I'll give you one for the sensor probes not being launched for long distance sensors.
Why in the Hell would anyone have to mine in the Star Trek universe when they have replicators?
Tractor Beams are in the game via Bridge Officers.
Because there are certain things that you can't replicate, of course. What do you think all those "anomolies" are, anyway? Replicators also still require raw material to convert into the things you create with the replicate. You can't create something out of nothing.
Not that any of this matters. Cryptic pays lipservice to canon or Treknology when it suits their purposes, and completely disregards it at all other times. Or have you not wondered why the money-free Federation has 15 different forms of currency in this game? And that's not counting C-store cash.
i am thinking cause you can fit ships whatever way you like to do whatever job you want it to do(Like a Hurricane BC lets say ive got an armor tanked close range nuet tackler, A long ranged nano snipa then a salvager looter type and i use it for PI in 0,0). you have implants,boosters and cross train whatever race you like so no class system its just one big whatever you want to do. no other game has that btw.
Umm, you can fit whatever you want on whatever ship so long as the player is high enough level to use the gear and the ship has enough slots in STO as well. Also, the ships in STO can be cusomized (somewhat) on the outer appearance to make something that is more unique rather than EvE where every Apoc looks the same. Not to mention the amount of customizability of skills, gear, and appearance of the player and all of his bridge officers.
Really? So I can fit a probe launcher/mining laser/tractor beam/whatever on my Star Trek ship? Of course not. EVE ships can do more things than combat, such as explore, mine, carry cargo, etc. This is why you can customize your EVE ship to do far more stuff than your STO ship. In STO combat is the only thing you can do really.
I'll give you one for the sensor probes not being launched for long distance sensors.
Why in the Hell would anyone have to mine in the Star Trek universe when they have replicators?
Tractor Beams are in the game via Bridge Officers.
Tractor beams are in the game for every ship by default in STO, but that's beside the point. EVE ships simply have more practical customization options. Granted, they do have less (or none) cosmetic customization options. Even with just weapons, EVE has far more choices as opposed to STO's "phasers or disrupters" non-choice.
Actually, I found a lot of the practical customization options in STO to be worthless anyway. They've done a very poor job of explaining what the different types of components really do and what the practical aplications are for them.
Why would anyone want to mine in Star Trek? Maybe cause it's better than "scanning for anomolies" all the time for everything. Even with replicators your ship needs raw materials to run the replicators, they don't create matter out of nothing after all. The "resource gathering" and "crafting" components of STO are so poor and crappy that they were voted by the STO community as the least favourite part of the game and part of the game that needs the most improvement.
Games develop over time based on the feedback they receive from THEIR player base!
So eve having been developed over 6/7 years means that it gets developed in a way that IT's players desire, STO has barley left the car park yet, its still fixing and changing stuff post launch, only now are we seeing some stuff developed that they players are asking for. (content for klingons)
If you, as a player of STO likes STO then you will effect how it turns out in the future, even if you dont give feedback, your still a statistic that they monitor, they will still see that you do more of one thing than another. Just as Eve players have.
Some people will never like Eve, and some people will never like STO, but is one product "better" than the other?.. no. Its just different. While I do not find any enjoyment from STO at the moment, 7 years down the line may be a completly different thing.
Regardless of your opinion, its wrong to compare a 7 year old game with a 7 week game.
Its not fair on both gaming studio's
Any game that releases today is trying to compete with other games that are available today.
The only worth while comparison is between games as they stand today.
If I start a company building gaming PCs that have 32meg of RAM, 286 processors and green screen monitors people will rightly mock me and refuse to buy them. I couldn't say 'Oh, but it's not fair to compare my PCs with today's PCs as other people have been making them for years. Compare mine to PCs when they started and you'll find they're great!'.
No, if you want your product to compete in today's market it has to stand up against the other products in today's market. Not 2001's market.
Games develop over time based on the feedback they receive from THEIR player base!
So eve having been developed over 6/7 years means that it gets developed in a way that IT's players desire, STO has barley left the car park yet, its still fixing and changing stuff post launch, only now are we seeing some stuff developed that they players are asking for. (content for klingons)
The Klingon faction having it's own PvE content was promised from the start by cryptic, as was never having to PvP if you didn't wish to. Unfortunately they gave themselves far too little time to do two factions at once, and so the Klingon faction got a quick slap together job and the spin that they always intended them to be a PvP faction. While the players have been asking for more PvE content for the Klingons, the player requests didn't have much to do with it in the grand scheme; Cryptic is just finally getting around to addressing the problem that they were aware of since beta.
"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
Bwahahahahahaha! That's kinda like saying Thomas Kinkade is a better painter than Vincent van Gogh. It's a valid opinion to hold, but it shows that you have very poor taste in art (MMOs.)
STO is to "other" AAA MMOs, as "Four Dogs Playing Poker" on velvet is to fine art.
EVE isn't qutie my cup of tea but it offers far more freedom and possibilities than STO. Ship equipment, combat, skills, crafting, resource gathering, economy, corporations (guilds in EVE), PvP, and far more player intrigue... all done on EVE and done far better than STO. It has a larger and devoted playerbase from what I've experienced, despite STO having the fabled Star Trek IP.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
i am thinking cause you can fit ships whatever way you like to do whatever job you want it to do(Like a Hurricane BC lets say ive got an armor tanked close range nuet tackler, A long ranged nano snipa then a salvager looter type and i use it for PI in 0,0). you have implants,boosters and cross train whatever race you like so no class system its just one big whatever you want to do. no other game has that btw.
