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On the Fence? 1 Week in and I still Like the Game
mrhorrible
Member Posts: 10
So I was all set to pass this game up, horrible reviews, tons of terrible publicity here, and my own personal reservations about the game system and how they were going to make it work and still maintain a Star Trek feel. However, some of my pals at work started playing and they liked it and they gave me the 5 day buddy code and asked me to give it a shot and that it wasn't as bad as I had heard. A week later and probably about 30 hours in to the game I've purchased the game. For those of you still on the fence like I was, here are a few of my thoughts about a few frequently aired complaints:
Repetitive Quests
Well, in most MMOs quests are pretty repetitive. Star Trek Online is no exception. I've played and enjoyed WoW, EVE, LotR, and a few others and mostly the PvE quests involve a few repeated ideas. Lets break down the non-storyline PvE quest types you usually see:
Farmer Brown wants you to clean his field of Kobolds, Kill 10 and come back and collect your Kobold Pie
OR
Farmer Brown wants you to kill even MORE Kobolds, this time get their ears and bring them back as proof you actually killed some. By the way, even though presumably each Kobold has 2 ears, they might not always drop them.
OR
Farmer Brown wants you find 10 potatoes in his field and deliver them to the serving wench at the pub across the street/town/continent, upon delivery the serving wench will give you a pint of ale that you'll probably sell to the NPC vendor.
Yeah, you get the same sorts of things in STO more or less, kill 10 Klingon Cruisers or go rescue scientists from an outpost. Sometimes in other MMOs the main storyline missions will throw you something different, as will some of the STO storyline missions. Why do I like this better? Well, frankly I'm sick of killing Kobolds! Really though, the game play is different. Which is what I'll get in to next. Where do I think that they could improve? I think that they need some really good boss fights for gear as well as some long storyline missions that are designed for a static party.
Combat is Repetitive and Boring and Easy - Special Skills are Not Useful or Needed
Actually, compared to most MMOs, I find I enjoy space combat in STO more. It's different, you have to worry more about facing and bringing weapons to bear as well as distributing damage between your different shields. The positioning of your ship and your teammates ships are important. If you want to bring down a shield quickly, for example, you need to pay attention to where your teammates are so that you can all fire through the same shield which is made much more difficult since you generally need to keep moving to attack your foe. While positioning in combat making a difference isn't unheard of in other games it seems to play a bigger part here. It's fun twisting and turning to get that torpedo shot in while the facing shield is down.
As for special abilities not being useful, so far, I disagree. The skills seem pretty handy to me as a captain of a science vessel. I get the option of several debuffs, some damage over time abilities, and crowd control abilities including my favorite of "Scramble Sensors" that gets enemy ships within an area to all start firing on eachother. These all help out in one way or another. So I don't feel like I'm sitting here just mashing the space bar until the enemy is dead.
Ground combat is OK. I like that cover does matter in ranged combat. I enjoy having a team of my people fighting along with me. Sometimes the AI makes strange choices for my bridge crew, sometimes some of them seem to have a death wish! But by and large it's alright. I prefer space combat though.
Things I think are missing are an effective death penalty and I do think that the NPCs need to be more challenging opponents.
Too Easy to Achieve Admiral
It's true, some people, including some calling themselves casual gamers have managed to achieve Admiral in the first month of launch. I play typically 2-3 hours a night after work and 4-5 on the weekend. I've managed to get most of the way through Lt. Commander in that time frame. At this rate, I think I'd be on track for Admiral in about a month or so which is pretty short for an MMO. Unlike other MMOs, I'm not sure exactly how they'll increase the level cap unless they have ridiculous stuff like Super Admiral or President of the Federation. I'm interested in how they're going to accomplish this, well they've got a month or so to figure it out.
