MMO Gamers

There are a range of financial models that MMO’s fall into. There’s the subscription based model where you pay a monthly fee and that gives you access to all the content the game offers. There is “Freemium” where the game is free to purchase and free to play with some restrictions. Paying a subscription fee on this occasion will open up additional features. And there’s the micro-transactions model, where the game is free to purchase and play, but you can buy things using real money from an online store, such as clothes, mounts, potions etc. Ether Saga Online is an example of this model and it’s a popular model in the Asian market where it is prolific. Lately I’ve noticed a rise in a different model; that of the subscription based game that also offers items to purchase in an online store. Or maybe it’s always been there and I just never noticed.

MMO’s have always offered additional “services” for a fee, such as server transfers and character renaming, and I personally don’t have any issue with this. Nor do I have an issue with the micro-transactions model. If you want to pay $10 or $100 a month on items to enhance your game-play or just improve your enjoyment then so be it. But a subscription based MMO is different. In this case, you’ve already forked out money for the game, be it the boxed version or digital download. As well as that you are paying a monthly fee, and for that fee you should have access to everything that the game has to offer.

By now everyone has heard about Blizzard’s Celestial Steed Mount virtual item, and the enormous queues and eight hour backlog as WoW fanbois rushed to fork over an additional $25 US to be one of the hundreds of thousands of players to own it. And Blizzard isn’t alone in this, with Cryptic, the developers of Star Trek Online and Champions Online also providing their Cryptic Store, where you can buy things for real cash, such as new Bridge layouts, Starship Skins, and character races, just to name a few.

MMO’s are notoriously expensive to develop and prone to failure. Gamers are reluctant to pay $15 a month for games that might suffer server instability or bugs, but it would seem that they are more than happy to pay $15 a month plus extra at the online store if they like the game. Is this a trend we’re seeing and will we see more of it in the Western market? Are Bioware’s Execs sitting in the boardroom discussing their upcoming Star Wars MMO and greedily rubbing their hands together saying “We’ll give everyone access to a lightsaber, but only offer the double edged lightsaber in our online store””

I was excited when I finally hit Commander rank and could get a new ship, so I headed back to the Starbase, requisitioned a new Cruiser, and proceeded to fit it out. The Commander rank Engineering vessel has three gun placements fore and aft as well as additional hull, shield, and crew numbers. I can also have two Engineering Bridge Officers, an Ensign and a Lieutenant Commander, as well as Lieutenant Tactical and Science Officers.

So with my new ship I headed out to test the baby. Unfortunately I seemed to still only have access to patrol missions that gave Badges of Exploration #2, and I wanted #3 to fit my ship out with. The standard weapons and shields that came with the ship are better than the BoE #2 stuff. I did have a couple of nice blue drops which I used, but I was really eager to fit it out with the BoE #3. This actually left me a bit “ho hum” about STO, and I didn’t feel much like logging in. I persevered, however, and got to Commander 2, and with that it seemed to open up the BoE #3 patrol missions. So now I’m keen to get in there and fit my ship out with some better stuff.

I’ve been doing a bit of PvP as well, which is easy to get into. Simply bring up your PVP Queues list from the drop-down arrow in the top right of the screen and select a PvP game to enter. You can queue up more than one, so you can queue up both ship and ground combat if you so desire. Ship combat scenarios seem to vary from the “Hold Position” type setup or the “Which team gets to 15 kills first”. The only thing I’ve seen with the Ground Combat PvP is getting to 40 kills first.

Before I decided to play STO and while I was still reading up on the game and players opinions, the most common complaint I read was that Klingons were over-powered in PvP. While there has been some scenarios we’re Federation has been pwnd, it hasn’t seemed that unbalanced. I’d say I’ve been in more scenarios that I’ve lost than won, but not greatly so and not enough to give up on the PvP. Bearing in mind that I’m only Commander rank and the complaints may be directed more at end-game PVP.

