Putting such a huge emphasis on combat, ground or air doesnt matter cause it ISNT what Star Trek is about. In fact, I could even live with that being the main focus of the game if there were at least other things do to but they spent all their effort on shoot em up instead of anything else. I love how every epsiode of Star Trek they go in with guns blazing and crap...oh wait nm.
I know alot of people are not happy with this game. but just keep in mind....ALL MMOs and MMORPGs as games go through growing pains. I have played a ton of these MMOs and they all are raw at release so just try and be patient....the game has not even been out for 6 months yet...there has been 1 major patch to it??? I mean REALLY? Your going to judge now??? why not wait to throw judgement in...say....A YEAR FROM NOW????? Seriously!!!
I know alot of people are not happy with this game. but just keep in mind....ALL MMOs and MMORPGs as games go through growing pains. I have played a ton of these MMOs and they all are raw at release so just try and be patient....the game has not even been out for 6 months yet...there has been 1 major patch to it??? I mean REALLY? Your going to judge now??? why not wait to throw judgement in...say....A YEAR FROM NOW????? Seriously!!!
A year from now a new game that was not rushed out and milked before it was even releaed will be out and we'll be busy with that. Cryptic had it's chance. They chose a rich IP, destroyed it, recycled their crappy CO engine and got offended when STO was called CO with a star trek skin. Instead of doing damage control, Cryptic cleans out its forums, sends his people to interviews crying about them being people too and hurt feelings, setup a sale they won't honor and stack terrible customer service on top of that plus release weak updates and direect people to cash stores telling them their 15 subs don't buy jack, time to pay up more. Some MMOs do have rocky releases but underneath those games are solid attempts and solid games. This is a hollow game with a bunch of people standing around with their hands out before they even delivered a solid product.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
I know alot of people are not happy with this game. but just keep in mind....ALL MMOs and MMORPGs as games go through growing pains. I have played a ton of these MMOs and they all are raw at release so just try and be patient....the game has not even been out for 6 months yet...there has been 1 major patch to it??? I mean REALLY? Your going to judge now??? why not wait to throw judgement in...say....A YEAR FROM NOW????? Seriously!!!
A year from now it will be the same shallow experience that it is now; sure there will finally be more content (at least there should be), but a lot of people's problems with the game go to the core engine and that will not be able to be addressed without a complete replacement of the engine. Honestly, how likely do think that is going to be? Atari lost money on CO, STO is bleeding players, and Atari has two big lawsuits against it that look like they're going to suceed; Atari is more than likely not going to want to spend the kind of money needed to develop a proper engine for STO.
There is a huge difference between a new, 'raw' game and a game launched with gaping holes in it; the latter is what people got with STO. I don't care what the game is, or what IP it is based off of, but no MMO should take a year to put in what should have been in there at launch. So yes, the game should be judged as it stands at the moment and not at some magical time in the future when everything should be fixed.
"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
I know alot of people are not happy with this game. but just keep in mind....ALL MMOs and MMORPGs as games go through growing pains. I have played a ton of these MMOs and they all are raw at release so just try and be patient....the game has not even been out for 6 months yet...there has been 1 major patch to it??? I mean REALLY? Your going to judge now??? why not wait to throw judgement in...say....A YEAR FROM NOW????? Seriously!!!
This post could have been cut & pasted from a dozen other MMOs.
Excuses, excuses.
Judge it now. Re-evaluate if it improves.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
well STO is no diffrent from any other movie video game it was just rushed for a quick buck and the hardcore fanboys wont admit that its crap of would it realy could of been if it had 3+ years of development time
well STO is no diffrent from any other movie video game it was just rushed for a quick buck and the hardcore fanboys wont admit that its crap of would it realy could of been if it had 3+ years of development time
Considering that CO was in development for three years, and was still lacking in content at release, I'm thinking that Cryptic should stick with a 4+ year development cycle.
"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
well STO is no diffrent from any other movie video game it was just rushed for a quick buck and the hardcore fanboys wont admit that its crap of would it realy could of been if it had 3+ years of development time
Considering that CO was in development for three years, and was still lacking in content at release, I'm thinking that Cryptic should stick with a 4+ year development cycle.
