IF you are a star trek fan AND don't care much about how much potential is wasted in this game ... i guess you cold possibly like STO. Personally, if anyone cares, i'd very much like to sell my lifer account. I expected someting at least as good as EvE ... since STO made a LOT more noise about how great this game is going to be before even launching it.
@JoBrill- I feel so much sympathy for you lifers. I do. You had every right to think this would be an exceptional Star Trek MMO despite it being made by Craptic...unfortunatly though, it was a gamble that you lost at.
The difference between an MMO and a single player game is that the MMO is always changing. If you want proof of that, look at SWG 6 months before the NGE and 6 months after. Dont you think the game deserved a different rating AFTER the NGE than it had before? And if a game's rating can change because of foolish decisions like the NGE, the other side of the coin means that it should also be able to change because of improvements after the last review.
SWG's NGE was a monumental change to the entire game, and thus rightly deserved to be given a newer rating based off of what for all intents and purposes was an entirely new game. While STO has made improvements over the past six months, those improvements are nowhere in the same league as improvements made in other MMOs in the same time period, such as AoC. A re-review this overly generous should have waited until the one year mark, at the very least; what improvements they have made do not deserve the overly generous score the author of the article broke down for us. Additionally, a good part of the article seems to be looking at where STO might be at in the future, rather than where it is right now.
"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
People who are bashing the score haven't played since the first week of launch.
That might have been a valid argument, if you didn't still have lifetimers and other players on the official STO forums saying the same things.
"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
One thing I get from reading this thread is that the review criteria needs a re-think.
Its the weighting that's the real problem there. Graphics, customer service and sound might be dreadful but if the gameplay has you hooked, they will barely factor into your overall assessment. Putting asside disagreements over "value", this is one reason why all the posters here get pissed off with such a high final grade.
Reviews of other mediums rarely base their grade on an average of various catagories because a sensible reviewer knows that maths can't magically produce a number that reflects their feelings towards it. Its a nerdy mind that expects otherwise.
Company that buys advertising space on mmorpg.com + amature reviewer that was a member of the STO community and Cryptic fanboi before being a "contributer" here = game gets 7.4 rating when it should get maybe a 3.0.
Nice re-review! This game is getting better theres no question about that. I still can't believe that people want so bad for this game to fail just so they can say "I told you so". There's been a lot of arguments and opinions on why this game started out bad, is still bad, and how and why it will always be bad. It's nice to see someone look beyond the games awful state at launch.
Ummm this article is so transparent. The author was scratching and clawing his way to find "pros". This game is far below average for an MMO today. VAlue? Are you kidding me? Initial purchase+ SUb + Shop with one faction and no PvP. Terrible terrible article. "Please send us more advertising dollars. We are nice to you." Ack, I spit you out of my mouth. Ack!
Another Low Budget game.....The monthy sub for these games should be reduced, but it wont happnen. All the tools are in place to make it a great hame, Why not have a space zone that is large as an entire star system? and you can beam down to each planet. Why not have some planets have zones as large as zones you usually see in WoW or even multiple zones on one planet, Why not have the space combat system as complex and involved as Star Fleet Command......why? Low Budget........
My angle is make something great or dont make it at all.....having a market flooded with low quality choices is worse that have less choice with better quality
But the reviews - and these boards - differed. Instead, they said the game was unpolished.
As I said in one of my interviews (I've forgotten which one), I'm not going to be self serving and say "well, the reviewers are wrong" or "the players don't know what they're talking about". That's silly at best. We at Cryptic read you loud and clear. We need to up our quality.
dstahl (executive producer of sto) from aug 24
So from where I'm sitting, Cryptic is not throwing STO under the bus, but instead listening to the concerns of the team, and giving us the time and resources we need to begin addressing some of the bigger issues like Ground Combat, Sector Space, Exploration, PVP, and any other big issue that has been clearly called out in reviews.
7.4????? ummm considering this is what the ceo and executive producer have said about the game less than a month ago.... i really think your massively over-rating sto.
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 won't touch the review itself as most of questioned/critiqued it enough. My wonder is....7 months out and this qualifies for a re-review? Hmmmm. Yet another reason why mmorpg.com is not part of the MetaCritic panel.
