Here is the latest update on Star Trek Online, if you want to read the article on the STO website go here: http://www.startrekonline.com/node/1182
Welcome, you noble purveyors of Federation policy and fierce warlords of the Empire! Welcome one and all!
Wait now... Let's just take a moment to de-cloak, disarm and drop our shields, shall we? This State of the Game is of interest to you all.
So very, very much has happened over the last few weeks! It feels like every single time I began to write a new State of the Game, we'd have to quickly douse live shard fires, juggle major play tests and push critical late night patches. By the time the dousing, juggling and pushing was done, the outline of my State of the Game would be hopelessly out of date.
Given how tirelessly we've been working, if some ethereal, omnipotent resident from the Denorios belt hadn't stepped in and considerately put the breaks on space-time with a bit of temporal wizardry, I might have found myself eternally rewriting this single State of the Game.
Thanks to you, oh great wormhole-y one!
Support:
We. Are. Live. And so, supporting you -- yes, you, specifically -- is an effort that consumes us night and day.
Ask any bedraggled MMO developer about launch and they will inevitably assure you that it never, ever gets any easier. Crunch all you like, friend, it only gets harder after the game actually ships. STO is certainly no exception. Supporting a user base as large as ours requires dedication -- no, devotion! Our crew is, thankfully, more than up to the task. We are pushing the workplace warp core to maximum in an effort to better address any and every bug and issue that comes up in-game.
Our objective: Implement as many of the stability and gameplay adjustments you asked for as soon as humanoidly possible (as safe practices allow, of course). To this end, Community has put more effort into moderating the boards and CS has recently staffed up in order to get through your tickets quicker. The idea being, "we can hardly fix what we can't see."
We've also thrown a metric ton of hardware and man hours at getting the server capacity up. Our Network Operations crew has been performing admirably, to say the least. I won't begin to count the times I've heard, "Sorry, Captain! I'm giving it all she's got," come out of their work area, only to be quickly followed by a confident, Scotty-like, "It's done." Beautiful. Almost makes me want to demand them to, "fly her apart, then!" I might just because I know those boys and girls will hold it together in the end, whatever I say.
Bottom line: When -- if -- you see Queues, they should be much shorter and stability will be much better.
Game Adjustments:
Now that the game is out and in your loving hands, we're taking long, hard looks at everything each and every one of you is interested in seeing changed. Cruiser turn rates? Death penalties? More open auto-fire? All those topics and more are being scrutinized by the all-seeing eye of... um, us!
Some of the few things on the way:
* Respec
* Death Penalty
* Difficulty Slider
* More open auto-fire
* Replayable missions
* Improving Memory Alpha
* Fixing those Commodity missions
And there are a bunch more. We’ve heard you and are working on all these issues, but we want to make sure that they come out clean and finished. We hate rushing out features – it inevitably leads to us accidentally breaking things we didn’t have time to test. I dunno – like the Red Matter Capacitor or something…
Tribble Coming
In order to better accommodate our players during the Head Start weekend, we merged the physical machines dedicated to our Public Test Shard (Tribble) into the live Shard (Holodeck). It has since been difficult to find viable hardware to test new patches on before pushing them out to you.
Well, we've got more hardware now and Tribble will be up pretty soon. Problem solved.
Once Tribble’s up and running (insert whatever tribble joke you’d like to here) – we’ll be able to start releasing those core game adjustments to you guys for deeper testing and feedback.
Special Task Force: Infected
We're in the final stages of testing the first STF (the five-man raids we internally referred to as "Raidisodes"). STF: Infected is just about ready to release.
You know, I might actually record one of our internal play sessions. The excited cries for more shielding and healing get the blood pumping. Although, once our testers reach the end room and the action really heats up... Well, it's not exactly "family friendly" in there. Definitely going to be an exciting, thrilling mission for our players, though.
After Infected, we'll roll out more STFs. "The Cure", "The Khitomer Accord" and "Into the Hive" are all coming along nicely. We look forward to regularly releasing these and seeing what everyone thinks.
Update 1: Classy Marketable Name Coming Soon
The first major update is receiving a final coat of paint, too.
There's quite a lot of genuinely cool stuff in Update 1: Classy Marketable Name Coming Soon. Expect to see it pushed to the newly revived Tribble Public Test Shard over the next couple weeks.
New Klingon ships? Oh, my yes. And they look...awesome. Re-specs are also coming, of course. All of Cryptic can't wait to see that particular feature out the door. New PvP maps and Fleet Actions are rather nice, too.
Beyond Update 1?
Right now, we're planning it. We haven't set the future of STO's content into stone because so much of it will be determined by you, but we're laying out what we'd like to focus on for the next 6 to 12 months.
