For starters if you're cap already then you really need a new hobby rather than MMO's. I'm kind of tired of people who blaze through to cap just to get the thrill of being one of the first high level characters and then complain there's a lack of content end-game. Star Trek was aimed at being a casual MMO, not hardcore. Casual means 1-2 hours a day during the week and 4-6 hours a day on the weekends/holidays. I have a family and a job and get roughly 3-4 hours of play during the work week and 6 hours on the weekends. I am currently but a lowly Lieutenant 9 right now and still find plenty to do. If you knocked out the 80 hours it takes to get to cap already then you seriously need a life.
But then I guess you guys forgot that Cryptic said they were going to try and implement new content every 6 weeks. It's doable. And I find that the people who actually play the game actually enjoy it rather than flame it. I sense some people do it intentionally just to start flame posts about lack of content when there is enough content for the casual player instead of the hardcore. STO never claims to be hardcore.
That's funny cause I have a job and only play 1 hour on weekdays (if even that) and about 8 hours on weekends). That is under your limit for casual play yet I have a Fed Lt. Commander and a Klingon Commander.
So maybe it is you who just advance way too slowly? I mean the game has been out for two weekends (one weekend if you dont count the headstart) and 7 weekdays. That would roughly be about 20 hours of gaming and if you are only at Lieutenant 9 then I guess you are not following the quest lines but do other things? Not sure what those are as STO really does not have much of content beside the quest lines.
As Cryptic devs have already admitted there's probably only 50 hours of content on the forum, it would be pushing it for a hardcore gamer not to finish what was available in 7 - 10 days.
STO is not a great MMO. And yes, I can compare it to WoW even though WoW is 5 years old. Because that's exactly where the bang-for-buck calculation lies. If you want to launch a new MMORPG and go out to grab your millions of subscribers not just for a month, but long-term, it has to compete with WoW as it is now, on the first day. The tired idea that players should "slow down" and "not expect too much at launch" is there to perpetuate the money making scam that so many MMORPG's have become.
I don't care that CBS wanted STO out yesterday, or that Atari and CBS paid an enormous amount of money to get it out there (though I understand Cryptic wanting the $20M bonus payment). I do care if you want me to cough up hundreds of dollars that I get vfm from that investment.
By and large I would class myself as a "casual" gamer, when I'm working I get less than 10 hours a week on a good week, on a bad week less than 5. It took me 18 months to hit lvl 71 in WoW for example.
But... when I'm between contracts and have too much time on my hands, then I'm a hardcore gamer, I took me just over 5 weeks to lvl an alt to 80 in WoW following that 18 months...
I played the beta for STO and didn't convert to a subscription, it was clear that there wasn't anything like enough content or challenge at that stage to waste any more time on it. Cryptic's track record for additional content is bad. And even 80 hours (the much trumpeted headline rate) wasn't worth my cash for play time, it would have given me 2 weeks entertainment tops.
It is not; "power levelling" stupidity that drives me to play for hours at a time, but the fact that I am in another country, where I don't speak the language, and there's not much to do in the outside world (watch TV? don't understand it. Go for walks? Not in this smog. And so on...) and while I love my wife, I have no intention of bugging her for 18 hours a day so someone else can feel superior about only having 30 minutes a day to play a game.
MMORPG's are fun to play, because they are MASSIVE (STO is not), and Multi-Player (STO isn't really, you can solo all content without missing anything) and it's why I pay a subscription fee, not for tiny universes to idle by myself while other gamers tell me to wait while they catch up. I've done my catching up in games like WoW and enjoyed every minute of it, but I didn't expect the universe to wait for me while I did so.
Originally posted by Drachasor You didn't read it carefully at all. I talked about multi-part quests and so forth. I talked about interactable objects in zones and "camp density." I also said it isn't hard to expand on the line of reasoning I was using for other aspects of the game such as skills, etc Like I said, I think it is easy enough to measure the relative lack of content in STO through simple means. It has about 80 hours of leveling content (according to a dev, no less), with basically no alternative paths to leveling unless you grind. It has a few PvP and Fleet actions. That's not much. Compare to WoW which had over 400 hours of leveling content at launch AND multiple paths to do those 400 hours, so leveling up a new guy could be almost completely different in terms of content (so we might actually be talking about 1600 hours or so of content overall). It also had an end-game 10-man raid at launch, and STO has nothing like this. WoW had a few bloated quests here and there that sucked up a lot of time, but that wasn't common. I don't think STO has anything like that, but this is a minor difference so I'm fine with saying there's no significant difference in individual quest quality between the two overall. Other top-notch MMOs are more similar to WoW than they are to STO in this regard.
Measuring time needed to complete quest is not working. Including sub-quests is not adding any 'depth', it just makes it longer.
Measuing XP gain towards next level is invalid, since it depends on how many level you can get. You could measure the gain towards total XP but even then there would be an isue.
The zones as you described them, means size of the area you can walk around regardless of what is in there. You can have virtualy huge world filled with fluff. You are not factoring in things like travel speed and travel time, difficulty, combat system, dialogues and lore, etc. Neglecting any non-ex gain activities, neglecting fact that not every game is based on questing, raids, items and level focused, neglecting any non-linearity or diferent concepts, etc.
In fact, you description fits perfectly to generic grinder and I am not sure those can be described as content rich.
Conclusion: I am not saying your ideas are bad, there are definately things that could be build upon and maybe one day some sort of index could be made measuring what as TdogSkal can be described perfectly before - 'things to do at all levels'.
The point is, no such index exists now so any objective measurements are more than difficult.
NOTE: Do you have any other references to WoW 400 +hours worth content at launch?
Nope it's a fact that STO has launched with below the standard amount of content. Sorry lol thats not an opinion. I didn't set the standards, every MMO that has launched prior to STO did.
You can sit there all day saying "it's only your opinion that fire is hot" but it won't change anything.
STO launched with less content than most other MMO's except for champions online and some free to plays. Your average Gamer plays 20 hours a week. 80 hours of gameplay equates to 4 weeks of game play for your average gamer. STO has received mostly mediocre to bad reviews by professionals and gamers. You can continue stating your opinion. I'll continue stating fact.
Except no matter how much you claim your opinion is fact, that doesn't make it true.
So tell us, since you seem to have come up with a magic number what's the "standard" for number of zones?
Also, according to your system, if the "average gamer" spends 20 hours a week, and it only takes roughly 2 days played to reach the cap in wow, for example, doesn't that mean it's got less content? I don't think anyone believes that.
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
As Cryptic devs have already admitted there's probably only 50 hours of content on the forum, it would be pushing it for a hardcore gamer not to finish what was available in 7 - 10 days. STO is not a great MMO. And yes, I can compare it to WoW even though WoW is 5 years old. Because that's exactly where the bang-for-buck calculation lies. If you want to launch a new MMORPG and go out to grab your millions of subscribers not just for a month, but long-term, it has to compete with WoW as it is now, on the first day. The tired idea that players should "slow down" and "not expect too much at launch" is there to perpetuate the money making scam that so many MMORPG's have become. I don't care that CBS wanted STO out yesterday, or that Atari and CBS paid an enormous amount of money to get it out there (though I understand Cryptic wanting the $20M bonus payment). I do care if you want me to cough up hundreds of dollars that I get vfm from that investment. By and large I would class myself as a "casual" gamer, when I'm working I get less than 10 hours a week on a good week, on a bad week less than 5. It took me 18 months to hit lvl 71 in WoW for example. But... when I'm between contracts and have too much time on my hands, then I'm a hardcore gamer, I took me just over 5 weeks to lvl an alt to 80 in WoW following that 18 months... I played the beta for STO and didn't convert to a subscription, it was clear that there wasn't anything like enough content or challenge at that stage to waste any more time on it. Cryptic's track record for additional content is bad. And even 80 hours (the much trumpeted headline rate) wasn't worth my cash for play time, it would have given me 2 weeks entertainment tops. It is not; "power levelling" stupidity that drives me to play for hours at a time, but the fact that I am in another country, where I don't speak the language, and there's not much to do in the outside world (watch TV? don't understand it. Go for walks? Not in this smog. And so on...) and while I love my wife, I have no intention of bugging her for 18 hours a day so someone else can feel superior about only having 30 minutes a day to play a game. MMORPG's are fun to play, because they are MASSIVE (STO is not), and Multi-Player (STO isn't really, you can solo all content without missing anything) and it's why I pay a subscription fee, not for tiny universes to idle by myself while other gamers tell me to wait while they catch up. I've done my catching up in games like WoW and enjoyed every minute of it, but I didn't expect the universe to wait for me while I did so.
