So somebody posted about this several pages back, but I just wanted to jump in and mention that if you're mostly just in it for the open beta key, preordering from Target is super awesome. You pay a buck and get a box with a beta key and a $5 off coupon for the actual game. No obligation to buy the full game, and no waiting around for your beta key. Easy peasy.
Just out of curiosity, does anybody have pics of the pre-order box? I understand it has screenshots of as-of-yet unreleased uniform options on it.
Hrm. There is a shot with a bunch of dudes standing around in various uniforms. I tried taking a picture with my shitty cell phone camera but it came out all blurred and you can't see anything.
To be more specific, I believe it shows the TNG uniform options, including the neat late-TNG captain's jacket and skirt options. I was primarily wondering of those things were, in fact, going to be in-game for everyone.
There is a guy in something that looks like Picard's jacket, though it's got more... uh... stuff on it. Not sure about the skirt thing. There are two female characters in what I guess you could call skirts with pants underneath, though they're more like long shirts than skirts.
Sorry if this has been asked a bunch already but I haven't really been following the game that closely, is there any way to get access to the open beta without preordering?
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
Sorry if this has been asked a bunch already but I haven't really been following the game that closely, is there any way to get access to the open beta without preordering?
Some websites were doing OB hand-outs. Not sure if there's any left now, though.
Alternatively, you could just sign up for beta on the main site. Since it's OB, they'll probably let everyone in at some point in the beta.
I can understand some of the Trekkies concerns. Like uniforms. I don't mind limited color options. It should feel like Star Trek and the uniforms and their color coding is part of that. I didn't like the limited colors for creating my own alien though. That part sucked.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited January 2010
The uniforms look pretty Trekky to me as is. They rolled back the content changes that fucked up customization too.
And I just browsed through the beta forums again. Checking out that customization topic, and I feel I was justified in calling those people a bunch of self-entitled cocks.
The next few pages after the developers announced that the configuration changes weren't going to be in were comprised of posts from hardcore Trekkies. The words "real star trek fans" featured in many posts, and there were at least two to three threats to try and sabotage the game because they didn't get their way.
What a bunch of whiny jackasses. A few players were trying to explain why it wasn't a bad thing, but they wouldn't listen, and kept whining, bitching, and threatening Cryptic until a developer posted about how neon colors had been removed from the game. And even then a few of them kept bitching about non-specific things in general.
Either way, this is just the latest in a long round of bullshit from the hardcore fans of Star Trek. Next week they'll be all over something else if the influx of players from open beta doesn't drown them out.
I have to wonder how Cryptic views posts that boil down to "omfg i'll make sure you guys never get a single sale in my area" after they fix something that improves gameplay.
Man, that version is different than the one the official downloader is downloading. I was hoping there was a torrent i could just point at the temp directory the official downloader created and go from there. Oh well, ill let it go, 51% now. If its not close to 90% by tomorrow night, ill throw that torrent on and let it go all tuesday. Hopefully ill have a client by tuesday night and amazon will send me my beta key.
As for the beta forums... i read them for about 20 minutes at work a couple weeks ago. That was enough for me. That community makes the NMA community look sane and reasonable.
The uniforms look pretty Trekky to me as is. They rolled back the content changes that fucked up customization too.
I agree, they look very much like a Star Trek uniform. I wouldn't mind it or complain if they restricted color schemes. For the people that was to be unique butterflies... let them go play in that Club 44 or whatever and the holodecks. They can wear neon clothes all the time. On duty however, you should be in a regulation uniform.
Isn't immersion into the story part of an MMORPG? If you don't want to be part of the Star Trek Universe, you shouldn't be playing the game anyway.
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
edited January 2010
which preorder lets you get seven of nine to sexy up your bridge?
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
game would be more fun if it didn't crash when i beamed off the ship
i just don't see how they are going to launch in 2 weeks, it's so buggy still
I have been playing for 2 weeks and have not crashed once. I have encountered a few bugs in missions but not serious ones.
you're lucky, any time i'm on a away team mission and a lot of stuff starts happening the client crashes, I know the same thing happens to tremor
Are you using an ATI card? Try turning of dynamic lighting.
