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Well I played it for about a month. Please cycle the transporter and erase the pattern buffer to put
Styij
Member Posts: 186
Well a couple more weeks have gone by since my last thread on my opinion of Star Trek Online. As I recall I said the game was not great but not all that bad for $20. While initially the game held my interest and seemed playable outside of the ground aspect I have come to realize that the members of the last thread were correct.
I have found the game to be very repetitive, unimaginative and frankly unrewarding.
The ground combat is simply horrible. When I say horrible I mean a frustrating and repetitive tirade of the same stories, environments and piss poor mechanics. This part of the game is easily the worst part which is unfortunate as it makes up prolly half of the quest activity. This means half the game is just down right “horrible”.
The control system for the away team is far to limiting. I give orders to stand their ground and as soon as combat happens they take off like headless chickens. The rest of us are fighting in the corridor while my tactical officer goes Rambo, runs into the room and gets stuck in a corner fighting ten Klingons single handedly. The UI could use some help as well as sometimes I have to do a Vulcan Mind Meld with my keyboard/mouse to do even simple actions. Not to mention things like my toon looks like he is shooting but no animation of the beam happens or it is being bitten by a Targ still after it has been dead for ten seconds. The entire system lacks longevity and feels like it was designed for simpletons.
The loot drops are silly and leave me wondering why even bother. Oh! A rifle with the word assault in the name it must be cool. Lets open inventory and check out that bad boy…uh…uh….hmmm…it is actually a piece of crap compared to the sniper rifles I bought everyone. Recycle. In fact I recycle about everything. So loot is pathetic and unrewarding.
The worst part is the environments. Hmmm…oh look same station interior…sigh. Cool console lets interact…nope nothing of interest there. In fact I think the hallway layout of this place is exactly like the last one. Static and repeating environments with a skin change and nothing to do, they might as well just have room instances with four grey walls. It reminds me of Doom except without the thrilling combat or the novelty.
“Captain we should beam down and have a look.” /grimace /roll eyes /loud sigh. You BOs go ahead and let me know what happens I’ll be in chat.
I played the Klingon side for a while and the bird of prey is actually pretty fun in Pve. In PvP on either side I was raped constantly. But, that is neither here nor there as I am a noob to STO PvP.
It’s just the whole game feels like it was designed to be played be simpletons and doesn’t feel like the Star Trek I remember watching. So, $20 for a month of diversion I guess is ok. But, I think I’ll be playing Perpetuum’s open beta for a while.
My 2 energy credits worth. As always your mileage can and will vary.
Comments
well i was one of the people who responded to your first post. if i recall i could have been more polite, but it does get tiresome telling people that something is hot and will burn them... only to have them say your wrong, then burn themselves.
for 20$, it is a diversion. but you could do a lot better for 20$.
good luck finding a better game. (avoiding cryptic products is a good start imho)
edit: thanks for coming back after a month and commenting.
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
Kudos to you for this post as well. Perhaps people will take heed and not blow their cash on this steaming pile of filth of a game, or at least wait until it goes FTP.
Takes alot of heart to come back after defending it and giving STO the review it deserves. Now if someone could explain the 7.4 rereview... the 6.60 is/was closer to the mark if not slightly generous.
Thank you Styij for coming back and giving a review after having experienced what the game has to offer.
"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 played during open beta, not been back since then..yet.
I agree with most of your assessment from what I remember. For me I thought of the game as a kiddy pool. Fun enough but there just wasn't much variation or depth to it.
I think it would be ideally suited to be a free to play game to be honest. In that format it would be quite good.
I concur.
Sorry OP that the game turned out to be a disappointment after all, and props for manning up and admitting it. It would have been easy to just slink away like many of the people that post how good the game is after playing it for 3 hours and then realize the game sucks a little later.
