Variety is the spice of life

While SWTOR is my primary game, I am mixing things up pretty well lately.  I do a chapter of Fallen Empire every weekend, run a Tactical Flashpoint, and do heroics throughout the week.  That will likely change once I complete the expansion and I start doing alts again.  But it leaves me with a lot of free game time. So I am spreading it around.

I am still working my way through Halo 5.  I tend to do a mission a day on weekdays.  It's really well done,  even if I am a little lost.  I think I finished Halo 4, but I never did the DLC.  So there is a gap in my lore knowledge.  The game has some very epic moment which are not even cutscenes.  That's one thing I love about Halo.  I should be coming up to the end, just in time for Fallout 4!

I've also been playing with the STO Admiralty system.  It has some interesting variety, but there isn't much gameplay.  So I just end up spending about 15 minutes a day in there messing around.  I'd like to start playing for real at some point, but just haven't lately.

Thanks to expansion hype, I have been spending some time in Guild Wars 2 as well.  My Engineer (of course) is still only level 26 I think.  The zone exploration theme really supports short gameplay, so I hope in for short amounts of time.  GW2 does some things really well.  I love how easy it is to sell items on the Trading Post.  

ESO is on the outside looking in right now.  They have a new DLC which looks really cool, but I just don't have time right now.  I want to be playing more of this game.  Someday ESO, someday.

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Alive and Stuff

I'm still here!  I know you were worried.  Most of my time has been going to things like work and family these days.  I guess I am finally grown up?  Games are still being played though,  just my blogging about them has slowed down considerably.  It wasn't long ago that I posted 5 times a week.  However,  those days, like my WAR audience, are gone.

The last couple of weeks I have been playing a lot of Marvel Heroes.  It is surprisingly fun.  I'm not a comic book fan, but I like the Marvel movies and older TV shows/games.  So I am familiar with most of the bigger named characters.  The game is very low overhead too.  I can jump in for 30 minutes and have fun.  Captain America is who I have been playing the most of and he's a lot of fun.

Star Trek Online, sigh.  I have not been playing much lately and the future is not looking good.  I don't want to go into it too much, but their response to the whole lesbian Klingon flap was pretty bad.  I couldn't care less about the original issue,  but when you persecute someone, who you admit did nothing wrong, because of their beliefs it is just wrong.  I'm not sure how I can support them now.

Return of Reckoning...  I really like this project.  They have done an awesome job, and I'd actually really like to help out with programming.  However, after some thought,  I just can't risk getting sued by Games Workshop.  I know an actual lawsuit isn't likely, but that's not a risk I can take at this point in my life.  Which is a shame, there is so much potential there to learn and do cool stuff for players.

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Pillars and 4x Aplenty!

I'm still alive!  All my efforts have been directed towards work lately, so I have not been in the mood to write.  I'm still playing games when I get a chance though.  Just not so much lately since the wife has been out of town and I'm acting as a single father.

Pillars of Eternity.  I just finished the first act.  It's still pretty awesome.

Star Ruler 2.  A new 4x game I picked up.  Sadly, one of the main screens is giving me motion sickness so I can't really play.  There is a spinning planet behind some text which just gets to me.  I love 2015.  The developer maintains an IRC channel, so I popped in and just asked him if anything can be done.  He's going to put an option in to disable it in the next patch.  How awesome is that?

StarDrive 2.  Another 4x game came out, two in a month?  Crazy.  I picked this one up too, as I can't play Star Ruler 2 at the moment.  It's really good so far.  Very polished with an excellent UI.  I haven't gotten too far yet, as I've restarted at least 5 times.  But I finally figured out how things work so this save might actually get played for a while.

Star Trek Online.  I still log in regularly to DOFF and R&D,  but just have not put much time into doing missions lately.  Too many distractions.

SWTOR.  3.2 is coming up soon, which means a new planet/story.  I really need to get that half level so I hit the cap.

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A First?

Yesterday, STO broke the news that they are expanding the Pilot specialization.  Basically, they are talent trees.  Once you reach 50, you get 1 point per level.  Unlike most systems, you can keep on earning points after you hit the cap.  So you keep leveling forever by getting these points to spend.  Cryptic is adding something like 14 new skills.