* Who are the Undine and what drives them?
* How can we better exploit the Genesis System to create even more compelling content?
* Where can we boldly go next? Where shall we take exploratory missions, as there's so much potential there?
* Which faction should be playable next? Romulan? Cardassian? Pakled? Dominion? Horta? Okay, not so much the Pakleds.
And that’s not even the start of it! Ship interiors, more bridges, crew quarters, First Officers, Fleet advancement... You have subscribed to a service that delivers a universe unending, and we shall see that universe populated with compelling content or, by the Prophets, we will die trying.
Some people get that. Some people don't. We're here for those that do.
Throughout development, we guessed Star Trek Online might be polarizing. Some people don't get it and some people simply don't like it... But, others fall in love with their ships and captains and bridge officers. Those are the ones who can't live without beaming down to strange, new planets and participating in lively stories.
We guessed this and still we made a conscious decision to not water things down and go "mass market". Frankly, I think that's perfectly OK. Because, no matter what, there will be one single thing, now and forever, that drives everything we do: you.
We have a very healthy -- and healthily testy -- core community that gets it. And there's nothing we look forward to more than working together to make STO better.
Sad part is, you may not even know it. Far as I can tell, there're no hidden cameras and mics scattered about Cryptic's office. So, how would you know that we refer to our community almost as if it were an absent developer?
"Well, The Users think that we need to do more non-combat."
"Guys, I'm sorry to interrupt, but The Players really want ground auto-attack back. Drop what we're doing."
"We already know what you think about a death penalty, Craig – but The Community really thinks it's a good idea and their opinion is more valid than yours because they probably don't own goats."
It’s a little unnerving -- sometimes feels like we work with a giant multi-headed feedback monster that simultaneously loves and hates us. It whips even as it hugs! It rages even as it cries! And it fumes even when it's happy. It's unnerving, yes, but pretty freakin' rad, too.
What you guys post and say and do in-game and on the forums is the biggest factor we consider when making our decisions.
I am sorry if it ever appears that we're not listening to you or trying to make the game better. Because that is pretty much all we ever do.
-Zn
There is some things that they are addressing that I am looking forward to seeing like the death penalty, klingon content, exploration missions... finally!!! and some sort of auto attacking feature would be great. I might just have to get STO soon because looks like they are listening to the community and show be a good game soon. Glad to see that Cryptic is working to get things fixed and address new content.
Any word on this? I just found out that several members of the community got the game to work on Mac, and now that I'm working my way through Voyager, I would REALLY like a Star Trek game.
Any opinions on the newly updated game?
I might just return to StarTrek if it improves a bit more, depends on when StarWars the old republic goes live.
What I missed just before it went live was a good crafting system, I hope it has improved.
Here is the latest state of the game article: http://www.startrekonline.com/node/1308
A few more weeks of furious post-launch development have passed and we've arrived at yet another State of the Game. Does time merely fly, or does it actually warp? I'm not convinced any of us had a chance to notice the days passing between the last State of the Game and now – we've been working that hard.
I suppose we'd best jump right into this State of the Game before somebody blinks and we all find ourselves staring at the next State of the Game!
STF: Infected is Live
We pushed our very first Special Task Force live last week. Huzzah! A terrific number of people have played STF: Infected, many have completed it, and some even took a moment to provide excellent feedback.
A reminder for those who waltzed into Infected and realized their error after being promptly obliterated: Special Task Force content is not meant to serve as an Episode players can jump into and plow through without breaking a sweat. STFs take coordination, talent, game experience and familiarity with the specific STF being attempted. Come in with anything less and ... well, role-playing space debris probably isn't the best use of one's time.
Don't worry, though! After completing an STF once or twice, a like-experienced pick-up group can assemble and take names. In other words, once the content becomes familiar, "Ms. Jet Boots" won't hand your PuG its collective hat.
Of Bugs, Issues and Fixes
We know Star Trek Online has its share of issues. We see support tickets, we see forum reports, and we see issues when we play and enjoy the game in our own time. Please keep the feedback coming. It is extremely valuable.
It's important to reiterate that we are, by no means, only adding content to the game. We continue diligently squashing bugs and making moment-to-moment gameplay better.
In order to keep you informed – so you don’t feel like your reports have fallen into some kind of horrible oblivion – our tireless Producer, Daniel "dStahl" Stahl, has started the "Engineering Report."
The Engineering Report provides detail about what we're working on and where that work falls in the development pipeline. Dan's Engineering Report is regular, so you will see exactly what we're knocking down and you will then see improvements moving through the development pipeline.
Please check out the most recent report right here.
Tribble Live
Tribble, our Public Test Shard (PTS for short), is finally live! Cue a collective sigh of development team relief.
