Returning to limited play time that comes with work was a bit jarring.\u00a0\u00a0 Over the holidays I could slip off almost anytime and sneak some play time in, while being at work for 10-12 hours a day limits that dramatically.\u00a0 I have settled back into a good routine and am wonderfully grateful for the couple of hours I get each day to play, even if it does mean I going back to being a one or two game at a time player.<\/p>\n
It also means that while I consistently seem to have drafts of posts saved, very few will actually get posted and as usually I probably won’t be writing up well thought up comments to others posts.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That’s my situation and now for my report.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Just about a month after it started, my adventures in Norrath continue.\u00a0 I now have three characters at adventure level 20+, three more in their teens, and all six at least level 20 in their respective tradeskill.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If I had focused on only one (or one pair) I would probably be much higher level, but then I would not get to enjoy the variety of different characters I have.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In addition to EQ2, I was able to give STO a few hours of attention and I am left befuddled.\u00a0 It is a game that I really wish I was more excited about, but my time in it was not nearly as positive as some other people’s.<\/p>\n
Some things that did impress:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The big *shrug*<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n (Aka. what did not impress me.)<\/p>\n Generic MMO gameplay<\/strong> Combat Based<\/strong> You can not be the captain of a science ship that advances through the collection and sharing of knowledge. You can not be a trader, advancing based on your profits of buying low and selling high. Or by moving goods from one part of the galaxy to the next.\u00a0 Forget your ideas of advance by discovering new worlds, and “peoples”.<\/p>\n If you don’t like combat, then this game is not for you.<\/p>\n Slow<\/strong> I had one mission that I tried to complete three times; it was a multistage mission and each step took 15 minutes or more. That would have been fine except when I returned after having to log-out after step one, I was back at the beginning.\u00a0 The second time it happened, I bugged it because surely the designer could not have intended people to have to start over every time.\u00a0 The third time I made sure I had over an hour to play, turned off auto grouping and did the mission solo.<\/p>\n Another part of the problem is that I found individual combats to be long.\u00a0 In one mission my group, three ships, had to destroy several groups of enemy ships.\u00a0 Each enemy group consisting of multiple ships and took close to five minutes to destroy.<\/p>\n Of course this slowness could be due to that fact that all the captains are new and we are not optimizing our ships and crew.\u00a0 So maybe as we all the captains have more experience the combats will keep a tense manageable level of action without making me want a break after each one.<\/p>\n Boldly Going…<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n I am not pre-ordering, and I will most likely not be playing at launch.<\/p>\n Though I have the patched up to the open beta, and I will spend some of my limited gaming time this week continuing to look at the game.\u00a0 I would really like to “group up” with some of my online friends and try some more coordinated space combat.<\/p>\n I do expect I will play STO in the future but with EQ2, Torchlight\u00a0 and Dragon Age all on my drive now, and Mass Effect 2\u00a0 out soon, I simply have too many games to play.<\/p>\n If STO was a F2P game it would be installed on day 1, and I would probably pop on now and again. But\u00a0 with retail+subscription costs, I can not justify it right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Situation Returning to limited play time that comes with work was a bit jarring.\u00a0\u00a0 Over the holidays I could slip off almost anytime and sneak some play time in, while being at work for 10-12 hours a day limits that dramatically.\u00a0 I have settled back into a good routine and am wonderfully grateful for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,9,78],"tags":[62,111,113,79],"class_list":["post-847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everquest2","category-games","category-star-trek-online","tag-eq2","tag-games","tag-mmo","tag-sto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n I feel as though the STO universe and feel have been molded, maybe a bit too much, to allow generic MMO concepts to work; loot, currency, crafting, upgrades, aggro, spawn triggers, quests, etc.\u00a0 I applaud cryptic for at least wrapping that all around a fiction that is passable.\u00a0\u00a0 In a war situation, when resources become limited, groups have to use anything they can find.\u00a0 Scavenging, and bartering become required as does a need for a way to decide who gets what.\u00a0\u00a0 But still, a small part of me was hoping for a completely new core game play, that was based around exploration, negotiation, and the sharing of information.\u00a0 *shrug*<\/p>\n
\n Which leads to my point; the game is combat centric. You will not be able to advance without combat.<\/p>\n
\n From the small bit I played, this is not a game where you can jump on and do a couple of quick missions.<\/p>\n