Umm, you can fit whatever you want on whatever ship so long as the player is high enough level to use the gear and the ship has enough slots in STO as well. Also, the ships in STO can be cusomized (somewhat) on the outer appearance to make something that is more unique rather than EvE where every Apoc looks the same. Not to mention the amount of customizability of skills, gear, and appearance of the player and all of his bridge officers.
Really? So I can fit a probe launcher/mining laser/tractor beam/whatever on my Star Trek ship? Of course not. EVE ships can do more things than combat, such as explore, mine, carry cargo, etc. This is why you can customize your EVE ship to do far more stuff than your STO ship. In STO combat is the only thing you can do really.
I'll give you one for the sensor probes not being launched for long distance sensors.
Why in the Hell would anyone have to mine in the Star Trek universe when they have replicators?
Tractor Beams are in the game via Bridge Officers.
Tractor beams are in the game for every ship by default in STO, but that's beside the point. EVE ships simply have more practical customization options. Granted, they do have less (or none) cosmetic customization options. Even with just weapons, EVE has far more choices as opposed to STO's "phasers or disrupters" non-choice.
That's false. There's quite a bit more choice of weapon damage types than "phasers or disrupters".
Actually, I found a lot of the practical customization options in STO to be worthless anyway. They've done a very poor job of explaining what the different types of components really do and what the practical aplications are for them.
Regardless of if you found them "worthless" or not, they are still there which adds to the options of customizability of STO. Bridge officers (outfit, looks, skills, and gear), ships (looks and gear... much more looks but less gear options than EvE), and the main character avatar (gear, looks... but that's a moot point if or when EvE ever launches their out of ship avatar patch).
Why would anyone want to mine in Star Trek? Maybe cause it's better than "scanning for anomolies" all the time for everything. Even with replicators your ship needs raw materials to run the replicators, they don't create matter out of nothing after all. The "resource gathering" and "crafting" components of STO are so poor and crappy that they were voted by the STO community as the least favourite part of the game and part of the game that needs the most improvement.
I agree with the issue of crafting in STO being terribad.
Cryptic is just finally getting around to addressing the problem that they were aware of since beta.
Yea, which is basically what happens to all mmo's on release. for a few months after they have to straignten out unexpected problems while trying to address the concerns of its player base. Sometimes it takes a good year!
Which is why I think comparing a 7 year old MMO to a fresh young sprout of a game is wrong. Eve has gone through some massive, huge changes over the years to be the game it is today, and I expect STO will do the same.
Eve takes months to comprehend the basics, STO takes 5 minutes, Eve takes years to master, STO is done in less than a Month. Some people like the easy arcady space game like STO, but maybe 7 years down the line STO will also be as expansive as Eve, which people may or may not like.
We just dont know what the future holds for STO, all I know is that at the moment is that STO is too easy, and Eve is too hard.
Cryptic is just finally getting around to addressing the problem that they were aware of since beta.
Yea, which is basically what happens to all mmo's on release. for a few months after they have to straignten out unexpected problems while trying to address the concerns of its player base. Sometimes it takes a good year!
Which is why I think comparing a 7 year old MMO to a fresh young sprout of a game is wrong. Eve has gone through some massive, huge changes over the years to be the game it is today, and I expect STO will do the same.
Eve takes months to comprehend the basics, STO takes 5 minutes, Eve takes years to master, STO is done in less than a Month. Some people like the easy arcady space game like STO, but maybe 7 years down the line STO will also be as expansive as Eve, which people may or may not like.
We just dont know what the future holds for STO, all I know is that at the moment is that STO is too easy, and Eve is too hard.
The future of STO is pretty much just more of the same as Seasons 1 & 2 with minor free content added and major additions to the c-store of what the current playerbase cries for. While I fully agree with you in general that MMOs can change over time in reguards to there feature list, a game as broken as STO on so many basic levels just can't be altered to the same extent as WoW, AoC or Eve who's core gameplay was never the problem.
STO needs major work done to its server client so it feels like a real MMO and not a single player game with limited online features, a 3D engine over haul for space flight, major revamp/reworking of the ground combat, major reworking of sector space, working ship interiors, valid PvP or RvR options and proper crafting system.
While i can see ground combat, crafting and some PvP enhancements coming the rest would require a rewrite of the game code or STO 2 in other words.
i am thinking cause you can fit ships whatever way you like to do whatever job you want it to do(Like a Hurricane BC lets say ive got an armor tanked close range nuet tackler, A long ranged nano snipa then a salvager looter type and i use it for PI in 0,0). you have implants,boosters and cross train whatever race you like so no class system its just one big whatever you want to do. no other game has that btw.
Umm, you can fit whatever you want on whatever ship so long as the player is high enough level to use the gear and the ship has enough slots in STO as well. Also, the ships in STO can be cusomized (somewhat) on the outer appearance to make something that is more unique rather than EvE where every Apoc looks the same. Not to mention the amount of customizability of skills, gear, and appearance of the player and all of his bridge officers.
All that's nice. Is it necessary to hit any keys on your keyboard other than the space bar or the letter F to play Eve?
Please reread my original post. I mentioned customizability NOT gameplay. Your attempt failed.
Sorry....thought we were talking about a star trek online multiplayer game - not a computerized starfleet cut-out and dress-up doll software application
Yea, which is basically what happens to all mmo's on release. for a few months after they have to straignten out unexpected problems while trying to address the concerns of its player base. Sometimes it takes a good year!
Which is why I think comparing a 7 year old MMO to a fresh young sprout of a game is wrong. Eve has gone through some massive, huge changes over the years to be the game it is today, and I expect STO will do the same.
