Xbox One

Stupid name, which will quite possibly lead to confusion among certain segments of would-be consumers, and quite possibly taken advantage of by eBay-ers selling their old original Xboxes which are typically referred to as the Xbox 1.

Mandatory Kinect. On the surface, I like the improvements over Kinect for Xbox 360. Only a few feet needed to operate, but can be adjusted to scan the entire room and recognize up to six people by visual and voice. Good stuff! For my uses, Kinect is only good for voice commands and one of the issues I have with my Kinect on the Xbox 360 is I’ll be watching something on Netflix or whatever and the Kinect thinks it heard a voice command so it will pause or exit to dashboard or what have you. Annoying as hell, and I finally just unplugged the Kinect as a result. Maybe Kinect 2.0 fixes that, but if not, it’s going to make for some angry viewers.

TV Integration. I don’t watch a whole heckuva lot of TV these days because of my job; I’m just not around when shows play “live.” I use Netflix a lot, Amazon Prime and Hulu+ a little. But when I do watch TV, I spend most of my time flipping through the guide to find things to watch. So the faster guide via the Xbox One is appealing – as is its ability to switch from task to task nearly instantly, a pet peeve with the 360 which takes minutes to become functional between tasks. Comcast is my cable and internet provider, and one of the integrated networks with the Xbox One so that is appealing. Merely being an interface to the cable box and the prospect of potentially needing a clunky old-school IR Blaster? Not appealing. At all. I’d much prefer a real solution that lets me get rid of 1970’s-sized cable boxes altogether.

Controller. I’ll have to reserve final judgement for when I actually hold one, but the thing looks like a throwback to the “I hope you’re an NFL player” sized original Xbox controller which was so unpopular Microsoft designed the S (Small) controller which in a fairly short time completely replaced the original controller and the S designator dropped. The S controller was sleeked and tweaked to become the excellent Xbox 360 controller so going back to a seemingly huge controller is baffling.

Skype. Cool and all, and Skype is light years better than the current voice codec on Xbox Live, which was even improved a couple years ago but is still not much better than the old Roger Wilco-era voice chat from the 90’s. However, I don’t want Kinect broadcasting a Skype Video session. At all. I’m up for using Skype as what it was originally designed as: as telephony app. I don’t do webcams, I don’t do video chat, and I don’t foresee changing my mind on that.

“Unlimited” friend list. About friggin’ time! Microsoft blamed the current limit of 100 on their old network code and specifically Halo 2. But then they took Halo 2 offline and everyone was excited for a friend list upgrade that never happened. It remains to be seen if the new friend list is truly unlimited or if it will indeed have limits but regardless, it will be a dramatic improvement for people like myself who are members of online gaming groups.

Online Authentication. Steam has been doing this for years? Sure, they have a buggy-as-hell-if-you-don’t-do-it-right-the-first-time “Offline Mode” but it still has to phone home every so often. Checking in every 24 hours sounds intrusive, and perhaps for some it is. Me? I won’t use my Xbox 360 because if it isn’t connected to Xbox Live any achievement I may earn isn’t time stamped. One of the uses I have for the Xbox Achievement system is tracking when I last played (or at least when I earned such-and-such achievement) and possibly comparing time stamps to my friends, that matters to me.

Pre-owned fees. Honestly, after the past couple years of Season Passes and publishers whining about pre-owned sales cutting into their full-price profits, anyone who didn’t see this one coming was fooling themselves. Doesn’t mean anyone has to like it though, especially since Sony isn’t doing it. I have to wonder if Microsoft just assumed the publishers were forcing the issue for everyone only to discover too late that wasn’t the case?

PlayStation 4

Back in the day, I was a Sony fanboy. PlayStation, Sony consumer electronics, PlayStation 2, you name it. Then Sony finally pissed me off with their “our way or the highway” every time you turned around. Proprietary everything, not going along with industry standards. So I rejected anything and everything Sony for roughly the past decade. I decided to ease up off my high horse and try out the PS Vita. It’s actually a nifty little handheld console (my first one ever) and I did subscribe to PS+ which got me a handful of “free” (ie. leased) games though PS+ is honestly far more beneficial to PS3 owners. The fact Sony is making PS Vita integration mandatory for PS4 games gives half an Appeal Point to the platform just so I have something else to do with the Vita. However, as illustrated with the Xbox 360 and their SmartGlass apps, I don’t always care to be switching my focus back and forth from TV to tablet. The teeny tiny little sticks on the Vita are horribly difficult to use accurately in certain game types, so I can’t really imagine using the Vita as a PS4 controller.

Sony Move is optional and not included. Good decision, and if it’s anything like the PS3’s Move there is absolutely no way in hell I would ever own it anyway.

Controller. I was ok with the PS2 controller but the Xbox 360 controller is superior in every way imaginable. The PS4 controller looks slightly larger than the PS3’s but that’s mostly due to the little touchscreen (here we got making me switch my focus off the TV again) but I’m willing to give it a shot if I do choose Sony’s console. Third-party manufacturer’s are already lining up making PS4 controllers that mimic the Xbox 360 controller design so really, that should tell Sony something about their ergonomics… Also, even back when I was a PS1/PS2 fanboy, I never cared for Sony’s symbol-buttons. X, Circle, Square, Triangle? Very thinly color-coded on black buttons? Try getting your non-gamer girlfriend to press a certain button and soon her character is dead because she’s still staring at the controller trying to figure out which button you’re talking about. For me, not only was A, B, X, Y easier to understand, it’s also easier to communicate but more importantly Microsoft’s buttons were brightly color-coded so I can simply tell my girlfriend “press the green button” and she can spot that instantly.

Party chat. Inferior hardware aside, this was a major reason I still do not own a PS3. The thing doesn’t have enough RAM for a separate discreet voice chat. The PS Vita has it, for cryin’ out loud. If I’m doing any online gaming with friends, I’m in an Xbox Party so we have our own discreet channel, not listening to the unwashed public spew their trash. Now that PS4 has this, I’m certainly open to the possibility of flying a PS4 flag someday.

Gaikai. I dislike the name, always have. I’m also not sold on Cloud Gaming, otherwise OnLive would have taken off, right? I guess OnLive worked “ok” for games that didn’t require fast latency and fast reactions, or so I’m told. My only experience is using Splashtop 2 to steam my desktop to my tablet and to say it’s less than satisfactory is an understatement. Still, Gaikai is a way to get PS3 games “playable” on both the PS4 and PS Vita, which can extend the lifespan of the PS3’s library and if it works, that can only be a good thing. I don’t recall Microsoft saying they were doing anything similar to handle the 360′s massive library for One owners?

