I really wanted to like STO im a decent fan of star trek and I got feed up with the PVP griefing and static bland universe that EVE can be. but STO gave me the feeling that i was being scamed for being a fan. it feels like they just threw together off the shelf pieces and skinned it over in star trek skins (on occasion my charactor avatar actually appeared in space and visa versa)
STO could have been so much more and deep and immersive its one of the few good franchises that would have been prime for immersive learning instead if a shallow violence filled hack and blast.
they didnt even bother to put in all the planets of SOL system so you can crocc the galaxy but you cant visit mars or even star fleet acadamy!
exploration and crafting are there only in token
STO in its current form didnt hold my intrest for hours let alone days.
I definatly did like this article it seemed prety fare and accurite
guess now its back to searching for a MMO with some depth life and dynamics and maby some emotion besides KILL KILL KILL !!!
make a world, not a game, we dont want another game.
Putting casual players and trek fans in the same category is probably a bad idea. From a casual player standpoint, yes, it's probably somewhere near your score of 7.5 (actually it's probably closer to the 6.8 you give it for yourself) but as a Trek game...no, this is horrible. I don't hate STO for being a bad MMORPG. I hate it for being an absolutely awful Trek MMORPG. There is nothing Star Trek about the game save for a few sound effects. Also, DS9 was never consumed with the Dominion...not even when they were at war with them the last couple of seasons. There were a lot of episodes in the later years of DS9 that didn't focus on the Dominion and didn't have space battles every scene. So saying that the show had a "very gritty portrayal of the Federation at war" is a bit of a stretch particularly when only a few of the handful of Dominion-War-centric shows showed anything remotely relating to the horrors of war. Frankly, those episodes only showed the inconveniences, rather than horrors, of war.
Exactly. The fact that the author thinks DS9 was as combat heavy as STO indicates to me that perhaps the review had never watched DS9.
Also, as a Star Trek fan for life I give the game a 0/10 for a few reasons. 1) the developers assuming that Trek fans would only want the most dumbed down, simple MMO ever. 2) the developers not even trying to capture the Star Trek feel in the game's main storyline, and 3) exploration and diplomacy, a huge part of Star Trek are an afterthought when they should have been in the core game design.
Finally, what does it say about this game and its developers when it is simpler, shallower, and more dumbed down than World of Warcraft?
I personally thought it was a well done review. I might disagree with parts but that is all matters of opinion as is with every game. Thank for the three style look because I do think it is important. Hard core gamers want something very different from casual gamers and IP fans. The base of STO works well for the casual gamer and gives them a fun experiencew. Not great mind you but far from bad. As for the people claiming trek fans would not like it, as a long time old school Trekkie I am enjoying it. Sure the UFP is not about combat but you forget there is this little issue going on called a war, kind of changes the perspective. Plus lets get real this is a game first and foremost so it needs to be fun. Which is more fun spending hours waiting for scanners to gether data that will have to be actually evaluated back at the starbase or kicking Klinogn butt? Come on Star Trek exploration is BORING. You always hear them talking about all the time they have spent waiting while one officer ran a bunch of tests. From a game perspective exploration is hard because it is hard to make it real exploration and fun at the same time. I saw someone say more diplomacy and I wanted to scream. Explain how you can do diplomacy with either knee jerk AI responses or pure PvP where the other guy knows it is just a game and so does not want to deal with real diplomacy? It is easy for people to arm chair quarterback how this game should be made but seriously how many of you could make it? Lets get real most have no clue about game development and programming. At the end of the day it is simple, you like the game play it, you do not like then do not play.
You've missed the whole point. There are plenty of ideas about exploration and diplomacy, which had they been implemented would have made many gamers happy. Vanguard had a neat diplomacy mini-game which lots of people liked. There have been some excellent suggestions about enabling missions to be completed *without* blowing up every ship, that is look for a diplomatic solution during a quest and you might find one (quests of similar complexity have been done in LOTRO for example). In fact, you come across as just a bit dumb and unimaginative because there are lots of ideas out there which are entirely workable.
So the point is that Cryptic had an extremely limited scope for STO from the start. Lack of exploration and diplomacy isn't about lack of ideas, it is about going for the quick buck, knowingly making a mediocre game while counting on the IP to make it a financial success.
The frustrating thing is, with people like you around happily forking out $65+ for a bit of mediocre online fun, they will keep going. I wonder which unfortunate IP is next...
Firstly, I would like to say that I liked the game. It was fun to play, it didn't feel repetitive and I got a lot of joy out of it. When I finally get the money, I will buy it and play it, for I need something to replace my time after giving up WoW. Secondly, I would like to comment on your point about Zachary Quinto's performance as the EMH. If you take a real close look, you'll see that the EMH is modeled after a Vulcan, pointy ears and all, which is befitting considering that's what he played in the movie.