Nice attempt at spin there; the difference is that most games that advertise multiple complete factions, with plenty of PvE content for both, actually have that at launch. Heck, even WAR, AoC, and frikking Vanguard were able to to deliver on that. Yes, they had to fill in holes in content here and there, but they had the factions and content. Along comes STO which promised two complete factions, and could barely deliver that for just the Federation side. Actually, they didn't deliver it even for the Feds: They lacked endgame content until two weeks after launch, and the last few levels as well. Cryptic swore up and down in interviews that the Klingons were just some glorified version of monsterplay, and when asked repeatedly in interviews swore up and down that the Klingons had plenty of PvE content to level up in.
You can flail your arms around all you want and tell us that STO's condition is normal for MMOs, but the people here who have MMO experience know better. You're trying to equate most MMOs post launch touch ups, bug squashing, and normal continued development with releasing a game that was released a year earlier than it should have been. The simple fact is that very little in STO was ready for beta testing, let alone launch.
As far as comparisons go? In a perfect world, no new MMO would be compared to any other. However you should have learned by now that the world is not perfect, nor are people. Any MMO that comes out is going to be compared to existing games as they are now, not as they were at launch; that's just the way life works.
"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 am thinking cause you can fit ships whatever way you like to do whatever job you want it to do(Like a Hurricane BC lets say ive got an armor tanked close range nuet tackler, A long ranged nano snipa then a salvager looter type and i use it for PI in 0,0). you have implants,boosters and cross train whatever race you like so no class system its just one big whatever you want to do. no other game has that btw.
Umm, you can fit whatever you want on whatever ship so long as the player is high enough level to use the gear and the ship has enough slots in STO as well. Also, the ships in STO can be cusomized (somewhat) on the outer appearance to make something that is more unique rather than EvE where every Apoc looks the same. Not to mention the amount of customizability of skills, gear, and appearance of the player and all of his bridge officers.
All that's nice. Is it necessary to hit any keys on your keyboard other than the space bar or the letter F to play Eve?
Please reread my original post. I mentioned customizability NOT gameplay. Your attempt failed.
Sorry....thought we were talking about a star trek online multiplayer game - not a computerized starfleet cut-out and dress-up doll software application
And I'm sorry that you were unable to comprehend my original post. However, your reply shows that instead of confessing that you were wrong, you cover up with a snide comment about STO that has nothing to do with my original post. Its really sad.
But your under the mistaken impression that I agree with the OP. I dont, at all. STO Can never be better than Eve on many different levels, least of which is that its got a 7 year development head start.
But while I dis-agree with the OP, I dont agree that the STO should be compared to Eve. I could get into the argument about the two games, but the fact is, they are two completly different games!
As such, there will always be people who 'prefer' one to another. Its great that STO has some fans... I too hope one day that STO will take some drastic action and be a game that I one day will like. But I will like it for completly different reasons that I like eve.
Yea, which is basically what happens to all mmo's on release. for a few months after they have to straignten out unexpected problems while trying to address the concerns of its player base. Sometimes it takes a good year!
Which is why I think comparing a 7 year old MMO to a fresh young sprout of a game is wrong. Eve has gone through some massive, huge changes over the years to be the game it is today, and I expect STO will do the same.
Nice attempt at spin there; the difference is that most games that advertise multiple complete factions, with plenty of PvE content for both, actually have that at launch. Heck, even WAR, AoC, and frikking Vanguard were able to to deliver on that. Yes, they had to fill in holes in content here and there, but they had the factions and content. Along comes STO which promised two complete factions, and could barely deliver that for just the Federation side. Actually, they didn't deliver it even for the Feds: They lacked endgame content until two weeks after launch, and the last few levels as well. Cryptic swore up and down in interviews that the Klingons were just some glorified version of monsterplay, and when asked repeatedly in interviews swore up and down that the Klingons had plenty of PvE content to level up in.
You can flail your arms around all you want and tell us that STO's condition is normal for MMOs, but the people here who have MMO experience know better. You're trying to equate most MMOs post launch touch ups, bug squashing, and normal continued development with releasing a game that was released a year earlier than it should have been. The simple fact is that very little in STO was ready for beta testing, let alone launch.
As far as comparisons go? In a perfect world, no new MMO would be compared to any other. However you should have learned by now that the world is not perfect, nor are people. Any MMO that comes out is going to be compared to existing games as they are now, not as they were at launch; that's just the way life works.
In a world we would all like, all games would be delivered complete. When they dont I am not sure why having end game content come out two weeks after release is an issue. If you are burning through the content that fast to find the end-game, you are playing the game and probably have no idea what the game is about (this is a gneral reference, not specific to STO). Any game developer/publisher that want sto add the "end game" content (whatever that may be or mean) two weeks after release is a non-issue as no one should be through the entire content in that short a period of time. If you are there are games for you; Dragon Age, for example.
If you are burning through the content that fast to find the end-game, you are playing the game and probably have no idea what the game is about (this is a gneral reference, not specific to STO).
I would normally agree with you! People who burn through content as "zomg zerg" are people that irritate me a lot.
However, since Champion's Online I will now take exception. Some games are just not made correctly, even people who take there time and absorb everything are completing MMO's within a few weeks. Even the grind fest that is Aion still saw people completing everything in 30 days.
With STO being made by the same people who made CO I would genuinly beleive that STO has little end game content.
It's as I said earlier. People are trying to equate STO with what's happened in other games as far as how they've evolved naturally over time. It's simply a scam of a comparison. The same type of scam comparison Cryptic staff have been trying to brainwash people with ever since they realized early on in closed beta and through open beta that most players found the game severely lacking. It seems to have taken hold for a few unfortunately.
People shouldn't burn through content in a couple of weeks, but even casual gamers "burnt through content" within two or three weeks when STO was released, and they've not added much more at all since. Not to mention that there are still glaring bugs that they've not fixed since early in closed beta, and they just keep adding more bugs too.
