the game is really early. it's basically an alpha. perhaps i am old-fashioned, but back in the day when a game was doing a beta test it was because the game was basically already done and you were just subjecting it to testing to get the bugs out.
this game is ridiculously incomplete. there's a whole faction that's going to be in the final game that isn't even in the beta yet. it's probably the most incomplete beta i've ever played in and there's a reason it only runs for like, 4 or 5 hours a week
because honestly there's like nothing to it right now
the game is really early. it's basically an alpha. perhaps i am old-fashioned, but back in the day when a game was doing a beta test it was because the game was basically already done and you were just subjecting it to testing to get the bugs out.
this game is ridiculously incomplete. there's a whole faction that's going to be in the final game that isn't even in the beta yet. it's probably the most incomplete beta i've ever played in and there's a reason it only runs for like, 4 or 5 hours a week
because honestly there's like nothing to it right now
That doesn't sound all to different to how Nemisis wasn't released to testers in ChO until a month or so before open beta.
the game is really early. it's basically an alpha. perhaps i am old-fashioned, but back in the day when a game was doing a beta test it was because the game was basically already done and you were just subjecting it to testing to get the bugs out.
this game is ridiculously incomplete. there's a whole faction that's going to be in the final game that isn't even in the beta yet. it's probably the most incomplete beta i've ever played in and there's a reason it only runs for like, 4 or 5 hours a week
because honestly there's like nothing to it right now
That doesn't sound all to different to how Nemisis wasn't released to testers in ChO until a month or so before open beta.
The difference is that was one month before further beta testing.
STO is one and a half months from going live.
Course, I'd still like to be in the beta.
see317 on
0
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited December 2009
I'm kind of hesitant to talk about the game, due to the NDA, but in the interest of dispelling concerns, i'll say that i've gotten a completely opposite impression of the beta from what Pony has.
I can't talk about it, obviously, but i've got confidence that it'll make it's current release date if the developers push themselves a little harder.
Though, they need to up the frigging amount of time the beta server is up for by alot. How i'm expected to find bugs in the content with such a short amount of time available is beyond me.
Is the Sporatic beta testing thing normal for developers? I was in the Beta for Champions, and it looks like STO is following the same beta formula with the rigorous scheduled beta sessions.
Is the Sporatic beta testing thing normal for developers? I was in the Beta for Champions, and it looks like STO is following the same beta formula with the rigorous scheduled beta sessions.
Limited testing times aren't uncommon for MMO beta's. Popular games like Warhammer Online often have limited testing times, so as to focus the playerbase on a specific in-game issue, and stress-test the server.
But most MMO's have much larger testing times then what Cryptic usually does for their beta testing. It's hard to even get anything done in-game when the server is up for four to five hours, tops.
Champion's Online was a great example of this, and what it lead too. They didn't even ever have the last two zones up for public testing in beta and open beta. Which is why the end-game was so shitty right after release, and was one of the reasons why the combat mechanics recieved a complete overhaul and change (Much to the anger of many players, especially life-time subscribers who had been in beta.) after the first post-release patch.
Supposedly, the reduced time allows them to focus on specific issues, but there's been pretty of well supported arguements showing how much more they could get done if they extended testing times by a factor of three or so.
the game is really early. it's basically an alpha. perhaps i am old-fashioned, but back in the day when a game was doing a beta test it was because the game was basically already done and you were just subjecting it to testing to get the bugs out.
this game is ridiculously incomplete. there's a whole faction that's going to be in the final game that isn't even in the beta yet. it's probably the most incomplete beta i've ever played in and there's a reason it only runs for like, 4 or 5 hours a week
because honestly there's like nothing to it right now
That doesn't sound all to different to how Nemisis wasn't released to testers in ChO until a month or so before open beta.
The difference is that was one month before further beta testing.
STO is one and a half months from going live.
Course, I'd still like to be in the beta.
Today is December 2, release is Febuary 2... that's a month and a half?