The thing that was new (to me, at least), was the forum reaction.  There were actually complaints about Cryptic "moving the goalposts" and forcing them to grind more.  It's not normal for a game to add new skills, especially this many, outside an expansion.  They basically gave people more options, and were greeted with a lot of whining.  I'm not sure I'd be cut out for working at a MMO.

I can understand a little angst.  There really may not be enough new content for people who don't want to do what they have been doing for a while now.  They're also the type who feel they must have every skill in the game as soon as possible.  That's clearly not how Cryptic feels, as this system can provide a really high ceiling that could last players years.

Since I have been back in STO, I've really been impressed with the constant stream of news, changes, and additions.  Not all games are like this, so STO players should be a little happy at least.

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Event Mania

STO likes events, a lot.  Sure, they don't have the hourly variety anymore, but they almost always have something going on.  Right now things are a bit crazy, as there is a ton of stuff going on in the game.  I, as usual, am not taking enough advantage of it.

1)  Jem'Hadar Ship Promotion.  You can get the new shiny ship from R&D boxes.  I plan on getting a few packs later in the month during a R&D bonus event.

2)  Hearts and Minds.  Special Friday the 13th mission is available the new couple of days, with special rewards of course.

3)  Crystalline Cataclysm Event.  Running this instance 14 times will net a bunch of rewards.

4)  Bonus Marks.  This weekend, you get bonus Fleet and Reputation marks from doing your normal stuff.


So yeah, quite a bit going on this weekend.  The ship and Crystalline events last for a few weeks, while the others are just weekend.  Still, it is pretty good.  Compare that to SWTOR which has nothing really going on :(  This does beg the question, are there too many events?  STO has something special nearly every weekend.  Does it lose its luster quickly?

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Entitlement and the Delta Recruits

Cryptic recently announced a new event for STO, starting next month.  It's basically a recruitment event for new (and returning) players.  They call it Delta Recruitment.  The idea behind it is that the 'allies' need recruits for the upcoming Iconian war.  It's more than just a simple event to get new players into the game though.

New characters made during the event get some bonuses:

• Access to some new story missions
• A nifty delta character next to their name
• Dilithium for enemies killed.  This is just for the duration fo the event though.  They also give people in their group dilithium. 
• If you finish a faction story, you get an account wide starship trait
• Other special rewards while leveling
• Contributes to server wide goals that provide bonuses for everyone
• Free character slot

Sounds pretty neat to me.  However, the player response on the forums was sadly as you would expect.  I'll summarize...

"Cryptic, this is terrible!  Everything you do should be directed at me personally!"

It really makes no sense.  It is clear Cryptic made an effort to ensure everyone would have something to gain from this event. Veteran players can get the bonus Dilithioum by grouping with the new characters.  They also can get the trait for their main by rolling an alt.  They also get the server wide bonuses that recruits unlock, which are useful things like bonus skillpoints.  

Plus, Season 10 is coming up quick.  So there is a lot going on with the game.  I wish I could say that about SWTOR.  

All that being said, I probably won't make a Delta recruit.  I just got my Romulan into the 50's and don't really feel like making a new character.  That's ok though, not everything has to be for me.

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Crystalline Entity

STO started a new event based around the Crystalline Entity.  I always enjoyed those episodes in TNG.  In the game, it's just so-so.  For the event, you have to do the instance 14 times.  Once complete, you get a lot of Dilithium, marks and a torpedo launcher.  It seems worthwhile, especially considering how quick it is.

The usual instancet takes about 5 - 7 minutes to complete.  You and a bunch of other folks zone in, and you just start shooting stuff.  You don't have to go very far and everything pretty much stationary.  There is really no danger, especially in the normal queue.  The Entity sends out a couple of aoe pulses, so if your shields are low you could get taken out.  No big deal though, you can just respawn.

If you place in the top 3 for DPS, you get some extra loot.  That becomes the real challenge of the event.  I've placed 3rd a couple of times, but my ship is hardly optimized.  So it is fun to try and keep improving.  I'd like to get 1st place so I can get the trophy for my ship interior.

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Odds and Player Views

Yesterday, STO introduced a new ship to the game, the Tier 6 Jem'Hadar Strike Ship.  You can obtain it as a random drop from an R&D Pack (which is like a lockbox, but has crafting materials).  From what I've heard, the odds of getting it are pretty slim.  You wouldn't know that from being in game though.  STO broadcasts when someone wins a ship.  Last night, I saw quite a few people winning these ships.

