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Star Trek Online: Talking with Executive Producer Daniel Stahl
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Star Trek Online Season 2 is well under way and new Executive Producer Daniel Stahl is receiving notice for his down-to-earth approach. MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller had the chance to sit down with Stahl to talk about Klingons, Weekly Episodes, and how players influence the game's future.
Daniel explained that with Season One they were laying the groundwork to build improvements for the game. He described Season One as a “sure step” in the right direction. With Season Two, the team worked really hard to implement things that the players wanted in the game. Non-combat quests were a big part of the design and something that definitely had a Star Trek feel to it. Daniel explained that both players and developers liked the more Star Trek style missions of exploration and diplomacy to solve the missions rather than just combat. They wanted to deliver more of a Star Fleet Captain experience rather than just action combat.
Read the Daniel Stahl interview.
Comments
I hope they can fix it but I have my doubts. For now I still feel like I flushed my money down the toilet when I purchased a lifetime sub. Its a shameful feeling and I should have tested the game out more instead of being excited by the IP. Oh well, we live and learn.. I wont be buying anything from Cryptic anytime soon.
While it is marketing speak I must admit it sounds to me as if Cryptic really is working hard at turning this thing around and in a way that incorporates the community rather than inspite of the community. May have to return to this one to check it all out, plus need something to tide me over until other games make their way to release.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
The game flopped because of two things:
#1. The game was no complete - it offered nothing new other than a nice character creation screen.
#2. The fans had to deal with the most horrid microtransactions, e.g., paying to be a klingon, lifetime sub to be a playable borg, etc. This would've been okay if it was a FTP game. However, it's a $15.00 per month game with Item Shop. That gets people so mad.
I know this game isn't doing very well and although I feel so evil for saying it, I'm glad to see it fall. Perhaps this will be another example of how not to run things in the MMO industry.
I am still shocked to see what little was done to the Star Trek IP.
I hope for the sake of the Folks still playing they can turn this around.
I can tell anyone who is wondering that from what I've heard on My vent from the 4-5 Guildies who are still playing, there are a few major issues with the new update they are still working out...The one guy in My Guild I thought would be playing STO at least until SWTOR came out told me yesterday he's pretty sure he's not going to re-up his Sub...I was pretty shocked when he told me that...I can only speak from what I've heard from my friends...But it does not look very promising from what I can tell...But like I said I hope they can turn it around cause the Folks who bought Lifetime Subs deserve more than they've got up to this point...That's for sure...
I heard that their subs have gone up not down.
After delaying entering the game for the launch I decided it was time last weekend to slip into my Trekkie uniform and head off into outer space
.
As with most games it has it's annoying bits, but in general my experience has been positive, ofc I haven't reached any of the dizzy heights the many nay sayers obviously have, however I'm not one to live at my PC and I usually play for about 2 to 3 hrs a day, this is probably why I enjoy the game, I don't guzzle down the content like it's going out of fashion
.
I like what I hear though about season 2, and I've always wanted to be part of an MMO that has episodic events, espeically such an iconic game as StarTrek.
My opinion,
Companies shouldn't get second chances once they've launched games so brazenly incomplete. I don't care how good the game is 6 months out, they out and out ripped off the early adopters and this trend needs to stop. It blows my mind that still today, well after STO's launch they still have to do damage control regarding how bad it was when they brought it to the market in pretty much every single press junket and interview. It shouldn't have to be this way.
Players, don't accept crap games.
Developers, don't lowball your way into crap contracts with your publishers.
STO is a trainwreck. I hope we've all learned something.
5.5 Rating on Gamespot. 6.0 Rating on Mediacritic. C+ on Oneup. 6 out of 10 on Eurogamer. Yeah you are correct. The rest of the net obviously LOVES this game. Only the people HERE seem to find it lacking in substance.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
I am sorry if it sounds like bashing, but Cryptic has a serious reality loss. They are always taking of what WILL be, someday. Same with Champions. SOMEDAY it will be great, when 25 expansions have been added, somewhere in 2050. Pft.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
QFT...
could be a blue snuck in and isnt best pleased with the overall direction that STO threads seem to take, though... i do hope that they do turn this game around, i dont believe they have done anywhere near enough to improve the game yet though.. but if they keep at it.. it might turn into a game that people want to play.. ... .. well, you never know, that horse might just sing...
