Ok, there are a ton of threads about STO, who likes it, who doesn't, and why. Most people on both sides claim its all opinions. I think there are some facts that are objective, and these ought to be considered, so that prospective new players can try to make a decision whether they want to buy it or not. So, please keep flames, and simple "I like/hate the game" comments out of this thread. Let's just talk about the facts. I underlined spots where I am not sure of the info. Is STO a traditional MMORPG? What exactly is the definition of a "traditional" MMORPG? No, STO is not a traditional MMORPG, it is a battle action game. Multiple online players can play together in combat situations. Although there can be a massive number of players online together, each player is always in an instance with a max number of players. (What is that max?) STO does not have a large, open world, but instead is made up of many instances. If you want a fact, STO is a modern mmorpg. It always brings enough people together for group content if you want, yet never so many that you have to make a line for mobs. Older mmorpgs have the problem that the population fluctuates heavily with the age of the game/server. At launch the starting areas are crowded, and at highend you dont see a soul. Later on its the other way around. WoW implementet cross server queues for groupcontent, this is taking it a step further cause it also solves the overpopulation part of the problem. There is no compelling reason to have more than 50 people in the same place, infact it would most likely be detrimental to the gameplay experience.
What is there to do in STO? Combat is the main activity in STO. Other activities that are common in MMORPG's, like harvesting, crafting, exploration, mini-games, are mostly missing in STO. It is a game set in the midst of a war, and you are there to fight. There are quests, and they involve space combat, or ground combat. There are a few that also involve (what? exploration?) There are annoyingly many quest that do not involve fighting. Somehave you deliver medical supplys to a planet in need, others have you evacuating xy, sometimes you have to search for clues in a abandoned starbase, i once had to repair weatherstations on a planet or talk some sense into two merchants who each thought the other stole from him. And im not talking about combat optional, im talking about no enemys on the map. Thankfully you can avoid them mostly by avoiding some contacts/missions.
What kind of replayability is there?
Many MMORPG's have multiple classes, multiple areas, and this leads to replayability. STO has some different classes (3), there is only one starter area. So if you do start an "alt", it will be doing the same quests in the same zones as the first character. There are two main factions, Klingon and Federation, although currently there is little or no PvE content for Klingons.
The "classes" in STO are the ships. There also is no ultimate ship in each tier, instead there are 2 ships of each class that require the admiral rank, and yes you need to skill your char different to specialize for them. Also you dont have to upgrade your ship to a newer one, nothing wrong with a defiant or intrepid at admiral. There can be good reasons for that.
Also cryptic already is busy adding content, and even new factions are planned. If you take your time you wont experience a shortage of content imho.
Does it have PvP? PvE?
STO is mostly a PvE game; PvP is handled in instances like arenas. There are no open PvP areas with strongpoints (or space stations) to capture or defend. There is no lasting effect from a PvP battle that affects other players in the realm. PvE is either against other space ships, sometimes in large fleet battles, or it is on the ground of planets with small teams. Is there a free trial? No, STO is too new to have a free trial yet. There was an open beta, where some of the game was made available for public testing. There might be a buddy key available from someone.
The technics behind the instance system are really interesting btw. Im not 100% sure yet but i think it is very dynamic. The way i think it works is that, if player a from instance Sol 1, and player b from instance Sol 2 would enter the same missionobject on their respective map, they could still end up in the same instance of that mission. So even if the other 49 people in your instance igore the object, you still wont necessarily be alone since people from other instances can enter it too.
I think another good thing about the STO instancing is that I think it serves the Star Trek IP in a way that traditional mmo's can't, in Star Trek the Enterprise very rarely ran into anyone else from the Fed while exploring in space and this is played out wonderfully by the set up they use, with my main I have the open team option off so I always generally enter my mission zones alone instead of again being around some other twenty five ships that make me wonder "if they have so many ships here why in the hell do they need to send me to do this?". And with an alt I keep the team option open so I often do get the sense of being a part of something bigger, like a war is going on.