Which would mean that Starfleet is staffed by complete idiots in the future. They choose a person completely incapable of bedside manner and a reassuring approach, especially vital when performing life threatening surgeries.
If you don't want to read my novel, just read the bold phrases to get the point.
Your review was great, except for the line above. Sheri Graner Ray, a game developer here in Austin, has been devoting a lot of her public face time to convincing the gaming industry that yes, tutorials do in fact matter. As a hardcore gamer and mediocre/amateur dev at times, I originally poo-pooed her message.
Then I played the STO tutorial in open-beta a month later. Knowing Sheri was 100% dead-on after suffering through it, I had my wife and non-gamer trekkie friends play the tutorial. The tutorial was so bad, they had no idea how to get through it without my help. None of them would ever play it solely based on their first 15 minutes of torture. (Mind you, these were computer-saavy, intelligent people who play Wii, and they got confused at every landmark in the tutorial. About 70% of the time, I simply could not blame them.)
It was amazing once my eyes were opened from the eyes of a true casual gamer (the kind that's only played Sims or Farmville): The tutorial innately assumed you were an avid MMO gamer who knew how to do everything and blithely tromped forward without so much as a pop-up-window explanation at crucial times.
Infuriated at how the developers had automatically filtered out everyone unfamiliar with MMOs, I wrote 3 separate posts in open-beta, detailing every last thing wrong with the tutorial, hoping desperately that at least some of it would be fixed before non-WASD trekkies were annihilated. ( I was hoping I could link to the posts, but all open-beta suggestion posts were deleted)
You can guess how this story ends....
Yup, that's right. EVERY LAST THING I asked to be fixed was completely ignored. The tutorial experience at launch was 100% identical to the horror they produced in beta. We're not talking about enormous dev time requirements either, like "make 10 new textures/instances" or "have William Shatner do a voice-over." No, it was along the lines of "your pop-up explanations say the wrong things" or "you didn't explain how to fire a weapon," and it still fell on deaf ears.
I would say that such an atrocity by itself should be grounds for dumping STO, but the sad truth is every MMO commits this heinous crime of assumption. An avid WoW gaming friend of mine told me that she never would've touched it if her brother hadn't spent days patiently helping her understand how to play it, as the tutorial consisted of exclamation marks which she didn't even see for a month of playing. She now plays WoW 50 hours a week and does quite well in PvP. The fact that our tutorials filter out people like this is shameful, and it needs to end now.
According to Sheri, this means you first have to stop having the junior intern do the tutorial and bump it up in priority beyond picking up the morning coffee.
Edit: To further emphasize my point, it's worth noting that after 6 pages of comments, no one else mentioned the tutorial except for the EMH's vocal emotional state. This illustrates how easy it is for us familiars to overlook and completely botch the most important part given to casual/non-gamers: the first 5 minutes where they don't even know how to move, shoot, or communicate.
I love how because the reviewer said it is an MMORPG that it is magically an MMORPG. The reviewers opinion is no more valid then mine is. Once STO tries to become even a little bit massive give me a call.
I hate to break it to you, but yes, it is.
Just as a newspaper columnist's is more valid.
There are people out there who coin terms, define genres and trends. Like defining what "science fiction" is. Their opinions are always more valid than the man on the street. They have established a competency for knowing what they're talking about and convinced popular vote or people who affect popular vote of said competency. We use their definitions versus my grandfather's uncle's.
How the world works. Welcome to it.
Alright i guess you take Ann Coulters opinions as more valid then most peoples because she sell millions of books. Your comment makes me laugh. It is so irrational in so many ways i dont even know where to start.
Try to start. Tell us, why is your opinion, Mr... annonymus man on the internet, equal to that of Jon Stradden, Managing Editor of mmorpg.com?
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, imo. But to say that everyone's has the same weight? Nah. We know a lot more about Jon then we do you, which lends a lot more weight to his opinions on MMORPGs then yours.
It was going to be the Forgotten Realms, and more than likely the NWN setting. However, WotC/Hasbro has initiated a lawsuit to remove Atari's rights to create games based off the D&D franchise. Given that Atari's mission statement when purchasing Cryptic was to use the CO engine and push out MMOs every 18 - 24 months, I will be rather happy if the lawsuit succeeds.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
An ambitious 9th grader coulda come up with that stuff. Come to think of it, I did(despite not being ambitious). Even had the problem... on an '85 Daytona Turbo. Fixed it with electrical tape.