Foefaller on
0
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited December 2009
Has there been any word on whether they'll be doing a life-time offer for this game?
I agree with Pony.
It has the bones of something that could be really cool, but it needs a LOT of work yet. Seems like a lot more than these next few months will afford them.
dachish on
My heart it ceases, my breath undrawn.
Eyes forever focused, on the sanguine, metal dawn.
I agree with Pony.
It has the bones of something that could be really cool, but it needs a LOT of work yet. Seems like a lot more than these next few months will afford them.
This makes me happy that I won't be able to play the game for a while.
To me, the game feels about like ChO did when it was at this stage of development. The nature of the game makes it easier to balance, though, so the game will feel a lot more complete when it goes live.
Today is December 2, release is Febuary 2... that's a month and a half?
Of work-days perhaps?
Meh, I'm not too good at the maths...
Anyways, I was making some assumptions. Something I shouldn't allow myself to do.
I assumed they'd be shipping a finished product. I know, I'm old fashioned that way. If they where shipping a finished product, it would require time to press the disks, get them packaged and then get them shipped to the billion and a half stores, time they likely wouldn't be using for development as they'd be done. Not being working anywhere near to the industry, I guessed that would take about a week and a half. Figure a couple of days lost to the holidays (again, assumptions on my part...) and that's about 2 weeks there. So you've got the rest of December, and a little over two weeks of January: a month and a half.
In retrospect, I should know better. I don't remember the last PC game I bought that didn't require patching to bring it up to date. And MMOs as a genre are never fully complete until the owners pull the plug, so the dev team would be able to keep working straight through to the launch.
Today is December 2, release is Febuary 2... that's a month and a half?
Of work-days perhaps?
Meh, I'm not too good at the maths...
Anyways, I was making some assumptions. Something I shouldn't allow myself to do.
I assumed they'd be shipping a finished product. I know, I'm old fashioned that way. If they where shipping a finished product, it would require time to press the disks, get them packaged and then get them shipped to the billion and a half stores, time they likely wouldn't be using for development as they'd be done. Not being working anywhere near to the industry, I guessed that would take about a week and a half. Figure a couple of days lost to the holidays (again, assumptions on my part...) and that's about 2 weeks there. So you've got the rest of December, and a little over two weeks of January: a month and a half.
In retrospect, I should know better. I don't remember the last PC game I bought that didn't require patching to bring it up to date. And MMOs as a genre are never fully complete until the owners pull the plug, so the dev team would be able to keep working straight through to the launch.
There are a lot of non-MMO games that are "finished" at released. That is, the game works as intended for the vast majority of customers. However, I don't think there's ever been an MMO that's been finished at release. There's always some kind of significant issues, usually balance and performance related, at launch.
What usually happens with MMOs is that they press the disks, but continue development. Then you get to download a big fat patch on release day.
Most MMOs go gold as much as a month before the release date. There is almost always a "Day 1" patch. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen an MMO that didn't have a day 1 patch. I've come to expect it.
Basically, it doesn't matter what's on the game disc for an MMO anyway, because the user is paying a subscription fee which will cover the development time for bug fixes and additional content patches. They could sell you a blank CD with the game logo printed on it as long as the Day 1 patch gives you everything you need to have a working game.
While the core game is better than ChO's, I have to agree with Pony on this; with the game's current state and the rate of testing they're doing, STO might be ready for a late May release. Given that 'open beta' is usually just a stress test, there's going to be major parts of the game going live with little or no real testing.
This isn't a 'day 1 patch' sort of issue, it's a 'come back 6 months later and see if it has a game yet' issue.
New article from MMORPG.com about bridges and bridge officers. Enjoy:
The bridge is one of the most iconic locations in any Star Trek series or film. It’s where the bulk of the action takes place and an inherent part of the starship captain fantasy. A couple weeks ago, the Associated Press broke the news that Cryptic had listened to fan demands and will launch with in-game 3D bridges. Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich gave us all the details on them and the crews that will populate them during a recent trip to Cryptic HQ.
