Give or take about 6 months or so ago, Dan Stahl stepped down as Executive Producer for Star Trek Online.

Yesterday.. Cryptic announced that they’ve found someone to fill the Executive Producer slot… they picked… Dan Stahl.

The official announcement is here.

Maybe as one of his first duties back in the role.. he can undo the asinine decision to drop loot boxes, that customers then have to pay real money to buy the keys to open and use.

Star Trek Online’s 2 year anniversary event started yesterday… I hadn’t logged in to play in ages (even after they went F2P), so I figured I’d log in and see what improvements they may have made to the game since I last played.

Loading screens are prettier, they revised the ground combat system (I didn’t do any ground missions, since I was just checking out the anniversary hoopla), and they do appear to have fixed some bugs.. I may have to give it a more in depth re-vist next time SWTOR is down.

Look who's 2!

Here’s a blurb about the Anniversary event, from the official site.. I will say the new Odyessy class ship… turns like a freaking house.. would not want to be in a fight that required a lot of quick movement.

Q: So what are we celebrating?
A: Star Trek Online first launched on February 2, 2010. This week marks the second anniversary of the game being live. We’re also celebrating the recent shift of STO to a free-to-play game.

Q: How long does the event run?
A: From around 10:00am PST on Thursday, February 2, 2012 through around 10:00am PST on Monday, February 6, 2012.

Q: What are the parts of the celebration?
A: In addition to the fun activities planned by the community, there are two special activities that you can participate in. First is a daily Q mission and second is a one-time flagship mission.

Q: What is the daily Q mission?
A: Each day, you can talk to Q at Earth Spacedock or on Qo’noS. When you do, he will offer you a mission that has you go to Starfleet Academy or the KDF Academy. This mission involves chasing down some pests that got loose, then returning to Q. Remember that you can run faster by pressing the Shift key to sprint.

Q: What are the rewards of this mission?
A: When you complete the mission, Q will give you a choice of reward. There are three choices.

1) A “Two Year Anniversary Party Popper” item that does silly things when you use it.
2) A mystery box.
3) A box with 500 Dilithium Ore in it.

If you choose the mystery box, opening it randomly awards one of four things.

1) A box that contains random Green, Blue, or Purple quality item.
2) A box that contains some high end consumables.
3) A 1 hour Skill Point boost.
4) The “One Year Anniversary Party Popper” item that does silly things when you use it.

If you complete the mission multiple times and choose the mystery box multiple times, you may get the same reward more than once. The reward is random and there is no guarantee that you will get different rewards each time.

Q: How often can I do the Q mission?
A: Each time you do the mission, you cannot do it again for 20 hours. This makes it doable roughly once each day, which is why we call it a daily mission. If you go back to try and get the mission, it will show a countdown timer there of how long you need to wait before the mission is available again.

Q: How does the flagship mission work for Federation characters?
A: One time during the event, a Federation character of level 5 or higher can talk to Engineer Kani on Earth Spacedock to start the mission. The mission will ask you to take a brand new Odyssey class starship out on a shakedown cruise. At the completion of the mission, the character will receive a non-tradable inventory item that contains a starship. This item cannot be opened to actually get the starship until the character achieves the rank of Vice Admiral at level 50.

Q: How does the flagship mission work for Klingon characters?
A: One time during the event, a KDF character of level 21 or higher can talk to Engineer Tum’Era on Qo’noS. The mission will ask you to take a brand new Bortas class starship out on a shakedown cruise. At the completion of the mission, the character will receive a non-tradable inventory item that contains a starship. This item cannot be opened to actually get the starship until the character achieves the rank of Lt. General at level 50.

Q: Is there any other way to get an Odyssey class or Bortas class starship?
A: Not at this time. The ship is free to everyone who completes the mission during this event. After the event, there will be no way to obtain these ships for some time. We have not decided on when they will return to the game. You can expect that variations of these ships will show up in the C-Store next month.

Q: Is there a fast way to get to the event location?
A: There is a transwarp button in the mission journal that can speed your travel to Earth Spacedock or Qo’noS if you need it.

In this week’s weekly maintenance, Cryptic pushed Season 4 out to players of Star Trek Online.

This is the ‘big’ update that is supposed to ‘fix’ the absolutely horrible ground combat system STO has had since launch.  Full patch notes can be accessed here. Here’s a quick snippet about the ground combat changes this patch introduced.