As far as the thread goes it is one of the most fact based posts I've read but I think it undersells what is offered and available in the game (it's not as cut and dried black and white as op makes it seem.). And I'm a bit mixed on the entire "non traditional" mmo statement because the truth of the matter is, as someone who is a gamer first mmo player second the differences between the two are not as varied as "mmo players" say. Basically who cares if GW says it's not an mmo or if it isn't made exactly like EQ if you just do the knowledge to what an mmo is and forget your own vast personal knowledge then you can see it is an mmo.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Ok hang on..... lets get this straight your telilng me the reason they went instance zones is to cut back on server stabiilty and lag due to high amount of people in one area? Ummm anyone remember eq 1? Back in the old days of Dial-up? I can remember countless times where I would do /who (zone) and show up 300+ people in an area. And I didn't lag even during epic battles lets say during nagafen where there 80 people in the area. Fought nagafen and all the fire giants without lagging without crashing. Being hit by his dragon breath weapon and his dragon roar (Fear) and still didn't lag.....
wrong. eq 1 would lag with 150 people. I don't remember the zone but if two raids were going in it the the zone would lag. we had problems with this zone a lot. This was the one in the area where their was no air and you ran to the zone. When eq1 first came out it was even worse. 100+ people in a zone during an event would lag the zone or worse crash it. This problem never went away while I played the game up through god or so. Heavily populated zones would lag and could easily lag to the point of being unplayable.
Now client lag wasn't really much of a problem. Having a raid with 60-72 people wasn't an issue. some zones were better then others. Lots of fighting would cut the capacity of the zone.
I didn't like the setup of STO and really don't card for the design of the game world at all. But that aside it is a massively multiplayer game. It is not a single player game. And it is not a game with multiplayer capability. As far as I know there are only the 3 types of game definitions and this game fits the MMO definition. cryptic is don't things a bit different in that the build one since world with many instances vs many copies of the world and separating people up. I prefer their approach to say the wow/eq approach since I don't have to have my friends play on the same server and that kinda stuff. Everyone plays in he same game world. I don't mind instancing as it is far preferable to either empty zones or overpopulated zones.
Course I don't like how cryptic put these tools together to create the sto world. Everything feels very artificial and doesn't feel contiguous. I had the warp space things most of all. And I feel this game is a half assed game. It should have had far more development time.
He asked for facts not opinion. There is a max of 50 players per instance. No this is not a traditional MMORPG for numerous reasons. Weather those reasons make the game good or bad is for each individual to decide. The OP is correct, sorry. As a reference Guild Wars had instances as well to help reduce the lag, the difference is that even Guild Wars had a cap of 250 per instance. As far as it's an MMORPG, that seems to be opinion as many disagree. Even the developers of GW stated they don't consider GW's an MMO, most gamers don't consider GW's an MMO, yet most people seem to agree that GW's is more of an MMO than STO is. So again, he asked for facts not opinions. Stating that STO is a MMORPG is an opinion, and not a widely shared one. Me stating that it is not, is still an opinion even though it's one that seems to be shared by more people. So lets just stick with the facts. Well then if either answer is an opinion, then why ask the question in a "fact" thread? According to the makers of the game it is an MMORPG. According to this webiste, it is an MMORPG. Adding the word "traditional" to it turns it into an open ended question where only opinions can be given. In the end there are 2 things to do. Click blinkies and combat. The exploration was a concept many enjoyed on papaer not sure how many still enjoy it now that it's been revealed to be nothing more than click blinkies and combat as well. No it is not just click blinkies and combat. Only someone who has not played the game or ignored that part would say something like that. Whether or not you enjoy it is irrelevant. This is supposed to be a "fact" thread remember? There is more than just combat in this game. I already provided the person you needed to talk to if you want to explore. The OP clearly wanted personal bias out of this thread since we already have enough of "This game sucks/is aweswome" threads. Can we at least have one thread in this site that isn't a big circle jerk of hate?
As far as weather or not STO is an MMO or not, it's all opinion. 50 people in an instance isn't massive, well to most people. The limited amount of needed grouping is another. You will find most seem to not consider STO an MMO. And as far as this site considering it an MMO... again it depends on who you ask.