At launch, the Bridge is going to be pretty simple. Each time the player earns a new ship, they get to select from a group of prefabricated bridge areas. The team is close to launch and they didn’t want to bite off more than they could chew.
Over time, the plan is to add far more customization for players to really tailor their bridge. They also want to expand out into other iconic interior starship rooms, such as the Captain’s Quarters; an area that could theoretically house trophies and more personal achievements.
“You work with the players,” Zinkievich noted. Where exactly they expand first after launch will in large part be determined both by what players tell them and what they actually do in the game. If there’s a demand, of course more interiors will be added. It’s what got them on the launch feature list in the first place, after all.
The Bridges of STO will be larger than those of the show, which Zinkievich described as a necessity of a 3D video game. The fact is, they want people to be able to bring their friends in. The limit on the exact number of characters in a bridge will be based mostly off “what looks good.” Those they showed me seemed to strike a balance between that necessary size without losing the feeling of what made Bridges cool.
Naturally, the bridge serves as a control hub for the ship. UI elements from the general game will be accessible from within the bridge at logical locations. However, at least to begin, they have no plans to let people fight or actually pilot their ship from the inside. It’s far more akin to player housing than a different way to play the game.
Aside from other players, the bridge will of course be fully be populated by the NPC crew people have earned throughout the game.
The crew members have become an integral part of every aspect of the game. In space, they provide access to special abilities that could make the difference between victory and defeat. On land, their phasers are there with you in every scenario.
The team has gone to great lengths to make them apparent to the players from day one. They won’t have full blown personalities like side-kicks in single-player RPGs like Dragon Age, but they won’t be anonymous peons either.
“Captains never hail and never scan anything,” Zinkievich pointed out. When you use the replicator, it’s your engineer who gives you feedback and whose face you see beside the console. The premise is that no matter what action you pick on board a ship, you’re likely asking someone to do it and they show you that. These little touches didn’t seem like much at first, but over a couple hours of playing the game organically (from character creation through the tutorial and first few missions) I got to know the people with me in some strange way.
Bridge Officers fall into three general categories. Like most other elements of the game, they’re either Science, Tactical or Engineering. Each officer has four ranks to progress through with access to two skills (one for space and one for the avatar) per level. Each of these skills has nine levels within it for players to work on. These skills can vary widely form crew-member to crew-member, even within a single class. Players earn merit that can be used to train up their officers.
These officers can also be customized completely by the player. Their names, faces and races can be totally transformed so that each person develops a unique group of characters to carry out their orders.
For those who develop an attachment to that “First Mate” whose been with them since day one, they can also have their abilities modified. Each one comes with certain abilities hard coded into them, which brings a collection aspect to the game, but unlike a gun which is replaced when you get a newer one, a new officer with an ability you need can instead be used to teach that to someone you’re familiar with. This swaps out one ability in the tree of your choice.
The ships themselves determine who is active. The basic ships have three slots, one for the first rank of each officer type. More advanced ships allow people to seat higher rank officers (and thus have access to more skills) and more than one of a type.
On land, the player simply selects the complimentary crew from their collection to follow them down. At early levels, pre-fabricated generic characters come along if the character does not yet have four officers. It is entirely possible, and even plausible to have two distinct sets. For example, a player may choose to promote a Bridge Officer solely because they love his away mission skills, even if he’s totally useless or redundant in space.
Their decision, though, to stick to three officer types struck me as odd. Everyone knows the iconic characters. What about a Security Officer like Worf? A ship’s councilor like Deanna Troy? A doctor like Voyager’s EMH? A helmsman like Tom Paris or Sulu?
You can point to aspects of them within each of the three generic roles, but certainly there would be the opportunity to have larger, more defined crews?
Zinkievich said they considered this, but ultimately felt that a more compact crew was the way to go.
“We wanted to make [the roles] a little more general purpose so you develop more of an attachment to them,” he pointed out. For example, really, how often would you have to talk to the Security Officer day-to-day? He has a point, and by combining the roles, you get more familiar with the 3-5 characters you’re using on a daily basis.
