STO Free Trial Weekend / Demo

[PREDATOR490]

Star Trek Online is having a Free Trial for previous subscribers this weekend and a demo at some point in the future.

The sign-up page can be found here: Free Trial

I know a few members of SDN signed up for the Open Beta so this is just a chance to come back and see how the game has developed since then. Incidentally, no I do not gain anything by posting this... the referal program hasnt even started yet and I am amoung those that despise Cryptic for employing it in the manner they have.

[Edward Yee]

I do like the whole free trial/demo, since I ended up jumping WAAAY further into the deep end than I should have, and forever blame the guy who got me signed up. Seriously though, it has some novelty value over WoW... too bad about the lack of storage space, because it's pretty bad. (You can't directly put gear onto your starship or bridge officers, you must pick them up into your personal inventory first.)

[PREDATOR490]

The referal program has just went live, basically get 5 people subscribed and you get the Galaxy-X from All Good Things. Complete with cannon and supposedly a cloaking device.

The fury over this has been epic due to people being extremely pissed off with Cryptic's nickel and diming any chance they get. For the most part the C-Store shit could be avoided because it was all trivial but now Cryptic come out with a custom ship that has enhanced functionality on a canon ship lots of people requested. Unsurprisingly, Cryptic refused to listen to the playerbase and the shilling for referals has started.

Not particularily impressed but the referal thing does offer a demo...

Not interested in working for the Galaxy-X, I prefer the Defiant which they claimed is coming out later so I'm happy for the most part.

Thus if anyone wants a referal, I'll hand mine out.

[Gramzamber]

I still play STO, and I was one of the people against this scheme and Cryptic's nickel and diming in general.
To demonstrate how keenly they listen to their customers, I've been permanently forum banned.

Fuck them and their bullshit.

[PREDATOR490]

I still play STO, and I was one of the people against this scheme and Cryptic's nickel and diming in general.
To demonstrate how keenly they listen to their customers, I've been permanently forum banned.

Fuck them and their bullshit.

Lt Expendable by any chance ?

I'm J-Sheridan and I have seen a few people get banned recently who were quite vocal about things Cryptic were doing. Additionally, they are literally burying all the 'negative' threads started in sub-forums where they are less likely to be seen.

[Gramzamber]

I still play STO, and I was one of the people against this scheme and Cryptic's nickel and diming in general.
To demonstrate how keenly they listen to their customers, I've been permanently forum banned.

Fuck them and their bullshit.

Lt Expendable by any chance ?

I'm J-Sheridan and I have seen a few people get banned recently who were quite vocal about things Cryptic were doing. Additionally, they are literally burying all the 'negative' threads started in sub-forums where they are less likely to be seen.

Got it in one, heh.
Seen you around there too. Yeah, I spoke out against the Galaxy X farce, lots of other stuff and them bumping all the threads into barely visible sub forms.
GM Destra banned me for "having a bad attitude". No, really.

[Molyneux]

I haven't posted on the forums, but I am in STO as well - I do like the "lifetime subscriber" lounge, even though it doesn't look like it'll be all that useful.

I hadn't even heard of the Galaxy-X.
I'm @greymav, if you see me around.

[Nephtys]

Referral? Is there a way to give out basically a demo? I'm mildly curious how this game plays. As godawful bad MMOs are and all.

[Molyneux]

Referral? Is there a way to give out basically a demo? I'm mildly curious how this game plays. As godawful bad MMOs are and all.

A quick summary:
Ship-to-ship combat is interesting and innovative, ground combat...isn't.

[PREDATOR490]

A demo is meant to be coming about but the referal system does have certain advantages in the fact it gives the newcomer a boost in starting if they team up with the person that recruited them.

From what I have seen though the demo itself is extremely lacking in what its offering but the reason for that is fairly obvious. They dont want the demo folks to see the GOOD stuff rather than have the fly about and see the BAD stuff.

[Commander 598]

http://www.startrekonline.com/demo <-- This has been there for about a week...

[Gramzamber]

Referral? Is there a way to give out basically a demo? I'm mildly curious how this game plays. As godawful bad MMOs are and all.

A quick summary:
Ship-to-ship combat is interesting and innovative, ground combat...isn't.

Of course even the ship combat becomes a clusterfuck in the endgame 5 man "raids" where you're actually expected to rush in and die vs. fleets of Borg, and believe me in one of those missions you'll have killed enough cubes that you ought to be promoted to president of the galaxy.

[Mr Bean]

Referral? Is there a way to give out basically a demo? I'm mildly curious how this game plays. As godawful bad MMOs are and all.

A quick summary:
Ship-to-ship combat is interesting and innovative, ground combat...isn't.

