Reilly2040's Blog

Well, the NDA got lifted in time for this weekend’s big stress test inviting on pretty much anyone who was interested in getting a beta code, so I can finally talk about how much I’ve been loving Star Wars The Old Republic.

Being a huge fan of the previous Knights of the Old Republic games, I’ll be honest,the news that Knights of the Old Republic 3 had been canned in favour of a new MMO that wouldn’t be continuing that story was a bit disappointing.  Set 300 years later though, there’s still nods to the previous games (specifically the leader of the Jedi Council Satele Shan being a direct descendant of Bastilla, and rumours that Revan’s eventual fate will be revealed by the game), and it retains the same kind of strong story telling that you’d expect from a Bioware RPG.   Truthfully, I think they’ve done a great job of taking the gameplay of the first two games, and turning it into an MMO.

Its reported that the game may be the most expensive ever made, and to be honest it shows.  The environments are rich, with my character recently arriving on Coruscant to some brilliant visuals of its impressive skyline, filled with traffic, and the appearance of the familiar Senate Hall imposing.

Of course, a lot has been said about the fact that all dialogue has been recorded as voice over, and again its brilliantly done.  The voice acting is top notch, and it really helps to immerse you in the world.  The cutscenes whenever you pick up or hand in a mission serve to move the story along and involve you more fully in events than the usual basic text would’ve done.   By the end of it, you really start investing in the characters and it breathes life into the world.  Again providing a great balance between a single player RPG and an MMO.

I’ve also been incredibly impressed with the amount of content on offer.  In the game there are the two factions (Republic and Sith Empire) as you’d expect, and 4 classes within each of these, including all those you’d expect with Jedi, Bounty Hunters, Smugglers and Sith.  However each of these 8 classes has its own unique storyline, just begging you to roll alts in order to get the full story of what’s going on.  For example, one thing I loved is that something you stumble across in the opening mission as a Jedi Knight actually forms the main story if you’re playing a Jedi Consular.  And likewise a throwaway detour to a Twi’lek village as a Consular forms a big part of the Knight’s storyline.  And each of the areas is filled with side quests, so you’re never short of something to do, and that’s before you get into group events like Flashpoints, or PvP.  Neither of which I’ve actually tried yet, as I’ve been so engrossed in the main stories and trying out different classes.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have been playing for a few weeks now, and I’m totally hooked.   I’ve been at a point  where my game time in Star Trek Online has been decreasing due to the lack of updates over this last year.  and there just seems to be so much more to do in Old Republic.  I can see me being hooked in a big way once it properly goes live.

Or, why I cancelled my Star Trek Online Subscription…

My intention here is not to have some kind of “Wahhh!  Rage Quit!” post.  Indeed the opposite is very true.  I fully intend to keep playing the game and making purchases from the C-Store, as I still really enjoy playing Star Trek Online.  Neither is this a post about how clearly the game has failed, as its going free to play.  Nope.  Figures from various other MMOs that have done the same have shown the games are far more profitable when they lose the subscription model and rely on microtransactions, including Cryptic’s own Champions Online which has enjoyed a whole new lease of life since going free to play.  I wholeheartedly expect Star Trek Online to continue to be around for years to come, and continue to grow as a game with the new income this will generate.

So why the cancellation?  Well, some background.

Without meaning to be overly harsh, I think its fair to say this hasn’t been the best year for the game.  After enjoying its fortunes turning around with the featured episodes, and the promise of a restructure to allow those featured episodes to become a permanent feature in the second half of the year, the game was the strongest it had ever been, with loads of players turning up every Saturday to play the new missions.  Then  everything went a bit wrong.  Atari decided to sell off Cryptic, and suddenly all the hope of new staff dried up.  With no new staff, and the future of the company in doubt, suddenly the new mission content dried up as well.

I would hope its fair to say, that most of the community were pretty understanding of this at the time.  Once it was clear that there was some sort of sale of the company going on, most seemed to respect that the staff were signed to NDAs.    Eventually word came through that Cryptic had been purchased by Perfect World, and everyone was hopefull that we’d now start to see the promised Featured Episodes, the launch of the Enterprise-F, and the long-in-development Duty Officer System (something I was especially looking forward to) all start to appear on Tribble for testing.

Then the news leaked out, via a conference call that STO was going free to play.  While the game going free to play had been expected (following the success of Champions Online), I think its fair to say that most hadn’t expected it until next year sometime. However, again I think all-in-all the forums were largely understanding of the benefits that going free to play would bring to the game for everyone.

And then Cryptic released their “Free to Play Matrix“.  Now to those who don’t play the game, the differences between the Silver and Gold accounts may look reasonable, but there’s an issue.  Practically speaking for players, there’s very little benefit to having a gold account.  Sure, you get extra inventory and Bridge Officer slots, and you get a C-Store points stipend, however quickly players realised that this wasn’t really promising a lot.   As a silver player, according to some of the maths done by various people, if you invest 2 months worth of subscription costs into C-Store points, you can buy replacement inventory, bank and bridge officer slots for those lost by downgrading.  Yes, you lose Foundry access, but Silver members can still buy one slot to create a mission in, and as someone who’s played with the Foundry, but has never really released anything, I can say that this isn’t a big problem.  Sure, if you really get into writing and publishing missions, you’ll have to subscribe, but for most casual players of the game, this isn’t something they’ll particularly miss.

You do lose access to your Veteran Rewards, but again, Character and Ship slots can be purchased to make up anything you lose, other than a few things (a couple of nice veteran uniforms, a ship firework device, and a Captain’s Yacht shuttlecraft).

Then, came what seemed to be the final straw for the forums.  The announcement that the Featured Episodes were being further delayed, as was the Duty Officer System.  Now rather than see a release to the live server, they were to be held back, and only available via the Free to Play beta server.  No new content would go live until after the Free to Play launch.  So now, the only way players would get any new mission content would be to beta test the Free to Play release. To say players were unhappy would be generous.

