Season 8 Dev Blog #39

As someone who often plays PvP and cares for this type of content deeply, it is my genuine pleasure to let you all know about our upcoming new PvP mode: Small Craft Arena.

For the first time ever, we have created a cross-faction PvP queue that allows Klingon, Romulan, and Federation players to queue up for War Games against each other, all from the same queue. This ensures that matches can be found in the shortest time possible for this new mode. But the fun doesn’t stop there – we’ll be putting you in your small crafts (shuttles, fighters, captain’s yachts, etc.)!

For the past couple years, players and fleets have enjoyed informal Small Craft PvP matches via the private PvP queues, as well as through various events that our Community Team has run. Thanks to your turnout at these events and the great feedback we’ve received about how fun they have been, we’ve decided to make an official queue.

Launching later this month, level 50 players who have set a default small craft will be able to queue up via the public PvP queue for “Small Craft Arena,” which takes place in the ‘Cracked Planetoid’ map. While the first team to 15 kills wins the match, you’ll earn Expertise and Energy Credits at the match’s end whether you win or lose, as well as credit towards any daily Arena PvP missions you have active in your journal (a great source of Dilithium!). Haven’t set up a default small craft yet? Head to your favorite shipyard and speak with the “ship selector” contact.

This entirely fresh experience brings new aspect into the game for customizing and creating builds for your small craft. Given the substantial differences between small craft mechanics and standard ships, we are excited to see the builds and tactics that arise from this new challenge. We’re also hoping that the quick queue time and fast-paced nature of the game will result in a more bite-sized time investment required to casually PvP, allowing many more players to participate in PvP systems.

We hope you enjoy this incredibly fun, new PvP mode, and we will be closely watching out for your feedback on it now in the Tribble forums (as it’s available for testing), and when it goes live on Holodeck with Season 8.5 on the 30th.

See you in the queues, Captains!

Jeff "AdjudicatorHawk" Hamilton
Systems Designer
Star Trek Online

Ooooh. This sounds fun. I don't normally pvp, cos I just get steamrolled, but I'll certainly be giving this a try.

I've PvPed a total of once, my level 50 character against a level 37 engineer. I lost 14 to 2! I wonder what it is about PvP...

Did have the effect of sharpening up my gameplay a lot, even once - he taught me a few things about kits and so on that have enabled me to beat a few more NPCs, though not him! Somehow it all just goes straight out the other ear when it's just me against the computer, in a way it doesn't when there's another human being involved. Might join you one of these times.

One thing that is a pity, though, is that it still has to be 15 wins even when there are only two of you. That would be fine when it's shared between a whole team, but I was mighty tired of it long before the other chap had notched up 15 wins by himself, and it wasn't as if they were taking him long...

Last time I was in game, i ended up talking to a Rommie I was in a red alert with. We ended up having a pvp, my tier 50 Defiant vs his tier 40 D'Deridex. Both were Engies. He couldn't get my shields down and I couldn't finish him because he kept cloaking to heal. I even cloaked and switched my sci boff mid match to try better. Ended up like this for a good 30 minutes before he decided to not cloak and try it. He popped. But it was fun. There was an awesome part early on though, where I cloaked at the exact instant he decloaked directly in front of me. Gave me a chance to slip around and pummel him. We did decide to end it after that first victory though, as it was dragging on a looong time.


If anyone fancies a pvp one on one (or even 2 on 2 etc), I'm happy to play with fleeties.