STO is a mmo that's only good for a month even for normal players that would label themselves as casual, MAYBE a month and a half if you're only playing occasionally.
Trying to say that it's similar to most mmos when released or soon after is pure bunk.
Cryptic's plan is to have the player pay for initial game development, not game play. That's not only ripping people off due to not providing adequate game play for the money people are paying, but that's also ripping people off by not providing those people with a return on their investment after they've been bankrolling development.
It's amazing what people will do to make excuses for a dev team's piss-poor game design and implementation.
The game was released woefully incomplete. The factions weren't fleshed out with the Klingons clearly left out of being worked on. At the beginning, there were far more Klingon players than there are now (but still far, far less than Feds). When I left, we were a rarity. Hell, PvP? It was the ONLY thing that I liked about the game, but jeeez, only 1-2 maps are used. Ground PvP is absolutely horrible. Animations screwed and also one word: "HOLD"... which takes alot of fun out of the game. That's just a few of the reasons why nobody PvP'ed on Ground.
The only thing essentially to do in the game is blow s**t up. Because nothing else is fleshed out or just isn't there.
Now, for the people complaining it isn't fair to compare STO to EVE, well d**n. The OP brought it up, and it's shot down by the facts.
The final fact is that STO lost the great number of players that were there at launch. The general rule in MMORPGs is that you get only that one shot for big success, and Cryptic fumbled it even before STO came out the gates.
Now they're just busy trying ways to milk the living life out of whoever is left with the subscription / LTS, C-Store, and the audacity of putting game additions on the C-Store for that pitifully incomplete, inadequate game.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
But your under the mistaken impression that I agree with the OP. I dont, at all. STO Can never be better than Eve on many different levels, least of which is that its got a 7 year development head start.
But while I dis-agree with the OP, I dont agree that the STO should be compared to Eve. I could get into the argument about the two games, but the fact is, they are two completly different games!
As such, there will always be people who 'prefer' one to another. Its great that STO has some fans... I too hope one day that STO will take some drastic action and be a game that I one day will like. But I will like it for completly different reasons that I like eve.
When you take something out of context, in an attempt to make an invalid point, that is indeed spin. Also I never had the impression, nor did I state such, that you agreed with the OP. You are correct that STO and Eve are two completely different games, and generally shouldn't be compared; however there's not much else out there to compare STO with, so people are going to gravitate towards the closest (which means Eve in this case, as it's the biggest Western SciFi MMO currently available). Once we get more SciFi MMOs out there, you'll start seeing STO compared to games like SW:TOR. I'm willing to bet that STO, with it's head start in updates, is going to fall far short of where SW:TOR is at launch.
*Edit for additional thought:* There was an article from this website the other day, talking about space combat in the upcoming SW:TOR game. In that article, the author started talking about SWG's Jump to Lightspeed expansion. While talking about that, he made a very valid point: Jump to Light Speed's larger ships (like the YT-1300) actually simulated Star Trek better than STO does; multiple players could get on one of theose ships, walk around to explore, and even have multiple jobs while flying through space (manning turrets, fixing damage in the engine room, running secondary systems such as sheilds, etc.). It's rather sad that SWG simulates that experience better than STO does, when Star Trek was mainly about the crew working together.
"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
In a world we would all like, all games would be delivered complete. When they dont I am not sure why having end game content come out two weeks after release is an issue. If you are burning through the content that fast to find the end-game, you are playing the game and probably have no idea what the game is about (this is a gneral reference, not specific to STO). Any game developer/publisher that want sto add the "end game" content (whatever that may be or mean) two weeks after release is a non-issue as no one should be through the entire content in that short a period of time. If you are there are games for you; Dragon Age, for example.
Nice try, but the issue here is that the majority of STO's players were at the endgame within two or three weeks (and that was with people playing through all of the available content). When you have that in a MMO, then there's a major problem. As far as endgame content available on release goes? Other than STO, can you name a MMO that didn't have something for the max level players to do? DAoC made the mistake of thinking that they had time to add more endgame content (high level dungeons and such), but they did have the RvR mechanic in place (which was always intended to be their endgame). Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, for all of it's problems, did indeed have endgame dungeons available at launch; sure they were buggy and/or pointess at first, but they were there. WAR is the the only other MMO I can think of where the endgame was lacking, but that game suffered from many of the same problems STO does and I'm fairly certain that most of WAR's players took longer than 2 or three weeks to hit the top level.
"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
It's as I said earlier. People are trying to equate STO with what's happened in other games as far as how they've evolved naturally over time. It's simply a scam of a comparison. The same type of scam comparison Cryptic staff have been trying to brainwash people with ever since they realized early on in closed beta and through open beta that most players found the game severely lacking. It seems to have taken hold for a few unfortunately.
It's not just Cryptic though: Every MMO company who has released a shoddy MMO in the past few years (Funcom, Mythic, Sigil, and CRS immediately come to mind) have used that same line. The difference though is that many of those companies have tried to make up for the lousy launches in some way; whether it's firing the guy in charge (Funcom and Mythic), stopping the clock for a few months on the initial 30 days of free time (CRS and Funcom (with AO)), or making some kind of apology. Generally such actions have bought those companies a little bit of goodwill, but I don't think I've ever seen Cryptic take one of those steps in any of their MMOs.
"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
Games develop over time based on the feedback they receive from THEIR player base!
So eve having been developed over 6/7 years means that it gets developed in a way that IT's players desire, STO has barley left the car park yet, its still fixing and changing stuff post launch, only now are we seeing some stuff developed that they players are asking for. (content for klingons)
If you, as a player of STO likes STO then you will effect how it turns out in the future, even if you dont give feedback, your still a statistic that they monitor, they will still see that you do more of one thing than another. Just as Eve players have.