Well said. That's why sadly there is going to be such a massive drop off already within the first month in STO. It's not going to be pretty.
And as they are focussing on Klingon PVE content first, that is going to take them 45 days from now. It means, that people still have nothing to do at Admiral after those 45 days.
Not to mention that there are a lot of systems in the game that are horribly unfinished still and need to be fixed. (Exploration content and trade system and Memory Alpha barter trade system for example).
Not to mention that they also need to rework the whole Skill trees (dev admitted it finally). Especially after they suddenly decide to put a CAP on it at the end of Open Beta. Another nice CO like last minute panic move that slapped back straight into their faces!
Cryptic hasn't learned a single thing from CO and made the same mistakes all over again.
But when it comes to STO. I don't think they care. They sold so many boxes, got so many people into buying longterm and lifetime subs. Add the 20 million dollar bonus from ATARI on top of it. Then you can figure out that they already made more then enough profit already to cope with the massive drop off that is going to happen.
And when there are not many people left after the first month, who are actually paying a sub. Then you can expect Cryptic to put this game in maintainance mode instantly and move away most resources for their next project.
As lifetime subs aren't going to pay the ongoing bills. They got your money already UPFRONT. That's why Lifetime subs are plague for the MMO genre.
Nope it's a fact that STO has launched with below the standard amount of content. Sorry lol thats not an opinion. I didn't set the standards, every MMO that has launched prior to STO did.
You can sit there all day saying "it's only your opinion that fire is hot" but it won't change anything.
STO launched with less content than most other MMO's except for champions online and some free to plays. Your average Gamer plays 20 hours a week. 80 hours of gameplay equates to 4 weeks of game play for your average gamer. STO has received mostly mediocre to bad reviews by professionals and gamers. You can continue stating your opinion. I'll continue stating fact.
Except no matter how much you claim your opinion is fact, that doesn't make it true.
So tell us, since you seem to have come up with a magic number what's the "standard" for number of zones?
Also, according to your system, if the "average gamer" spends 20 hours a week, and it only takes roughly 2 days played to reach the cap in wow, for example, doesn't that mean it's got less content? I don't think anyone believes that.
You keep on trying buddy but since you wanted to bring WoW up yet again...
STO has 80 hours of game play at launch.
WoW had 400+ hours of game play at launch.
If you really want to bring up the whole hard core gamer thing then lets do so. Hardcore gamer could hit cap in WoW at launch in about a week.
Now your comparing what a hardcore gamer can do in WoW to what a casual gamer can do in STO. Sadly a casual gamer could do the same in STO that a hardcore gamer could do in WoW. So all that does is indicate how much worse the issue is in STO.
Take the blinders off bro because there really starting to show. And quit making me defend WoW, I despise the game.
Something else Cryptic could learn from Blizzard is how to manage a user forum, I have never seen an official forum with as many posts slating the game as the one for STO, my favourite runs for over 100+ pages on the lack of end game content.
There's also a superb Star Trek send up of the game written as a Captain's Log... (which I reproduce below, fully acknowledging it isn't my work)...
Captain’s Log, Stardate 90210.1
I have headed out into Romulan space, ready for the missions ahead of me. I start with some patrols because I’m short on time. I set a course for the first system and let the auto-pilot go. I sit back at the Conn and watch as my ship makes the most unusual set of turns and twists, travelling in anything but a straight line to my destination. I ask my science officer if the nav computer has been infected with some sort of virus that causes the ship to walk a straight line like a drunk 3 times over the legal limit. He tells me he put in “Bug report” to the “CS’s at Starfleet Command” but it’s been over a week now and no reply. I shrug and remain thankful that the inertial stabilizers on this ship work, unlike the old Constitution I first commanded that threw everyone from their seats every five seconds…
Suddenly, without warning or my prompting, a Hirogen Captain appears on screen. We’re in combat. RED ALERT! But for some reason shields are up and weapons are at the ready – we travel like that all the time. Good thing I don’t pay the electric bill on this tub. But now all I see is mirror-universe ships attacking me – they’ve appeared on-top of me out of nowhere! The ship is being pounded – I have no chance! Not to mention I have no idea why Hirogens would be commanding Mirror Universe ships to begin with.
Just then a few more ships warp in – re-enforcements have arrived! The U.S.S. Enturprise-R, accompanied by the U.S.S. MeSoHorny and U.S.S. Debbie Gibson manage to attract the fire of the enemy ships to themselves. I manage to limp away from the battle – most of my crew dead. I slowly wait for the shields to replenish – and before the do I am back at full crew. I thank my doctor who administered a tribble-based compound to the survivors coupled with that Vulcan mind-transfer ceremony thingy that makes crew regeneration faster than shield regeneration. I warp out back to our planned course.
We arrive at the first planet in our patrol. I steer towards the planet at full impulse, but my ship keeps “teleporting” back every few seconds. My science office tells me it is a strange subspace phenomenon known as “rubber-banding” and is known to occur where the local space gets out of sync with sub-space. The strange motion incurs nausea in me and the crew – I throw-up a little bit in my mouth.
We finally reach the planet. They are in trouble – an urgent call to Starfleet. I arrive, my exploration cruiser brimming with weapons ready to take out whatever evil the Romulans, Remans, or Hirogen have brought to these people. I ask them what they need and they ask for 10 pieces of commodities entertainment. My tactical officer suppresses the urge to use a widespread pattern of torpedoes to just take out the idiots at this colony. I tell him to contact the U.S.S. Spielberg and have them stop by and then warp out to the next system without giving these people a second thought.
We arrive at the next system and see a Romulan Warbird de-cloak. Finally, some combat! We turn..and turn…and turn…and turn…and turn….to get the ship in our forward firing arc. Despite the Warbird being two-and-a-half times our size, he turns on a dime and comes at us. “Fire” I shout. My tactical officer sits at his station, frantically pushing a button over and over. I ask him what he is doing. He says that is the only way to get all of the weapons to fire at the same time. I tell him to hit the “auto fire” button but he says we can only auto-fire two weapons at a time. I tell my chief engineer to get on it but he says he decided to study dropping warp plasma instead. My doctor tells me not to worry – that if the tactical officer gets carpal-tunnel syndrome he can always grow him a new hand.
The battle is nearly won….but the sneaky Romulan escapes to warp at the last second. I tell my crew to follow him, but they tell me we are still in combat mode and can’t even manage full impulse for another 6 or 7 seconds. I ask them how the Romulans did it but they only shrug their shoulders. I need a smarter bridge crew.
We beam down to the planet, just in case the Romulans sent some people there. I arrive alone. I wait…and wait…and wait….but no one else appears. After 15 minutes of “inactivity” I fall asleep. When I wake up, everyone is magically there beside me like nothing ever happened. I shrug and we go Romulan hunting.
