Sweet dreams: don't let the STO bugs bite.

I haven’t been playing Star Trek Online much lately, and what time I have spent has been marred by bugs new and old. From bugs in recent special events to those around for months–and even since beta, this growing infestation is sucking the fun out of the game for me. Consider these cases:

Cryptic recently hyped its remastered episodes in a week-long event.  One of those episodes, Stranded in Space, was remastered months ago and had a laundry list of bugs from the minor, like the double engine trails on the Azura, to the infuriating, like the security accolade mission consistently breaking in multiplayer runs.  None of these bugs were fixed for the special event. Cryptic really should fix content before they spotlight it like that; otherwise, they end up spotlighting the bugs more than the content.

One of the new rewards for playing Stranded In Space is a device that calls a freighter providing access to mail, bank, etc.  I played the mission, got the reward, and tried it. Nice. I played some more and swapped it back into a device slot–an annoyance which hints at a kludged implementation.  The countdown was still on 4 hours.  OK, maybe it has to stay slotted to count down.  I left it in the slot and played more: still 4 hours on the countdown.  I reported it as a bug and got back the boilerplate “this is a known problem and please be patient”. An advertised feature in a small release should not be that difficult to deliver correctly.

This week’s sale is 50% off extra slots, including extra bridge officer slots. There happens to be another months-old bug where the extra slots don’t increase your maximum number of slots correctly, so you stop gaining slots as you approach level cap.  After three frustrating tickets later, I got no resolution like a goodwill refund for something being broken that I bought with real money. Now they’re featuring it on the store, and it’s still broken. And there’s no warning that it’s bugged and may not work for some players.

Cryptic broke the interaction between cloaking devices and dialog boxes in January 2011, probably by adding some special features to one of the Romulan featured episodes [Serious Cloak Bug thread, STO Forums]. If you’re cloaked or using Mask Energy Signature and you respond to a dialog box, you decloak. Cryptic’s FUD on the issue is that fixing it requires fixing every single interaction in the game.  Huh? They caused the bug my changing a base mechanic for a feature episode mission.  They aren’t willing to break or recode that one episode now to fix a bug that affects the entire game.

Beyond just concentrating on quality and bug fixing, Cryptic could spend some time to get their bug tracking and reporting system fully working. The bug system now appears to do a search for similar bugs before activating the submit button, but I’ve reported the same bug many times over months and never seen my earlier bug reports. There’s no way to browse the bugs database to see what’s broken, how many times it’s been reported, if any root-cause analysis has been done, or when the bug is likely to be addressed.

I have been on both sides of this problem in my professional life, and a well-run issue tracker that lets people see what problems there are and when they’re likely to get fixed is a big factor in building trust between developers and users. The fabled Cryptic transparency only includes new and fun things; they are particularly silent and ineffective on the less glamourous front of admitting and fixing mistakes.

Orion’s Page - Blog Archive - Champion Proposal: Final Stages

My first LOTRO character was a champion based on a character from a LOTR-based NWN persistent world. Gameplay with that champion (rolled two years ago this month) felt a little lethargic and uninteresting compared to my eventual love, the runekeeper. I’ve dabbled with champions since then and liked what I’ve seen in changes to the class and overall combat engine.

From Orion’s latest post, this update to the champion class will be significant.  I’m not a big enough champion nerd to appreciate subtle changes in how skills and stances relate, but a few things stand out:  no more shields, no fervor penalty for two-handing, and far fewer on-defeat skills. That last one is big for me as a solo; I don’t get to use on-defeat skills as much wandering around alone.

My sense is this champion tune-up is on par with or bigger than what the runekeeper got a few months ago. Some of those runekeeper changes didn’t stand out in the dev diaries but ended up being fantastic; i.e., Master of Writs. Pairing solid posts like Orion’s with Turbine’s usually-well-delivered updates has me eager to roll a new champion and see how it feels when the time comes.

