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  • My ship in Star Trek Online

    My Constitution class cruiser in Star Trek Online is very conventional, but still looks pretty good.

    USS Hermosa Beach

    The NX designation, rather than the usual NCC, is because I am a lifetime subscriber or played the beta or some such thing. The ship’s name, Hermosa Beach, is because I used to live in Hermosa Beach and still miss it.

    I played one of the PvE (player vs. environment) multiplayer instances last night, Starbase 24. I’d played it with my other characters, but they’ve changed it a bit. There used to be ship combat, then ground combat in the station. Now it’s just lots of ship combat with a group of other players. Something interesting was the courtesy shown in the loot drops. For high quality loot, it gave a choice of “Need, Greed, or Pass.” In LOTRO, most people choose Need for everything, which is annoying. In STO, people chose Greed for non-essential goodies and some folks even passed on things they couldn’t use. So does that mean STO has a better class of player? Maybe…

  • Coming to terms with how my Mass Effect 3 game will end

    I’m well along in the final mission sequence of Mass Effect 3 and should be able to wrap up the game in the next few days. I hear that there are hours of cutscenes left, so perhaps they will exceed the remaining game play.

    Yesterday, I read ahead in the IGN walkthrough and read about the endgame options. I didn’t read the details of the fights to get me there, so I will still have the joy of exploring and learning how to manage the tough enemies between me and the Citadel. It turns out that because I haven’t played multiplayer or the iOS game, I have no hope of getting the best ending in which everyone lives. In fact, though I did all the side missions and gained as much support as I could, it looks like I will have to pick an ending where Shepard dies, the Earth is devastated or destroyed, and probably the whole crew will die. But at least I should be able to stop the Reapers.

    Yesterday, I was pretty depressed about it, but I’ve decided that I will put up with it and finish the game. Perhaps if the iOS game goes on sale for $1 again, I’ll buy it and retry the end game if I can boost my readiness level to see if I can do better. I can’t imagine spending much time playing multiplayer to boost the galactic readiness level, but I may try and see.

  • Fighting the plot in Mass Effect 3

    I’ve been mostly enjoying Mass Effect 3, but like so many Bioware games, including Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2, I am feeling excessively constrained by the plot the writers have constructed. Though I have done all the side missions, I don’t have any feeling of making a difference in the universe. Sure, all the NPCs I meet know Shepard, but none of my actions are making any difference in the plot, which is smothering and oppressing me.

    In the game so far, I have had the choice to kill or save the Rachni (I chose to save them, though I don’t know whether that will be a good idea in the long run), cure the Krogan genophage or not (I did), and I had to make a choice to kill an entire race. At the end of a long and nasty fight that someone should smack the Bioware devs for (more below), I had a choice to either kill off the Geth or the Quarians. In either case, Legion dies, but in the latter, Tali kills herself because I sacrificed her entire race. I call bullshit! The great Commander Shepard should have been able to separate the two forces and broker a peace rather than having once side wipe out the other. Not knowing the consequences, I first chose to support Legion and the Geth, which ended badly for the Quarians. Hating that outcome, I redid the horrible Reaper boss battle and tried the other way, which was better, but not much. I read from the IGN walkthrough that if I had certain criteria met in my imported save file, perhaps I could have saved both sides somehow. Again, what a stupid design?!? You mean doing the side missions to save the Quarian general and their fleet from the fighters didn’t give me enough pull to make them see reason and back off? Come on!

    I have a hunch this is just the beginning of me not liking the stupid either/or plot choices, and I know enough people have complained about the ending that I’m sure I won’t like that. I’m just at the point where I am about to be funneled into the final sequence of missions, which is another characteristic of Bioware games that I don’t like. And if this one, like Dragon Age 2, only gives me bad choices, I’ll be pissed (and yes, I’m prepared to be pissed).

    So back to the Reaper boss battle on the Quarian/Geth homeworld: Did anyone actually think that was fun? In the battle, you need to keep a laser target designator on a certain area of a huge reaper that is shooting at you and if it even comes close to hitting you, you die and start the whole thing over. And you need to do that for several weapon strikes, so even if you manage to stay alive through a couple, you can still be killed and have to start over. Sure, once I figured it out, it wasn’t terribly hard, but it was never actually fun. This is why I don’t play some of the old console games, like the early Metal Gear games – the penalty for even a small screw up is huge and therefore, I don’t see it as fun.

