Game ?

[Psycho Dad]

1. Is it worth playing as a duo?
2. Is it Pay to win?
3. Is can me and a friend avoid PvP and still clear end game content?

[andreasaspenberg575]

you can play well together. though there is missions that you have to solo. most missions can be played multiplayer however. pvp is entirely optional. you can easily avoid it. there is one endeavor that requires pvp but, you can just skip it. you generally need to pay to get the best ships, though you get some good free ships a few times per year.

[Agnithrax]

1.) Definitely. BUT...

a.) There is a short tutorial session you'll have to complete separately and then you will be able to team up together and do PvE runs.

b.) For PvE runs you will be paired up with 3 other pug players for a total team of 5 on TFO's; although under the same PvE button is a Patrol tab at the top where you will be able to launch missions for just the both of you if that's your preference. At first the PvE will be slim pickings as you unlock more of them by leveling up and it takes maybe a month of casual play to reach max level.

c.) The storyline following from the tutorial I'm afraid is also solo play and you won't be able to share the storyline together. In the story though a whole lot of the actors from the shows reprise their rolls for the game. The game is essentially grindcore with a half dozen or so different types of currencies to accumulate with roughly twice that number in the Mark's currency and maybe ten times that number in various crafting materials all gathered mainly from grinding out TFO's. After hearing all this, whether it's ultimately worth playing together just for the player vs. environment stuff is up to you to decide; for myself I dig it and what you'll be doing together is more or less all everyone does all day at endgame anyway.

2) Not in the least.

3) No paywalls for content and historically they've been the least hard sell game I've come across, albeit I haven't looked very much after choosing this one for my dopamine button to mash and mash and mash down on. Last year Embracer Group got played by this Saudi game company which left them in a fix though. We are in the midst of their second restructuring and while the Cryptic developers were moved under a company called DECA for Embracer, this very month actually Cryptic has been dissolved and STO will be in the direct hands of DECA. DECA runs Realm of the Mad God, infamously the most player unfriendly game there has ever been, so with STO in DECA's hands things may change very drastically very soon. Furthermore DECA is a gaming company specializing in maintaining old games and you will find STO glitchey spaghettiware from decades of code over code over "the dev who knew how to do x, y and z is gone so we don't even know how to u,v or w anymore."

Many hope for changes and fixes, but my fears are DECA will put the game on life support and start ramping up all the untapped revenue streams available to implement since Cryptic was averse to taking players for all they could get. Cryptic kept the money rolling in by making the whales happy and the PvP is their Sea World Tank where should you enter PvP the whales will eat you; so there is some PvP content you can see if you like re-spawning a lot to see it, and technically that's also open content to you should you want to see it but ultimately is all entirely unnecessary for any long term play.

LLAP!

[cap-boulanger]

Originally posted by Agnithrax:

c.) The storyline following from the tutorial I'm afraid is also solo play and you won't be able to share the storyline together. In the story though a whole lot of the actors from the shows reprise their rolls for the game. The game is essentially grindcore with a half dozen or so different types of currencies to accumulate with roughly twice that number in the Mark's currency and maybe ten times that number in various crafting materials all gathered mainly from grinding out TFO's. After hearing all this, whether it's ultimately worth playing together just for the player vs. environment stuff is up to you to decide; for myself I dig it and what you'll be doing together is more or less all everyone does all day at endgame anyway.

Actually, many (not all) storyline episodes can be done with a team.

[Agnithrax]

Awesomesauce, I had no idea.

[ODST_General]

Originally posted by Psycho Dad:

1. Is it worth playing as a duo?
2. Is it Pay to win?
3. Is can me and a friend avoid PvP and still clear end game content?

1) As a couple of other people said, the majority of both episodes (story missions) and TFOs (endgame group content) can be played by a group of up to 5 players. A few story missions actually present some alternative options for different player classes, so having a player of a different class can be slightly beneficial, though not required. The TFOs typically require a team of 5, and will pair you with random players in order to fill any spots.