Online Authentication and Pre-Owned? No phoning home? Trade your games? Let your friends borrow yours and you borrow theirs? It’s all good, man! Sony laid the smack down on Microsoft with that one. Microsoft’s announcement, whether it truly is the future we’re all looking at sooner or later or not, was clearly unanimously unpopular and gave Sony the opportunity for a hype knockout punch.

PS+ required for online gaming? Say hello to Sony’s equivalent to Xbox Live’s Gold membership! I suspect they would have done this already but it’s taken up til this past year for the PS3 to get any real traction that Sony couldn’t risk losing customers. Now they’ve got the customer base plus can hedge their bets on how many former Xbox loyalists may change flags over Microsoft’s unpopular restrictions one the One.

Upgradeable hard drive. This was made official this morning, though I didn’t see if it will be the same setup as PS3 where (I think?) you can buy pretty much any hard drive you want and slap it on the PS3 or if they’ll pull a Microsoft and design proprietary and drastically over-priced (glares at the PS Vita memory cards) hard drives. Update: Sony did indeed clarify they are continuing the PS3 policy of allowing any size hard drive to be connected to the PS4! This is great news!

The Games

This is what matters in the end. During the past decade, for me Microsoft has traditionally had better exclusives. Sony has had Naughty Dog and… that’s it. Another reason I don’t own a PS3: the only game I’d even consider is Uncharted, and I won’t buy a system for one game. (Sure, there are technically three Uncharted games, but… same thing for this bullet point.) Everything else I like that is available on both PS3 and 360 has a superior experience on the 360 so why spend money on a black box I don’t want cluttering my living room when I already have the better experience? Also, I’m not sure what the tipping point was or when it happened but I’m to the point now I just can’t friggin’ stand Asian games. JRPGs? GTFO! Anime graphics? GTFO! Androgynous children heroes versus adult villains with pedophiliac undertones? GTFO! That may not be a popular opinion with today’s (or perhaps more appropriately, yesterday’s) gamer but I like what I like and I’m sick of apologizing for it. Now, with this upcoming generation, it remains to be seen who will have the better games. The PS4 has some legitimately fantastic hardware this time (compared to the superior on paper only PS3) so

Now, a good deal of the current crop of Xbox One and PS4 games are also coming out for the 360 and PS3. The main advantage being simply the hardware upgrade involved. It doesn’t take much more than checking out State of Decay to see that the CryEngine 3 is taxing the Xbox 360, for example. State of Decay might be one helluva zombie sandbox but, for me anyway, the janky performance issues kept taking center stage so I’ve decided to skip the game. That said, even the current state of some of the playable demos shown at E3 yesterday were a bit off-putting. But I guess in light of the recent hullaballoo over Aliens: Colonial Marines everyone is showing their real games in their real current state instead of rigging a “presentation demo only” version. So now the “It’s Beta” apologists can migrate to consoles too, it’s no longer an MMO-exclusive phrase!

Bungie’s Destiny holds some promise, anyway. Titanfall… I dunno. On the one hand, it holds the “mech” appeal and seems better than MechWarrior Online. It actually reminds me of the old Shogo game except you can actually get out of your mech in Titanfall. But on the eye candy side of things, much as everyone makes fun of Call of Duty for (up til now) still using their modified Quake 2 engine, Titanfall is using the Source Engine. Source has its fans, and it allowed Respawn to crank the game out quickly but Source is definitely lo-fi visuals these days… Seeing MMOs finally on (both!) consoles is encouraging. DCUO, Planetside 2, Elder Scrolls Online… those sounds great for console adaptation.

Live Streaming

Both consoles are jumping on the live streaming bandwagon. Microsoft immediately got the upper hand by announcing the popular Twitch service will be integrated with the One. Twitch did clarify that it is not an exclusive agreement and they want to be on as many devices as possible, but for streamers the One clearly has the advantage here. Sony on the other hand takes second place with their announcement of Ustream support. Anyone with experience using Ustream from either end of the stream equation knows why you don’t hear Ustream mentioned very often. But with this announcement it’s likely some major work will go into Ustream’s pipeline to prepare for the PS4 so perhaps it will end up being a viable contender after all.

Meh

I still have a “wait and see” attitude and I don’t expect either platform to be truly appealing until sometime late 2014. Plenty of time to slowly work on my Xbox 360 backlog! I’ll be honest, though, even in my current “meh” phase, the PS4 is shockingly sounding like the friendlier place to be.

A couple weeks ago, right about the same time I was kinda-sorta getting it in my head that maybe I would start looking at getting back into Lord of the Rings Online finally, some other traditional MMO fantasy themeparks came into the Google+ discussion threads. Of course, Trion announced RIFT was going F2P which was, and still is, big news. Somehow Runes of Magic briefly entered one of the conversations. Hudson and I both agreed it was a good game, and I did really enjoy playing the Priest/Knight class combo up til around level 30-ish give or take when I got stuck with a bunch of group quests but no one available in the mornings to group up and do them. [Familiar story around this blog, I know...] I halfway considered reinstalling it today, but Jeremy nipped that idea in the bud by beating me to the punch then dropping the news that — at least on the Artemis server — RoM is practically dead. There’s only two guilds left on Artemis who run end-game at all. Shame…

So, I patched up Allods, which has had several updates and launched its latest expansion today with a couple events (one gives a free mount if you login every day for the next 28 days, for example) and set out to re-learn my Heretic. Not too difficult, really, he was only level 14 with a handful of skills on his hotbar. Several quests later, he’s now level 15 and earlier today I hooked up with one of the more well-known guilds on the Yul server and joined them. So far a friendly bunch, they don’t mind that I’m casual by necessity, and they do both end-game raiding and Astral PvP which is totally my scene assuming I end up liking the game enough to get that far. So, hey, I’m excited now to be playing Allods and seeing what that game is all about! Plus, if I do end up taking it to level-cap, it would make a great experience for me to do that in a designed-from-the-ground-up F2P game rather than my usual Western former subscription converted to F2P/Freemium.

I like Polaris, mind you, so no complaints about that part. But I’m quite tired of Kingsmouth. I’ve yet to find a solo-able build for Savage Coast. Duo or more? Yes, please! Trouble there is the same I have with nearly every server-based MMO: lack of player population during the US East Coast mornings. The Secret World claims it is technically single-shard, but in practice it is the most inconvenient method of doing single-shard I have ever seen.