Again, heavy for a 80's TV show. But that doesn't say much, or demand much from an MMO.
Man those Dodge Daytona's were notorious for that. All you needed to do to fix it though was reverse the polarity on the dilithium matrix. I mean that works for everything in the world right? I know when my juicer's acting up I just reverse the polarity. Same with my air conditioning. Works every time!
As for STO, fair review though personally I think the score is a little generous. The game is ridiculously shallow, the launch stability is amongst the worst of this generation of mmo's. Personally I'd put it slightly ahead of Age of Conan's. With the vast amount of disconnects (when I was trying it out I was getting disconnected about three times per hour), the complete lack of depth, the lack of voice for almost anything other than Zachary Quinto's pathetic voice over work (I swear the voice over work in Night Trap or Return to Zork was better than his EMH), or the Guardian on the Edge of Forever there is no voice work. Its very easy to see the game was rushed to release, just try to read some of the quest text either its engrish or they need a much better editor. The spelling and grammatical mistakes are really unacceptable in this day and age.
The ground combat is just plain bad, not just unchallenging its weak. The ship combat is admittedly kind of fun, and the graphics are pretty good. It could have growth, but with Cryptic's track record I don't expect to see any depth added. The missions reminded me of the missions I had in CoH years ago, and those never seemed to really get much more in depth. I have limited faith that Cryptic will improve them there. Its an extremely casual game that will rapidly bore anyone who's not just a hard cord Star Trek fan. Still due to the IP it will have time to grow.
Personally I'm getting tired of companies using a well known IP for lazy development.
Edit: To further emphasize my point, it's worth noting that after 6 pages of comments, no one else mentioned the tutorial except for the EMH's vocal emotional state. This illustrates how easy it is for us familiars to overlook and completely botch the most important part given to casual/non-gamers: the first 5 minutes where they don't even know how to move, shoot, or communicate.
Heck its not all that easy for vets. I've played basically every MMO released since EQ and there were parts in that mess of a tutorial where I had to stop and think. If that's the case, a true newbie is going to be completely lost.
Nice review, thanks much. I really like how you tried to score it with different audiences in mind. I like how you talked about each game system, and that you mentioned the C-store; that really is important to me. I don't like the idea that I can't play a Federation Klingon or Ferengi without paying extra cash right out of the gate. I also don't like the fact that these races have unique stat bonuses. The way they implemented the RMT shop really is a deal breaker for me.
You make some nice recommendations too. I hope Cryptic takes a look at your column for some intelligent feedback on its latest game.
I love how because the reviewer said it is an MMORPG that it is magically an MMORPG. The reviewers opinion is no more valid then mine is. Once STO tries to become even a little bit massive give me a call.
I hate to break it to you, but yes, it is.
Just as a newspaper columnist's is more valid.
There are people out there who coin terms, define genres and trends. Like defining what "science fiction" is. Their opinions are always more valid than the man on the street. They have established a competency for knowing what they're talking about and convinced popular vote or people who affect popular vote of said competency. We use their definitions versus my grandfather's uncle's.
How the world works. Welcome to it.
Alright i guess you take Ann Coulters opinions as more valid then most peoples because she sell millions of books. Your comment makes me laugh. It is so irrational in so many ways i dont even know where to start.
Try to start. Tell us, why is your opinion, Mr... annonymus man on the internet, equal to that of Jon Stradden, Managing Editor of mmorpg.com?
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, imo. But to say that everyone's has the same weight? Nah. We know a lot more about Jon then we do you, which lends a lot more weight to his opinions on MMORPGs then yours.
I don't judge opinions based on who said them, but rather on the quality of their argument. Unfortunately, Mr. Wood's argument is not very compelling. STO is not "massive" in any sense of the word and calling it an "MMORPG" is laughable. Likewise, solarine's argument is puerile. Just because some faceless kid on the Internet has declared "how the world works" does not make it so.
Originally posted by laephis I don't judge opinions based on who said them, but rather on the quality of their argument. Unfortunately, Mr. Wood's argument is not very compelling. STO is not "massive" in any sense of the word and calling it an "MMORPG" is laughable. Likewise, solarine's argument is puerile. Just because some faceless kid on the Internet has declared "how the world works" does not make it so.
Never quite understood this, either. What makes this game not an MMO? This site defined what "Massive" meant to them and it seemed to work pretty well.
Do you mean it's not Massive content wise? Population? Because it is instanced? Do you really need to be fighting other people for quests all the time for it to be considered an MMO?
Don't get me wrong, my favorite type of games are Sandbox, by far. However, I also do enjoy these types of games, as I have been playing CoH for 3 years now AND, in case you were wondering, I dislike STO... I might visit it in a year if they add some meaningful stuff in the mix.