I am still waiting for my Klingon Scaners to work, they been broke since BETA. I find it funny that they can pump out Fed Starships every couple of weeks to put in the C-Store but fail to fix something as small as a scanner. I realy believe that within 12 months, just long enough for the Lifers to get their monies worth to go F2P that way Cryptic dosen't have to justify any thing they do with the game.
I am still waiting for my Klingon Scaners to work, they been broke since BETA. I find it funny that they can pump out Fed Starships every couple of weeks to put in the C-Store but fail to fix something as small as a scanner. I realy believe that within 12 months, just long enough for the Lifers to get their monies worth to go F2P that way Cryptic dosen't have to justify any thing they do with the game.
Theyre not broken. Scanners only detect non-combat interractable objects, and Klingons simply have none. That said, I do want them to detect combat groups as well, but as it currently stands the scanner works exactly like it was made to, and is therefore not broken.
just viewed the review. It does a nice review of the things we have recently viewed in STO.
Its nice to view that there are some who view the need of re-viewing sto to make a rereview of previous reviews..
And i must say that, right now, in retrospect i do believe that Star Trek Online will soar high in the years to come. The devs DO hear us, and Daniel Stahl is as good a executive producer as we could ever desire. Most executives these days seem to think that they are far too important to debate ideas with the community, but dstahl, rekhan and others are so in touch with the community that we sometimes forget who we are talking to.
All in all, i surprisingly found myself playing STO every single day again since last week, and only after reading this re-review i noticed that i was once more having fun. STO future does looks brighter and brighter from where we stand
And another thing i must say is.. most people in here who are complaining and whining should be a little more involved in STO's community before saying that this game sucks. The thing is that STO was plagued by bad decisions in the past, and now it is entirely under new management. In the past 3 months, dStahl managed to turn water into wine regarding some aspects of the game, and there still is much more to come. Just wait until the new ground-combat system hits the main server...
I respect your point of view but you do not understand our point of view at all it seems. What is acceptable to you is not acceptable to most.
The Game Engine itself... is substandard and never should have been considered for use with anything but a cheap console game. It is not suitable for use for a online multiplayer game and no amount of fixes can fix this one... the whole game needs to be scrapped software wise and remade from scratch.
How space was done in STO is horrible to most players that bought and played the game... I am talking not only space combat with no Z axis but also how the ship classes were designed, Sector space itself, even the lay out of the galaxy is wrong. Note I am not talking about walking in ships... even running the game as a "ship character" space in so many ways is substandard.
Ground combat misses the mark because it SHOULD be ground SURVEY, EXPLORATION, CONTACT, and DIPLOMACY first and then combat if necessary, which means ground CONTENT needs a complete re-create. Planet zones need to have many times more area than they do not, environment needs serious work, LOS issues, collision issues, character animations need serious work, Missions... oh man where do I start with that mess...
Factions... this is Star Trek for god's sake, Klingons get worse treatment than my mother in law, no Romulans? seriously? We fight Borg from day one and kick their tails? Give me a break. Note I am a Federation all the way and even I think the Klingon faction got screwed.... Gene is turning over in his grave I would imagine...
Philosophy of game content and Missions relative to the Intellectual Property... Blatant disregard for the IP in both subtle and gross fashion. I am going to stop right there... either you know what I speak of or you never will understand that STO is NOT Star Trek, only an insulting joke of what it should be.
And you say it is getting better?
OF COURSE IT'S GETTING BETTER.... IT WAS SO BAD IT HAD NO WHERE TO GO BUT UP!
If you like STO fine, but please be advised that many, many Players feel that Cryptic should have lost the IP as soon as STO's release was public because of the horrible job they did with it. No amount of encouragement from Players that still play will ever fix that to many of us.
The only way to fix this mess to to abandon the software, shut down the servers, refund the customers what they have paid, and sell off the IP to a Dev Team that will do it right the second time.
Brilliant post and correct in every way. The only way you'd be satisfied with this game is if you aren't even remotely a Star Trek fan and are looking for nothing but a casual friendly space shooter with extremely limited options. Contrary to popular opinion, Star Trek fans will not just buy anything so long as its labelled as Star Trek. You NEED to get the IP right to keep them.
just viewed the review. It does a nice review of the things we have recently viewed in STO.
