I will also say that while I like the IDEA of the foundry it's too limited to have a lot of value. It's interesting to see what people can do with it, but at the end of the day it's by definition pointless as creators cannot assign loot, special awards, or other things for obvious reasons. The only real benefit to your character comes from general loot drops (of the sort shared by all mobs) and a dilithium/questionite/astral diamonds award for doing so many foundry missions as part of a daily quest. Since you can basically waste hours on a well made, and challenging adventure, and get absolutely jack for it (which is annoying if you were forced to use up tons of stims/healing potions/etc...). This sadly leads to the foundry turning into a hunt by people looking for quick missions that just barely quality for the daily quest. I tried my hand at design with "Neverwinter" and while it was tricky to figure out at first I managed to put together a fairly simple dungeon, and while feedback was mixed, at the end of the day I pretty much got told if I expected people to want to play it I needed to make sure it was a grindable cakewalk, not that many players ever really appeared for it. I may or may not try it again, I just found the effort of creating kind of thankless, and as a player know exactly where they were coming from.

I give Cryptic Kudos for the *idea* of the foundry, but it needs serious work as a concept. Cryptic needs to find a way to make The Foundry lead to more direct and meaningful awards for both players and creators, without unduly unbalancing the game, that is a tall order for sure, but even after tinkering with it on and off for years (mostly as a player) it strikes me as more of a novelty than anything anyone should be excited about.
 

Oroboros

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Feb 21, 2011
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"As huge Star Trek fans, Cryptic draws inspiration from every source it has available at its disposal when it comes to tying in new updates and content to established Star Trek canon."

They seem to consistently draw inspiration from some of the most obscure and/or worst aspects of Trek despite this. The last season brought back the Voth-Hyperevolved *dinosaurs* from voyager and one of the more dumb parts of Trek that I think lots of folks would like to forget, and then managed to make them even dumber-adding Cybernetic T-rex's with laser cannons on their heads-in a completely straight-faced manner too. Before that? The Elachii, a one-off monster of the week from Enterprise who weren't even named in their on screen appearance, upstaging the Romulans of all things. Which is to say nothing about what they did to the Romulans themselves-turning the scheming, arrogant, backstabbing space dark elves into Bajorans essentially. In hindsight we should have seen that one coming though-over on Neverwinter they seem to be promoting 'Drizzt' style Drow pretty heavily, so it should come as no surprise that they'd make the Romulans into nice guys to be more palatable for the mainstream.

STO is a funny game. I love it and hate it at the same time. I imagine I'd love it a lot less if it wasn't the only Trek game of note on the market atm. (and the closest we have to an rpg by far)
 

Czann

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Jan 22, 2014
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I've made a Gorn PC after getting the needed level and I play it sporadically. Lots of missions, ships, races and fun. Could be better graphically but overall a good game to waste some time.
 

The_Grand_Nagus

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Feb 8, 2014
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This is my favorite game; it has come SO far since launch it is hard to believe. However I do have a few requests:

1) IMPROVE THE FOUNDRY: the fact that you cant even create missions for one of the games factions(Romulans) is just ridiculous.

2) FIX/IMPROVE Bat'leths: the Bat'leth is the most Iconic melee weapon in Trek, yet it is inferior to some random sword in combat because the sword causes you to auto-run towards your target while the Bat'leth does not. It is incredibly lame not using a Bat'leth on your Klingon because they designed it to be inferior.

3) ADD A FLEET EXALIBUR: We all know CBS said "no T5 connie", too bad, so sad. But they did NOT say you couldnt make a T5/fleet Exalibur/Exeter/Vesper. All you have to do is lock out the connie skin from the ship costume and problem solved.

Looking forward to 2014 and the new expansion that apparently isnt the Cardassians!!!
 

TheBlueRabbit

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Jan 9, 2009
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The_Grand_Nagus said:
2) FIX/IMPROVE Bat'leths: the Bat'leth is the most Iconic melee weapon in Trek, yet it is inferior to some random sword in combat because the sword causes you to auto-run towards your target while the Bat'leth does not. It is incredibly lame not using a Bat'leth on your Klingon because they designed it to be inferior.
This, this, this, INFINITELY this!!! (And, howdy, Nagus. Welcome to The Escapist!)

As a life-long trek addict, at least checking out this game when it went F2P was a no-brainer. I had already been playing Champions Online for about a year (thanks to Shamus Young's series on it in 2010) and enjoying the hell out of it. It's FAR from perfect, and I'm still not a huge fan of the ground combat in it, but as soon as I bear down on some poor sap in my Defiant, I pretty much grin from ear to ear and forget all the problems.

They've done a decent job of consistently churning out new things to explore & projects to work on (altho building a SB in a fleet with only 3 or 4 active people is a daunting task) which keeps me coming back every day.

It's the only MMO I've enjoyed playing enough to drop down the cash for a lifetime sub, although I did get it during a sale period.

Are there bugs? Yep. Are some of them REALLY damn annoying? Absolutely. Are they bad enough to chase me off? Never!
 

marscentral

Where's the Kaboom?
Dec 26, 2009
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I've been playing on and off since launch. It's a bit like a lot of the TV shows in that the quality early on was really inconsistent, but it has grown it's beard (when it went f2p) and gotten a lot better. I wish more MMOs took a look at it's f2p model because it really is the best way I've seen. Very little (only some veteran rewards I think) is off limits to players who don't pay, you can get zen by either buying it or through trading dilithium which you earn in missions.

The new content has been fantastic fun. There's plenty to do, even within the end game grind. It's the first MMO in a long time to really get me coming back and I bought my lifetime sub after it went f2p and haven't regretted it. There are bugs (I really wish they'd fix marauder bridge officer costumes) but they're not game breaking.
 

J Tyran

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Dec 15, 2011
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I play it on off still, its like a holiday from EVE every now and then. EVE can be be hard work sometimes with all the planning and preparation and living as a pirate/pvper in low sec and NPC nullsec you have to be wary all of the time, STO is just some easy PVE and I have always been a Star Trek fan.

It had a rocky start though, its good to see its lasted this long though.
 

LordFish

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May 29, 2012
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Excellent article, Paul! Always love hearing you talk about STO on the podcast. It's why I started playing and it's also the only MMO I've enjoyed.