I’m not so eager for STO Season 4 and the Duty Roster System: Cryptic’s having problems in the discussion and delivery departments lately, and they’d do well to take a few pages from Turbine’s book. Turbine’s communications with the LOTRO community are more measured and better timed. It may help that the LOTRO community seems better behaved but no less passionate: their forums suffer less from heat/noise–except for those trash-talking PvMP forums, of course.

It also helps that forums.lotro.com supports RSS feeds to get around the heat, noise, and overload that trying to stay on top of STO’s forums inflicts on me.  Hint, hint.

I’ve played STO enough to scratch off the veneer of Star Trek and see too much of the generic MMO RPG beneath. LOTRO and STO got my attention and my cash because of the intellectual property, not because I like MMOs.  Although the massively-multiplayer aspects can be fun sometimes, they’ve also been immersion-breaking, road-blocking, distracting, and even discouraging.  It feels like these games have all the limits of a computer-based game with none of the advantages of a real multi-player (tabletop) RPG.

It’s not clear what Atari divesting itself of Cryptic Studios means for the developer of STO.  Word in the forums is “business as usual” of course.  For me, I have to wonder if the game will last long enough to reach the break-even point for my lifetime subscription–especially given months of hiatus I’ve taken since launch. It seemed like an easy bet with such a big IP back then. Oh well.

I may pop into STO and LOTRO for a few hours here and there, but I’ll probably devote most of my game time to single-player games: a heavily modded The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Portals 1 & 2, and either Mass Effect or Dragon Age to psych me up for the  MMORPG that might be more RPG than MMO: Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Here’s hoping!

The big news for the Foundry is wrapper missions like dailies that will direct players to select highly-rated Foundry missions.  These wrappers will provide rewards, the lack of which was a topic in Fleet Vent last night. Cryptic can tailor the reward to the captain (emblems being mentioned specifically) and prevent the exploit fest that would have happened if authors controlled mission rewards.  On the other side of the editor, authors with highly-rated missions may get more project slots. Both are excellent ideas to reward using what I feel is one of STO’s most unique features compared to other MMOs. Letting authors sell missions on the C-Store won’t happen soon, but the idea is out there.

Craig Zinkievich is back at Cryptic as COO.  I share Chris and Jeremy’s guarded reaction to the news. To be fair, some of the good things happening now in STO must have started under Zinc’s watch. He just wasn’t around for the credit.  On the other hand, behavioral patterns can quickly and unconsciously resurface when former colleagues are reintroduced into the groups they’d left. The STO team has definitely grown since Zinc departed; I hope his return doesn’t revive bad habits or past policies that the new STO team–and community–have grown beyond.

The Klingons will get plenty of attention in Season Four: Qo’noS is getting more of a redesign than an ESD-style make-over. That includes the Klingon Academy as the mechanics and culture bootcamp for players choosing to start their STO experience as Klingons. The new leveling progression will refer players to featured episodes, and it will include Klingon retellings (prequels and sequels, not shovel-ware faction swaps) of Starfleet missions with Klingon tie-ins; e.g., Saturday’s Child an Kuvah’magh.

The Duty Roster system may need a new name given the inevitable effect “duty” has on post-Beavis-and-Butthead geeks like the STOked guys. More seriously, it worries me to hear Stahl refer to it as being like a trading card game, something I’ve never liked for its mechanics or pusher-like card rarity marketing scheme. I’m also not happy to hear that the active roster will be linked to captains instead of ships. I understand Jeremy’s relief at not having to reallocate rosters when changing ships given the agony of bridge officers, abilities, equipment, and power trays that is switching ships. However, it’s another step to making starships less like characters themselves and more just hollow shells filled with “stuff” by excluding them from the duty roster system.  I proposed on the forums [ My Longish Proposal, Begging Heretic, Heretic Responds] and still hope to see workspaces or bays on ships that complement the duty roster system and reflect the ship’s inherent mission (sci, tac, eng).

Taking this with the latest Ask Cryptic and Engineering Report paints a picture of a game that’s growing from a developer with ambition.  Personally, I think somebody should take away Obama’s Secret Transparency Award and give it to Stahl instead.

