Archived Post
10-03-2011, 07:52 AM
Well, the developers have launched the Tribble server for the beta test of Free-to-play (F2P) and to put further work into Season 4.1.
I first became aware of the beta test on the 29 September 2011. However, I did not attempt to access the server until Friday, 30 September 2011. I read over the patch notes provided by the developers. The notes are provided in an outline format.
However, it is unclear in the written documentation how people access a Silver account or a Gold account. Since, I am a veteran of the game since February 2010, I took an educated guess that if I had a lifetime subscription or was paying for an account that I was already a gold member. I also speculate that to start a silver account, a player just has to download the client software and open a new account with the game.
Although, I have not confirm this information. I also do not know how someone not playing the game will know that Cryptic Studio is beta testing the game for silver account clients.
Logging in the game to test:
At this phase of the test, the players must start out with a new character. I was able to load a copy of my main character in the character editor. At least, I will have the look of my main character, but she is a new character.
The game starts the player with the same tutorial, but there have been changes. Players will now start in sickbay if they are a science officer, engineering if they are a engineer character, or another place for tactical officers. I have not confirmed where tactical players start.
From this point, the tutorial is still the same.
This is where I encountered my first bug report. In role play mode (RPG), the auto fire did not function properly. The problem was mainly with the number 2 slotted power or attack. I switch back to the shooter mode, the toolbar functioned correctly. I then switched back to RPG mode. In my set up, I use a Logitech F310 gamepad. Only the number 3 slot power on the toolbar would function correctly. I tried several techniques to understand what was happening in the game in relation to the game pad.
The method I ended up using to work around this problem was to turn off the second auto attack option, or the highlighted green button. To turn this off in game, a player just has to hold the right mouse button down until the button is no longer highlighted green. I was able to enable or turn on the first position power in the toolbar while using the gamepad. The auto fire work too, but I had to press the second attack manually to activate the second attack power from both the keyboard and gamepad.
I suspect when the programmers eliminated the 'maintain' option on the ground game for the RPG mode, it wiped out the necessary code that allowed the toolbar to function properly. Even though the programmers stated they had made the function inoperable for several months. I do not think this is true. I have always used 'maintain' in Star Trek Online (STO) and Champions Online (CO).
I mainly used maintain because it allowed a player on ground and space to set the first two slotted powers to autofire and not have to worry about targeting the enemy. In space it allows a player to fire at multiple contacts if the player does not target anything. You just had to enable the fire and as soon as a foe steps into range, the player will attack the foe.
My 'maintain' was able to do this up until Season 4 patch came out which eliminated this option. When they eliminated this option in the autofire menu, this is when I first started to experience the toolbar not working properly for the slotted 2 power.
I suspect that the way maintain was working before Season 4 patch was a mistake to begin with when the programmers started allowing autofire to more than one slotted attack for space and ground. I think they tried to correct for this because it caused an error in the players favor. I think they stated 'they had made it inoperable' only to act a a block for what was really transpiring in the game. I think the programmers underestimated how useful the original serendipitous error was.
I think they intended to correct for it in Season 4 with the shooter system. However, it backfired because by removing the underlying function caused more malfunctions in the code. I do not think this is a sinister act or behavior. I think it was a bad policy to tinker with something that was not consider 'broken' by the player base.
Anyway, I slaved through the tutorial and am told I never have to do it again. We will see.
On to Exploring the Galaxy:
My usual style of play is to skip the Cryptic storyline in the game, mainly because I think it is not Star Trek style stories, but really just Space Wars version 4.0. I usually, go strait to the Delta Volanis area and explore. I save the story missions if people want to team later.
However, I soon discovered that the developers assume everyone plays the storyline missions. I base this on that you do not officially get the go explore the Delta Volanis until after you finish the P'Jem story.
I prefer to do exploration missions first build up some money and replace all the useless starter equipment on the Miranda. On the live server, I immediately dump the Miranda for the TOS Constitution class. I also outfit my away team with Phaser 2. This way I only have to pay for armor and shield upgrades. I normally use my exploration badges to buy items from Ensign to VA1.
However, the developers have eliminated badges with the current proposed patch. This actually is a bad idea. When you first start doing exploration missions, the first couple of missions are Aid the Planet, Gather resources, or approach the planet. By eliminating the badges, the player now has to buy all the ship components and landing party equipment as a out of pocket expense.
A player could elect to craft some low level items, but by the time you made enough low level items to overcome the skill required to make a useful item that you can slot now, you will out rank the crafted item. So, when I swing around to make craftable items, I will be able to do so with my second character or when I am VA1, I will be able to make a ton of useless items. Not to mention, the long back and forth flights to Memory Alpha to make the items is allot of dead time.
I explored to see if they moved crafting off of Memory Alpha, I have not seen anything ship board to do so.
The moment I hit the exploration zone, I hit around 10 Aid the Planet missions in a row. The developers decided to eliminate the reward item for going out and purchasing commodities. So all ten of those missions were sent to the drop mission pile because, there is no point to do them. No one is going to go out and spend 1,000 Ec or more on items, and get nothing in return.
