Star Trek Online: The Continuing Languish Mission

[katmai]

reset mine yesterday, but thanks.

[Barrister]

So that email I got about my password being reset was legit?

Yes.

If you have doubts go right back to www.startrekonline.com to re-set your password, rather than following a link in your email.

Hmm... now Perfect World says they can't phone me in Canada.  But they say they should be able to re-set over email.  There's no issue with sending them the last 4 digits of my CC number, right? (that, together with some other information, is all they asked).

[Barrister]

They say they've re-set my account to the new email address. 

[crazy canuck]

When you have a quiet moment see how many charges have been racked up in Vegas on your credit card

[DontSayBanana]

Decided I'd had enough of a hiatus.  Anything good going on in STO these days?

[Barrister]

Decided I'd had enough of a hiatus.  Anything good going on in STO these days?

Let's see...

they're doing ANOTHER Featured Episode re-run.  Yawn.
However if you haven't done the most recent FE series you should rush out and do it.  It was from earlier this year, and was rather good.
Check the daily mission calendar.  There's a new mission for the Vault where you have to use a shuttle.  It's also fun.

But really - when was the last time you played?  Lots of changes when it went to F2P.

[DontSayBanana]

I've been seeing that over the past two days, plus some changes just prior to F2P from when I was barely playing at all.

The good: the remastered missions, hands-down.  They need some more of those- undead Sekkoth still being at ESD after the end of P'Jem always got on my nerves- if memory serves, there was another similar issue with the station commander of Sierra-39, but I haven't gotten there yet to see if they've remastered that one.  I'm mixed on the duty officer system, but it does help make the player feel like a captain instead of just a security team leader.  That little bit of interactivity makes the ship interiors that much more enjoyable for an RP-er like myself.

The bad: the nagging popups, even though I get that it's part and parcel of the F2P model, but I don't want my entire travel time to be filled with the startup "bulletin" and an endless stream of "blank@blank received a Ferengi Marauder!"  I see the help dialogue is STILL obtrusive and can't be disabled.  At least the lock box notifications can be toggled off, though, so I guess that's a point in their favor.

The ugly: the bad part of the duty officer system- that the "missions" are pretty much a carbon copy of the Marvel: Avengers Alliance Facebook game.  The chance of failure is the only way it's different from "sending a hero on a mission."  Blind missions, fixed times that are solely based on the rewards offered, NPC comes back with lesser currency.  Again, though, they've made the best of a bad situation by making the missions sound as "Star Trek as possible.  The sheer volume does offer some insight into why Starfleet captains are so damned irritable all the time, though- no wonder Kirk was getting alien poo-nanny all the time; it would take Kirk-levels of sex to avoid snapping like Picard in the middle of "All Good Things".

[Barrister]

Okay - so definitely check out the Featured Episodes.  They're available after Lt 6 I think, so very early on.  Lots of fun.  There are 4 - the Deferi, the Davidians, the Romulans, and the DS9 one. 

Duty officers - what makes it interesting to me is once you get into them there are mission chains that tell a brief story, and usually have great rewards at the end.  You can also make some pretty nifty gear via DOff missions.

The lockboxes are super-annoying, yes.  I actually bought a pack of keys and opened a few, but other than the ship (which appears to have a drop rate of less than 1%) there's very little very interesting.  They also contain something called a "lobi crystal" which you can save up for to buy certain items, in case you didn't get anything useful in your box.  But the costs of those items are outstanding (most expensive is 800), and while a box might contain up to 10 lobi crystals, most have only 1.

One interesting note though - the lock boxes can contain something called a "holonovel code fragment", which launches a DOff mission to defragment the holonovel and create a new holographic Duty Officer.  I've been buying these off the Exchange, and I now have a duty officers named Gertrude, Claudius and Hamlet's Father's Ghost available to send on missions.

[DontSayBanana]

So, after reading up some more on the complaints, a worrying thought occurred to me: are we absolutely sure the lock boxes are legal?

They're a game of chance that can only be accessed by master keys, and master keys can only be purchased with real money.  If they at least gave a master key stipend to gold subscribers, they could argue that it's not a direct payment, but it seems pretty clear that with the lock boxes, you pay to play a game of chance.  Minors, too.

Since some of the "prizes" can be picked up in other ways than from lock boxes, too, there's a definite "losing" case.

[Barrister]

So, after reading up some more on the complaints, a worrying thought occurred to me: are we absolutely sure the lock boxes are legal?

They're a game of chance that can only be accessed by master keys, and master keys can only be purchased with real money.  If they at least gave a master key stipend to gold subscribers, they could argue that it's not a direct payment, but it seems pretty clear that with the lock boxes, you pay to play a game of chance.  Minors, too.

Since some of the "prizes" can be picked up in other ways than from lock boxes, too, there's a definite "losing" case.

It's as legal as opening a pack of Magic cards.

[Syt]

I logged in today after . . . dunno how long. I have 6000 points store credit.

[DontSayBanana]

Finally logged in with the new machine last night.  The canon Fed starship collection is now complete: picked up an Ambassador, and it's every bit as overpowered as I hoped it would be.  Sovereigns can suck it; the Ambassador is a real warship.

[Barrister]

I haven't splayed STO for months.

But I realized today they announced a new 'expansion' - Romulans will be playable in May.

Downloading updates now. 

[katmai]

Been putzing around with game to see changes.

[Barrister]

Been putzing around with game to see changes.

I was putzing around for a bit till I got distracted by War Thunder.

Will definitely role a Rommie when the expansion comes out, though I'll likely stick with my Fed liberated borg Admiral.