Anyway, I’ve been parked in Savage Coast for several months now. Not really logging in at all since I’ve only managed to solo the very first few missions, and even those are a bit hairy.

It’s a Blade / Pistols build, which I like fine in terms of how it plays, and if I happen to have enough mobs on me, it seems to have some survivability but one on one, the self-heal via Forking Paths just doesn’t have anywhere near the output to stay alive.

Actives
Blade Torrent
Shootout
Dancing Blade
Forking Paths
Above the Law
Martial Discipline
Dirty Tricks

Passives
Perfect Storm
Sharp Blades
Immortal Spirit
Coup de Grace
Vigilante
Regeneration
Fluid Defence

“On paper” this sounds like a decent setup, and like I mentioned above, if I just happen to have a gaggle of zombies (3+ will do nicely), but if I only have one (worst-case) or two mobs, I find myself at this screen too often, which causes me to logout for a week or more in frustration.

I fail at image manipulation so here’s a super-cheapo compilation of my gear with no alpha transparency layer:

My Twitter-based Cabal only plays on Mondays, therefore I can very rarely ever see them. Even then, they’re far ahead of me and I just can’t bring myself to ask anyone to come slum in Savage Coast because I fail at builds — I figure they only play once a week so they login with pre-made plans anyway.

I guess the next issue will be that putting together yet another new build with new weapon types means heading back to Kingsmouth… /sigh

My plan for 2013 was to lay off the PC games and finally make some headway into actually completing my stack of 70+ Xbox 360 games. But like they say “a plan is the point which you deviate from.” Other than getting partially through Tomb Raider (fantastic action game by the way) I’ve been surprising on the PC mostly.

Star Trek Online has been my main MMO for some time, and that hasn’t changed, though I did take a break for say a month after grinding every day to get Tier 5 in the New Romulus reputation that was part of last November’s Season 7 update. It did get to be a drag having to solo the instances, though eventually one of my fleet-mates caught up to me so we duo’d them with bridge officers completing the team. Much more fun with actual people! I still haven’t begun the reputation grind on any alts yet though, some of those world missions and zones I can use more time away from, Vastam Peaks in particular I’m in no hurry to see again any time soon.

In March, I tried to get back into The Secret World but that still hasn’t panned out for me yet. I love the game, I really do. But I can never find groups to run quests with, and almost everything I’ve found in Savage Coast needs a duo. I still keep it updated and log in periodically but it’s always the same scenario: no one around or if there are players, no one wants to group to quest. I really wish The Secret World (and Age of Conan too for that matter) were Cryptic-style single-shard so I’d be able to find players and the game would seem more alive than it does.

A lot of March was spent beta-testing Neverwinter, which I love and I did buy a Founder’s Pack to support the game and the studio but all that beta playing gave me a minor case of burnout since the game is very linear, so now that it’s in Open Beta / soft-launch phase, I mainly rushed through the same content I’d tested several times and once I got to 30 and the Neverdeath zone I’ve slowed down dramatically, mostly just logging in to Iet my Devoted Cleric Invoke his Diety for XP, Astral Diamonds and whatever other rewards he’s randomly awarded. I’ll get back to Neverwinter once the Beta Blues wears off, because it’s precisely what I wanted out of an Action Co-op RPG which just happens to have some MMO-Lite aspects. Right now I only have the Devoted Cleric because I’ve been in a bit of an “anti-alts” mood, but I played every class in beta and after just leveling up again in open beta, the last thing I want is to do it yet again. Allegedly the next two classes will be the Archer Ranger and Scourge Warlock, and the recent State of the Game post hints the Archer Ranger will be the first of those to appear so perhaps I’ll eventually get around to doing an alt of a brand-new class, but even then I’m in no rush to repeat the leveling process again so soon.

I also chose March as my attempted re-entry into Guild Wars 2, which once more didn’t pan out. I wasn’t feeling my Guardian at all so I ended up making a Ranger hoping that re-starting from the beginning would teach me how the game is intended to be played. I think it partially succeeded with that, my Ranger did get up to level 30-ish where my Guardian is still level 17-ish but… there’s just something “off” about the game. It’s gorgeous and all, but overall I’ve just yet to find a compelling reason to want to level to 80. Pretty much everyone in my little circles of influence who does play says there are concerns for the game’s longevity other than “level up and roll an alt,” which is no longer one of my interests in the least, but I have to take that with a grain of salt because they’re all “level then roll alt” types to begin with.

In April, I got into a few beta tests for Marvel Heroes and, ya know what? I really, really like the game! After deliberation, I ended up getting one of the Iron Man Founder packs, since he’s my favorite hero I’ve played so far. I’ve never really enjoyed these overhead “mouse clicker RPGs” as I usually call them. I had Diablo back in the day and I don’t ever remember making it past the second or third level of the first dungeon you enter in Tristan. For a few years I’d load it up and just go roaming through that dungeon killing things until my bag filled up (which didn’t take long), portal back to town to sell and by then I was usually bored so exited the game. I totally skipped the genre until several months ago I bought Torchlight 2 on Steam and installed Path of Exile. I really like each of them, or more accurately, I think I can see where I would like them if only I had someone to play with. I did do one short Path of Exile match with two other bloggers a few months ago and that was way more fun than playing solo. I’m sure there are thousands of gamers who love to solo these clicker RPGs but I can’t friggin’ stand it. Enter Marvel Heroes and it’s MMO-Lite “open world” setting where everything is free-for-all co-op. I’ll compare it to Guild Wars 2 in the sense that there’s no such thing as “mob tagging” or “kill stealing” or anything else. You technically can get into a group but you don’t have to. Every few minutes some form of (for lack of a better term) “dynamic event” pops up in whatever zone and everyone can run up and kill the world boss or save the civilians or whatever the event is about. Finally, I get to see the appeal to these games that all the soloers or players who had a static group of friends have been enjoying for years! So of course I’m going to support the game! Plus, the Lead Designer at Gazillion Entertainment is Geoff “Heretic” Tuffli, former Lead Designer for Star Trek Online. He did a fantastic job for Star Trek, and he’s a very intelligent and well-read guy in general; I was happy to see him get the job at Gazillion and it looks like the studio is putting out a quality product, at least for my expectations of it.