So that made me wonder.  Just how many of these R&D Packs are people buying?  Have I vastly underestimated peoples willingness to gamble?  Are they using Dil to buy Zen rather than actually paying?  Is the drop rate of the ship not actually that low?  All questions I'll probably never have the answer to.

I visit the STO forums and Reddit occasionally.  One thing I have noticed is there is a contingent of doomsayers (as with every game) but they are particularly aggressive.  Apparently, STO putting a new ship in the c-store is a sign that STO is dying.  Nevermind that it is their business model.  Also, when there is a sale on items, it is a sign of the game dying.   Stores have sales all the time for a lot of reasons, and they aren't dying.  Just some strange behavior I'm noticing as I explore my first real F2P game.  I don't consider SWTOR in the same league.

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STO's Evil Cash Shop

Now, I use the term evil lightly, as we are talking about a game.  The C-Store in STO is really something.  PWE puts a lot of resources into developing products for it, that's for sure.  Don't get me wrong, they put out some great stuff.  Ships in STO are usually very well done and no easy feat.  So getting a return on that investment is important.

Is STO Pay to Win?  Yes and no.  You can buy the most powerful ships with Zen (RMT).  Right now, that's usually whatever the latest T6 ship is including a special console and trait.  There are no 'end-game' ship drops that are more powerful and BoP in this game.  It's straight from the C-Store (or the Exchange for EC in some cases).

However, it's not really P2W because those powerful ships are really just optional.  The difficult PvE content can be done in lower tiered ships.  So I'm not sure what that makes STO.  Is it better than PWE making content that requires the latest and greatest ship?  I mean, eventually they will have to make the PvE content more difficult right?

Ships are a big part of Star Trek, and there are no shortage of them in STO.  The staff releases really neat ones which makes them very tempting to buy.  Sadly,  the lockbox model tends to work a bit too well and a lot of the ships are distributed in that way.  They would get more of my money if they could just be bought, but in the scheme of things I guess gambling wins out.  I can't really argue with that.

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Success!

This weekend was a good one for me in STO.  I took full advantage of double XP and got my Romulan to level 50.  Duty Officer missions were just crazy.  I got a critical success on one and it gave me 20k xp!  That's quite a lot.  So I have reached the old cap, only 5 years after launch too.

Here is where the game really starts.  At 50 (Vice Admiral) you can buy end game ships.  Those are T5U and T6.  Up until this point, I was going through a new ship a week so it was hard to get attached and really pay attention to what was going on.  But I pulled out the ol' wallet and bought a Faeht Intel Warbird, which will probably be my main ship for quite some time.

The game really changes at 50 now that I can concentrate on a ship.  Plus, the reputation system opens up, and the specialization system opens up at 51.  I still have loads of content ahead of me, which is nice.  Plus, there are a lot of PvE queues available now too.  I kind of feel overwhelmed.  That's not necessarily a bad thing though.

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Quite a Weekend

Big gaming weekend for me coming up!  Star Trek Online is having a Double XP weekend (well, longer than that).  As I am still leveling, this will be a big help.  The XP was just pouring in last night between missions and Duty Officers.  I should be a good bit into my 40's by the time it is over.  The great things is that missions scale in STO, so I will not be out-leveling any content.

As if that were not enough, they are also have a ship sale in the c-store.  While I am still leveling, I don't really need any of those special ships.  However, now might be the time to buy my T6 Intel ship, the Faeht Intel Warbird.  It's $6 off this weekend.  Now, a T6 isn't a necessity, but it might just be cool to have.  It looks nice and has some nice abilities.  Plus, I like the word Intel.

So I'm thinking I may as well pick that up while it's on sale.  Spending $24 in the c-store is a lot, but it's really just less than 2 months subscription.  I have no plans to buy anymore ships, so I think it'll be worthwhile.

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Great Scene

I was playing some STO last night and came across this really entertaining scene.  Where else are you going to see a Gorn and a Romulan in a Wild West showdown?  It takes place on Nimbus III, which is the location of Star Trek 5.  All recorded with Forge, of course :)

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Getting back to SWTOR

Recently, Star Trek Online has been my game of choice.  It's been going really well so far.  I am enjoying all of the Romulan content and have worked my way up to level 33.  The old cap is in sight at 50, with the new one at 60.  I hear the story content doesn't really stretch over the last 10 levels, so we'll see if I make it.  Even though I have been playing it a lot, I still don't consider STO to be my primary game.

