Star Trek Online thread

[Darkthunder]

I think the assumption is that since the Voth evolved on Earth as the first intelligent species, when they relocated to the Delta Quadrant, they brought some of their unintelligent cousins with them.

Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense: The Voth evolved from the Hadrosaurs of Earth, but their "unintelligent cousins" didn't evolve at all over 65 million years? Pretty weak assumption if you ask me.

[captain_obvious]

Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense: The Voth evolved from the Hadrosaurs of Earth, but their "unintelligent cousins" didn't evolve at all over 65 million years? Pretty weak assumption if you ask me.

Imo, it's just lazy design to put in dinosaurs with lasers on their heads.  Which is what they did.  I'm perfectly fine with them putting in the voth, but not okay with putting in dinosaurs with lasers on their heads.  It's not like starfleet charges into battle with rocket launcher wielding chimpanzees after all. 

Though I think the romulans DID experiment with thalaron mines strapped to the backs of epohhs for a time. 

Also, screen from "S8.5"

Wookie feet?

[Tuskin38]

Wookie feet?

That picture appears to be an update of the Fed mission 'Researcher Rescue'

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Mission:_Researcher_Rescue

There is an update coming they're calling 'Season 8.5' Dev blogs next week.

[Tuskin38]

Big tribble patch with a bunch of redone missions

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=14438191&postcount=1

SFC found some stuff, I'll let him post the rest but here is something interesting

"Dys_Scotty_Sphere_Anniversary_System"
"Dys_Scottys_Sphere_Conference_Ground_Season_9_Fe"

Judging by the name, we'll be visiting the Dyson Sphere Scotty was found crashed on in TNG Relics. Sounds like we'll visit it in both the Anniversary and Season 9

[captain_obvious]

Should start a bar there.  Call it "Scotty's". 

Btw, I had a wee bug bite me in the arse the other day. 
I had just hit t4 marauding (YAY!) and went to select the reward boff (I opted for a female human sci).  Unfortunately, STO decided that I was to receive a rather less useful male ferengi sci.  I submitted a bug ticket, but no dice.  They claim that they are unable to switch the officer for another -.-

Oh, it also had the usual "SUBMIT A BUG REPORT!", even though it was a bug report...

Kudos to them though, I received a response within 72 hours!

[captain_obvious]

Whoooooaaaa! I had a look at those patch notes for tribble, that's a lot of (unnecessary) nerfs!  apb? Nerfed.  ALL t5 rep abilities? Nerfed.  Ground CC sci toons? Nerfed.

Oh, and *still* no fixes for bfaw or kdf costumes/slots.

[Tuskin38]

So SFC just found this

 http://puu.sh/6gxmP.mp3


Sounds like he is yelling 'Captain Tuvok!'

[captain_obvious]

Alas, that doesn't work for me. 

[Tuskin38]

the Only change to Stranded in Space is that they use the Transporter room from the Tutorial and it shows your BOFFs on the Origin bridge in the comm windows. Which are outdated because they're not using the new LCARS.

We're moving onto Diplomatic orders now, but I expect it to be much the same. The real changes will probably come with the missions after.


Edit:

They cut the ground portion on P'Jem in half it feels like, you start up the hull instead of at the bottom.

The camera pans in the cutscene when the Undine reveals himself, I think they may have changed the tree models too.

Edit: Hm, Redshirt is up, 8.5 is a big enough update that it needs separate testing from the main branch.

Edit:

On the Mission Diplomatic Orders you get different dialogue choices if you play as a Vulcan, you also get less. You cannot ask the High Priest on Vulcan about Surak, because logically as a Vulcan you would know about him already. But you can jump right into the dialogue about P'Jem being a listening post 200 years ago.

Andorians also get a small dialogue change as well.

[BarnesSFC]

What I found:

Scotty Sphere Files, as Tuskin said

Hirogen Bridge files, Hirogen Tetryon "Burn" Item pack, 2 Hirogen universal consoles, Mirror Intrepid and Varanus class ships, for a future Hirogen lockbox

New 2014 Planetary Invasion event, which is presumably tentacles event

Voice files for 8.5 and the Anniversary event (Tuvok is not in yet)

[Tuskin38]

Tuvok/Tim Russ is probably who Branflakes was with in LA for recording.

Oh, one thing I'd like to mention. No more JJ-Verse uniform in the mission 'Treasure Trading Station'. in fact they're all wearing civilian clothes now, not random Starfleet uniforms.

Well except for one NPC in the hanger.

[Tuskin38]

One of the devs working on the revamped mission posted this

One thing you guys can really help test is that there are slight modifications to dialog when you go back in time and first meet the Enterprise based on what ship you are flying. NX, TOS Connie, Temporal Ships, Romulans ships, and if you are cloaked should have some mention of how your ship is/will be perceived by the crew of the TOS Enterprise. It's just a tiny modification to the dialog, but I had fun with it.

That is neat, I need to try this.

[Darkthunder]

Well, it appears that Dan Stahl is out, and Stephen D'Angelo is in as new Executive Producer for STO:
http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=1078321

As people might recall, Mr D'Angelo was temporary Executive Producer during Dan's absence (when Dan decided it was a good plan to go work for Zynga, developing Facebook games).

What caught my eye however was;

Daniel has decided to step down from the captain?s chair to pursue an exciting new project at Cryptic Studios, and I hope you will join the whole Star Trek Online team in thanking him for his contributions to, love for, and dedication to Star Trek Online.