Birthing Tribble took a little longer than predicted, but the Public Test Shard is up and running.
It's such a relief to have Tribble operational; we can now publish in-game changes and new features to a secure testing environment to get hands-on player feedback before releasing said changes and features to Holodeck. The "straight to live" method might be hilarious fun for games developers who enjoy being completely overwhelmed by uncontrollable terror, but publishing to Tribble first is definitely the right practice.
See an issue or feature in the Engineering Report that you want to be absolutely sure we're getting right? Just want to try the latest and greatest before everyone else? Want to feel "teh l33t, lol" and collect more fodder for forum posts? Copy your current Holodeck character to Tribble and play on the PTS right now!
This second, we have a preliminary build for Season One - Common Ground running on Tribble. If new content of this sort is interesting to you, and you would like to better help us improve Star Trek Online, please check this link for more Tribble information.
Season One - Common Ground Coming Soon
Our first major update to Star Trek Online (because the patches, STF content and Gamma Orionis content we already released is just a start) is right around the corner. It's only been about five weeks since launch, and Season One - Common Ground is prepped to launch.
A preliminary build is on Tribble (see above for details). Expect the Common Ground build on the Tribble test environment to be updated many times over the next week as we intend to open up features, polish content and stomp the bugs our coolest users *cough* Try Tribble Now! *cough* are finding.
Respecs, new PvP maps, new Fleet Actions, another STF ... Season One - Common Ground is pretty-pretty-pretty robust.
Transparency Forward!
General advisory: All Cryptic hands are hereby instructed to reconfigure comm. badges to broadcast.
What does that mean? Our devs are on the forums more, we're sharing what we're working on in a variety of ways and we're publishing a calendar. The goal? Be as transparent as possible. We're going to tell you what we're doing as often as we can. We're going to give you the date we're shooting for on the calendar, even if it ends up slipping. We're going to tell you the bug we're squashing, even if it's a resilient bugger. We're going to show you that your subscription to Star Trek Online is a subscription to an ongoing service of tremendous value.
For example, we've recently posted and updated the "Upcoming Events Calendar."
It's improving, too. Soon, each item will link to its own descriptive page. A better style calendar was just published, also.
So, rather than waiting until everything is done, finalized, blasted into sacred stone and prepped for PR and marketing -- the traditional way of operating -- we're going to post what we're planning on doing as soon as we finish planning it. It's risky, yes, but it's definitely the right thing to do.
We believe our customers and co-developers of Star Trek Online - you beautiful people - deserve to know what's in store for the universe. We believe it's more important to let you know what we're striving to accomplish, even if we stumble, than it is to package releases in fancy boxes for easy, last-minute consumption.
Here's the drawback: Some of that information may, ultimately, turn out to be inaccurate. Dates move, items change, content gets revised. Delays, cuts, iterations, early releases ... Oh, my! That's games development for you. We're hoping everyone understands this and still appreciates the rare look at how interstellar sausage gets made.
Some of the items on the coming soon list - Season Two and Season Three, specifically - are a little vague right now. But, we want you to know they're coming and when they're coming. As time goes on, we'll fill out the calendar with more information.
Best I can tell, this is a pretty unique strategy, as far as MMOs go. "Telling the customers what we're working on well beforehand so they know where their game is going." So darn crazy it just ... might ... work!
Your Feedback, Our Job
For your edification, here are the results of the player survey that some 40,000 of you wonderful players graciously filled out for us.
Obviously, more non-combat content and ship interiors are hot items. Rest assured, we are forming our next update around those core concepts.
Expect more polls and surveys in the future. Still plenty of questions to be answered. For example:
1. "What new playable faction do you want?"
2. "What current content would you like to see more of?"
Because we intend our fans to directly impact development and we intend to address your concerns and implement your requests, we'll do more surveys, release the results and move in the right direction.
Our entire team continues to look forward to resolving your most important issues and getting the exciting content and systems in that you request.
I like the game. Havn't quite figured out MP yet, but the PVE is satisfying, if a bit repetitive. Still working to get out of my 'golf-ball' Good fun. I REALLY like the customizing my crew and ship, and the foot-to-space stuff. Just seems more engaging to me then hitting something with my sword in WOW.
That being said, it shares a FRIGHTENING amount of similarities with WOW, and about half the content from the sounds of it. Hope more gets released.
I would really like to see missions that are all contained on the ship. Like engine/ship repairs that need doing or medical emergencies and things of that nature. Would love to see a holodeck of some sorts to play around on 🙂 The AI (least in the beta) needed more work in ground fighting the NPCs always tried to get up close when they have guns 🙂
I would also would like to see missions that make you think and solve complex puzzles or mysteries.