STO Delta Rising

[Athos]

STO Delta Rising

Rank cap increase to Level 60: Time to make Admiral!!

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/6007253-announcing-delta-rising!

This looks sweet from this 10,000 foot view; let's hope that it is infinitely better than season 9.5 release.

[Athos]

• Takes place in the Delta Quadrant
  
  • Ton of new story content on a similar level to Legacy of Romulus.
  • Races that will be encountered include: Talaxians, Ocampa, Kazon, Hierarchy, Malon, and Hazari.

• Level Cap increased to 60, and the rank of Fleet Admiral / Dahar Master
  
  • The rank increase to Fleet Admiral will NOT allow us to control multiple starships. It's still very much a "something Geko really wants in the game at some point" feature.

• Tier 6 ships, and ship upgrades:
  
  • All 3 factions getting new ships (cruisers, escorts, science vessels, etc.).
  • New class of starship.
  • Tier 6 ships will have new ability that no other ship tier can do.
  • SOME form of ship upgrade system (NOT tied to crafting/R&D system) will allow for Tier 5/Lobi/Lock Box ships to be "competitive" at new endgame level.
  • "Nothing you have will become obsolete. Ships, gear, nothing." - CaptainGeko.
  • Revamped Intrepid-class, with revamped interior (includes two variants of the Mess Hall, and the Astrometrics lab).
  • Other possible revamps include: Nebula, D'Kyr, Guramba, Aquarius, etc. (We'll see some of those "get a little love" starting with Delta Rising.)
  • Federation-adapted Dauntless class [2]

• Max gear level increase to Mk XIV:
  
  • Includes both space and ground gear.
  • New crafting system will immediately take advantage of level increases, once they go live.

• New class of bridge officer:
  
  • Similar to the "sub-class" concept found in other fantasy MMOs.
  • New class will be tied to Tier 6 ships (possibly just the "new class" of starship).

• New advancement system:
  
  • Specialization skill trees to add further character customization.
  • Progression in the system even beyond level 60.
  • Will add flexibility to ship builds, but will not directly tie into gameplay.

• Increasing the level cap and adding new gear helps to fight power creep because the game is rebalanced for a max of level 60.
• Some of the 50-60 content will be held off to be released later.
  
  • They have plans in place through at least the next anniversary.
  • With a good amount of repeatable content in place, they can bring us more story content now.
  • Players will not be able to burn through new content, and level increases won't be as easy as earlier levels of the game.
• Tim Russ will return, accompanied by fellow Voyager actors, among them Garrett Wang, whose character Harry Kim is Captain of the U.S.S. Rhode Island by 2410.

• Testing period and dev blogs:
  
  • The new code branch will be on Tribble starting sometime in August 2014.
  • Will probably not have any content, initially, as the expansion will be released to Tribble a little at a time.
  • There are more than 40 dev blogs coming regarding this expansion.

Not directly tied to the expansion:

• Secondary deflectors:
  
  • Still on the schedule. Had to be pushed back due to resources. They're really close to being done.
• The Foundry will be made "more visible" to anyone "flying around" in space.
• Cardassians as either a playable species or as their own faction is "inevitable", but nothing on the table for Delta Rising.
• At this point, it's unlikely that any 3rd-party ships will go into the game once all the canon ships have been added.
• Open-jacket versions of the Odyssey dress uniforms make sense at some point, as do more variants of the uniform in general.
• There are plans to implement more red alerts similar to the Borg red alert. Maybe in the next year, those can be started on.
• The devs do want to eventually bring back a true exploration-type feature to the game. They need to find a smarter way to bring infinite exploration that is interesting and entertaining. Not happening in Delta Rising, though.
• In wanting to improve old content, the devs do eventually want to revisit PvP. No time frame, but it will happen at some point.
• If anyone has any good ideas for the Captain's Table, let Geko know.

[Jureth]

sounds peachy...I'm a little scared about what this upgrade system could entail but at least they seem to have thought about current max level gear ahead of time. I wonder if that means the rep system gear will be changed as well. 

[Athos]

From the way it sounds, all of our current gear/ships will not become obsolete.  I'm interested in these Tier 6 ships; the Enterprise is supposed to be the flagship; will we have an Enterprise-G?  Or maybe the Enterprise-F will get an "upgrade".

While reaching "Admiral" should be attainable for everyone, I hope that "Fleet Admiral" is somehow a bit more difficult.  Maybe only a certain time frame to make that rank?  Should be interesting but it does seem like they have thought things through.

[Sorripto]

Seems like some fun to me.  I just hope they avoid the NGE issue Star Wars Galaxies had when they added "customization features" to the new leveling system.  Overall this looks quite good and I look forward to it.

[Jureth]

I think the biggest thing most Galaxies fans hated was that Sony took something that had a lot of unique features and made it just like every other MMO and allowed anyone to be a Jedi when some people had spent a lot of time trying to attain that goal. It doesn't sound like Cryptic is headed in that type of drastic direction, though I could be wrong. 

[Kheren]

I would agree. That's what I heard too. The worst thing to do is to take away what players had and liked or render futile all the investment of time and effort they made into a game.

Truth be told, the same thing happened in City of Heroes with their now infamous Power Diversification implementation. Nobody had asked for it, nobody wanted it, everybody hated the idea and it not only changed characters drastically but made more than one class either weak, useless or plainly unusable. The tank couldn't tank as before, the brawler couldn't brawl as good anymore, the blaster couldn't blast as well and the controler couldn't control much. It made even some powers like regeneration totally useless, inefficient and worthless when once it had been a top, hard won and fun ability.

The result; when they implemented it, COH lost 54% of it's player base overnight! This was at the time the most humongous drop in any game ever seen and I'm not sure this black record was ever broken since.

What is most troubling about this whole story is that this Power Diversification fiasco was forced upon, despite generalized uproar, by the lead designer and owner of the gaming company that launched and ran COH. His name: Jack Emmert. The company: Cryptic Studios.

[Hera]

Id say SWG still holds the record.  The Trials of Obi Wan bait-and-switch tactics had a clas action lawsuit to get money back and anyone who wanted money back for a long time got banned from the game.  People would ask for money back, get banned, and their friends would quit over it.  My guild of some 60 people and 200+ accounts quit. 

They dont learn very quickly either.  They did the same thing to EQ2 later.