An exciting new project, you say? Well, I guess that means that development on their existing projects will continue to suffer during 2014, while they work on this new game, in an attempt to make more money. Remember when Neverwinter was announced as being in development? That's right, dev resources were funneled into Neverwinter development for the duration, and STO and CO suffered as a result. I'm not convinced that those resources have "returned" to STO and CO. CO btw is more or less in maintenance mode, without any meaningful content updates whatsoever. I guess STO won't be far behind, if history is any indication.

[BarnesSFC]

Well, it appears that Dan Stahl is out, and Stephen D'Angelo is in as new Executive Producer for STO:
http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=1078321

As people might recall, Mr D'Angelo was temporary Executive Producer during Dan's absence (when Dan decided it was a good plan to go work for Zynga, developing Facebook games).

What caught my eye however was;
An exciting new project, you say? Well, I guess that means that development on their existing projects will continue to suffer during 2014, while they work on this new game, in an attempt to make more money. Remember when Neverwinter was announced as being in development? That's right, dev resources were funneled into Neverwinter development for the duration, and STO and CO suffered as a result. I'm not convinced that those resources have "returned" to STO and CO. CO btw is more or less in maintenance mode, without any meaningful content updates whatsoever. I guess STO won't be far behind, if history is any indication.

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=843461
This sums your post up nicely

[Darkthunder]

I fail to see the relevance. I did not say "The game is DOOMED!!! The sky is falling!!!". But it could very well head in that direction. Only time will tell I suppose.

[captain_obvious]

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=843461
This sums your post up nicely

Quit being a paid up member of the CDF, get your head out of your arse and take a look around.

Also, this sums up my reaction to reading this
"Holy fuck, that was unexpected!!!"

[AllotoniFan]

I fail to see the relevance. I did not say "The game is DOOMED!!! The sky is falling!!!". But it could very well head in that direction. Only time will tell I suppose.

I can only hope that in the possibility it does go wrong at some point and PWE decides to give(as in sell) STOs management rights to another company, they better not let said company be EA(with SWTOR being a nice example).

Just got my Fed character to Vice Admiral today. I was kinda sad the Borg and Undine story-arcs were so small. Cryptic should give more attention to the badass villains of Star Trek instead of giving them only 5 or 6 solo missions a few PVEs. Maybe even a Crystalline Entity story-arc.

[BarnesSFC]

Quit being a paid up member of the CDF, get your head out of your arse and take a look around.

Also, this sums up my reaction to reading this
"Holy fuck, that was unexpected!!!"

I was joking in that post. In all seriousness, I realize STO has alot of bugs and Cryptic isn't perfect, but I'm certain that STO isn't going to be abandoned when it (presumably) makes a lot of revenue each year, especially after the launch of LoR.

So far, STO has gone in the right direction, and hopefully it continues to do so in 2014.

[captain_obvious]

I was joking in that post. In all seriousness, I realize STO has alot of bugs and Cryptic isn't perfect, but I'm certain that STO isn't going to be abandoned when it (presumably) makes a lot of revenue each year, especially after the launch of LoR.

So far, STO has gone in the right direction, and hopefully it continues to do so in 2014.

Sorry about the tone of that post.  I was a wee bit drunk when I posted it :/
While I hope that STO stays alive, but they really need to put a lot more emphasis on fixing old bugs and maybe just maybe listening to testers before letting things go live. 
Cutting the BS pointless changes like those being made to the t5 rep powers would help too. 

[Darkthunder]

So far, STO has gone in the right direction, and hopefully it continues to do so in 2014.

While STO has had many improvements over the years, it's also had many bad decisions made. Making the Romulan a "mini-faction" is one of the major bad decisions. As is the introduction of the Galor Class lockbox, which effectively prohibits them from adding a Cardassian "mini-faction". The Cardassians already have a limited amount of ship classes in canon, and removing their most known class from being a part of the faction, would be a big mistake. As a result, the only "likely" next mini-faction, would be some form of independent Borg (former Borg/ex Borg), and naturally people will want to be able to fly Borg ships. I don't know about you, but I don't see the fun in having players flying Intrepid, Defiant and Galaxy classes, and fighting neutered/balanced Borg cubes. Borg are suppose to be intimidating. They should be deadly. For a player faction, they'd need to be balanced to other ships.

Daniel Stahl was an excellent Executive Producer prior to his leaving Cryptic to work for Zynga. Under Stephen D'Angelo's "temporary" leadership, the game suffered immensely, and communication with the devs were largely shut down. After Stahl returned to Cryptic and his post as EP, he wasn't nearly as communicative as he once was, and many bad decisions were made over the course of his tenure (the removal/reinstatement of Dilithium rewards in Season 7 being one of the major offenders). You also have the fact that most forms of income in the game, whether they be Dilithium or Mark rewards, were cut in half or lower still. The "DOff Grinder" at the Academy's saw a major pricehike. Foundry "Fleet Mark" rewards were added/removed over the course of his tenure, the list goes on.

Now after all that, how anyone can sit there, and with a straight face saying "STO has gone in the right direction", is beyond me. STO is headed down a dark path, their 4th project will further prove this point in time. I find very little enjoyment in the game these days, besides grinding Dilithium, and converting to Zen. Not paying a dime on this game, when as stated, it has far too many problems, and has had far too many bad decisions over the years.