For some reason there are an inordinate amount of crates scattered within the facility. I guess this Federation base doesn’t have a maid – stuff is just lying all over the place. I move to the next room, but some of the away team stays behind. I call for them but nothing happens. I go back to the first room and there are two of my bridge officers running in circles between a few crates. I ask them what they are doing and they reply “Running, sir!” Did I mention that I needed a smarter bridge crew?
Finally regrouped, I use a stealth field and sneak up on some Romulans. I activate my targeting scanner, and suddenly they all fire at me! Hmmm…you’d think Starfleet engineering would have made that a silent activation. I dive for cover and let loose a barrage of plasma fire from this rifle I stole from a crate on Deep Space K-7 – I hope no one misses it there.
My tactical officer keeps running back and forth. I tell him to attack someone and he does, then runs back and forth some more. My engineer sets-up a protective force field around the Romulans – it does nothing to help me. My doctor pulls a tribble out and starts petting it. I wonder if this is the best Starfleet has to offer, then what is the crew like on the U.S.S. Debbie Gibson?
We eliminate the Romulan threat on the planet. We beam back into space and I hail Starfleet. No one answers. I try again – still, no one on any frequency. I figure it must be Cinco de Mayo and all of the Admiral’s and what not are up to their eyeballs in Romulan Ale Margaritas. I try Commander Sulu and he isn’t there either. Darn it…where’s Sulu?
No-one hit the level cap in the first week of WoW's release. Whatever they may claim now.
It is entirely possible to power level to 60 in a few days (assuming sane play of no more than 8 hours a day) now, but back then it wasn't.
There were no handy cheat sheets, and guides on where to go and what to do, people had to figure it out for themselves. And given the massive amount of content, you'd need to level several characters in WoW to have covered it all - Undead Mage vs. Human Warrior were pretty different experiences for me at least.
Whereas STO's utterly linear and unvarying experience means that there's no point at all in trying out other Alliance builds because the path is exactly the same.
And don't get me started on Klingon PvP only - repeat the same few quests ad infinitum and people said Aion was a grind...
And as I said before, no-one cares about the WoW launch, it's WoW now that STO has to compete with and that's truly laughable.
I suspect that it will take Bioware's demonstration of the Star Wars franchise for people to see how profitable licences should be handled...
i like how people exaggerate wow's launch content.
3 months of casual play to hit 60 even with various content gaps was easy mode for it's time. endgame? all broken.
i wish new mmo's came out with 5 years 2 expansions and countless content updates worth of content too.
another thing about wow, first time i heard of it was in a 99 issue of pcgamer. so it was in development for a very long time.
and STOs missions are no more tedious repeitive or cut and paste than any other mmo. remember mmos before quests? remember how every post wow mmo has teh same selection of quest types?
although most of the mission are boil down to teh same old formula, there's alot of variation between them. i've moderated a trade dispute, escorted a freighter between stations picking up civilians while fight enemy ships, gone back in time, used a special item to fight a super powered mob(the doomsday device). each mission is different. sure you can expect to do a mix of fighting ships in space and fighting klingon or w/e on teh ground in any given episode. but which mmo's have that much variation in gameplay?
in wow you do the same types of quests at level 20 that you do at level 70.
STO has enough content to get to 45 with a surplus. each mission takes about 45 minutes to an hour to complete solo, a bit faster in a group. it takes about 2-3 mission to complete each level and the leveling doesn't slow down at higher levels allegedly.
fruther more in every mmo that has taken only a couple months for a casual player t to hit max level, there have been players who powergrind through the game in two weeks or less and then complain about lack of endgame content.
i like how people exaggerate wow's launch content. 3 months of casual play to hit 60 even with various content gaps was easy mode for it's time. endgame? all broken.
i wish new mmo's came out with 5 years 2 expansions and countless content updates worth of content too.
another thing about wow, first time i heard of it was in a 99 issue of pcgamer. so it was in development for a very long time.
and STOs missions are no more tedious repeitive or cut and paste than any other mmo. remember mmos before quests? remember how every post wow mmo has teh same selection of quest types?
although most of the mission are boil down to teh same old formula, there's alot of variation between them. i've moderated a trade dispute, escorted a freighter between stations picking up civilians while fight enemy ships, gone back in time, used a special item to fight a super powered mob(the doomsday device). each mission is different. sure you can expect to do a mix of fighting ships in space and fighting klingon or w/e on teh ground in any given episode. but which mmo's have that much variation in gameplay?
in wow you do the same types of quests at level 20 that you do at level 70.
STO has enough content to get to 45 with a surplus. each mission takes about 45 minutes to an hour to complete solo, a bit faster in a group. it takes about 2-3 mission to complete each level and the leveling doesn't slow down at higher levels allegedly.
fruther more in every mmo that has taken only a couple months for a casual player t to hit max level, there have been players who powergrind through the game in two weeks or less and then complain about lack of endgame content.
I cant believe you are still arguing that STO has normal content for a new MMORPG. It took a headstarter guy 4 frigging days to hit the level cap. I have never, ever heard an MMORPG that had people at level cap 4 days after launch.
Observe that this does not mean to say that it wont take 4 days to reach level cap *now* in games like WoW but rather at launch. It took atleast a couple of weeks for the first capped characters to been seen after launch in WoW.
Also keep in mind that WoW had several races, with several leveling paths where as STO has one, ONE. There are no other races with alternative leveling paths (Klingons have no leveling path, just repeteable 5-6 maps) and Feds only got one straight line to cap. So yes, this game has very much less content than other games at launch. Possible exception is the game which it is based on (Champions Online).
Originally posted by dirtyklingon another thing about wow, first time i heard of it was in a 99 issue of pcgamer. so it was in development for a very long time.
Which shows why it had so much more content at release than a title that was thrown out the airlock in about 18 months.
i like how people exaggerate wow's launch content. 3 months of casual play to hit 60 even with various content gaps was easy mode for it's time. endgame? all broken.
i wish new mmo's came out with 5 years 2 expansions and countless content updates worth of content too.
another thing about wow, first time i heard of it was in a 99 issue of pcgamer. so it was in development for a very long time.
and STOs missions are no more tedious repeitive or cut and paste than any other mmo. remember mmos before quests? remember how every post wow mmo has teh same selection of quest types?
although most of the mission are boil down to teh same old formula, there's alot of variation between them. i've moderated a trade dispute, escorted a freighter between stations picking up civilians while fight enemy ships, gone back in time, used a special item to fight a super powered mob(the doomsday device). each mission is different. sure you can expect to do a mix of fighting ships in space and fighting klingon or w/e on teh ground in any given episode. but which mmo's have that much variation in gameplay?
in wow you do the same types of quests at level 20 that you do at level 70.
STO has enough content to get to 45 with a surplus. each mission takes about 45 minutes to an hour to complete solo, a bit faster in a group. it takes about 2-3 mission to complete each level and the leveling doesn't slow down at higher levels allegedly.
fruther more in every mmo that has taken only a couple months for a casual player t to hit max level, there have been players who powergrind through the game in two weeks or less and then complain about lack of endgame content.
I cant believe you are still arguing that STO has normal content for a new MMORPG. It took a headstarter guy 4 frigging days to hit the level cap. I have never, ever heard an MMORPG that had people at level cap 4 days after launch.
Observe that this does not mean to say that it wont take 4 days to reach level cap *now* in games like WoW but rather at launch. It took atleast a couple of weeks for the first capped characters to been seen after launch in WoW.