Is Dana the absolute authority as to what constitutes a game as an MMORPG? I would say no. Just another person expressing his opinion on what he believes an MMORPG should be. Oh, and he never mentioned STO once in that blog.
STO being an MMO is a matter of opinion. I'll let you decide which is the more popular opinion. Bottom line though is, it's all opinion.
I stated fact, I played from closed beta till around open. You click blinkies or engage in combat. Even exploration is click blinky or engage in combat. Scanning an anomaly is still clicking a blinky.
I've clicked things for missions in STO... oh... maybe 15 times max. And I've been through closed beta, open beta, and still playing today.
This wasn't opinion lol. It's the same system they use in CO.
Let's don't get bogged down in whether it is technically an MMORPG or not. I said "traditional MMORPG" so that people would think of EQ or DAOC type games, and STO is not like those. If someone wants a game like an EQ, and is hoping STO is EQ in space, I am saying that it is not. That is not a judgement, just an observation, neither good nor bad.
Aye, and it is an important distinction to be made as everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, in this game occurs in small instances with an average population of 20 people. Completely false.
So if people come here and expect large zones with houndreds of people, they will be dissapointed. This game actually takes it one more step than in CO because in that game there was rather large instanced zones where as here the zones are small and short lived.
This is the main reason why I dont think PvP territorial control is possible in this game. How can you have territorial control over a bunch of instances? Fleet X control instance #2 and Fleet Y control instance #4?
Instancing is a personal preference. Despite people's complaining, it will not go away anytime soon. So, truthfully, it is only a subjective negative rather than a factual negative.
Too much of anything is usually bad thing. Like STO, over instancing was one of the main reasons POTBS tanked, and not only that, but the type of game (or doing it well, at least) lent itself to more open world and less restrictive mechanics. In GW, it was not game breaking, because the game revolved around matched area combat anyway.
In STO, this much over instancing breaks the game into little tiny boxes to go play in. For me and for many, this made it a crappy game, and a poor ST game (like many other poor ST games) and breaks the flow of the game. If little shoeboxes are good enough for you, enjoy.
Yet, this is all your OPINION, not fact. I, and many others totally disagree with your opinion that this is a "crappy game".
My statement still stands that instancing is based on personal preference, which is a subjective negative rather than a factual negative.
the guild I tried hooking up with could not fit into one instance - we couldn't even all meet each other at the same time in world. what a joke
Let's don't get bogged down in whether it is technically an MMORPG or not. I said "traditional MMORPG" so that people would think of EQ or DAOC type games, and STO is not like those. If someone wants a game like an EQ, and is hoping STO is EQ in space, I am saying that it is not. That is not a judgement, just an observation, neither good nor bad.
Aye, and it is an important distinction to be made as everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, in this game occurs in small instances with an average population of 20 people. Completely false.
So if people come here and expect large zones with houndreds of people, they will be dissapointed. This game actually takes it one more step than in CO because in that game there was rather large instanced zones where as here the zones are small and short lived.
This is the main reason why I dont think PvP territorial control is possible in this game. How can you have territorial control over a bunch of instances? Fleet X control instance #2 and Fleet Y control instance #4?
Instancing is a personal preference. Despite people's complaining, it will not go away anytime soon. So, truthfully, it is only a subjective negative rather than a factual negative.
Too much of anything is usually bad thing. Like STO, over instancing was one of the main reasons POTBS tanked, and not only that, but the type of game (or doing it well, at least) lent itself to more open world and less restrictive mechanics. In GW, it was not game breaking, because the game revolved around matched area combat anyway.
In STO, this much over instancing breaks the game into little tiny boxes to go play in. For me and for many, this made it a crappy game, and a poor ST game (like many other poor ST games) and breaks the flow of the game. If little shoeboxes are good enough for you, enjoy.
Yet, this is all your OPINION, not fact. I, and many others totally disagree with your opinion that this is a "crappy game".
My statement still stands that instancing is based on personal preference, which is a subjective negative rather than a factual negative.
the guild I tried hooking up with could not fit into one instance - we couldn't even all meet each other at the same time in world. what a joke
You're hard pressed to get a single team into the same instance half the time unless it's PvP, nevermind a guild.