Of course, Trion’s new MMO third-person shooter Defiance came out in April (which I blogged about already) along with SyFy’s companion series which is surprisingly good. I had debated getting the Xbox 360 version since Hallower was very interested as well as several of the AGE folk. Turns out Hallower has gotten so busy taking care of his elderly grandmother and helping his family, he hasn’t had time for gaming since April anyway. The AGE guys still have busy Defiance crews on both Xbox and PS3 platforms though. But, to use the same comparison to Guild Wars 2 as I did for Marvel Heroes, everything in Defiance is so co-operative that to a degree it doesn’t matter so much if a friend or guild is online at the time (especially considering the woes the chat system had for weeks at launch) as everyone can just jump into the Arkfalls or quests, shoot things, help each other out with no penalties.

Which brings us to May. Neverwinter entered Open Beta / soft-launch on April 30 so as I mentioned already, I jumped in and leveled to 30 quickly before backing off. I’ve also been playing Soul Sacrifice (I blogged about the demo) on the PS Vita, which got me interested to re-try Ragnarok Odyssey as well, so I’ve been spending a little time bouncing back and forth between the two. I’ve never played an actual Monster Hunter game as I do not own a platform they’re available for, so these two Vita games which are of a very similar vein are the closest I can compare to. They’re very heavy on the grinding; in fact, grinding is arguably the entire point, but they are rather fun in co-op. In turn, these two games got me interested in RaiderZ which… /sigh at the name but it’s actually an interesting, if rough-around-the edges “Monster Hunting MMO.” I have a Cleric that I’ve played on and off up through level 16 so far, and have enjoyed learning the systems, and crafting each new set of gear. The boss fights are a lot of fun! In some ways, RaiderZ is very similar to TERA, at least in terms of the mouselook camera and action combat, though it has its own unique aspects to combat and I’d say it’s a straight-up Monster Hunter-style game in the sense that you grind certain mobs or certain bosses in order to craft all your gear. There’s little or no gear as quest rewards that I’ve seen. You even craft your mounts, pretty much anything you’d use you craft. So that’s neat even though again, it’s heavily based on grinding monsters. If Maieta would make a real chat window where we could easily block the spammers (the single worst aspect of the game and an instant turnoff for many, I’m sure) that alone would improve the game. The community is very nice and helpful, always a good sign, and most of them keep track of spammers and will help you spell their sneaky names to /block them manually.

Mid-May, Tipa blogging about DC Universe Online finally wore me down, so I downloaded the game on Steam to check it out. Despite my general apathy (bordering on loathing) of the DC Comics heroes, this is a really solid action game! I’m horrible at being creative with comic superhero design and names, though so I put my design up for grabs on Google+ and Stargrace happened to comment that my hero had “quite the package” LOL which I hadn’t noticed because… well, why would I be staring there? So, with that in mind and his costume colors at the time, I unleashed The Purple Package onto the villains of Metropolis. Oakstout joined me for a couple hours of beating up bad guys and leveling up a little.

After a very extended break of two years? Maybe more? I decided to try dipping my toes back into Lord of the Rings Online. Most of the friends I’d made on Arkenstone still play so even though my kinship (which was dwindling when I went on break) has dissolved, I have others ready to welcome me in. Despite Lord of the Rings being one of those older-school MMOs that fills your screen with hotbar upon hotbar of skills, it didn’t take more than a handful of combat encounters for my old patterns to start coming back, remembering which skills did what, which ones complemented another, and so forth. I do have a lot to learn with the two expansions that have been added since I last played, as well as researching whatever has changed stat-wise and build-wise with the Lore-master class. I doubt I will play any of my alts, which is half a shame since I had really enjoyed my Warden a couple years ago but… just not feeling alts in any games right now other than minor piddling around with some in Star Trek Online. I haven’t uploaded any new LOTRO screenshots, however so… I’ll just say that I do plan on slowly reacquainting myself with Lord of the Rings Online as the year continues, but I doubt I get to the new level cap prior to winter.

Of course, the big news for May was that Star Trek Online’s first full expansion was coming! The Legacy of Romulus, despite bringing a host of bugs old and new and near-daily maintenance on the new hardware, has been a rousing success for the game so far. Many veteran players have returned to see the new content, the new UI overhaul, and of course the new Romulan faction and its faction-specific content, ships and so forth. A lot of new players are in there as well, our tiny little blogger / Twitter fleet has expanded and there’s been members on practically every time I’ve logged on, regardless of time. It’s been great having people to chat with and group with and teach them how to play the game. Hudson has apparently had the game since launch but never really played seriously until now, and he’s so taken with the game that he subscribed rather than stay F2P. I’ve enjoyed chatting and grouping with him, and he’s made sure to jump onto C3 to ask me questions as well. Needless to say, I’m definitely back in Star Trek for the foreseeable future!

What the hell is Soul Sacrifice? People keep comparing it to the Monster Hunter franchise. I’ve never played a MH game so I can’t really say. When I got my Vita on a Black Friday sale I did pick up Ragnarok Odyssey which I’m told is also a Monster Hunter style game, but I much prefer Soul Sacrifice so far. Better graphics, smoother controls, and a sense that the RPG mechanics have more depth.

Basically the "point" of the game is you load into a map, kill some monsters then the boss. Rinse, repeat. There are no outright character levels, but you do level up your Life and Magic, plus boosting your offerings and crafting sigils. If this were an MMO we’d be screaming "ewww it’s just a grinder" because essentially that’s all it is. But because it’s a single or up-to-four-player co-op game, gamers are apparently willing to exempt this style of game.

Again, I can only compare to Ragnarok Odyssey but one of my primary complaints about RO was the (so far) extremely limited selection of maps. And maybe that’s the case with Soul Sacrifice, I don’t know but the demo had more variety and a far superior setting to its maps than anything I’ve seen in RO so far. Also I’ve played a few online multiplayer games so far and not only is Soul Sacrifice’s netcode better than Ragnarok’s, it also performs better. Ragnarok would stutter and cough due to all the particle effects in combat. Soul Sacrifice has been flawless so far.

In Soul Sacrifice players are Sorcerors whose job is to wander the world murdering monsters. Once you kill a monster, it dissolves into an oily pool then for a short while you are able to absorb its soul to power yourself up. You can choose to Sacrifice the soul which will increase your Magic LV (short for level) or Save the soul which increases your Life LV. Magic LV increases your offensive abilities while Life LV increases your defensive. In the demo there is a global cap of 20 so for instance if you chose to get 19 Magic and 1 Life you’d be a literal glass cannon – heavy damage but can be easily taken out. Reversing that would make you one hell of a support player but not doing much damage. I have about 5 or 6 hours into the demo now and am sitting at 10 Magic and 6 Life so I’m hitting noticeably harder than I was but can take hits better and my heal offering is a little better, too.

