STO Reborn Episode 1

Hey peeps!

Sorry for the lack of posts. I've been working to establish a small new game community (http://theninetyfifth.enjin.com/home), catching up on Lotus Fleet RPing (http://www.lotusfleet.com/forums/index.php) and a costume for the 20-11 Star Trek Convention:

But I'm back and this post is going to be a doosy.

For anyone that doesn't know, Star Trek Online is going free to play "soon". (That's Cryptic "Soon" so it can be any point from now until judgement day.) So this gamer decided that now is maybe the time to give my two cents and start playing the game from the beginning again on the game's free to play test server to not only see what's changed, but to also test out any of the newer implementations they've put into it.

Of course, I'll also be making fun of it.

All right, so I decided to go with a Tactical Joined Trill character named Aunred. After the game crashed in the Character Creator twice, of course. But remember, Beta is Beta, so I give them a degree of benefit of the doubt.

The first thing I noticed was the different starting area. Keep in mind I haven't really played through the game in nearly a year and a half, so if they changed this recently, then I wouldn't know. But the new starting area is much better than starting you off in the damn bar where your fellow crewmembers are drinking booze and such.

(Yes, I'm aware of the typo.)

Then you report to the new bridge. This is somewhat odd, though, as now the bridge appears to be similar to a Sovereign-class bridge, although you're still on a Miranda-type light cruiser...This kind of gave me false hope that they'd actually altered a particular story moment so that it wasn't as terrible, but I'll talk about that later.

So I beamed aboard the USS Khitomer and the training levels proceed exactly the same as they did before. The only difference being the shooter controls they introduced in Season 4. I also noticed updated animation on the female so that she didn't look like a flailing marionette when running anymore. So that's a plus.

The other thing I noticed was how all the Borg were clones! Oh no! Not only are we being invaded by Borg, but they're multiplying like Tribbles!

The shooter controls are the same as I've said before. They add nothing to the game, really, aside from a slightly faster response for combat. The faster combat would be more interesting if the enemies you fought actually had any degree of intelligence at all. Yes, the enemies in STO are still complete morons. Even moreso than the baddies in other MMOs.

But I digress from the report.

I run through the rest of the Khitomer section and then come to the second worst part of the tutorial section (Besides the atrocious voice acting by Zachary Quinto *shudder*).

Yes, the off screen slaughter of every officer on board your ship leaving you, the only ensign remaining apparently, in charge of the ship. There were so many other things that could have been done to get you into the flight chair and I've heard they're adjusting the starting mission so it's not quite as terrible, but for the time being I can only gauge it on this.

And by gauge, I mean condemn it's plot-based stupidity.

Ships still look damn good, though:

So the rest of the tutorial proceeds as it did before, so I'll skip past that.

Then I transferred to Starbase 10...and the game froze at the loading screen. But again, Beta is Beta, I found it more funny than annoying.

Went to Starbase 10, nothing majorly different. Enjoyed my Trill's new running animation some more and got the first mission, Stranded in Space.

Here's a quick moment to talk about the game's new mission panel. While it is quite a bit more organized, which is a plus, it also contains summaries and information about future missions. I find that while this is useful for older players, it could possibly give spoilers and plot information to new players. With the whole free to play conversion being meant to bring in new players, I can see this being a bit of a problem.

One thing I am thankful for, though, is that they sped up the leveling from Lt. to Lt. Cdr. Since 80% of the game is grinding the same content and baddies, being able to do that in a better ship faster is a definite plus.

As for the mission Stranded in Space, it's the same mission we've all done multiple times before, only with added cutscenes that add nothing to the gameplay. And I love the massively huge rifle in the hands of my normal sized Trill.

So, conclusion for now, same old, same old. Nothing majorly redeeming or new for the game to this point. Hopefully the next episode will contain my main reason for doing this, the Duty Officer system.

Until next time, peeps, game on and take care.

-N'Eligahn