Its nice to view that there are some who view the need of re-viewing sto to make a rereview of previous reviews..
And i must say that, right now, in retrospect i do believe that Star Trek Online will soar high in the years to come. The devs DO hear us, and Daniel Stahl is as good a executive producer as we could ever desire. Most executives these days seem to think that they are far too important to debate ideas with the community, but dstahl, rekhan and others are so in touch with the community that we sometimes forget who we are talking to.
All in all, i surprisingly found myself playing STO every single day again since last week, and only after reading this re-review i noticed that i was once more having fun. STO future does looks brighter and brighter from where we stand
And another thing i must say is.. most people in here who are complaining and whining should be a little more involved in STO's community before saying that this game sucks. The thing is that STO was plagued by bad decisions in the past, and now it is entirely under new management. In the past 3 months, dStahl managed to turn water into wine regarding some aspects of the game, and there still is much more to come. Just wait until the new ground-combat system hits the main server...
I respect your point of view but you do not understand our point of view at all it seems. What is acceptable to you is not acceptable to most.
The Game Engine itself... is substandard and never should have been considered for use with anything but a cheap console game. It is not suitable for use for a online multiplayer game and no amount of fixes can fix this one... the whole game needs to be scrapped software wise and remade from scratch.
How space was done in STO is horrible to most players that bought and played the game... I am talking not only space combat with no Z axis but also how the ship classes were designed, Sector space itself, even the lay out of the galaxy is wrong. Note I am not talking about walking in ships... even running the game as a "ship character" space in so many ways is substandard.
Ground combat misses the mark because it SHOULD be ground SURVEY, EXPLORATION, CONTACT, and DIPLOMACY first and then combat if necessary, which means ground CONTENT needs a complete re-create. Planet zones need to have many times more area than they do not, environment needs serious work, LOS issues, collision issues, character animations need serious work, Missions... oh man where do I start with that mess...
Factions... this is Star Trek for god's sake, Klingons get worse treatment than my mother in law, no Romulans? seriously? We fight Borg from day one and kick their tails? Give me a break. Note I am a Federation all the way and even I think the Klingon faction got screwed.... Gene is turning over in his grave I would imagine...
Philosophy of game content and Missions relative to the Intellectual Property... Blatant disregard for the IP in both subtle and gross fashion. I am going to stop right there... either you know what I speak of or you never will understand that STO is NOT Star Trek, only an insulting joke of what it should be.
And you say it is getting better?
OF COURSE IT'S GETTING BETTER.... IT WAS SO BAD IT HAD NO WHERE TO GO BUT UP!
If you like STO fine, but please be advised that many, many Players feel that Cryptic should have lost the IP as soon as STO's release was public because of the horrible job they did with it. No amount of encouragement from Players that still play will ever fix that to many of us.
The only way to fix this mess to to abandon the software, shut down the servers, refund the customers what they have paid, and sell off the IP to a Dev Team that will do it right the second time.
Brilliant post and correct in every way. The only way you'd be satisfied with this game is if you aren't even remotely a Star Trek fan and are looking for nothing but a casual friendly space shooter with extremely limited options. Contrary to popular opinion, Star Trek fans will not just buy anything so long as its labelled as Star Trek. You NEED to get the IP right to keep them.
Originally posted by jaif re: All the people who say "another review? Why?" I can't believe you're complaining about a new review of an MMO. There's nothing wrong with a second look, esp of something that's changed. If your complaint is that hasn't gotten a second chance, then write up a review yourself. I don't mean that as a challenge either - these things are interesting to a lot of people.
Re-reviewing STO after 7 months and just a few relatively minor content/bug-fix patches is like re-reviewing WoW after going from X.0 to X.1. If you're going to re-review, at least wait until something has changed.
Originally posted by jaif re: "In Star Trek, every effort is made to avoid combat, violence is the last resort. In STO, violence is the only resort. STO is not Star Trek." Huh? Yes, there was diplomacy and dialogue, but there was plenty of fighting too. Kirk certainly loved to fight, and DS9 featured a war for a number of seasons.