Also keep in mind that WoW had several races, with several leveling paths where as STO has one, ONE. There are no other races with alternative leveling paths (Klingons have no leveling path, just repeteable 5-6 maps) and Feds only got one straight line to cap. So yes, this game has very much less content than other games at launch. Possible exception is the game which it is based on (Champions Online).
aoc and WAR both had max levels within a week of headstart. wow's expansions had people going from 60-70 or 70-80 within 3-4 days after they launched.
i would like to see multiple paths in STO.
game leveling speed should not be tuned for powergrinders. they should be tuned for average players.
again wow had more dev time than the average mmo as well, as well as a much bigger budget.
You didn't read it carefully at all. I talked about multi-part quests and so forth. I talked about interactable objects in zones and "camp density." I also said it isn't hard to expand on the line of reasoning I was using for other aspects of the game such as skills, etc
Like I said, I think it is easy enough to measure the relative lack of content in STO through simple means. It has about 80 hours of leveling content (according to a dev, no less), with basically no alternative paths to leveling unless you grind. It has a few PvP and Fleet actions. That's not much. Compare to WoW which had over 400 hours of leveling content at launch AND multiple paths to do those 400 hours, so leveling up a new guy could be almost completely different in terms of content (so we might actually be talking about 1600 hours or so of content overall). It also had an end-game 10-man raid at launch, and STO has nothing like this. WoW had a few bloated quests here and there that sucked up a lot of time, but that wasn't common. I don't think STO has anything like that, but this is a minor difference so I'm fine with saying there's no significant difference in individual quest quality between the two overall. Other top-notch MMOs are more similar to WoW than they are to STO in this regard.
Measuring time needed to complete quest is not working. Including sub-quests is not adding any 'depth', it just makes it longer.
Wrong. A 30 minute quest where you just do 1 thing (kill a mob or something) is a lot different from a 30-minute quest that has 10 sub-components that you spend about 3 minutes on each. It's a measure of complexity and depth, but I am sure others are easily findable. Time to complete quests IS helpful, since generally simple quests with long completion times are boring.
Measuing XP gain towards next level is invalid, since it depends on how many level you can get. You could measure the gain towards total XP but even then there would be an isue.
It matters because you can compare how much experience is available form quests with gaining levels. Lots of extra quests means more content than you'll see leveling up with one character.
The zones as you described them, means size of the area you can walk around regardless of what is in there. You can have virtualy huge world filled with fluff. You are not factoring in things like travel speed and travel time, difficulty, combat system, dialogues and lore, etc. Neglecting any non-ex gain activities, neglecting fact that not every game is based on questing, raids, items and level focused, neglecting any non-linearity or diferent concepts, etc.
I explicitely mentioned objects that you can interact with. That includes people, lore items, etc. You inability to read what I wrote doesn't mean it wasn't there.
In fact, you description fits perfectly to generic grinder and I am not sure those can be described as content rich.
You have assumptions and you are trying to force what I said into them. It doesn't fit.
NOTE: Do you have any other references to WoW 400 +hours worth content at launch?
I'd think that the fact I have an ACTUAL launch character with 400+ hours of gameplay on him and this was before Battlegrounds and the like would be more than sufficient. I have a level 36 mage I could cite the stats of as well, but since you seem to want everything to fit into a certain narrative I don't think that would change your mind at all.
i like how people exaggerate wow's launch content. 3 months of casual play to hit 60 even with various content gaps was easy mode for it's time. endgame? all broken.
i wish new mmo's came out with 5 years 2 expansions and countless content updates worth of content too.
another thing about wow, first time i heard of it was in a 99 issue of pcgamer. so it was in development for a very long time.
and STOs missions are no more tedious repeitive or cut and paste than any other mmo. remember mmos before quests? remember how every post wow mmo has teh same selection of quest types?
although most of the mission are boil down to teh same old formula, there's alot of variation between them. i've moderated a trade dispute, escorted a freighter between stations picking up civilians while fight enemy ships, gone back in time, used a special item to fight a super powered mob(the doomsday device). each mission is different. sure you can expect to do a mix of fighting ships in space and fighting klingon or w/e on teh ground in any given episode. but which mmo's have that much variation in gameplay?
in wow you do the same types of quests at level 20 that you do at level 70.
STO has enough content to get to 45 with a surplus. each mission takes about 45 minutes to an hour to complete solo, a bit faster in a group. it takes about 2-3 mission to complete each level and the leveling doesn't slow down at higher levels allegedly.
fruther more in every mmo that has taken only a couple months for a casual player t to hit max level, there have been players who powergrind through the game in two weeks or less and then complain about lack of endgame content.
I cant believe you are still arguing that STO has normal content for a new MMORPG. It took a headstarter guy 4 frigging days to hit the level cap. I have never, ever heard an MMORPG that had people at level cap 4 days after launch.
Observe that this does not mean to say that it wont take 4 days to reach level cap *now* in games like WoW but rather at launch. It took atleast a couple of weeks for the first capped characters to been seen after launch in WoW.
Also keep in mind that WoW had several races, with several leveling paths where as STO has one, ONE. There are no other races with alternative leveling paths (Klingons have no leveling path, just repeteable 5-6 maps) and Feds only got one straight line to cap. So yes, this game has very much less content than other games at launch. Possible exception is the game which it is based on (Champions Online).
aoc and WAR both had max levels within a week of headstart. wow's expansions had people going from 60-70 or 70-80 within 3-4 days after they launched.
i would like to see multiple paths in STO.
game leveling speed should not be tuned for powergrinders. they should be tuned for average players.
again wow had more dev time than the average mmo as well, as well as a much bigger budget.
Bigger budget yes, more dev time than average ... no lol. Average is 4-5 years. Some go on for more. The problem here isn't that WoW had more dev time than average. The problem here is that STO had a great deal less dev time than average.
This is Atari's goal however. They want to push MMO's out after 12-24 months of development. Which is going to leave a trail of content devoid shallow MMO's such as STO and CO.
Sadly it is there stated business plan so... one can't logically expect any depth or even close to the standard amount of content expected in an MMO.
Nope it's a fact that STO has launched with below the standard amount of content. Sorry lol thats not an opinion. I didn't set the standards, every MMO that has launched prior to STO did.
You can sit there all day saying "it's only your opinion that fire is hot" but it won't change anything.
STO launched with less content than most other MMO's except for champions online and some free to plays. Your average Gamer plays 20 hours a week. 80 hours of gameplay equates to 4 weeks of game play for your average gamer. STO has received mostly mediocre to bad reviews by professionals and gamers. You can continue stating your opinion. I'll continue stating fact.
Except no matter how much you claim your opinion is fact, that doesn't make it true.
So tell us, since you seem to have come up with a magic number what's the "standard" for number of zones?
Also, according to your system, if the "average gamer" spends 20 hours a week, and it only takes roughly 2 days played to reach the cap in wow, for example, doesn't that mean it's got less content? I don't think anyone believes that.
What are you on? It in no way takes the average player 2 days to even reach level 60 in WoW. It probably takes a month to reach 80, possibly more for an average player. Yes, there are power-rushing strats to get it done really fast, but most have never heard of them.
Nope it's a fact that STO has launched with below the standard amount of content. Sorry lol thats not an opinion. I didn't set the standards, every MMO that has launched prior to STO did.
You can sit there all day saying "it's only your opinion that fire is hot" but it won't change anything.
STO launched with less content than most other MMO's except for champions online and some free to plays. Your average Gamer plays 20 hours a week. 80 hours of gameplay equates to 4 weeks of game play for your average gamer. STO has received mostly mediocre to bad reviews by professionals and gamers. You can continue stating your opinion. I'll continue stating fact.
Except no matter how much you claim your opinion is fact, that doesn't make it true.
So tell us, since you seem to have come up with a magic number what's the "standard" for number of zones?
Also, according to your system, if the "average gamer" spends 20 hours a week, and it only takes roughly 2 days played to reach the cap in wow, for example, doesn't that mean it's got less content? I don't think anyone believes that.
