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Another STO review.
recsa
Member Posts: 13
After playing the Beta (im not even finishing the beta) i have to say that STO is nothing but a failed game, i was very upset about how Cryptic could have finished a so big project in almost 2 years (average MMO industry for pay to play games is around 3-4 years) but still i had my hope for a good Start Trek game .... i will have to wait for next one, STO is not and hardly will ever be, its not a matter of bugs, those can be easily solved, its a design problem, most of its sub systems are badly designed, all the game looks like a title that would have been published 5 or 6 years ago, some samples:
- Space combat is terrible, its not a true 3D, all the game is designed in 2D environment with some 3D imitation, you cant make a loop with your ship, you cant shoot up or down, everything is played in a thin plane that makes you remember the old days when developers had to struggle their minds to simulate real 3D environments.
- All weapons have same range, which limits the tactical potential.
- Theres very little options available to combat, you can fire, turn, control speed (although it really has no much effect), balance shields, ... and almost anuthing more, no targetable ship's sub systems, no weapon groups configuration, none of the usual match speed, chase, lock, etc etc features in other (and older) space combat games.
- Ground combat is just a bad joke, can't even describe it, its just a bad joke, if you have ever played any MMORPG out there and take a look at STO combat mechanics ... you will just cry.
- Space is no bigger than a shoes box, they made star systems soooo big and sectors so small that you can visit all the systems in just one night.
- Space is EMPTY, theres no life at all, i wonder why are hundreds of races strugling to control the galaxy .... why are klibgons and Feds in war, theres nothing to fight for, the few star systems that exists are empty, they have only 1 planet in the best and you cant visit it unles they give you a mission to do it, and even then you can only see the small "dungeon" they want you to see, the rest of the planet? it just simply doesnt exist, theres 0 work in modeling the game world, just a couple repetitive space station rooms, and few more. Now i can understand why they made it in 2 years, now i even think they took too much time.
- Theres no FREEDOM, MMORPG have been defined because its freedom, they are not like shooters or offline RPGs where you have a story driven gameplay, main quest, side quests and you go here and there, in MMORPGs devs build a world, and drop you there, from that point is up to you where to go, where and how to fight, play, socialize, ... in STO thats not happening, as said theres no world for you to explore, you can only follow the quests or you will never see nothing but empty maps.
- No crafting at all.
- Doesnt matter the lvl once you fight with your first ship, the rest of the game is all same, bigger ship = bigger enemies = exactly same gameplay, tehre are very very few player abilities at your disposal, so theres no real sense of achievement when you level up, you fly over the levels without the expectation to reach the next lvl, you can even level up unnoticed, keep playing and then say: "oh i leveled up, well, i will spend the skill points later, now im too busy doing ... nothing"
- All the loot is junk and sells form so much money at vendors that you can buy anything you want, and since vendors have on sale all the equipment you could ever loot and better ... one thing is sure they found the formulae to avoid greeding, there will never be fights for loot, no one cares about it.
- Even if you are an Star Trek fan, you will be really pissed with STO, Cryptic has got the Intellectual Property to be able to use the names, images, uniforms, music, .... but thats all, theres very few Star Trek feeling on the game, everything in teh game is solved by firing first talking later, well you only talk to your quest giver to collect the reward, its more like wild west in space, no exploration, no diplomacy, no puzle, no ... nothing, just fly - engage - kill, then move to next mission ... rinse and repeat.
- Also now that they retracted from their word to community and added an skill cap, many people says that they will need more character slots (only 3 allowed, the 4th has to be paid) because they want to test the 3 federation classes and the 3 Klingon classes ... well, theres no need, once you have played a Federation toon, you can save the time to play a Klingon one, its exactly the same, you just change the UI color from blue to red, but rest is exactly same, same skills, same abilities, hey, but they have klingon names ... NO they have same names too, your Federation Tactical Bridge Officer comes with Hail Yield I ability ... your klingon Tactical (same name here too) Bridge Officer comes with .... guess it ... Hail Yield I ability, and so on.
I could go on and continue enumerating its failure to make an even decent pay to play MMORPG in 2010, but the list would be gigantic, in overal, if this title would have been published 5 or 6 years ago, it would have been a game with some interest, but MMORPG industry standrads this days is way way ahead of what STO can offer.