The forums as they stand are probably the most hostile I can ever remember them being. Even the die hard fans of the game (which I would count myself among) are struggling to defend Cryptic’s current track record of undelivered content with all the delays, and promises that such-and-such will go live once feature X is done.  Only for feature X to be released, then that same content to be delayed for feature Y.

There are also the interviews with staff. The forums are pretty much united in feeling there isn’t enough between silver (free) and gold accounts to justify the cost of the ongoing subscription. Yet the responses to this seem to make clear that the current direction favours focusing on securing a large number of free players, all buying items via microtransaction versus looking after those players who have subscribed over the last year and a half/two years. From a financial standpoint there’s no denying it makes sense, however it does feel wrong that after sticking with the game and the company throughout the troubles this year has brought, we’re being ignored. At the very least it would be nice to feel that someone was listening to the concerns of the community, but questions about the gold/silver split are quickly deflected by talk of how much money free players will bring into the game.  Ignoring the fact that the current model will see the benefits of that money go to both types of account equally.  Surely courting those players that will pay a monthly subscription in addition to buying C-Store points for extra vanity items (as many of us have been doing since the start of the game) makes sense?

And so today, after a brief discussion with my in game fleet, I came to the decision that makes the most sense to me. My account is currently paid up through to the end of December, which means I’ll enjoy and participate in the free to play beta, and in all likelyhood also enjoy at least a month of gold access once the game goes free. However beyond that, for the sake of some uniforms I just couldn’t justify staying gold financially.

Of course, when my account goes free I’ll incur an initial cost in C-store points to equip my character with the bank and inventory they’ve lost, but all my other purchased ships and uniforms will remain. Sadly my intention over the next couple of months had been to use money I’d been putting aside to buy a lifetime subscription, but that doesn’t currently make sense any more, when a fraction of that money will keep me in C-store points for a good while.

This is not me stopping to support the game. I have no doubt that it’ll continue to be one of my main games, and I fully intend to continue purchasing new ships and other goodies as they become available. However at the moment it doesn’t really feel like I’m valued as a monthly subscriber, so I’ll become one of the silver account players instead. I do hope though, that eventually things change and prior to free to play launch there’s something added to the gold accounts that make them feel more worthwhile. It wouldn’t even have to be much. The occasional ship skin or uniform for subscribers for example.  If something like that was to happen, I’d resubscribe in a heartbeat.  However, at this point, it’d be nice to at least have devs properly acknowledge the unhappiness of the community and complaints about the free to play matrix.  But they seem intent on following through on this course of action, despite whatever feedback they get.  Which seems a shame, to attempt a relaunch of the game, with a community that’s pretty hostile.

Of course, I’ll still continue to recommend the game to my friends.  After all, it is a fun game, and once the weekly missions restart, I expect to have a great time playing through whatever new storylines come our way.  But would I recommend anyone subscribe to the game?  No.  Unless you’ve already bought a lifetime, I think it makes more sense to just go free to play, and occasionally invest in some C-Store points whenever something cool comes out that catches your eye.  Which is a sad state of affairs, as I genuinely believe there’s a good team behind this game that cares about it.  But somewhere at the moment, it definitely feels like there’s a disconnect between this game and its community.

To finish with a side thought, with Cryptic currently in development of the new Neverwinter game, it’ll be interesting to see if it goes straight to free to play on its release.

Better late than never, I thought I’d better maintain the tradition, and talk about the big season update that came out for Star Trek Online a month or so back: Crossfire.  Unlike a lot of other MMOs, this doesn’t include new mission content, since Star Trek Online has its Featured Episodes to cover that.  Instead their current direction is for seasons to bring in changes to the technology of the game, that the content will then build on.

So what did they change for season 4?  well, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes.  New texture compression technology has increased the detail in the game for no extra hardware requirements, while micro-patching cuts down on the need to download massive game updates.  Instead the game will only patch files as they’re needed.

All of which may not sound as immediately exciting as a swanky new plot arc, but the quality of life it brings to the game is immediately noticeable.

However, the season is called Crossfire, and that’s because of its main event: a complete revamp to the ground combat system in the game.  Values have been tweaked to make the combat faster paced, control responsiveness has been improved and weapons have been redesigned.

And then there’s the new shooter mode.  The traditional ground combat has been retained, and now dubbed the RPG mode, however the devs have implemented a whole alternative combat mode, which gives an FPS style to the game.   Switching to shooter mode allows you to select targets via a targetting cursor on the fly, rather than locking onto a target as is normal in RPG mode.  This allows you to spread out your fire across multiple targets, throw grenades into an area (rather than to a specific target) and brings a more intense experience to the combat.

Ground combat has long been taken as one of the weaker aspects of the game, so to see it receive such a massive overhaul has been a big thing for the game.  It really can’t be understated just how much faster and more immediate ground combat feels, whether you’re playing in shooter mode or not.

It doesn’t end there however.  At the same time as ground combat has been upgraded, so have the Borg.  In preparation for a Borg event, due to start later in the month, the Borg have been brought more in line with the capabilities of their onscreen incarnation.  No longer can you continue to fire at them blindly, as the Borg will now adapt to your weapon after a few shots.  They also now have had their assimilation ability boosted.  Whereas before this simply worked as a hold and slow debuff, now players can be properly assimilated.  If the Borg get their nanoprobes on you, then if you’re not cured quickly by a healer on your away team, then you’ll find yourself assimilated, turning into a drone and attacking your teammates for a short while before being allowed to respawn.

All these changes have made the Borg a much bigger threat than before.  From your ship, you can (and must if you want to survive) replicate a remodulator device that you can use to reset your weapons to make them usable against the Borg once again, and by equipping a second, different weapon type in your second weapon slot, you do give yourself a few more shots before remodulation becomes a must, but if you’re remodulating, that means your weapons won’t work for about 10 seconds (not that they were getting past those Borg shields anyway).  The end result is that the Borg are not only closer to their onscreen abilities, but they’re also a heck of a lot tougher and scarier to face.  Very appropriate for the baddies that take centre stage for the end game content.