What are you on? It in no way takes the average player 2 days to even reach level 60 in WoW. It probably takes a month to reach 80, possibly more for an average player. Yes, there are power-rushing strats to get it done really fast, but most have never heard of them.
and most of that month would be spent at 70-80. i found wotlk leveling content to be slow and sparse compared to tbc.
the people who hit admiral fast in STO had already played CB and OB so they knew the fastest path to get there already. just like any other mmo.
i like how people exaggerate wow's launch content. 3 months of casual play to hit 60 even with various content gaps was easy mode for it's time. endgame? all broken.
i wish new mmo's came out with 5 years 2 expansions and countless content updates worth of content too.
another thing about wow, first time i heard of it was in a 99 issue of pcgamer. so it was in development for a very long time.
and STOs missions are no more tedious repeitive or cut and paste than any other mmo. remember mmos before quests? remember how every post wow mmo has teh same selection of quest types?
although most of the mission are boil down to teh same old formula, there's alot of variation between them. i've moderated a trade dispute, escorted a freighter between stations picking up civilians while fight enemy ships, gone back in time, used a special item to fight a super powered mob(the doomsday device). each mission is different. sure you can expect to do a mix of fighting ships in space and fighting klingon or w/e on teh ground in any given episode. but which mmo's have that much variation in gameplay?
in wow you do the same types of quests at level 20 that you do at level 70.
STO has enough content to get to 45 with a surplus. each mission takes about 45 minutes to an hour to complete solo, a bit faster in a group. it takes about 2-3 mission to complete each level and the leveling doesn't slow down at higher levels allegedly.
fruther more in every mmo that has taken only a couple months for a casual player t to hit max level, there have been players who powergrind through the game in two weeks or less and then complain about lack of endgame content.
I cant believe you are still arguing that STO has normal content for a new MMORPG. It took a headstarter guy 4 frigging days to hit the level cap. I have never, ever heard an MMORPG that had people at level cap 4 days after launch.
Observe that this does not mean to say that it wont take 4 days to reach level cap *now* in games like WoW but rather at launch. It took atleast a couple of weeks for the first capped characters to been seen after launch in WoW.
Also keep in mind that WoW had several races, with several leveling paths where as STO has one, ONE. There are no other races with alternative leveling paths (Klingons have no leveling path, just repeteable 5-6 maps) and Feds only got one straight line to cap. So yes, this game has very much less content than other games at launch. Possible exception is the game which it is based on (Champions Online).
aoc and WAR both had max levels within a week of headstart. wow's expansions had people going from 60-70 or 70-80 within 3-4 days after they launched.
i would like to see multiple paths in STO.
game leveling speed should not be tuned for powergrinders. they should be tuned for average players.
again wow had more dev time than the average mmo as well, as well as a much bigger budget.
Bigger budget yes, more dev time than average ... no lol. Average is 4-5 years. Some go on for more. The problem here isn't that WoW had more dev time than average. The problem here is that STO had a great deal less dev time than average.
This is Atari's goal however. They want to push MMO's out after 12-24 months of development. Which is going to leave a trail of content devoid shallow MMO's such as STO and CO.
Sadly it is there stated business plan so... one can't logically expect any depth or even close to the standard amount of content expected in an MMO.
and wow was in development before they started talking about it in 1999. i believe it came out in teh last quarter of 04.
i like how people exaggerate wow's launch content. 3 months of casual play to hit 60 even with various content gaps was easy mode for it's time. endgame? all broken.
i wish new mmo's came out with 5 years 2 expansions and countless content updates worth of content too.
another thing about wow, first time i heard of it was in a 99 issue of pcgamer. so it was in development for a very long time.
and STOs missions are no more tedious repeitive or cut and paste than any other mmo. remember mmos before quests? remember how every post wow mmo has teh same selection of quest types?
although most of the mission are boil down to teh same old formula, there's alot of variation between them. i've moderated a trade dispute, escorted a freighter between stations picking up civilians while fight enemy ships, gone back in time, used a special item to fight a super powered mob(the doomsday device). each mission is different. sure you can expect to do a mix of fighting ships in space and fighting klingon or w/e on teh ground in any given episode. but which mmo's have that much variation in gameplay?
in wow you do the same types of quests at level 20 that you do at level 70.
STO has enough content to get to 45 with a surplus. each mission takes about 45 minutes to an hour to complete solo, a bit faster in a group. it takes about 2-3 mission to complete each level and the leveling doesn't slow down at higher levels allegedly.
fruther more in every mmo that has taken only a couple months for a casual player t to hit max level, there have been players who powergrind through the game in two weeks or less and then complain about lack of endgame content.
I cant believe you are still arguing that STO has normal content for a new MMORPG. It took a headstarter guy 4 frigging days to hit the level cap. I have never, ever heard an MMORPG that had people at level cap 4 days after launch.
Observe that this does not mean to say that it wont take 4 days to reach level cap *now* in games like WoW but rather at launch. It took atleast a couple of weeks for the first capped characters to been seen after launch in WoW.
Also keep in mind that WoW had several races, with several leveling paths where as STO has one, ONE. There are no other races with alternative leveling paths (Klingons have no leveling path, just repeteable 5-6 maps) and Feds only got one straight line to cap. So yes, this game has very much less content than other games at launch. Possible exception is the game which it is based on (Champions Online).
aoc and WAR both had max levels within a week of headstart. wow's expansions had people going from 60-70 or 70-80 within 3-4 days after they launched.
i would like to see multiple paths in STO.
game leveling speed should not be tuned for powergrinders. they should be tuned for average players.
again wow had more dev time than the average mmo as well, as well as a much bigger budget.
Bigger budget yes, more dev time than average ... no lol. Average is 4-5 years. Some go on for more. The problem here isn't that WoW had more dev time than average. The problem here is that STO had a great deal less dev time than average.
This is Atari's goal however. They want to push MMO's out after 12-24 months of development. Which is going to leave a trail of content devoid shallow MMO's such as STO and CO.
Sadly it is there stated business plan so... one can't logically expect any depth or even close to the standard amount of content expected in an MMO.
and wow was in development before they started talking about it in 1999. i believe it came out in teh last quarter of 04.
Hmm... not sure what your trying to say here but let me save you some time and help you out a bit.
"World of Warcraft was first announced by Blizzard at the ECTS trade show in September 2001.[44] Development of the game took roughly 4–5 years, and included extensive testing."
no i first read about world of warcraft in 1999 in a pcgamer magazine. nothing was known about it except that it would be some kind of adventure game. this is before it was officially announced.
Comments
Holy jeese stop playing dumb when people reference hours to content.
That's funny cause I have a job and only play 1 hour on weekdays (if even that) and about 8 hours on weekends). That is under your limit for casual play yet I have a Fed Lt. Commander and a Klingon Commander.
So maybe it is you who just advance way too slowly? I mean the game has been out for two weekends (one weekend if you dont count the headstart) and 7 weekdays. That would roughly be about 20 hours of gaming and if you are only at Lieutenant 9 then I guess you are not following the quest lines but do other things? Not sure what those are as STO really does not have much of content beside the quest lines.
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As Cryptic devs have already admitted there's probably only 50 hours of content on the forum, it would be pushing it for a hardcore gamer not to finish what was available in 7 - 10 days.
STO is not a great MMO. And yes, I can compare it to WoW even though WoW is 5 years old. Because that's exactly where the bang-for-buck calculation lies. If you want to launch a new MMORPG and go out to grab your millions of subscribers not just for a month, but long-term, it has to compete with WoW as it is now, on the first day. The tired idea that players should "slow down" and "not expect too much at launch" is there to perpetuate the money making scam that so many MMORPG's have become.