An ambitious 9th grader coulda come up with that stuff. Come to think of it, I did(despite not being ambitious). Even had the problem... on an '85 Daytona Turbo. Fixed it with electrical tape.
Again, heavy for a 80's TV show. But that doesn't say much, or demand much from an MMO.
Man those Dodge Daytona's were notorious for that. All you needed to do to fix it though was reverse the polarity on the dilithium matrix. I mean that works for everything in the world right? I know when my juicer's acting up I just reverse the polarity. Same with my air conditioning. Works every time!
Except when the tri-folium solution is applied improperly to the nex-terra-phaluxus compound. Then the ether-cellular precambriant decambritizer is your last hope, and that hope is just pubescent. Only by reversing the polarity of the sub-atomic Ovarian Atomizer will you reconstitute your precious power mirrors. Learned this the hard way.
Toyota... all you have to do was talk to ME... all your effervescent woes would be pubescent....
I rate this game 4.0. I don't see why they didn't make it like Star Wars with all its depth? It's been out for so many years and this is all they come up with? Very disappointing.
Right now, if you buy the game it will cost you 10$ less than at the beginning (with less than one month since went live) but this is not the worst part, this is a market decission that players are ok with.
The worst thing (best for those who wanted to wait) is that you'll get 2 free months now but nothing at all if you are already subscribed/playing.
Any Star Trek MMO needs a diplomacy system. Vanguard shows how this could be done on a small scale mission basis. But it is too late now, the game has been made casual, and not even that well it seems. Maybe like AO it will shine in a few years time, but that is the only hope you can offer for so many of the new releases.
I went to STO with very little expectations, after being let down by so many hyped games in recent years, so I would hit it without any preconceived expectations, unfortunately it meet such low targets.
I agree with more or less everything said in the review, and initially I had fun, but by Lt-Cmdr 4 I was wondering where the game was....
I expect a certain amount of grind and repetition in any MMO, but not to the extent that STO does it, especially as a Klingon player. You are stuck in a loop of the same couple of ground arena's the same couple of space arena's like a bad case of Groundhog Day, with no sign of a reprieve.
Space combat is a case of hit the "fire all" key as fast as you can, with the odd BOFF skill here and there, with very little need for tactics (in tier 1 or 2 anyway), until your thumbs break, your keyboard breaks, your opponent dies, you die, or you write a macro.
Ground combat is usually a case of running through corridoors that you can't actually see along due to graphics bugs, getting stuck in the walls and begging the opposition to kill you so you can join the fight, running round in circles as a group "pwning" (I hate that phrase!) or "being pwned". At least there's less button spam here, and tactics can actually win the game (assuming you aren't all stuck in walls...)
Crafting . . . . . . . . . sorry, I was laughing so much I forgot to type. There is no crafting in STO, don't believe the lies. You loot various items and exchange various combinations plus a naff item and receive a slightly less naff item from an NPC - I honestly can't say I've seen anything for Klingons along those lines, I think it's purely a Fed system.
There's more, but I realise how this post looks, and I didn't mean it to, but every time I start to think positively about the game, all I can think of is I got a T-Shirt with my Gold Edition, and the first 10-12 levels were fun.
Such a shame, as a Star Trek MMO could, and SHOULD, have been so much more, it's enough to make a grown man cry.
And I am a Star Trek Fan. I've watched every episode - most of them several times (and own the DVD's and VHS), I've watched every movie and love even the bad ones, I knitted a Tribble when I was a kid and I still have it, I have about 30 T-Shirts, but even I think the rating is too high.
Good review Jon, basically everyone is paying to beta test this game. Typical MMO release, lack of content everywhere and the crafting is just thrown in to say they have it.
As to the MMO argument, this game is about as much a MMO as many others that skirt the genre's definition. Massive it is, but that is about it. Just like Global Agenda, this game does not meet my definition of a MMO.
Over instancing in many cases is a clutz for poor game design and it is very evident in this game.
Personally I don't think they can add enough content to keep most players interested for long. Typically Cryptic just spends enough time on a game to get the next one out. I think their sole purpose in the genre is make it off box sales.
Enjoy the game for what it is, just don't expect to spend a lot of time playing it, it will bore you to death eventually.
The problem is that Star Trek is about exploration and solving problems not always with force. There is absolutely none of that in this game. Hence it can hardly be called Star Trek just because it looks like it.
It's definitely fair that you gave the game a 6.4. Heck, its rating here on the MMORPG game list is only marginally better at 6.8. That's almost at the bottom of the list of games that even have enough votes to get a rating and way below any of the so-called AAA titles to have come out in recent years.