I was hoping to see if the game awarded dilithium instead of badges or aid the planet rewards. This was not to be. Instead, the player is left with a large amount of time grinding that is not profitable. Keep in mind profit is any skill, currency, or tangible and intangible item a player comes away with from spending time doing an activity in the game.
So my options, was a long grind to Lieutenant Commander (LtC) or go do the storyline missions, which I think are boring and not representative of Star Trek. So I decided to go do the storyline missions to get them out of the way.
The P'Jem mission had some changes which are nice. However, in my opinion the story is awful. A federation Commander who has just survived a Borg attack on Vega Colony, then went to save a stranded freighter which was under attack by Orions , who are formally allied with the Klingon Empire. You have to escort a emotionally unstable Vulcan who is prone to frustration and anger (very non-Vulcan like). he has urgent business on P'Jem that requires Star Fleet intervention.
Makes no sense if you are a Undine spy trying to secretly infiltrate a Vulcan monastery. Yes, my first instincts is to argue for Star Fleet to personally escort me. Then if bad storyline is not enough, the Klingons show up to tell you that you are being duped by the Undine.
What is a better mystery is how the Klingons know about the Undine and the federation player does not know. It also begs the question, if we have a Betazoid Counselor, which is standard operating procedure for Star Fleet since TNG. The whole purpose of have a telepathic and empathetic as a bridge crewman is to inform the captain of suspicious people who are trying to deceive the captain with mental skills.
If that is not enough, the next mission Stop the Signal, is actually really good until you get to the end of it. Some how, in a gun fight, a Undine is revealed to the crew. Then a bunch of Klingons show up to aid the lone federation frigate. This is weird because, we are so deep in the Federation interior. The Klingons get wiped out in 30 seconds by a Undine battlecruiser that should be fighting a VA1 ship.
Instead you have to attempt to fight the ship solo, after an entire Klingon battle force is wiped out with standard issue phasers and standard issue torpedoes, without any skills allocated.
Where a smart player and wise player would have went and built up the ship and crew for the mission can come back to the stories, the developers wiped out the only way to build up your ship and crew by eliminating the badges. Then not replacing it with anything.
However, once I realized the Stop the Signal mission was poorly designed, I went back and slaved my way with exploring. I did rack up a nice payload of resources. however, my monetary assets is below average. of the 22 characters I currently have in the main game. I am usually north of 22,000 EC's at LtC1. I was barely at 2,000 EC's this weekend.
(continue below)
I first became aware of the beta test on the 29 September 2011. However, I did not attempt to access the server until Friday, 30 September 2011. I read over the patch notes provided by the developers. The notes are provided in an outline format.
However, it is unclear in the written documentation how people access a Silver account or a Gold account. Since, I am a veteran of the game since February 2010, I took an educated guess that if I had a lifetime subscription or was paying for an account that I was already a gold member. I also speculate that to start a silver account, a player just has to download the client software and open a new account with the game.
Although, I have not confirm this information. I also do not know how someone not playing the game will know that Cryptic Studio is beta testing the game for silver account clients.
Logging in the game to test:
At this phase of the test, the players must start out with a new character. I was able to load a copy of my main character in the character editor. At least, I will have the look of my main character, but she is a new character.
The game starts the player with the same tutorial, but there have been changes. Players will now start in sickbay if they are a science officer, engineering if they are a engineer character, or another place for tactical officers. I have not confirmed where tactical players start.
From this point, the tutorial is still the same.
This is where I encountered my first bug report. In role play mode (RPG), the auto fire did not function properly. The problem was mainly with the number 2 slotted power or attack. I switch back to the shooter mode, the toolbar functioned correctly. I then switched back to RPG mode. In my set up, I use a Logitech F310 gamepad. Only the number 3 slot power on the toolbar would function correctly. I tried several techniques to understand what was happening in the game in relation to the game pad.
The method I ended up using to work around this problem was to turn off the second auto attack option, or the highlighted green button. To turn this off in game, a player just has to hold the right mouse button down until the button is no longer highlighted green. I was able to enable or turn on the first position power in the toolbar while using the gamepad. The auto fire work too, but I had to press the second attack manually to activate the second attack power from both the keyboard and gamepad.
I suspect when the programmers eliminated the 'maintain' option on the ground game for the RPG mode, it wiped out the necessary code that allowed the toolbar to function properly. Even though the programmers stated they had made the function inoperable for several months. I do not think this is true. I have always used 'maintain' in Star Trek Online (STO) and Champions Online (CO).
I mainly used maintain because it allowed a player on ground and space to set the first two slotted powers to autofire and not have to worry about targeting the enemy. In space it allows a player to fire at multiple contacts if the player does not target anything. You just had to enable the fire and as soon as a foe steps into range, the player will attack the foe.
