[Ninja]

Some amazing things planned for Feb/Mar/Future. I was especially interested in the Feb Engineering Report. Also from the Feb Ask Cryptic Interview i thought an "Officer Exchange" as well as reducing the Zoning are two very important features as well. Also interesting was allowing pets to be part of away team missions, although i am against this because it's far from ST canon. I think there is a considerable demand for more "aesthetic" and canon related items as well as plans to introduce a lot. These could all go on the C-store and allow the game to go F2P (Free 2 Play). I hope this trend is a way to pave that path...

All this makes me much more excited to keep grinding and paying the subscription fee!

In Testing

• Feature Episode Series 3: Cloaked Intetions
• New playable shuttles and fighter craft

In Development
Almost everything in this section seems awesome, ESPECIALLY new ground combat gameplay. I hate ground combat as it is now.

The Future

• Allowing players to purchase more inventory slots
• Opening up shared exploration sectors (e.g. Hromi Cluster)
• Adding melee weaponsmiths to the game that sell specific ground weapons
• Adding open PVP melee areas to social maps (Andoria, Vulcan, Qo'noS, Rura Penthe)
• Repurposing some Feature Episode maps as new PVP maps
• Fleet Starbases
• Removing restriction on number of players required to create a Fleet
• Allowing Fleet Bank size to automatically scale with the size of the Fleet
• Combining Marks and Emblems to a single scaled currency system
• Allowing away team powers to be assigned to hotkeys
• Adding ability to warp to a friend
• Adding a functioning shuttlebay for ship interiors (allows you to switch to your shuttle without returning to Spacedock)
• Removing the restriction that you can only craft on Memory Alpha or Qo'noS
• More shuttle specific mission types
• Replacing Deepspace Encounters with more instanced missions
• More PVP Maps
• More iconic locations such as Starfleet Academy, Rura Penthe etc...
• Additional Playable Factions (Romulan, Cardassian...)
• More Species (Androids, Aenar, Talaxian, Hologram species)

[Torzan Dekar]

Can't wait for some of these things to come out. Although it was said before that they would level out the Klingon faction before designing a new faction (hope its romulans)

[washproof]

These could all go on the C-store and allow the game to go F2P (Free 2 Play). I hope this trend is a way to pave that path...

well if that does happen it will mean I payed over

[Ninja]

[QUOTE={UFP}washproof;62009]well if that does happen it will mean I payed over

[Christopher Halsey]

IF Star Trek Online were to go F2P it would be unlikely to hurt those that had purchased subscriptions. Most P2P MMOs that go F2P do not do away with subscriptions.

Subscribers get premium access, allowing them access to more content. F2P members get access to less content. You also get different features. Subscribers get more character and item slots, more customization and access to better items than F2P players.

As an example STO F2P would be like not being able to get above the rank of Commander and not being able to get items that are green or above. Or only be able to play Klingon. I am not saying this is what they would do but giving an example of how the F2P experience is limited compared to that of the subscription method when a traditional P2P MMO goes F2P.

I wouldn't be too concerned with STO going F2P, Atari will most likely want to see how Champions Online does for a full financial year before looking at whether or not to do it for STO. Atari's MMOs were a huge boost to the companies figures for the financial year that just ended, over all revenues were quite poor for Atari but the MMOs really contributed to what they did make, they won't want to risk that before having a better understanding of how F2P is going to impact those results.