For those of us that played Warhammer Online we remember their Public Quests. They promoted grouping, allowing an open group system, or you could just rock up on your own. They came in stages, usually three, and would start easy and get harder. At the end you got a chance at a chest drop and some loot depending on “how well you scored”, a questionable system. At first we loved PQ’s, doing all of them in Tier’s 1 and 2, but by Tier 3 we were over them and didn’t bother with them. WAR’s PQ changed a lot from launch to present day, changing with the population and with the player bases desires. What sounded like a great idea turned out to be nothing special and something for players to complain about, making you question whether the innovation was worth the frustration to players and the headaches it caused developers.

Star Trek Online has its own version of these Public Quests, called Fleet Actions. Unlike WAR you don’t have to locate these Fleet Actions on the map, an NPC will give you a level appropriate Fleet Action when you contact the Starbase. You’ll even be told which solar system it’s in so just warp to the appropriate place and you can join in. If the Fleet Action is finished when you warp in there will be a short timer, four or five minutes, while the thing resets. I’m not sure what the maximum number of players a FA allows but the ones I’ve been in have had around a dozen players.

Much like’s WAR’s PQ’s, FA’s are in stages. The one I’ve been repeating of late started with the destruction of 60 Birds of Prey (Klingon fighters), moved onto destroying something like 36 Cruisers and then continued in this fashion over five stages, culminating in the destruction of some big Klingon Battleship thing which name escapes me. Each stage is more difficult then the last and the final battle is very difficult, with Battleships and Behemoths throwing all sorts of torpedoes at you as well as wave after wave of fighters. In the end, once you’ve defeated it all, you get some loot that may or may not be dependent on your productivity, I can’t tell. You also get some skill points, XP, and coin for your trouble.

The Fleet Actions are quite fun and quite the challenge. They also can take a while to complete; over an hour in fact. The downside to these FA’s is when you don’t have enough players to complete them, a problem that plagued WAR’s PQ’s as well. They also come in both Ground and Space varieties, but I tried to do the ground one twice and found only three or less people in there, and those people did exactly what I did on discovering so few players in the instance; beamed out of there. I hope I get an opportunity to do a Ground Combat Fleet Action because I enjoy the Away stuff almost as much as the space combat and I’d like to see how it is working with other players. Though most likely it’ll be the PUG from hell.

While I have enjoyed doing Fleet Actions, I’m not really sure it’s worth the time or effort. The reward I got was a shield battery, which is a pretty standard drop when doing any old mission. I think you’re far better off just doing the patrol missions and trading in the badges you get from those for loot. I guess it really comes down to whether you want to do solo or group content. I think WAR’s PQ’s proved that players will take the easier route every time, and not bother trying to put a group together or relying on a PUG to grind out a PQ. And much like WAR, STO provides better rewards from its PVP and, questionably, more fun.

We’ve just seen the release of the free content update Season One – Common Ground. The biggest or most notable inclusion in this update is the addition of new Fleet Actions, or Raids, which provide additional end game content for all those players that had reached the level cap and were scratching their heads as to what to do now. But there’s a little bit of something for everyone.

We finally have been given the free respec that people have been crying for since release. My first character I made was a Science Officer and I didn’t really know what I was doing with my skill point allocation so a respec for this guy would probably be on the cards, but I never really liked the Science Officer that much and only got him to Leut5 before rolling an Engineering Officer. I had a look at my skills on the Engineer and I’m actually pretty happy with what I’ve done. Still, it’s nice to know I’ve got a free respec sitting there if I need.

There’s also been the addition of a couple of uniform slots. Initially you can choose to display your armour or, if you prefer, the outfit that you selected when you created your character. Just bring up your avatar’s paperdoll and right-click on your armour slot and you can choose to display the armour or not. Now, as well as your initial uniform you can also equip your character in some casual wear and swap and change out of it as you please. You can find the NPC tailor who grants you your casual wear in the Earth Space Station. There is also a Fleet uniform you can select, so when you join a Fleet (guild) you can choose to wear the uniform that your Fleet leader has designed for his Fleet. Unfortunately when I tried to select the Fleet uniform I received an error message saying “You must be a member of a Fleet”. And I know for certain that I am a member of a Fleet. I can even see what the Fleet uniform looks like in the Fleet interface. Hopefully this will be patched sooner rather than later.

