MMOs

Star Trek Online recently gained a new loot drop that has been generating strong opinions, a Cardassian Lock Box. Inside each lock box is a random item. Possible items include a special tribble, some special team commodities, some cross faction consoles, a DS9 uniform set, or a few others. On the whole people aren’t interested in those, the only item they actually want is the Cardassian Galor class cruiser.

The actual odds of getting a cruiser are unpublished but assumed to be very low, possibly in the 0.5% range. This wouldn’t be very interesting in itself without one final piece to the puzzle: you require a “Master Key” to open the box and the keys have to be bought on the C-Store for real money. They cost 100 c-points each, or 10 for 900, making them £0.72 each (I think).

Many people have complained about this, and with some justification. My post isn’t really going to touch on that. Instead I’m going to reveal that I got one, and without spending any money on keys. You see, the ship is tradable via the exchange for normal in game energy credits. When it first launched prices were around 500 million. In three days they were down to 100 million. I snagged one for 82 million.

This amount of in game cash is not a small amount by any means. In fact when I bought it, 82 million was the most I’ve ever had at once, but at level cap there is very little else to spend energy credits on. There are also a couple of ways to earn a lot quickly. The first is Ker’rat. It’s a space warzone in Eta Eridani that features the Federation fighting the Klingons while simultaneously trying to complete some Borg related objectives. If you can win the warzone you get a very rare drop. If you’re second or third you get a rare drop. If you’re at max level the drop will be at least MK X, sometimes even MK XII. Also, all the ships you destroy drop loot in the MK X to XII range. The second way is STFs. Most STF runs on normal succeed with the optional these days. They also drop quite a bit of loot now (especially Cure). Between those two methods you should be able to amass your millions with relative ease (I had 40 million when the Galor was first released and reached 82 million in a week). Also, as an extra bonus, Ker’rat has a wrapper mission that gives you 1440 dilithium for every three completions (and is not a daily so you can just keep running it).

So with all that information aside, here’s a couple of pictures of the Galor in an STF:

I’ve had a few things recently I’ve thought of posting but didn’t quite have enough enthusiasm to actually do it. Now I’ve found something I do have enthusiasm about.

Buy Minecraft.

Minecraft is a clever indie game that has developed something of a cult following of late. It’s an odd sandbox game of building random stuff and surviving attacks by skeletons. Or something. To be honest I’m not really sure (except for the building) since I haven’t actually played it. The reason I bought it (and would like you to buy it) is largely unrelated to the game itself. Apparently a group of self righteous players are unhappy with the progress the game has made recently and have issued an ultimatum that they will launch a DDoS attack at the games servers until there are signs that development is continuing at a speed more to their liking. The assumption is that with the game down the developer will have a lower income and no choice to give in to their demands.

A few blogs (and even the Escapist) have a more detailed account of the situation: Living Worlds - Don’t Let Terrorists Win Tradeskill Perspectives - Gamer Entitlement Going Too Far Escapist - Minecraft Brought Down by DDoS Attack.

There is a small part of me that is worried that this is a clever conspiracy to gain attention and sympathy, but since the game is only 10€ anyway I figured it was worth the risk.

The following is almost my own idea. It’s actually a combination of several ideas I’ve see thrown around on the STO forums made a little more concrete.

First I’m going to provide a quick overview of how equipment in STO works:

Most equipment comes in ten levels, starting at “Mk I” and going up to “Mk X”. The stats increase through the levels and which you can use is restricted by rank. Lieutenants can only use up to Mk II, Lt. Commanders up to Mk IV etc. all the way up to Rear Admirals using anything up to Mk X.

Equipment also comes in four rarities: common, uncommon, rare and very rare. Increased rarity adds modifiers to equipment. Uncommon gains one modifier, rare gains two and very rare gains three (some equipment types like tactical consoles don’t specifier modifiers - in this case just think of it as only having one possible modifier and it’s just that modifier applied the corresponding number of times).

Now we have that out of the way, on to the actual crafting.

The basis for this idea (which many people have suggested on the forums) is a new type of item (called, for example, an “Improvement”) which provides modifiers to other equipment. You would craft the improvement (using the existing anomaly data), and then combine it with existing equipment to make better equipment.

For example, consider Impulse Engines. Impulse Engines have four possible modifiers:

[Aux] which allows you to move at 25% speed while engines are disabled [Spd] which provides a speed boost
[Turn] which provides a turning rate boost
[Full] which provides a speed boost to full impulse.