Some people will never like Eve, and some people will never like STO, but is one product "better" than the other?.. no. Its just different. While I do not find any enjoyment from STO at the moment, 7 years down the line may be a completly different thing.
Geberally MMOs get 4+ years of development time, so when they get rto player input they already have a solid foundation. STO has a half finished foundation and they already expect the players to show the creativity the devs solely lack.
It's as I said earlier. People are trying to equate STO with what's happened in other games as far as how they've evolved naturally over time. It's simply a scam of a comparison. The same type of scam comparison Cryptic staff have been trying to brainwash people with ever since they realized early on in closed beta and through open beta that most players found the game severely lacking. It seems to have taken hold for a few unfortunately.
It's not just Cryptic though: Every MMO company who has released a shoddy MMO in the past few years (Funcom, Mythic, Sigil, and CRS immediately come to mind) have used that same line. The difference though is that many of those companies have tried to make up for the lousy launches in some way; whether it's firing the guy in charge (Funcom and Mythic), stopping the clock for a few months on the initial 30 days of free time (CRS and Funcom (with AO)), or making some kind of apology. Generally such actions have bought those companies a little bit of goodwill, but I don't think I've ever seen Cryptic take one of those steps in any of their MMOs.
except for firing the guy in charge.... unless you believed the spiel about Zinc resigning to be with his family, his goats, and those bees.. lol
They kinda seem to be bending over backwards too with welcome back weekends and being vocal about wanting feedback to make the game what the players want it to be. Unfortunately this one has too much badwill out there now because of all the shenanigans they've pulled since launch, and of course getting feedback to design your game is something you do in beta testing not after release. It's in a similar state to where Vanguard was after people saw how broken and buggy it was. Cryptic didn't learn from SoE's mistakes. SoE never admits making mistakes, and a lot of people left their games never to came back. Companies like Funcom, Sigil, etc. did and a lot of people were willing to give them another shot.
While this is your opinion and I respect that...you pretty much list only your positive opinions while comparing it to the "other" space MMO out there and give us details on how we can try it out for ourselves?
Something don't smell right but I can also see how you came to these conclusions after only a day of playing(I was fairly hyped up myself). Please return after a week or so and give us your review then.
Thank you sir.
P.S. Saying STO gameplay is better than EVE's by 100X is flippin' mad bro.
I really have to come up with some kind of product these people will buy and start selling it to them.
You should sell lies, thats what they do. It just has to be tangible in the minds of your target audience.
I played EvE for 18 months and have been playing STO since open beta. The games offer completely different experiences. Here are my experiences and opinions.
EvE:
Character abilities are based on skills only. There are no levels for characters; although there are levels of skills. The only way to build skills is through training them in real time. A major improvement is that you can make a list of skills to train over 24 hours instead of being forced to log in multiple times to train a skill to the next level or train a new skill. No matter how much or little you actually play the game, your skills train at a constant rate. Although there is no level cap, last I heard it would take 26 years of real time to max out all available skills whether you play the game 16 hours a day or one hour a month.
PvE content is bland to say the least. There is no story for combat or transport missions, just contacts who offer jobs. Crafting is extremely detailed and requires multiple skills to perform. Mining is possible, but mind-numbingly boring. You just sit and shoot a rock until your hull is full. The COSMOS missions were pretty good, but quite challenging. You really need a group or T2 ships to complete them. One final note. Although you can run missions or do what people call PvE, you are always in PvP danger. Other players can hunt you down and either gank you or loot your wrecks.
PvP is constant and virtually always one-sided. Most PvP I experienced in EvE was a group of players hunting targets against people trying to run away or getting ganked. Almost all conflicts were 5-to-1 ratios. The bigger side won, period. I don't care how skilled or coordinated your side is.
EvE is a massive sandbox with long travel times, harsh death penalties (especially if your clone is out of date) and extremely detailed crafting/economy.
STO:
Characters are given three career paths from which to choose. Skill points are earned through defeating enemies and completing missions. Once enough skill points have been spent, the character advances in rank (level). There is a level/skillpoint cap.
PvE content is repetitive and centered on combat; however, there are several story lines and references to Star Trek lore. Crafting is pointless, and there is no mining (for those who love shooting rocks). Diplomacy missions are basically go here and talk to him, then her, then him, etc. I don't even mess with those. There is no PvP while running PvE content.
PvP is done through an areana system for all intents and purposes. Once the sides have enough people, the match plays out. The team with the better coordination has an advantage.
STO is a smaller galaxy with fast travel, lax death penalties (none on default difficulty setting) and minimal crafting/economy.
Bottom line: If you want a hard core game that takes a long time to get into, big space, pvp, and complex mechanics, EvE is the much better game. If you want to have casual fun flying around a Star Trek setting, fast-paced travel/combat, pve, and easy mechanics, STO is more fun. That's my opinion.
The reason why Cryptic is synonimous with crap is because of the junk they put out like STO. STO became the absolute worst mmorpg of its time when it launched. Most reviewers agreed, other than mmorpg.com, to salvage their ad revenue. But the reality remains that the game does not have a subscribership base, numbers, that is anything close to what any fair minded entertainment business person would consider mediocre.
It would be a different story if it were a single-player game with no monthly fee. The game is nothing more than a rudimentary third-person shooter with tiny little maps of the same npc mobs that pop time after time;it lacks most of what massively multiplayer means, and to compare it to EvE in some fashion as to try to position STO as a better mmorpg product, isnt only a false comparison by someone with an axe to grind, its down-right stupid.