This pretty much did it for me exactly, for the record, and it doesn't even really affect the visuals. I went from stuttering to rock-solid framerates just by turning off dynamic lighting.
Of course this means they kind of need to un-screw their lighting setup, but!...
Is it just that the download is slow or is the game really that huge? o_O
Both. The downloads/patches tend to be large, and the download/patch servers are usually strained on release days. Champions finally reached a good balance after about a month and a half. As dicussed earlier, the patcher architecture is great for smaller patches. But, with patches into the GB-area, it's difficult for their system to keep up with demand. WoW's mini-torrent patcher is great, but bandwith facists like Comcast would be in everyone's shit, so I can understand why they went this route.
There's actually a general rule of thumb i've started applying after taking note of a certain trend. If someone has an avatar that is:
A. An avatar of them dressed up as a Federation Officer.
B. A picture of a character from the show.
C. A picture of a character from the show, with subtitled text added to it, trying to sound witty.
They're generally hardcore Trekkie fanboys, and also a bit of a cock who doesn't understand much about game development. The vast number of posts about how immersion is more important then fun tend to come from those guys, and they tend to be brick walls when trying to explain things to them.
I'm with you on A, but C is ok if it's a Vreenak.gif mouthing "It's a FAAAAAKE." Or pasted into Snakes on a Plane with a snake in his hand saying "It's a SNAAAAAAKE".
I've been wondering how Bridge Officers work, especially when it comes to customization. How do you get Bridge Officers? Do you just pick them up as you go along or buy them or something else? And do they come as they are or are you able to customize them (choose race, uniform, traits, stuff like that)?
Do I look like the sort of man who'd go and find unsuspecting Japanese schoolgirls in short skirts and white panties and ask them if they want to see my "Cthulu Special"?
I've been wondering how Bridge Officers work, especially when it comes to customization. How do you get Bridge Officers? Do you just pick them up as you go along or buy them or something else? And do they come as they are or are you able to customize them (choose race, uniform, traits, stuff like that)?
You get bridge officers through mission rewards and through buying. Supposedly you can also get "special" officers through missions, but I haven't seen any. When you get one, it's a "candidate". It has a predetermined race and gender. You can customize the uniform/appearance of the officer at the tailor, within the norms for that officer's race.
Right now, to get what you want, you buy/pick a candidate based on their race/gender (unknown race is best; you can make them into anything). Then you buy other candidates of the same type to swap skills. It's clunky, but it works okay. Based on the amount of whining on the forums, though, you can probably expect full customization sooner rather than later.
So i ordered this from Direct2Drive this morning. Downloaded it in two hours, and its installed fine. Activated my pre-order/open beta key on the site, and got the confirmation email. Should i be able log in now, to begin the patching? Because its telling me that i dont have permissions to view the launcher when i try to login.
Kiith on
The very existense of flame throwers proves that at sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves "I want to set those people over there on fire, but i'm just not close enough to get the job done."
I've been wondering how Bridge Officers work, especially when it comes to customization. How do you get Bridge Officers? Do you just pick them up as you go along or buy them or something else? And do they come as they are or are you able to customize them (choose race, uniform, traits, stuff like that)?
You get bridge officers through mission rewards and through buying. Supposedly you can also get "special" officers through missions, but I haven't seen any. When you get one, it's a "candidate". It has a predetermined race and gender. You can customize the uniform/appearance of the officer at the tailor, within the norms for that officer's race.
Right now, to get what you want, you buy/pick a candidate based on their race/gender (unknown race is best; you can make them into anything). Then you buy other candidates of the same type to swap skills. It's clunky, but it works okay. Based on the amount of whining on the forums, though, you can probably expect full customization sooner rather than later.
That part is probably the most important to me, as I'm interested in making an Orion bridge officer. However, I'm not sure if that's a choice available with the alien creator thing.
