Leak z 28 listopada :
So today Cryptic allowed those that have been accepted to the Closed Beta a lovely 6 hours to play on their current build. This was the first play test I have been able to participate in since being accepted.
I'll try to give a fair view about what the experience was like... without revealing any key content.
So, I started having to create a new Federation character, where I could choose from four federation races from the Cannon, or I could choose a fifth "unknown" species, and make my own. As I was eager to get as far as possible with my first character, I chose a Vulcan. I ran through the char creation screens, making minor modifications to the character - but rest assured, the huge list of "sliders" that can modify EVERY aspect of your character that Cryptic is known for (City of Villains/Heroes) is there, and then some. Due to the early stage of the game, many HUD elements were working incorrectly, which also added to my decision to fly through the Character Creation. (Cryptic also made this easy by making it possible to adjust many attributes at once, but you can still access the advanced options and lost 10 hours making everything juuuust right).
They throw you right into a battle for the tutorial. I started my character on a bridge under red alert (in said battle). Excited to get my hands dirty, I tried to run to the NPC and start my mission. Every button worked... except WASD. I began to jump around in place, tryping to the fellow noobs for assistance (which for some reason chat in the noob zone is eerily quiet...). I got none.
I realized shortly that my Xbox 360 controller was plugged in - so I tried using it. Surprisingly it worked near-perfectly - everything movement-wise was in place... just no default mapping to use the skills (I learned that you can map it in the options, but it is buggy... i didn't bother). After moving a bit with the controller, the keyboard started working (?) and I continued on my way.
Killed some baddies with my Phaser and the old Kirk one-two, saw that many graphics and animations are still in placeholder stage, but the core combat system is in place. You have two main weapons you can switch from, and an action bar. One aspect that irritated many was the one-button gameplay. By this I mean that any time you need to interact with ANYTHING (i.e. world objects, loot/pickup stuff, talking to people, opening/closing stuff, etc.) you just press "F"... I think this is mostly because this game is built on the Champions Online engine, which was specifically designed to be XB360-compatible. I'm interested to see if this makes it into the final build. I didn't mind it too much. It was alot of, "run around, F, F, F, click, F, attack, F, F, FF, FFFFFFFFFFFFF, alt+F4, CTRL+ALT+DEL, ALKFHJ:OAHWADJ@#_ U)*" (it is a beta, after all)
After some running around and some pretty cool scripted stuff (yay for Phys-X enabled graphics
) I, a complete novice, was given command of my very own starship.
Starship combat is simple. Target, attack w/ whichever weapons are in range (forward/aft phasers, for example... for more info see the "starship tactics" trailers part 1 and 2 on
http://www.startrekonline.com). You can set the autofire (though I suspect this feature was connected to more than one client crash for me...) and once you punch a hole in one of the four main shield arrays (forward/aft/starboard/port) you send your torpedoes through the hole to finish the job. This is harder than it sounds (and harder than they make it look on the trailers - I think that shit is scripted) as your torpedoes have a very narrow firing area. I basically had to cut all power to engines, pull a quick 180 and hope their shield didn't come back in time....
Moving from zone to zone usually requires a warp-jump which is very cool looking, even though the ships are still placeholders as well - they aren't quite as finished as the trailers, but it's obvious that a complete graphic update is soon.... *Crosses fingers*
After you finish the tutorial (moving in space, interacting with shit in space, attacking shit in space, attacking shit with shields in space, running from a shitload of attackers in space, crashing your client in space, etc.) you can move to "Sector space" whereas you can move your ship from location to location. Entering a "location" can be an instance, or it can be a public space, depending on where it is - i.e. if you enter sector 001 Alpha (I.E. our solar system) you have a short loading screen, you see yourself come out of warp, and you are in a public zone with hundreds of other PC ships coming and going from space stations, shipyards, etc. However, if you enter another system, you will enter a randomly-generated instanced space that can have it's own stuff to scan, stuff to collect, people to fight, etc, or it can even have a randomly appearing mission. At one point I found a damaged freighter, that hailed me. I had to escort it from point A to B... we got attacked, my game crashed, and when I reloaded all the baddies were dead - but the freighter wouldn't follow me anymore.
I can't really go into more about the inter-system travel without spoiling alot of cool stuff.... but I spent the last four hours of the play test just exploring... there is ALOT of fun awesome crap hidden in this game!
In Conclusion, I think this game will be wickedly addicting. They have not released any guild/faction content yet (but it IS promised!), and they're going to allow you to customize your own bridge that you can walk around, and your bridge officers will walk around and do their own stuff... but mostly it'll be your own personal space to keep shit - I'm thinking specifically Kable and his Village of Crap in Star Wars Galaxies.
Anyway, I'm eager to try the new build this weekend... Once I get to the Neutral Zone it's open PvP.