I don't care that CBS wanted STO out yesterday, or that Atari and CBS paid an enormous amount of money to get it out there (though I understand Cryptic wanting the $20M bonus payment). I do care if you want me to cough up hundreds of dollars that I get vfm from that investment.
By and large I would class myself as a "casual" gamer, when I'm working I get less than 10 hours a week on a good week, on a bad week less than 5. It took me 18 months to hit lvl 71 in WoW for example.
But... when I'm between contracts and have too much time on my hands, then I'm a hardcore gamer, I took me just over 5 weeks to lvl an alt to 80 in WoW following that 18 months...
I played the beta for STO and didn't convert to a subscription, it was clear that there wasn't anything like enough content or challenge at that stage to waste any more time on it. Cryptic's track record for additional content is bad. And even 80 hours (the much trumpeted headline rate) wasn't worth my cash for play time, it would have given me 2 weeks entertainment tops.
It is not; "power levelling" stupidity that drives me to play for hours at a time, but the fact that I am in another country, where I don't speak the language, and there's not much to do in the outside world (watch TV? don't understand it. Go for walks? Not in this smog. And so on...) and while I love my wife, I have no intention of bugging her for 18 hours a day so someone else can feel superior about only having 30 minutes a day to play a game.
MMORPG's are fun to play, because they are MASSIVE (STO is not), and Multi-Player (STO isn't really, you can solo all content without missing anything) and it's why I pay a subscription fee, not for tiny universes to idle by myself while other gamers tell me to wait while they catch up. I've done my catching up in games like WoW and enjoyed every minute of it, but I didn't expect the universe to wait for me while I did so.
Measuring time needed to complete quest is not working. Including sub-quests is not adding any 'depth', it just makes it longer.
Measuing XP gain towards next level is invalid, since it depends on how many level you can get. You could measure the gain towards total XP but even then there would be an isue.
The zones as you described them, means size of the area you can walk around regardless of what is in there. You can have virtualy huge world filled with fluff. You are not factoring in things like travel speed and travel time, difficulty, combat system, dialogues and lore, etc. Neglecting any non-ex gain activities, neglecting fact that not every game is based on questing, raids, items and level focused, neglecting any non-linearity or diferent concepts, etc.
In fact, you description fits perfectly to generic grinder and I am not sure those can be described as content rich.
Conclusion:
I am not saying your ideas are bad, there are definately things that could be build upon and maybe one day some sort of index could be made measuring what as TdogSkal can be described perfectly before - 'things to do at all levels'.
The point is, no such index exists now so any objective measurements are more than difficult.
NOTE: Do you have any other references to WoW 400 +hours worth content at launch?
Except no matter how much you claim your opinion is fact, that doesn't make it true.
So tell us, since you seem to have come up with a magic number what's the "standard" for number of zones?
Also, according to your system, if the "average gamer" spends 20 hours a week, and it only takes roughly 2 days played to reach the cap in wow, for example, doesn't that mean it's got less content? I don't think anyone believes that.
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
Well said. That's why sadly there is going to be such a massive drop off already within the first month in STO. It's not going to be pretty.
And as they are focussing on Klingon PVE content first, that is going to take them 45 days from now. It means, that people still have nothing to do at Admiral after those 45 days.
Not to mention that there are a lot of systems in the game that are horribly unfinished still and need to be fixed. (Exploration content and trade system and Memory Alpha barter trade system for example).
Not to mention that they also need to rework the whole Skill trees (dev admitted it finally). Especially after they suddenly decide to put a CAP on it at the end of Open Beta. Another nice CO like last minute panic move that slapped back straight into their faces!
Cryptic hasn't learned a single thing from CO and made the same mistakes all over again.
But when it comes to STO. I don't think they care. They sold so many boxes, got so many people into buying longterm and lifetime subs. Add the 20 million dollar bonus from ATARI on top of it. Then you can figure out that they already made more then enough profit already to cope with the massive drop off that is going to happen.
And when there are not many people left after the first month, who are actually paying a sub. Then you can expect Cryptic to put this game in maintainance mode instantly and move away most resources for their next project.
As lifetime subs aren't going to pay the ongoing bills. They got your money already UPFRONT. That's why Lifetime subs are plague for the MMO genre.
Cheers
Of course there is content in STO...
You can Tribble Ranch!
just canceled my account...
gosh the quests r lame and boring...i get more varaity mission out of f2p games than this crap
last cryptic game i buy
Except no matter how much you claim your opinion is fact, that doesn't make it true.
So tell us, since you seem to have come up with a magic number what's the "standard" for number of zones?
Also, according to your system, if the "average gamer" spends 20 hours a week, and it only takes roughly 2 days played to reach the cap in wow, for example, doesn't that mean it's got less content? I don't think anyone believes that.
You keep on trying buddy but since you wanted to bring WoW up yet again...
STO has 80 hours of game play at launch.
WoW had 400+ hours of game play at launch.
If you really want to bring up the whole hard core gamer thing then lets do so. Hardcore gamer could hit cap in WoW at launch in about a week.
Now your comparing what a hardcore gamer can do in WoW to what a casual gamer can do in STO. Sadly a casual gamer could do the same in STO that a hardcore gamer could do in WoW. So all that does is indicate how much worse the issue is in STO.
Take the blinders off bro because there really starting to show. And quit making me defend WoW, I despise the game.
I'll go out on a limb and say there will be a few more posts like this over the coming weeks.
I'll go out on a limb and say there will be a few more posts like this over the coming weeks.
It's already happening on the official forums. More and more people start seeing the uggly unfinished truth that is STO.
Something else Cryptic could learn from Blizzard is how to manage a user forum, I have never seen an official forum with as many posts slating the game as the one for STO, my favourite runs for over 100+ pages on the lack of end game content.
There's also a superb Star Trek send up of the game written as a Captain's Log... (which I reproduce below, fully acknowledging it isn't my work)...
Captain’s Log, Stardate 90210.1
I have headed out into Romulan space, ready for the missions ahead of me. I start with some patrols because I’m short on time. I set a course for the first system and let the auto-pilot go. I sit back at the Conn and watch as my ship makes the most unusual set of turns and twists, travelling in anything but a straight line to my destination. I ask my science officer if the nav computer has been infected with some sort of virus that causes the ship to walk a straight line like a drunk 3 times over the legal limit. He tells me he put in “Bug report” to the “CS’s at Starfleet Command” but it’s been over a week now and no reply. I shrug and remain thankful that the inertial stabilizers on this ship work, unlike the old Constitution I first commanded that threw everyone from their seats every five seconds…
Suddenly, without warning or my prompting, a Hirogen Captain appears on screen. We’re in combat. RED ALERT! But for some reason shields are up and weapons are at the ready – we travel like that all the time. Good thing I don’t pay the electric bill on this tub. But now all I see is mirror-universe ships attacking me – they’ve appeared on-top of me out of nowhere! The ship is being pounded – I have no chance! Not to mention I have no idea why Hirogens would be commanding Mirror Universe ships to begin with.
Just then a few more ships warp in – re-enforcements have arrived! The U.S.S. Enturprise-R, accompanied by the U.S.S. MeSoHorny and U.S.S. Debbie Gibson manage to attract the fire of the enemy ships to themselves. I manage to limp away from the battle – most of my crew dead. I slowly wait for the shields to replenish – and before the do I am back at full crew. I thank my doctor who administered a tribble-based compound to the survivors coupled with that Vulcan mind-transfer ceremony thingy that makes crew regeneration faster than shield regeneration. I warp out back to our planned course.
We arrive at the first planet in our patrol. I steer towards the planet at full impulse, but my ship keeps “teleporting” back every few seconds. My science office tells me it is a strange subspace phenomenon known as “rubber-banding” and is known to occur where the local space gets out of sync with sub-space. The strange motion incurs nausea in me and the crew – I throw-up a little bit in my mouth.