The game’s "spells" are called Offerings and you can equip up to 6 of them. Two trays of three offerings, and press the right trigger (RT) to switch trays. Collecting more of the same offering will let spend the extras (and possibly require some soul shards, not sure on that one) to boost the offering to get more casts per game before it runs out of power. Each map has a few items that will let you recharge your offering power, provided you do it before it’s totally run out, however recharging your offerings consumes the item. I suspect at most there are four items per map, which would equal one recharge per player assuming everyone’s playing nicely, otherwise someone might be hosed and run out of useful offerings if the other players use up the recharge items first.

The final magic players can cast is a Black Rite. These are super-powerful spells that have a good chance of killing any boss (at least if it’s health status is red) but comes at a high cost: it’s only available when you are close to death yourself and it has lasting aftereffects that can only be erased by spending lacrima tears. (I’ll get to that in a bit.) The Black Rite available in the demo is Infernus which deals a devastating blast of flame but costs your skin, which reduces you to half defense.

At the beginning of the game you find a magic book Librom which is very reminiscent of the Necronomicon from the Evil Dead movies. It talks to you and you relive bits of its previous owner’s life, along the way learning his abilities and becoming a Sorceror yourself. Librom provides you with all your missions, changing your gear, offerings, Black Rites and so forth, but also at the beginning of each game he prompts you to wipe his tears by touching the screen. His tear droplets are called lacrima which becomes another currency used to erase the effects of Black Rites, recharge Offerings, and other game functions as well as changing your name. Easy enough to get but for cleansing the Black Rites and recharging Offerings alone will probably become part of your regular farming routine.

Your right arm is your source of power, all spells are cast from that and you can craft sigils using parts collected from soul shards found on the maps then carve them into your right arm (ie. a socket system) to give additional buffs to certain Life or Magic abilities.

In addition to boosting the existing offerings, and crafting sigils, you can fuse multiple offerings to create an all-new one, for example adding an elemental attack to your arm or whatever.

Another important thing to use every so often is Mind’s Eye which alters your vision so you can see soul shards, recharge spots and health status of your team and monsters. For bosses it not only shows its health (green is healthy, red is getting close to death and vulnerable to a Black Rite or sacrificing an ally) but also shows its cursed spots which will give you a critical hit if you can target or otherwise strike those locations.

You’ll notice I mentioned sacrificing an ally? Yes, for single-player you get various NPC allies and if they go down you can choose to Save or Sacrifice them as well. If you sacrifice your ally, a devastating attack is unleashed but that ally is "permanently" dead unless you spend lacrima to erase that event. Also sacrificing allies makes your other NPC allies less likely to want to team with you. In multiplayer, you can save or sacrifice your teammates for the same devastating attack and the dead player is put into a mode similar to Mind’s Eye where he can view health status but also see the actual attack and damage numbers, so being dead can actually help you figure out a good build. At least until the hardcore players go through it all and put the data on forums and wikis.

I’m having a blast with the Soul Sacrifice demo and look forward to receiving my full version that I’ve pre-ordered from Amazon. I think every single Vita owner at AGE is getting the game, so I should have plenty of friends to co-op with so I’m looking forward to leveling up and seeing what else the game has to offer!

Given the exponential growth of the MMO sub-genre of gaming in the past decade, especially the past five years, I have to wonder if the concept of a “main” or “primary” MMO even exists in today’s up-and-coming MMO player or if it’s just a holdover, a relic, from us old-school players?

It seems like a good deal of us blogger-type players may talk about the growing research that long-term sedentary activities are not only unhealthy but shorten one’s lifespan, and a lot of us seem to agree with that point. Or at least inasmuch as we take advantage of the choices we have today and instead of sitting around playing one MMO for 16 hours per day, we’ll spend 12 hours playing 3 different MMOs.

As an old-schooler myself, I can’t speak to those who’ve come into the genre in the past few years, but I also can’t help but notice that even those old-schoolers who extoll the virtues of balancing one’s life, of not being addicted to a single MMO… we all seem to secretly (or in Keen‘s case, openly) desire that One True MMO to come along again that will latch it’s unbreakable tentacles into our virtual soul and not let go. It sometimes appears less that we want to rekindle a romance, either with the genre itself (which due to its very nature inspires burnout) or to recapture that wondrous feeling of our first MMO “love,” but that we want more than anything a new, better addiction.

Is there such a thing as a “primary” MMO anymore, or is that simply an older train of thought from a past era?

Beta Weekend 4 will be next weekend, April 12-14 and will not wipe characters from Beta Weekend 3! Level cap is increased to 50 (60 is the launch cap) and finally the four Professions will be playable. No new classes or races were mentioned in the announcement.

Open Beta will begin April 30, so that’s an additional two weeks for Cryptic to finalize feedback from BW4 to the OBT client. Seems each Beta Weekend was spaced roughly two weeks apart so far, and Cryptic has taken a lot of steps tweaking things based on each event’s feedback. The Open Beta announcement does seem to indicate that the new classes hinted at, especially some type of Ranger and Druid, won’t make it into the launch game.

On that note, a recent interview with Cryptic CEO Jack Emmert hints that a monetization scheme for races, and probably classes, might be that the basic version will be patched into the game for free then a Premium version with extra abilities or attributes could be in the Zen Store. This philosophy matches that of Star Trek Online where some ships, such as last year’s introduction of the flagship Odyssey and Bortasqu’ ships initially free during the Anniversary event then moved to the Dilithium Store, meanwhile upgraded versions are sold in 3-Packs in the Zen Store.

I’ve clocked between three and four hours in Defiance today, so I thought I’d give a handful of impressions so far.

Chris over at LevelCapped wrote his impressions earlier today and referred to Defiance as “RIFT with Guns” which is probably extremely accurate since RIFT is Trion’s first game. However, since I haven’t played RIFT (seriously, why is it all caps?) past level 5 or so, I can’t really say that myself. Instead I’ll say Defiance is “Guild Wars 2 Lite with Guns.”  

I see Defiance and Guild Wars 2 very similarly because in their normal game worlds, the focus is on a combination of solo and “massive co-op” gameplay. In both games if there’s some form of “dynamic content” such as an Event in GW2 or an Arkfall in Defiance everyone around can simply run up and contribute to the objectives without being hassled with formally joining a Group or a Raid.

