STO: Ingame video

Cryptic changed the webpage for Star Trek Online.

With this changes they also put on some videos online.. most of them known, but one I haven’t seen before. It’s Starship Tactics: One.

It’s a nice video which shows some fighting going on.. in some scenes you can see the UI. It’s looks something crowded at first, but interesting.

So with all those fighting going on I get more interested in how the diplomacy parts will be. Will I have choices as a captain or will it be the ..well-known.. linear quest chain in an episode? Cryptic is still somewhat silent about that aspect of the game. Most of the time it’s about fighting and the rest is only mentioned briefly, i.e. diplomacy and exploration…

If you look at the Klingon trailer on the video page, you’ll see that diplomacy will not play a big role for them … ;)

Bleeding to death..

I hated it playing D&D-stuff back then when I started with RPG’s on the computer.. Bleeding to death. You were just lying there and were helpless.

But actually that is how I feel currently with the state of WAR…and that’s why I can’t get excited about Jeff Skalki’s Producers Letter. They have to be that positive about RvR and such..but I don’t think that this reflects the state of game on the German Servers.

Even before patch 1.3.2 Destruction steamrolled Order, but there was still some hope.. Than came the patch and with removal of the fortress Destruction steamrolled their way to Altdorf. No chance for Order to do something against it. We brought 5 Warbands together.. they countered with 10. We defended against 150 attackers.. they just brought some more.. No matter what we did, they could easily outnumber us and had enough spare high ranked and skilled smaller groups to catch any reinforcement we tried to send. You could argue, that this is the purpose of a RvR game..to win, but I think winning is only fun if you have to fight for it.

After the last couple of weeks defense on order side is simply gone. Every time I log in Altdorf is under attack. I have currently a very tight gaming schedule .. So when I log on at 7pm. Altdorf is under attack and I couldn’t do anything for the next 2 hours other than trying to defend Altdorf which I didn’t do because it plain boring and too long for me. I’m not alone with this frustration.. lately some of rvr active alliances quit RvR because there was no chance for a victory on the horizon. They just do a weekly alarm clock attack on IC.. but quiet frankly moral’s down.. annihilated.

If you now check the Warbands running around.. order doesn’t get even one together (around 2 groups is now max) and destruction still gathers around 4-5 pug warbands.  Prime time is dead because of Altdorf sieges…

There is no RvR anymore and Destruction is in maximum of 2 hours back in Altdorf… GOA pulled in some new hotfixes today (reduction of siege duration), but this will help nearly nothing, because there is no real fighting going on.

I can’t think of a patch to bring back the players and fix the moral damage the last patch brought. It’s easy to break things, but really difficult to bring back the players who left/paused and are just too frustrated to play and pay for such a RvR experience.

And to be honest.. I blame Mythic and their patch policy for that. You can’t take away a mechanic and bring in the replacement several weeks later. That’s utterly wrong.. I hated it when they changed CC over several patches.. but career mechanics are something the players can adept to. Some important design stuff like T4 campaign and city siege just have too much impact to be changed that way…

I really try to be positive about the game.. and I even enjoy it sometimes  (mostly now in T3  or some rare instances I do. They are rare,  because city instances are not accessible during city siege and most of our guild don’t log in that frequently, because of the city sieges). But that blunt city siege experience is just too much fun breaking…  I would not even enjoy it if it was the other way around.. Mythic should have never focused on city sieges if they can’t make them feel special..

So let’s see if WAR is bleeding to death.. or if there is something magical happening and the game gets a T4 campaign which feels special and has lots fighting going on… not just farming.

Strange things happen..

GOA posted what they put on the EU servers  as hotfix concerning the city siege stuff.. (here)
Funny thing to note.. No reduction of city siege stage1 or stage2 times to be found there. In the forums GOA claimed that the timers got reduced, but nothing on the webpage…and the game itself. Reading the forums not only Drakenwald is still stuck in 2 hours of stage 1, but the other servers too.  This could make it to the strangest hotfixes I’ve ever seen…

Another strange thing..Even though there are heavy flaws in there,  I really like the game… when it’s actually going on. Meaning ORvR with nearly equal forces…you know.. Limbs and fireballs flying through the air. Screams of fleeing elves and such..