We finally reach the planet. They are in trouble – an urgent call to Starfleet. I arrive, my exploration cruiser brimming with weapons ready to take out whatever evil the Romulans, Remans, or Hirogen have brought to these people. I ask them what they need and they ask for 10 pieces of commodities entertainment. My tactical officer suppresses the urge to use a widespread pattern of torpedoes to just take out the idiots at this colony. I tell him to contact the U.S.S. Spielberg and have them stop by and then warp out to the next system without giving these people a second thought.
We arrive at the next system and see a Romulan Warbird de-cloak. Finally, some combat! We turn..and turn…and turn…and turn…and turn….to get the ship in our forward firing arc. Despite the Warbird being two-and-a-half times our size, he turns on a dime and comes at us. “Fire” I shout. My tactical officer sits at his station, frantically pushing a button over and over. I ask him what he is doing. He says that is the only way to get all of the weapons to fire at the same time. I tell him to hit the “auto fire” button but he says we can only auto-fire two weapons at a time. I tell my chief engineer to get on it but he says he decided to study dropping warp plasma instead. My doctor tells me not to worry – that if the tactical officer gets carpal-tunnel syndrome he can always grow him a new hand.
The battle is nearly won….but the sneaky Romulan escapes to warp at the last second. I tell my crew to follow him, but they tell me we are still in combat mode and can’t even manage full impulse for another 6 or 7 seconds. I ask them how the Romulans did it but they only shrug their shoulders. I need a smarter bridge crew.
We beam down to the planet, just in case the Romulans sent some people there. I arrive alone. I wait…and wait…and wait….but no one else appears. After 15 minutes of “inactivity” I fall asleep. When I wake up, everyone is magically there beside me like nothing ever happened. I shrug and we go Romulan hunting.
For some reason there are an inordinate amount of crates scattered within the facility. I guess this Federation base doesn’t have a maid – stuff is just lying all over the place. I move to the next room, but some of the away team stays behind. I call for them but nothing happens. I go back to the first room and there are two of my bridge officers running in circles between a few crates. I ask them what they are doing and they reply “Running, sir!” Did I mention that I needed a smarter bridge crew?
Finally regrouped, I use a stealth field and sneak up on some Romulans. I activate my targeting scanner, and suddenly they all fire at me! Hmmm…you’d think Starfleet engineering would have made that a silent activation. I dive for cover and let loose a barrage of plasma fire from this rifle I stole from a crate on Deep Space K-7 – I hope no one misses it there.
My tactical officer keeps running back and forth. I tell him to attack someone and he does, then runs back and forth some more. My engineer sets-up a protective force field around the Romulans – it does nothing to help me. My doctor pulls a tribble out and starts petting it. I wonder if this is the best Starfleet has to offer, then what is the crew like on the U.S.S. Debbie Gibson?
We eliminate the Romulan threat on the planet. We beam back into space and I hail Starfleet. No one answers. I try again – still, no one on any frequency. I figure it must be Cinco de Mayo and all of the Admiral’s and what not are up to their eyeballs in Romulan Ale Margaritas. I try Commander Sulu and he isn’t there either. Darn it…where’s Sulu?
To be continued…..
No-one hit the level cap in the first week of WoW's release. Whatever they may claim now.
It is entirely possible to power level to 60 in a few days (assuming sane play of no more than 8 hours a day) now, but back then it wasn't.
There were no handy cheat sheets, and guides on where to go and what to do, people had to figure it out for themselves. And given the massive amount of content, you'd need to level several characters in WoW to have covered it all - Undead Mage vs. Human Warrior were pretty different experiences for me at least.
Whereas STO's utterly linear and unvarying experience means that there's no point at all in trying out other Alliance builds because the path is exactly the same.
And don't get me started on Klingon PvP only - repeat the same few quests ad infinitum and people said Aion was a grind...
And as I said before, no-one cares about the WoW launch, it's WoW now that STO has to compete with and that's truly laughable.
I suspect that it will take Bioware's demonstration of the Star Wars franchise for people to see how profitable licences should be handled...
i like how people exaggerate wow's launch content.
3 months of casual play to hit 60 even with various content gaps was easy mode for it's time. endgame? all broken.
i wish new mmo's came out with 5 years 2 expansions and countless content updates worth of content too.
another thing about wow, first time i heard of it was in a 99 issue of pcgamer. so it was in development for a very long time.
and STOs missions are no more tedious repeitive or cut and paste than any other mmo. remember mmos before quests? remember how every post wow mmo has teh same selection of quest types?
although most of the mission are boil down to teh same old formula, there's alot of variation between them. i've moderated a trade dispute, escorted a freighter between stations picking up civilians while fight enemy ships, gone back in time, used a special item to fight a super powered mob(the doomsday device). each mission is different. sure you can expect to do a mix of fighting ships in space and fighting klingon or w/e on teh ground in any given episode. but which mmo's have that much variation in gameplay?
in wow you do the same types of quests at level 20 that you do at level 70.
STO has enough content to get to 45 with a surplus. each mission takes about 45 minutes to an hour to complete solo, a bit faster in a group. it takes about 2-3 mission to complete each level and the leveling doesn't slow down at higher levels allegedly.
fruther more in every mmo that has taken only a couple months for a casual player t to hit max level, there have been players who powergrind through the game in two weeks or less and then complain about lack of endgame content.
KERPLAH!
I cant believe you are still arguing that STO has normal content for a new MMORPG. It took a headstarter guy 4 frigging days to hit the level cap. I have never, ever heard an MMORPG that had people at level cap 4 days after launch.
Observe that this does not mean to say that it wont take 4 days to reach level cap *now* in games like WoW but rather at launch. It took atleast a couple of weeks for the first capped characters to been seen after launch in WoW.
Also keep in mind that WoW had several races, with several leveling paths where as STO has one, ONE. There are no other races with alternative leveling paths (Klingons have no leveling path, just repeteable 5-6 maps) and Feds only got one straight line to cap. So yes, this game has very much less content than other games at launch. Possible exception is the game which it is based on (Champions Online).
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Which shows why it had so much more content at release than a title that was thrown out the airlock in about 18 months.
I cant believe you are still arguing that STO has normal content for a new MMORPG. It took a headstarter guy 4 frigging days to hit the level cap. I have never, ever heard an MMORPG that had people at level cap 4 days after launch.
Observe that this does not mean to say that it wont take 4 days to reach level cap *now* in games like WoW but rather at launch. It took atleast a couple of weeks for the first capped characters to been seen after launch in WoW.
Also keep in mind that WoW had several races, with several leveling paths where as STO has one, ONE. There are no other races with alternative leveling paths (Klingons have no leveling path, just repeteable 5-6 maps) and Feds only got one straight line to cap. So yes, this game has very much less content than other games at launch. Possible exception is the game which it is based on (Champions Online).
aoc and WAR both had max levels within a week of headstart. wow's expansions had people going from 60-70 or 70-80 within 3-4 days after they launched.
i would like to see multiple paths in STO.
game leveling speed should not be tuned for powergrinders. they should be tuned for average players.
again wow had more dev time than the average mmo as well, as well as a much bigger budget.
KERPLAH!
Measuring time needed to complete quest is not working. Including sub-quests is not adding any 'depth', it just makes it longer.
Wrong. A 30 minute quest where you just do 1 thing (kill a mob or something) is a lot different from a 30-minute quest that has 10 sub-components that you spend about 3 minutes on each. It's a measure of complexity and depth, but I am sure others are easily findable. Time to complete quests IS helpful, since generally simple quests with long completion times are boring.