The starter missions have been simple enough to get into, and the voice acting was good to adequate, depending but nothing downright bad yet. After creating your character, the limited tutorial only gives a rudimentary synopsis of the EGO system and has you pick up and equip a few starter weapons then sends you out on your own. The User Interface (UI) is rather minimalist and confusing in a few points until you figure out what is where and how to get to what you want quickly.

Finding things to do is easier in Defiance than Guild Wars 2 at least. Simply bring up your map and every mission type is shown, as are all the Arkfalls. It’s up to you to choose what you want to do at any given time, whereas in GW2 you have to wander around a given zone (or rely on third-party event timer apps) to have any idea what’s happening when and where.

Mission types are Main Missions, which make up the storyline of the Defiance game, then Episode Missions are more cinematic and include tie-ins to the Defiance television series. There are several variants of Side Missions to be found as well, ranging from Time Trial races to “survival mode” style Hotshot and Rampage missions, as well as other types of Side Missions. In addition there are Co-op Maps, which are four-player instances. Naturally there’s PvP to partake in as well, in either instanced battleground form or the open world Shadow War. I did try one of the Shadow War… things. It was a 38v38 fight but it’s still considered “open world” and once the battle is over you just continue on as usual; I don’t even think there was a load screen?

In terms of being a “real” shooter, Defiance is pretty darn close. It isn’t 100% “pixel perfect” regardless if Trion claims it is or not. But it’s maybe 97% there, and people coming from the MMO side of things who aren’t big shooter players probably wouldn’t know the difference anyway. Thankfully, it’s nothing like an RPG shooter such as Tabula Rasa (RIP) where sure you aimed your reticule but once you clicked the mouse button to shoot, it was MMORPG mechanics determining the hit/miss/damage calculations just the same as if you’d clicked a hotbar button on a traditional MMORPG.

My main gripe with the third-person shooter aspect of Defiance is the camera. For all the blustery talk over the years of “the PC is the primary platform for shooters” PC-only studios seem to botch third-person way more often than they should. In Defiance, the camera is positioned too far off your character’s right shoulder, so if you’re anywhere near a wall or any object that could be used for cover there’s a good chance that while your reticule shows it’s aiming at the target, your gun is actually aiming at the wall or object. Switching to “iron sights” aiming will be more accurate to check if you’re actually aiming at your target or not. There’s also no mechanic to toggle which shoulder the camera is positioned from, which would really help if you’re in a bigger fight against large numbers of mobs and you’re attempting to take cover.

Defiance is technically “Buy 2 Play” like Guild Wars 2, and is scheduled to have 5 DLC packs. Trion is already selling a Season Pass at $40 though since Trion has not yet specified what those DLC packs will be and what type of content they will contain, I would recommend holding off until more information is released. There is a “real money” currency called Bits but in the handful of vendors I’ve found so far, they took both Bits and the in-game currency Scrip. I think there are some Bits-only convenience items in the Trion Store such as extra inventory space, though, so all in all the Purchase plus Transactions experience should be very similar to Guild Wars 2.

The transmedia experiment should be interesting with the game and the Syfy series hopefully maintaining some concurrency. I’ll likely just be a passive observer over social media as everyone watches the show since I don’t really watch television anymore due to other interests and my job pretty much prevents me from watching live tv on a regular basis. The show will also be available on Hulu but only the free web version not Hulu Plus. I have an extreme aversion to watching television at a PC desk on a PC monitor so… unless Hulu gets the rights to stream it over their Plus service, I’ll likely never see the show.

Not to break my arm patting myself on the back, but after reading most of the other Neverwinter articles out there, I thought my coverage of CBW #2 was by far the most comprehensive, and I will stand by what I said then. This post will be shorter and simply address some additional thoughts I experienced during CBW #3. Downside: It’s been two weeks so I’m a little fuzzy on a few things now and also my keybind to save screenshots with the UI didn’t save over to CBW3 so I lost a lot of the screenshots I thought I’d been taking. I didn’t feel like running Fraps at the time for UI shots, unfortunately so… lesson learned.

One of regrets I mentioned in CBW2 was that I did not have time to level my Trickster Rogue to 10 to see his first Daily Power, Stealth, in action. Fortunately there were no character wipes so he was waiting on me for CBW3 as well. I leveled him to about 13, both solo and partnered with Oakstout for some dungeon quests and Foundry quests and we had a blast. Oakstout was playing his Guardian Fighter initially so enjoyed tanking and stabbing over his shield while my Trickster Rogue threw volleys of daggers, or *bamf!* teleported around the enemies for some super-fast stabby action.

Adding the Stealth Daily to the mix was indeed a lot of fun, but with or without it, I feel the Trickster Rogue is a very strong melee class and very effective both solo and in groups, and I hear it’s also one of the predominant classes found in PvP which I have not tried yet.

Some of the complaints about characters in CBW2 were animation-related, such as the normal pose for the Control Wizard who ran around with two fingers in the air. His pose has been tweaked already and wasn’t nearly as annoying, I meant to play one again but ended up spending all my time with the Devoted Cleric while Oakstout tried the Control Wizard, He initially found the class a little hard to work with and squishy but he found a groove with it as he leveled and it ended up being his favorite class so far.

Great Weapon Fighter

CBW3 introduced the Great Weapon Fighter to be play-tested. The GWF is an all-out offensive melee fighter who specializes in Area of Effect (AoE) damage with a huge two-handed weapon (Great Weapon, where the class gets its name), and is in fact somewhat weaker against single targets where the Guardian Fighter and especially Trickster Rogue excel.

His first two At Will powers are Wicked Strike on the left mouse button, then Reaping Strike on the right mouse button. Both are area swipes for hitting multiple enemies, though Reaping Strike is also a chargeable power by holding the RMB down then releasing it. Depending on one’s playstyle, this can make Reaping Strike more or less desirable. I found the GWF’s mobility to be an asset, whether simply side-stepping out of the way of an attack or using his Sprint ability, as the class generally has fewer defenses to balance out his offensive powers. Charging Reaping Strike slows the class down and if a player is accustomed to a faster pace, he won’t like using Reaping Strike and will change it out for another At Will power once more are unlocked by leveling. I found that for my own playstyle at the low levels, it worked best if I ran into a group of mobs and used Roar, one of the first Encounter Powers, to knock them back a bit then while they stood up and came back to me I could fully charge up Reaping Strike. My other favorite Encounter Power was Mighty Leap which was especially handy for boss fights where the boss is able to knock you back. Mighty Leap throws your weapon at the target then you leap to it, catching the weapon and slamming into the ground for nice area damage; it’s a great way to get back into the fight with a single key press after being knocked back.