Honestly, from what I saw before I quit to what I hear from Folks who still play, I don't think that is accurate at all...Not meant to bash you personally or anything like that...I just don't see it as being a possibility whatsoever...
I could be wrong though...
xfire shows about 20k sub like Warhammer.
One thing he is right about Star Trek Onlines improvements are player driven which really goes as a black mark against them in my book because it's as I have said for quite some time the people that actually work on the game have no clue on what to do to actually make it fun. Now while I say this is a bad thing for me because I have no intention of following someone who doesn't know how to lead on their own it is a good thing for the community because the changes are being made and ultimately they are changes and additions the player base wants.
But for me I still can't get over the lack of imagination and such at Cryptic they have always dev'd shallow one dimensional games and this is a clear indication of that.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
For their current players I hope that this game wont fail. Even if its only because its the only Star Trek MMO around.
But I do hope that they (and other MMO companies) realise that their payment model failed. Asking too much money for too little content compared to other MMO's. If it wasnt based on Star Trek, I wonder if they even wouldve tried to put an extra price on part of the content. Not to mention that they didnt do much with their ip. Its a shell of a game compared to what it couldve been.
No, you are right. He's confusing it with CO, which has been increasing (well recovering) in players. STO's numbers have been heading only down.
This is the worst game ever
The only real question they have to ask themselves is: will we make $$$?? This is the flaw in capitalism. They wern't looking for Blizzard esque profits, they were aimming low. I call it the Wal-mart effect. If you can make someithng shinny on the outside (the first 2 weeks of content in STO is sort of shinny) people will buy it. If investors are betting on intal box sales (this seems to be what Atari was doing) for return than thats what they will do.
Meanwhile Star Trek fans like myself are stuck with wanting a Star Trek MMO but being left with one less then stellar option. It really is sad, but that is our system. But you are right, if they had spent the time and a little more money on it they could have made a game that would have made even more money. But that would have been risky, andwould have required real vision not just thier "band-in-the-box" strategy to making MMO's. Big Corporations don't do well with this creative process sort of thing. Look what they did to the music industry.
Back to the Wal Mart effect. People know its evil, they know most of the stuff there is crap quality, but they just keep comming back, over, and over, and over...
There was a lot of hype surrounding this game when it came out and my friends and I had our eyes on it. Once I found out it was being developed by Cryptic, however, I suddenly became a LOT more reserved. The amount of bad word of mouth surrounding almost every one of their games exceeds what I would call background forum negativity. It truly sounds like they, as a company, need to seriously review what they consider a completed game that is ready for market.
My friend insisted he was going to try it when it came out, but as soon as it hit the market and the uproar of angry players rose out of the forums, he suddenly changed his mind.
In a genre of games where a bad launch can absolutely ruin the chances of a game ever recovering any popularity, Cryptic's throw it out there and then see about fixing it later mentality doesn't seem smart.
As a final word, Garrett, you need to read your articles over once before posting them. I noticed two typos in your article and I will give you a nickel if you find them and fix them.
Currently playing:
Rift
Played:
SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft, AoC
This game is unfixable, the whole design is flawed. Putting players in to tiny instaces, small maps and the "lol secter space" and the lack of content and bug ridden game made sure i never got passed beta.
Im pretty sure Crypic does not care about this game or its players one bit after the amount of times they have done over the ones actually still playing in some way or another to make that extra $. Cryptics whole thing is churn out tacky mmos (i say that lightly) with next to no dev time so not as much overheads means they can and probebly did make a profit from the box sales and lifetime subs and any subs they get after that is a bonus.
Thats the really sad thing about this game, they made money of this POS, and the ones left there happily still lapping up all of cash shop stuff.