I don't think a 4 year development cycle would have fixed this game. Atari simply picked the wrong development team to make this game, imo. That isn't a knock against Cryptic, either. They have CO/CoH/CoV, which were great titles. But you don't send a team of hockey players to try and play basketball. I'm not saying Perpetual was better either, I don't know the circumstances surrounding their ejection from writing the game, but what I DO know is that in my opinion, their BASE idea for the game seemed better.
And that idea was, the ship was the playground, then space, in that order. There was a Starfleet Academy you had to graduate from first as part of a noobie quest.
It would have taken longer to develop, but I would have waited for it. So would a lot of fans, I think, that wound up quitting the present form of the game.
And to be fair, I was against the Cryptic version of the game at first, I raved about how against it I was. Then I stupidly followed the beta crowd blindly, because I was excited about the combat, and thought "Just accept it as an action game and you'll enjoy it, at least for awhile". Wasted $100 on the Collector's Edition, ground to RA5 in just a month, before realizing, that I was right in the beginning with my original opinions of the game. And that was, that everyone would be in a collective state of shallow excitement about the game at first, then...early burnout.
A friend of mine, who had been waiting to see what the game was like (but didn't want to risk paying for it), got her hands on one of my beta keys. She is very tolerant and loves all KINDS of video games, and has played many MMOs herself.
She didn't get past the noob missions. Uninstalled it immediately, and told me "I can't keep playing this...it's too much like CoH...doesn't feel like Star Trek at all".
I do not think that the current game can be improved enough to bring people back, because the basic and important parts of the game that the fans wanted...which were closer to a ship simulator and more of a sandbox type formula...were not there to begin with. Trek fans have vocalized recently what I suspected all along, and that is that they never wanted a game centered around combat or war. I'm sure Cryptic did their absolute best given their 2 year time limit by Atari, and I have no doubt they worked very hard to produce what they did.
But obviously, based on the complaints, it isn't what the fans wanted.
Nobody that was involved with developing this game listened to the fans. And this is what you get...a small group of die hards pay to play it, then as soon as they figure out the game isn't Star Trek and isn't fun, they bail.
And before the vocal minority of people who are still fans of the game decide to speak out, if I could develop the game myself, I would. I could write out how I'd like the game to work, certainly, but I couldn't program it myself.
Old School SWG - "I paid you 1,000,000 credits not for you to slice my Krayt weapon for me... I paid you 1,000,000 credits to give it BACK to me."
I don't think a 4 year development cycle would have fixed this game. Atari simply picked the wrong development team to make this game, imo. That isn't a knock against Cryptic, either. They have CO/CoH/CoV, which were great titles. But you don't send a team of hockey players to try and play basketball. I'm not saying Perpetual was better either, I don't know the circumstances surrounding their ejection from writing the game, but what I DO know is that in my opinion, their BASE idea for the game seemed better.
And that idea was, the ship was the playground, then space, in that order. There was a Starfleet Academy you had to graduate from first as part of a noobie quest.
It would have taken longer to develop, but I would have waited for it. So would a lot of fans, I think, that wound up quitting the present form of the game.
As far as the development cycle comment goes, I was speaking more in generality than for STO specifically. Cryptic showed with CO that even a three year development cycle is still too short for them; they are not so great at churning out content. STO would need more than just additional time, as you correctly pointed out.
From what I have read, Perpetual's version of STO was vaporware; other than concept art and some 'screenshots' made using their engine (but not actually in the game), they had absolutely nothing. People say that they spent all of their money developing Gods & Heroes, and were going to use that engine for their Star Trek game. It is also said that Perpetual's original vision for STO got tossed away at some point, and had they actually made the game it would not have been like they originally stated.
As far as having a multi-player crewed ship? Cryptic could have done that if they had wanted to spend the time on it, as the answer on how to do it is in STO's Bridge Officer system: Just like in the shows, when one officer (player) is not there (is logged out), a NPC from the appropriate branch (science, medical, tactical, egineering, etc.) would man that station or fill that slot in an away team. Just as in the shows when an officer comes on duty (logs in), they would replace the nameless person manning that console (NPC) or beam down and join the away team (replacing the NPC in their slot).
Players would be assigned to ships to start with, with the ability to request a transfer to a ship with players they wished to group with regularly (friends, guild members, etc.). Of course for this to work, Cryptic would have to do something they stated they were unwilling to do; they would have to develop content for each of those primary ship jobs so that everyone had something to do. To make this version of STO, Cryptic would need to have spent at least 5 years developing it (and I am guessing probably closer to 7 years for them).