Of course even the ship combat becomes a clusterfuck in the endgame 5 man "raids" where you're actually expected to rush in and die vs. fleets of Borg, and believe me in one of those missions you'll have killed enough cubes that you ought to be promoted to president of the galaxy.

At the end this is STO's main issue, there's to much combat against way to many enemies. Just playing during the closed beta I in my own self before I made Captain racked up more kills than where shown on screen during TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT and the movies combined. I don't have a few borg cubes to my credit I have over a hundred cubes, tactical spheres and the like. If you assume 100 man complement per Orion ship then I personally have blown up more Orion spacers than the US Navy has seaman.

This is the WWII equivalent of a U-Boat captain who sinks not only the entire British Navy but half the American one as well all by himself. Somewhere during Alpha they changed the came from missions similar to the series where you fight one, maybe two ships per mission to a dozen or dozens and it's been silly ever since then. And the ground combat is even worse, it seems every single away mission after you make Lt involves you killing your way through at least two company's worth of baddies, and in some of the worse Klingon missions (One space station mission, name escapes me) you get to fight an entire to scale Klingon Battalion worth of troops if you go through the whole station.

Every room in that station had at least a squad of Klingons with the larger rooms having entire Platoons worth you had to fight. Some ground missions take two hours by themselves because of the shear numbers of enemies you HAVE to fight.

[TheFeniX]

Of course even the ship combat becomes a clusterfuck in the endgame 5 man "raids" where you're actually expected to rush in and die vs. fleets of Borg, and believe me in one of those missions you'll have killed enough cubes that you ought to be promoted to president of the galaxy.

Our last run on infected (three friends with VOIP and two pugs without) we had 2 escorts (all DPS), 2 cruisers (one tank, one healer), and a science ship (me, healing and running 2 instances of scramble sensors). We had one wipe because our tank (the friend on VOIP no less) decided to sit inside the transwarp hub (outside the range of both healer's extend shields) during a borg reinforcement wave and get pounded by about 15 assorted probes and spheres and died within seconds because I couldn't even target an enemy to fire off a scramble.

Calling him a tank is generous, we really only needed him to draw fire and stay healthy long enough to let the borg essentially kill themselves. The tac cube is another issue, but he goes down quick with minimal losses if you have your shit together. His warp core breach almost always wipes out the escorts (fun to watch though). Calling ship combat a cluser-fuck, even the end-game missions is generally when a 5 man team is really only operating as 5 one-man teams.

The game has become pretty boring. I'm contenting myself right now with wiping out feds in the space warzone non-stop. I have to give the Captain rank guys some credit though, at Captain 1 I can only kill maybe 2 before they take me out. At Commander, it was like shooting fish in a bucket.

[Norade]

Hey Predator, I'm going to try the demo, likely won't do much beyond that, but if I sign up I'll toss you a referral.

[Molyneux]

Well, my highest is currently only Lt. Cmdr. 3, so...yeah.

[Gramzamber]

Compared to The Cure and Khitomer Accords, Infected is a walk in the park once you get used to it.
KA is particularily insidious, the first section you have to clear a fleet, then kill a tactical cube with 1.2 million HP, then stop 6 Borg probes from using a time gate while two transwarp gates constantly spam fleets of 5 of them escorted by spheres while having to destroy the gates too.
Oh and if 6 make it through you lose, start again. In 15 minutes.

There's hard and then there's sado-masochism.
The funny thing is when I complained about this I'm told "If you don't like them, don't do them!". Yeah, true. Problem is, THERE'S NOTHING ELSE TO DO.

[PREDATOR490]

Meh, the STFs are just zerg fests compounded by the fact the populace of most MMOs seems pre-disposed to be folks that will not work as a team.

That said, I just did the KA and Cure in about 2 hours and 1 hour respectively. Yes, it has a LOT of dying but with a decent group who know how to revive and stick together it can be reduced considerably.

I have only made one RA5, I just cannot bring myself to make other characters to slog through the same leveling shit again. My main reason being I know I will end up deleting those characters once the new factions come out.
I'm gunning for either a Romulan / Dominion although if this Borg faction comes out then I'll go for that.

Granted, its stupid for Borg to be a playable faction but it seems its the 2nd highest demanded race to be made playable after Romulans. Thus if they are going to add them, why the fuck not. Klingons and Romulans are going to be piss poor due to the simple fact their space is used as leveling grounds for the Federation. They were never designed to be player factions and Cryptic's having trouble adding content to keep 2 factions happy without the addition of more.