    That being said, there are a couple of very clever sequences the Bioware devs included that they should be commended on. Getting onto a Geth dreadnought through a damaged entry tunnel and being able to use magnetic boots and move all the way around the tunnel was very cute. The mission where Shepard virtually treks through a Geth server was also very creative and unique. So someone had a spark of creativity when doing those missions, but they made up for it and fell back to lazy design when I had to choose to wipe out the Geth, which depressed me.

    So I will soon be done with ME3 and will not play multiplayer, I’m sure. The lousy experiences with this game have even made me wary of Bioware’s Star Wars MMO, though if it ever goes free-to-play, I may need to try it.

  • Had to restart Mass Effect 3

    Though I was several hours into Mass Effect 3, I decided to restart with an imported character from Mass Effect 2. I read some things on IGN’s excellent ME3 Wiki and Guide that made me realize I had messed up by not importing my character. Without importing, some known characters didn’t even show up in ME3. Some of my choices in ME2 may come back to haunt me in ME3, but so far, it has been OK. The other thing that made me want to restart is that I had been getting a little too far in the main plot, so some of the early side missions were about to be cut off so I couldn’t finish them.

    The biggest change so far is that I met up with the crazy tattoo chick, Jack, while rescuing the students from Grissom Station. The end of that mission goes way better when Jack is present, because one of the students died in a scripted scene in my first play through, but with Jack present, the student didn’t die (though he did have a lesser role). A few of the dialogue choices throughout the game are different too, based on the choices I made in ME2, and that may come to haunt me when I’m dealing with the Krogan and the genophage cure. We’ll see.

    The only odd thing is that I didn’t import my ME1 character in to ME2, so ME2 didn’t know that I had chosen Ashley to be killed rather than Kaidan, so Kaidan was alive in my first attempt at ME3, while Ashley is alive in my new one.

    So, yes, I did waste a few hours, but I was able to re-do the missions more quickly with the imported character than before. Besides, imported characters are high-level and have way more abilities than freshly rolled ones. So I don’t regret restarting at all, other than the cognitive dissonance of Ashley being alive.

  • Started Mass Effect 3 and now it takes all my spare time!

    I made the mistake of starting Mass Effect 3 on Sunday and now it is taking all my spare time. ME3, like its predecessors, is a well-written, mostly great looking RPG with third-person cover shooter elements. The game starts off with the invasion of Earth and our hero Shepard’s escape to rally the galaxy to fight the Reapers. Then it turns into a conventional mission-based RPG with some missions that move the plot forward and side missions that provide allies or better abilities. Because the overarching goal is to gather support against the Reapers, the distinction between plot missions and side quests is much more blurred than in conventional RPGS. In my opinion, this is a good thing: if my world were under enemy occupation, fetch quests and kill ten rats quests would seem like a colossal waste of time, but quests to gain support would be okay.

    The graphics in the game are typically very good. As with other Bioware games, the textures for armor and such are not quite up to par, but even with all settings maxed, I get great frame rates at 2560×1440. Unfortunately, the cut scenes are probably ones rendered for the original Mass Effect, because they look horrible. The scenes right before a mission that show the shuttle bay on the Normandy seem quite low-res, as do the Mass Effect Relay movies where the Normandy is launched through space. Even some of the shuttle landing sequences look unnatural and not smoothly done. These lousy cut scenes hurt the continuity of the game. On the other hand, the female characters’ bodies are lovingly rendered and look perfect, even under the low-res armor.

    The game is split between wandering around on the Normandy, interacting with crew and passengers, visiting the Citadel space station, dealing with government officials and criminals and more, and the missions on various planets and space stations throughout the galaxy. The problem with Mass Effect games is that after a certain point, you get funneled to the endgame missions, and, (per ME2) if you try to do other missions after that point, consequences are dire. I’d prefer that not happen, so I’m trying to be careful to not get too far in the plot while my mission list is still huge.

    Overall, I am enjoying ME3 very much and it takes all my spare time, while other games go unplayed… OK, so it isn’t a mistake to play ME3, but it is one to think of having free time again.

  • Lootboxes – a way for MMOs to separate us from our money

    Lootboxes are a fairly new phenomenon, at least in the MMORPGs I play the most, Star Trek Online and Lord of the Rings Online, and they are an interesting attempt to separate us from our money. Real money, not in-game stuff. And it is not necessarily a bad thing, but it may not bode well for the future.