Kirk threw more punches than any of the other captains, yes, but he wasn't doing it all that often. Also, on DS9 that war arc didn't feature a whole lot of combat screentime-wise. Now, did it have more combat than the other series? Yes, but it was still a very small percentage of screen time.
Originally posted by jaif
Meanwhile, how do you represent diplomacy meaningfully in an MMO? Take the episode in which Picard rescues the earth boy captured by - what exactly are you going to do in an MMO? Click lots of dialogue buttons, then choose the one that says "don't fight, give the boy back", and that's the end? You need to think this through. The only interesting diplomacy I've ever seen in MMOs involves players, not the game. -Jeff
First, it's not the player's job to create X or Y. Second, STO's community has offered a number of pretty solid ideas on diplomacy.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
The new team has really got their act together cleaning up the mess that pathetic previous team made !
I wont be playing just yet until the new planned revamp (they are going to completely rework ground combat because the curretn system is basically a pet-grind full of horrendously poor gameplay)
I cannot stand ground, so is tay clear for now. I love space combat though!
I look forwards to the future expansions as the games playerbase rises steadily. Its no longer a desert town anymore (i went on recently) like it was, we now have people in each of the social zones and in space, whereas at one point i can honestly say the online counter was below 200 for most of the day, which was utterly depressing.
I would thouroughly reccomend this game to any star trek fan who likes the federation, but if your after other factions stay clear for now. They do plan to add' faction' content in future but i believe that will be expansion pack based. And again, it will be gimmicky:
You will get a UI, ships and a few casual missions,with a focus on PvP and then neutral missions that all factions get. Federation seem t obe the only ones who get pure storyline/general misssions ontop.
By the by in regards to this:
Re-reviewing STO after 7 months and just a few relatively minor content/bug-fix patches is like re-reviewing WoW after going from X.0 to X.1. If you're going to re-review, at least wait until something has changed.
All mmo's get re-reviews. They usually get a initial launch one, a few months down the line one, and then they get a finilized/expansion one (usually a year or so+)
You obviously was not around in the beta. As a proud closed beta tester for this game, i can definately say that a LOT has changed since testing began. Its still expanding, slowly, but surely. There was NO diplomacy system, no bridges, no crew, no klingon PvE, No klingon levelling system, no planet life (animals etc), Low content...
There is significantly more content which is still being pushed forwards. Cryptic LISTENS, unfortunatley that is also their downside. I.E in the beta, too many whined there was no bridges. Cryptic responded quite nicely that they were in progress please wait.
Guess what. Idiots couldnt wait, they whined and flamed and screamed. So cryptic got tired and said 'shut the hell up, here, have some unfinished crap designed bridges'
Then waited a month before they began fixing the concept bridges. Now ive criticised them heavily at launch for so many failures, but things like this were the PLAYERBASE's fault. Had people accepted the polite request to wait, bridges would probably have been functional and released in a month or two. Instead, we got a bare minimum, eventually animated, eventually made to size.
Oh, and im not blind. I still dont play STO, I wasted far too much money on it, i have a pre-order special lifetime account from back in the closed beta when it was looking fantastic and promising. Eventually ill play it again someday, probably after the ground revamp.
As to them having hte IP, theyve done a great job for two years work. TBH they really should have spent 4/5 on it though.
Lastly, as someone who has seen the old star trek online (yes, i witnessed perpetual entertainments STO it was a glorious thing to behold) I can say i wish PE had finished. That was the most fantastic game i had ever seen. Ever. Unfortunatley, they were ass's about it and refused to let Cryptic have any concept art/work done and coding/engine etc, and so cryptic started from scratch.
Fair assessment: the art is solid (and improved), the space combat is fun and nuanced (lots of customization in your build), etc.
The big detractors: the ground combat is stupid easy (especially once you realize how to insta-gib everything), Klingons don't have much PvE content outside of exploration, DSE, fleet actions (Group Instances), STFs (5-man raids), Borg Sector missions, and 8 unique KDF missions.
The game has really improved since launch - and most of the additions have been added in-game (not the C-Store):
Weekly Missions (yes, there are now new missions each week)
In short, I feel like STO is headed in a good direction. The devs are incredibly transparent around the forums - getting preproduction and production screens of new content out for the masses.
