Welcome to 2011! Looks like STOked aren’t the only ones that took the holidays off… with barely any new content or ground-breaking news, we’ve decided to feature a bit of the community’s outlook on some recent features: Aegis/Borg Sets, the Garumba C-Store ship, and more responses to the continued development of the Foundry.

Then we’ll go over some highlights from Dan Stahl’s recent interview on Trek Radio, and share the winner of our community-submitted UGC mission contest — complete with EPIC TRAILER! You can’t miss this!

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Show Notes:

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The post Winning Foundry Submission | STOked 64 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

The big topic this week in the STO community with no doubt is the Foundry. Jeremy and Chris have had their nerdy little hands on it for a bit now and they share their first impressions!

Plus – We cover the highlights of the recent Ask Cryptic, and read between the lines on a few items, update you on a few great season 3 changes

Then – We’ve got an Exclusive look and a borg’d up ships captured during a Q&A session on tribble, and give you an update on our great Klingon experiment!

Last but not least it’s STOked’s holiday buying guide! We share a few of our favorite trek toys, and cover a few items that just might improve your game!

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The post Foundry Preview | STOked 61 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Tonight’s show is going to be a smorgasbord of internet failures of several types. We promised to talk to you about NASA’s “gigantic ground-breakingly awesome and totally not lame” announcement they had planned for today, and we’ll do so. Then we’ll tell you why it FAILED SO HARD.

And speaking of big announcements and failures, OnLive today announced their new “unlimited play” plan. Wah wah. But hey, yknow, we still think OnLive is rad, and we’re gonna tell you why. Then we’ll tell you about a major game-changer that’s landed in Star Trek Online, which we’ll spend our weekend playing with, AND we’ll tell you why this has the potential to change the landscape of online gaming in general.

Show Feeds:

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Show Notes:

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The post World Changing Fail | J@N | 12.2.10 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We took a week off and you did NOT like it! So to make it up to you, we brought back Executive Producer Daniel Stahl, and squeezed every last bit of secret goodies out of his stash: He tells us all about The Foundry (the new official title of UGC), Klingon content additions, the return of Gozer, the future of STFs, PvP evolution, Devidians, Tholians and MORE!

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This Week’s Show Notes:

GOOD NEWS: Interview w/ Daniel Stahl!
He had so many great things to tell us about the future of STO, including:
TONS of UGC info, and it’s proper new title (The Foundry)
Information about the Devidians and Tholians
And an epic load of development plans for Klingons

New Latinum Trophies! (with pics)
https://jupiterforce.org/showthread.php?3369-New-Latinum-Trophies

Akira updates! (with pics)
https://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=3082408&postcount=4

BAD NEWS: No Math.

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The post Stahl Tells All | STOked 54 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

This weekend, the boys from Jupiter Broadcasting boldy went where so many had gone before — PAX Prime 2010! Unfortunately, with Cryptic not in attendance, news for STO was light. In this episode, we’ll talk about some of the 3rd party software and hardware solutions that were seen on the Expo floor, that we’re hoping to feature in future episodes.

After that, we’ll perform a quick review of the latest Weekly Content: “Out In The Cold”

Then we’ll wrap up the episode with the last batch of Community Spotlights, from the bios we’ve received over the past several weeks, and give you a tease regarding our next feedback request.

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This week’s Show Notes:

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The post Captain Bio Spotlight | STOked 50 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We’ve got the trailer for the winning viewer submitted STO mission, “Invasion of the Ship Snatchers”. Plus we’ve got some firm details on Cryptic’s secret Star Trek Online project for Season 3.

Then – We’ve got a whole new question for you in our Mail segment, as well as your surprising Free to Play feedback from last week’s question.

All that and more, and this week’s STOked!

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This Week’s Show Notes:

NEWS:

Secret Project Update:

Revamped Sector Space

1. Will include exploration overhaul -AND- beta UGC functionality.
2. Final details not yet available — internally, they’re working on a few different options and seeing which works best, before moving those features to Tribble.

New PVP Queue UI and Match making is on Tribble for testing

1. Details of the new system found HERE
2. Interestingly, many of the implemented changes were inspired by a user-created thread.

Ask Cryptic, Aug 9

1. They are shifting focus over to improving existing content and mechanics, rather than simply adding more stuff (although in some cases – KDF, e.g. – adding more stuff IS the fix.)
2. Another mention of the commissioned officer trading system, sounds like it’s more than speculation now. (“put in for a transfer”)
3. Multiple mentions of UGC, including using it to customize interiors and create fleet starbases.
4. I still find it humorous that “sitting in chairs” is this massive technological hurdle.

Found tidbit, re: Ground Combat Improvements suggestions:  

1. “I passed it on to the design team.  They’re digging into ground combat soon.” -jmattson
2. If you want your voice heard on ground combat, now is the time to do it!

StormShade “No new factions for Season 3”

1. Mostly polish and bug fixes
2. Get the feeling Cryptic is really sick of the new faction question?

NewEgg promotion:

1. Buy a core i5 processor + motherboard, get a free copy of STO.
2. Offer valid until Sept 5, 2010.

MATH:

(No math this week)

In it’s place:  EPIC CINEMATIC TRAILER OF EPICNESS AND RAD.  I hope.