Ground Combat Update

Shooter Mode

• There is now an alternate firing mode called “shooter mode”. Shooter mode is very responsive, and allows for quicker acquisition of targets via the targeting reticule. Use L-Mouse and R-Mouse to fire your primary and secondary attack on your weapon. Middle mouse will activate your melee attack. You can, however, still use the keyboard keys – 1, 2, and 3 – if you prefer. Notice you can fire your weapon without a target while in shooter mode, and players can now miss targets.
• There are new shooter mode specific keybind options in the options menu.

Swap to shooter mode

• Use the B key to Swap between Shooter and RPG mode. If you open a menu (like your skill page) while in shooter mode, you will temporarily drop back to RPG mode, so you can maintain control over your character and interact with the window.
• Players can auto-attack their primary fire in shooter mode by holding down the left mouse button in a default button layout.

Classic controls are unaffected

• It was important to us to maintain the classic RPG control scheme in STO. You can continue to play with the original control, use the new Shooter controls, or switch back and forth on-the-fly at any time.

New Options

• To help preserve the classic controls, there is now a new set of shooter mode controls and keybinds in the options menu, so you can manage both independently.

I have not had the opportunity to play since the patch.  So I don’t know how much of an improvement the new ground combat system actually is.  I do know, that I always tried to avoid missions involving ground combat because the original system the game shipped with was just that bad.  Which means, pretty much anything would be an improvement ;)  I’ll try and get on this weekend, and give it a whirl.

Non-TOR related news.. This coming weekend (June 23rd – June 27th).  Q will be visiting Earth Spacedock (or Qo’noS if you’re a Klingon) and giving you a double XP boost.  Assuming it’s working like it did last time.. the buff isn’t permanent, and you’ll need to head back to Q every so often to get the buff applied.

If you’re still playing STO, and have an alt you need to level up.. this is a good weekend to crank out a few levels.

“Make it So”

Another patch, more added content!

During maintenance today, Cryptic added in some more stuff, and made some much needed improvements to how Memory Alpha works, although there is still no equivalent ‘crafting’ method for Klingons.  Personally, I think the whole ‘crafting’ thing needs to go… it just doesn’t fit Star Trek if you ask me.

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Cryptic has announced their RAF rewards.  Looks pretty good so far.  Similar to WoW they give you an auto-teleport to your referred friend, some leveling bonuses (though, not as extreme as WOW’s).  And after 5 referrals, a new Tier 5 ship you can use (the Galaxy class from ‘All Good Things).

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Little patch released today to address some of the bugs found in the Season 1.1 update.   Here’s the notes:

Greetings!

Update ST.1.20100420a.14
Today’s update is a hotfix to address some issues in the Season 1.1 update that were released on Thursday. We are releasing this ASAP as we feel the PVP issue is critical enough to warrent a weekend update (vs waiting till next week). We’ve also included a few other fixes that were available and ready to go out.

Updates

• PVP missions were not tracking mission completion properly and so you were no longer getting credit for completing a match. This is fixed now.
• Space PVP Assault maps were not tracking score properly and would sometimes end after 3 points instead of the intended 30 points. This is fixed now which should make these PVP maps playable again.
• Injury Pack vendors now allows for bulk purchases. Also the word “ea” is shown after the price to be clear that the price is per item.
• We’ve increased the chances that you’ll find more “Aid the Planet” missions in Star Clusters. It is still random and rare, but previously after completing one, there was a cooldown timer before you could get another one, and that timer has been reduced.
• We’ve fixed an issue where DPS and Bind stats on Mark Store tooltips was displaying crazy numbers. Those tooltips should now be based on the actual item and correct.
• Fixed an issue where you could get in a bad respec state if you attempted to rank down some skills.
• The Pakled species traits have been updated and now properly show their traits in status windows.
• Addressed an animation issue where you would sometimes “slide” if you were firing a weapon and rolling at the same time.
• Mark vendor stores had inadvertantly replaced the Anti-proton gear substore with ground gear. This has been fixed and Anti-Proton gear is now available again.

Fixed several client crashes that were introduced in the last update.

Received an email this morning from Cryptic announcing Veteran’s rewards and some other ‘specials’ (Free ‘welcome back’ weekend to subscribers who quit, free trial for new players, refer a friend promotion, etc..)

All good things, little disappointed about losing the ‘Lifetime only’ status for the Captain’s Table.. but in the end, it’ll be ok.

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This morning’s maintenance window brings us the next update, which includes the Death Penalty and Difficulty slider.

Also included are some much needed improvements to the Exchange..

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The build currently on Tribble has some changes made to the way the forthcoming Death Penalty will work. Cryptic is removing the Death Penalty from easy mode (read that as ‘normal’ on the slider, the same difficulty the game is now). Apparently, possibly receiving a minor “injury” a small percentage of the times they died, would be too much for some people.