In the next three months, the game will see:
Redesigned sector space (larger, less cartoony)
Redesigned ground combat (weakest point in the game)
User-Generated Content (should be able to avoid the pitfalls of Paragon Studios' UGC in CoV/CoH)
More Klingon ship
Continued weekly missions (which are a misnomer - you actually get a suite of missions in each new sector, in addition to the main weekly missions).
Varied gear / more crafting
Am I worried for STO? No, not really.
The game has turned around considerably during the past month. Lots of sore spots are getting polished and the focus is on doing new features right instead of checking as many boxes off for some marketing guru.
Even C-store items are being added via mutiple means, i.e.:
A ship can be unlocked as part of normal level progression
A ship can be acquired through earning X emblems from PvP, STFs, Fleet Actions, etc.
As a last resort, a ship can be acquired via a paid c-store unlock (aka the one lazy bastards choose)
I got into this game at launch and had a ball...at least until I maxed out on level super-fast & wound up with nothing to do but grind exploration missions or suffer through a PUG on a raid. Levelling was SO fast that by the time I really got to appreciate a particular starship, its loadout & handling, etc., I'd be leaving it behind for some new ship class. The only enemies that were remotely challenging were Romulan Warbirds, and the Borg--well, the Borg just flat cheated. I'm glad to hear that they've finally got ship interiors, and that they're revisiting & changing around some of the mission content--that'll be good. And I'm very sorry for the Klingon players. They were promised--PROMISED, multiple times--that more Klingon content was coming their way, that Klingons were and had always been intended as more than just "monster play"...and now it turns out that they were lied to. I'm so very sorry.
The rating MMORPG has given STO sounds about right. It should be higher--that is, Star Trek Online SHOULD be rated higher, but the game itself does not deserve it. Maybe it will, eventually...but I'm not holding my breath. STO had vast potential, and I hope that someday, they'll figure out how to unlock it. In the meantime, I'll be ventilating goblins & orcs over at LOTRO while waiting for SW:TOR to go live. For the Republic!
I am still waiting for my Klingon Scaners to work, they been broke since BETA. I find it funny that they can pump out Fed Starships every couple of weeks to put in the C-Store but fail to fix something as small as a scanner. I realy believe that within 12 months, just long enough for the Lifers to get their monies worth to go F2P that way Cryptic dosen't have to justify any thing they do with the game.
Theyre not broken. Scanners only detect non-combat interractable objects, and Klingons simply have none. That said, I do want them to detect combat groups as well, but as it currently stands the scanner works exactly like it was made to, and is therefore not broken.
Wow Nagus I hope that was sarcasm . If it wasn't, that was quite a reach and good for a chuckle. You put your credibility at risk . /CDF salute ! .... LMAO. On a more serious note , yes that's the reason Cryptic gave and it's been like that how long ?
Fair assessment: the art is solid (and improved), the space combat is fun and nuanced (lots of customization in your build), etc.
The big detractors: the ground combat is stupid easy (especially once you realize how to insta-gib everything), Klingons don't have much PvE content outside of exploration, DSE, fleet actions (Group Instances), STFs (5-man raids), Borg Sector missions, and 8 unique KDF missions.
The game has really improved since launch - and most of the additions have been added in-game (not the C-Store):
Weekly Missions (yes, there are now new missions each week)
In short, I feel like STO is headed in a good direction. The devs are incredibly transparent around the forums - getting preproduction and production screens of new content out for the masses.
In the next three months, the game will see:
Redesigned sector space (larger, less cartoony)
Redesigned ground combat (weakest point in the game)
User-Generated Content (should be able to avoid the pitfalls of Paragon Studios' UGC in CoV/CoH)
More Klingon ship
Continued weekly missions (which are a misnomer - you actually get a suite of missions in each new sector, in addition to the main weekly missions).
Varied gear / more crafting
Am I worried for STO? No, not really.
The game has turned around considerably during the past month. Lots of sore spots are getting polished and the focus is on doing new features right instead of checking as many boxes off for some marketing guru.
Even C-store items are being added via mutiple means, i.e.:
A ship can be unlocked as part of normal level progression
A ship can be acquired through earning X emblems from PvP, STFs, Fleet Actions, etc.