At level 10, the GWF gets his first Class Power, Unstoppable and a Determination gauge on his UI. The GWF gains Determination from both dealing and taking damage and once the gauge is over the halfway mark, he can use Unstoppable which is one of the GWF’s few defensive abilities, causing his attack speed to increase (but damage per strike to decrease) and he takes less damage for the duration as well. The mitigation also scales with the percentage of Determination as it decreases; initially, you take hardly any damage but as Determination gets closer to the 50% point your incoming damage gradually increases.

Out of all the classes I’ve played so far, I found the Great Weapon Fighter to be the most expensive at lower levels in terms of using health potions. The other classes I got by fine with potions looted from enemies, but I used so many with the GWF I had to actually run to a vendor and buy more. I suspect nearly everyone ends up choosing a Cleric-oriented Companion as soon as possible for that reason. [Spoiler: there's a quest later on which rewards a Cleric Companion too, so if you're wanting to collect multiple Companions on the cheap, something to keep in mind.]

Based on the initial GWF build we got to test, the general consensus was that in PvE the class is best at tanking the adds in a boss fight while the Guardian Fighter handles the boss itself. In PvP, players said it was a great counter to the Control Wizard.

Companions

Just to add what I said in my CBW2 post, Companions do have a little customization to them. When mine reached rank 10, another skin unlocked which allows me to change his appearance. It’s a preset costume so it’s currently nowhere near as freeform as Star Trek Online where I can customize the appearance of every costume piece my Bridge Officers wear. But it’s still a nice touch to at least be able to tweak the appearance of your Companions even a little.

As your Companions level up, their training time quickly increases as well which serves as incentive to eventually start spending Astral Diamonds to rush the training. Since it was beta and I was too busy playing content versus grinding AD, I tended to time training my Companion when I wouldn’t need him or when I planned on logging that character out for awhile.

Mounts

At level 20, you gain your first mount though if memory serves you do have to buy it from the mount vendor in Neverwinter. 2 gold or thereabouts, so saving up for that should be your first long-term goal in the 1-19 bracket. Mounts are summoned with the ’6′ key, which is never part of the UI until you unlock your first mount. Far as I can tell, all mounts are tradeable (probably the Zen Store ones too) so you can buy them then sell them on the Auction House.

You initially get your choice of Horse which is the basic mount type in the game. Others are available from the Mount Vendor then really fancy ones are in the Zen Store.

One problem I noticed right away was my character’s pose while riding. She leans forward in a near racing pose so to get her to also look forward, the model bends and stretches her neck to the point it looks like her neck is broken. Obviously the models and especially animations and poses still need to be worked on, hopefully prior to launch.

Zen Store

I wrote quite a bit about the Zen Store in the last article so I won’t repeat myself here, though I will say this: over the years as the so-called “Free To Play” (F2P) business model has appeared and become more popular, players always inquire about the Item Shops but it seems no one ever writes about them very much, be it bloggers or “professional” game journalists. Which is why last time I had the attitude of “if you want it done right, do it yourself” to hopefully lead by example.

One thing that I have noticed about Neverwinter is that compared to Champions and Star Trek, it is slightly more intrusive that it has an Item Shop and they’d like you to spend money. Champions and Star Trek also have optional subscriptions still, and I do know a good deal of players still sub to Star Trek at least. Neverwinter is full F2P with no subscription option.

Remember when Lord of the Rings Online switched to F2P and players were (still are?) complaining how intrusive the LOTRO Store was? It seemed that nearly every UI frame had some sort of LOTRO Store button or icon ready to sell you something.

The one time I’ve noticed it “suggestive selling” is when you’re incapacitated in a fight. A “Near Death” UI frame appears where you can Call For Help (your Companion will stop fighting and come revive you; a similar mechanic exists in Star Trek) or Release which sends you back to the most recent campfire you visited but also resets the mobs past that campfire. Obviously that means if you went down in a boss fight, releasing resets the boss to 100% as well.

Notice it’s pushing a few Zen Store items? A Scroll of Cure Serious Wounds will recover  you from near death to full health at your current location. A Scroll of Mass Cure Serious Wounds will do the same for your entire party.

A pack of five Scrolls of Cure Serious Wounds is 300 Zen, or $3 USD and 500 Zen for a five-pack of the Mass Cure Serious Wounds scrolls.

This is a touchy subject. Many players, myself included, feel this is still a totally optional purchase. But I’ve always been the type of MMO player who is willing to concede defeat and try it again, even through respawns, which is exactly what will happen when my party and I click the Release button and reappear at the most recent campfire. Players who want to revive on the spot without resetting the boss to 100%, well those scrolls exist, therefore a certain segment of the players are saying those items are “Pay2Win.” Unless there is no other option to revive, period, I will continue to disagree on that. It’s a convenience item, nothing more, in my book. Also don’t forget the Astral Diamond Exchange where players can trade their AD for Zen and vice-versa! If you collect enough AD you can buy someone else’s Zen from the Exchange then buy those scrolls from the Zen Store.

The other controversial item in both CBW2 and CBW3 are Scrolls of Identification which, as the name implies, are used to identify gear. Apparently in CBW1 these were available from normal vendors but the past two Beta Weekends they were only in the Astral Diamond vendor and cost 800 AD apiece. Players are raging over the change. I did not have a single issue with scrolls. In fact, I had two or three full stacks of them because they drop relatively frequently from mobs and chests anyway. Simply mousing over any unidentified item will still show you if that item is a (mathematical) upgrade over your current item, thus saving me the need to spend a scroll if it was not an upgrade. If the item cannot be used by your class, the icon is red so why would you spend a scroll to identify it? For myself, simply playing sensibly and only using the scrolls on items I could use as an upgrade led me to having more scrolls than I needed. Now, if someone were perhaps aiming for a very specific build and only wanted gear that boosted certain abilities then sure, the mathematical algorithm used to determine if an item is an upgrade may in fact not work out since you may desire one that is equal to your current item but boosts the abilities you want instead of what your current item does. So I will concede that for certain play styles, scrolls may be a more in-demand commodity than for others. But I would also say that the relative scarcity of scrolls as well as their AD price tag may serve as a slight balancing factor with the various currency economies that will grow in Neverwinter.

