Another great-looking Iron Man trailer. Interesting to see another suit of armour revealed (I guess Tony decides he needs an emergency more portable suit) and we see a little more of Black Widow (but not much). Most interestingly we see Whiplash’s involvement in the main plot and Hammer recruiting him.
Line of the trailer is either “Oops” or “Agreed”. Probably the later 
This film can’t come soon enough 
So I’ve been playing the game for around a week now. With my buddy key expired, I’ve gone straight out and bought the collector’s edition from Steam (since I figured a download retailer was the quickest way to a new key to get me back into the game). I opted to pay the extra for the collector’s edition, since I can see me playing this game for a good while, and the Classic Trek uniforms called out to me (can’t beat Classic Trek. Well, maybe DS9).
I’d mentioned in my previous post about how I felt like the game feels like a solid basis to build on. So I thought now I’ve got a little playtime under my belt, I’d list some things I’d like to see happen in the game. Now, I’m not that up to date on the developer side of things, so odds are on some of these are already planned, and I’m not by any means saying these are things I’d like in the short term, just as the game develops.
So in no particular order:
The Bridge
At the moment, the bridge doesn’t really do much. You can select from a few different themes at the Starbase, but otherwise its just a private meeting room where you can chat to your mates. The bridge for me represents an exciting opportunity for player housing in the game. Ontop of the themes, allow players to by new (decorative) consoles for example, or select from a variety of Captain’s chairs. Granted, the nature of Star Trek limits the bridge customisation a little. You could fine tune the customisation to different colour schemes, chairs, console types etc though.
To open things up, larger ships could add a Captain’s ready room to the bridge, which could easily be decorated with more personal items. Throw in a couple of sofas, or fish like Picard had. Desks, coffee tables, pictures on the walls all become possibilities that would look out of place on a bridge.
Above this, even larger ships could hang a conference room on as well.
Player housing was something I sunk a bit of time into in Star Wars Galaxies, customising my place on Tatooine. I could easily see myself tweaking and re-tweaking my bridge and ready room in Star Trek Online.
Of course, I’d also like the ability to actually sit on that centre seat
Multiple Uniform Slots
One of the nice features in City of Heroes is the ability to accumulate extra costume slots, and then switch between outfits at will. The existing uniform designer in STO ticks most of the right boxes for me in terms of the different uniforms that can be created (although I do hope that eventually the exclusive uniforms like TOS and TNG make it into the C-Store and become micropayment fodder). You can currently save particular looks and reload them at will, although you have to first visit the tailor, and then pay to switch uniform. It’d be nice to have a number of pre-defined slots for your favourite uniforms (at least for your Captain. The Bridge Officers could remain reliant on the tailor). I know you can currently have a second slot for your “fleet” uniform, so presumably this is something that’s in the works (I guess extra uniform slots could be another candidate for micropayments, but a couple of free ones would be nice).
New Races
By this I don’t necessarily mean just new alien types for Starfleet officers (although obviously they’re good too, and easier to implement), but bolstering the existing Federation vs Klingon game with race-specific campaigns and ships (Romulans being an obvious candidate) makes sense. Saying that, given the development time required to produce a new race, its range of ships, and although the mission arcs related to that race’s plotline, I could see this being more along the lines of a larger, paid expansion.
More Story Arcs
I’m now a Lieutenant Level 10, and the one thing that’s jumped out at me is that only really Admiral Quinn has been offering me missions that build into a story arc so far. Sulu and the others seem to just give out the more general, easily generated missions that you can use to build up your xp, rather than have an underlying plot you can get your teeth into (although its possible I’ve written those contacts off too early and missed a plot arc coming in later). So one thing I’d like to see in these early Lieutenant levels is maybe one other Admiral giving you missions that have a storyline to them. City of Heroes was again quite good at doing this kind of thing, so I’d imagine it’ll be on the cards at somepoint.
More Ships From the TV Series
In fairness to the devs, this is already pretty well catered for. The Constitution class was a pre-order option, and the Constitution class refit, Danube, Miranda, Defiant, Intrepid, Galaxy, Akira, Nova and Sovereign are all in the game (can’t remember if I’ve forgotten any). So a hopefully easy win for the devs would be including a few of those ship classes that didn’t make it in currently. Excelsior’s an obvious one, the original Stargazer, Steamrunner and heck even the NX-01 are candidates. They could easily map to existing class tiers, although players would maybe have to turn a blind eye to an NX-01 holding its own against a Miranda but there’s no reason they couldn’t be added to add a nice bonus into an update package (regarding the NX-01, the in-game canon could just say its a new ship based on the old hull for nostalgic reasons or something).
That’s all just a random wishlist. Of course, there’s various other tweaks I’d like: bugs fixed, elements of the interface cleaned up, but I know these will all happen with time, especially as its early days yet for the mmo, with patches turning up every few days to fix the gameplay issues as their found. From playing City of Heroes, I know some of this kind of content is very much a long term (first few years) type of thing, but that’s fine. I’m having fun playing the game and figuring it out as it is, so the point is more to bring in interesting new features as the game matures in order to keep the existing player base interested.
Despite not being out until April, DC are obviously wanting to capitalise on the recent release of Rebirth #6, and have posted a preview of the first issue of the ongoing monthly up on the DCU blog.
Despite feeling a little unsure about the Flash in the DCU at the moment, with both Rebirth and Blackest Night: Flash not quite ticking the boxes for me, this preview’s really got me excited again. While I’ll miss the Wally backup, I’m loving the opening to this story. The cover really grabs you with a great action pose, and the opening scene likewise is exciting. I love how Barry texts Iris back almost instantly and Manapul’s art looks great. It probably wouldn’t have suited a story like Blackest Night: Flash, but here it really makes everything look bright and fun, which I think the franchise needs a little of after the last year or so.
The fact that its the Trickster Barry’s chasing in the opening is a great touch. Axel is the newest of the Rogues, and previously Barry’s only fought the original Trickster, so straight away Johns is setting us up for Barry’s reaction to how the Rogues have developed since he died. Something I’m really looking forward to, especially given Captain Cold’s concern over Barry’s return, and how that’s going to dramatically change things for the Rogues.
Despite the rocky start, and the fact that Wally’s home in the DCU is still a bit uncertain (at least with Kyle we knew about GLC: Recharge and then Rann/Thanagar War) I’ve still got a lot of hope for the Flash franchise, and these opening pages add to that. The idea of Barry being back may be controversial, but playing him as a by-the-book forensic cop has legs (especially compared to Hal’s rule-breaking space-cop over in GL), and the idea of CSI: DCU (for want of a better term) could be really interesting if Geoff properly explores it (I’m thinking here about how much of Hal’s civilian life and job have been shelved in favour of cosmic adventures over the last few years, and I hope we don’t see something similar with the Flash. We know that The Flash is great, but its Barry Allen who needs to be presented as the interesting character here).
Between this preview and the teases in Rebirth #6 I think there’s a lot to be excited about for the Flash over the next few years. I just really hope that this series finally pulls off what so many relaunches have failed to do since Infinite Crisis and reinvigorates the franchise.
