Star Trek Online may have had a “rough” launch (I have a Lifetime subscription to it, but did not play for the last two years, except for the occasional logging in for special events), with the release of the game’s first expansion “Legacy of Romulus”, Cryptic and Perfect World have finally gotten the game to where a lot of people expected it to be at launch (myself included). Â The expansion added lots of stuff to it (Dalmarus has a very, very excellent write up on the expansion over at TenTonHammer, and I’m not going to re-hash it here as I agree with him).
One thing Cryptic did very well “back in the day” and they appear to have continued are the regular “Ask a Dev” type sessions. Â Just like a lot of other places currently.. they open a thread, forum goers pose questions, the community goes through and picks some questions, the “Devs” (In STO’s case, Executive Producer Dan Stahl) then go through and answer them.
This is the first “Ask Cryptic” I’ve read the answers for since I stopped (and now, re-started) playing. Â This is also the first set of answers to come out post-launch of the expansion (They actually re-opened the forum thread to get some additional Expansion related questions after launch).
It’s no secret to anyone playing STO that there have been plenty of bugs/server stability issues since the expansion launched, some of this (I’m sure) is related to shared infrastructure with Neverwinter, which has proven to be fairly popular in it’s own right since going into Open Beta. Â Mr. Stahl takes the high road, and explains a bit about these issues (yes, they did anticipate a large volume of players, and bought new stuff to support us… some of that new stuff broke). Â He also address the community’s questions about when we’ll see a bug fix to address some of the huge (can’t delete in game mail!) and not so huge issues that have cropped up.
We are addressing a variety of issues (not all of them game related) rapidly and at times this has meant short notice downtimes. We did buy new hardware. We did upgrade the network. We did plan for all the new people, but sometimes bad things just happen for no good reason. We’ve had to replace some new hardware, rewire some networks, upgrade some firewalls, and pretty much anything else that you could think of from an infrastructure standpoint. We’re sorry and we’re working around the clock to whack the moles as they pop up. But in general, we’ve had more people in and playing the game than any previous update in STO. We’re seeing record numbers of captains creating new Romulan characters. It’s pretty awesome.
We also have several game updates coming over the next several weeks that will introduce a new Fleet Holding and a new Event. We also have a big bug fix update in the works to address many of the issues that you’ve been reporting such as in game mail, Romulan mission bugs, and much more. QA is checking all these updates and fixes now and we’ll roll them out as soon as we can.
I am curious to see if they take a page from NeverWinter’s playbook, and put together an ‘apology’ gift for players, due to the excessive (but needed) downtime the game has had post expac.
Here’s the link to the full posting. Â Here are the answers I think are most important:
Q: (dcblackman) The Neverwinter Gateway has functions like selling on the Auction House and Professions. Will we see this implemented in the STO Gateway?
Dstahl:Â That is the plan, hopefully before the end of the year.
I am super psyched for this. Â The NeverWinter version of the gateway, is super useful currently. Â I can pop on via my phone from work, and send my companions out to craft, sell my loot from the previous night on the Auction House, check my mail.. etc.. Â For the STO version.. I can check out what my character looks like, and what ships I have.. I can’t access Research & Development (Crafting), or the Duty Officers stuff. Â As much as I hate to say it, the current incarnation of the STO Gateway, is useless. Â I’m also hoping that this means that STO will get the Foundry improvements that went into the NeverWinter version of the Foundry too.
Q: (rbatalla1977) Any plans to do more voice overs in older missions?
Dstahl: STO has been working to get more VO into the game ever since our first Feature Episode series. While we haven’t had the opportunity to VO every mission, we have put as much VO into the game as our budget will allow. This means that older missions may eventually get more VO, but in the short term, we will be focusing our VO efforts on new missions.
The Romulan missions have the most VO that we’ve ever made for the game, and while not every line is VO’d, it adds a lot of character to the missions. We love voicing these characters and plan to approach other Star Trek personalities to see if they can lend their voice to STO in the future. If and when they do, we’ll definitely retrofit any of their lines from previous missions.
I’ll be the first to admit, that playing Star Wars: The Old Republic since it’s launch, has totally spoiled me. Â I expect full voice over in everything I play now, and I expect my character to participate in the conversations, not just stand there like a store mannequin. Â I’m also the first to admit, I don’t get that in any game I’ve tried since SWTOR’s release. Â While more games (Defiance, Secret World, STO, NeverWinter, Marvel Heroes, etc..) are adding voice over to the quest givers and for other in game purposes.. your character (for the most part) is still just a passive participant in the story. Â I’d love for my STO Captain to say ‘Engage’ or ‘Make it So’ or any of the other Star Trek catch phrases for going to Warp.. but, I don’t think that’ll happen any time soon, so I am glad that they’re going to try and keep adding VO to new quests, and redo older ones where appropriate.
This “Ask Cryptic” tells me that Cryptic is still trying to stay communicative with the Community, which is good to see after being gone for years. Â I’m looking forward to becoming more active in the community again, and continuing my Captain’s adventures! Â Head on over and read the news article yourself, and if you haven’t already.. create an account and give STO a shot (or, another shot if you’re a former player).