Played a fair bit this weekend after taking a break for a few of the play times. Still not going to buy this game. I do enjoy space combat and it seems like ground combat is getting a little better but the game just doesnt "click" with me.
I must have missed a patch notes but it also seems like the greatly scaled back item drops. The auto join open instance feature was nice for some missions but a complete and total pain in the ass on others (I know you can turn it off)
I think my main problem is that you can blow shit up and shoot klingons til your ass bleeds (PVE) and the rewards just seem to be a pittance unless you are killing for a quest, 1 BO point or maybe a drop which turns out to be a consumable (which STILL seem to be using the art from Champions Online..)
I found that alot of people just did missions til they unlocked the patrol sirius/orion etc missions where you have to encounter a roaming spawn and then grind out kills there, turn in for credit and retake.
The first part of the game should be the hook, that makes you go, FUCK yes I want to play this all day. But it seems that comes after you get to the next ship and actually start getting some abilities, which unfortunately I didnt get to this time around.
So I got my pre-order key from Amazon, I put it in Cryptics site, but every time I try to login through the launcher I get told I'm not authorized to view the launcher. I really just wanted to patch while I was at work, don't tell me I have to download another huge launcher because I have the wrong one or something.
That part is probably the most important to me, as I'm interested in making an Orion bridge officer. However, I'm not sure if that's a choice available with the alien creator thing.
Yeah, if you get an officer that's an "unknown" race, it's the same as having an unknown race player captain. That is, instead of having limits and norms for your race, you can make it anything. My beta captain was an unknown race that looked exactly like a human, for example (did it that way to pick my own traits). So, yes, you'll be able to make an Orion with that.
Played a fair bit this weekend after taking a break for a few of the play times. Still not going to buy this game. I do enjoy space combat and it seems like ground combat is getting a little better but the game just doesnt "click" with me.
I must have missed a patch notes but it also seems like the greatly scaled back item drops. The auto join open instance feature was nice for some missions but a complete and total pain in the ass on others (I know you can turn it off)
I think my main problem is that you can blow shit up and shoot klingons til your ass bleeds (PVE) and the rewards just seem to be a pittance unless you are killing for a quest, 1 BO point or maybe a drop which turns out to be a consumable (which STILL seem to be using the art from Champions Online..)
I found that alot of people just did missions til they unlocked the patrol sirius/orion etc missions where you have to encounter a roaming spawn and then grind out kills there, turn in for credit and retake.
The first part of the game should be the hook, that makes you go, FUCK yes I want to play this all day. But it seems that comes after you get to the next ship and actually start getting some abilities, which unfortunately I didnt get to this time around.
The item drops are a bug. People were swarming the sector patrol thing because it's the fastest way to make XP. With lots of players, it completes quickly, and you can skip around to different instances to find one that's in progress. That being said, I think the episode missions are a lot of fun, especially if you're a Trek fan, and are worth doing even if you outlevel them by cheesing the sector missions. I do agree that the game needs a better hook in the early levels.
If you went ahead and patched 8a.0 to 8a.1 you'd have to in effect "unpatch" that 800mb difference to get to the new Open Beta build.
I'm in the group of people who already patched. Is there actually a way to unpatch as he says, or do I have to go through the hassle of downloading the 8gb client again?
That part is probably the most important to me, as I'm interested in making an Orion bridge officer. However, I'm not sure if that's a choice available with the alien creator thing.
Yeah, if you get an officer that's an "unknown" race, it's the same as having an unknown race player captain. That is, instead of having limits and norms for your race, you can make it anything. My beta captain was an unknown race that looked exactly like a human, for example (did it that way to pick my own traits). So, yes, you'll be able to make an Orion with that.
Played a fair bit this weekend after taking a break for a few of the play times. Still not going to buy this game. I do enjoy space combat and it seems like ground combat is getting a little better but the game just doesnt "click" with me.