    Lootboxes, per the name, are loot from kills. In LOTRO, they seem pretty rare, and I have only acquired a few of them. In STO, they are very common in the first few missions, though have become rare as I have progressed in the game. Though lootboxes (or Ferengi lockboxes in STO) are loot, they are not useful unless you have a key. In some games, keys can also be found as loot, but are even more rare than the lockboxes. Why? Because the game companies sell keys in their online store for real money (Cryptic or Turbine points, for example), so hoping to get players of these Free-to-Play games to plonk down real money to open an in-game item. To be fair, Turbine sometimes gives the keys away in the excellent lottery they have.

    So why would someone buy a key for real money to get an unknown in-game item? Gambling! The highest end loot that comes out of the lootboxes is quite compelling. In STO, you can win starships, while in LOTRO, you can get blue (highest quality) gear. In LOTRO, getting good gear is fairly regular, but I’ve opened a few lootboxes in STO and have yet to get anything good.

    Why has the drop rate for lootboxes dropped as I progress in STO? I can only speculate that the devs load early players up with them in the hope that they will spend some real money before dropping the game. That may be cynical of me to think that, because it means the devs have a low opinion of the long-term attractiveness of the game, but it’s the best explanation I can think of at the moment.

    Do lootboxes work for the game owners? Yes, I have bought a few keys in both LOTRO and STO. Do they work for gamers? Maybe – it adds a bit of a thrill in the process of opening a lootbox and hoping for a big win, probably similar to the gambling thrill in Vegas casinos. I have a hunch lootboxes are here to stay and may even be expanded. I just hope they don’t become the only way to get good stuff or that their drop rate doesn’t overwhelm other loot in an attempt by the game owners to get even more money from us.

     

  • How Star Trek Online offers a different challenge from most MMOs

    I will not declare complete knowledge of MMOs by a long shot, but Star Trek Online is different from all the MMOs I’ve played (or tried). These differences add a bit of complexity, yet most MMO players will find things familiar enough that it will not be an issue.

    The biggest difference between STO and conventional MMOs like WoW, LOTRO, Conan, etc., is that we need to manage the leveling and equipment of the main player character, one or more starships, and some number (between 4 and 8) bridge officers. Now having helpers occurs in many games, such as the helpers in Guild Wars (sorry, I forget what they’re called), or the companions in LOTRO for captains and lore masters, but STO’s level of customization, skill choices, and how they affect gameplay are unmatched.

    Since the best part of STO (in my opinion) is starship combat, I’ll talk about that first. There are 3 major classes of starship: escorts are quick and pack lots of firepower, while science vessels have powerful buffs and heals (yes, really, for starships – shield or hull restore, and so forth), and cruisers are slow all-rounders. Ships also have levels, from low-level ships with few weapons and slots that you get early in the game to studly ships we would recognize from the TV shows that we get as admirals (think Enterprise D and E, Voyager, and Defiant as examples from each of the 3 classes). As we get better ships, we also get better equipment for them. Quantum torpedoes or plasma beams or tetryon beams, etc. Each ship has slots for fore and aft weapons (varying number, based on level and class), engine, shield, deflector array, and consoles to provide engineering, science, and tactical buffs. The items that fit there are found as loot, given as quest rewards, bought in stores, or on the Exchange from other players. In short, it is essential that players keep their ships up with the best equipment, just as I keep my LOTRO lore master up with the best armor and weapons I can get.

    The player also levels and gains skill that affect various aspects of shipboard and ground combat. Players can choose science, engineering, or tactical emphasis, each of which gives unique special abilities as the player levels. Choosing one player class does not prevent using other ship classes, however, so my tactical captain uses an upgraded Constitution class cruiser. Player equipment is important, so players need to always use weapons, armor, and shields appropriate to their level. There is also the concept of a player “kit” which provides additional ground combat abilities based on the player class. Since my guy is a tactical captain, he has grenade abilities added by the kit. Previous engineer captains I’ve had could summon phaser turrets and healing devices. The player skill tree has changed significantly since I last played, so I am still getting used to the new (and, so far, better) format.

    The player also has helpers in the form of Bridge Officers (BOFFs). They level up as BOFF skill points are assigned by the player to certain skills for each BOFF. These skills provide space and ground combat abilities that are essential to winning fights, so keep your BOFFs up with their skills. The BOFFs can’t use their skills if they are knocked out in combat, so you also need to make sure they have good armor, weapons, and shields (though they can be hand-me-downs from the player). You can customize BOFF appearance, outfits, and name when you recruit them.

    There is even a new concept called Duty Officers that can perform tasks for the player and they help the player gain prestige and I don’t know what else. I’ve just reached the level where I can use Duty Officers, so I don’t yet know the full story there.