Dominion may end up being impressive along with the Borg due to them both having the potential to expand their territory quite well. Although the rumour is the next level band after RA5 - 10 will involve a new enemy / leveling area above Cardassian space. Either the Breen or the Iconians, the latter is going to be a 'big bad' or something if the rumours are to be believed. Given Cryptic's current trend of bringing up obscure things from all over ST I would not be surprise if they decided to bring them in.

[Nephtys]

Welp. I'm trying this game out, and it's... different. At least Captain Suzy S. Scandalbottom of the USS Halliburton is now transferring to her new ship, the USS Teabag Express. But even though I'm trying a free demo, I have to wonder: Is there anything else to do? Space Combat's alright, but... welp. Good thing I didn't really pay for it.

Also, one more thing. Ground combat? Rating: TERRIBLE!

[Kuroji]

Reading all of this, not to mention the nickel and diming and 'premium content' they seem to push every which way they can, makes me quite happy I didn't sign up as I intended to initially. I personally haven't seen a game this gung-ho about this sort of thing, ever, and it makes me a little nervous about how long STO will stay going.

[Molyneux]

Welp. I'm trying this game out, and it's... different. At least Captain Suzy S. Scandalbottom of the USS Halliburton is now transferring to her new ship, the USS Teabag Express. But even though I'm trying a free demo, I have to wonder: Is there anything else to do? Space Combat's alright, but... welp. Good thing I didn't really pay for it.

Also, one more thing. Ground combat? Rating: TERRIBLE!

Ground combat improves once you start getting access to different abilities, but yeah, it's pretty dire. Especially at the beginning.
A word to the wise: if you find a tribble, put it in your bank and provide it with plenty of food. It'll do what tribbles do best, and some of the breeds can do neat things like give you combat or regen buffs.

[Oskuro]

I personally haven't seen a game this gung-ho about this sort of thing, ever, and it makes me a little nervous about how long STO will stay going.

I'm feeling a bit let down with Cryptic regarding this, specially since I have the nagging feeling that Champions Online is being forgotten a bit.

As a mater of fact, I'm getting the general feeling lately that MMOs are kind of dwindling, I haven't seen many announcements for new MMOs lately, and the existing ones are staying very quiet about new developments. Has it finally dawned on producers that they won't be able to replicate WoW? Have they realized that for an MMO to work they need to keep a loyal player base, and that's hard to do with the usual Gaming Industry treatment of players?

Or maybe I'm simply not paying too much attention to any MMOs, since I've been unable to play any of them for a while now.

[Gramzamber]

I believe the combination of WoW and the massive flood of Korean style free to play MMOs have greatly diluted the potential playerbase.
Ideally this would mean developers coming up with new, innovative MMOs to bring in the crowds. But instead companies like Cryptic seem interested only in short term gimmicks to squeeze as much money out of their customers as they can before their MMO is abandoned.

[PREDATOR490]

The big name MMOs like WOW and EVE seem to be going quite well, the latter has always been rather 'slow' with its updates but they have a reasonable working game.
Thus, waiting 6 - 12 months for their 'Major' patches is more bearable.

STO on the other hand, you get to end level within a week pretty easily and there is absolutly fuck all to do at endgame except grind for equipment to raid. The lack of content in STO is dire and the fundamental mechanics are clunky and annoying at times. This is not the kind of game that you can have sit for 6 - 12 months like EVE.
Thus we have content patches every month in theory but the patches themselves are lacking and even with the test server bugs are being shipped to live quite frequently.

They just brought in a new raid Undine Terradome - Think 'In the Flesh' for the general idea. This thing is a fucking nightmare of tedium but I will admit it was fun for being a bit innovative in the initial approach. The problem comes with the fact its bugged and basically another zerg fest of Die, Respawn, Kill enemies, Die, repeat.
This thing took around 3 hours and eventually the team just broke up due to the tedium which is common throughout all the STF raids.

The sad thing is, this is the only endgame unless you want to waste your time leveling lots of characters - which you can only make 3 of unless you pay for more.

Which naturally brings up Cryptics trend of selling EVERY last thing they can. Ship bridges, ship models, skins, respecs, character renames, new races, EMOTES.
Granted the respecs and such arent that new but the rest of that shit gets extremely annoying and they are ever eager to keep shelling out more garbage for people to buy. Not that this stuff has that an adverse effect on the game and is mostly superlative but making people pay for new races they request, or new bridges when they actually have NO function. Kinda pointless and only serves to annoy the playerbase that what little content DOES come out they have to PAY for.

The sad thing is, STO is going to retain players for the simple fact of the IP, just like Star Wars retains players even despite the fact SWG is a well known disaster of MMOs. Of course, SW is getting a new MMO that looks like its going to be pretty good. I suppose in 6 years we can find out if ST will get a similar upgrade.