The last major change worth talking about, is the Klingon homeworld.  Following the updating of Earth Space Dock back with season 3, Quo’noS has long been in the frame for a similar revamp, and to be honest, it needed it much more than the Starfleet home base.  The previous council chambers frequently felt like wide open rooms, and finding your way around was frequently a pain until you learned where everything was.  For me, the worst part was the high council chamber.  A necessary stop for each major rank, it was a cavernous hall with just a few Klingons standing around.  And that was only after you realised you had to go upstairs to find it.

With season 4, that’s all gone, to be replaced by the First City.  Gone are the empty chambers, and instead there’s now a bustling city for the Klingons to base themselves out of.

Here, the revamped texture compression really shines.  The city is incredibly detailed, and the devs have done a great job making it feel alive.  It perhaps still retains the old issues, of it being a bit tricky to find your way around, however there’s a quest to introduce you to the map, and if you run through that, it shows you where everything is, and since doing it, I’ve found I’ve not struggled nearly as much as I did in the old Qo’noS when it comes to finding stuff.

Its all about the nice little touches in the new map.  I love the street signs, which are in Klingon, but flick to English as you approach them.  A nice combination of usability, while still making it all feel Klingon.  The bank, is a building being run by Ferengi, which I loved, and when you go in, you can look down onto the massive warehouse floor where presumably everyone’s stuff is actually being kept.  The High Council’s chamber finally seems a lot more appropriate too, with its reduced scale and moody lighting.

To be honest, while the Klingon players were jealous of the Earth Spacedock revamp, I now think the Federation player have something to be jealous about.  The developers are just improving things all the time, and while Earth Spacedock is a brilliant base map, the new First City just shows how much the devs keep improving with the tools behind this game.

But, they weren’t just finished with the first city.  Of course, the crowning jewel of Earth Spacedock was its revamped ship requisitions area, and now the Klingons have one of their own.   If you return to the transporter room in the city, you also get an option to beam to the orbital shipyards.

Once there, you see the devs took a leaf out of Earth Spacedock, to give the Klingons their own equivalent.  While it might be a bit of a pain that you need to beam up to it, rather than it being housed in the same area, there’s no doubt that visually, its worth it.  Once you arrive in the shipyard, all the usual NPCs are available for you to buy, equip and customise your ships, however its all about the view.  If you head over to the windows, you get a brilliant view of some Birds of Prey currently docked at the shipyards.   Like the view of the Galaxy Class in Earth Spacedock, its brilliant to see these ships from this perspective, and its really something you need to check out for yourself to see just how good those ships look.

As a final nice touch, as the shipyards are orbital, once you zone into Qo’noS space in your ship, you can ignore the planet, and just fly straight to the ship yards.   A really nice touch.

Of course, all this is just the start of season 4, with lots still to come.  The revamped Borg will be getting highlighted in the upcoming Borg invasion event, as well as the remastered STFs.  And then we’ve got not only the return of the Featured Episodes, but the introduction of the new Duty Officer System, which promises to be a game within itself, and something I’m really looking forward to.  As always, the game is coming forward in leaps and bounds.

One aspect of the game which I finally completed the other week, and is also due for a revamp in the near future, are the three Borg STFs (Special Task Forces).  These form a large portion of the endgame content for players who make it to Rear and Vice Admiral, presenting a harder challenge than the normal gameplay.  These are missions targeting the organised players and require a full team of five to complete, with all five people needing to have some idea of what they’re doing, and the ability to listen to orders from those in the team who know their way around the missions.  Having decent high-end gear is also pretty much a requirement, especially once you get past the initial STF, Infected.   But, as these missions will shortly be getting a make over, I thought it’d be interesting to take a look at them as they stand.  What I liked, and what I disliked.  And then compare this review with the new versions once they come out.

I’ll start with the first of the STFs, Infected.

To be honest, my first few attempts at Infected weren’t overly favourable.  I found it took too long to get through, and the final boss room, which requires platform game style jumping in order to access various force field controls (miss and you fall into instant-death plasma and you’ll have to restart the entire room if the team can’t rez you), just caused a lot of frustration.

That said when broken into parts and done over a couple of nights I found it was much better, and it comes back to what I said about needing to know what you’re doing. Once my fleet had a few successful runs under their belts, strategies were figured out and now we can run Infected at around an hour and its a lot of fun. I think Infected is probably a great introduction to the STFs in that regard. It’s by far the shortest and also has much simpler puzzles. It gets players used to working together in an organised fashion, and gets you used to the idea that these missions are going to require more patience and thought (and failed runs to figure things out).  The mission splits nicely into different parts, with a fun, but not overly difficult space battle to start things out, before beaming down to a Starfleet base under siege by the Borg.  You then have to work your way down into the bowels of the station, fighting through assimilated bosses, before coming face to face with the Borg’s new Locutus-style spokesperson.   When nicely dealt with in stages, this mission becomes a lot of fun, as an expanded version of the kinds of missions you’ve been used to dealing with solo in the game already.

The second STF however, The Cure, remains one of my least favourite missions in the game. I really hate running this STF.

Unlike Infected it doesn’t break down as well into sections and for the most part is one giant ground map with no breaks. I just find it overly long and repetitive with no real fun to be had. Sadly however you need to complete it if you want to play Khitomer Accord.

Most of the action takes place around a series of gates that are controlled by various generators, which must be powered up in sequence, with each generator requiring about 30 seconds to power up, before the next can be triggered.  In the meantime Borg spawns will appear who will attempt to deactivate the generators, and bring with them various tougher Tactical drones who, if they spot you, will cause you no end of grief as you try and stop the worker drones switching off your precious generators.