As a last resort, a ship can be acquired via a paid c-store unlock (aka the one lazy bastards choose)
I left STO two months in and came back in the third month and out of all three of the updates I saw none had more release content than C-Store content, I don't see how you could even come to this conclusion, if you count missions seperately then you should also be counting c store items individually as well but even if not I have yet to see it as any closer than fifty fifty.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Comments
IF you are a star trek fan AND don't care much about how much potential is wasted in this game ... i guess you cold possibly like STO. Personally, if anyone cares, i'd very much like to sell my lifer account. I expected someting at least as good as EvE ... since STO made a LOT more noise about how great this game is going to be before even launching it.
People who are bashing the score haven't played since the first week of launch.
I loled at the mention of 3D space.
@JoBrill- I feel so much sympathy for you lifers. I do. You had every right to think this would be an exceptional Star Trek MMO despite it being made by Craptic...unfortunatly though, it was a gamble that you lost at.
SWG's NGE was a monumental change to the entire game, and thus rightly deserved to be given a newer rating based off of what for all intents and purposes was an entirely new game. While STO has made improvements over the past six months, those improvements are nowhere in the same league as improvements made in other MMOs in the same time period, such as AoC. A re-review this overly generous should have waited until the one year mark, at the very least; what improvements they have made do not deserve the overly generous score the author of the article broke down for us. Additionally, a good part of the article seems to be looking at where STO might be at in the future, rather than where it is right now.
"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
That might have been a valid argument, if you didn't still have lifetimers and other players on the official STO forums saying the same things.
"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
7.4.....really.....
i want what you guys are drinking!
It is more about their scale. Average should be 5, not 7.4. As far as I remember have no game gotten lower score than 5 and that is just weird.
If you subtract 5 from the score and make it 1-5 instead you get the true score.
One thing I get from reading this thread is that the review criteria needs a re-think.
Its the weighting that's the real problem there. Graphics, customer service and sound might be dreadful but if the gameplay has you hooked, they will barely factor into your overall assessment. Putting asside disagreements over "value", this is one reason why all the posters here get pissed off with such a high final grade.
Reviews of other mediums rarely base their grade on an average of various catagories because a sensible reviewer knows that maths can't magically produce a number that reflects their feelings towards it. Its a nerdy mind that expects otherwise.
Company that buys advertising space on mmorpg.com + amature reviewer that was a member of the STO community and Cryptic fanboi before being a "contributer" here = game gets 7.4 rating when it should get maybe a 3.0.
Nice re-review! This game is getting better theres no question about that. I still can't believe that people want so bad for this game to fail just so they can say "I told you so". There's been a lot of arguments and opinions on why this game started out bad, is still bad, and how and why it will always be bad. It's nice to see someone look beyond the games awful state at launch.
Ummm this article is so transparent. The author was scratching and clawing his way to find "pros". This game is far below average for an MMO today. VAlue? Are you kidding me? Initial purchase+ SUb + Shop with one faction and no PvP. Terrible terrible article. "Please send us more advertising dollars. We are nice to you." Ack, I spit you out of my mouth. Ack!
Another Low Budget game.....The monthy sub for these games should be reduced, but it wont happnen. All the tools are in place to make it a great hame, Why not have a space zone that is large as an entire star system? and you can beam down to each planet. Why not have some planets have zones as large as zones you usually see in WoW or even multiple zones on one planet, Why not have the space combat system as complex and involved as Star Fleet Command......why? Low Budget........
My angle is make something great or dont make it at all.....having a market flooded with low quality choices is worse that have less choice with better quality
jack emmeret (cryptic ceo) from aug 24
But the reviews - and these boards - differed. Instead, they said the game was unpolished.
As I said in one of my interviews (I've forgotten which one), I'm not going to be self serving and say "well, the reviewers are wrong" or "the players don't know what they're talking about". That's silly at best. We at Cryptic read you loud and clear. We need to up our quality.
dstahl (executive producer of sto) from aug 24
So from where I'm sitting, Cryptic is not throwing STO under the bus, but instead listening to the concerns of the team, and giving us the time and resources we need to begin addressing some of the bigger issues like Ground Combat, Sector Space, Exploration, PVP, and any other big issue that has been clearly called out in reviews.
