Author: johnk

Latest STOked Interview with Dan Stahl

The guys over at STOked just released the raw video of their latest interview with Dan Stahl on justin.tv.  Although the interview was supposed to focus on the just-released still-beta foundry, its 32 pre-edit minutes are also packed with non-Foundry information, some of which I’ll highlight after the embed:

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.

Auxiliary Power Preset Work-around

With greater reliance on auxiliary power level settings for science skills, the lack of a “science mode” power preset is more noticeable.  For mouse-averse captains, this bind statement provides functionality similar to the existing presets:

/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.

On the Klingon Front

My latest Klingon captain is moving up in the ranks: Qohn is now a Lieutenant Commander aboard the K’Tanko class battlecruiser IKS Toranga. He got there almost exclusively with solo content, mostly fighting in the Kahless Expanse.

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.