Traditionally, games launch here with really high ratings from the fanbois and then drop as more people who aren't so rabidly supportive of the new shiny start weighing in. I think it speaks volumes that STO launched with the lowest score of any game I've paid attention to and has only come up marginally since then.
Cryptic should be ashamed of themselves. They've released two games back to back, and the newest is more than a point lower than the already "meh" score of Champions. Not only have they failed to learn from the past mistakes (and triumphs) of other games, they've even failed to learn from their own!
I'm a big Star Trek fan and I played Champions Online for months. There are things fun about Champions, but Cryptic is only good at putting out mediocre games. There are good qualities to the games, but the overall experience is lacking after you play a while. If a different company had made Star Trek Online I would have played in a second, but I've learned my lesson with Cryptic, and that's disappointing since I really want to play a Star Trek MMO, though this one is so instanced, like Champions Online, that its hard to call it a true MMO.
Sadly, Cryptic will talk about all the people playing their game, but in many cases I think its just the hardcore trek fans who don't know any better yet. After playing a few months even they will leave the game if its the usual crap from Cryptic and then you will see news stories about how they lost most of their subscriptions.
It was obvious that it will be a shallow, dull game just by reading dev blogs after they announced this game. I knew it from the start that is why they did not get my money
Great character customization mixed with an annoyingly confusing ability system that doesn't do its job and explain what said abilities and statistics do and are for, with an in-game UI that's clunky and needlessly complex, piled on top of a mediocre game that's biggest selling factor lies behind a name and hype?
"Standard Cryptic fare" to me. That alone should of been thrown into both the Pros and Con section... =P
For once, an honest review, thanks Jon. I rate it a bit lower than you do, because I still view it as an incomplete beta that doesn't yet deserve a release grade.
Comments
I really wanted to like STO im a decent fan of star trek and I got feed up with the PVP griefing and static bland universe that EVE can be. but STO gave me the feeling that i was being scamed for being a fan. it feels like they just threw together off the shelf pieces and skinned it over in star trek skins (on occasion my charactor avatar actually appeared in space and visa versa)
STO could have been so much more and deep and immersive its one of the few good franchises that would have been prime for immersive learning instead if a shallow violence filled hack and blast.
they didnt even bother to put in all the planets of SOL system so you can crocc the galaxy but you cant visit mars or even star fleet acadamy!
exploration and crafting are there only in token
STO in its current form didnt hold my intrest for hours let alone days.
I definatly did like this article it seemed prety fare and accurite
guess now its back to searching for a MMO with some depth life and dynamics and maby some emotion besides KILL KILL KILL !!!
make a world, not a game, we dont want another game.
Exactly. The fact that the author thinks DS9 was as combat heavy as STO indicates to me that perhaps the review had never watched DS9.
Also, as a Star Trek fan for life I give the game a 0/10 for a few reasons. 1) the developers assuming that Trek fans would only want the most dumbed down, simple MMO ever. 2) the developers not even trying to capture the Star Trek feel in the game's main storyline, and 3) exploration and diplomacy, a huge part of Star Trek are an afterthought when they should have been in the core game design.
Finally, what does it say about this game and its developers when it is simpler, shallower, and more dumbed down than World of Warcraft?
You've missed the whole point. There are plenty of ideas about exploration and diplomacy, which had they been implemented would have made many gamers happy. Vanguard had a neat diplomacy mini-game which lots of people liked. There have been some excellent suggestions about enabling missions to be completed *without* blowing up every ship, that is look for a diplomatic solution during a quest and you might find one (quests of similar complexity have been done in LOTRO for example). In fact, you come across as just a bit dumb and unimaginative because there are lots of ideas out there which are entirely workable.
So the point is that Cryptic had an extremely limited scope for STO from the start. Lack of exploration and diplomacy isn't about lack of ideas, it is about going for the quick buck, knowingly making a mediocre game while counting on the IP to make it a financial success.
The frustrating thing is, with people like you around happily forking out $65+ for a bit of mediocre online fun, they will keep going. I wonder which unfortunate IP is next...
Which would mean that Starfleet is staffed by complete idiots in the future. They choose a person completely incapable of bedside manner and a reassuring approach, especially vital when performing life threatening surgeries.
If you don't want to read my novel, just read the bold phrases to get the point.
Your review was great, except for the line above. Sheri Graner Ray, a game developer here in Austin, has been devoting a lot of her public face time to convincing the gaming industry that yes, tutorials do in fact matter. As a hardcore gamer and mediocre/amateur dev at times, I originally poo-pooed her message.
