On this week’s STOked, we’ll talk a little more about Season 3’s “Secret Project” and expose some recent behind-the-scenes hints as to what it could be. Then Jeremy gets you MATHED on using an XBox 360 Controller as your primary user interface device in STO.

And lastly, we announce the winner of our “Best User Submitted Mission” contest, as well as go on a quick tangent about Free-to-Play subscriptions in preparation for next week’s viewer feedback request.

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This Week’s Show Notes:

200 Day Vet Rewards include a Snazzy Costume! (Pics)

1. If you’ve been playing since release, and haven’t gotten yours (like me), you can check your accolades to see how far along you are.  Look for “Redoubtable”.

“Secret Project” details are starting to slip:

1. It is the SOLE focus of Season 3 Nov.
2. DStahl teases us
3. More confirmations that it is NOT an additional faction
4. ZAM article hints at revamp of exploration as a high priority for DStahl

KDF gets the shaft again!

1. Several missions had rewards added days after S2 landed, which resulted in them missing out on these rewards.  
2. Some will be available in the future for emblems/marks, but most will not.  
3. The “” will be handed out by a special NPC that should acknowledge you if you’ve completed the appropriate mission(s).

Upcoming Content Release Dates

Cryptic hosts a poll regarding future costumes

ZAM Interview w/ Daniel Stahl

1. Includes the lyrics to “The Ultimate Klingon!”

MATH:

Take CONTROL!

On this segment of You Got Mathed, I’m going review the procedures to setting up a new way to play the game:  The XBOX 360 Controller.

I want to make this clear up front:  Use of an XBox controller is NOT officially supported by Cryptic, and the design of the UI and game mechanics are not intuitive to this type of control scheme.  There is a LARGE learning curve to making this work.

First, you must own an XBox 360 Controller.  If you have a wired controller, it’s easy enough to just plug the USB into your computer and you’re done.  If you have wireless controllers, you’ll need to own a receiver which is about the same cost as buying a wired controller, so….. choose, but choose wisely.  Or you can get a play & charge kit that converts a wireless controller into a wired controller, which is definitely the cheapest method if you already own the wireless.

TO PURCHASE ON AMAZON.com:

XBox 360 Wired Controller

XBox 360 Wireless Receiver

Play & Charge Kit for XBox 360 wireless controllers

The second step is the most difficult, but most important:

Keybinding!

There are two primary methods to this, which I will attempt to explain.  You might note that neither of these are easy as using the in-game interface.  This is because, as I mentioned above, use of a controller is not officially supported by STO, and so many of the buttons themselves are not natively available from the drop-down menus in the keybinding interface.  

1)  Third Party Software

My preferred software for this, after some light digging, is XPadder.  It’s not free ($9.99) but is extremely powerful.  In my opinion, it is definitely worth the price.  But if you simply must have FREE software, I’ve been told to recommend GlovePie, but after trying it myself I was incredibly unimpressed with the software’s features and ease of use (or lack thereof).  I can’t hate that name though.

NOTE:  If you’re using 3rd party software, be sure to turn off the XBox Controller from the in-game UI in STO.  Otherwise it will auto-map some commands (but not enough to actually PLAY) resulting in dual-mapped buttons.

2)  You can also go through the manual use of slash-commands from within the STO client.  These commands are not easy to use, or understand, nor are they intuitive at all.  I attempted to use this method first and had a moderate amount of success before STILL spending the $9.99 on XPadder instead.

If you wish to understand the strange and arcane language of keybind-scripting, check out the following forum post that should get you started (also a good place to ask questions about binds):  XBox 360 Controller Keybinds (special thanks to Kakurenbo)

After all of that, it’s time to get started in attempting to tackle the learning curve.  I’ve done probably a half-dozen missions of each space & ground now, using this controller, and I still perform terribly.  But, it’s not un-fun, and I could see this potentially taking my gaming experience to a new level, once I’ve mastered it.

But there ARE several very real downsides:

Obviously, with a controller in your hand, you can’t type.  Which means that you will either have to set down the controller to speak with your buddies, or rely solely on voice chat to communicate.  Or play in silence, but that kind of defeats the purpose of this game being a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER game.

The other huge stumbling block, is that there are simply not enough buttons on an XBox controller, for you to be capable of mapping every command in the game to your fingertips.  I had to sacrifice a small handful of skills in order to fit the more important bindings onto my controller.  Also, attempting to use this as a healer in an Away Team would mean death for every body involved – guaranteed.  Targeting teammates is difficult enough with a mouse + keyboard, this only elevates that difficulty.

I can sum up my opinion on the whole matter as this:

1. Superior to Mouse/KB in space, but takes a lot of mastering and tinkering.
2. Inferior to Mouse/KB on ground, for a million reasons.  Just trust me.

I have a few suggestions for keymaps, and would love to hear your feedback as well, so email me or post your question at jupitercolony.com

MAIL:

And the winner is:  “Invasion of the Ship Snatchers” — E Beyer

Over the next week, we will attempt to turn this story into a quick walkthru/cinematic.  We may fail.  When UGC launches, we will pour our entire fleet’s resources into creating this mission.

Next week’s question:  Since we’ve been talking “F2P”, we wanna hear your input.  

Positives:

Reduce the barrier for entry, bring in more players

If they go with the DDO model, ‘free’ C-Store points for subscibers

Negatives:

Subscribers (especially lifetimers) get boned?

Community suffers from “freetard bloat”?

Is it just a money grab?

So you have one of a few options:

1)  Tell us your primary argument for, or against, F2P.  We’ll share the most insightful.

2)  Tell us your ideas for some worthwhile C-Store content that would support a F2P mechanic over the long-term.

1. Must not give paying customers an edge in PvP
2. Must give subscribed players a reason to spend points (assuming an allowance system will be in place)

See you next week!

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The post XBox 360 Controller Tutorial | STOked 46 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.