Boldly going
Feb. 2nd, 2011 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cmdr_zoomNew game, and a little context for that last post.
I've finally gone and picked up Star Trek Online, one year after its launch. The way I figure it, they've finally got a decent amount of content (and the promise of more on the way, though I fear the Foundry will probably end up exactly like Mission Architect has), most of the original bugs and issues are fixed (just in time for new ones), and the price of the game itself has come down (to free, technically; I got the Deluxe Digital Download via Steam for just $15, which includes a free month of play). Nor do I seem to be alone; while the space around Sol is well-populated with giant cruisers flown by admirals, I did see several other dinky ships like my own Miranda-class USS Osiris.
First impressions, after a single night of play, behind the cut.
It feels very chaotic. A lot of this is no doubt due to my own inexperience and ignorance, despite my attempts to read up on the game via the forums, the wiki, etc. It's been so long since I was a complete newbie in Atlas Park that I can't clearly recall if CoH was quite so overwhelming. (Mind you, the game was also simpler then - no salvage, no auction house or IOs, no zone events...) Some of it is probably also because there's just one server that everyone plays on, and of course, I'm at the Federation questing hub, especially for the early game. So it's a bit crowded. That's good, I guess - an MMO with no players is a very sad and lonely thing - but adds to the sense of overload.
I'm sure I'm making mistakes in my character build, just going with what sounds right with no real understanding of the numbers behind it, but I'm looking into getting some help there and I'm not so far into the game yet that I can't either fix it (I hope) or punt and reroll. I'm not the sort who chases after Optimum Performance, but I'd like to not suck and to be able to beat a Klingon of similar size best two out of three.
Slowly getting used to the gameplay, which is both like and unlike games I've played before (Starfleet Command and, of course, City of Heroes, with some Warcraft tossed in because you can't avoid it in this genre). The space battles are definitely my favorite, while the ground game is... competently done. That may be my own biases, though.
Characters have an unnerving tendency to all look the same, and I don't mean the uniforms (which are actually rather widely varied, which goes against the whole point of "uniform" even for a service as Military-Lite as Starfleet). I can tinker with my character and his bridge officers a bit, but the NPCs have a bad case of Only Six Faces.
It's going to be a while before I have the hang of enhancing/upgrading my ship and my own equipment from drops. Crafting in WoW manages to be at least semi-intuitive; much less so (IMO) in CoH and now STO.
Once I get my character up to a grade 6 Lieutenant (possibly as early as tonight), I'll be allowed to make a Klingon character, who starts at similar rank. Unlike my human engineer-promoted-to-captain, the Klingon will definitely be a warrior (tactical specialization) and fly around in "Raptor" type ships. Fun.
The trick is going to be balancing it with/against CoH, which is heating up with today's release of Issue 19.5 - but I mostly play that on the weekends with friends anyway, and I can afford another 50 cents a day for a month or two until I can either get back to it or decide it's not for me after all.
I've finally gone and picked up Star Trek Online, one year after its launch. The way I figure it, they've finally got a decent amount of content (and the promise of more on the way, though I fear the Foundry will probably end up exactly like Mission Architect has), most of the original bugs and issues are fixed (just in time for new ones), and the price of the game itself has come down (to free, technically; I got the Deluxe Digital Download via Steam for just $15, which includes a free month of play). Nor do I seem to be alone; while the space around Sol is well-populated with giant cruisers flown by admirals, I did see several other dinky ships like my own Miranda-class USS Osiris.
First impressions, after a single night of play, behind the cut.
It feels very chaotic. A lot of this is no doubt due to my own inexperience and ignorance, despite my attempts to read up on the game via the forums, the wiki, etc. It's been so long since I was a complete newbie in Atlas Park that I can't clearly recall if CoH was quite so overwhelming. (Mind you, the game was also simpler then - no salvage, no auction house or IOs, no zone events...) Some of it is probably also because there's just one server that everyone plays on, and of course, I'm at the Federation questing hub, especially for the early game. So it's a bit crowded. That's good, I guess - an MMO with no players is a very sad and lonely thing - but adds to the sense of overload.
I'm sure I'm making mistakes in my character build, just going with what sounds right with no real understanding of the numbers behind it, but I'm looking into getting some help there and I'm not so far into the game yet that I can't either fix it (I hope) or punt and reroll. I'm not the sort who chases after Optimum Performance, but I'd like to not suck and to be able to beat a Klingon of similar size best two out of three.
Slowly getting used to the gameplay, which is both like and unlike games I've played before (Starfleet Command and, of course, City of Heroes, with some Warcraft tossed in because you can't avoid it in this genre). The space battles are definitely my favorite, while the ground game is... competently done. That may be my own biases, though.
Characters have an unnerving tendency to all look the same, and I don't mean the uniforms (which are actually rather widely varied, which goes against the whole point of "uniform" even for a service as Military-Lite as Starfleet). I can tinker with my character and his bridge officers a bit, but the NPCs have a bad case of Only Six Faces.
It's going to be a while before I have the hang of enhancing/upgrading my ship and my own equipment from drops. Crafting in WoW manages to be at least semi-intuitive; much less so (IMO) in CoH and now STO.
Once I get my character up to a grade 6 Lieutenant (possibly as early as tonight), I'll be allowed to make a Klingon character, who starts at similar rank. Unlike my human engineer-promoted-to-captain, the Klingon will definitely be a warrior (tactical specialization) and fly around in "Raptor" type ships. Fun.
The trick is going to be balancing it with/against CoH, which is heating up with today's release of Issue 19.5 - but I mostly play that on the weekends with friends anyway, and I can afford another 50 cents a day for a month or two until I can either get back to it or decide it's not for me after all.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-03 01:51 pm (UTC)Not sure how much help I can be, but give Ky'reth a call next time you're on.