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=177070&page=2
7.4????? ummm considering this is what the ceo and executive producer have said about the game less than a month ago.... i really think your massively over-rating sto.
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 won't touch the review itself as most of questioned/critiqued it enough. My wonder is....7 months out and this qualifies for a re-review? Hmmmm. Yet another reason why mmorpg.com is not part of the MetaCritic panel.
I am still waiting for my Klingon Scaners to work, they been broke since BETA. I find it funny that they can pump out Fed Starships every couple of weeks to put in the C-Store but fail to fix something as small as a scanner. I realy believe that within 12 months, just long enough for the Lifers to get their monies worth to go F2P that way Cryptic dosen't have to justify any thing they do with the game.
Theyre not broken. Scanners only detect non-combat interractable objects, and Klingons simply have none. That said, I do want them to detect combat groups as well, but as it currently stands the scanner works exactly like it was made to, and is therefore not broken.
Brilliant post and correct in every way. The only way you'd be satisfied with this game is if you aren't even remotely a Star Trek fan and are looking for nothing but a casual friendly space shooter with extremely limited options. Contrary to popular opinion, Star Trek fans will not just buy anything so long as its labelled as Star Trek. You NEED to get the IP right to keep them.
I gree with you its awesome post
final fantasy 14 leveling guide and Mastery
cataclysm Gold Secret and leveling Guide
http://toponlinegames911.blogspot.com/2010/10/starcraft-two-sc2-strategy-guide-terran.html">sc2 starCraft strategy Guide and mastery
Re-reviewing STO after 7 months and just a few relatively minor content/bug-fix patches is like re-reviewing WoW after going from X.0 to X.1. If you're going to re-review, at least wait until something has changed.
Kirk threw more punches than any of the other captains, yes, but he wasn't doing it all that often. Also, on DS9 that war arc didn't feature a whole lot of combat screentime-wise. Now, did it have more combat than the other series? Yes, but it was still a very small percentage of screen time.
First, it's not the player's job to create X or Y. Second, STO's community has offered a number of pretty solid ideas on diplomacy.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
Absolutely fantastic review.
I agree wholeheartedly.
The new team has really got their act together cleaning up the mess that pathetic previous team made !
I wont be playing just yet until the new planned revamp (they are going to completely rework ground combat because the curretn system is basically a pet-grind full of horrendously poor gameplay)
I cannot stand ground, so is tay clear for now. I love space combat though!
I look forwards to the future expansions as the games playerbase rises steadily. Its no longer a desert town anymore (i went on recently) like it was, we now have people in each of the social zones and in space, whereas at one point i can honestly say the online counter was below 200 for most of the day, which was utterly depressing.
I would thouroughly reccomend this game to any star trek fan who likes the federation, but if your after other factions stay clear for now. They do plan to add' faction' content in future but i believe that will be expansion pack based. And again, it will be gimmicky:
You will get a UI, ships and a few casual missions,with a focus on PvP and then neutral missions that all factions get. Federation seem t obe the only ones who get pure storyline/general misssions ontop.
By the by in regards to this:
Re-reviewing STO after 7 months and just a few relatively minor content/bug-fix patches is like re-reviewing WoW after going from X.0 to X.1. If you're going to re-review, at least wait until something has changed.
All mmo's get re-reviews. They usually get a initial launch one, a few months down the line one, and then they get a finilized/expansion one (usually a year or so+)
You obviously was not around in the beta. As a proud closed beta tester for this game, i can definately say that a LOT has changed since testing began. Its still expanding, slowly, but surely. There was NO diplomacy system, no bridges, no crew, no klingon PvE, No klingon levelling system, no planet life (animals etc), Low content...
There is significantly more content which is still being pushed forwards. Cryptic LISTENS, unfortunatley that is also their downside. I.E in the beta, too many whined there was no bridges. Cryptic responded quite nicely that they were in progress please wait.
Guess what. Idiots couldnt wait, they whined and flamed and screamed. So cryptic got tired and said 'shut the hell up, here, have some unfinished crap designed bridges'
Then waited a month before they began fixing the concept bridges. Now ive criticised them heavily at launch for so many failures, but things like this were the PLAYERBASE's fault. Had people accepted the polite request to wait, bridges would probably have been functional and released in a month or two. Instead, we got a bare minimum, eventually animated, eventually made to size.