That is just one way that Cryptic could have made a far superior game. Unfortunately, there's just not much they can do now except fix the bugs and start handcrafting unique content (i.e., no more kill/scan 5 of X missions). Giving the Klingons an equal amount of content compared to the Federation (that's equal, not the same) wouldn't hurt either.
"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
The absurdity of complaints alike is just ridiculous.
You complain about inappropriate implementation of IP and then you complain about single player game at the same time.
Star Trek IP is a single player game.
i cant recall a movie or single tv episode that involve only one federation character........ ip is single player???? how, in which way? mmo = massive MULTIPLAYER online...... the game is much more a single player game than an mmo, the ip is very much about co-operation
Same goes for other 'points' like combat.
space combat in sto is at best shallow and repetive, ground combat is far worse. so what about the original post exactly do you disagree with?
Cryptic did well job and transformed the IP into MMO game rather successfully.
ummmm, imho .... no they did not. and if you look at the major reviews that opinion is repeated many times over.
please please reply and state in which ways sto is a succesful mmo interpretation of any star trek movie or series.
specifically let me know how well they represent star treks emphasis on peaceful exploration. solving interesting problems through creativity and diplomacy. or give me a strong list of shows/movies where the federation characters attitude was shoot first, then keep shooting (after all that is what the game is).
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
I don't think a 4 year development cycle would have fixed this game. Atari simply picked the wrong development team to make this game, imo. That isn't a knock against Cryptic, either. They have CO/CoH/CoV, which were great titles. But you don't send a team of hockey players to try and play basketball. I'm not saying Perpetual was better either, I don't know the circumstances surrounding their ejection from writing the game, but what I DO know is that in my opinion, their BASE idea for the game seemed better.
And that idea was, the ship was the playground, then space, in that order. There was a Starfleet Academy you had to graduate from first as part of a noobie quest.
It would have taken longer to develop, but I would have waited for it. So would a lot of fans, I think, that wound up quitting the present form of the game.
As far as the development cycle comment goes, I was speaking more in generality than for STO specifically. Cryptic showed with CO that even a three year development cycle is still too short for them; they are not so great at churning out content. STO would need more than just additional time, as you correctly pointed out.
From what I have read, Perpetual's version of STO was vaporware; other than concept art and some 'screenshots' made using their engine (but not actually in the game), they had absolutely nothing. People say that they spent all of their money developing Gods & Heroes, and were going to use that engine for their Star Trek game. It is also said that Perpetual's original vision for STO got tossed away at some point, and had they actually made the game it would not have been like they originally stated.
As far as having a multi-player crewed ship? Cryptic could have done that if they had wanted to spend the time on it, as the answer on how to do it is in STO's Bridge Officer system: Just like in the shows, when one officer (player) is not there (is logged out), a NPC from the appropriate branch (science, medical, tactical, egineering, etc.) would man that station or fill that slot in an away team. Just as in the shows when an officer comes on duty (logs in), they would replace the nameless person manning that console (NPC) or beam down and join the away team (replacing the NPC in their slot).
Players would be assigned to ships to start with, with the ability to request a transfer to a ship with players they wished to group with regularly (friends, guild members, etc.). Of course for this to work, Cryptic would have to do something they stated they were unwilling to do; they would have to develop content for each of those primary ship jobs so that everyone had something to do. To make this version of STO, Cryptic would need to have spent at least 5 years developing it (and I am guessing probably closer to 7 years for them).
That is just one way that Cryptic could have made a far superior game. Unfortunately, there's just not much they can do now except fix the bugs and start handcrafting unique content (i.e., no more kill/scan 5 of X missions). Giving the Klingons an equal amount of content compared to the Federation (that's equal, not the same) wouldn't hurt either.
Dinendae,
We are on the same page, for the most part. I do want to clarify that my comments about a player crewed ship being the playground were based on my best guess of what Perpetual was doing. If they didn't actually have anything, then they didn't have anything. But the screenshots certainly gave off an impression.
Cryptic couldn't even do it now without rewriting the entire game. What gave that away to me were the bugs in beta, where you'de transport to a space station, and inside that space station was your ship. Outside the bug occured too, in reverse. Your character would float monstrously next to other ships. That told me that the way they have it programmed, ships are on a scale VERY tiny. This is why many people weren't happy with the bridge view.
