Okay, as Acyl mentioned, he was kind enough to hook me up with a beta key. I installed the game and played it a little this morning.
Pro: it captures the feel of 'wet navy' space combat very well, and the fleet actions are, frankly, awesome. The way it handles them is impressive
too. You warp in and there are other players already there, but that's okay, you don't HAVE to play with them or talk to them if you don't want
to. Somehow, just knowing that the USS Bite Me is run by a human player makes the game seem more alive. And, look, the USS Regaan (?), the USS Righteous
Indignation (do I spot an EPU fan there?) and the USS Smokinbroken (also ?) are charging in to assist against this Borg cube that YOU DID _NOT_ JUST SHOOT THAT
GREEN SHIT AT ME!! **freemfreemfreem**
It's very pretty. I can't stress that enough. It's so pretty, in fact, that my machine (which handles max-pretty CoX just fine) needed to be
tweaked a bit to get an acceptable framerate. But _so_ pretty. **drool**
I'm not sold on the personal combat system. It's the standard MMO approach -- action bar, cooldown, etc -- but some things you take for granted in
other MMOs seem to be missing. The biggest one -- and maybe I'm just spoiled by CoX here -- is that you can't queue up your next action. In CoX, you
can click on a power and if you're not in range, it waits until you are, then fires. Not so here. If you're not in range, it doesn't go off.
Same with if it's still cooling down. It's a little thing, but it tripped me up many times and I was rather annoyed by it.
The missions are detailed, engaging, well written (except for the EMH, who I'd have overwritten with a copy of DOS 3.3 if I were able, he's that
annoying), and extensive. It can be hard to figure out where your next objective is, if you're not in range of the glowie (yes, they use glowies). But
even so, they're fun.
Avatar (both character and ship) customization is pretty awesome. I wish the ship had more options, but then, I'm a lowly ensign still (I think...), and
only have access to the first tier of stuff. We'll see where that goes.
There are quite a few flaws. On the 'amusing' side of the scale, every time I leave spacedock, my character is wandering around in space. I don't
mean my ship is in space, I mean my _character_. Just out for a stroll, no spacesuit required, thanks.
On the 'annoying' side, attack animations -- heck, animations in general -- don't fire or misfire almost as often as they work correctly. Not a
game breaker and certain to be fixed, but still.
On the 'I wish they would do that different' side... it's very obvious this is meant to be launched on the console platform. Every action
you're required to do can be done with one keypress. Context menus pop up when you get close to an interactive object, allowing you to decide what to do
without having to point and click. And so on. That's not necessarily bad, but as with most context-based systems, it gets a bit old having these things
pop up when you're just trying to maneuver past the throngs of people onboard the station.
And on the 'oh hell no' side... disconnects. My god, disconnects. Tha server, she cannae handle the load, cap'n! I realize this is open beta,
when they stress-test the server. However, a quick visit to the forum reveals that this issue has been happening for several days, and I'm not the only
one. I got disconnected upon finishing a mission, at about 11:00am this morning.
I have not been able to log back on since. It's not the login server, it's the game server -- or the character server, perhaps. It can't download
the character list, and the worse bit is that, when THAT fails, it boots you back to begin the login process all over again. You read that right -- you do NOT
get queued. It's like trying to get into CoX on double XP weekend. Just keep hitting login and praying, I suppose.
This is ASININE.
On a different level... I enjoyed what little I got to play, and I'm sure they'll work out the bugs. I'm unsure if I'll invest significant
time in it, though. It's fun, yeah? But ... I already feel shoehorned into _their_ universe. If I was a huge Trekkie that might not matter, but I'm
not. And there's not much in the way of social interaction that I've seen -- chat is filled with variations on the Stop Having Fun Guys Guy, and the
Ha Ha You Suck Noob Guy.
As Ops pointed out to me... it's a very pretty MMO that you play by yourself.