There’s tons of other stuff in the update and you can read the full list here.

I finally hit Lieutenant Commander and that has brought me some joy. Not only does that open up some new skills to train in, it also gives me access to a new and better ship. I’ve upgraded to a Cruiser, and that’s given me additional gun hardpoints fore and aft. And since I’m going down the Engineering line, this ship has an extra Engineering console. So I now have one Tactical, Science, and Engineering console for Ensigns and one additional engineering console for a Lieutenant, so I’ve promoted one of my Engineering Bridge Officers which has granted me the use of two of his skills.

The ship itself is a pretty thing. You have the choice of three different designs to choose from, but all parts of the ship are interchangable; the saucer, the neck, nacellus; every part can be changed to suit and painted in a number of different styles. I’ve gone for a more classic “Enterprise” look.

The manual that came with the game is almost useless, so I was browsing the online manual and made some noob discoveries. In the top right of my screen, where the minimap is located, are a number of options. One of which, the little down arrow, opens up a list of additional options, such as PVP queues (more on that later) and “Visiting the Bridge”. I knew you could modify your bridge but I had no idea why you would want to, until I discovered that you can actually visit your bridge. It’s a little like player housing I guess, in that it can be modified and you can invite people to come and visit you in your bridge. Like I’ve said before, the more I play STO the more little treasures I find. Here’s me sitting in the captain’s chair on my bridge, with my bridge officers at their stations. By the way, select the emote “sit (captain)” from the extensive list of emotes to sit in your chair.

This weekend saw the six month anniversary of the North American launch of Aion – The Tower of Eternity. Despite evidence to the contrary on this blog, I’m still playing Aion and I still consider it my main MMO. Though, admittedly I did go through a bit of a slump just after the Christmas break, and I found it a struggle to keep leveling my 37 Chanter. So I rolled a Cleric instead, and remembered how good the first 30 levels of Aion really are.

The Cleric is Aion’s main healer class. While both the Chanter and Cleric come from the Priest archetype, the Chanter really isn’t a good healer, as anyone who’s tried to heal a group on a Chanter will attest to. The Cleric on the other hand is an awesome healer. It has a number of single target heals, an insta heal (from a stigma) and a group heal. The Cleric has enough heals to keep a group alive, assuming the group as a whole doesn’t suck.

Offensively the Cleric has a combination of magic damage spells and melee attacks. Most of the Cleric’s damage will come from its spells, its smites and DoTs, though don’t discount its melee strikes. You get to wear chain armour and wield a mace and shield, and the addition of the shield adds a lot to your survivability.

So now I have my 37 Chanter and a 35 Cleric, and I’m running Fire Temple on both of them. As much as I enjoy FT, I’m starting to get a bit sick of it. I also need to decide on a class, and get that class to 50 or at the least well into the 40’s. And that’s my dilemma, because I enjoy both classes. Our legion seems to be well off for clerics around the 30-40 range at the moment, so I’m tempted to put that class aside and use it only for crafting until there’s a need for him, and level up my chanter instead.

Missions in Star Trek Online (STO) play out in one of a number of ways. Some missions may only take place in space, requiring you to defeat some enemies in ship-to-ship combat, or to scan some asteroids for minerals or whatever. Other missions might see you warp into a zone and then beam down to the planet/mining facility/communications outpost for some up close and personal combat. And then many missions will have a combination of the two. The Away Team is the ground combat component of STO missions.

Your Away Team can be made up of Player Characters (PC) or Non Player Characters (NPC). You use your Bridge Officers (BO) to complete your Away Team, and these NPC’s are pretty much like pets in other MMO’s. You get to train up their skills, either their ship skills or their ground combat skills or a combination of both.