I must have missed a patch notes but it also seems like the greatly scaled back item drops. The auto join open instance feature was nice for some missions but a complete and total pain in the ass on others (I know you can turn it off)
I think my main problem is that you can blow shit up and shoot klingons til your ass bleeds (PVE) and the rewards just seem to be a pittance unless you are killing for a quest, 1 BO point or maybe a drop which turns out to be a consumable (which STILL seem to be using the art from Champions Online..)
I found that alot of people just did missions til they unlocked the patrol sirius/orion etc missions where you have to encounter a roaming spawn and then grind out kills there, turn in for credit and retake.
The first part of the game should be the hook, that makes you go, FUCK yes I want to play this all day. But it seems that comes after you get to the next ship and actually start getting some abilities, which unfortunately I didnt get to this time around.
The item drops are a bug. People were swarming the sector patrol thing because it's the fastest way to make XP. With lots of players, it completes quickly, and you can skip around to different instances to find one that's in progress. That being said, I think the episode missions are a lot of fun, especially if you're a Trek fan, and are worth doing even if you outlevel them by cheesing the sector missions. I do agree that the game needs a better hook in the early levels.
Good to hear about the items, last time I played I had decently geared out my BOs and my ship with tier II gear so it was a bit of a shock when most of the drops where like energy boosters or health packs. I am also happy that they corrected the ship scale, that was a small but annoying thing seeing a massive battleship that was the same size as your cruiser.
I'm a bit confused, is this a tactical game akin to Eve, or is it some kind of FPS? I saw ship combat and then characters running around on the ground shooting each other, and I can't help but wonder what sort of controls are going to be utilized.
The game is intriguing though.
On a random note, has the Star Trek Universe ever addressed the whole Light Speed to time conversion issue?
On a random note, has the Star Trek Universe ever addressed the whole Light Speed to time conversion issue?
A wizard did it.
Kiith on
The very existense of flame throwers proves that at sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves "I want to set those people over there on fire, but i'm just not close enough to get the job done."
If you went ahead and patched 8a.0 to 8a.1 you'd have to in effect "unpatch" that 800mb difference to get to the new Open Beta build.
I'm in the group of people who already patched. Is there actually a way to unpatch as he says, or do I have to go through the hassle of downloading the 8gb client again?
Is that why they cut off access to the launcher for Open Beta people? I was able to patch before that so I guess that means I have to reinstall.
I'm a bit confused, is this a tactical game akin to Eve, or is it some kind of FPS? I saw ship combat and then characters running around on the ground shooting each other, and I can't help but wonder what sort of controls are going to be utilized.
The game is intriguing though.
On a random note, has the Star Trek Universe ever addressed the whole Light Speed to time conversion issue?
There is both space combat and and an RPG'esque shooter in the game.
The space combat is done 3 dimensionally, aka in space, and is similar to how PotBS was. Except Pirates was obviously on a 2 dimensional plane.
Ground combat is more or less a 3rd person shooter that relies on dice rolls and your positioning in relation to the other people, rather than twitch relexes.
I've never played PotBS so I don't really get that reference.
Hmm. Let me see if I can do this justice.
Like I said, space combat is done 3 dimensionally, using "W" and "S" to pull your yoke up and down, and "A" and "S" to bank left and right. You are equiped with forward and rear weapons that you can fire only if the enemy is with their firing arc. Generally phasers have wide arcs, where as disruptors and torpedos have smaller ones. Your ships are protect by 4 quadrants of sheilding (front, back, left and right).
Essentially you have to use your W,A,S,D keys to manuever your ship through the battle positioning yourself to destory the sheilding of your opponents so you can start damaging their hull. I have to say "Think of it as dog-fighting, but in space" but that seems to fit. Well, except for the 4 positional sheilds..... and the 4 power systems you manage.... and the skills you and your bridge officers are able to use.... and the consumable that boost your systems.
Theres a video back on page 38 that shows the space combat, since I'm sure I did a horrible job explaining it.