STO is nothing but a cheap game done in hurry to get the bucks out from people that feels the need to play in a Star Trek world, from here i will never again put any hype on a Cryptic release.
Comments
Yes, you are right, i use to come to MMORPG.com to look for opinions, and check for nw titles, but never felt the need to register and share my thoughts about a game, but Cryptic has really pissed me, i cant understand how a company with some success, can release a game like STO in 2010, and more when they are using a Franchise like Star Trek that guaranties fans coming to the game, its frustrating, so i thought that maybe if some one reads my comments and just keeps away from STO, maybe, if more people does it, Cryptic will notice they dont have the support they were looking for and next time they design a game acordingly to its time.
Amusing.
To each his own, I am a Trekkie and I like it so far, not saying its perfect by far, but i see the potential.
Todays major patch fixed alot of things aswell.
Yup, it's pretty bad OP. It has just about every sign of a rushed and shallow game. CO was much the same in this and it has had a horrible time since it was launched several months ago. I imagine STO will do slightly better because of the IP, but it will largely suffer. Heck, a thread on STO's site asking for people to rate the game had most of the people giving it a C or less. That's pretty sad.
How many have you come across that have joined MMORPG lately to praise the industry.
How many have you come across that have joined MMORPG lately to praise the industry.
Hehe not many, if any, MMORPG.com seems to have become the center for people to let out their rage towards certain developers.
Todays major patch only fixed bugs, none of the things i have stated in my post, bad design deccisions cant be changed, see SWG.
On the other hand, i promise that if Bioware does a good work with SWTOR, i will come here and bow :P
This is problem in MMORPG industry nowadays.. This is the Major issue imo.. However, they have to add allot things if u go there, and that and that etc... and spot where to hunt for best exp.... there is allot more.
Asheron's call is 1 example of TRUE MMORPG.
Kain_Dale
I agree with you, there has to be a balance between freedom and a story arc that makes you feel the involvement in the story the developers have build, but in this case theres no balance at all, simply theres no world.
But of course, we know better than to believe a random poll on forums represents a proper cross-section of the people who play the game. I would feel pretty naive if that were the case for me.
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
How many have you come across that have joined MMORPG lately to praise the industry.
Hehe not many, if any, MMORPG.com seems to have become the center for people to let out their rage towards certain developers.
certain if not all. No complaint box stays full enough when a new one can be made in a years time.
The reason why in STO you don't have real 3D, is because they used the same engine and tools as Champions Online.
So your average Spaceship pretty much flies and behaves the exact same way as your SuperHero in Champions Online. With the exact same limitations!
That alone is already a huge EPIC FAIL by Cryptic, that they didn't even bother spending a single shred of energy modifying their engine/tools to allow Full 3D in Space.
That's why a lot of people say rightfully that STO is pretty much a carbon copy of CO in a lot of ways. Just with different skins and some little adjustments here and there.
But the whole mission system, with the annoying pop-up boxes all the time, even when the NPC is standing right in front of you for crying out loud. Is carbon copied from CO.
The so called social hubs, like Earth Spacedock are nothing more then tiny mission hubs. These maps are so small, that only a handful of people is allowed per instance. So you got people spread out over hundreds of instances of the same map.
Good luck building a community that way! It didn't work in DDO (back then at launch), it didn't work in CO and it will not work in STO either!
As there are so many instances of each and every zone, that meeting the same person twice will never ever happen. Well... maybe after the first month, when almost everyone is gone and ditched the game, so there are only few instances per zone left. Like is the case now with CO.
Cheers
I honestly have to think you're wrong about the game. So we'll have to agree to disagree.
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
But of course, we know better than to believe a random poll on forums represents a proper cross-section of the people who play the game. I would feel pretty naive if that were the case for me.
Of course it isn't a proper cross-section. One would expect the official game forums to be quite biased TOWARDS THE GAME. The fact even in that setting you can't get a majority of the people to say it is good is quite telling.
That don't sound good.
But hey I'm not a Star Trek fan so I do not care much about this game anyway. I think it look a bit silly and boring just after watching some of the screenshots here.