No Diplomacy, No Crafting, All Combat
True, the game is heavily combat oriented which isn't in line with the Star Trek universe. The exploration missions are supposed to be the answer to this I think, however the exploration missions need a lot of work. It would be great if they had a way of giving you some choices on missions and having the choices you make change the outcome of the mission. There isn't really crafting in this game, sure you can trade parts with an NPC and they'll make you a shiny new phaser, but that's not crafting. Not a big deal for me, but I can certainly see how people who really love crafting would feel put out. I got burnt out on crafting in Vanguard though, don't figure I'll be doing that again any time soon!
Other Thoughts on the Game
While certainly, there is a lot of room for improvement in the game none of the issues I see are insurmountable. People have mentioned that the game is slow and laggy. I have yet to have a problem on a fairly modest machine. I have crashed once or twice, but not too hard, no more of a rate than with other games. Their biggest problem right now that I can see is that they need to add a lot more content to the game to keep subscriptions going. I think that like many MMO releases, it was rushed out the door with incomplete content. This isn't a problem just with this game, but with the industry.
Will my interest last for more than a month? Maybe. If I run out of content and hit the level cap I'll maybe start up an Engineer or play a Klingon.
In my opinion the best things this game has going for it is that the gameplay is not a WoW clone and that it's a Sci-Fi game and not set in a fantasy world. So it's a bit different.
Comments
Quests in most games are repetitive.
Luckily, most games give you SOMETING ELSE to do (crafting, trading, exploring...)! In STO, there is nothing else. That's why you'd actually expect at least quests to be nice and varying. But no, you only have repetitive quests. To repeat. Repeatedly.
Ahh! Now trade would be fun too, and fairly easy for them to implement I think.
You guys remember that episode in Star Trek where Picard was grinding Klingons? Yeah, me neither.
I'm sorry OP but this made me laugh so hard. I read your entire post. I am definitely "on the fence". I am a casual gamer until i find something i like and then i become hardcore. Neglecting the dog, my girlfriend, my whiney son's mom. I love Star Trek but i understand this is a game with a Star Trek paint job and im okay with that 100%. I'm worried about the longterm gameplay potential. I'd hate to blow 40 bucks and be done in 1 month's time if i went into hardcore mode. thanks for the average gamer perspective though. Very honest. I to say it but.............................i'm still on the ropes. Lol
I'll tell you what. If someone can send me a link where i can get a borg bridge officer promo. I'm totally in. Too lazy to do the research myself.
I swear to God as soon as I read the title I thought that the poster must had 10 or less posts
And I wasn't wrong.....................
All i can say is welcome to all the new members to mmoprpg.com!!!! Way to new guys, and look forward to more insight!
So what are you implying? That maybe this an advertisement of some sort? How about everyone who goes against the masses, expresses any type of individuality, and then tries to inform other's of their "different" opinion, usually gets ripped to shreds. I understand why he would not want to post on his main.
He is probably like you with over 2000 posts and doesn't want to be known as that guy that was once respected on this site but isn't anymore because he liked something everyone else didn't. I get so sick of people who trivialize someone's opinion just because they have a low post count.
Or the episode where they slaughtered the star base full of romulan doctors and nurses? That one was my favorite.
Or the episode where they slaughtered the star base full of romulan doctors and nurses? That one was my favorite.
Or how in every episode they always go in guns blazing and they never ever hail the enemy first to give them a chance to talk it out. Oh wait, that never happened.
Nope, not an advertisement, geeze you'd hope that they'd hire someone who wouldn't say they thought their game had about a month's worth of content!
I love it in the Star Trek episodes when, in starship combat, instead of opening fire with weapons at 3,500 kilometres, which they are fully capable of doing, they just decide to close in to 10 kilometres, probably just for the sheer hell of it. No matter if it is some colossal Federation warship with 24 Heavy Phaser banks and 16 Photon Launchers or just a Shuttle with a dinky little Phaser - what the hell, close in to 10k and turn in very tight circles! Wow, what a Top Tactic! Make it soooooooooooooo!
That and the black market in weaponry and starship components that every Starship Captain eagerly deals in.