Then I played the STO tutorial in open-beta a month later. Knowing Sheri was 100% dead-on after suffering through it, I had my wife and non-gamer trekkie friends play the tutorial. The tutorial was so bad, they had no idea how to get through it without my help. None of them would ever play it solely based on their first 15 minutes of torture. (Mind you, these were computer-saavy, intelligent people who play Wii, and they got confused at every landmark in the tutorial. About 70% of the time, I simply could not blame them.)
It was amazing once my eyes were opened from the eyes of a true casual gamer (the kind that's only played Sims or Farmville): The tutorial innately assumed you were an avid MMO gamer who knew how to do everything and blithely tromped forward without so much as a pop-up-window explanation at crucial times.
Infuriated at how the developers had automatically filtered out everyone unfamiliar with MMOs, I wrote 3 separate posts in open-beta, detailing every last thing wrong with the tutorial, hoping desperately that at least some of it would be fixed before non-WASD trekkies were annihilated. ( I was hoping I could link to the posts, but all open-beta suggestion posts were deleted)
You can guess how this story ends....
Yup, that's right. EVERY LAST THING I asked to be fixed was completely ignored. The tutorial experience at launch was 100% identical to the horror they produced in beta. We're not talking about enormous dev time requirements either, like "make 10 new textures/instances" or "have William Shatner do a voice-over." No, it was along the lines of "your pop-up explanations say the wrong things" or "you didn't explain how to fire a weapon," and it still fell on deaf ears.
I would say that such an atrocity by itself should be grounds for dumping STO, but the sad truth is every MMO commits this heinous crime of assumption. An avid WoW gaming friend of mine told me that she never would've touched it if her brother hadn't spent days patiently helping her understand how to play it, as the tutorial consisted of exclamation marks which she didn't even see for a month of playing. She now plays WoW 50 hours a week and does quite well in PvP. The fact that our tutorials filter out people like this is shameful, and it needs to end now.
According to Sheri, this means you first have to stop having the junior intern do the tutorial and bump it up in priority beyond picking up the morning coffee.
Edit: To further emphasize my point, it's worth noting that after 6 pages of comments, no one else mentioned the tutorial except for the EMH's vocal emotional state. This illustrates how easy it is for us familiars to overlook and completely botch the most important part given to casual/non-gamers: the first 5 minutes where they don't even know how to move, shoot, or communicate.
I hate to break it to you, but yes, it is.
Just as a newspaper columnist's is more valid.
There are people out there who coin terms, define genres and trends. Like defining what "science fiction" is. Their opinions are always more valid than the man on the street. They have established a competency for knowing what they're talking about and convinced popular vote or people who affect popular vote of said competency. We use their definitions versus my grandfather's uncle's.
How the world works. Welcome to it.
Alright i guess you take Ann Coulters opinions as more valid then most peoples because she sell millions of books. Your comment makes me laugh. It is so irrational in so many ways i dont even know where to start.
Try to start. Tell us, why is your opinion, Mr... annonymus man on the internet, equal to that of Jon Stradden, Managing Editor of mmorpg.com?
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, imo. But to say that everyone's has the same weight? Nah. We know a lot more about Jon then we do you, which lends a lot more weight to his opinions on MMORPGs then yours.
It was going to be the Forgotten Realms, and more than likely the NWN setting. However, WotC/Hasbro has initiated a lawsuit to remove Atari's rights to create games based off the D&D franchise. Given that Atari's mission statement when purchasing Cryptic was to use the CO engine and push out MMOs every 18 - 24 months, I will be rather happy if the lawsuit succeeds.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
Man those Dodge Daytona's were notorious for that. All you needed to do to fix it though was reverse the polarity on the dilithium matrix. I mean that works for everything in the world right? I know when my juicer's acting up I just reverse the polarity. Same with my air conditioning. Works every time!
As for STO, fair review though personally I think the score is a little generous. The game is ridiculously shallow, the launch stability is amongst the worst of this generation of mmo's. Personally I'd put it slightly ahead of Age of Conan's. With the vast amount of disconnects (when I was trying it out I was getting disconnected about three times per hour), the complete lack of depth, the lack of voice for almost anything other than Zachary Quinto's pathetic voice over work (I swear the voice over work in Night Trap or Return to Zork was better than his EMH), or the Guardian on the Edge of Forever there is no voice work. Its very easy to see the game was rushed to release, just try to read some of the quest text either its engrish or they need a much better editor. The spelling and grammatical mistakes are really unacceptable in this day and age.
