Our STO group has been running the new missions and some of the new fleet actions and the new space battleground and...

... this is all really, really keen, actually. I find myself liking most of the changes.

Re: the graphics woes, for some reason they've split the graphics settings into, well, Graphics, and also the Display tab. Because THAT makes perfect sense. I had the horrible jaggies until I found that the antialiasing settings were in the display section.

I don't understand this design choice but I can't say it's not unheralded: STO has never had a proper UI designer onboard, near as I can tell.

At any rate, the new missions are fun. I found myself thinking "This is lame! They reduced two episode arcs to just four missions!" and then I was reminded that most of those episode missions were horribly grindy and non-fun, which is true. They were. These four missions cover the same ground and hook in some of the endgame stuff and ... well, they're pretty nice. They're not grindy at all, you can blast through them or take your time and smell the roses. I think they're very well done.

(I also have to give huge kudos to the devs for doing a SWTOR-like conversation system in them. I really hope that gets expanded elsewhere. It makes it less annoying -- now, whoever clicks first doesn't get to say what all of you do.)

I had a moment of absolute dread when I saw one of the fleet actions. It's basically a lane defense/escort mission rolled into one unholy menage a crappe; except when you get into it they've done everything right instead of giving you the finger. The ships you have to escort are apparently indestructible (well, they're Andorian...), they push forward as fast as you can clear the enemies rather than being scripted to lag behind, and there's no time limit that we were able to find. That action turned out to be a helluva lot of fun.

My dread was unfounded, is what I was saying.

The other fleet action we tried is more typical of standard STO fare, except here again they've opted to avoid the traditional fuck-yous to the players. There is still a pretty substantial one but while the movement debuff is annoying (and can be deadly), it's not unavoidable.

At this point they just need to get rid of the interruptible trigger actions and everything will be roses and sunshine.

Finally, the new space battlezone is... well, it's a battlezone. Except in space. If you like the Voth ground battlezone, you'll probably like this. I note it can pulverize the ability of your graphics card to make with the pretty pew-pew beams and such. During the entire fight the only way I could tell I was shooting was by watching the numbers fly off the enemy (and my power tray cycling). But for all that it's still pretty fun and they've fixed some of the more glaring ground zone problems. In the space zone, you get credit for it regardless of how long you've been there or whether you did enough damage to get past some magic threshold.

All in all I'm extremely pleased with all the updates.

Now, pardon me, I'mma go back to adding glowy techy bits to everyone. :D

--sofaspud
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