    So STO requires the user to manage skills for the player and the BOFFs, as well as gear for the player, BOFFS, and ships. As such, it is a little more complex than most MMOs but starship combat in the Star Trek universe makes it worth it.

  • Currencies and Store Integration in Star Trek Online

    Having been a Star Trek Online player since the beginning, I’ve seen the evolution of currencies and stores in the game. Initially, there were energy credits that were used to buy things in in-game stores, like weapons and gear for your characters. There were also Cryptic points, which were bought with real money to buy goodies, like ships and things. There were also other special purpose currencies, like ship tokens that you got when you earned a new ship through leveling up, and medals for PvP stuff that I had no familiarity with because the PvP mostly sucked.

    Now, the developers have somewhat simplified currencies and stores, though they’ve added some. There are still energy credits, earned for missions, and they can be used in the Exchange (like the Auction House in LOTRO) where players buy and sell excess gear, as well as for most stores in the game for weapons and gear. The medals and such have now been replaced by dilithium, which is earned by doing daily missions, PvP, and in other ways that I don’t know about yet. Dilithium Stores tend to have higher quality gear that can only be bought with dilithium. There are also some Ferengi crystals that show up from time to time. These are fairly rare, but allow the purchase of nifty and rare items, though I don’t yet have enough crystals to buy anything, so I haven’t done so.

    The most impressive thing is the seamless integration of Cryptic Points into the stores in the game, particularly the clothing and new ship stores. Now, when you want to equip your Bridge Officers or yourself with a new outfit, the store shows lots of items that are only available if you pay with Cryptic Points, the real-money currency. Same with ships: if you want a niftier ship, you can get one if you pay with Cryptic Points (you still can’t go above your level range, though). Very nicely done and a clever way to exploit (and I mean that in a good way) the Free-to-Play model that Star Trek Online has adopted.

    Overall, the currency and store integration in Star Trek Online is well done and should serve as a model for other games in the future.

  • Star Trek Online, LOTRO, Saints Row 3, and Infamous – lots of gaming, little time

    I finished the main plot of Saints Row: the Third last week (as noted here), and even did the other version of the ending (which killed Shaundi, yet I still seem to be able to call her up when I need Homie support, so it’s all good). Therefore, what am I still doing playing the game?

    Well, the game is so fun that I am enjoying collecting all the collectibles, wiping out rival gangs, doing all the side missions, etc. I did some of those things, especially the collectibles, solo, but the others are best with a friend. I had a great time doing co-op missions with friends, and will keep the game handy so I can continue to do so!

    I also played a bit of Star Trek Online and am enjoying it. The early missions are mostly unchanged from what I did more than a year ago, but the game is generally more polished. There is a new Duty Officer system, which adds complexity, but may provide some bonuses, though I haven’t quite figured it out. The crafting is still pretty bad, though is better than it was at game launch. The biggest issue is lack of clear explanations of where to get blueprints. I presume some are for sale from the vendors on Memory Alpha, but in the tutorials, everything is given to you, so it doesn’t exactly make it obvious.

    I also played a bit of LOTRO and was very pleased to find some of my kinship-mates online. I did some missions with my level 40s Minstrel and my 75 Lore Master. LOTRO is a very comfortable game to play, though playing with my Minstrel in the North Downs reminded me of the slow and annoying travel system in many areas (though it is better in the new areas). There must be a fine line for the developers: they want us to spend as much time in-game as possible, yet don’t want to piss us off so we quit.

    I also spent a short time in Skyrim, gathering the Crown of Barenziah and killing a dragon or two.

    Finally, I spent some time playing Infamous on the PS3. I like the game mechanics and am very intrigued with the story, but aiming stinks (at least for me) and the penalty for dying is pretty high. I will likely continue to play the game occasionally, so I can figure out the story line.

  • Star Trek Online Videos

    I’m enjoying Star Trek Online so much that I made a couple of videos. I bought the Constitution class cruiser upgrade, so I wanted to show it off, too.

    The first clip is sector space leaving Sol and heading to the Delta Volanis cluster.

    The second, much longer, clip shows one of the random encounters that occur in clusters. In this case, I got to fight some Orion pirates. You can see that the cruiser is not very maneuverable, but gets the job done. You can also see me pick up some of the “anomaly” crafting materials, including the frequency matching minigame.

    If driving starships around and blowing stuff up sounds like fun to you, try Star Trek Online.