Graphically, the ground combat part of the game is impressive. The detail on your avatar is quite good, and the locations are quite varied; from lush tropical environments to sand-swept deserts to desolate rock surfaces. You have a limited number of commands for your BO, you can make them passive or aggressive, make them focus their fire on your target, and set rally points for them, where they’ll hold position. Initially I didn’t think much of the ground combat, but like most of STO I’m finding the more I play and the more I discover the complexities of combat, the more I’m enjoying it.

There are some things you can do to improve your combat effectiveness. Squatting will grant you a bonus to damage, though it will make you more vulnerable to melee attacks. You can double-tap your directional keys which will make you do a commando roll which will give you a temporary defense buff. And you do significantly more damage if you flank your enemy. I’ve been setting my BO’s away from me in an attempt to get our enemy in crossfire to try to maximize flanking damage. You also have your kit abilities, whatever they may be, which you can use. As well as that, there are exploits and exposes, though I’m not entirely convinced that I’m doing this right.

The missions themselves do not vary too greatly. They are either outdoors or indoors or both, and involve you scanning, activating, or deactivating something, and killing some enemies. However, having said that, it doesn’t make them any less enjoyable, and there are some novel actions that you are required to sometimes do. For instance, in the screenshot below, I had to rescue some scientists. Sounds easy enough, except the building was on fire. I found a fire extinguisher and equipped it, the same as I would a phaser, and used it to put out the fires. I’m sure I could have just run through the fire; I’d take a little damage and survive, but it was fun having to put out the fires all the same.

If I do have one complaint, and it’s one that I’ve mentioned before, is that STO doesn’t feel like a MMO, and that’s particularly true for the ground missions. As much fun as it might be, it’s hard to justify a subscription for what feels like a single player experience. However, having said that, the game still has its claws in me.

Space. The final frontier. I’ve been negotiating the map and managing to find my way around. At first glance the map is quite confusing, and mission locations seem somewhat vague and difficult to locate. However, once I figured out the map it was much easier to get around. You have systems within sectors within systems, or something like that, and that’s where the confusion lies. Often there’s a need to look beyond the grid you’re in and warp to another sector.

I’ve been spending a bit of time in space. My initial opinion of the graphic style and feel of space was that it felt confined and cluttered. Certainly some of the instances feel like this, with asteroid belts and the different colours in space; the reds and blues and oranges, which gave the feeling of being walled in rather than the great expanse of space. But some of the instances I’ve been in lately do feel epic in scale, having to negotiate large asteroids while passing a huge, huge planet. The screenshot below doesn’t do justice to how epic this instance felt. It truly was an awe inspiring moment.

I’ve gotten to Lieutenant Rank 8 (LT8) and I’m assuming that after LT9 I’ll get to Lieutenant Commander. This will open up the next tier of skills to start training in as well as giving me access to a new and better ship, which according to the manual I get for free. I’m still on the first ship I started with, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the next tier of ship has to offer. As I’ve progressed through the skills and added more points into particular skills, as you would expect, more skills have opened up to me, and subsequently made me more resilient. I’ve gone the engineering path and so far this has given me some pretty nice shield buff/repair skills, and certainly lifesaving.

I’ve also had my first PVP experience, or at least I think I have. I was doing a mission to destroy some Borg cubes, and there were a couple of other Federation guys in the instance, though I was not grouped with them. The Borg cubes seem to have an ability to drain my engines and shields, leaving me dead in the water so to speak. I’d only just recovered from one of these Borg attacks when a Klingon Bird of Prey came out of stealth and started firing on me from behind. I used my shield buff skills which got me out of the strife I was in, and then the Klingon was driven off by the other two Feds, clearly not NPC behaviour. I’m not sure of the requirements for getting into PVP instances, or how frequent they are, so something I’ll have to look into. But first, a new ship is on the cards.