Star Trek Online: All Good Things
bastun_ie finishes up the Star Trek Online open beta.
I said last time I'd finish up the STO preview by talking about ground and space combat, and Klingons and PvP, but before I about that, I have to mention the event that closed off the Open Beta.
All good things...
Logging on in the evening of the beta's last day, the launcher warned of an impending Klingon invasion happening at 10pm. By this stage in the beta, we had a fleet (guild) formed, so people arranged to meet up on the same instance maps nearer to the event kickoff. I'd made it to Lt. Commander by now, and was flying a Tier 1 Escort ship. But seeing as it was the last night, I decided to return to Spacedock and blow all my remaining credits on buying a Cruiser. At just over 20000 credits, this was easily achievable, and I had a Constitution (refit!) class ship ready.
Unfortunately, though, as I entered a system (with the intention of getting some combat in on the new ship before the event, so I could see how it handled), my character crashed... I couldn't log her back in - but I could get online with my newbie level 6 Klingon in his very basically equipped Bird-of-Prey. So I did. Klingons had been told to rendezvous near Qu'onos, and I was greeted with the epic sight of a mass fleet of Birds-of-Prey and Negh'var cruisers. Very impressive!
There was confusion in the Zone chat over where exactly we should be meeting - in Sector Space near Qu'onos, or in the system proper - and what our target was. I knew from talking to my fleet on a private chat channel - yes, you can talk to the opposite faction in-game - that the Federation was similarly confused over where to defend, but a couple of minutes after the appointed time, NPC flagships spawned and offered a mission. Accepting, I warped into Sirius sector - to more confusion. We were midway across the sector map from both Sol and Starbase 24, and noone was sure what our proper target was. The NPCs had only mentioned invading the Federation. Some headed off to Sol for an attack on Spacedock, others, including me, went to Starbase 24 - normally a Federation open zone mission where combat takes place against NPC Klingons. Travelling across Federation space as a Klingon was interesting - I was still offered Federation missions, including one to save the Starbase from invading Klingons.
Zoning in, we were met by a large force of Starfleet ships, and, unfortunately, we were quickly decimated. A flaw emerged - there is only one respawn point, which quickly got camped by some of the Federation. Zone chat was interesting... "This is like shooting fish in a barrel!" "(profanity filter), there's no skill in what you're doing!" "Let them respawn, it's no fun to just kill them straight away!" Quite reminiscent of the chat in WoW's Barrens, as the Alliance raided the Crossroads. Despite full instances, lag wasn't too bad once you got underway after a respawn - but another flaw was that despite hitting my cloaking device as soon as I could, it seems the Federation ships could still target us. Despite these flaws, I eventually managed to get free of the campers, and we took down a couple of Fed ships before reinforcements arrived.
Zone chat then started to get interesting - talk of Borg! After another death, I managed to warp out to sector space - and the map had large Borg cubes on it! Deciding my newbie Bird-of-Prey - the IKC Mankrik's Wife - would be entirely useless, I tried relogging my Federation character, and this time got in. I transwarped back to Spacedock, and headed out to join a battle.
Now this was truly epic!
Warping in to a battle, I was confronted with several Borg Cubes, assisted by smaller Borg spheres. Each was thirty-four levels stronger than me! However, in our favour, there were dozens of Federation ships - and some Klingons were also helping out. Occasionally there'd be a mis-target, and a Fed would fire on Klingon, or vice versa, but facing a common enemy, people generally united. Battle against the Borg was tough. If a cube targetted you, you generally had about 5 seconds to live before your shields disappeared. However, targetted fire against a single target whittled away at their shields, and eventually, after some deaths and respawns - BOOOOM! We brought down a Cube. Only to see more warp in...
Noticing some of my fleet were actually in Spacedock, I enquired why they weren't out fighting Cubes. "There's Borg in Spacedock!" was the answer. Ooh! After helping to take out another cube, I transwarped back to Spacedock (transwarp is like a hearthstone or recall scroll - once every 30 minutes, you can use it to return to Spacedock). Beaming down, I arrived in the middle of a pitched battle. A few dozen players were fighting a rearguard action against literally hundreds of Borg. I spent about 30 minutes valiantly - well, dying repeatedly, as whatever position I was holding got swamped. Eventually, though, it was time for bed, and I logged off from the End of the Universe As We Know It.
So - a two-part event to close the open beta. The Klingon vs. Federation part was clumsy and had its flaws: no clear direction on proper targets, single respawn points for both factions in the Federation maps, the seeming inability of Klingon cloaking devices to work (at least, if someone was camping the respawn point, they didn't work), and, of course, the camping. The Borg aspect, though, didn't suffer from those complications, and was much better. And the flaws are entirely excusable. Cryptic didn't have to run an event, and I got the impression that it was hastily thrown together, but the fact that they did run one was a nice thank you to those who'd played the betas.
But more importantly, it shows Cryptic are open to running proper events. With GMs taking part as NPCs - it was noted that some of the Borg were, indeed, being piloted/played by devs or GMs. That's something I haven't seen since... hmm, Ultima Online. Given that this is effectively a 'single shard' game, it opens the door to all sorts of interesting possibilities - events could potentially lead to persistent, lasting changes in the STO universe.
Oh, and Leonard Nimoy now provides a narrated intro to each new sector of space, the first time you cross into it. Another nice touch.
Posted by Drew Shiel at February 5, 2010 10:42 PM