If you're interested, I posted a musing in another thread of how I thought multiplayer ships could be made to work. And yes, an npc or AI taking over in the absence of one crew member was certainly one idea, but I think the concept is much deeper than that. I don't just say 'this is how it should have been', I'm certainly not that arrogant. I actually am asking the question, can it really be done, on a massive scale?
I was kind of hoping that Cryptic would show the IP at least a little respect and give an MMO bearing the Star Trek name more dev time than a single player console game. Oh well... im done caring about this trainwreck.
We are on the same page, for the most part. I do want to clarify that my comments about a player crewed ship being the playground were based on my best guess of what Perpetual was doing. If they didn't actually have anything, then they didn't have anything. But the screenshots certainly gave off an impression.
Cryptic couldn't even do it now without rewriting the entire game. What gave that away to me were the bugs in beta, where you'de transport to a space station, and inside that space station was your ship. Outside the bug occured too, in reverse. Your character would float monstrously next to other ships. That told me that the way they have it programmed, ships are on a scale VERY tiny. This is why many people weren't happy with the bridge view.
If you're interested, I posted a musing in another thread of how I thought multiplayer ships could be made to work. And yes, an npc or AI taking over in the absence of one crew member was certainly one idea, but I think the concept is much deeper than that. I don't just say 'this is how it should have been', I'm certainly not that arrogant. I actually am asking the question, can it really be done, on a massive scale?
If Perpetual had just cancelled the project people would have been disappointed, but when the full story came out a lot of people were seriously ticked off. The fact that Perpetual closed down, renamed themselves, and then tried to reacquire the license probably didn't help either. From what people who followed Perpetual duirng that time have said most of the ideas they had were going to get tossed anyway, so I don't see it as that great of a loss other than the fact that Cryptic got it.
To be fair, I was originally ok with Cryptic getting the license; although I found their gameplay a bit shallow and repetitive in CoH/CoV, they spent the time on CoH to polish it up. However, during the second part of last year I started to have grave doubts about what they were going to be able to do. This was especially true since one of the big guys at Atari had let it slip that STO was going to be launched around March of 2010; he made that comment during Atari's acquisition of Cryptic.
Once I got my hands on the client at the start of closed beta, and saw how little there actually was to the game, I knew everyone's fears were going to come true. Once the closed beta ended and i saw how much they swore was going to be in at launch was still not tested (or was barely implemented in the case of the Klingons), I wrote the game off. Luckily I was still unhappy about CO, so I hadn't actually spent any money preordering STO.
As to my scenario of how a multiplayer ship could have worked, understand that I was not saying that is how they should have done it; I was merely giving an idea of how it could have been done, and that idea was in fact inspired from the thread you linked. To answer your question (from that thread and here): Yes it could be done, and I imagine that there are several different ways it could have been done. I do think additional factions (Klingons, Romulans, etc.) would probably have had to wait until expansions, but there are enough competent companies out there that could have pulled it off. Cryptic just happens to not be one of them anymore.
"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
Comments
Putting such a huge emphasis on combat, ground or air doesnt matter cause it ISNT what Star Trek is about. In fact, I could even live with that being the main focus of the game if there were at least other things do to but they spent all their effort on shoot em up instead of anything else. I love how every epsiode of Star Trek they go in with guns blazing and crap...oh wait nm.
I know alot of people are not happy with this game. but just keep in mind....ALL MMOs and MMORPGs as games go through growing pains. I have played a ton of these MMOs and they all are raw at release so just try and be patient....the game has not even been out for 6 months yet...there has been 1 major patch to it??? I mean REALLY? Your going to judge now??? why not wait to throw judgement in...say....A YEAR FROM NOW????? Seriously!!!
A year from now a new game that was not rushed out and milked before it was even releaed will be out and we'll be busy with that. Cryptic had it's chance. They chose a rich IP, destroyed it, recycled their crappy CO engine and got offended when STO was called CO with a star trek skin. Instead of doing damage control, Cryptic cleans out its forums, sends his people to interviews crying about them being people too and hurt feelings, setup a sale they won't honor and stack terrible customer service on top of that plus release weak updates and direect people to cash stores telling them their 15 subs don't buy jack, time to pay up more. Some MMOs do have rocky releases but underneath those games are solid attempts and solid games. This is a hollow game with a bunch of people standing around with their hands out before they even delivered a solid product.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
A year from now it will be the same shallow experience that it is now; sure there will finally be more content (at least there should be), but a lot of people's problems with the game go to the core engine and that will not be able to be addressed without a complete replacement of the engine. Honestly, how likely do think that is going to be? Atari lost money on CO, STO is bleeding players, and Atari has two big lawsuits against it that look like they're going to suceed; Atari is more than likely not going to want to spend the kind of money needed to develop a proper engine for STO.
