Star Trek Online: The Continuing Languish Mission

[DontSayBanana]

Not sure if Kat's still playing, but I'm sure Beeb's seen that Season 8's gone live.  I'm impatiently watching my patching progress because I can't wait to check out the new tutorial and the new Fed ship map interiors.

[DontSayBanana]

So the new default bridge is millions of times better than the "slap a few chairs and consoles around this funny-shaped room" approach they'd originally taken.  The new Fed ship interior is also a huge step forward, but it's unfortunately only used in the tutorial- I was hoping they'd overhaul the personal ship maps, since the "large" and "Defiant" maps are the only ones that make sense as starship maps.

They've been a lot better about their gameplay maps, too- Paradise and the Sphere are a lot more engaging at giving out endgame missions than, say, Task Force Omega.

Also, I went on about the maps, but the new Federation tutorial is, in itself, much, much better, starting an actual storyline that crosses a couple missions and actually gives the first four bridge officers some characterization.  It's also slightly more plausible as far as how a cadet gets launched straight into the captain's chair (cadet crew on student cruise, captain is abducted and killed by a pirate trying to seize the ship, another ship is trying to escort your ship back to Earth when the Vega shit hits the fan).  It also actually provides some consequences to Vega, since there's a little more conversation about exactly what happened at Vega and what the aftermath might look like: the Borg did get control of the colony, but their ships were wasted, and so there's now a Federation blockade keeping the remaining Borg isolated there.

[crazy canuck]

Now that I have read those spoilers, I dont have to bother about checking out the new tutorial and content.

[DontSayBanana]

Now that I have read those spoilers, I dont have to bother about checking out the new tutorial and content.

It's the tutorial.  I didn't feel it was super-spoilery to give stuff away from the tutorial.


Anyway, that's about as much as I got in the way of spoilers from the dev blog before making a new toon to try it out, and it was still fun.  The problem before was that the storyline kind of needed to sit in for weak gameplay, and the old tutorial didn't even really do that.

[katmai]

Hey Syt, is STO big in Germany?
I only ask cause seems to be decent size population on STO, and even have a couple in my guild/fleet.

[Syt]

I don't know?

I still have to reclaim my account, but I kind of can't be bothered. I sometimes think it would be fun to do some ship combat again, but then I think of the long slogs of ground missions or mucking about in Warp, or the umpteenth mission that's "fly around this planet and clear these groups of enemies", and just shrug and move on.

[katmai]

They have been making marked improvements to it, and since I went Lifetime I feel no need to log in if don't want to, compared to other MMO's

[DontSayBanana]

They have been making marked improvements to it, and since I went Lifetime I feel no need to log in if don't want to, compared to other MMO's

Speaking of, have you hopped on Tribble and checked out the ESD redesign yet?

[katmai]

They have been making marked improvements to it, and since I went Lifetime I feel no need to log in if don't want to, compared to other MMO's

Speaking of, have you hopped on Tribble and checked out the ESD redesign yet?

Have not, just seen a youtube video someone made of it.

[Syt]

I got my account back some time last year. I logged in then, got confused and logged out again.

Since it's the game's 5 year anniversary, I decided to take another look.  I'm glad that they introduced a new standard uniform for Starfleet that looks much more in line with the TV shows. I've started a new Klingon. They've completely revamped the opening for the race since I last played, so that's nice.

I also have 7000+ in Zen; the extras from the expansions cost more than twice as much.

And you can play as Talaxian now.

[Valmy]

It was worth it enough for me to drop 300 clams on the damn game (the game + lifetime subscription).

So...have you gotten your money's worth BB?

[DontSayBanana]

I got my account back some time last year. I logged in then, got confused and logged out again.

Since it's the game's 5 year anniversary, I decided to take another look.  I'm glad that they introduced a new standard uniform for Starfleet that looks much more in line with the TV shows. I've started a new Klingon. They've completely revamped the opening for the race since I last played, so that's nice.

I also have 7000+ in Zen; the extras from the expansions cost more than twice as much.

And you can play as Talaxian now.

I love the game, but having recently gotten back into active playing, I have a couple really major gripes:

1) Holy Money Sink, Batman.  The RMT rate for zen is $1/100Z, so Tier-6 ships?  $30 each.  Upgrading a Tier-5?  $7 each.  Even most T5 ships are $20 each, which is absolutely ridiculous in ships with multiple variants, like the Odyssey (the pack to unlock all three variants "only" costs $40!).

2) Star clusters were removed because they were grindy.  But the storyline missions in the Delta Quadrant are even worse than the removed cluster missions.  The Vaadwaur content isn't even fun; I was just getting pissed off because I was getting incapacitated over and over and over again.

3) Speaking of grinding, the time sink required for non-gameplay tasks is outrageous.  Diplomacy?  Used to be non-combat mission maps, then it was supplemented by duty officer assignments, and now it's almost entirely doff assignments- it takes dozens of them, just to advance a single rank in a commendation category.  And there's no phone or even a web portal to manage doff assignments, so even collecting the doff assignment rewards and starting new assignments is, in and of itself, a completely unrewarding time sink.

[Barrister]

So, half the family has been puking up their guts the last few days of the Christmas holiday, and any plans we had are out the window.

I wondered if I could still access my STO account - and I can!  So I'm downloading the necessary 14GB now.

I don't think I've played in, oh, the last 5 years or so.

Interested in giving the game a spin again after that time.

[Barrister]

Bah - account logs in - but all of my characters (and LTS) is not showing up.

I knew it wouldn't be this easy...

[Barrister]

Bah - account logs in - but all of my characters (and LTS) is not showing up.

I knew it wouldn't be this easy...

My email to Customer support says my lifetime account is linked to some email address I've never heard of.  Sounds like I was hacked at some point in the last 4 years.

Odds of me getting it back?