While I definitely appreciated the attempt to bring a puzzle with a high level of strategy into the game, it just becomes annoying.  The number of failed attempts I ran through in order to try and get past the first few gates really got tiring after a while, and with the length of the whole mission, you need to ensure you’ve put aside about 3 hours to do this all in.  The constant grind of managing to get a couple of the generators activated, only to draw agro from the tactical drones, or fail to kill the workers fast enough can easily become wearing.

The mission also seems to lack the polish of the other STFs, specifically in terms of nice touches like voice overs (which in fairness were rare in the game when these were developed, but did add to the feeling you were running special high-end missions).  In Infected for example you get Manus of Borg taunting you as you work your way through the levels of the station, or there are various computer announcements that tie into the puzzles in Khitomer Accord.  The Cure comes across much less involving in comparison.

Out of all the Borg STFs this is the one most clearly needing the upcoming revamp, and I can’t wait to see what Gozer (the developer in charge of the STFs) has done to it.  I have no real problem with these endgame missions being longer, or trickier, but when they just get repetitive and frustrating I lose interest, and only the promise of the Khitomer Accord, and all the good things I’d heard about it, along with the support of my fleet who managed to get a few successful runs done, kept me going with this mission other than just giving up on it entirely.

The final STF, Khitomer Accord, is without a doubt the most complex.  Again, its a very long mission, requiring several hours to complete, and contains several tricky puzzles that require you to have an organised team and good equipment.  However, unlike The Cure, I found all this fun rather than dull and frustrating.  Like Infected, Khitomer Accord has a much better split between space and ground combat with neither element outstaying its welcome.  And like Infected, if things are dragging on, there’s a few good points where you can all agree to stop, and resume the mission the next evening.

This STF probably also benefits from having the strongest story.  While a danger of any team mission is that dialogues get quickly skipped to keep things moving (a reason I tend to prefer to solo the featured episodes first), I still managed to pick up the gist of what was going on, with you intercepting another Borg attempt to alter the past, which leads to the discovery of a massive deactivated Borg base that the present-day Borg attempt to bring back online.  This also gives you the fun of having the two different types of Borg in the mission, the current Cryptic-design Borg, and the more familiar TV/Movie era design.  The time-travel shenanigans in the mission also relate directly to the events in the tutorial, which found you facing off against these old Borg, who were all underpowered, with no proper link to the Collective, and many of their ships disabled.  After the events of the Khitomer Accord, you get no prizes for guessing who it turns out was responsible for the Borg’s poor state of repair in the tutorial

Variety and a strong storyline are without a doubt the key to Khitomer Accord’s success.  While some of the puzzles are tricky (specifically a puzzle which involves one of your team dropping forcefields surrounding various generators to give you only the briefest of windows in which to destroy them), there’s a clear feeling of progression.  You may get stuck on one of the generators, but once its destroyed, its done.  No need to reset the room and do it all again because you got stuck.  None of the elements in the mission outstay their welcome, instead just moving you along to the next confrontation.

While there’s no doubt in my mind that the Cure isn’t a great mission, if you can get a good team together to get you through it, its worth it to play the Khitomer Accord.  And of course, as you complete each of the Borg STFs, you get a new piece of the Borg equipment for your ship, which gives your ship a great distinctive look, as well as supplying various bonuses which are well worth the work.

That’s just a quick glimpse at some of my thoughts on the STFs as they stand.  Obviously its going to be very interesting to see how they develop over the next couple of months.  The revamped ground combat, and Borg adapting will have had an immediate impact on how easy these are to run, but shortly we should start seeing Gozer’s redesigned versions of these missions appearing.  Some of the teases he’s posted on Twitter look very interesting, with him obviously paying a lot of attention to the areas of the missions that have drawn the most criticism or feedback generally (such as Infected’s platform jumping), and the way he’s also making use of the difficulty levels (which weren’t present when these were first designed) to change things at higher difficulty looks very interesting.   I can’t wait to see what they’re like

With the Iconian involvement behind the Tal Shiar now revealed, Starfleet decides its time to deal with Hakeev before things get out of hand.  You’re sent to the Tal Shiar base in the Brea system, and its not long before you’re running around the Tal Shiar-controlled city, with Obisek and his Reman forces seeing their chance for freedom.

Much like last week, the scope of this mission is what really sells it.  After a brief space battle to clear the way for transport to the surface, you find yourself in probably the best city map Cryptic have designed yet, running around gantries and rooftops planting charges and signalling for orbital bombardments.  There’s no real puzzles this week, as its all about the final battle against Hakeev’s forces.

Instead the developers have littered the map with great little set-pieces.  Whether its calling on your ship for orbital bombardments on Romulan artillery positions, or being pinned down by a low-flying Scorpion fighter, this mission is a lot of fun, and you really appreciate the work that’s gone into the map, culminating in the reveal of a giant Iconian Gateway that was a great moment.  The space scenes as well, were very welcome.  The featured episodes tend towards a lot of ground-based action, and this series has been especially heavy on it, so the initial moments of clearing the defences around the planet, followed by the final fights against the Romulans were very welcome.  However, saying that, the developers have done such a great job on this series keeping the ground portions varied with puzzles and the like, that I wasn’t particularly aware of how space-light this series had been until I actually thought about it.  These Romulan episodes have doubtless been the strongest Featured Episodes yet, and quite possibly the best missions in the game.

The story with the Romulans also leaps forward in a major way this series.   After defeating the remaining Tal Shiar ships, Sela herself (sadly no Denise Crosby voiceover, but understandable given its just one line) turns up in her Scimitar-class flagship, striking back against you for the incursion into Romulan space.  You then get a pretty fun and challenging fight against her ship, which is pretty tough, and also possesses the thalaron radiation attack that can near-cripple your ship if you don’t get out of its way.  Its more of a traditional STO boss fight than last week’s, but was still just as fun.