There is a huge difference between a new, 'raw' game and a game launched with gaping holes in it; the latter is what people got with STO. I don't care what the game is, or what IP it is based off of, but no MMO should take a year to put in what should have been in there at launch. So yes, the game should be judged as it stands at the moment and not at some magical time in the future when everything should be fixed.
"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
This post could have been cut & pasted from a dozen other MMOs.
Excuses, excuses.
Judge it now. Re-evaluate if it improves.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
The absurdity of complaints alike is just ridiculous.
You complain about inappropriate implementation of IP and then you complain about single player game at the same time.
Star Trek IP is a single player game.
Same goes for other 'points' like combat.
Cryptic did well job and transformed the IP into MMO game rather successfully.
Not even close. It is shallow, isolationist, and breaks with the IP in important ways.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
well STO is no diffrent from any other movie video game it was just rushed for a quick buck and the hardcore fanboys wont admit that its crap of would it realy could of been if it had 3+ years of development time
Considering that CO was in development for three years, and was still lacking in content at release, I'm thinking that Cryptic should stick with a 4+ year development cycle.
"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
I don't think a 4 year development cycle would have fixed this game. Atari simply picked the wrong development team to make this game, imo. That isn't a knock against Cryptic, either. They have CO/CoH/CoV, which were great titles. But you don't send a team of hockey players to try and play basketball. I'm not saying Perpetual was better either, I don't know the circumstances surrounding their ejection from writing the game, but what I DO know is that in my opinion, their BASE idea for the game seemed better.
And that idea was, the ship was the playground, then space, in that order. There was a Starfleet Academy you had to graduate from first as part of a noobie quest.
It would have taken longer to develop, but I would have waited for it. So would a lot of fans, I think, that wound up quitting the present form of the game.
And to be fair, I was against the Cryptic version of the game at first, I raved about how against it I was. Then I stupidly followed the beta crowd blindly, because I was excited about the combat, and thought "Just accept it as an action game and you'll enjoy it, at least for awhile". Wasted $100 on the Collector's Edition, ground to RA5 in just a month, before realizing, that I was right in the beginning with my original opinions of the game. And that was, that everyone would be in a collective state of shallow excitement about the game at first, then...early burnout.
A friend of mine, who had been waiting to see what the game was like (but didn't want to risk paying for it), got her hands on one of my beta keys. She is very tolerant and loves all KINDS of video games, and has played many MMOs herself.
She didn't get past the noob missions. Uninstalled it immediately, and told me "I can't keep playing this...it's too much like CoH...doesn't feel like Star Trek at all".
I do not think that the current game can be improved enough to bring people back, because the basic and important parts of the game that the fans wanted...which were closer to a ship simulator and more of a sandbox type formula...were not there to begin with. Trek fans have vocalized recently what I suspected all along, and that is that they never wanted a game centered around combat or war. I'm sure Cryptic did their absolute best given their 2 year time limit by Atari, and I have no doubt they worked very hard to produce what they did.
But obviously, based on the complaints, it isn't what the fans wanted.
Nobody that was involved with developing this game listened to the fans. And this is what you get...a small group of die hards pay to play it, then as soon as they figure out the game isn't Star Trek and isn't fun, they bail.
And before the vocal minority of people who are still fans of the game decide to speak out, if I could develop the game myself, I would. I could write out how I'd like the game to work, certainly, but I couldn't program it myself.
Old School SWG - "I paid you 1,000,000 credits not for you to slice my Krayt weapon for me... I paid you 1,000,000 credits to give it BACK to me."
As far as the development cycle comment goes, I was speaking more in generality than for STO specifically. Cryptic showed with CO that even a three year development cycle is still too short for them; they are not so great at churning out content. STO would need more than just additional time, as you correctly pointed out.