Measuing XP gain towards next level is invalid, since it depends on how many level you can get. You could measure the gain towards total XP but even then there would be an isue.
It matters because you can compare how much experience is available form quests with gaining levels. Lots of extra quests means more content than you'll see leveling up with one character.
The zones as you described them, means size of the area you can walk around regardless of what is in there. You can have virtualy huge world filled with fluff. You are not factoring in things like travel speed and travel time, difficulty, combat system, dialogues and lore, etc. Neglecting any non-ex gain activities, neglecting fact that not every game is based on questing, raids, items and level focused, neglecting any non-linearity or diferent concepts, etc.
I explicitely mentioned objects that you can interact with. That includes people, lore items, etc. You inability to read what I wrote doesn't mean it wasn't there.
In fact, you description fits perfectly to generic grinder and I am not sure those can be described as content rich.
You have assumptions and you are trying to force what I said into them. It doesn't fit.
NOTE: Do you have any other references to WoW 400 +hours worth content at launch?
I'd think that the fact I have an ACTUAL launch character with 400+ hours of gameplay on him and this was before Battlegrounds and the like would be more than sufficient. I have a level 36 mage I could cite the stats of as well, but since you seem to want everything to fit into a certain narrative I don't think that would change your mind at all.
can i have ur stuff? lol
I cant believe you are still arguing that STO has normal content for a new MMORPG. It took a headstarter guy 4 frigging days to hit the level cap. I have never, ever heard an MMORPG that had people at level cap 4 days after launch.
Observe that this does not mean to say that it wont take 4 days to reach level cap *now* in games like WoW but rather at launch. It took atleast a couple of weeks for the first capped characters to been seen after launch in WoW.
Also keep in mind that WoW had several races, with several leveling paths where as STO has one, ONE. There are no other races with alternative leveling paths (Klingons have no leveling path, just repeteable 5-6 maps) and Feds only got one straight line to cap. So yes, this game has very much less content than other games at launch. Possible exception is the game which it is based on (Champions Online).
aoc and WAR both had max levels within a week of headstart. wow's expansions had people going from 60-70 or 70-80 within 3-4 days after they launched.
i would like to see multiple paths in STO.
game leveling speed should not be tuned for powergrinders. they should be tuned for average players.
again wow had more dev time than the average mmo as well, as well as a much bigger budget.
Bigger budget yes, more dev time than average ... no lol. Average is 4-5 years. Some go on for more. The problem here isn't that WoW had more dev time than average. The problem here is that STO had a great deal less dev time than average.
This is Atari's goal however. They want to push MMO's out after 12-24 months of development. Which is going to leave a trail of content devoid shallow MMO's such as STO and CO.
Sadly it is there stated business plan so... one can't logically expect any depth or even close to the standard amount of content expected in an MMO.
Except no matter how much you claim your opinion is fact, that doesn't make it true.
So tell us, since you seem to have come up with a magic number what's the "standard" for number of zones?
Also, according to your system, if the "average gamer" spends 20 hours a week, and it only takes roughly 2 days played to reach the cap in wow, for example, doesn't that mean it's got less content? I don't think anyone believes that.
What are you on? It in no way takes the average player 2 days to even reach level 60 in WoW. It probably takes a month to reach 80, possibly more for an average player. Yes, there are power-rushing strats to get it done really fast, but most have never heard of them.
Except no matter how much you claim your opinion is fact, that doesn't make it true.
So tell us, since you seem to have come up with a magic number what's the "standard" for number of zones?
Also, according to your system, if the "average gamer" spends 20 hours a week, and it only takes roughly 2 days played to reach the cap in wow, for example, doesn't that mean it's got less content? I don't think anyone believes that.
What are you on? It in no way takes the average player 2 days to even reach level 60 in WoW. It probably takes a month to reach 80, possibly more for an average player. Yes, there are power-rushing strats to get it done really fast, but most have never heard of them.
and most of that month would be spent at 70-80. i found wotlk leveling content to be slow and sparse compared to tbc.
the people who hit admiral fast in STO had already played CB and OB so they knew the fastest path to get there already. just like any other mmo.
KERPLAH!
I cant believe you are still arguing that STO has normal content for a new MMORPG. It took a headstarter guy 4 frigging days to hit the level cap. I have never, ever heard an MMORPG that had people at level cap 4 days after launch.
Observe that this does not mean to say that it wont take 4 days to reach level cap *now* in games like WoW but rather at launch. It took atleast a couple of weeks for the first capped characters to been seen after launch in WoW.
Also keep in mind that WoW had several races, with several leveling paths where as STO has one, ONE. There are no other races with alternative leveling paths (Klingons have no leveling path, just repeteable 5-6 maps) and Feds only got one straight line to cap. So yes, this game has very much less content than other games at launch. Possible exception is the game which it is based on (Champions Online).
aoc and WAR both had max levels within a week of headstart. wow's expansions had people going from 60-70 or 70-80 within 3-4 days after they launched.
i would like to see multiple paths in STO.
game leveling speed should not be tuned for powergrinders. they should be tuned for average players.
again wow had more dev time than the average mmo as well, as well as a much bigger budget.
Bigger budget yes, more dev time than average ... no lol. Average is 4-5 years. Some go on for more. The problem here isn't that WoW had more dev time than average. The problem here is that STO had a great deal less dev time than average.
This is Atari's goal however. They want to push MMO's out after 12-24 months of development. Which is going to leave a trail of content devoid shallow MMO's such as STO and CO.
Sadly it is there stated business plan so... one can't logically expect any depth or even close to the standard amount of content expected in an MMO.
and wow was in development before they started talking about it in 1999. i believe it came out in teh last quarter of 04.
KERPLAH!
I cant believe you are still arguing that STO has normal content for a new MMORPG. It took a headstarter guy 4 frigging days to hit the level cap. I have never, ever heard an MMORPG that had people at level cap 4 days after launch.
Observe that this does not mean to say that it wont take 4 days to reach level cap *now* in games like WoW but rather at launch. It took atleast a couple of weeks for the first capped characters to been seen after launch in WoW.
Also keep in mind that WoW had several races, with several leveling paths where as STO has one, ONE. There are no other races with alternative leveling paths (Klingons have no leveling path, just repeteable 5-6 maps) and Feds only got one straight line to cap. So yes, this game has very much less content than other games at launch. Possible exception is the game which it is based on (Champions Online).
aoc and WAR both had max levels within a week of headstart. wow's expansions had people going from 60-70 or 70-80 within 3-4 days after they launched.
i would like to see multiple paths in STO.
game leveling speed should not be tuned for powergrinders. they should be tuned for average players.
again wow had more dev time than the average mmo as well, as well as a much bigger budget.
Bigger budget yes, more dev time than average ... no lol. Average is 4-5 years. Some go on for more. The problem here isn't that WoW had more dev time than average. The problem here is that STO had a great deal less dev time than average.
This is Atari's goal however. They want to push MMO's out after 12-24 months of development. Which is going to leave a trail of content devoid shallow MMO's such as STO and CO.
Sadly it is there stated business plan so... one can't logically expect any depth or even close to the standard amount of content expected in an MMO.
and wow was in development before they started talking about it in 1999. i believe it came out in teh last quarter of 04.
Hmm... not sure what your trying to say here but let me save you some time and help you out a bit.
"World of Warcraft was first announced by Blizzard at the ECTS trade show in September 2001.[44] Development of the game took roughly 4–5 years, and included extensive testing."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft
4-5 years which is the average.
I will just take it that you were agreeing with me and simply worded it oddly. That way you don't come off looking foolish
no i first read about world of warcraft in 1999 in a pcgamer magazine. nothing was known about it except that it would be some kind of adventure game. this is before it was officially announced.
KERPLAH!