Once you get Sela’s ship down to a certain damage level, another Gateway opens up and an Iconian ship grabs Sela’s ship in a tractor beam and they vanish off.  This leaves things very open for the progression of the storyline.  What will be the Iconians next move?  Was Sela working with the Romulans, or was she ignorant to their plans, in which case why have they kidnapped her?  Its worth also noting that Sela’s flagship was one of the transport locations mentioned in Hakeev’s Gateway during the Coliseum mission, so even if Sela herself hasn’t been working with the Iconians, certainly someone on her ship has been, unless its a clue that she has been working with them.   Its a great little mystery that’s suddenly opened up, and I’m massively pleased by the developers ramping up this storyline.  I’m really looking forward to seeing how the developers drive this storyline forward in future missions.

So overall, I have to say this Cloaked Intentions series has been the most satisfying yet.  While some missions have suffered from bugs that’ve affected them early on, those issues have quickly been resolved, and the constant improvement we’ve seen in the Featured Episodes is never more obvious than in this series with its frequent cut scenes, voice acting, and experimental missions like the shuttle-based The Vault.  The move from more standalone plots, to going back and pushing forward the main story in the game was undoubtedly a highlight for me, and while I wouldn’t want to see it in every series, as it would dilute the impact and run the risk of becoming stale, it does help make things that bit more memorable.

Things are hotting up in the Romulan Sector.  After events at the Vault, Starfleet assigns you to investigate one of the Remans’ targets, a mining colony in the Hfihar system which came under the control of the Ferengi Madran after the destruction of Romulus.  With a mining colony seeming an unlikely target your orders are to gain access to the mine itself to discover what secrets its hiding.

This mission evoked the first Deferi mission to me in one major aspect.  The richness of the environment.  After a quick space sequence where you must determine which moon houses the mine, you beam down to the mining camp.   The mining camp itself stands apart with the Deferi city for one of the most immersive maps in the game.  Its a busy, grimy place.  Romulan citizens litter the camp, wandering around or performing tasks.  There’s new ambient wildlife, as tame wrrigul also wander around the camp.  There’s a mining cart that moves along an upper rail, and a spotlight shining down from a guard tower above.  Meanwhile various Ferengi run around, delivering padds and reports to their boss Madran.  Its a brilliant map, that captures the grungy, downtrodden feeling fantastically.

Its not just visually that this map pulls you into the situation.  The mission also finds you questioning various miners around the camp, which nicely builds a picture of their hard life, between the poor conditions, Madran’s exploitation, and the dangers that lurk in the mine itself.

Again, class-specific objectives are well used in this mission, with the developers obviously realising they’re onto a good thing with this new mechanic.  Being on a team with a science character leads to you performing a geological survey which I found good fun, scanning various parts of the map before finding a rich, new vein of ore for the mine, while playing as an engineer finds you searching for the various components for a broken drill.  This has been a great addition to the game, and despite only being a fairly recent development, its great to see the developers being able to produce interesting new side quests, which also encourage both teaming (to get all the side quests and their accolades) and replaying the missions on other characters.

Once you’re in the mine itself, again the game finds itself borrowing from Classic Trek.  The love the developers have for the original series is obvious, and the fact it remains the most iconic incarnation of Star Trek is born out as obviously the classic Trek elements in the game get a lot of attention from the players in the forums.   This time, with miners going mysteriously missing, the developers siezed upon the opportunity to borrow from that classic episode, the Devil in the Dark, as your explorations eventually lead you to stumble upon the tunnels where the miners have been going missing.  The sight of Romulan guards facing off against a Horta (not not coming out of it too well) was great, and the fact that the mission offers your own Horta pet as a reward is a great treat for fans of the original series.

The mission also features more of the new cutscenes that’ve been brought into the game recently alongside the new voice acting.  While the quality of some of the voice acting is admittedly variable, it still adds a lot to the main characters in the series and makes them more memorable.  I’m also loving the new Romulan uniforms.  The detailed uniform worn by Tal Shiar Boss Hakeev is a really nice piece of work.  The cut scenes also provide a more effective way of playing out a conversation between NPCs than just reading their dialogue in the normal interactions screens.  I’m a big fan, and while they’re apparently a bit of a pain to do with the current developer tools, I’m really enjoying how much they add to missions.

Classic Trek references, one of the best-designed, immersive maps in the game, cut scenes and voice acting.  This mission is a great example of how these featured episodes are about more than just adding new storylines into the game, and how they showcase new technology.

The One Year Anniversary event is now live in Star Trek Online, and its great fun.   Q has appeared in both Earth Space Dock and Qo’nos and has decided its time for a party

For both factions, Q offers a couple of events.  The main one being a Star Trek trivia quiz.  Get five questions right, and he’ll reward you with an exclusive party popper device and an 8 hour XP boost.  However if you get any wrong, he’ll transform you as punishment into any one of a number of creatures, including Undine (Species 8472), a Sehlat or even a Horta.  Get transformed five times, and you’ll at least be rewarded with an accolade though, so its not all bad

Q also offers up a new daily mission, in which he invites you to go play in the Fountain by Admiral Quinn’s office.  Do this, and you’ll be rewarded with a variety of items, which can be anything from a common food item, to exclusive unlocks like pets or bridge officers.  Its an incredibly generous mission, although sadly has been since revealed to be open to exploiting, as the rewards are taken from a pool shared amongst the players.

However, even with all this, Q’s not quite finished, bringing in possibly the biggest thing in this anniversary event.  Basically he decided that Earth Space Dock was too drab and boring (perhaps a bit of meta-commentary from the dev team there)?  So he’s decided to change it back to the older (and more recognisable) space dock.

Its been no secret that dstahl, the lead developer had been championing the original space dock, and that it was being brought into the game.  For the last few weeks, sneak peaks of the new interior were released on the Tribble test server, but to finally see the finished work is just breath-taking.  Its not just a matter of restoring the old Space Dock.  There’s a lot of love and attention gone into its design in the game, aided by the fact that it is so recognisable, that you can’t help grinning when you see it.