Or how about all those episodes in which they beamed down to a planet and shot everything on sight? Oh, we want to scan red rocks, but that red rock has 5 aliens dancing around it... ATTACK!
How about all those episodes in which the crew just stood and laughed out loud in the middle of a firefight knowing they were invincible in their personal shields.
Yep, very Star Treky indeed.
Yeah, sounds familiar, I had this feeling with Pong too.
I liked it for a week.
Same with Tetris and Pac-man, in fact, same with 95% of the video games I played in the last 30 years.
Then the week passed.
I care about your gaming 'problems' and teenage anxieties, just not today.
No doubt the game is fun for a week, sounds like from what I've read it can even be fun for a month or two until you reach Admiral but then the wheels are gonna fall off.
Is that a bad thing? Maybe not, sounds like you can get your money's worth much like a single player game so no harm, no foul.
Long term appeal is suspect though, but I'm starting to think the era of long term MMORPG play might be dead, because for most players each new release seems to be only good for a month or three.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
OP, don't be surprised if you find yourself making a thread titled: "Three Weeks In, and I Finished the Game"
At one week, I remember thinking the game was ok. Two weeks in and I was bored, but close to the end. Two and a half weeks, I finished the content. Three weeks and I had no compunction to log in anymore.
STO is a shell of a game I'm afraid.
As a single player game STO can pass as a SPRPG with incredible depth and custimization.
As a MMORPG is a shallow borefest and a failure of monumental proportion, borderline scam that should be prohibited by law.
What a difference 15 bucks a month make heh.
I care about your gaming 'problems' and teenage anxieties, just not today.
Seems I recall Cryptic saying there's about 100 hours of content. I had about 60-70 hours to RA5, I think, though I skipped alot of exploration and defend content.
The ride is enjoyable, but when you hit RA5, you'll realize that you're then locked out of 80% of the content that made the game worth playing. Since there's not much variance between classes to encourage a reroll, there won't be much more reason to sub after that.
The hours they stated was 80. However, it took me around 50-60 to finish the game.
I logged in to do the STF, but we failed it, and it wasn't much fun anyway. Just a harder (read: ridiculous of crowd control) generic mission. We got frustrated, I did anyway. Hold/root/die, repeat.
So the endgame is just the same cookie cutter mission (so far) just with CC turned up to 200% of normal.
I just couldn't get myself to play past captain 6. There was just so much 'god mode' 'I win' playing I could stomach. It's like this game was made for people with suicidal tendencies, so the whole concept of 'dying' was removed from the game. You just can't lose, and in the case of ground based combat, you can't even lose even if you try.
So what are you implying? That maybe this an advertisement of some sort?
I just say that people who open threads about a game and never posted before are quite fishy, but of course they might be genuine (I do not say this to everyone who disagree with me, if that s what you are wondering)
Before I made my own thread I believe I had at least 100 posts already, actually in fact if you look at my history, I believe I opened no more than 20 threads in all, majority of them in the off topic forum.
Just to say that opening threads is not something people does very often, so the fact that your first post is a new thread is a bit suspicious, don't you think so?
In fact if you have time to check all the positive threads opened in any "mainstream" MMORPG forum, you will notice that the majority is made by people who have very few posts.................and do not post anywhere else afterwards (Let's see how many tmore times the OP will post).
So maybe it is my imagination, it might be , who knows?
Anyway, the reason why I said that I thought this thread was made by someone with less than 10 post, is the way the title is written.
If you are in marketing you will recognise that more as a slogan rather than a genuine title, of course if you haven't studied marketing, you won't notice it.
That's why I said that BEFORE even reading the thread I thought this was made by someone with less than 10 posts.
But I am not against people voicing their opinion, even if they go against mine at all.
It's just that I do want genuine players to do so.
If only it was a F2p. but people are paying to be ripped off. It's like taking a piss through someone's letterbox, knocking on the door and asking how far it got up the wall, i.e. bloody cheeky.