I came back after 7 months of not playing, since beta, to see what all the talk was about. Like you I was gravely disappointed. I got all the way to admiral then realized that I was trapped in some stagnate dimension where nothing changes and the only way you can find new content is if you fork out the extra cash in the C-Store. I swear, those developers need to be lined up out back and shot one at a time; without blindfolds. If you think that is bad, I've seen people executed in person for far far less.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
Actually the core of Cryptic's problems has always been in its leadership, rather than the rank and file devs. Ever wonder who's bright idea it was that Cryptic games need to break the game world up into shoebox sized instances, or that the Klingons absolutely had to be in STO at launch when they were clearly not even remotely ready? According to interviews he's given, that would be Jack Emmert. Zinc and DStahl both need to share the blame, as they were there (working on STO) from the start. People like to point fingers at Roper, but he was working with CO at the time STO was developed and launched; he only ran STO for a couple months after it launched, although he didn't help matters while he was there. Needham needs to take some of the blame as well; since he's in charge of Cryptic overall, he's responsible for letting things get to such a state.
"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 usually avoid getting all in depth into who is developing what but as a player very familiar with Cryptic products I would have to second this opinion. I recall as far back as City Of Heroes issues that the playerbase would have with ideas that Emmert was pushing, and even though they would be universally shot down by both the player base and the devs (atleast the players who wined about it say so) they were often forced to do what "the boss" wanted and it would backfire, this was the pattern of COH up to the Cryptic NC battle.
Since that time COH community has largely been a bed of roses.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
So I wonder then, could it be said that execs/producers goals and aims are in a conflict of interest with those of their respective player bases? Perhapes studios whose goals are more "long-term" money are more inline with their players? Wouldn't that be something. An industry where the producers goals are polar opposites of their consumers, as far as the products go.
You got off easy Styij. I only got to play this game for a few hours in beta due to a big project at work and thought it was cool so I paid for the lifetime sub. I played for about 30 days after it went live and thats about it. I go back and do a few missions once a month in the hopes that things will get better but I finally gave up on that too. Now I'm just waiting for it to go free to play and see what features, of the few there are, they cut from me (like they cut bank space in lotro when it went f2p).
I quite enjoyed how once Emmert left CoH/CoV, all of those things that he claimed just couldn't be done actually started getting done.
"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
Actually that's already been here for several years now; the last few years have seen some of the biggest names in MMO fall flat on their butts because they refused to listen to their developers and/or players, and thought they knew what everyone actually wanted despite being told different. CoH/CoV when Cryptic (and especially Emmert) ran it, Brad Quaid with Vanguard, AA (I forget who was head developer there), Richard Garriot withTR (though to be fair, I'm not sure if it was his fault or NCSoft's), Mark Jacobs with WAR, and Cryptic's latest two games all suffered from that problem.
When Emmert announced their new NWN game, in one of the interviews he gave he talked about how his original idea was to take the NWN city and break it up into small zones and instance it. Seriously? I mean come on, the one thing everyone has been complaining about (fans and critics alike) were the shoeboxed sized zones and rampant instancing in CO and STO. It's like the man is totally incapable of learning from past mistakes. Either that or he has absolutely zero original ideas, and just keeps regurgitating the same junk over and over in the hope that this time it'll finally work.
"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
Part of the problem is "nerds" like us heaping rock star status on these other "nerds" and them having very little to no ability to deal with it. Regardless of how many mistakes these people make there are always tons of people willing to make excuses for them and defend them.
As an example let's look at Final Fantasy XIV, when the game launched a great many people were highly critical of lot's of components to that game and low and behold the "fansquad" was right on the heels of the critics to defend the bad points in the game. I remember a specific topic that got pretty heated and went over twenty pages deep and my strongest argument there was for fanbois to stop defending bad content, it's one thing for a person to realize that they like something inspite of it's flaws but another thing entirely to act as if these flaws are in fact not flaws or don't even exist.
Fast forward to now and SE did something I felt was smart that many of these "rockstar" devs try to avoid like the plague, they admitted they made a mistake and tried to correct it. Quite ironically when SE came out and admitted the mistakes they made a great many of those posters who defended this game with every breath in them have not even been back to the forums (I can recall three people specifically I got into heated debates with who I have not seen since). And that goes back to that rockstar status, it was impossible for them to admit the game had flaws until the lord and masters SE came out and confirmed it too.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Heck, you don't need to go any further than these forums; there are still quite a few who post here that beat the Cryptic drum. Personnally I have never bought a game because <person X > was involved in the game, and I refuse to do so; I judge a game based off of the information they give me, the videos they show of the gameplay, and my experience with the game during (open and/or closed) beta. Trying the game at least during open beta is an absolute must for me these days; if I don't get in to see the game, they don't get my money.