There is a reason why EvE online is continuously reported as one of the most successful mmorpgs 7-years running, and the only mmorpg over 7 years aside from WoW, Lineage, Aion, and Runescape to surpass 300,000 subscribers and hold onto them. And for an Indie developers to be able to accomplish that is huge compared to AAA developers that is nothing but something akin to a snake-oil sales-man.
Comments
Because there are certain things that you can't replicate, of course. What do you think all those "anomolies" are, anyway? Replicators also still require raw material to convert into the things you create with the replicate. You can't create something out of nothing.
Not that any of this matters. Cryptic pays lipservice to canon or Treknology when it suits their purposes, and completely disregards it at all other times. Or have you not wondered why the money-free Federation has 15 different forms of currency in this game? And that's not counting C-store cash.
Tractor beams are in the game for every ship by default in STO, but that's beside the point. EVE ships simply have more practical customization options. Granted, they do have less (or none) cosmetic customization options. Even with just weapons, EVE has far more choices as opposed to STO's "phasers or disrupters" non-choice.
Actually, I found a lot of the practical customization options in STO to be worthless anyway. They've done a very poor job of explaining what the different types of components really do and what the practical aplications are for them.
Why would anyone want to mine in Star Trek? Maybe cause it's better than "scanning for anomolies" all the time for everything. Even with replicators your ship needs raw materials to run the replicators, they don't create matter out of nothing after all. The "resource gathering" and "crafting" components of STO are so poor and crappy that they were voted by the STO community as the least favourite part of the game and part of the game that needs the most improvement.
Games develop over time based on the feedback they receive from THEIR player base!
So eve having been developed over 6/7 years means that it gets developed in a way that IT's players desire, STO has barley left the car park yet, its still fixing and changing stuff post launch, only now are we seeing some stuff developed that they players are asking for. (content for klingons)
If you, as a player of STO likes STO then you will effect how it turns out in the future, even if you dont give feedback, your still a statistic that they monitor, they will still see that you do more of one thing than another. Just as Eve players have.
Some people will never like Eve, and some people will never like STO, but is one product "better" than the other?.. no. Its just different. While I do not find any enjoyment from STO at the moment, 7 years down the line may be a completly different thing.
Any game that releases today is trying to compete with other games that are available today.
The only worth while comparison is between games as they stand today.
If I start a company building gaming PCs that have 32meg of RAM, 286 processors and green screen monitors people will rightly mock me and refuse to buy them. I couldn't say 'Oh, but it's not fair to compare my PCs with today's PCs as other people have been making them for years. Compare mine to PCs when they started and you'll find they're great!'.
No, if you want your product to compete in today's market it has to stand up against the other products in today's market. Not 2001's market.
The Klingon faction having it's own PvE content was promised from the start by cryptic, as was never having to PvP if you didn't wish to. Unfortunately they gave themselves far too little time to do two factions at once, and so the Klingon faction got a quick slap together job and the spin that they always intended them to be a PvP faction. While the players have been asking for more PvE content for the Klingons, the player requests didn't have much to do with it in the grand scheme; Cryptic is just finally getting around to addressing the problem that they were aware of since beta.
"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
Heheheh...
EVE isn't qutie my cup of tea but it offers far more freedom and possibilities than STO. Ship equipment, combat, skills, crafting, resource gathering, economy, corporations (guilds in EVE), PvP, and far more player intrigue... all done on EVE and done far better than STO. It has a larger and devoted playerbase from what I've experienced, despite STO having the fabled Star Trek IP.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Yea, which is basically what happens to all mmo's on release. for a few months after they have to straignten out unexpected problems while trying to address the concerns of its player base. Sometimes it takes a good year!
Which is why I think comparing a 7 year old MMO to a fresh young sprout of a game is wrong. Eve has gone through some massive, huge changes over the years to be the game it is today, and I expect STO will do the same.
Eve takes months to comprehend the basics, STO takes 5 minutes, Eve takes years to master, STO is done in less than a Month. Some people like the easy arcady space game like STO, but maybe 7 years down the line STO will also be as expansive as Eve, which people may or may not like.
We just dont know what the future holds for STO, all I know is that at the moment is that STO is too easy, and Eve is too hard.
The future of STO is pretty much just more of the same as Seasons 1 & 2 with minor free content added and major additions to the c-store of what the current playerbase cries for. While I fully agree with you in general that MMOs can change over time in reguards to there feature list, a game as broken as STO on so many basic levels just can't be altered to the same extent as WoW, AoC or Eve who's core gameplay was never the problem.
STO needs major work done to its server client so it feels like a real MMO and not a single player game with limited online features, a 3D engine over haul for space flight, major revamp/reworking of the ground combat, major reworking of sector space, working ship interiors, valid PvP or RvR options and proper crafting system.
While i can see ground combat, crafting and some PvP enhancements coming the rest would require a rewrite of the game code or STO 2 in other words.
Sorry....thought we were talking about a star trek online multiplayer game - not a computerized starfleet cut-out and dress-up doll software application
RELAX!@!! BREATHE!!!
Nice attempt at spin there; the difference is that most games that advertise multiple complete factions, with plenty of PvE content for both, actually have that at launch. Heck, even WAR, AoC, and frikking Vanguard were able to to deliver on that. Yes, they had to fill in holes in content here and there, but they had the factions and content. Along comes STO which promised two complete factions, and could barely deliver that for just the Federation side. Actually, they didn't deliver it even for the Feds: They lacked endgame content until two weeks after launch, and the last few levels as well. Cryptic swore up and down in interviews that the Klingons were just some glorified version of monsterplay, and when asked repeatedly in interviews swore up and down that the Klingons had plenty of PvE content to level up in.