2) The majority of content is PVE/Cooperative. So Pay to Win doesn't really apply. On average, paid ship, weapons, etc. Are usually the best in the game, but with stuff like player crafted items and all the different builds, abilities, and equipment level, and quality. You can still make perfectly capable free builds once you have a decent understanding of the game and mechanics.

3) As others have said, PVP is completely avoidable. As mentioned above, end game basically boils down to repeating specific TFOs to grind up "Reputations" and grind out dilithium which is used to buy/upgrade gear or can be converted to premium store currency. Advancing the Reputations unlocks additional gear and abilities for the player to purchase using a combination of currencies. There is also usually some FOMO event running, which has you running a mission or set of missions over the course of a month to unlock some special reward. The current one being a Halloween themed mission that unlocks a sword and pet cat that follows the player out of combat.

[[S.A.S]sephchan]

Yes
Yes
Yes

[x1Heavy]

And yes.

[-=EDF=- Kouta Seto]

Originally posted by Psycho Dad:

1. Is it worth playing as a duo?
2. Is it Pay to win?
3. Is can me and a friend avoid PvP and still clear end game content?

1. Yes you can play with 2 people, safe the tutorial and very few missions that require you going in solo. Some endgame contend will put you in teams of 4, but you can still queue as 2 person team, the other 2 will be randomly selected then.
2. Yes its P2W... you COULD earn that stuff, but that time, as long as Dili to Zen is broken AF, is long gone. Dont let anyone tell you its not... i could wipe the floor with any newcommer anytime basicaly right after the tutorial, simply because i have a frelling T6 ship and you dont.
3. there is no PVP unless you want it specificaly. PVP is NOT required and NOT needed in this game. Its for those who care about it, but gives you nothing realy usefull in return. So no Klingon randomly attacking you out of nowhere (as funny as that would have ben back when it first released given there was NO P2W to be found (among other nice stuff like strangers that could just happen to aid you in your missions and such... all things long gone sadly...)

[尺丹乙回尺 𖤐]

I thought it was worth it until they took away the foundry. Man, I miss it.

[andreasaspenberg575]

i do miss playing custom missions but, there is a lot of missions added after the foundry was removed.

[Svenicus]

sorry to topic invade but whats the GFX like these days? havent played in like 5-6 year... is it still the same?

[NIkto Barada]

dx 11 upgrade was added and compatibility mode is gone. ds9 and some other maps are now very dark if playing without certain options- dont ask me about outside game enhancements via grfx card programs.

[Streifi]

1.) Yes. You can play most missions together, but there might be one or two missions that have to be soloed. Apart from that you can play pretty much everything together.

2.) No. Most things you can buy for real money are either nice-to-have due to them being iconic ships for example, or being new releases and some of them certainly help clearing the content faster, but none of them are required.

Since this game doesn't have a paywall for playable content or expansions, you can play through its entirety without having to spend any money at all.

Only in PvP the game might be pay2win, since better ships and/or equipment from the shop might have an edge to the general free equipment, but since I'm not a minmaxer, I can't tell you the exact metrics. But due to your third question I assume that PvP isn't of much interest to you anyway.

3.) Yes. You can avoid PvP and still play through the entire game to reach the endgame. The endgame is composed of repeatable actions like special task force missions (kinda like an instance or a raid in other MMOGs) and are done in groups. You don't have to do any PvP to get there. All missions are available to you as well and don't require you to do PvP. There are specific PvP-missions however, but they're not part of the regular story arcs and if the rewards don't interest you, you can safely skip them without missing out on the games story.

Some missions invite you to replay them by offering multiple parts of item sets as reward (but you can only claim one at a time when you complete the mission), so having a pal with whom to play through them might be fun. A select few missions also offer different options on how to approach the challenges ahead, so it might be fun to play through them again and try out something differently.

If I may recommend you something: Some missions have different optional objectives based on your professions (class), so playing together with different professions makes you reach those goals as well. So I recommend to you that you and your friend choose different professions, so you can complement each other better.

Have fun in the game, should you and your friend choose to play it, that is! :)