[TESLA]

Well, the time is upon us. the Beta for Star Trek Online starts on Jan 12th.

And Steam, Direct2drive, Amazon, etc, are all accepting pre-orders now.

Im curious to see if many people here would be playing this game?

But what I cannot make my mind up about yet, is which pre-order version to get!

Which is better? The Direct2drive, or Steam version. Which extras would be better in the game!



GameStop:

 GameStop customers receive the ability to command the exclusive and always classic USS Enterprise from Star Trek The Original Series.

Best Buy:

 Best Buy is offering their customers a fun in-game pet. As a Federation Captain, players own a famed Tribble of Star Trek lore that will accompany them on their travels into the final frontier. As a Klingon commander, players control the boar-like Targ, a beast found on the Klingon home world of Qo’noS.

Amazon:

Amazon is offering an exclusive “Liberated Borg” Bridge Officer. This bridge officer, who comes with unique nanotechnology augmentations, assists in missions and gains experience as the player does.

Wal-Mart:

With the Wal-Mart Bonus Skill Points package, receive addition skill points that enable players to improve their characters quickly.

Target:

Target customers who pre-order Star Trek Online receive a unique ground weapon – a TR-116. This rare projectile weapon is used in dampening fields and other challenging environments; it is also modified with a micro-transporter which beams the fired projectiles to targets at close range so that a user can fire without a direct line of site.

Direct2Drive:

Direct2Drive customers receive an exclusive Multi-Spatial Personal Shield. This advanced personal shield system is based on Borg technology, which constantly regenerates itself and the health of its wearer.

STEAM:

STEAM is offering customers Chromodynamic Armor. This armor is based on technology brought back from the Delta Quadrant by USS Voyager improves the damage and critical hits of energy weapons.


For most of us europeans, Wal-Mart, and a couple of other places are not an option.

Which one to get.....cannot decide!

[Flipside]

Hmmmm.... I'd say it depends on how you play the game, Steam adds Gank, Direct2Drive adds Tank, personally, I'd go with Direct2Drive based on the offer alone, but it really depends.

Edit: Thinking about it, this is an ingenious way of doing market research, it's easy to tell which outlet is selling what percent of the goods by using a simple database search.

[Thaeris]

 

What ever happened to the days of getting a game... where you got the whole freaking thing without having to worry about the extras available depending on where you bought it???

Reminds me of the crap Microsoft pulls with its "options" depending on the version of the OS you buy. Crap. Total crap.

[MR_T3D]

pre-order bonuses piss me off.
less so if the are acquirable ingame still, and/or the pre-order is just convenience.
still, i can SEE why dev's like pre-orders, but I just don't want to rush to buy almost any game until release, especially since a little piece of news on Oct. 20th regarding MW2..

though, this game looks quite interesting, its just i can't givee the commitment that most MMORPG's ask for.

[Colonol Dekker]

Looks good according to my PCG issue.
 
I'm looking forward to (once I sort out a decent connection) answering distress calls by blowing up the victims.

[phatosealpha]

TODO:  Name ship Kobyashi Maru.  Hang out near Klingon border sending distress signals, just to see if anyone bites.

[Black Wolf]

What ever happened to the days of getting a game... where you got the whole freaking thing without having to worry about the extras available depending on where you bought it???

Agreed - how is anyone looking at this as a good thing?

[General Battuta]

I can't see how it hurts, I guess. They're extra bits tossed in to incentivize the buyer. They hardly seem critical to the game experience.

[BloodEagle]

I suppose It really depends on how significant the change is. I mean, if it raises your combat potential by a few (<5) percentage points, then it isn't that big of a deal.

I still find it to be in poor taste, though.

[Thaeris]

Agreed. When I buy something, I want the whole thing. Expansion packs are different - but this clearly isn't an expansion pack. I don't want to be limited in what I can do and get because of how I bought something.

I believe I've heard a few people complain about this sort of thing with regards to pre-orders/pseudo-special editions. I think that Dragon Age game was an example of that...