That honor still goes to SWTOR, even though I haven't played it in weeks.  So what is it going to take to get me actively playing again?

12x.  I just can't play my alts without 12x XP.  This seemed to be quite popular, but BioWare has not mentioned it in a long time.  They did give us 2x XP, but that's just not enough anymore.

New Content.  It looks like the earliest we are going to see new content is late April with Ziost.  That's a little over 2 months, which feels like a long time to go without anything new.

PvP.  I might come back if I really get the urge to PvP.  Right now, I don't really feel like doing that though.

It feels like BioWare has hibernated for the winter.

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Exploration is Impossible

In a recent forum poll, STO players put Exploration Missions as their top priority (40%) for the coming year.  Star Trek Online used to have an exploration system, but it was removed.  I think they were just not happy with it and how it fit into the game.  It was basically sectors with randomly generated systems that had some randomly generated missions.  Overall, it was not very engaging.

Exploration is a core aspect of Star Trek, it's in the opening theme.  However, I don't feel it is possible to do it justice in a game.  They key to making exploration good is to make it meaningful.  The old system wasn't meaningful in any way.  But Werit, Elite Dangerous and No Mans Sky!  I don't feel that their systems are meaningful either.  Procedural content lends itself to quantity, not quality.  300 billion star systems is a great tag line, but so what?  What's happening in these systems, anything interesting at all?

Interesting.  In Star Trek,  exploration involved interesting crafted stories.  You need writers for this,  we're just not at a point where this can happen from procedural content.  Now, there are some thoughts that PWE might leverage the Foundry.  However, that relies on players making new content, as old content wouldn't make sense in an exploration system.  The rate at which players will explore will far out pace any content creation, so procedural seems like the only way.

Persistence.  If the worlds you discover just vanish when your done, how is it meaningful?  Making things stick around is not an easy task.  The way STO is setup with quadrants, I just don't see that as a possibility.  You would need a system to re-access every place you visited, as the standard mapping system won't support huge new areas.  However, if everything is bland and boring, why would you want to revisit?

While players want Exploration,  I just don't feel like they can be given a system that will actually meet their expectations.

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Death from Above

I actually enjoy STO's ground combat quite a bit. It has a lot going on, with all the skills, crew, weapons, and so on. I recently got a Polaron Bombardment tactic module from a lock box, which rains down destruction from above. Combine that with my Photon Grenade ability, and it is quite a light show. For me it is, for my enemies, not so much.

 Test of embedding Forge clips.

 

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Duty Officers and R&D

I played a bunch of STO this weekend.  I had to take breaks to do real work ( :( )  and take the kids to see Sponge Bob ( bleh ).  I had a couple of goals in mind, all of which I managed to reach.  I am generally pretty goal oriented when it comes to my MMO's.

Duty Officers.  Available at level 11 (well, more like 12 for me), it gives access to their trading card/crew skill/garrison whatever system.  You collect all sorts of duty officers and send them on missions.  It's a lot more in depth than SWTOR's crew skills, and can be kinda fun.  I like collecting Duty Officers, as there is a large variety and they borrow heavuily from Star Trek lore.  I miss my exocomp Duty officer I have on my Fed character.

Research and Development.  STO has tried a number of crafting systems since it launched.  Is this one any better?  I'm not sure yet.  I unlocked it at level 15 and have just started to play around with it.  I'm not sure I want to start farming crafting materials, so who knows how much I'll be able to do.  It looks like there is a lot to do though.

So it was a pretty successful STO weekend.  I opened up these two systems and did some story related stuff.  During the week my time is more limited, so I'll probably just do a few missions and Duty Officer stuff.

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STO So Far

I've been playing STO for about 5 days now.  I'm playing a Romulan who is currently level 9.  I've probably put in ~5 hours.  Usually, I play an episode a night.  So far this is working out pretty well.  I get enough to keep me wanting more.  Overall, I am pretty happy with the game.

Story.  The Romulan story is decent.  It's good enough to make it feel like more than a collection of missions I'm doing to level.  The missions have so far felt pretty different from each other with interesting mechanics/props.