I'm going to keep fiddling with it, but I don't foresee it sucking up my time, not like CoX did.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Pro: it captures the feel of 'wet navy' space combat very well, and the fleet actions are, frankly, awesome. The way it handles them is impressive
too. You warp in and there are other players already there, but that's okay, you don't HAVE to play with them or talk to them if you don't want
to. Somehow, just knowing that the USS Bite Me is run by a human player makes the game seem more alive. And, look, the USS Regaan (?), the USS Righteous
Indignation (do I spot an EPU fan there?) and the USS Smokinbroken (also ?) are charging in to assist against this Borg cube that YOU DID _NOT_ JUST SHOOT THAT
GREEN SHIT AT ME!! **freemfreemfreem**
It's very pretty. I can't stress that enough. It's so pretty, in fact, that my machine (which handles max-pretty CoX just fine) needed to be
tweaked a bit to get an acceptable framerate. But _so_ pretty. **drool**
I'm not sold on the personal combat system. It's the standard MMO approach -- action bar, cooldown, etc -- but some things you take for granted in
other MMOs seem to be missing. The biggest one -- and maybe I'm just spoiled by CoX here -- is that you can't queue up your next action. In CoX, you
can click on a power and if you're not in range, it waits until you are, then fires. Not so here. If you're not in range, it doesn't go off.
Same with if it's still cooling down. It's a little thing, but it tripped me up many times and I was rather annoyed by it.
The missions are detailed, engaging, well written (except for the EMH, who I'd have overwritten with a copy of DOS 3.3 if I were able, he's that
annoying), and extensive. It can be hard to figure out where your next objective is, if you're not in range of the glowie (yes, they use glowies). But
even so, they're fun.
Avatar (both character and ship) customization is pretty awesome. I wish the ship had more options, but then, I'm a lowly ensign still (I think...), and
only have access to the first tier of stuff. We'll see where that goes.
There are quite a few flaws. On the 'amusing' side of the scale, every time I leave spacedock, my character is wandering around in space. I don't
mean my ship is in space, I mean my _character_. Just out for a stroll, no spacesuit required, thanks.
On the 'annoying' side, attack animations -- heck, animations in general -- don't fire or misfire almost as often as they work correctly. Not a
game breaker and certain to be fixed, but still.
On the 'I wish they would do that different' side... it's very obvious this is meant to be launched on the console platform. Every action
you're required to do can be done with one keypress. Context menus pop up when you get close to an interactive object, allowing you to decide what to do
without having to point and click. And so on. That's not necessarily bad, but as with most context-based systems, it gets a bit old having these things
pop up when you're just trying to maneuver past the throngs of people onboard the station.
And on the 'oh hell no' side... disconnects. My god, disconnects. Tha server, she cannae handle the load, cap'n! I realize this is open beta,
when they stress-test the server. However, a quick visit to the forum reveals that this issue has been happening for several days, and I'm not the only
one. I got disconnected upon finishing a mission, at about 11:00am this morning.
I have not been able to log back on since. It's not the login server, it's the game server -- or the character server, perhaps. It can't download
the character list, and the worse bit is that, when THAT fails, it boots you back to begin the login process all over again. You read that right -- you do NOT
get queued. It's like trying to get into CoX on double XP weekend. Just keep hitting login and praying, I suppose.
This is ASININE.
On a different level... I enjoyed what little I got to play, and I'm sure they'll work out the bugs. I'm unsure if I'll invest significant
time in it, though. It's fun, yeah? But ... I already feel shoehorned into _their_ universe. If I was a huge Trekkie that might not matter, but I'm
not. And there's not much in the way of social interaction that I've seen -- chat is filled with variations on the Stop Having Fun Guys Guy, and the
Ha Ha You Suck Noob Guy.
As Ops pointed out to me... it's a very pretty MMO that you play by yourself.
I'm going to keep fiddling with it, but I don't foresee it sucking up my time, not like CoX did.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs