| What to look forward to?
Between today's patch release and Cryptic's latest Engineering Report, STO promises some quality upgrades on the horizon. Fans of the game now have a solid idea of what to expect through July, from minor UI improvements to huge chunks of content.
STO has its detractors, no doubt, and I haven't been shy about airing my own concerns from time to time. This summer presents Cryptic with the perfect chance to add swaths of new content and to quiet some of the naysayers. And with a certain Nameless Behemoth's next expansion expected sometime in the fall, the next few months could prove critical to STO's future. So let's see what Craig Zinkievich and company have in store for us.
1. Crafting Improvements
Oh. Thank. Goodness. I am so glad crafting has finally seen some major changes. This very morning, Cryptic released an update to Season 1.1, one of the main features of which was the crafting overhaul. They didn't fundamentally alter the mechanics, but the UI improvements alone elevate Memory Alpha from the teeth-grindingly obtuse mess it was before. I won't go into the improvements too much -- Shameless Plug Alert: See next week's Captain's Log for a basic guide to STO crafting -- but suffice to say I am very pleased.
2. Starship Interiors
According to last week's Engineering Report, STO will feature playable starship interiors come July. Cryptic have been throwing this idea around for months, and frankly, I didn't really think it would happen. At least not this soon. I imagined ship interiors would turn out to be a pipe dream (a Jefferies tube dream?): something the players would so love to see and the developers would so love to implement ... eventually. Maybe. At some point.
But if Cryptic's timeline holds, ship interiors will be available a lot sooner than that. Specifically, the Engineering Report promises:
Curved Federation ship hallways
Smaller Federation hallways (non-combat versions)
Player ship interiors
From the sound of it, STO will include both mission-ready and strollable vanity interiors. I have no idea whether interiors will be customizable, but we've got a while to wait for more info. Klingons are maybe getting the shaft on this feature, too, unless they just don't believe in hallways. But the addition of starship interiors is a pretty enormous win all the same.
3. Diplomacy
Y'know how in most episodes of Star Trek (pick a series, any series), Federation officers don't spend nearly every waking minute blowing stuff up? And y'know how in STO, they do? The game's dearth of diplomatic endeavors has distressed diehard fans since day one. But Cryptic will offer some relief in July with the planned introduction of the Federation Diplomatic Corps. Again, details are forthcoming, but it sure sounds promising, doesn't it?
|
Home 
Shopping Cart
