Drunkard's Walk Forums

For most of the last year or so I'd been having launcher issues. Which I managed to scrape by with most of the time and get online anyway. 
But it got so bad with STO that I could only (BARELY) get on by going through the CO launcher.
Then THAT went belly up as well. "Black Screen of Death" and I couldn't even get as far as the trouble-shooting stage or options. 
So I essentially gave up for about a month or two this spring. 
I had been thinking about outright uninstalling both games, but hadn't gotten around to it. The other day, while contemplating the back-up folders for the stuff that would be lost if I just uninstalled and shredded the folders (the screenshots and costume designs mainly) I thought to give the situation a more thorough attempt at a fix. 
And thus the "Nuke the Site from Orbit" protocol was initiated. 
I uninstalled both games after backing up the screenshot folders elsewhere. Then I also uninstalled ALL my other Steam games. Then I uninstalled Steam itself. And then used some System care tools to "deep clean" the remaining folders, scramble and randomize the data and the registry bits. ("Carthago delenda est!" )
Then I did a full defrag on my drives and a systemcare sweep, then rebooted the computer an extra time on top of the standard reboot - just to be thorough. 
Next I reinstalled Steam. But placed the game archive on my 1TB external USB drive. Then I re-installed Star Trek Online and Champions and let them fully update. in the process I followed the install process carefully and made sure my anti-virus "got to know" both games as they installed with new protocol and exceptions in place. 
Then I rebooted the computer again. THEN I crossed my fingers and launched STO - if I got the black screen of death on the launcher, that would be the end for real and I'd have to walk away from both games permanently. 
Well - no black screen of death. It launched just fine with no complaints and no hiccups. 
Same with CO. After rebooting again and making sure, I can safely say that both games are working like a charm now. 
I can't tell you what exact part of the above process was the actual "fix". I just took a shotgun approach and tried EVERYTHING all at once. But something obviously worked. 
So - if all else fails - remember the final option - "Nuke the Site from Orbit. It's the only way to be sure!" 

Oh - speaking of which. I popped into STO and... 
HOLY CRAP where do I even BEGIN? 

I think I need someone to tutor me on all the changes since last fall. It's seriously been about 9 months since I played regularly. I think I need some serious help! 

Okay, so I'm assuming you haven't played much if any of the Delta Rising expansion?

Not a scrap of it. 

All right. I'll start with ships.

There's two new post-50 classes, T5-U and T6. T5-U's are upgraded versions of existing T5 ships, or a number of new ships available from lockboxes released since DR, which start as T5-Us from the word go. You upgrade your existing T5 ships with Upgrade tokens from the C-Store. They're not account bound, so you can often find them on the Exchange as well. Depending on price, that might be the best option. Once you have the token, you can upgrade them at the ship status screen. Now, I'm not sure, but you might have to talk to the ship selectors and do it there. I will note that all event ships (The Breen ships from the winter event, the Risa ships, anniversary ships and such) can all be upgraded for free without a token, and the mirror universe ships can't be upgraded at all.

Now, there's three differences between T5 and T5-U. There's a boost in hit points, that improves the closer you are to level 60. There's an extra console slot, the type of which (Tactical, Science, Engineering) varies from ship to ship. And there's starship mastery. Basically, in space combat, the ship earns XP for itself. T5-Us ships have four levels of mastery. Each level grants a different buff to the ship, that varies by ship. More HP, turn rate buff, accuracy bonus, carriers often get buffs to their fighters, and so on. The levelling for those is fairly easy, you'll manage that pretty quickly without any trouble.

Frankly, if you want to keep flying existing ships, the T5-U upgrade's your best bet, although I've heard complaints that not all the old guard really work out that well at level 60.

T6 ships are every new C-store ship released from Delta Rising onwards, along with the new Event ships, which you missed out on, so just C-store ships I suppose (Speaking of Events, there's some stuff there I'll get to later. It's kinda nifty, bur also kinda annoying). T6 ships have the same hp boost that T5-Us have, maybe slightly more, although they don't have an extra console slot. They have a console, almost always usable on only those ships, which are pretty powerful. There's two and a half big differences that separate them from the 5-Us.

First, their Starship Mastery tree has five levels, not four. The fifth level is actually a starship trait. Once you've unlocked it, you can activate it in the traits window under ship traits. Like the space and ground reputation traits, you can have four active at any time, and once you've unlocked them, they apply no matter what ship you're flying, be it a 6, a 5, a 5-U, or even the NX replica class level 1-10 captains can fly The trait varies by ship, and I'd recommend looking up various ships on the wiki to see if there's any you really need.

