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STO January 22nd Update
perkam
Member Posts: 9
Most Balance issues have now been resolved thanks to the January 22nd Update. From The STO Website:
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Improved gameplay balance in space
No direct change in Tier 1 combat
Increased damage of space enemies above level 11 (Tier 2).
Reduced science vessel shields and hull by about 10%
Added more interesting weapons Bridge Officer abilities to enemy ships
All Romulan/Reman ships now use mostly plasma torpedoes instead of Photons. So their High Yields will be Heavy Plasma Torpedoes instead of Salvos (including their Bird of Prey Frigates).
Improved Romulan/Reman Mogai – Added Plasma Turret, Dual Beams, Rapid Fire, Attack Pattern Alpha and Evasive Maneuvers.
Improved Romulan/Reman D'deridex – Added additional Aft Plasma Array, Viral Matrix, Photonic Shockwave, and increased its used of Heavy Plasma Torpedoes.
Improved all Hirogens ships– Added Transphasic Torpedoes
Improved Klingon Negh’Var – Added Boarding Party at higher levels
Improved Cardassian Galor – Added Evasive Maneuvers, and Feedback Pulse
Fixed Borg shipWeapons (It’s tractor Beam and Cutting beam were note working)
Fixed Torpedo and Mine powers that were unintentionally harming your own crew.
Fixed Rapid Fire to work properly.
Made a tuning pass on Chroniton projectiles
Tricobalt weapons now have a 30 second shared cooldown.
Updated the plasma ball to have slightly more direct damage and slightly less DoT damage
Removed some Federation spawns in Klingon PVE missions that were not granting XP properly
Added some missing end tier ships to the stores
Removed a bad Shield HP console that was not working properly
Reduced the damage from the Metreon Gas in the Briar Patch that was smoking everyone. Sorry Riker, we had to do it.
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Also, they have listened to the complaints about CDN subscriptions being too high compared to CDN/US exchange rate, and they've fixed that as well.
Things are looking good for launch 
If GW was an animal, which one would it be ?
Comments
Seems to me that they chose a good compromise: Allow the easy mode to stay in effect for the low levels so that people can learn the game, but then crank it up past 11. Makes sense. I'm sure those that wanted a cake walk thru the PVE experience will be disappointed, but this game was meant to be challenging.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
imho it still needs to be harder i was fighting +7 ships with np in cardassin space
I'm expecting to see a radical patch shortly after release and they've lured in as many box sales and locked-in subs as they can. Nothing I've experienced with this game indicates that Cryptic learned anything from Champions Online's launch.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
Keep in mind that from Cryptic's point of view, there might be no lesson to be learned. From a profit standpoint, CO might have been a big success for them. I suspect that STO will be too.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Agreed.
Keep in mind that from Cryptic's point of view, there might be no lesson to be learned. From a profit standpoint, CO might have been a big success for them. I suspect that STO will be too.
Well seeing as CO is showing lower numbers on XFire than CoX I hardly think they will consider it a success. Profitable maybe but seeing as CO was meant to be an improved CoX I dont think they are happy with the lower sub numbers only 6 months after release.
STO on the other hand will get more subs because of the IP and there is still hope that they will do something with the game. Atleast give it some kind of fun end-game.
My gaming blog
Cryptic has done the Star Trek IP justice. Certainly, there were lessons to be learned from CO, and only a fool would say that they haven't learned anything from that launch.
This time around, they are finalizing bug fixes with missions and UI with some balance decisions being made so its easy to play the game.
STO Is a game that, in its current form, is fun, well designed, true to the Star Trek IP, and it is one of most unique mmo's out there.
Most people whining over here about Champions Online are ones that got the short end of the stick with that game. I understand your pain, but as someone such as myself for whom this is the first Cryptic game that I'm playing, I see a game that is well above the plethora of mediocre, unoriginal and repetitive MMOs out there, WAR and all other new ones included.
Play the game and then decide. Don't listen to those over here who are quick to judge the developer, instead of judging the game.
If GW was an animal, which one would it be ?
I can assure you well over 75% of us that dislike STO have played the game for more than just the tutorial. I bashed the game after seeing it at a friends house. Felt bad, DLed the client after getting a ket FRom Ten Ton hammer, played again and disliked it, heard people say you have to play for more than a few hours for it to get good, played it again for a total of 5 hours Real life time, and then finally said my peace.