Maybe they will see some minor success once it goes ftp.
good luck to them.. however the biggest problem they have is that lame engine of theirs.. instancing everything into shards is just too arcade.. and you just lose the whole Klingon vs Feds feeling.. IMO
http://www.castlethornsoftware.com/
Want a real Star trekish game with bridge player, NPC to order on your ship? Jump there and try, graphic isnt Unreal-ish but gameplay IS star-trekish!
Sadly, very sadly, you are completely right and your Wal-Mart analogy is quite fitting.
Nothing wrong with the question "will we make $$$?" though... the problem is the question "will we make $$$ FAST for next to no investment?" which is what people, both customers and developers need to keep an eye on (if they want to play good games in the future). In the long run, it does Cryptic no favors to accept the low-bid/fast-track development contract from Atari.
Interestingly enough, it was Atari who was responsible who was for the 'Great videogame crash of 83' with the rushed release of "E.T the extraterrestrial" for the 2600. It's a bit more complicated this time, but I can see history repeating itself.
I'm 100% certain that the subs have gone down, not up. Why? First of all it is rare that an MMO will gain subscribers after the game has launched. It has happened, but usually games go from huge initial box sales to a steady but declining population. Second, STO has gotten so much bad press that I'm not sure it will ever recover. Third, I've seen no indication that more prople are playing STO. At best the population is holding steady.
I played STO for about 30 hours and that was all I could stomach. The first 10 hours were kinda fun, but then it hit home hard that I was just doing the same stuff over and over again with no variation and that the game seems to have very little to do with Star Trek (for example, look at the ships, for every canon on-the-shows starship design there are three or four invented by Cryptic designs. Uniforms seen on the shows and movies are only C-Store items and so far I've not seen a single iconic location from the shows or movies (DS9 might count but it looked so crappy and half-assed I didn't feel like I was on that "Cardassisn monstrosity" at all.))
Overall, the STO team talks a good talk about improving the game, but I seriously doubt they will ever be able to fix the core design flaws that plague the game. For example, the gigantic C-Store and the rampant nickel-and-diming Cryptic calls a business plan, shoebox sized zones, loading screens ever five minutes, tiny instances with few players in each, space looking like a Jackson Pollock painting instead of looking like real space - or, more importantly, space as depicted on the TV show called Star Trek.
Anyway, I tried the game out for a month, it was a bad game, and I don't think they will improve it in any good way until they rethink their entire business model and design philosophy.
I think the best game design is a contribution of player suggestions and dev team design, with dev team design trumping player suggestions because the dev team should have a vision for the game, should have far more information than the players, and should know the future of the game.
Cryptic going on and on about making the game with player suggestions and relying so heavily on community input makes me think they don't have a vision for their game and they don't have any idea of where the game is going in the future. Their prime directive (so to speak) seems to be "makes as much profit as possible any way possible."
This might be a huge bash but...
Having played every single western mmorpg save for LoTR, STO has been the biggest satisfaction killing game I've ever tried, and I tried Horizons. Yes I hit cap, and yes I continued to play for months. The biggest issue was the borg content update, the itemization, and the ships. All STO needed was a much larger expansive ship arsenal to choose, and to tier up in. Star trek is about exploration and ships, along with away teams, all of which was skipped on and trashed. Away team missions to save romulans/vulcans and they are starfleet officers on the ground. Pitiful recycled maps/objectives for the star clusters. Severely limited ship selections and improvements that you could put onto said ships. The way they handled the "item mall".
It needs to keep getting worse and be shut down, so that perhaps another company can aquire the IP rights and do it right. Let this be a testbed and shown how to do it right on about every level. Let the "The lifetime subs really helped us with a influx of money we needed!" followed by "You can call in to get that lifetime sub refunded... " be the legacy this project leaves behind, not the end of the star trek universe for online gaming.
Maybe its just me, but I'da thought the 'star trek feel' woulda been something that should have been in the game at launch... you know, cause its a star trek game?
I'd say that if you have to add a star trek feel to the game AFTER launch of your star trek game, you're kinda admitting you failed.