I love the way they’ve tweaking docking as well.  As before, once you’re in range you can trigger the docking button and you’ll automatically load into the interior, however as a really nice touch, with the new space dock, you can instead fly up to the doors, which will open up revealing the interior.  Just as you’re about to cross the threshold it loads as before, but the end result does give you more of a “flying in to dock” feeling.

The revamped interior remains a lot in common with the previous layout, but most of the rooms have been updated to at least some degree.  The most notable being Admiral Quinn’s new office, which is now in the same instance as the rest of the interior, so you can just walk into it without loading screens, and the new design seems much more detailed than his old office.    Club 47 has received a major facelift as well, now being much more of a club than just a bar, with a dance floor and DJ present for social events.

The highpoint has to be the ship requisitions room though, which now looks on into the interior of the space dock itself, so as you exit the turbolift, you’re immediately grabbed by the view across the docking bay, currently dominated by a Galaxy class starship parked right beside the requistions room.  The great thing is that the devs are planning periodic tweaks to this room to keep that interior changing.  For example, for its live release there’s now an Excelsior class ship also docked, which wasn’t present in the Tribble testing version.

And for the duration of the event, the developers have also decorated this new interior with one year anniversary holograms, which really add to the feel of the celebration and make the release of this new space dock feel that bit more special.

The final thing that’s been added to the game (via a C-Store purchase), is the Delta Flyer, the famous shuttlecraft from Voyager.  The developers have big plans for shuttles in the new weekly missions that are due to start on Saturday, so have been revamping them a little, with the existing runabouts getting tweaked, and the Delta Flyer and a basic Mk 8 shuttle being added to the game.  But as well as being a premier shuttle, the Delta Flyer also comes with a bonus device that you can keep in your inventory which will launch a Delta Flyer shuttle pet from your starship.  Very cool, and a nice unexpected extra

But wait, there’s even more  The first of the new “remastered” missions has also been released.  Stranded in Space, the first mission you do after the tutorial has been completely reworked using new technology that was developed during the weekly missions and while I enjoyed the original version of the mission, this new revamp with its level scaling, optional objects based on class and cut scenes is really superb.  I can’t wait to see what future remastered missions end up looking like.  And there’s also the release of the first five Foundry missions onto the live server.  While the Foundry itself has been delayed while more work is done on it, the developer team decided to take some of the real fan-favourite user-created missions and put them on the live server as a demo of what’s possible using the toolset.  I’ve played a couple of them on Tribble and they were excellent, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the other missions are like.  Especially as one of them has been designed for the Klingon faction.

Overall, I’m loving this event.  I only had a very brief time in it last night, so tonight I’m hoping to invest more time in exploring everything properly, and making sure all four of my current characters take full advantage of Q’s prescence, the various items you can get from his missions and all the new missions.

The most recent new content added to season 3 of Star Trek Online saw two special sets of ship devices added to the game.  Consisting of several parts (such as a set of shields, a deflector dish and the like), each device grants bonuses to your ship, but also gives additional bonuses if you complete the set.  However, even better is these sets also change the appearance of your ship.

The inspiration for the first set is obvious.  Especially within Voyager, as during the Scorpion 2-parter that introduced 7 of 9, the Borg partly assimilated Voyager, meaning evidence of Borg technology became visible on the hull.  So the first, Borg, set follows on this idea.  Equipping the deflector adds strange Borg-crafted spines to your ship, or equipping the engines adds Borg technology to your impulse and warp engines, causing the nacelles to glow green.   I do especially like the nod to the recent JJ Abrahams movie though with the spines from the deflector clearly being influenced by the Narada.

The nice idea behind this set, is you get the first piece from replaying one of the previous Borg missions and the other 3 from completing the various Borg STFs in the game.

The STFs have long been one of the less popular aspects of endgame content. Requiring a full team of players who know what they’re doing, the STFs are longer missions designed to be challenging to experienced players. I’ve previously run the first one, Infected, and to be honest I hadn’t been taken with it at all. I found it a long, hard slog to get through it and the rewards were pretty poor. Granted, players with more experience in it can get through it faster, but the experience hadn’t really left me a desire to try it again.

Now though, the devs have sought to address one of my big complaints. By adding pieces of the Borg set as rewards, they’ve made it more worthwhile running through these STFs, and are hoping to entice more people to try them out.  I’ve certainly noticed a big difference while I’ve been in game, with a sizeable cluster of starships all parked around the system that the first STF starts in since the sets were released, and a lot of chatter about the missions in the zone chat.  So it certainly looks like its been a success.

Of course, the other advantage of the first console being in the mission replay is that it helps advertise the additional bonuses that are sometimes present for replaying a mission (such as a type 1 phaser in one of the Klingon missions).  Again, these extra rewards for replaying are something I hope we see more of.

The other set that’s been released is the Aegis set (dubbed the “Tron” set by the playerbase, and from the screenshot its hopefully easy to see why).  This set is based off of crafting, with three elements (shields, deflector and engines) that can be crafted once you’ve maxed out all the available crafting trees.  Again, its a nice way to highlight another part of the game, especially given the revamp that’s just been done on crafting.  Like the Borg set, equipping two or three of the devices start to apply additional bonuses and abilities to your ship.  A nice side effect of the Aegis set, is that it bolsters the benefits of being in a fleet, as having everyone working to aquire the data samples for crafting made it easy to quickly equip all of the members of the fleet with this new set, often on several characters.

I’m a massive fan of these sets and I really hope the devs have more on the drawing board. They’re a nice way of drawing attention to different aspects of the game (similar to what I liked about parts of the weekly missions), and I love the idea of being able to further customise the look of our ship based on awards we’ve won.

Star Trek Online Season 3 has now officially launched on Holodeck (the live server).