Edit: You can also hold down Left+Right mouse buttons to steer if you don't like using the W,A,S,D keys. I generally use a combination of the two. Mouse to steer, W and S keys to go up and down.
I found that alot of people just did missions til they unlocked the patrol sirius/orion etc missions where you have to encounter a roaming spawn and then grind out kills there, turn in for credit and retake.
It seems like a slow go if you're going through the missions and aren't cheesing the the sector patrols. The ground combat is fast, but the ships are slow. Also, I think there are some encounter scaling issues with a few of the missions. A group of guys and I got the shit kicked out of us repeatedly on a line of missions where you fight a lot of Gorn. The "go scan strange objects" mission was particularly brutal.
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There is a guy in something that looks like Picard's jacket, though it's got more... uh... stuff on it. Not sure about the skirt thing. There are two female characters in what I guess you could call skirts with pants underneath, though they're more like long shirts than skirts.
OB starts 12AM PST on Tuesday, or when?
Some websites were doing OB hand-outs. Not sure if there's any left now, though.
Alternatively, you could just sign up for beta on the main site. Since it's OB, they'll probably let everyone in at some point in the beta.
It's been a good long time since a post actually made me chuckle. Thank you.
And I just browsed through the beta forums again. Checking out that customization topic, and I feel I was justified in calling those people a bunch of self-entitled cocks.
The next few pages after the developers announced that the configuration changes weren't going to be in were comprised of posts from hardcore Trekkies. The words "real star trek fans" featured in many posts, and there were at least two to three threats to try and sabotage the game because they didn't get their way.
What a bunch of whiny jackasses. A few players were trying to explain why it wasn't a bad thing, but they wouldn't listen, and kept whining, bitching, and threatening Cryptic until a developer posted about how neon colors had been removed from the game. And even then a few of them kept bitching about non-specific things in general.
Either way, this is just the latest in a long round of bullshit from the hardcore fans of Star Trek. Next week they'll be all over something else if the influx of players from open beta doesn't drown them out.
I have to wonder how Cryptic views posts that boil down to "omfg i'll make sure you guys never get a single sale in my area" after they fix something that improves gameplay.
Anyway, if I understand the mess that is the forums, the version you want is this torrent:
http://installers.crypticstudios.com/torrents/Star%20Trek%20ST.0.20100108a.0.torrent
and you don't want to update it until the 12th or it could mess stuff up. (ie don't update it to ...8a.1 or ...8a.2 atm).
From:
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=53486
As for the beta forums... i read them for about 20 minutes at work a couple weeks ago. That was enough for me. That community makes the NMA community look sane and reasonable.
Check out my band, click the banner.
Isn't immersion into the story part of an MMORPG? If you don't want to be part of the Star Trek Universe, you shouldn't be playing the game anyway.
you're lucky, any time i'm on a away team mission and a lot of stuff starts happening the client crashes, I know the same thing happens to tremor
amazon -ish
Are you using an ATI card? Try turning of dynamic lighting.
This pretty much did it for me exactly, for the record, and it doesn't even really affect the visuals. I went from stuttering to rock-solid framerates just by turning off dynamic lighting.
Of course this means they kind of need to un-screw their lighting setup, but!...
I want my captain shirtless on away missions, but we both know our wishes are ridiculous and are not going to happen.
Honestly, I'm leaning the other way.
I was going to post: Amazon.com.UK folks got their Open Beta/Headstart codes yesterday. I got my Amazon.com (US) codes this morning.
I'm with you on A, but C is ok if it's a Vreenak.gif mouthing "It's a FAAAAAKE." Or pasted into Snakes on a Plane with a snake in his hand saying "It's a SNAAAAAAKE".
Unless you're NATIK.
Yeah, the armor bugs me. I look like the tools from Elite Force. The belt kits are also Elite Force-y.
You get bridge officers through mission rewards and through buying. Supposedly you can also get "special" officers through missions, but I haven't seen any. When you get one, it's a "candidate". It has a predetermined race and gender. You can customize the uniform/appearance of the officer at the tailor, within the norms for that officer's race.