My idea would require an improvement for reach of those. For instance:

[Aux] Additional Auxilliary Thrusters
[Spd] Increased Reactor Efficiency
[Turn] Additional RCS Units
[Full] Increased Reactor Output

These improvements would come in different levels like normal equipment (Mk I to X), but with a couple of important points (to avoid unnecessary complexity). Firstly they would only be available in even levels (Mk II, Mk IV, Mk VI, Mk VIII, Mk X) like existing crafting options. And secondly they could be used with lower level equipment (mainly for using a Mk X improvement on Mk IX equipment etc.). The different levels would require rarer anomaly data to provide, like the existing system. (What happens in Season 2 with Vice-Admirals with Mk XI (but no Mk XII) equipment, I don’t know yet :P).

Something else to consider is that this idea would apply to equipment of all rarities, so you could combine uncommon “Impulse Engines [Aux]” with the “Additional RCS Units” to get “Impulse Engines [Aux] [Turn]”. To maintain balance between rarities however I think improving uncommon equipment (to rare) should require two improvements, and improving rare equipment (to very rare) should require four improvements. So to go from common “Impulse Engines” to very rare “Impulse Engines [Turn] x3” would take a total of seven “Additional RCS Units”.

PS - I recently sold a very rare “Hyper-Impulse Engines Mk X [Aux] [Turn] [Spd]” for 5,000,000 energy credits. If anyone sees a “Combat Impulse Engines Mk X [Aux] [Turn] x2” I’d quite happily pay that much for them…

Perhaps I should just go ahead and rename my blog “Star Trek Online Forum Highlights”…

Pendra37 on the STO forums has come up with the first idea to improve sector space in Star Trek Online that actually seems it could be done without majorly overhauling the game engine.

The coolness basically boils down to one change: “If you hit the Drop out of warp button, you drop out of warp. A random deep space instance map loads up. The map may be completely random.” For more detail, read the post Sector space makes sense.

This reminds me of the fantasy RPG Rings of Power on the Genesis/Megadrive. In that game, for most of the time you controlled and oversized character walking through the landscape. At any time you could press B and the map essentially zoomed in showing you were you “really” were (and that the oversized character was just you represented on a map). Most of the time there was nothing interesting around, but there were things hidden in places that you could find and some quests required you to go to specific places.

Another pair of interesting ideas for STO I found on the forums.

The first is “The Voyage Home”, a framework around exploration type missions based on the story of Voyager.

The second is Bridge Officer Story Arcs, missions based around your bridge officers, after you set up some personality options (most importantly, sympathies to certain factions and vendettas against certain factions).

Yesterday EVE Online broke the peak concurrent user record again for an online game with 60,453 players online simultaneously.

Just for the record, the reason World of Warcraft doesn’t hold this record (despite having by far the most subscribers of any MMO) is because of it’s sharded nature. All sixty thousand EVE players were in the same game world.

Yes, it seems I’ll be obsessed with Star Trek Online for a while…

For those of you (at least in the UK) who would like the chance to become obsessed, Zaavi are selling the Gold Edition of STO for £17.95 £23.95 (oddly enough the normal version is £29.95).

The Gold Edition comes with loads of extras including a T-Shirt and download code for DS9 style uniforms. Of course you should try the free Star Trek Online demo first :P

A few people on the Star Trek Online forums (notably ThomastheCat) have come up with ideas for minigames (discussed here). The idea is that they would replace the “find an item and press F” mechanic with something more interesting and situation specific.

The forum post has more detail, but a lot can be communicated with just the mockups that have been made:

And if you’re not already a player, remember you can get a free trial of Star Trek Online.

Cryptic Studios have just launched the Star Trek Online referral program. They encourage old players to bring in new players by giving them free in game stuff (specifically the future Enterprise from All Good Things with three warp nacelles as a ship option). To make it easier to persuade people, referred players get to try a demo of the game for free. It does seem the demo will be made freely available in the near future anyway though. The demo has the following restrictions:

Cannot trade player-to-player, send items via mail or use the Exchange.
Cannot send in-game tells except those on the friends list (but can receive all tells)
Cannot participate in zone chat
Cannot send a friend request, or team/fleet invites (but can receive and accept them)
Cannot play beyond level 3, or access missions other than “Stranded in Space,” once outside of the tutorial Episode

The last is the important one really. Anyway, if anyone wants an invite, send me an email (each player can only have five pending invites).