The ground combat is just plain bad, not just unchallenging its weak. The ship combat is admittedly kind of fun, and the graphics are pretty good. It could have growth, but with Cryptic's track record I don't expect to see any depth added. The missions reminded me of the missions I had in CoH years ago, and those never seemed to really get much more in depth. I have limited faith that Cryptic will improve them there. Its an extremely casual game that will rapidly bore anyone who's not just a hard cord Star Trek fan. Still due to the IP it will have time to grow.
Personally I'm getting tired of companies using a well known IP for lazy development.
Heck its not all that easy for vets. I've played basically every MMO released since EQ and there were parts in that mess of a tutorial where I had to stop and think. If that's the case, a true newbie is going to be completely lost.
"Very heavily instanced"
Nice one gj.
World of Warcraft is a proof that MMORPG quality should affect schedule/budget and not the other way around.
Nice review, thanks much. I really like how you tried to score it with different audiences in mind. I like how you talked about each game system, and that you mentioned the C-store; that really is important to me. I don't like the idea that I can't play a Federation Klingon or Ferengi without paying extra cash right out of the gate. I also don't like the fact that these races have unique stat bonuses. The way they implemented the RMT shop really is a deal breaker for me.
You make some nice recommendations too. I hope Cryptic takes a look at your column for some intelligent feedback on its latest game.
I hate to break it to you, but yes, it is.
Just as a newspaper columnist's is more valid.
There are people out there who coin terms, define genres and trends. Like defining what "science fiction" is. Their opinions are always more valid than the man on the street. They have established a competency for knowing what they're talking about and convinced popular vote or people who affect popular vote of said competency. We use their definitions versus my grandfather's uncle's.
How the world works. Welcome to it.
Alright i guess you take Ann Coulters opinions as more valid then most peoples because she sell millions of books. Your comment makes me laugh. It is so irrational in so many ways i dont even know where to start.
Try to start. Tell us, why is your opinion, Mr... annonymus man on the internet, equal to that of Jon Stradden, Managing Editor of mmorpg.com?
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, imo. But to say that everyone's has the same weight? Nah. We know a lot more about Jon then we do you, which lends a lot more weight to his opinions on MMORPGs then yours.
I don't judge opinions based on who said them, but rather on the quality of their argument. Unfortunately, Mr. Wood's argument is not very compelling. STO is not "massive" in any sense of the word and calling it an "MMORPG" is laughable. Likewise, solarine's argument is puerile. Just because some faceless kid on the Internet has declared "how the world works" does not make it so.
Never quite understood this, either. What makes this game not an MMO? This site defined what "Massive" meant to them and it seemed to work pretty well.
Do you mean it's not Massive content wise? Population? Because it is instanced? Do you really need to be fighting other people for quests all the time for it to be considered an MMO?
Don't get me wrong, my favorite type of games are Sandbox, by far. However, I also do enjoy these types of games, as I have been playing CoH for 3 years now
AND, in case you were wondering, I dislike STO... I might visit it in a year if they add some meaningful stuff in the mix.
Man those Dodge Daytona's were notorious for that. All you needed to do to fix it though was reverse the polarity on the dilithium matrix. I mean that works for everything in the world right? I know when my juicer's acting up I just reverse the polarity. Same with my air conditioning. Works every time!
Except when the tri-folium solution is applied improperly to the nex-terra-phaluxus compound. Then the ether-cellular precambriant decambritizer is your last hope, and that hope is just pubescent. Only by reversing the polarity of the sub-atomic Ovarian Atomizer will you reconstitute your precious power mirrors. Learned this the hard way.
Toyota... all you have to do was talk to ME... all your effervescent woes would be pubescent....
I rate this game 4.0. I don't see why they didn't make it like Star Wars with all its depth? It's been out for so many years and this is all they come up with? Very disappointing.
The review is very spot-on.
They keep doing things worst.
Right now, if you buy the game it will cost you 10$ less than at the beginning (with less than one month since went live) but this is not the worst part, this is a market decission that players are ok with.
The worst thing (best for those who wanted to wait) is that you'll get 2 free months now but nothing at all if you are already subscribed/playing.
The player base is very angry (http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=128573; 70 pages atm) and feel insulted, cheated, defrauded and a long etc.
I will never understand why marketing goes before good service. Never.
Any Star Trek MMO needs a diplomacy system. Vanguard shows how this could be done on a small scale mission basis. But it is too late now, the game has been made casual, and not even that well it seems. Maybe like AO it will shine in a few years time, but that is the only hope you can offer for so many of the new releases.
I went to STO with very little expectations, after being let down by so many hyped games in recent years, so I would hit it without any preconceived expectations, unfortunately it meet such low targets.
I agree with more or less everything said in the review, and initially I had fun, but by Lt-Cmdr 4 I was wondering where the game was....