Played:
From Earth & Beyond, Anarchy Online, Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Tabula Rasa (Beta), EvE Online, City of Villians, Atlantica Online, Guild Wars, Lineage 2, Pirates of the Burning Sea, PlanetSide, RF Online, Second Life, Fallen Earth.
Todays major patch only fixed bugs, none of the things i have stated in my post, bad design deccisions cant be changed, see SWG.
On the other hand, i promise that if Bioware does a good work with SWTOR, i will come here and bow :P
SWG was the other way round, Good design decisions changed into bad ones. They could of changed back but insisted NGE was for the better.
Thanks for the review recsa,
I believe you. I'm not playing the beta, but I was interested in STO. I spent the last few days trying to read between the lines from other posters, but you seem to be very honest WITH A FOLLOW UP FOR EACH OF YOUR TOPICS.
Before your OP I had a feeling that this game would have been a defiant no anyway in my books as it's to instanced. Therefore not an mmo in my books.
One last note :
I've played every beta but this one, and had never seen ANY game change for the better between open beta and release. In fact not for months after release, if at all.
I believe OP played with Bridge Commander and knows what the space combat should be like
(if you haven't go try it!).
Anyway I must admit he is right in many ways, but he forgot to tell what is actually good in the game. Because there are a few good stuff like customization which boosts the feeling. Even though its far from enough I suggest everyone to go and try the game, see it yourself! If you've been watching Star Trek or/and played Star Trek games and more than 3 MMORPGs, you'll be greatly disappointed after a few hours of gameplay...
"Ad astra per aspera."
You are right customization of characters and ships is good, Cryptic allways focuses on that, you can make your char look almost whatever you want and you can mix parts of the ships in the series to make you our ship look a bit different from rest, not much since you can only combine 4 parts of the ship an many look pretty similar, but thats ok, we dont want to have TIE fighters in Star Trek.
Yep Bridge Commander has good combat, i'm not as hard core as to ask an MMORPG to have an space combat as detaild as you can find in a offline game developed around that precise aspect, but honestly i think they just threw really few development hours in it.
i completely agree. i got done playing the beta and was quite disgusted. good thing i didnt pre-order. space combat was interesting for about 5 minutes, until you found out how tedious it is. that was really one of the real draws to this game for me. i was hoping for some solid space combat. even EVE online is better. ground combat is a joke. i was always skeptical about it. but i gave them the bebefit of the doubt. i imagined maybe a slightly dumbed down Mass Effect experience. what we got is the downs syndrome version. oh wells...there is always star wars coming out next year. now THAT looks like a real game.
[Mod Edit]
Vertical movement and/or aiming would trivialize space combat.
Same range on all weapons is an equalizer, and has no limiting characteristic.
Accounting for the bugs like any good beta tester should, ground combat is fine. Fix the pathing and it will be on par with any ranged combat mmo.
Yeh being able to get around in a video game is a horrible thing. riight.
Every part of space I've seen is teaming with life.
Completely false. You can go anywhere any time. Though I prefer to enjoy playing along the myriad of story lines.
Finally a game not wasting cycles on crafting! joy!
Yeh it's a mmo. You level up as does your opponent.
Loot is very ueseful, there's hardly any left over to sell. You have a whole ship and crew to outfit.
Cryptic nailed the IP. STO is the best ST mmo out there, and I couldn't imagine it being done any better.
You can train your bridge officers with skills other than what they may come with.
Play the game, L2P the game, then try again. Or just go home.
What are the other Star Trek MMOs?
[Mod Edit]
. Did any of you complainers look at Cryptics earlier work. Both CoH and CO uses basicly the same engien so logic dictates that STO would use the same one too. Neither game has contained any real crafting, both have been almost completly instanced. Almost every complaint on the list can be pointed out as present in either CoH or CO or both.
I can understand that people asumed (and asumed being the key word) alot of thing based on their own wet dream of a Star Trek game. Sadly, as it's known in the customer support biz asuming is not the same as fact and 9/10 wrong(and yes that mmost likley menas i am wrong in my asumptions too).
And last... Honestly... Space combat... Show me any clip from any of the shows were large ships swing around and do a reenactment of the nutcracker suite. Go on... I dare you. I consider the space combat to be the most "star trek:y" thing in the entire game
This have been a good conversation