Im sorry but anyone who comes on here and says after 5 hours that im not giving the game a chance, is in need of some serious mental help.
Seeing as thousands of ships are destroyed every day, how is the game true to the IP? I can watch ten episodes of Voyager/TNG/DS9 and not one ship gets destroyed.
Star Trek IP main focus is not combat.
And what is so original about the game? You have a ship, that acts much like any character in any MMORPG, and you go to instanced missions where you need to kill X of Y race. Ground missions are pretty much the same. Nothing original about it and very repetetive.
My gaming blog
Let's see..if the game truly played like the star trek episodes a majority of the game would be..
Talk on ship..beam to planet and/or ship..talk some more...beam back..talk some more..end of episode.. Hardly a thrilling a game..
I hated STO at first. But with the latest changes I am actually having fun. It's uniqueness is in managing your crew. You get to level up your crew members/manage how they look/act/etc. It's like a Star Trek Pokemon.
The storylines are fairly Star Trek. The ground missions are getting better.
The game is definitely not for everyone, but it's way better than what I expected (and I do have Champions Online).
I also like the ship explosions
No that would be if they were mimicking the show or doing a poor simulation. Everyone goes into their discussion and preferance of STO with the knowledge that is an Online Role playing Game (Or at least its supposed to be).
But the route they chose was the dumbed down console shoot em up, rather than a persistant online world or in this case universe.
Keep in mind that from Cryptic's point of view, there might be no lesson to be learned. From a profit standpoint, CO might have been a big success for them. I suspect that STO will be too.
No. CO was not a success for them. Look at Warhammer. I guarantee Warhammer sold far more copies than CO. Its about to shut down, and it caused Mythic to be no more. Does CO even have 200 people on its servers at any given time? I strongly doubt it.
The lack of success that STO will garner will force Cryptic to shut their doors. I'm guessing they took a nice loss from CO, and they had cash from STO funding to keep them afloat. They will not be making their money back with STO. Good bye, Cryptic. Can't say I will miss your boring, depthless games.
"It's like a Star Trek Pokemon. "
I hope they put THAT on the box.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
The issue is cost versus income. How much did CO cost to make? Not much, I'd guess. If they took in a fair amount more, then it was a success.
Same deal with STO - although it probably cost more to make (including license cost).
I doubt if longevity even has a row on the spreadsheet these days.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
The issue is cost versus income. How much did CO cost to make? Not much, I'd guess. If they took in a fair amount more, then it was a success.
Same deal with STO - although it probably cost more to make (including license cost).
I doubt if longevity even has a row on the spreadsheet these days.
Actually, I bet longevity does show up, as the "milk it" phase. My guess is that their strategy is:
- re-use everything you can from previous efforts, develop quickly
- put the minimum needed to start the hype
- get as much money as possible up front, the earlier the better (life time pre-order before release)
- put cash shops in, keep adding small stuff to the game, changing skills etc, to keep the feeling of progress alive
- put a skeleton crew on the game, and milk it for as long as possible. Longevity is just the icing.
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2025: 48 years on the Net.
Good point. I agree.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Seeing as thousands of ships are destroyed every day, how is the game true to the IP? I can watch ten episodes of Voyager/TNG/DS9 and not one ship gets destroyed.
Yet you don't see them ONLINE either. You're in your own instance for this reason. If you don't like the larger open battles, don't join them.
Just fly around and enter systems if you want. That way you don't have to "fight" (nor progress).
Hahaha, are you kidding me? I've played since the second week of closed beta. So I've played plenty. They butcher the IP. They go out of their way to not use source material and to come up with their own random design. Those Trekkies who do get past gameplay issues will die when they see how abandonded the IP was. This is not and has never been a Star Trek MMO. This is a Generic Cryptic Space MMO . Testers argued at every test to make it more trek.. guess what. They didn't listen.
How exactly do you make it more "Trek"? IMO, it feels pretty damn good as it is.
How exactly do you make it more "Trek"? IMO, it feels pretty damn good as it is.
Make it so that fewer than 96% of all missions are go somewhere and blow something up?
This is the title Bioware should have done vs star wars. This is where a voice over/story driven mmo where you're choices have meaning would have been more than appropriate. It would have allowed for the IP across multiple "treks" paths, thus would have at least a decent change of trying to please all the flavors of trek fans. As it is, its a poorly designed fps shooter.