Avian Gamers Network

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Deak
SWTOR - Spicerunner Legacy - Smuggler - RETIRED
Rift - Decipher - Paragon - RETIRED | WAR - Frenzyof Energy - Shaman - RETIRED
WoW - Fire Mage - RETIRED | SWG - Weaponsmith - RETIRED
MMOGGLER™ for online gamers

Beta's up for those of you who missed it...

Seven point five gigs of download for the client... which means I won't participate.
It wil take me three days to download and cost me around 400 US dollars on the phonebill...

God! I'm sick of digital distribution...

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1st Feb 2008

yea its buggy as hell and laggy as hell and freezy as hell.

Unimpressed and not ready for release. With only two weeks of "open" beta I suspect that It wont be ready for prime-time by early start, if Feb 2nd. They have serious work to do

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Ryric Krael
Former Vice President AGN
Former Director, Section 6
Former Head of Department of the Treasury
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Ask not what your PA can do for you, but what you can do for your PA
"Gone Section Five"

My sentiments exactly, DF.

Logged 5-6 hrs in-game, submitted 4 bug reports and uninstalled it. I'll check out a free trial a few months after go-live.

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Liro
"The english language is not a wedding gown, it doesn't get better the more lace you add. It is instead a thong. Less is more." From /.
I need to remind myself of this regularly.

Same experiences as well, can hardly do anything with it, I had better luck in closed beta than I am now in open beta

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Section 6

From a poster at another board
http://www.rihardsonline.com/news/2010/ ... a-testing/

My Random list of things that just don't work...

• No Login queue....
• No true 3d - axis, while some may argue its for simplicity sake...having to spiral up and down is not simple. Take Eve, simple 3D combat, yes you can't go inverted but you can still move freely.
• Lack of open-world game play.
• Complete lack of choices, your missioning...and thats about all there is to do.
• Wireframe/outline - These are the same for every ship - for Feds - Constellation Class shape, for all other enemies...Bird of prey. This reeks of cutting corners...very simple fix...
• Combat is unmanageable - Space combat can be 20+ ships at once and there is no way to manage who you are targeting or to who is on your radar. Whoever takes point is simply going to get blown away by 10 torps in many instances. While at higher levels this may change, with roles becoming more defined... The first 10 levels are there to encourage the player and draw them in, and introduce them to their role in combat...STO does not do this at all...
• The Radar...sucks, bloody useless, in space, in station, etc.
• Maps - very buggy usage of maps, hovering over an item doesn't always show you what or who it is, or the name of the star system
• Loading screens -> I don't feel any immersion because I am on a load screen every 10 minutes - with today's technology this is somewhat unacceptable.
• Sector space - A loadscreen...then an interactive navigational display. lets be honest, instant travel may have been a simple approach..but this is near useless.
• Ground... Yea this is the first game to have space and ground at launch...unfortunately neither is great, and ground is very generic feeling most of the time.
• Ship slots, just feel generic as well, not sure why but was very meh...to their whole approach.
• Graphics are okay but my computer is a beast and I still have graphical glitches and slow downs*
• Bugs... hell of a lot of bugs, from the menu's with NPC's to missions...And where are the voice overs btw? I think these should be standard to some degree...
• Overall lack of originality.
• No death penalty? is this a single player game?

*(Running a i7 920 - GTX 275, 6gb ram, W7)


Few other thoughts...

THIS IS BETA
Wrong. This is an open beta, see these things go Alpha, Closed Beta, Open Beta. By the time a product reaches open beta, it is usually a stress test, and marketing time away from release.... Therefore the game should play like such. The fan boys on the forums need to get over themselves and realize this game is not street ready, hell its barely closed-beta ready.

The First 10 levels/ranks/grades
I feel like I have played very standard type of gameplay as of lvl 5/ LT Grade5 whatever you like to call it. I have followed the mission lines. What do I have to show for it? A few upgrades, some random exploration type of loot. Very little loot from space vessels in combat, very little character advancement...very few activated/usable "skills"

Skills
The choice to go with passive skills that are never explained well over giving a new player 3 or 4 activated skills to get use to and use is just poor design, follow through and documentation.