You can flail your arms around all you want and tell us that STO's condition is normal for MMOs, but the people here who have MMO experience know better. You're trying to equate most MMOs post launch touch ups, bug squashing, and normal continued development with releasing a game that was released a year earlier than it should have been. The simple fact is that very little in STO was ready for beta testing, let alone launch.
As far as comparisons go? In a perfect world, no new MMO would be compared to any other. However you should have learned by now that the world is not perfect, nor are people. Any MMO that comes out is going to be compared to existing games as they are now, not as they were at launch; that's just the way life works.
"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
And I'm sorry that you were unable to comprehend my original post. However, your reply shows that instead of confessing that you were wrong, you cover up with a snide comment about STO that has nothing to do with my original post. Its really sad.
ooo, my first 'spin' accusation
But your under the mistaken impression that I agree with the OP. I dont, at all. STO Can never be better than Eve on many different levels, least of which is that its got a 7 year development head start.
But while I dis-agree with the OP, I dont agree that the STO should be compared to Eve. I could get into the argument about the two games, but the fact is, they are two completly different games!
As such, there will always be people who 'prefer' one to another. Its great that STO has some fans... I too hope one day that STO will take some drastic action and be a game that I one day will like. But I will like it for completly different reasons that I like eve.
In a world we would all like, all games would be delivered complete. When they dont I am not sure why having end game content come out two weeks after release is an issue. If you are burning through the content that fast to find the end-game, you are playing the game and probably have no idea what the game is about (this is a gneral reference, not specific to STO). Any game developer/publisher that want sto add the "end game" content (whatever that may be or mean) two weeks after release is a non-issue as no one should be through the entire content in that short a period of time. If you are there are games for you; Dragon Age, for example.
Gaming since Avalon Hill was making board games.
Played SWG, EVE, Fallen Earth, LOTRO, Rift, Vanguard, WoW, SWTOR, TSW, Tera
Tried Aoc, Aion, EQII, RoM, Vindictus, Darkfail, DDO, GW, PotBS
I would normally agree with you! People who burn through content as "zomg zerg" are people that irritate me a lot.
However, since Champion's Online I will now take exception. Some games are just not made correctly, even people who take there time and absorb everything are completing MMO's within a few weeks. Even the grind fest that is Aion still saw people completing everything in 30 days.
With STO being made by the same people who made CO I would genuinly beleive that STO has little end game content.
It's as I said earlier. People are trying to equate STO with what's happened in other games as far as how they've evolved naturally over time. It's simply a scam of a comparison. The same type of scam comparison Cryptic staff have been trying to brainwash people with ever since they realized early on in closed beta and through open beta that most players found the game severely lacking. It seems to have taken hold for a few unfortunately.
People shouldn't burn through content in a couple of weeks, but even casual gamers "burnt through content" within two or three weeks when STO was released, and they've not added much more at all since. Not to mention that there are still glaring bugs that they've not fixed since early in closed beta, and they just keep adding more bugs too.
STO is a mmo that's only good for a month even for normal players that would label themselves as casual, MAYBE a month and a half if you're only playing occasionally.
Trying to say that it's similar to most mmos when released or soon after is pure bunk.
Cryptic's plan is to have the player pay for initial game development, not game play. That's not only ripping people off due to not providing adequate game play for the money people are paying, but that's also ripping people off by not providing those people with a return on their investment after they've been bankrolling development.
It's amazing what people will do to make excuses for a dev team's piss-poor game design and implementation.
The game was released woefully incomplete. The factions weren't fleshed out with the Klingons clearly left out of being worked on. At the beginning, there were far more Klingon players than there are now (but still far, far less than Feds). When I left, we were a rarity. Hell, PvP? It was the ONLY thing that I liked about the game, but jeeez, only 1-2 maps are used. Ground PvP is absolutely horrible. Animations screwed and also one word: "HOLD"... which takes alot of fun out of the game. That's just a few of the reasons why nobody PvP'ed on Ground.
The only thing essentially to do in the game is blow s**t up. Because nothing else is fleshed out or just isn't there.
Now, for the people complaining it isn't fair to compare STO to EVE, well d**n. The OP brought it up, and it's shot down by the facts.
The final fact is that STO lost the great number of players that were there at launch. The general rule in MMORPGs is that you get only that one shot for big success, and Cryptic fumbled it even before STO came out the gates.
Now they're just busy trying ways to milk the living life out of whoever is left with the subscription / LTS, C-Store, and the audacity of putting game additions on the C-Store for that pitifully incomplete, inadequate game.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
When you take something out of context, in an attempt to make an invalid point, that is indeed spin. Also I never had the impression, nor did I state such, that you agreed with the OP. You are correct that STO and Eve are two completely different games, and generally shouldn't be compared; however there's not much else out there to compare STO with, so people are going to gravitate towards the closest (which means Eve in this case, as it's the biggest Western SciFi MMO currently available). Once we get more SciFi MMOs out there, you'll start seeing STO compared to games like SW:TOR. I'm willing to bet that STO, with it's head start in updates, is going to fall far short of where SW:TOR is at launch.
*Edit for additional thought:* There was an article from this website the other day, talking about space combat in the upcoming SW:TOR game. In that article, the author started talking about SWG's Jump to Lightspeed expansion. While talking about that, he made a very valid point: Jump to Light Speed's larger ships (like the YT-1300) actually simulated Star Trek better than STO does; multiple players could get on one of theose ships, walk around to explore, and even have multiple jobs while flying through space (manning turrets, fixing damage in the engine room, running secondary systems such as sheilds, etc.). It's rather sad that SWG simulates that experience better than STO does, when Star Trek was mainly about the crew working together.