Voice Acting.  The VO in the game is ok.  It's not nearly as bad as when they started experimenting with it, but it is not as good as SWTOR.

Combat.  I've always been torn about combat (space) in STO.  On one hand, it is unique in the MMO space.  On the other, it can feel pretty tedious at times.  This might just be me doing it wrong though.  I have a tough time sticking to one spot on their shields.

F2P.  So far,  I haven't hit any F2P walls.

Graphics.  I like them, there is a lot of neat things to look at.  The Romulan ships look great.

I'm not sure about STO's long term prospects.  I'm not big into group activities and PvP isn't really a focus of the game.  However, there is plenty of content for me to do before I get there.  I look forward to playing every day, so that's pretty good for now.

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Gateway Drugs

A few years ago, I stopped playing Star Trek Online.  It was mainly due to the fact of very little actual content was being made.  Another contributing factor was the emphasis placed on the C-Store and lockboxes.  Well, it turns out I have changed in the intervening years.

I'm not sure when exactly it happened, but at some point I became ok with the lockbox concept.  It was probably SWTOR, whose Cartel Packs are pretty much lockboxes.  I imagine that the constant F2P bombardment in the industry finally changed my ways. I will regularly buy Cartel Packs now when new packs come out.

Now that I am playing STO again, I find myself willing to buy keys for their lockboxes.  I'm not going to go crazy or anything, as I am too cheap for that.  But since I am a F2P player, I'll send some money their way.

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Boldly Going... Again

Since I am taking a brief intermission from SWTOR, I have been looking at some new games to play.  Star Trek Online caught my eye as I have not played it in probably a couple of years.  They've had the Legacy of Romulas and Delta Rising expansions since I last stepped into the game.  So I thought I'd check it out again.  I've had a character since launch, but so much has changed that it seemed like a good idea to start fresh.

Of course,  it turns out I never transferred my Cryptic account over to Prefect World.  Sadly, this ended up being a manual process where I had to submit a support ticket.  That meant no STO over the weekend :(  Monday night, PWE came through and linked up my old account.  I couldn't leave that 675 Zen behind (and 85k Dilithium).

I've always been a fan of Romulans, even if they are just Dark Elves.  So it was a no brainer that I rolled one.  I get to experience the new content and start fresh.  So far, it is pretty cool.  I am impressed with the visuals of the tutorial world and the voice acting.  Everything seemed pretty polished.

I got to the flotilla and called it a night.  I'm not a huge fan of the starting ship, as I really like the TNG Warbirds.  I'll get there eventually.  I'm also a little bummed I am working for the Romulan Republic, i.e. the good guys.  I like my Romulans evil.

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End of the Road

I don't mean the Boyz II Men song, although that was pretty good and a common school dance song.  I am referring to Star Trek Online.  Even though it has gone free to play, my only interest in the game has been their Featured Episodes.  Up until The 2800, they were very interesting and what Star Trek is all about to me.

After the first episode in this series, I wrote a post about being disappointed.  I figured I'd let the rest play out before I gave my impressions again.  Sadly, I can't say it got better.   I am very disappointed with the effort Cryptic put into The 2800.  Enough so that this it has pretty much killed my interest in the game.

Where to start?  The voice acting was very bad.  If you are not going to do it right, don't do it at all.  I appreciate the effort that their staff put in for it, and it is not their fault.  Professionals should have been hired.   As for the story, I found it to be pretty bland and uninteresting.  Part of that is because it involved Bajor, which I never liked anyway.

I will say that the Deep Space 9 space walk was pretty neat.  That's about it though.  All of the other action was uninspired and pretty buggy to me.  I had to force myself to finish the last episode of the series.  During the last space flight, when ever I'd spawn I would be mass targeted by Dominion ships and destroyed.  Took be ~8 lives to finish.

The fact that Cryptic is really pumping out the c-store offerings is also annoying.  I don't mind them making money, but why should I buy anything when there is only sub-par content to use it on?  If they released decent content at a faster pace, I'd be more inclined to purchase items.

I don't know, maybe I have just been spoiled by the quality content in SWTOR.  I don't think that's the case though,  the Cloaked Intentions featured Episode seemed a lot better than the 2800.  

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