Miranda...
I think forcing everyone to use the Miranda to start was a mistake, give us a flimsy vessel for the first 5 then let us start to differentiate from one another as we level. Hell even a Re-mod of the Miranda for the different classes would have been better.

Just things that have occured to me. Let me say that I am disappointed with the game, but not really ranting over its short comings. I am more sickened by the community forums fanboyism over the game and the fact that they really don't see how much of a fail this game is as far as star trek. There is no open world gameplay which I think is a must for MMORPG type of games. You simply do mission after mission and hope you don't get bored.

_________________
Ryric Krael
Former Vice President AGN
Former Director, Section 6
Former Head of Department of the Treasury
-------
Ask not what your PA can do for you, but what you can do for your PA
"Gone Section Five"

That bad huh?

Already knew about the 2D-axis in space battle, which is a huge letdown...

But that everything shouldl be a mission? No free travelling (i.e. combat space patrol) with no random encounters...

And could anyone pålease describe that space travel itself?

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1st Feb 2008

from the link I posted above.

Beyond the actual space combat which basically feels like your ship is just your avatar (WASD) control/mouse. "Warp" travel is accomplished on the sector map, which is really just a overlay on the space map/area as you can see above. Systems, encounters, missions are on the map and you fly to them...just like combat, once your close enough you push the use key to enter the system.

You can also use an auto-pilot, which is the same thing...just hands-free. Click location in the map and engage...

basically all the sector space map does is add 2 loading screens to travel... (one on the front end and one when you arrive...)

The game also has the tendency to display your ground avatar in place of your space and vice-versa making movement difficult/not possible for several seconds to minutes while the game figures its shit out...

I havnt tried going to a system without a mission, might be a 2-3 unknown signals from my scanner I can check out but otherwise I don't think there are random spawns... eventually there will be an exploration system (at launch...so they say) but it has not been part of the open-beta, and im not sure if it was in during closed...

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Ryric Krael
Former Vice President AGN
Former Director, Section 6
Former Head of Department of the Treasury
-------
Ask not what your PA can do for you, but what you can do for your PA
"Gone Section Five"

Thanks for the info. I have been thinking about this game, but I dont have time to look into it.

Thanks for all the info so far.

I do have one comment about this being "Open Beta" and what you should expect in Open Beta.

You are correct that Open Beta is for stress testing. It is for stress testing ALL of their systems. You start a good open beta out by Scaling back your systems as much as you can first, and then crank up different systems. The first Half of any Open Beta should be expected to be buggier than the previous couple months of Closed Beta, as you are introducing new factors that were not present previously. Open Beta is not intended to be a "Early Entry" program. It is still a BETA.

Granted, I don't like what I'm hearing about a lot of aspects of this, and I'm not necessarily willing to just blindly buy this game hoping these people are wrong. However, I also think that what we hear the last week of Open Beta is the most important, and I'm not looking for a WoW-in-space MMO. I'm looking more for a MMO-Star Trek Sim game.

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"Loose with Dignity"
Robert
Second President, Avian Gamers

DDO - Cannith - AlistairItor - Rogue/Ranger (5/3) - Main
DDO - Cannith - Guijanitor - Paladin/Rogue (4/1)
DDO - Cannith - RicochetItor - Rogue (5)

Anyone interested in the beta...got an extra key from fileplanet... Runs till the 26th or so...letme know and I'll PM it to you. Be aware its a 6-8gb download.

MGJ - your probably correct. One thing that has people worried is that they are only allowing people up to lvl 16, were not sure if they are going to open up the rest, but it is as buggy as <16 it's going to be an issue. The other thing is typically betas have new patches released during their course (from my experiance)... the game has not patched since the initial OB release.

I think a lot of the negative feedback is part due to a very compelling game, very simply...its not a good game. A side from the bugs, the design is pretty weak... The bugs have just emphasised a poor design with some other serious flaws...

I don't know if anyone has played Guild Wars, but the MMO part of this game feels closer to GW (Starbase/city/town lobbies with instancing every where else.) then any other true MMORPG to date...