Right now, to get what you want, you buy/pick a candidate based on their race/gender (unknown race is best; you can make them into anything). Then you buy other candidates of the same type to swap skills. It's clunky, but it works okay. Based on the amount of whining on the forums, though, you can probably expect full customization sooner rather than later.
That part is probably the most important to me, as I'm interested in making an Orion bridge officer. However, I'm not sure if that's a choice available with the alien creator thing.
I must have missed a patch notes but it also seems like the greatly scaled back item drops. The auto join open instance feature was nice for some missions but a complete and total pain in the ass on others (I know you can turn it off)
I think my main problem is that you can blow shit up and shoot klingons til your ass bleeds (PVE) and the rewards just seem to be a pittance unless you are killing for a quest, 1 BO point or maybe a drop which turns out to be a consumable (which STILL seem to be using the art from Champions Online..)
I found that alot of people just did missions til they unlocked the patrol sirius/orion etc missions where you have to encounter a roaming spawn and then grind out kills there, turn in for credit and retake.
The first part of the game should be the hook, that makes you go, FUCK yes I want to play this all day. But it seems that comes after you get to the next ship and actually start getting some abilities, which unfortunately I didnt get to this time around.
Yeah, if you get an officer that's an "unknown" race, it's the same as having an unknown race player captain. That is, instead of having limits and norms for your race, you can make it anything. My beta captain was an unknown race that looked exactly like a human, for example (did it that way to pick my own traits). So, yes, you'll be able to make an Orion with that.
The item drops are a bug. People were swarming the sector patrol thing because it's the fastest way to make XP. With lots of players, it completes quickly, and you can skip around to different instances to find one that's in progress. That being said, I think the episode missions are a lot of fun, especially if you're a Trek fan, and are worth doing even if you outlevel them by cheesing the sector missions. I do agree that the game needs a better hook in the early levels.
I'm in the group of people who already patched. Is there actually a way to unpatch as he says, or do I have to go through the hassle of downloading the 8gb client again?
Good to hear about the items, last time I played I had decently geared out my BOs and my ship with tier II gear so it was a bit of a shock when most of the drops where like energy boosters or health packs. I am also happy that they corrected the ship scale, that was a small but annoying thing seeing a massive battleship that was the same size as your cruiser.
The game is intriguing though.
On a random note, has the Star Trek Universe ever addressed the whole Light Speed to time conversion issue?
Warp fields.
A wizard did it.
Is that why they cut off access to the launcher for Open Beta people? I was able to patch before that so I guess that means I have to reinstall.
There is both space combat and and an RPG'esque shooter in the game.
The space combat is done 3 dimensionally, aka in space, and is similar to how PotBS was. Except Pirates was obviously on a 2 dimensional plane.
Ground combat is more or less a 3rd person shooter that relies on dice rolls and your positioning in relation to the other people, rather than twitch relexes.
Hmm. Let me see if I can do this justice.
Like I said, space combat is done 3 dimensionally, using "W" and "S" to pull your yoke up and down, and "A" and "S" to bank left and right. You are equiped with forward and rear weapons that you can fire only if the enemy is with their firing arc. Generally phasers have wide arcs, where as disruptors and torpedos have smaller ones. Your ships are protect by 4 quadrants of sheilding (front, back, left and right).
Essentially you have to use your W,A,S,D keys to manuever your ship through the battle positioning yourself to destory the sheilding of your opponents so you can start damaging their hull. I have to say "Think of it as dog-fighting, but in space" but that seems to fit. Well, except for the 4 positional sheilds..... and the 4 power systems you manage.... and the skills you and your bridge officers are able to use.... and the consumable that boost your systems.
Theres a video back on page 38 that shows the space combat, since I'm sure I did a horrible job explaining it.
Edit: You can also hold down Left+Right mouse buttons to steer if you don't like using the W,A,S,D keys. I generally use a combination of the two. Mouse to steer, W and S keys to go up and down.