From what I have read, Perpetual's version of STO was vaporware; other than concept art and some 'screenshots' made using their engine (but not actually in the game), they had absolutely nothing. People say that they spent all of their money developing Gods & Heroes, and were going to use that engine for their Star Trek game. It is also said that Perpetual's original vision for STO got tossed away at some point, and had they actually made the game it would not have been like they originally stated.
As far as having a multi-player crewed ship? Cryptic could have done that if they had wanted to spend the time on it, as the answer on how to do it is in STO's Bridge Officer system: Just like in the shows, when one officer (player) is not there (is logged out), a NPC from the appropriate branch (science, medical, tactical, egineering, etc.) would man that station or fill that slot in an away team. Just as in the shows when an officer comes on duty (logs in), they would replace the nameless person manning that console (NPC) or beam down and join the away team (replacing the NPC in their slot).
Players would be assigned to ships to start with, with the ability to request a transfer to a ship with players they wished to group with regularly (friends, guild members, etc.). Of course for this to work, Cryptic would have to do something they stated they were unwilling to do; they would have to develop content for each of those primary ship jobs so that everyone had something to do. To make this version of STO, Cryptic would need to have spent at least 5 years developing it (and I am guessing probably closer to 7 years for them).
That is just one way that Cryptic could have made a far superior game. Unfortunately, there's just not much they can do now except fix the bugs and start handcrafting unique content (i.e., no more kill/scan 5 of X missions). Giving the Klingons an equal amount of content compared to the Federation (that's equal, not the same) wouldn't hurt either.
"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
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
Dinendae,
We are on the same page, for the most part. I do want to clarify that my comments about a player crewed ship being the playground were based on my best guess of what Perpetual was doing. If they didn't actually have anything, then they didn't have anything. But the screenshots certainly gave off an impression.
Cryptic couldn't even do it now without rewriting the entire game. What gave that away to me were the bugs in beta, where you'de transport to a space station, and inside that space station was your ship. Outside the bug occured too, in reverse. Your character would float monstrously next to other ships. That told me that the way they have it programmed, ships are on a scale VERY tiny. This is why many people weren't happy with the bridge view.
If you're interested, I posted a musing in another thread of how I thought multiplayer ships could be made to work. And yes, an npc or AI taking over in the absence of one crew member was certainly one idea, but I think the concept is much deeper than that. I don't just say 'this is how it should have been', I'm certainly not that arrogant. I actually am asking the question, can it really be done, on a massive scale?
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/277025/How-would-you-write-a-Star-Trek-game.html
Old School SWG - "I paid you 1,000,000 credits not for you to slice my Krayt weapon for me... I paid you 1,000,000 credits to give it BACK to me."
I was kind of hoping that Cryptic would show the IP at least a little respect and give an MMO bearing the Star Trek name more dev time than a single player console game. Oh well... im done caring about this trainwreck.
If Perpetual had just cancelled the project people would have been disappointed, but when the full story came out a lot of people were seriously ticked off. The fact that Perpetual closed down, renamed themselves, and then tried to reacquire the license probably didn't help either. From what people who followed Perpetual duirng that time have said most of the ideas they had were going to get tossed anyway, so I don't see it as that great of a loss other than the fact that Cryptic got it.
To be fair, I was originally ok with Cryptic getting the license; although I found their gameplay a bit shallow and repetitive in CoH/CoV, they spent the time on CoH to polish it up. However, during the second part of last year I started to have grave doubts about what they were going to be able to do. This was especially true since one of the big guys at Atari had let it slip that STO was going to be launched around March of 2010; he made that comment during Atari's acquisition of Cryptic.
Once I got my hands on the client at the start of closed beta, and saw how little there actually was to the game, I knew everyone's fears were going to come true. Once the closed beta ended and i saw how much they swore was going to be in at launch was still not tested (or was barely implemented in the case of the Klingons), I wrote the game off. Luckily I was still unhappy about CO, so I hadn't actually spent any money preordering STO.
As to my scenario of how a multiplayer ship could have worked, understand that I was not saying that is how they should have done it; I was merely giving an idea of how it could have been done, and that idea was in fact inspired from the thread you linked. To answer your question (from that thread and here): Yes it could be done, and I imagine that there are several different ways it could have been done. I do think additional factions (Klingons, Romulans, etc.) would probably have had to wait until expansions, but there are enough competent companies out there that could have pulled it off. Cryptic just happens to not be one of them anymore.
"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