_________________
Ryric Krael
Former Vice President AGN
Former Director, Section 6
Former Head of Department of the Treasury
-------
Ask not what your PA can do for you, but what you can do for your PA
"Gone Section Five"

I agree with the above comment DF. My biggest problem is the not the bugs I know they come with beta but I havent cared much for the gameplay in general.

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Section 6

From the looks of it it looks like a simplified "Starfleet Command" with some mix of a complicated version of "Star Trek Legacy".

While I have no problem with the Miranda class (Heavy Escort-line as I understand it) I don't understand why they insist on using Soyuz-class (Modified miranda, only seen once in detail on TNG Season two I think) for Science-line, considering the game is set some 20 years after Star Trek 10: Nemesis.
It would have made more sense to use either Obert-class (the successor for the Soyuz - Seen first time in Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan) or even the Nova-class (Successor to Obert - Seen in Voyager)

While the Miranda itself is an old ship in Star Trek it had a utilitarian design which made it strong in many aspects. By TNG/DS9 it was outdated mostly by weak armor. By Canon it is the only ship that fit into the category of a relatively small attack cruiser, until the Defiant-class.

As far as I understand the Command-line is supposed to be a Constitution-class (Refit) though I haven't confirmed that. I'd say it would have made more sense to use either Excelsior-class since it was a ship in great numbers and had been in use about as long as the Miranda and Obert (Miranda being the longest used ship in Star Trek)

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1st Feb 2008

Since it's late and I'm tired, I'm going to sum up: yet another excellent franchise pissed away.

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Liro
"The english language is not a wedding gown, it doesn't get better the more lace you add. It is instead a thong. Less is more." From /.
I need to remind myself of this regularly.

Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel.

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~Ravage™
~I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
~The problem with facts, is that sometimes they don't support your opinion.

If he is a closet-trekker we don't need to force it out of him...
His self-realisation will come... in time...

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1st Feb 2008

While I liked the series (DS9 is the one series I've not watched much) and the movies, I'm no Trekker, nor am I a closet Trekker.

My comment originated waaaaay back in the day as SWG was being recognized for what it truly was. Maybe I'm too impatient with MMOs to hook me/to perform well/to be enjoyable but it didn't take much time in-game with Star Trek Online to realize I had identified another stinker. Another franchise, like the Star Wars universe, cheapened by the current attempt monetize it's name in the MMO space. I don't mean to be pessimistic about it, I'm just callin em like I sees em!

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Liro
"The english language is not a wedding gown, it doesn't get better the more lace you add. It is instead a thong. Less is more." From /.
I need to remind myself of this regularly.

they dropped 2 huge patches...I will report back tomorrow at somepoint...

_________________
Ryric Krael
Former Vice President AGN
Former Director, Section 6
Former Head of Department of the Treasury
-------
Ask not what your PA can do for you, but what you can do for your PA
"Gone Section Five"

What I find interesting is this MMO originated back at the same time SWG did. They announced it either right before SWG was announced, or right after. Since then it's gone through multiple designs and developers.

It's been a long time coming, but with really very little comparitive time spent developing it. lol

_________________
"Loose with Dignity"
Robert
Second President, Avian Gamers

DDO - Cannith - AlistairItor - Rogue/Ranger (5/3) - Main
DDO - Cannith - Guijanitor - Paladin/Rogue (4/1)
DDO - Cannith - RicochetItor - Rogue (5)

Don't think a lot of the resources carried over from dev to dev team...so not as long as it seems but yea... unimpressed. The patches fixed some obvious bugs (but not the starship spawn on ground and people in space which still happens from time to time...)...did revamp the HUD a bit but nothing to write home about...honestly more stuff that they should have figured out by now..

There is just no immersion in the game...

_________________
Ryric Krael
Former Vice President AGN
Former Director, Section 6
Former Head of Department of the Treasury
-------
Ask not what your PA can do for you, but what you can do for your PA
"Gone Section Five"

That screenshot looked like shit. I will also stay well away given other comments above.

Another one bites the dust. Man someone should write a song...

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"I built me a bomb and dropped it on every MFer who got in my way!"