For those that don’t know, in Star Trek Online “Seasons” are the descriptions of the large content update patches that all MMOs wheel out from time to time in order to spruce up the game, add new features, and squash some bugs.  In Star Trek Online though, they work a little differently, serving as a banner for a portion of the game’s lifespan.  So while Season 3 may have started with the large update that hit yesterday, it continues until the launch of Season 4, as there’s more content to come as part of season 3, that’s still undergoing some final testing and tweaking.

Unlike a lot of these large updates MMOs see (and indeed seasons 1 and 2 of STO), new content was not a big part of the Season 3 release.   Usually you might expect to see new zones open up in the game, and new missions available to be played, but here the developers had been pretty up front that instead for Season 3, the focus was going to be on polish.

Its no secret that Star Trek Online had a bumpy launch.  A lot of people suspect it was rushed out of the door early, with some content lacking, and other aspects of the game lacking proper attention.  Its a launch that dogged the game for some time, and over the course of seasons 1 and 2, these issues were slowly addressed, bringing in some Klingon PvE content, rolling out difficulty options and a death penalty, and introducing a load of new missions, including the recent, highly successful weekly missions.   So despite that rough launch, the game has come on in leaps and bounds.

However there will still aspects of the game that were obviously bugging the developers, and with that in mind, and the game looking much healthier in terms of its content, they obviously felt it was time to sort those aspects out.  And with season 3, while there may be no new missions (unless you’re playing a Klingon), its clear the love that’s gone into the changes.

For me, there’s several main areas of focus.  One is immediately clear to all players, and that’s Sector Space.  Sector Space is the view of the game where you fly from space sector to space sector, travelling to systems within those sectors in order to complete missions.  The original version of sector space (see left) came under a lot of criticism.  Its graphics had a grid transposed over space, with markers coming up from the “floor” to each planet.  I didn’t mind it too much (I rationalised it as an Astrometrics view), however a lot of players felt it detracted from the immersion in the game.  The new version of sector space however, brings a very noticeable revamp.

Firstly, all of sector space has been darkened.  The over-lit view used previously is now absent, with most of the lighting now coming from any stars you pass on your travels.  There’s now a toggle switch as well for switching Astrometrics on or off.  Switching it on provides a similar view to before.  While still darkened, a grid becomes visible.  Switching it off, and those grids and markers are hidden.  The end result gives you much more a feeling of flying through the vastness of space.   As you approach systems, stars start as small dots, before getting larger and eventually you can view the planets surrounding them, and an info box pops up to give you information about the system, as well as any previous options to enter the system or continue a mission.  Another nice visual tweak is when moving through this revamped sector space, you see stars streak past, like the familiar effect seen in the series whenever the Enterprise (or Defiant or Voyager) was travelling at warp.

Previously, where stations such as Deep Space Nine were shown in a highlighted, translucent way, again they’ve been changed, so they’re now rendered as complete objects in sector space.  So as you approach the station, there’s a feeling that you’re genuinely flying up to it, again as opposed to some kind of astrometric or tactical view from a computer terminal.  Specific areas of sector space, such as the Mutara Nebula, Great Bloom or Badlands have had effects added to them.  Before these were normal systems you approached and entered.  Now as you approach, the view of sector space shifts to reflect the environment of the stellar anomaly.    The changes are all geared to shift the feeling from some impersonal computer display to give you more of a feeling of directly controlling your ship as it travels through space, and its superbly done.

The next major change that’s really grabbed me has been crafting.  Crafting has always been something many ignored in STO.  Its based around anomalies that are scanned in space and on planet surfaces.  Gathering up these anomalies meant they could be spent in Memory Alpha upgrading basic pieces of equipment.  All sounds good on the surface, however the types of equipment that could be upgraded were quite limited, and generally you found yourself creating loads of things you didn’t need, in order to gain the crafting experience required to produce something you did genuinely want.  For me, and a lot of players, crafting became resigned to being end game content.  Something new to try and max out at Vice Admiral purely for fun, unlike other MMOs where crafting is a key part of your character’s development.

Season 3 aims to address these issues directly.  The previous distinctions between “Physical Sciences”, “Technology” etc tiers are removed, with items moved into the more logical groupings of “Personal Weapons, Ship Weapons, Ship Devices and the like.   The number of items available has also been drastically increased.  Now almost any combination of weapon or device type you can want appears.  This is the first part to making crafting relevant.  For example, previously when I hit maximum level, the weapons I could craft were no use.  The only beam arrays available were Polaron, and I use Phasers.  Now, whether you use phasers, polaron or tetryon arrays the option is there.  Likewise for the different types of consoles, shields, torpedoes, kits.  Whatever you could need.  Purple “very rare” gear is also now available (previously it was only the rare, blue gear you could craft up to), making use of the rare particle traces introduced into the game in season 2.

The only restrictions I’ve noticed seem to come with the Mark XI gear.  There, for example, only normal shields are available, as opposed to covariant (my shield of choice), regenerative or any of the others).  However I think this is still reasonable, as players need to have some high end gear that is only available through playing the wider game (in this case, to get emblems to be exchanged for the highest end equipment).  Aside from that, the developers have restricted phasers and disruptors to Federation and Klingons respectively, presumably to add a bit of distinctiveness to the two factions’ crafting.

The other major improvement was the removal of needing a base item to upgrade.  Seen as a money-sink, it was another way that crafting only became possible properly at higher levels, as you needed the cash to outlay on something to craft, and unless you’re a pretty clued up player, energy credits can be scarce at lower levels.

Instead, now the basic anomalies (of which, most players amass a huge amount of) are used to create schematics.  So if you want to create a new ship phaser, you’ll need so many anomalies, plus a ship weapon schematic in order to create it.   Again, I think this is definitely a change for the better.  Now lower level characters who’ve managed to build up a supply of anomalies can craft some better equipment for their ships without worrying about their dwindling energy credits.

I’ve been a massive fan of this revamp.  Its really turned crafting into something exciting and relevant to characters as they level up throughout the game.  And the hints of future improvements, tying in with the crew system being designed for season 4 sound like something to really look forward to.