Zinkievich also pointed out that by simplifying the overall roles, they’ve actually increased the customization options for players. Doing a double take there? I was at first, but he actually raised a very valid point. If everyone had to hire 15 crew, there would be defined roles and thus very limited options of what those officers could do. Helmsmen would fly the ship better, Doctors would heal better.
The broader, general categories force players to make choices. Do they want a Tactical officer that knows how to perform some evasive maneuvers, or is it better to find someone with a really nice ability to deal heavy damage? This creates some interdependencies between ships and encourages people to work together. It also lets people use their crew to essentially tailor their role to their particular role within a group or situation.
At each rank, there are dozens of possible skills an officer could have. This collection game encourages people to seek out, create or trade for the officer with the ideal configuration of eight skills for them. Even if they have not yet been promoted, those eight skills will be visible from day one to help people plan.
Bridge Officers provide players with a more iconic and complete Star Trek experience. Part of the fantasy is to be the Captain and while some out there would no doubt love to travel the galaxies in the role of Ship’s Doctor, that’s not exactly compelling gameplay for the average player. This system of NPC Bridge Officers hopes to find a comfortable middle ground between the authenticity of real players as subordinates and full fledged characters of single-player RPGs. With Cryptic’s reputation for customization, the Bridge Officers seem to be a great start. In one system, players gain a collectable item, a side-kick and the ability to tailor their character to any group or situation.
The addition of bridges only enhances the relationship between the player character and their crew and ship. It is a very limited system to start, but hopefully the seed of something much larger down the road.
Oh, I knew what you meant by PQs, it's just that since you didn't get your post in immediatly after the article was up... I was confused as to what the hell you were talking about...
it looks very surreal to have a star trek ship in a massive star battle and be joined by another friendly ship and seeing a chat bubble pop up from a massive ship saying "sup." or "sweet."
Posts
http://www.massively.com/2009/12/01/hands-on-with-star-trek-onlines-space-combat/
those of you still waiting for your invites
you aren't missing much
the game is really early. it's basically an alpha. perhaps i am old-fashioned, but back in the day when a game was doing a beta test it was because the game was basically already done and you were just subjecting it to testing to get the bugs out.
this game is ridiculously incomplete. there's a whole faction that's going to be in the final game that isn't even in the beta yet. it's probably the most incomplete beta i've ever played in and there's a reason it only runs for like, 4 or 5 hours a week
because honestly there's like nothing to it right now
That doesn't sound all to different to how Nemisis wasn't released to testers in ChO until a month or so before open beta.
STO is one and a half months from going live.
Course, I'd still like to be in the beta.
I can't talk about it, obviously, but i've got confidence that it'll make it's current release date if the developers push themselves a little harder.
Though, they need to up the frigging amount of time the beta server is up for by alot. How i'm expected to find bugs in the content with such a short amount of time available is beyond me.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Limited testing times aren't uncommon for MMO beta's. Popular games like Warhammer Online often have limited testing times, so as to focus the playerbase on a specific in-game issue, and stress-test the server.
But most MMO's have much larger testing times then what Cryptic usually does for their beta testing. It's hard to even get anything done in-game when the server is up for four to five hours, tops.
Champion's Online was a great example of this, and what it lead too. They didn't even ever have the last two zones up for public testing in beta and open beta. Which is why the end-game was so shitty right after release, and was one of the reasons why the combat mechanics recieved a complete overhaul and change (Much to the anger of many players, especially life-time subscribers who had been in beta.) after the first post-release patch.
Supposedly, the reduced time allows them to focus on specific issues, but there's been pretty of well supported arguements showing how much more they could get done if they extended testing times by a factor of three or so.
Today is December 2, release is Febuary 2... that's a month and a half?
It has the bones of something that could be really cool, but it needs a LOT of work yet. Seems like a lot more than these next few months will afford them.
Eyes forever focused, on the sanguine, metal dawn.
Of work-days perhaps?