The other difference is that all T6 ships have access to one of the Specialisation trees in some way. You can now give any BOFF a secondary class in addition to their base one, currently Intelligence, Command and Piloting. Ground abilities in those trees can be used under any circumstances. Space abilities are limited to certain ships. For instance, all the ships that came out with Delta Rising have an Intelligence slot. The recent Command and Pilot ships have similar stations. Those ship slots are dual-class, and vary depending on the type of ship. For instance, one of my captains has a ship with an Engineering/Intelligence slot. You can slot any Engineering officer, and if they have Intelligence skills, you can use those as well. The new powers vary, some are impressive, some are situational. I don't think they're gamebreakers, but opinions might vary.

Lastly, there's the 'half' difference I mentioned. A number of T6 ships, namely the Intel, Command and Piloting trios, have special abilities locked to that sort of ship. They're a lot like Sensor analysis, Cruiser Commands, and Romulan Singularities. Intel ships can send out drones to apply debuffs to enemy ships, Command battlecruisers can buff their teammates, and Piloting ships get afterburners, barrel rolls, and other fancy moves. Again, I don't think they're gamebreakers, but they're fun.

(Actually, I lie. Command battlecruisers ARE gamebreakers, in that their powers have been doing something WEIRD to the servers. It's to blame for a lot of the lag problems, and I know the Devs are reworking the background stuff to put a stop to it. Oddly, the other big offender is Attack Pattern Beta...)

So, yeah. T5-U for the classic ships with some minor bonuses, T6 ships for the new hotness. Although they've started making T6 Iconic ships that can use some of the older costume parts. There's a T6 Galaxy/Venture class, for example.

- Next item of interest is Specialisation Points. You'll find this tab in the character window, between skills and traits. Currently there's four specialisation trees: Command, Intelligence, Pilot and Commando. You can have one tree set as your primary, and one as your secondary. Every point spent in an active tree grants a skill of some sort. There's a lot of different skills. Some are the usual sort of thing you'd expect; improved cooldown on powers, increased run speed, less damage from flanking attacks, that sort of thing. There's also some odd abilities, such as leaving explosives behind you when you perform an action roll, or having your ship do a barrel roll (That works on any ship too. Scimitars doing a barrel roll is hilariously awesome). In addition, once you reach eight points in Command or Intelligence, you can start using those kits in your ground build, although you'll need more points to use higher quality versions of the powers. You can also unlock some traits as you fill out the tree.

You get a specialisation point with every level you get from 51 onwards. Once you reach 60, you'll keep earning xp, and another specialisation point will be granted with every 'level'. You can also get one per week per account as a reward for completing the current featured episode, although trying to do those might be a bit confusing/frustrating for you right now, given you're essentially an entire expansion behind, and even though they sort of scale, they're still really designed for level 60 characters.

- Moving on from specialisation points, Bridge Officers have been changed somewhat. Basically, they now remember all the skills you've taught them. While they can only have four active at any time, when not in combat, you can open their skill window, or the stations window for your spaceship, and select different powers. This means, for example, that you don't need multiple science officers for those times you need polarize hull instead of hazard emitters, and it definitely shows in how few BOFFs my newer characters have compared to my older ones. It is still slightly bugged for some people, in that sometimes a BOFF might swap back to their default powers, so if an engineer pulls out a cover shield you'd swear you took off them, that's why.

Instead of the old 'trade them to another player, or have an unrecruited BOFF teach them' routine, you now use training manuals. You can buy basic manuals from vendors in the social zones, on the exchange, convert unassigned BOFFs into manuals, or craft the higher quality ones for your class in the R&D tab of the Duty Officer window, under 'Officer Training'.

- This one I'm pretty sure you've noticed by now, but the old Sector Space has been completely replaced. Now there's three zones, covering the Alpha, Beta and Delta Quadrants. The galaxy feels a lot bigger in general, and a lot of the star systems having been moved around a little. Autopilot and the system list are your friend, although autopilot will drop you just outside the target system, you'll need to throttle up slightly and head for the systems target planet, not the star.

Okay, now for the problem. This is pretty much the shitstorm that's been raging nonstop since Delta Rising came out, if not earlier, going by the Tribble section of the forums.

Levelling.

You're familiar with the old routine, I'm guessing. Run a mission, you'll get enough xp to level, meaning you can access the next mission in the story chain with little problem. In fact, you can be confident of hitting 50 long before doing all the story content, which means you don't have to do the old missions in the Cardassian arc that haven't aged well, and instead can just play the fun ones. That still applies... until level 50. From 50 onwards, the xp requirements for each level go up CONSIDERABLY, and the mission rewards of the Delta Quadrant arc are nowhere near enough to cover it. Starting out with a character at level 50 that's done all the older content, if you're very lucky, you'll get enough xp from the missions with an entry requirement of 50 to reach 51. You will NOT get enough from the level 51 missions to reach 52, and the xp requirements get a lot bigger. The devs stated that you're supposed to run STFs to get the extra XP needed. It didn't help they decided to change a lot of the STFs around the launch of DR, leaving a number of them in a flawed state.