I expect a certain amount of grind and repetition in any MMO, but not to the extent that STO does it, especially as a Klingon player. You are stuck in a loop of the same couple of ground arena's the same couple of space arena's like a bad case of Groundhog Day, with no sign of a reprieve.
Space combat is a case of hit the "fire all" key as fast as you can, with the odd BOFF skill here and there, with very little need for tactics (in tier 1 or 2 anyway), until your thumbs break, your keyboard breaks, your opponent dies, you die, or you write a macro.
Ground combat is usually a case of running through corridoors that you can't actually see along due to graphics bugs, getting stuck in the walls and begging the opposition to kill you so you can join the fight, running round in circles as a group "pwning" (I hate that phrase!) or "being pwned". At least there's less button spam here, and tactics can actually win the game (assuming you aren't all stuck in walls...)
Crafting . . . . . . . . . sorry, I was laughing so much I forgot to type. There is no crafting in STO, don't believe the lies. You loot various items and exchange various combinations plus a naff item and receive a slightly less naff item from an NPC - I honestly can't say I've seen anything for Klingons along those lines, I think it's purely a Fed system.
There's more, but I realise how this post looks, and I didn't mean it to, but every time I start to think positively about the game, all I can think of is I got a T-Shirt with my Gold Edition, and the first 10-12 levels were fun.
Such a shame, as a Star Trek MMO could, and SHOULD, have been so much more, it's enough to make a grown man cry.
And I am a Star Trek Fan. I've watched every episode - most of them several times (and own the DVD's and VHS), I've watched every movie and love even the bad ones, I knitted a Tribble when I was a kid and I still have it, I have about 30 T-Shirts, but even I think the rating is too high.
Good review Jon, basically everyone is paying to beta test this game. Typical MMO release, lack of content everywhere and the crafting is just thrown in to say they have it.
As to the MMO argument, this game is about as much a MMO as many others that skirt the genre's definition. Massive it is, but that is about it. Just like Global Agenda, this game does not meet my definition of a MMO.
Over instancing in many cases is a clutz for poor game design and it is very evident in this game.
Personally I don't think they can add enough content to keep most players interested for long. Typically Cryptic just spends enough time on a game to get the next one out. I think their sole purpose in the genre is make it off box sales.
Enjoy the game for what it is, just don't expect to spend a lot of time playing it, it will bore you to death eventually.
The problem is that Star Trek is about exploration and solving problems not always with force. There is absolutely none of that in this game. Hence it can hardly be called Star Trek just because it looks like it.
It's definitely fair that you gave the game a 6.4. Heck, its rating here on the MMORPG game list is only marginally better at 6.8. That's almost at the bottom of the list of games that even have enough votes to get a rating and way below any of the so-called AAA titles to have come out in recent years.
Traditionally, games launch here with really high ratings from the fanbois and then drop as more people who aren't so rabidly supportive of the new shiny start weighing in. I think it speaks volumes that STO launched with the lowest score of any game I've paid attention to and has only come up marginally since then.
Cryptic should be ashamed of themselves. They've released two games back to back, and the newest is more than a point lower than the already "meh" score of Champions. Not only have they failed to learn from the past mistakes (and triumphs) of other games, they've even failed to learn from their own!
I'm a big Star Trek fan and I played Champions Online for months. There are things fun about Champions, but Cryptic is only good at putting out mediocre games. There are good qualities to the games, but the overall experience is lacking after you play a while. If a different company had made Star Trek Online I would have played in a second, but I've learned my lesson with Cryptic, and that's disappointing since I really want to play a Star Trek MMO, though this one is so instanced, like Champions Online, that its hard to call it a true MMO.
Sadly, Cryptic will talk about all the people playing their game, but in many cases I think its just the hardcore trek fans who don't know any better yet. After playing a few months even they will leave the game if its the usual crap from Cryptic and then you will see news stories about how they lost most of their subscriptions.
It was obvious that it will be a shallow, dull game just by reading dev blogs after they announced this game. I knew it from the start that is why they did not get my money
Let's see...
Great character customization mixed with an annoyingly confusing ability system that doesn't do its job and explain what said abilities and statistics do and are for, with an in-game UI that's clunky and needlessly complex, piled on top of a mediocre game that's biggest selling factor lies behind a name and hype?
"Standard Cryptic fare" to me. That alone should of been thrown into both the Pros and Con section... =P
Just want to lulz and say I told you so.
During closed beta everyone doubted when I said this game is crap.... now who is laughing? Not me. Just glad I didnt buy this POS
For once, an honest review, thanks Jon. I rate it a bit lower than you do, because I still view it as an incomplete beta that doesn't yet deserve a release grade.