/bind F12 “Genbuttonclick Powerlevel_preset_3$$GenSliderSetNotch Powerlevel_Auxiliary_Slider 1″

Pressing F12 will invoke the “Balanced” power preset, then increase auxiliary power to 100%; other subsystems will each have about 33% power. The power management control must be fully expanded for this to work.

Hopefully Cryptic will add a fifth power preset now that auxiliary power levels are so important to science captains.  Until then, I hope this helps other keyboard jockeys manage their power levels better.

Why does this statement invoke the Balanced preset?

It should be possible to explicitly set power levels in a single bind statement, but GetSliderSetNotch doesn’t work as expected; it moves the slider incrementally and appears to interfere with multiple invocations in a single statement, locked sliders or not. This might be an anti-exploit added by Cryptic because, as an article on sto-advanced.com [Power Settings, other than the defaults] shows, it’s possible to do a great many things in a single statement.

This article has been cross-posted to the STO forums; please add to the discussion there.

That’s been slow going compared to my previous Klingon characters; they leveled mostly by FvK PVP a few months ago.  Back then, a new match started every few minutes in prime time.  In two full nights of playing, Qohn only faced other captains twice, both KvK, and had a dozen attempted matches end in “not in queue” or “not enough captains accepted” messages. It’s hard to say if the queues are empty because they’re bugged or because there aren’t enough new subscribers or old ones rolling new characters. We’ll know when Cryptic fixes the queues–hopefully very soon.

The bright spot tonight was “Bringing Down the House”, the first Klingon PVE content I’ve played.  Chasing down a Romulan assassin across several worlds allowed for a good mix of ground and space combat. The story’s interesting if a little linear (most MMO content I’ve played so far is) and surpasses anything at equivalent levels on the Federation side.  More, please.

But first, Cryptic, please fix the queues.  Although I avoid PvMP like the Black Breath in LOTRO, I couldn’t get enough KvF after launch, and it’s going to be a long climb to Commander and (gasp) my beloved K’t'inga without it. And I promise to tear myself away from disintegrating Star Fleet captains long enough to enjoy any new Klingon PVE at or near level this time.

Star Trek Online

Fleets are the guilds of Star Trek Online. The guys over on mmojunkies.tv mentioned in STO Radio podcast 1.4 that fleets would have seven customizable ranks. They’ve even put up their choices and logo for Nova Fleet already.

Googling around, it looks like fleets are popping up all over the place. I don’t know if this is normal for other MMOs that haven’t launched yet, but it doesn’t surprise me. Star Wars: The Old Republic might have a larger, more passionate (i.e., fanboy) base than Star Trek, but there is an inherent structure and deep lore to the Trek universe–beyond just its military ranking–that makes such organizing easier and more contextually relevant.

If I were designing a fleet, I’d go in a different direction than STO Radio and base it on modern naval organization. The game isn’t released, and I’m not in the closed beta (yet … cough, cough) so none of this factors in how privileges relate to ranks, but here goes:

Like the modern navy, I don’t envision static arrangements of ships into flotillas, squadrons, etc. Fleet rank may imply authority when grouping with individual rank breaking ties. Of course I would expect consensus to overrule simple rank based on player skills and the challenges at hand.

I just get more excited every moment I think about this game coming out. My usual goal of moderating expectation is completely out the airlock! Please, Cryptic, do not disappoint!

The D7 battlecruiser from The Original Series and its improved descendent, the K’t'inga class, are my favorite ship designs in all of Star Trek. I can’t imagine a Star Trek game without them, and I wish STO would get some good Klingon starship porn out there.  As much as I love the Discovery and Excalibur so far, I need to see some attractive Klingon ships.

Come on, Cryptic: Give me some sugar Gagh, baby!

Here are the Future Past videos by way of GameStop:

• Star Trek Online: The Future Past, Part 1
• Star Trek Online: The Future Past, Part 2