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Will this game ever be similar to the series?
Atrus777
Member Posts: 4
I, like many other people here, am a big fan of Star Trek and have been watching this game for some time now. I fell in love with The Next Generation and since them I have dreamed of being aboard a ship in those same situations... the diplomacy... the distress calls... the adventure. I wanted to be there, to serve my post and to always feel like it was due to my contribution, along with my colleagues, that kept us alive.
This game currently looks like it has none of that feeling, and even the overly used combat situations make them seem inconsequential (in fact I have heard these is no death penalty, I cant image a more disgraceful tribute to the pioneers of space who risked life on every mission). The allurement comes with knowing that the wrong choice, or the wrong moment, would easily bring death. It is the unimaginable risk for an equally unimaginable reward of exploring where none has gone before.
I don't understand how that "Star Trek" feeling could have been left out of the Star Trek MMO, and it's depressing to see how this (maybe the best for our time) opportunity for us to experience those moments is wasted now. For what reasons? I will not speculate, it doesn't matter anymore now... but to those who developed this game, you have cheated us out of a dream, and to that I hope you all <END TRANSMISSION>
Comments
Sounds like you're wanting a single-player experience. MMOs based on IPs such as Star trek have to take a lot of liberties and cut a lot of corners and lose a lot of content for something of the sort to be worked into the MMORPG genre, but the upside is that MMOs are always evolving and you can be left with the hope that Cryptic can only go up from this point on.
That's a load of crap.
STO should have been made freeform aka sandboxish from the start simple as that, Cryptic are just money hungry and made it all basic and shallow.
It took them only 2 years to make STO that's a strong hint really how Cryptic works and how STO is presented.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
*nod*
To spend only two months in making an MMORPG of one of the biggest, richest, complex IPs ever is a disgrace.
The real sad part is that we probably wont see another Star Trek MMOG for many years now and STO will, after miserably failing, be a warning to others developers not to try a Star Trek MMOG.
ok, so you are basing this topic on what you have heard?
How do you propose a working game that recreates the ST "feel"?
What sort of death penalty do you think would salute those "who risked their lives every mission"? Perma?
Could you point cryptic, or anyone for that matter, in the direction of the investor looking to write a blank cheque to fund the making of this open ended, sandbox GALAXY with 400 billion stars?
Give us a hint, if you can, on how YOU would convert a television series into a computer game - MMO one.
Lastly, have you ever noticed that films based on books often disappoint? Why? Because they are different mediums that have different confines to work in.
First of all, nice hyberbole. STOs 20-30 planets or 400 BILLION stars. Zero death penalty or perma. Something inbetween maybe?
Also, why would a dissatisfied customer be required to give a design for how to do things better. When I watch a bad move, or play a poor game, do I need to spend a week trying to redesign it before saying it sucks? No.
So your strawman arguments isn't fooling anyone.
Agreed. I waited two months for them to do anything interesting with CO (like interesting raids or PvP world conflicts) and they failed and from what I heard now the game is still pretty much the same.
Cryptic has the mindset of creating a single player game when making MMOGs. What you see at day 1 is pretty much what you will ever see, short of a new zone here and there.
The Star Trek feeling and mmorpg elements that could have made this an excellent entertainment proposition are, sadly, left out of the game. The Market was delivered a nonsensical mmorpg that actually plays, with the complete lack of mmorpg content and elements, like a rudimentary third-person shooter.
So, for more of a vet mmorpg player, I find that lacks lasting game-play appeal, as the OP eluded to. So my take based on my experience and having explored the experience posted of others is this:
- There doesn't seem to be much respect for the Star Trek IP.
- Space is space-less. Each map is nothing more than a confining shoe-box, a small space of nothing to interact with.
- There is no game-play freedom of exploration. No exploration to other planets or discovery; again, your confined to your shoe-box instance. There's nothing dynamically to do in this game that would be reminiscent of Star Trek.
- If you do see a planet on an instanced map, there is no "away-team" capability to freely explore its surface. Its nothing more than a static inactive marble that you bounce off of in your confined instance.