Yes, STO is getting a third faction! It’s being handled a bit differently than a lot of us had hoped, however. Personally, I was hoping for a fully-fledged Romulan faction that, once (or if) STO ever overhauls their PvP system, could escalate into three-faction territorial control PvP. But that’s not the way it’s going to work, at least not at LoR’s launch. Right away, there’s a problem with that idea going up against the Romulan story line that’s already in the game, especially with the New Romulus content.

According to Ask Cryptic: Legacy of Romulus, players can start a Romulan character and play from level 1 (KDF characters can be started from level 1 as well!) and their exclusive Romulan Republic story will serve as a prequel to the game’s existing Romulan story arc, which has been somewhat tweaked to tie in the new story with the old and with the new faction. Reman characters are also part of the expansion but are not immediately available, being instead an account-wide unlock as part of the New Romulus reputation. I will assume those of us who are already at Tier 5 reputation will be “grandfathered” in.

The Romulan faction has a full set of leveling ships, as well as ships that can be purchased with Dilithium and Zen Store-exclusive ships, and Romulan Republic duty officers.

Here’s where the Romulan faction takes a curve from what we’d hoped for: at some point each Romulan or Reman captain will have to choose to ally himself with either the Federation or the Klingon Defense Force. So in terms of PvP, STO will remain a two-sided game.

One of the reasons Executive Producer Dan Stahl gave in the Ask Cryptic was fleet starbases. The Fleet Advancement System first went live with Season 6 in July, 2012 and the biggest fleets in the game are just now reaching Tier 5 starbases and are now devoting their full attention to advancing their embassies. The fleet starbase and embassy setup is currently tweaked for large fleets. Smaller fleets such as my own are struggling to get enough resources — namely Dilithium and Fleet Marks — to complete projects and it’s been a huge point of contention, not to mention players burning out from the constant grind, myself included. “Something” is being done to address this in the Legacy of Romulus expansion but Cryptic hasn’t said what that something will be yet. Anyway, the team was afraid introducing a third faction of Fleet Advancement might be too much and end up driving people away due to the burnout and grind, if they feel they have to “start over” from Tier 0 starbases and embassies with the new faction. So the Romulans will have their own story missions, ships, costumes, a faction-only social hub and all, just no Romulan fleet starbases.

A brief journey into the forums revealed another reason this solution may be beneficial in the long run: KDF Queues. Currently, the KDF is already a small subset of players. Partially because Star Trek itself has always been about Starfleet first, but also one cannot simply stroll into the First City — you have to level up a Federation character to level 24 (I think?) to unlock the KDF faction, so it’s turning away those who want to play the “bad guy” faction from the start. Allowing the influx of Romulan captains to ally themselves with the KDF will hopefully increase the total amount of players for the KDF side and therefore reduce the queue times.

A few days ago, the first code update for the LoR expansion went to the Tribble test shard. No new real content to test yet, this first build is primarily testing a new character creation system which is somewhat modeled after what’s being done in Neverwinter, and also the all-new LCARS User Interface (UI) for every aspect of the game, as well as introducing the Nukara Strikeforce reputation.

There’s a ton of, shall we say “issues” on the Tribble build, some related to this being an expansion and a lot is going on behind the scenes that is breaking some things in a sometimes “seriously, wtf?” manner but that’s what a Test Shard is for, so I am not going to get into any of that.

First, the new Character Creation system. Currently only Federation characters can be made. There was a way to “glitch” the creator to access the Romulan costumes but I wasn’t able to get my own screenshots of those before the glitch stopped working (for me anyway). Someone else captured most of them HERE for as long as that stays active.

The overall idea is a more streamlined and modern approach, similar to what’s being done with Neverwinter. There are a bunch of pre-made faces, etc. to choose or if you want to get into the nitty gritty, all the existing options we’re used to are still there as well. The screen itself is quite nice, it shows your first ship (the Miranda-class frigate for Federation) then in the background the NPCs animate while they talk to each other and starships fly by the viewport. It’s a nice touch.

Then the new LCARS UI for gameplay. This is a Work In Progress and naturally players are marching with their pitchforks in anger. What else is new? Gamers scream for change up until you give it to them, then they scream to change it back.

Here’s what it looks like in space right now. With the borders, some of the UI elements are a few pixels larger but the UI Artist says he’s making several changes before it goes live. I like the colors for the Weapons, Engines, Shields and Auxiliary settings, those were just white before. The “flat” look makes me think of “Windows 8 ‘Metro’ meets Star Trek LCARS.” Also new are the colors. Allies are now green and enemies are still orange, but both colors seem a faded hue, and again the artist is taking feedback. I’d like a little more vibrant hues and while we’re on that, something completely different that stands out for fleet-mates and teammates. I understand the colorblind segment of the players is having issues with the new green color anyway so that will likely get changed soon.

The Interaction UI Frame has been resized and reskinned as well. Nearly every NPC interaction is using this new frame. Some appropriately appear as if they’re talking to you over your ship’s viewscreen such as the one above requesting docking clearance at Earth Spacedock. The NPCs on ESD I talked to did not have the viewscreen graphics, so that was fine, but playing missions when your Bridge Officers talk to you — and they’re usually standing next to you — the viewscreen graphics are there which is odd from a “why are you talking to me from the ship when you’re right here?” sense. Hopefully something that can be addressed for normal play as well as adding a switch for Foundry authors to specify which should be used in dialogue.

Here’s the new character selection screen. Showing a KDF so they’re not being ignored here. Each faction has its own color scheme (and apparently user-switchable color schemes are coming such as TNG, Voyager, etc. colors) and the mousewheel will zoom the camera for your character and slightly for your ship. On that note, the new character sheet also has a 3D “paper doll” now so you can zoom and rotate your captain, your ship and your crew!

Captains will be able to re-train your Traits now! Also, just like the Reputation systems currently add new Passive and Active powers, new Traits are coming that can be earned as part of the game’s new focus on what other games would call “alternate advancement.”

Here’s a quick peek at the Nukara Strikeforce reputation tab. I do have detailed shots of each tier but don’t feel like really getting into that in this post. One point of contention with some users is that the high-end Ground Set listed is the same set that is currently in the Lobi store. Some people are upset they may have paid a lot of money to acquire the lobi crystals for that set, other people just see it as they paid up-front to have that set for months in advance. For my two cents, I’d rather not have actual gear in the Lobi store period.

Anyway, there’s a few shots of the first version of the new UI coming to Star Trek Online and its Legacy of Romulus expansion! I’ll talk more about the expansion once Cryptic officially adds the new playable content to the Test Shard.