So. Run a story mission, two at some levels. Leave the story behind and run STFs. Lots and Lots of STFs. Replay older missions for 2,000 xp or so. Level. Do one or two story missions. Leave the story behind...

I have two characters at 60. One of them only reached 60 a month ago. Ops and Uni each have one, as far as I know. The grind to play the freaking story content was such that we ended up burning out on STO for a while and going to play the Old Republic.

And while this was going on, the Devs were nerfing XP rewards from various locations, claiming that xp rewards dating back years were bugged and not working as intended. They responded to players working out farming methods by dialling their characters back and locking out mission hubs in Tau Dewa to the point people not farming couldn't play republic characters at all, and going on the forums, reddit and twitter to essentially rant and blame the players for not playing the game properly. It was a PR disaster, one that's still ongoing. STO Reddit used to be well regarded for managing to keep the usual MMO forum nonsense to a dull roar (Anyone remember the dear old CoH forums?), but for several months, even that was was a firestorm of flames and chaos. After a recent XP nerf to the Duty Officer system that included the genius of several different devs taking the fight to twitter and blocking anyone that replied to them, it seems to have sunk into their skulls that the current XP method is not working, and they're claiming they're currently working to improve the experience for players.

Right now, damn near everyone has the opinion of 'I'll believe it when you actually do it.'

If you're the sort that runs STFs a lot, or enjoys the various adventure zones, you might be able to avoid some of these headaches. Probably not all though. I'd suggest trying the new Romulan storyarc that was implemented back in Feb. It replaces a lot of the old Romulan missions from the games launch, they're pretty decent, they give some new story notes, and you might get a level out of them.

Thanks. That helps a lot. 
But that last post... oof... 

I'm glad I have a lifetime sub now. So... maybe I'll put off actually joining in until YOU guys get over YOUR burnout and we can do stuff together etc. 

By then I should have well over 12,000 Zen so I'll have enough to spend on purchasing Tier 6 ships (or even packs!). 

Speaking of doing other things - 
How's SWTOR these days? 

I can't speak for more recent content, but I have enjoyed finishing up old bits of missions I never completed and/or doing group instances. For $20, you can get both expansions and another 10 levels of content, and I think there's one or two $5 DLCs adventures.
---

The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."

>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI

Oh, we got over the burnout ages ago. Although right now, Secret World's getting more of our attention. A new issue came out at the start of the month, and I'd actually never finished the issue before it, not to mention getting a new friend interested in the game.

Anyhow, I'd suggest at least visiting Risa once a day once the Summer Event starts this week. This years reward is a T6 Ferengi ship, and they've actually changed how Event ships are awarded. The ships from previous years are no longer available to be earned in new projects. If you have an uncompleted project from last year, you can use the new currency introduced this year to get it, but that's it. And at the end of the event, any uncompleted project and unused currency will be automatically deleted. This was because a lot of people were keeping spare currency saved up, so that they could get the ship on the first day and not have to do everything. That, and the anniversary event, which used the same system, has had the featured ep grant 400 of the 1000 needed currency for running the featured ep once on each character. With the old system of making the ship cost only 40 once one character had unlocked the ship, a lot of people had close to 800 saved up without doing anything.

HOWEVER, as a counterpoint to that bad news. Any event ships you've unlocked in the past? Can now be unlocked for free on any character. Well, by now, I mean next Thursdays update. They'll be adding a button to the event section of the Reputation tab. The various Breen ships, anniversary ships, so on and so on. This means that if you got the Dyson Science Destroyer last year, for instance, you can get it for a character you made today... Well, you'd probably want to level them to 50 first, but that's not exactly a nightmare. And T5 Event ships get a free upgrade.

This is actually a great example of whoever's handling PR at Cryptic really not getting what they're doing wrong. The second paragraph was the first announcement. The third paragraph was a second announcement, SEVERAL DAYS LATER, after yet another shitstorm on the forums and reddit. The first one was poorly explained, and followed by lots of complaints from Devs about people not playing the game as intended, much like the XP mess. If these had been part of the same announcement, with a decently worded explanation and no Devs throwing out bitching on the forums, a location known for flames and chaos? Well, there'd be some complaints, but I think it'd be mostly well received.

Oh well... And now you're making me want to make a thread. 'MD compares the different MMOs: An Idiot Online!'

Any advice for someone just starting off in one of these games? I'm noodling on SWTOR and possibly The Secret World, maybe MWO....

Oh, and has anyone tried Valiance Online yet? It's in some sort of beta/alpha test state already...
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.