Article:
Star Trek Online: Season Two Released
Last week Cryptic Studios released their second major update for Star Trek Online, a patch entitled Season Two offering a variety of new game features for old and new players alike. New Executive Producer Dan Stahl summarised the new features in a recent ‘State of the Game’ article on Cryptic’s official web site:
http://www.startrekonline.com/node/1966
The article begins with a certain amount of self-congratulatory back-slapping regarding the changes to the game made by Cryptic’s STO development team since the game’s launch in February. While the list of changes is laudable, this begs off the question of why the game was in such a rough state at launch in the first place. Interestingly, Stahl himself seems to hint in a recent interview with Massively.com that he had his own reservations about this:
http://www.startrekonline.com/node/1966
Season Two certainly offers more material changes to the game-play experience to the cosmetic tweaks of Season One. The level cap has been raised, new ships are on offer. Klingon content and diplomatic mission content has been added, and the game now includes some anomaliy analysis and Dabo mini-games. Klingons also get more costume options, and more goodies have been added to the C-Store, including additional costume slots.
In fact, the costume slots has been a source of controversy, as they were originally offered on a per-character basis, not a per-account basis as per the similar slots offered in Cryptic’s other MMO Champions Online. Fan backlash has been considerable to the extent that Cryptic now plans to amend their policy:
http://www.massively.com/2010/07/18/star-trek-online-adds-more-c-store-options-and-controversy/
The lack of non-combat mission content in the game has been a major bone of contention for many fans since day one, so the promise of First Contact mission was warmly welcomed. Sadly the implementation of these missions doesn’t allow the average player to leap straight in – before you can be assigned any of these special missions you must accumulate 160 points of ‘Diplomatic Experience’ on your character. Unfortunately these points only seem to be awarded by the game when you complete a mission without fighting anyone, and since over 95% of the game’s missions are specifically combat-orientated this leave you grinding and grinding for hours trying to earn these points. I still haven’t garnered the requisite amount of points myself, but as soon as I do I’ll be posting another article regarding what happens.
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"The lack of non-combat mission content in the game has been a major bone of contention for many fans since day one, so the promise of First Contact mission was warmly welcomed. Sadly the implementation of these missions doesn’t allow the average player to leap straight in – before you can be assigned any of these special missions you must accumulate 160 points of ‘Diplomatic Experience’ on your character. Unfortunately these points only seem to be awarded by the game when you complete a mission without fighting anyone, and since over 95% of the game’s missions are specifically combat-orientated this leave you grinding and grinding for hours trying to earn these points."
You failed to mention you have access to 5 Diplomatic missions at Memory Alpha, 1 at Bajor, 1 at Vulcan, and 1 at Starbase 39 to help assist in your grind up. First Contact missions are offered at Envoy rank, not attache which is the first rank that you get with 160 dxp. You get Diplomatic Investigations that assist you in finding non combat missions at Attache. Consul rank which is after that gives you two DI's, envoy is first contact and 3 DI's, Ambassador is two FC's, Voting at DS9, and 4 DI's. (This information is available by clicking the bar at the top of the screen) Your climb up the Diplomatic ladder can begin right after you finish the tutorial.
"If you do, you are rewarded with bonus component items which presumably have some impact in crafting at Memory Alpha (although not having really engaged with the Memory Alpha stuff though I’m not really sure)."
The rare particles that you get from scanning are for the accolade trace tracker. Which is to be used in an upcoming update to memory alpha.
"I haven’t yet tried the Dabo mini-game, mainly because I was disappointed to find that you can’t play it on the Starfleet star base on Earth where my character is currently based, but only on the Deep Space 9 station in the Bajor Sector."
Incorrect. Dabo is located on Drozana station as well in the Eta Eridani sector blocks.
"I'm also still seeing gameplay bugs such as rubber-banding or mission statuses being lost or reset."
This was delt with quite early on, as for mission statuses being reset this is a new one to me. o_O