[General Battuta]

You aren't limited at all. All you're missing is one of a handful of special items. That's it.

[Flipside]

Give it six months and the exclusives won't be exclusive any more anyway, they'll nerf them, shunt them over to the main items and create some different incentives for new customers. This will, inevitably, lead to bad feeling in the community with accusations of preferential treatment and it'll all end in a hail of phaserspam.

[TESLA]

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/gaming/news/article/6630.html



Suppose they were not too far out this their timing....

[darkone]

Open beta started today if you have a key

[TESLA]

Open beta started today if you have a key

f*ck ive a key, didnt know it was today!!!

[TESLA]

So what does anyone think?


Mixed views


Liking the space combat. Ground play needs a bit of work, suppose thats way its a beta

Can be a bit slow frame rate on ground missions.

Fun though

[Colonol Dekker]

What was the intro cinematib like?
 
I'm easily pleased . . . ;-)

[Ransom]

There wasn't one.

[Fineus]

Ok, first impressions having spent about half an hour / hour in game.

1. Quite an in depth character creator. I kinda skimmed through it but it had some nice selections in there.

2. Graphics automatically set far too high. I had to significantly nerf my settings to get a decent frame rate out of the game (this is ground combat, I've yet to sample space combat). Suffice to say it figured my old rig could manage 16xAF and 8xFSAA as well as all other details set to Max. I wish, but no.

3. The interface starts off slowly but it does give you the whole HUD from the word "go" which can be daunting. Since it's a beta, maybe they'll streamline this a bit. I missed a communication in the first levels and ran around for ages not realizing that I couldn't proceed and had to restart the mission.

4. Server issues. I played for an hour, quit out, came back five minutes later and now I can't log in *at all*. Looking on the forum this has happened a lot, not a great sign.

Overall there's potential there and I'm looking forward to trying starship combat as that's my main draw. But so far it feels like it needs some polishing. Again though it is a beta...


Edit/Update:

Ok, I've now tried starship combat and to be honest I'm not sold. There was the initial thrill of flying about in my own Miranda class starship, pretending I was Khan and the worst thing to happen to space baddies anywhere. That has faded.

Controls remain cluttered and there's too much button mashing. I don't know if there's a "continually fire any weapon that can be fired at the enemy" toggle but there should be one, as I found myself mashing the "fire fore/aft phasers" button over and over. The game is half way towards making a decent space combat game, but it doesn't manage it in my eyes.

I won't be buying into this. There's potential but not at the prices they're asking. I'll be un-installing it now.

[Spoon]

Kalfireth you really have to teach me how you can spend ages when you've only played for about a hour 

Starship combat is by far the best part of this game, it kinda plays like the old starfleet command games. Ground combat is rather meh if you play it solo but the large 'fleet action' ground battles are incredibly fun to do (like wise, so are the fleet action space battles).
There are some really questionable design choices in mission design though. There was this one mission where you are put into a team and all you have to do is fly to a freighter which will then slowly follow you to a mining center. That's it. No enemy contact, no further follow up. There is one more mission where you are teamed up, travel to a planet, beam down, run in one straight line and activate some sensors and beam back up again... Again no enemy contact etc. Why did they think it was a good idea to have people team up for that? Is there any need at all?
Then there is a mission where you have to scan 5 asteroids... solo. In which you will encounter loads of strong klingons.
I mean seriously, what were they thinking there?

Overal the game kinda feels 'underdeveloped' though and well... it feels like a typical mmorpg. Where borgs are reduced to respawnable grindable enemies and completed quests have no impact on the game world at all. Everybody flies the same type of ships and dying so far has no penalty on it.

I already have the money to buy a tier 2 ship but I can't buy one yet because I have to grind more quests to rank up... (oh and low level quests give about the same exp reward as higher level ones. And you can keep doing low level fleet battle quests over and over  again.) Ah well, im having fun....