My 'maintain' was able to do this up until Season 4 patch came out which eliminated this option. When they eliminated this option in the autofire menu, this is when I first started to experience the toolbar not working properly for the slotted 2 power.
I suspect that the way maintain was working before Season 4 patch was a mistake to begin with when the programmers started allowing autofire to more than one slotted attack for space and ground. I think they tried to correct for this because it caused an error in the players favor. I think they stated 'they had made it inoperable' only to act a a block for what was really transpiring in the game. I think the programmers underestimated how useful the original serendipitous error was.
I think they intended to correct for it in Season 4 with the shooter system. However, it backfired because by removing the underlying function caused more malfunctions in the code. I do not think this is a sinister act or behavior. I think it was a bad policy to tinker with something that was not consider 'broken' by the player base.
Anyway, I slaved through the tutorial and am told I never have to do it again. We will see.
On to Exploring the Galaxy:
My usual style of play is to skip the Cryptic storyline in the game, mainly because I think it is not Star Trek style stories, but really just Space Wars version 4.0. I usually, go strait to the Delta Volanis area and explore. I save the story missions if people want to team later.
However, I soon discovered that the developers assume everyone plays the storyline missions. I base this on that you do not officially get the go explore the Delta Volanis until after you finish the P'Jem story.
I prefer to do exploration missions first build up some money and replace all the useless starter equipment on the Miranda. On the live server, I immediately dump the Miranda for the TOS Constitution class. I also outfit my away team with Phaser 2. This way I only have to pay for armor and shield upgrades. I normally use my exploration badges to buy items from Ensign to VA1.
However, the developers have eliminated badges with the current proposed patch. This actually is a bad idea. When you first start doing exploration missions, the first couple of missions are Aid the Planet, Gather resources, or approach the planet. By eliminating the badges, the player now has to buy all the ship components and landing party equipment as a out of pocket expense.
A player could elect to craft some low level items, but by the time you made enough low level items to overcome the skill required to make a useful item that you can slot now, you will out rank the crafted item. So, when I swing around to make craftable items, I will be able to do so with my second character or when I am VA1, I will be able to make a ton of useless items. Not to mention, the long back and forth flights to Memory Alpha to make the items is allot of dead time.
I explored to see if they moved crafting off of Memory Alpha, I have not seen anything ship board to do so.
The moment I hit the exploration zone, I hit around 10 Aid the Planet missions in a row. The developers decided to eliminate the reward item for going out and purchasing commodities. So all ten of those missions were sent to the drop mission pile because, there is no point to do them. No one is going to go out and spend 1,000 Ec or more on items, and get nothing in return.
I was hoping to see if the game awarded dilithium instead of badges or aid the planet rewards. This was not to be. Instead, the player is left with a large amount of time grinding that is not profitable. Keep in mind profit is any skill, currency, or tangible and intangible item a player comes away with from spending time doing an activity in the game.
So my options, was a long grind to Lieutenant Commander (LtC) or go do the storyline missions, which I think are boring and not representative of Star Trek. So I decided to go do the storyline missions to get them out of the way.
The P'Jem mission had some changes which are nice. However, in my opinion the story is awful. A federation Commander who has just survived a Borg attack on Vega Colony, then went to save a stranded freighter which was under attack by Orions , who are formally allied with the Klingon Empire. You have to escort a emotionally unstable Vulcan who is prone to frustration and anger (very non-Vulcan like). he has urgent business on P'Jem that requires Star Fleet intervention.
Makes no sense if you are a Undine spy trying to secretly infiltrate a Vulcan monastery. Yes, my first instincts is to argue for Star Fleet to personally escort me. Then if bad storyline is not enough, the Klingons show up to tell you that you are being duped by the Undine.
What is a better mystery is how the Klingons know about the Undine and the federation player does not know. It also begs the question, if we have a Betazoid Counselor, which is standard operating procedure for Star Fleet since TNG. The whole purpose of have a telepathic and empathetic as a bridge crewman is to inform the captain of suspicious people who are trying to deceive the captain with mental skills.
If that is not enough, the next mission Stop the Signal, is actually really good until you get to the end of it. Some how, in a gun fight, a Undine is revealed to the crew. Then a bunch of Klingons show up to aid the lone federation frigate. This is weird because, we are so deep in the Federation interior. The Klingons get wiped out in 30 seconds by a Undine battlecruiser that should be fighting a VA1 ship.
Instead you have to attempt to fight the ship solo, after an entire Klingon battle force is wiped out with standard issue phasers and standard issue torpedoes, without any skills allocated.
Where a smart player and wise player would have went and built up the ship and crew for the mission can come back to the stories, the developers wiped out the only way to build up your ship and crew by eliminating the badges. Then not replacing it with anything.
However, once I realized the Stop the Signal mission was poorly designed, I went back and slaved my way with exploring. I did rack up a nice payload of resources. however, my monetary assets is below average. of the 22 characters I currently have in the main game. I am usually north of 22,000 EC's at LtC1. I was barely at 2,000 EC's this weekend.
(continue below)