Mods in the Game

Well, looking back on my posts thus far, it seems like I am pretty hard on World of Warcraft (for a variety of reasons which I did my best to explain).

However, I just achieved the rank of Commander in STO (which included a new ship!) as well as upgrades on my weapon systems, my bridge crew's abilities, and my own abilities.

In other words, the already unwieldy amount of skills to keep track of during PvE gameplay has just increased drastically.

In STO, you can assign your skills to specific key combinations (the numbers 0-9, ctrl+0-9, and alt+0-9) and it really just becomes a game of memorization to remember which combinations are which skills or attacks, as well as what skills need to be used before specific attacks. It becomes extremely complicated. For example, in every space battle I fought before I got this new ship, my open gambit was the following key strokes:

ctrl+1: Directed Energy Modulation (which helps energy weapons to penetrate ship shields)
ctrl+4: Rotate Shield Frequencies (which helps reduce the damage taken to ones own ship)
6: Tachyon Beam (which depletes the opponent's shields)
5: High Yield (which increases the damage of the next torpedo attack)
1: Phaser Cannons (which is an attack)
2: Quantum Torpedo (which is an attack)

At various points throughout the battle, I would not only  need to reuse ctrl+1 and ctrl+4 as they came off of cooldown, but also use a variety of other skills (all of which are assigned similar key strokes).

This is, to a certain extent, simply how these games work: you either have to think about the button combinations or you hit them by reflex. However, one of the greatest innovations and benefits of World of Warcraft, in my opinion, is the ability for meta-game modification of the interfaces themselves as well as the construction of skills. In the case of the former, various mods have been programmed by gamers and can be integrated into ones own WoW interface that alter how one interacts with the information. When I played a Death Knight, for example, I downloaded a mod that altered how my HP and Runes (the equivalent to magical power for the class) were displayed so that it was more prominent and allowed me to better plan what skills I was using. I also downloaded one of many different skill bar mods that altered how one could organize skills and items for gameplay. In the case of the latter, it is possible to construct skill macros that will utilize certain skills and attacks in a preconfigured order. If the proper attack sequence, for example, required one to press "5" and then "2", one could simply construct a macro that would cast the spell associated with "5" and then automatically follow it with the skill associated with "2", thus decreasing the keystrokes necessary for the attack sequence.

I wish that STO had either of these functions. (Maybe it does, and I just haven't figured out how to use them yet; I have been trying to keep myself from using meta-game sources in order to preserve my own interactions with the game world)

Crafting!

I just figured out how to craft things (also known as conducting "research and development" in the Star Trek Online universe).

Fortunately, I have been hanging on to my mats for so long that I got to go on a crafting spree.

Additionally, I discovered that one can generally craft better equipment for one's character and starship than one can purchase. Maybe I'll stop wasting all my merits and energy credits at the stores now that I understand how the process works.

The Silence

It's really really quiet in the world of Star Trek Online. Well, if you include the sound effects, the music, and the other in-game noises, there's always a background of space clicks and beeps, some scary drum music that means battle, and the rush of warp engines powering up.

But there really is not a significant amount of chatter.

Coming from World of Warcraft, I was initially glad to get away from the incessant trolling of the chat bars, the neverending use of derogatory language, the constant stream of mispelled words flowing across the lower left corner of my screen.

But now, I actually am starting to miss it.

I'm not sure if the lack of chatter is because of the low population of players (compared to WoW, STO has barely any!), or simply because I am not a high enough level to get missions in the more populated zones. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I have yet to joing a Fleet (STO's equivalent of a guild). Either way, it is distressing me, and I am not really sure why.

I am an avid RPG player. I've spent months on end playing various games, many of which are similar in structure to STO and WoW. Maybe the anxiety about silence is coming from the simple distinction between MMORPG and a standard RPG: in the former, you know that there are other people out there, and you can see them; in the latter, there is no one else, so the lack of chat is an inherent part of the game's structure.

The social anxiety is pushing me towards exploring different times at which I should play the game. Perhaps on weekends, or late at night there are more people on the server who might be chatting more. Perhaps it is just a part of STO: people are less likely in this game to chat randomly about things that don't particularly matter.

It's not so much that I want people to talk to me; rather, I miss having that constant hum in the background.