This makes me happy that I won't be able to play the game for a while.
Hopefully by then it will be worth it.
Anyways, I was making some assumptions. Something I shouldn't allow myself to do.
I assumed they'd be shipping a finished product. I know, I'm old fashioned that way. If they where shipping a finished product, it would require time to press the disks, get them packaged and then get them shipped to the billion and a half stores, time they likely wouldn't be using for development as they'd be done. Not being working anywhere near to the industry, I guessed that would take about a week and a half. Figure a couple of days lost to the holidays (again, assumptions on my part...) and that's about 2 weeks there. So you've got the rest of December, and a little over two weeks of January: a month and a half.
In retrospect, I should know better. I don't remember the last PC game I bought that didn't require patching to bring it up to date. And MMOs as a genre are never fully complete until the owners pull the plug, so the dev team would be able to keep working straight through to the launch.
There are a lot of non-MMO games that are "finished" at released. That is, the game works as intended for the vast majority of customers. However, I don't think there's ever been an MMO that's been finished at release. There's always some kind of significant issues, usually balance and performance related, at launch.
What usually happens with MMOs is that they press the disks, but continue development. Then you get to download a big fat patch on release day.
Basically, it doesn't matter what's on the game disc for an MMO anyway, because the user is paying a subscription fee which will cover the development time for bug fixes and additional content patches. They could sell you a blank CD with the game logo printed on it as long as the Day 1 patch gives you everything you need to have a working game.
This isn't a 'day 1 patch' sort of issue, it's a 'come back 6 months later and see if it has a game yet' issue.
http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/14270158/star-trek-online/videos/startrekonline_trl_fleetactions.html
Also...
New article from MMORPG.com about bridges and bridge officers. Enjoy:
The bridge is one of the most iconic locations in any Star Trek series or film. It’s where the bulk of the action takes place and an inherent part of the starship captain fantasy. A couple weeks ago, the Associated Press broke the news that Cryptic had listened to fan demands and will launch with in-game 3D bridges. Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich gave us all the details on them and the crews that will populate them during a recent trip to Cryptic HQ.
At launch, the Bridge is going to be pretty simple. Each time the player earns a new ship, they get to select from a group of prefabricated bridge areas. The team is close to launch and they didn’t want to bite off more than they could chew.
Over time, the plan is to add far more customization for players to really tailor their bridge. They also want to expand out into other iconic interior starship rooms, such as the Captain’s Quarters; an area that could theoretically house trophies and more personal achievements.
“You work with the players,” Zinkievich noted. Where exactly they expand first after launch will in large part be determined both by what players tell them and what they actually do in the game. If there’s a demand, of course more interiors will be added. It’s what got them on the launch feature list in the first place, after all.
The Bridges of STO will be larger than those of the show, which Zinkievich described as a necessity of a 3D video game. The fact is, they want people to be able to bring their friends in. The limit on the exact number of characters in a bridge will be based mostly off “what looks good.” Those they showed me seemed to strike a balance between that necessary size without losing the feeling of what made Bridges cool.
Naturally, the bridge serves as a control hub for the ship. UI elements from the general game will be accessible from within the bridge at logical locations. However, at least to begin, they have no plans to let people fight or actually pilot their ship from the inside. It’s far more akin to player housing than a different way to play the game.
Aside from other players, the bridge will of course be fully be populated by the NPC crew people have earned throughout the game.
The crew members have become an integral part of every aspect of the game. In space, they provide access to special abilities that could make the difference between victory and defeat. On land, their phasers are there with you in every scenario.
The team has gone to great lengths to make them apparent to the players from day one. They won’t have full blown personalities like side-kicks in single-player RPGs like Dragon Age, but they won’t be anonymous peons either.
“Captains never hail and never scan anything,” Zinkievich pointed out. When you use the replicator, it’s your engineer who gives you feedback and whose face you see beside the console. The premise is that no matter what action you pick on board a ship, you’re likely asking someone to do it and they show you that. These little touches didn’t seem like much at first, but over a couple hours of playing the game organically (from character creation through the tutorial and first few missions) I got to know the people with me in some strange way.
