Cryptic, your free trial/refer a friend/welcome back weekend starts this Friday. Before that happens you might want to consider fixing a few specific bugs which make this game look unpolished. These aren't necessarily the worst bugs out there, but they are ones your future potential customers are likely to run into on their visit here.
If you want to make a good first impression, I'd consider taking care of the following before this weekend:
Art Issues- When you changed the transporter effects you introduced a bug where the alpha/transparency mask surrounding the combadge and rank pips become clearly visible during the transporter sequence. Using your transporter is a pretty signature Star Trek moment and it looks unpolished.
- When you go to warp (or exit warp), your ship frequently makes a brief appearance in the wrong spot - either appearing at the final destination for a moment before vanishing and doing the "warp in" animation, or doing the "warp out" animation and then briefly reappearing back at the starting point for a moment before the loading screen appears. "Going to warp" is a pretty signature Star Trek moment and it looks unpolished.
- Ship scanning Beam points in wrong direction - When attempting to retrieve (scan) an item like an anomaly, the beam that comes from the deflector dish no longer points forward. Instead it points towards coordinates 0,0,0 on the map, often causing the beam to go through your ship or point away from the anomaly. It looks very (and obviously) broken.
- Several injured crew members in sickbay in the new-player tutorial are floating several feet in the air above their bio-beds. Looks pretty weird and broken.
Combat Issues
- Damage from NPC phaser pistols is bugged and appears to be behaving as if they are melee attacks. They completely ignore shields and do direct health damage. This problem isn't really very noticeable on normal difficulty, but anyone trying the harder difficulty settings (especially elite) is going to notice this (and be confused/and or killed by it) quickly.
- Damage from NPC "bolt spray" attacks on higher difficulty setting may need looking into as it seems unusually high (and hits multiple times). Players who are prepared for it can barely survive those types of attacks. Newer players trying out higher difficulty settings for the first time are likely to get slaughtered.
User Interface Issues
- The last patch introduced an indicator on the target portraits, in the form of a little white arrow showing which shield you were currently facing/firing on. Right now the indicator has the left and the right shield facing confused (that is, it indicates the player is bearing down on the right shield when they're actually facing the left, and visa versa.
- Currently there is a problem where only one random page of a multi-page dialogue debriefings is showing. This often causes storyline missions to end confusingly. More information and examples of this bug can be located here: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=152567
PvP
- The new changes to the queue system are causing players to get stuck alone in PvP mission maps, unable to compete and/or complete the map or leave without logging out and waiting 15+ minutes for a reset.
I would like players to have a good "first impression" this weekend. The more subscribers, the more resources continued development of this game has to work with. Does anyone have any other obvious issues players are likely to run into this weekend which might make the game look unpolished or confusing?
edit: added to list.
Comments
Art Issue
Normally I don't care, but the OP is right this might not be good for first impressions, given the amount of scanning that goes on at low levels.
Glad you brought this up. This was really bothering me over the weekend.
That's right, how did I forget that one. The issue here is that the scan graphic (when you hit "F" to pick up an anomoly, not "V" to find it) doesn't point straight forward like it used to. Now it points towards coordinates 0,0,0 of whatever map you're on. It looks/is very broken and won't make any sense to a new player.
In the Fed side tutorial, when you go thru the doors and talk to the EMH guy the injured crew are mostly floating above the medical station, even above the "MRI" ring. Talk about a bad 1st impression, its the 1st door instance you have in STO. I bugged it way back in Feb, and its still borked.
PVP QUE SYSTEM
With the "new and improved" Q system that locks you into hopelessly outnumbered matches with no hope for anyone joining and making it an even fight, this "Flavorful" recent addition is probably going to make new players sprint away from STO if they are heavy PvP'ers.
Great catch combadge!
1. Sometimes when changing zones you enter facing a different direction than you were originally. Usually this is 90 degrees left or right. Since its the same wrong angle as the scanning beams and both bugs happened at the same time, I have a hunch they're connected.
2. The transporter transparency issue mentioned on the OP also affects things like facial hair. Which looks even worse than the combadge issue.
yes i had noticed these and would like them fixed as they are a little annoying
- fix PvP
- get a new game engine
Can those get done by Saturday?
There are a lot of things that can be improved upon, but there is only so much that can be done by the weekend. I would prefer they focus on highly visible bugs that players are probably going to notice within their initial visit.
I agree with all the stuff on the list. For sure. But the PVP one makes me the most worried. I can see people still giving the game a try even if the transporter graphics are off a bit. But I can see them raging and never trying the game again if they get stuck in PVP limbo.
Same here, Vorta.