Oh, and im not blind. I still dont play STO, I wasted far too much money on it, i have a pre-order special lifetime account from back in the closed beta when it was looking fantastic and promising. Eventually ill play it again someday, probably after the ground revamp.
As to them having hte IP, theyve done a great job for two years work. TBH they really should have spent 4/5 on it though.
Lastly, as someone who has seen the old star trek online (yes, i witnessed perpetual entertainments STO it was a glorious thing to behold) I can say i wish PE had finished. That was the most fantastic game i had ever seen. Ever. Unfortunatley, they were ass's about it and refused to let Cryptic have any concept art/work done and coding/engine etc, and so cryptic started from scratch.
I don't care how the game has changed...
Their constant use of MicroTransactions, especially in a collector world like Star Trek, has dubbed them as heartless blackness.
I'll never play a cryptic game again...
Fair assessment: the art is solid (and improved), the space combat is fun and nuanced (lots of customization in your build), etc.
The big detractors: the ground combat is stupid easy (especially once you realize how to insta-gib everything), Klingons don't have much PvE content outside of exploration, DSE, fleet actions (Group Instances), STFs (5-man raids), Borg Sector missions, and 8 unique KDF missions.
The game has really improved since launch - and most of the additions have been added in-game (not the C-Store):
Weekly Missions (yes, there are now new missions each week)
Klingon PvE (unique episodes, PvE-centered endgame, exploration, etc.)
PvP Queue Redesign (looked like shite before)
In short, I feel like STO is headed in a good direction. The devs are incredibly transparent around the forums - getting preproduction and production screens of new content out for the masses.
In the next three months, the game will see:
Redesigned sector space (larger, less cartoony)
Redesigned ground combat (weakest point in the game)
User-Generated Content (should be able to avoid the pitfalls of Paragon Studios' UGC in CoV/CoH)
More Klingon ship
Continued weekly missions (which are a misnomer - you actually get a suite of missions in each new sector, in addition to the main weekly missions).
Varied gear / more crafting
Am I worried for STO? No, not really.
The game has turned around considerably during the past month. Lots of sore spots are getting polished and the focus is on doing new features right instead of checking as many boxes off for some marketing guru.
Even C-store items are being added via mutiple means, i.e.:
A ship can be unlocked as part of normal level progression
A ship can be acquired through earning X emblems from PvP, STFs, Fleet Actions, etc.
As a last resort, a ship can be acquired via a paid c-store unlock (aka the one lazy bastards choose)
I got into this game at launch and had a ball...at least until I maxed out on level super-fast & wound up with nothing to do but grind exploration missions or suffer through a PUG on a raid. Levelling was SO fast that by the time I really got to appreciate a particular starship, its loadout & handling, etc., I'd be leaving it behind for some new ship class. The only enemies that were remotely challenging were Romulan Warbirds, and the Borg--well, the Borg just flat cheated. I'm glad to hear that they've finally got ship interiors, and that they're revisiting & changing around some of the mission content--that'll be good. And I'm very sorry for the Klingon players. They were promised--PROMISED, multiple times--that more Klingon content was coming their way, that Klingons were and had always been intended as more than just "monster play"...and now it turns out that they were lied to. I'm so very sorry.
The rating MMORPG has given STO sounds about right. It should be higher--that is, Star Trek Online SHOULD be rated higher, but the game itself does not deserve it. Maybe it will, eventually...but I'm not holding my breath. STO had vast potential, and I hope that someday, they'll figure out how to unlock it. In the meantime, I'll be ventilating goblins & orcs over at LOTRO while waiting for SW:TOR to go live. For the Republic!
Wow Nagus I hope that was sarcasm . If it wasn't, that was quite a reach and good for a chuckle. You put your credibility at risk . /CDF salute ! .... LMAO. On a more serious note , yes that's the reason Cryptic gave and it's been like that how long ?
I left STO two months in and came back in the third month and out of all three of the updates I saw none had more release content than C-Store content, I don't see how you could even come to this conclusion, if you count missions seperately then you should also be counting c store items individually as well but even if not I have yet to see it as any closer than fifty fifty.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....