- Space flight is confining and lacks freedom. There's a limited z-axis that prevents looping or gaining weapons locks on ships that are above or below, yet in front of you in many cases. It just adds to the unnecessary maneuvering of your ship.
- Space is life-less, other than the instance nodes that you bump into to enter for a ship pve encounter, or to wait in a long line of trying to perform pvp with other players; its esentially a single-player lobby system game that your forced to pay $15 a month for. If you see an opposing faction player on a system map, there is absolutely no engagement.
- Content is sorely lacking to the point where very very early on in this game, the 'instanced' pve quests are nothing more than similar repeatable maps and mobs of previous quests done; the static nature of pve and its' redundancy is astounding.
- Quest copywriting seems very week that leads to weak story engagement or sense of draw that your actually contributing to a story-arc or meaningfully contributing to federation or klingon game-play.
- Space and ground game-play combat has the most limiting, redundant, Quake 3rd-person shooter type feel of any game in the mmorpg market; its shallow.
- There is no physics to ground combat as there is no physics to space combat that factor into game-play.
- Ground and Space pvp combat amounts to a frag-fest of limited players and non-tactical or strategic importance in any respect to story or game-play in this faction vs. faction environment.
- Like a 3rd-person or first-person shooter, the player-vs-player stuff is without any game-play contributory value, other than winning a small confining map, it amounts to run, gun, die, or run,gun, win, limp, die. But your rewarded as much for being a loser as a winner; no mmoprg game-play distinction. I havent found the game-play nutrition in this yet.
- There is no reasonable complimentary opposite to winning. You win in space and on ground, you get a battery or such (a weak reward), you lose on space or on ground, you miraculously reappear next to the fight to battle like a button mashing mindless drone without consequences again. Lack of consequences to death has turned this title into a series of suicide runs for the same exact reward I get for battling tactically and strategically. The grossly equivalent rewards for those that die often is enough to leave this game.
The lack of any penalty for being a suicide player is astounding. So, as a Klingon that must rely on pvp matches to level, when these suicide players enter a match just to roll into klingons without putting up any fight, but just to died repeatedly and quickly to get the match over so they can rinse and repeat, thats considered good game-design and fauir play at my game-play expense?
There are several things missing, underwelming and poorly implemented in STO, and this has got to rank at the top of the list. . .they, those that die purposely and repeatedly without consequence, advance their own rush for experience at others game-play and immersion expense are exasperating a real problem; they are rewarded handsomely for being losers; figuratively and literally by Cryptic.
- The community (massively multiplayer) element of this mmorpg is very fragmented (as opposed to expanded and cooperative) due to the great number of single-player feel instances. Community feels fragmented to one of those several small instanced zones that does nothing to encourage the feel of massively multiplayer entertainment.
- No alternative industry, aka, no resource gathering towards community crafting, enterprise, or merchandising elements for the federation or klingons. Would be nice if this mmorpg staple were available to players, rather than being non-existant.
STO is not now, nor will it ever be, remotely close to Star Trek as is presented in book form, TV series or film. It's an uncomplicated, admittedly fairly enjoyable starship shoot-em-up, with a micron-thin veneer of Star Trek pasted hastily over it. Think Whack-A-Mole with starships - it's THAT undemanding. Fun it may be, but it's not much of a long-term game.
I think we'll all agree (well most will agree) that what Cryptic did with STO will come back and bite them in the ass. They had potential to make a game with depth and longevity and they managed to make a game that is shallow and has a maximum casual gameplay of a couple of months. I level slow, I like to absorb myself in the game... when I bought WoW (shortly after it released) it took me a year of casual gameplay to reach level 60. LotRO I've been playing for about a year, on and off, and have a 2 characters, none higher than level 35.
With STO I have a Captain 3 (level 33) playing a couple of hours a day since headstart. This is way to quick. Lets hope TOR does better, but I won't hold my breath.
whack a mole with starships.... absolutely hilarious, and sadly correct. and thats without going into ground combat which is even more mindless and uninspired.... well i guess on the ground you have to walk around walls.
IF THE ONLY DEFENCE FOR CRITICISM OF A GAME IS CALLING SOMEONE A TROLL OR HATER, THAT SAYS A LOT ABOUT THE QUALITY OF THE GAME