Bridge Officers fall into three general categories. Like most other elements of the game, they’re either Science, Tactical or Engineering. Each officer has four ranks to progress through with access to two skills (one for space and one for the avatar) per level. Each of these skills has nine levels within it for players to work on. These skills can vary widely form crew-member to crew-member, even within a single class. Players earn merit that can be used to train up their officers.
These officers can also be customized completely by the player. Their names, faces and races can be totally transformed so that each person develops a unique group of characters to carry out their orders.
For those who develop an attachment to that “First Mate” whose been with them since day one, they can also have their abilities modified. Each one comes with certain abilities hard coded into them, which brings a collection aspect to the game, but unlike a gun which is replaced when you get a newer one, a new officer with an ability you need can instead be used to teach that to someone you’re familiar with. This swaps out one ability in the tree of your choice.
The ships themselves determine who is active. The basic ships have three slots, one for the first rank of each officer type. More advanced ships allow people to seat higher rank officers (and thus have access to more skills) and more than one of a type.
On land, the player simply selects the complimentary crew from their collection to follow them down. At early levels, pre-fabricated generic characters come along if the character does not yet have four officers. It is entirely possible, and even plausible to have two distinct sets. For example, a player may choose to promote a Bridge Officer solely because they love his away mission skills, even if he’s totally useless or redundant in space.
Their decision, though, to stick to three officer types struck me as odd. Everyone knows the iconic characters. What about a Security Officer like Worf? A ship’s councilor like Deanna Troy? A doctor like Voyager’s EMH? A helmsman like Tom Paris or Sulu?
You can point to aspects of them within each of the three generic roles, but certainly there would be the opportunity to have larger, more defined crews?
Zinkievich said they considered this, but ultimately felt that a more compact crew was the way to go.
“We wanted to make [the roles] a little more general purpose so you develop more of an attachment to them,” he pointed out. For example, really, how often would you have to talk to the Security Officer day-to-day? He has a point, and by combining the roles, you get more familiar with the 3-5 characters you’re using on a daily basis.
Zinkievich also pointed out that by simplifying the overall roles, they’ve actually increased the customization options for players. Doing a double take there? I was at first, but he actually raised a very valid point. If everyone had to hire 15 crew, there would be defined roles and thus very limited options of what those officers could do. Helmsmen would fly the ship better, Doctors would heal better.
The broader, general categories force players to make choices. Do they want a Tactical officer that knows how to perform some evasive maneuvers, or is it better to find someone with a really nice ability to deal heavy damage? This creates some interdependencies between ships and encourages people to work together. It also lets people use their crew to essentially tailor their role to their particular role within a group or situation.
At each rank, there are dozens of possible skills an officer could have. This collection game encourages people to seek out, create or trade for the officer with the ideal configuration of eight skills for them. Even if they have not yet been promoted, those eight skills will be visible from day one to help people plan.
Bridge Officers provide players with a more iconic and complete Star Trek experience. Part of the fantasy is to be the Captain and while some out there would no doubt love to travel the galaxies in the role of Ship’s Doctor, that’s not exactly compelling gameplay for the average player. This system of NPC Bridge Officers hopes to find a comfortable middle ground between the authenticity of real players as subordinates and full fledged characters of single-player RPGs. With Cryptic’s reputation for customization, the Bridge Officers seem to be a great start. In one system, players gain a collectable item, a side-kick and the ability to tailor their character to any group or situation.
The addition of bridges only enhances the relationship between the player character and their crew and ship. It is a very limited system to start, but hopefully the seed of something much larger down the road.
It would appear that IGN makes things up instead of actually playing or talking to developers.
What are?
WAR is warhammer online
Why? Everything I've read has said you can customize your BO just like you can your Avatar.
Which was Fleet Actions.
There is a substantial lack of these instant-plastic-surgery-and-sexchange booths right now, which was my point.