MAIL:

We asked:  How do you feel about STO moving to a F2P subscription?

Special shout-out to “BlueBadger” – a since-beta DDO vet – that shared with us some lengthy insights into how that community reacted to the F2P move, and how it’s still being received by folks that’ve been on the inside of the issue since the beginning.

General feelings:

1. The game needed the influx of players, or it was going to die.
2. The subscription options allow for veteran players to not feel slighted/ignored (for the most part).
3. The store interface, and repeated encouragement for new players to purchase items from it, raises questions and community issues.  Turbine should not try to ‘bleed’ new players for money.  Let them come to the Store on their own terms.

In a Massively.com article from Feb. it was said:

"That's why it should come as no surprise to hear that since relaunching as a hybrid F2P in September, DDO has managed to amass more than 1 million new players who had never played the game before. According to Turbine, there are over twice as many paid subscribers as there were prior to the change. The revenue from DDO store transactions is now also over 500% — three times the industry standard for similar titles!"

(https://www.massively.com/2010/02/26/one-million-new-adventurers-in-dungeons-and-dragons-online/)

Also remember that LOTRO is going F2P, and EQII recently announced their F2P subscription model as well.  And technically AoC’s Trial is very similar.  This is becoming the way of the future, for games on the decline to re-initiate player interest.

Features/Restrictions proposed for FREE players:

– Minimal forum access (to keep community limited to dedicated players)

– Reduced access to the Exchange (to make it less likely these accounts will be used by ‘gold farmers’)

– Content locks, on a per-system or per-sector basis (to encourage Freepers to buy things).

– Allow Subscribers to purchase ‘Assignments’ that they can give to lower rank Freepers, for individual missions.  (to encourage subscribers to buy these with C-Store points, and to encourage Freepers to subscribe so they can do the same to introduce their friends to the game.)

Generally speaking, our audience seems to think that this would be a GOOD thing for the game, but must be done with care to not alienate existing customers, or come across as a blatant money-grab.

NEXT WEEK’S QUESTION:

We’re holding another contest!  This time, send us your character bio.

Bonus consideration given to those that meet a few requirements:

– Accuracy is important – to the timeline, and to the universe.

– No ‘chosen one’ scenarios (one of a kind, last of a dead race, a Q in human form, etc)

– Canon races will probably have an advantage simply from an “established storyline” standpoint that you can plug into.

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The post Invasion of the Ship Snatchers | STOked 47 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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.

STOked Episode 37: We asked you what you want to see in version 1.0 of a User Generated Content Engine for Star Trek Online, and you told us! We read your ideas on the show.

Plus! We show you some of the high-lights from our recent live STO gaming session this passed weekend!

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Show Notes

NEWS:

    * Team Settings crash: Don’t change your “Team Settings” options while members of your team are on a map other than your current. https://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?p=2724457#post2724457

Don’t buy PC Gamer for the STO Trial!

• – Ghost Ship
• – City on the Edge of Never (and Kuvah’magh)
• – The New Link
• – Ground Zero (Hobus)
• – Iconia
• – Suspect
• – Shut Down
• – The Tribble with Klingons
• – A Crack in the Mirror
• – State of Q

• User Ratings/Rankings
• This is an absolute necessity for weeding out the crap farm-fests, from the truly interactive and well-made stories.  Could be prone to griefing, but still worth the risk.  
• DO NOT TIE IT TO ACCOLADES:  People will artificially rate up/down if there is an Accolade for creating a “5-star” or “1-star” map.  Ruins the true use of the rank system.  Just don’t do it.
• Also add a “Don’t show me this mission again!” option, so that individuals can weed out their own dislikes.
• Many people brainstormed ideas to include some form of QA that doesn’t require 100% hands-on approach by Cryptic.
• Custom Mission Text
• Being limited to pre-fab scripts will kill immersion and creativity.  Give UGC artists the ability to write a script from the ground up.  (Use profanity filter.)
• Custom Bad Guys
• Full alien creation, not a pre-fab list of existing templates (or have both available as options?)
• Must be cross-faction
• Fed, KDF, Rommies, etc.  ALL must be able to use the entire toolset.
• Use the Holodeck!
• Allowing all of this UGC to take place on our ships’ Holodeck fits with canon, and allows the potential for a whole subculture of Holonovelists (complete with some sort of progression tracking?).  Also allows for eventual inclusion of non-Trek costumes & stories, similar to Dixon Hill, Sherlock Holmes, Wild West (Fistful of Datas), Vic Fontaine, Captain Proton and so much more!

• A tutorial!!  (Jeremy personally supports this mechanic)
• Different “hubs” for different progressions of a Holo program (MemAlpha for Beta Testing, major space docks for Round 2 if their ranking is high enough, Quark’s Bar for the best of those for Round 3.
• Player-controlled missions (Live GameMaster scenarios that could include creator/narrator-controlled NPCs)

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The post What YOU Want in a UGC Engine | STOked 37 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.