Klingons as well, continue to benefit from each knew season release.  In this season, Klingon tricorders have finally been upgraded to detect destructible mission objectives, that are common in their PvE content.  Previously it was only objects that could be interacted with (scanned etc) that they would detect, like the Federation tricorders.  This is a great quality of life change for making Klingon missions a bit easier.

Klingons also now have access to crafting, like the Federation only more disruptor-focussed.  And they’ve also got several new daily “sortie” missions opened up to them which they can play to raid Federation transports and outposts for more data samples for use in crafting.  All these kinds of changes we’ve seen over the last few releases really make me want to get back to my Klingon and start levelling him up again, and take advantage of the fact I can now upgrade my ship through crafting.

But these are only some of the initial changes introduced with the launch of Season 3.  And so, since this has gotten really quite long, I’ll take a break, and talk about the upcoming content currently being trialled on the public test server, including the much-anticipated Foundry for user-generated missions.

So, after locating a time portal to the 23rd century on Drozana Station in the previous mission, Everything Old is New Again finds you and your crew stepping through the portal in an attempt to discover what the Devidians are up to.

Immediately on activating the portal, you’re treated to the interior of Drozana Station in its prime.  No longer the 200 year old, decaying wreck, its now a pristine, newly-built station , and the sudden shift in decor to recognisable 23rd  design is a great fanboy treat.

What follows is another, well-designed mission.  Being from the future, your primary worry has to be to not muck up the timeline too much.  You discover that the station is under a medical quarantine following a mysterious illness that’s draining the neural energy of the station’s occupants (suggesting the Devidians are present in this time zone as well, something later confirmed).   There’s a nice little logic puzzle where you have to overload the computer systems in the room you start in, to break the lockdown and get out in to the main station.

Once out, stealth becomes the name of the game, as you need to try and avoid security patrols while trying to put together the items you need to scan the area for the Devidians and work out a way home.  There’s a nice line of dialogue about setting phasers to heavy stun, something we don’t usually get in the game, but made perfect sense to introduce here.   Another great addition is how some groups will allow you to use diplomacy to try and bluff your way around, rather than relying in stealth, or the aforementioned stun setting.  The stealth aspect is nicely done too, allowing you to duck past the security teams as they check other rooms, or you’ve got the option to try and lock them in one of them.  These kinds of options just really add to the “role playing” aspect of the game, allowing you to make choices as to how you want to tackle a problem.

Once you make it past security, its then onto the second main part of the mission, as you encounter a familiar face.  Heading the medical efforts on the station is Doctor Leonard McCoy, and you quickly find yourself drafted into helping him develop a treatment for the Devidian-affected crew.  This again, is a nice little puzzle where you must scan infected crew members, and use the results to provide the calibration needed to heal them.

Once that’s done, its a straight run to the finish, as you retrieve the final part you need and trigger the time portal, stopping only to get some drugs to protect you from the radiation from McCoy and zap some Devidians that appear.

In terms of mission construction, there’s some really interesting and varied ideas brought into the game here.  I think this is the first time a mission’s had a stealth aspect (including an accolade if you successfully get past the 23rd century security teams without having to stun them) so that was a welcome new gameplay mechanic that I think was pretty successful idea.  The combination of the stealth and puzzles nicely fills the mission out, and means that it feels like you’ve done a lot, despite the lack of combat (unless you decided to just shoot the security teams).

The inclusion of McCoy in the mission also worked really well.  We’ve seen semi-familiar faces in the game before in the form of MacKenzie Calhoun (from the New Frontier books) and various grown up versions of Voyager characters like Naomi Wildman, Icheb and Miral Paris (who of course is a big player in one of the storylines).  However this is one of the few instances where a main character from the franchise has appeared.  The designers had obviously gone to a fair amount of effort to make the character in game a reasonable likeness of DeForest Kelley, and the dialogue seemed spot on to me, so definitely a great moment in the game.  Hopefully we’ll see more familiar faces pop up as new content gets added, as it really adds to the missions, although I appreciate with the game being set in 2409 it makes it a bit trickier without more time travel being used.

However sadly it wasn’t all plain sailing with this mission, and despite the well-constructed mission, with lots of different gameplay mechanics, this was also the first weekly where I felt a few bugs bite which detracted from the experience.  On my first run through, during the stealth segment, I’d attempted to hide in a room while the security team walked past.  This had two side effects, with the team’s patrol route interrupted, they just waited outside the door rather than moving on.  Then one member of the security team randomly respawned within the room, immediately attacking me and costing me the accolade.

Fortunately, a second bug struck when I completed the mission, as the mission didn’t properly complete on my return to the future, and instead I had to run through it again.  Admittedly though, this worked to my advantage, as it let me re-do the stealth segment and get the accolade.

On my second run through, I then again encountered a bug with the second security team, who are supposed to be in a group in a room you have to work your way past.  Instead, they would spawn further up the corridor, run into the room, and immediately beam out and run back in again.  This constant cycle made it impossible to get past them without sacrificing the accolade by stunning them.

However, these bugs are already being addressed.  The mission not completing (while this worked to my advantage) has already been patched, and I expect any other lingering problems to be picked up as well.  It was just a bit of a shame that they slightly soured my first experience of the mission.

However, bugs and glitches aside, there’s a lot to praise in this episode.  The 23rd Century setting was well realised and  feels fresh in the game.  The greater mixture of gameplay styles, combat, stealth and puzzles, and allowing the player to decide how to approach the issue of the security patrols added some depth and real  role playing to the mission.  The inclusion of Bones was a great treat and hopefully a sign that the devs will try to bring more recognisable characters into the game as things go forward, where they can.

Combined with the previous mission, there’s a real sense that the developers are trying to push the envelope of what they accomplish within the game, whether its through the detailed level design of last week, or introducing new gameplay styles this week, its nice to see the game being pushed forward rather than just relying on the same kind of content and level design that we’ve seen before.