As far as admitting mistakes go, I can't figure out why so many companies are so adverse to doing so (aside from overly large egos getting in the way, in some cases). History has shown that companies that have lousy launches can earn quite a bit of goodwill from their customers if they admit the game has problems and then try to correct said problems as soon as possible. Two good examples of this were Anarchy Online (second worst launch in history) and WWIIOnline (worst launch in history), both of which came out within two weeks of each other. In both cases, the companies involved (Funcom for AO, and CRS for WWIIOnline) owned up to their mistakes and even stopped the clock on the thirty free day period; doing so earned them both a lot of goodwill at the time.
As for that last line in your post: I know it happens but I just can't understand that kind of blind devotion, especially with horrible game. That kind of mentality is everywhere these days; I've lost track of the number of people in this forum who have blindly defended Cryptic and STO, until the games problems become so obvious that it can't be denied anymore, then they never post here again. Then again we still get those who post on how great the game is, trying to make it sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread.
"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
Sorry to get off-topic for a moment but I just wanted to correct this statement. LotRO never cut bank space when it went free-play. All the chest upgrades are still available for in-game gold just as they always were except now the level requirements have been removed. This actually means all those low-level bank mule alts can now get ALL their bank expansions opened up as long as you have the gold to pay for it. If you DON'T have the gold to pay for them you DO have the option to unlock them using the store points (which you can earn for free just by playing). In fact they even added two MORE bank upgrades beyond what there used to be, though those final two can't be unlocked with gold, only store points.
Back on-topic...
Thanks to warnings from players like you guys who already tried STO, and previous experience with Atari (who owns Cryptic) doing their best to try to destroy DDO...a game they were the publishers for and supposed to be advertising...I myself have not even tried STO and have no intention of it, at least maybe until after it goes free-play. Even then I have no intention of putting money into it.
This is my current opinion on World of Tanks...I honestly don't understand how they can strech the MMORPG concept to include this game.
There are quite a few games that get listed here on occasion that do not fit the MMO category, and World of Tanks is one of them. Then again, I don't think the developers of WoT have claimed it was an MMO. APB was another one that was referred to as an MMO when it clearly wasn't; granted it had the best character (and car) customization out there, but even by this website's general guidelines, APB doesn't qualify. If memory serves me correctly, I thought that one of the reviewers here had said WoT wasn't a MMO a while back.
"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's for sure. Next year when Cryptic's NWN game comes out (yes, that soon), it'll be an interesting train wreck to witness. You can see it coming miles away!
"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)
Time to breakout the lawn chair , get my beer and preztels out , this should be quite the show.
Oh heck yeah, find out what day it launches, everyone stand outside of their local game retailer, and punch anyone who even lookes at this thing. We have failed as a gaming comunity if Cryptic's NWN earns more than 100 bucks.
I have played STO since beta and will admit that the game did not launch in what I would call anything close to finished. I also agree with the comments that ground combat leaves something to be desired. However, since launch Cryptic has made major changes that have made some things much more interesting. Unfortunately, ground combat was not one of them but even that is promised to see a revamp. The most promising things in today are "weekly episodes" (think TV episodoes); more interesting loot drops; improved sector space additions; more Klingon content. Coming up are things like the Forge (user generated combat); complete space sector revamp; more weekly episodes (along with daily's); revamp of "Deep Space Patrols" with a potential pvp component; and of course ground combat revamp. I have high hopes. The game is not that bad now and I only see it getting better....especially since J. Emmert is now moved out of the control chair.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Really? That's good news. Source?
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
I tried STO back in beta - I thought the ground combat was the best bit (not good, just better than the rest of it). I couldn't understand all the people on the forums gushing over the space combat...I thought it was terrible.
I picked up a trial a couple of months ago to give it another try and couldn't even make it through that before switching off.
So basically, the entire pile of crap game is still being revamped, nearly a year on after its released, it's still far from release-worthy. Absolutely appalling, this industry is a mock when people can get away with this. Needless to say i shant be giving STO another look, at least not for another year, that's if its still around. By which time of course ill be playing something like TOR and STO will become a mere whisper in the wind.