"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
Nice try, but the issue here is that the majority of STO's players were at the endgame within two or three weeks (and that was with people playing through all of the available content). When you have that in a MMO, then there's a major problem. As far as endgame content available on release goes? Other than STO, can you name a MMO that didn't have something for the max level players to do? DAoC made the mistake of thinking that they had time to add more endgame content (high level dungeons and such), but they did have the RvR mechanic in place (which was always intended to be their endgame). Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, for all of it's problems, did indeed have endgame dungeons available at launch; sure they were buggy and/or pointess at first, but they were there. WAR is the the only other MMO I can think of where the endgame was lacking, but that game suffered from many of the same problems STO does and I'm fairly certain that most of WAR's players took longer than 2 or three weeks to hit the top level.
"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
It's not just Cryptic though: Every MMO company who has released a shoddy MMO in the past few years (Funcom, Mythic, Sigil, and CRS immediately come to mind) have used that same line. The difference though is that many of those companies have tried to make up for the lousy launches in some way; whether it's firing the guy in charge (Funcom and Mythic), stopping the clock for a few months on the initial 30 days of free time (CRS and Funcom (with AO)), or making some kind of apology. Generally such actions have bought those companies a little bit of goodwill, but I don't think I've ever seen Cryptic take one of those steps in any of their MMOs.
"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
Geberally MMOs get 4+ years of development time, so when they get rto player input they already have a solid foundation. STO has a half finished foundation and they already expect the players to show the creativity the devs solely lack.
except for firing the guy in charge.... unless you believed the spiel about Zinc resigning to be with his family, his goats, and those bees.. lol
They kinda seem to be bending over backwards too with welcome back weekends and being vocal about wanting feedback to make the game what the players want it to be. Unfortunately this one has too much badwill out there now because of all the shenanigans they've pulled since launch, and of course getting feedback to design your game is something you do in beta testing not after release. It's in a similar state to where Vanguard was after people saw how broken and buggy it was. Cryptic didn't learn from SoE's mistakes. SoE never admits making mistakes, and a lot of people left their games never to came back. Companies like Funcom, Sigil, etc. did and a lot of people were willing to give them another shot.
You should sell lies, thats what they do. It just has to be tangible in the minds of your target audience.
I played EvE for 18 months and have been playing STO since open beta. The games offer completely different experiences. Here are my experiences and opinions.
EvE:
Character abilities are based on skills only. There are no levels for characters; although there are levels of skills. The only way to build skills is through training them in real time. A major improvement is that you can make a list of skills to train over 24 hours instead of being forced to log in multiple times to train a skill to the next level or train a new skill. No matter how much or little you actually play the game, your skills train at a constant rate. Although there is no level cap, last I heard it would take 26 years of real time to max out all available skills whether you play the game 16 hours a day or one hour a month.
PvE content is bland to say the least. There is no story for combat or transport missions, just contacts who offer jobs. Crafting is extremely detailed and requires multiple skills to perform. Mining is possible, but mind-numbingly boring. You just sit and shoot a rock until your hull is full. The COSMOS missions were pretty good, but quite challenging. You really need a group or T2 ships to complete them. One final note. Although you can run missions or do what people call PvE, you are always in PvP danger. Other players can hunt you down and either gank you or loot your wrecks.
PvP is constant and virtually always one-sided. Most PvP I experienced in EvE was a group of players hunting targets against people trying to run away or getting ganked. Almost all conflicts were 5-to-1 ratios. The bigger side won, period. I don't care how skilled or coordinated your side is.
EvE is a massive sandbox with long travel times, harsh death penalties (especially if your clone is out of date) and extremely detailed crafting/economy.
STO:
Characters are given three career paths from which to choose. Skill points are earned through defeating enemies and completing missions. Once enough skill points have been spent, the character advances in rank (level). There is a level/skillpoint cap.
PvE content is repetitive and centered on combat; however, there are several story lines and references to Star Trek lore. Crafting is pointless, and there is no mining (for those who love shooting rocks). Diplomacy missions are basically go here and talk to him, then her, then him, etc. I don't even mess with those. There is no PvP while running PvE content.
PvP is done through an areana system for all intents and purposes. Once the sides have enough people, the match plays out. The team with the better coordination has an advantage.
STO is a smaller galaxy with fast travel, lax death penalties (none on default difficulty setting) and minimal crafting/economy.
Bottom line: If you want a hard core game that takes a long time to get into, big space, pvp, and complex mechanics, EvE is the much better game. If you want to have casual fun flying around a Star Trek setting, fast-paced travel/combat, pve, and easy mechanics, STO is more fun. That's my opinion.
The reason why Cryptic is synonimous with crap is because of the junk they put out like STO. STO became the absolute worst mmorpg of its time when it launched. Most reviewers agreed, other than mmorpg.com, to salvage their ad revenue. But the reality remains that the game does not have a subscribership base, numbers, that is anything close to what any fair minded entertainment business person would consider mediocre.
It would be a different story if it were a single-player game with no monthly fee. The game is nothing more than a rudimentary third-person shooter with tiny little maps of the same npc mobs that pop time after time;it lacks most of what massively multiplayer means, and to compare it to EvE in some fashion as to try to position STO as a better mmorpg product, isnt only a false comparison by someone with an axe to grind, its down-right stupid.
There is a reason why EvE online is continuously reported as one of the most successful mmorpgs 7-years running, and the only mmorpg over 7 years aside from WoW, Lineage, Aion, and Runescape to surpass 300,000 subscribers and hold onto them. And for an Indie developers to be able to accomplish that is huge compared to AAA developers that is nothing but something akin to a snake-oil sales-man.
[Mod Edit]