Ok hang on..... lets get this straight your telilng me the reason they went instance zones is to cut back on server stabiilty and lag due to high amount of people in one area? Ummm anyone remember eq 1? Back in the old days of Dial-up? I can remember countless times where I would do /who (zone) and show up 300+ people in an area. And I didn't lag even during epic battles lets say during nagafen where there 80 people in the area. Fought nagafen and all the fire giants without lagging without crashing. Being hit by his dragon breath weapon and his dragon roar (Fear) and still didn't lag.....
wrong. eq 1 would lag with 150 people. I don't remember the zone but if two raids were going in it the the zone would lag. we had problems with this zone a lot. This was the one in the area where their was no air and you ran to the zone. When eq1 first came out it was even worse. 100+ people in a zone during an event would lag the zone or worse crash it. This problem never went away while I played the game up through god or so. Heavily populated zones would lag and could easily lag to the point of being unplayable.
Now client lag wasn't really much of a problem. Having a raid with 60-72 people wasn't an issue. some zones were better then others. Lots of fighting would cut the capacity of the zone.
Kael and ToV was great for this to happen and CL when everyone sold there
Aye, and it is an important distinction to be made as everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, in this game occurs in small instances with an average population of 20 people. Completely false. So if people come here and expect large zones with houndreds of people, they will be dissapointed. This game actually takes it one more step than in CO because in that game there was rather large instanced zones where as here the zones are small and short lived. This is the main reason why I dont think PvP territorial control is possible in this game. How can you have territorial control over a bunch of instances? Fleet X control instance #2 and Fleet Y control instance #4?
Average of 20 people per instance is completely false? Really, what is the average population then? In my experience it is even lower than that as some has only 3-4 people in them and some I was completely alone.
Saying completely false, does not make it so.
Why should I give out this number to you when you claim that you play STO? If you do, then you should know this. Unless of course you are lying about playing STO as well.
And, as Rocketeer pointed out in post #51... you cannot say "EVERYTHING" and then go on to provide false information. Which is exactly what you did.
As my previous reply to this mail got deleted I will try again.
First I am not lying about playing STO, it was me who gave an average number of people per instance and you who said it was completely false without giving any credible reason as to why or giving an alternate number.
Secondly, everything in this game is instanced so that is not false information (another accusation you put out without giving any reason as to why). Are you claiming there is something in this game which is not instanced. If so please tell me what zone is not instanced.
The number 20 was based on:
Number of people in small mission instances 1-12 (I believe the cap is 12 as I have never seen more than that) where average is around 3-4.
Number of people in fleet action instanced 1-50 with the average being around 25.
Number of people in starbases 1-50 with the average being over 40.
Number of people in sector map 1-50 with the average being around 35.
Seeing as small mission instances is by far the most common I think 20 people on average per instance is quite generous. More like the average people per instance is probably lower.
So again, do you have any factual information about me spreading false information? Because if you read the title and the OP it clearly says he want facts about STO and those numbers I have put out there are facts. If you dispute them then atleast say why they are not facts without just accusing me of spreading false information.
Aye, and it is an important distinction to be made as everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, in this game occurs in small instances with an average population of 20 people. Completely false. So if people come here and expect large zones with houndreds of people, they will be dissapointed. This game actually takes it one more step than in CO because in that game there was rather large instanced zones where as here the zones are small and short lived. This is the main reason why I dont think PvP territorial control is possible in this game. How can you have territorial control over a bunch of instances? Fleet X control instance #2 and Fleet Y control instance #4?
Average of 20 people per instance is completely false? Really, what is the average population then? In my experience it is even lower than that as some has only 3-4 people in them and some I was completely alone.
Saying completely false, does not make it so.
Why should I give out this number to you when you claim that you play STO? If you do, then you should know this. Unless of course you are lying about playing STO as well.
And, as Rocketeer pointed out in post #51... you cannot say "EVERYTHING" and then go on to provide false information. Which is exactly what you did.
As my previous reply to this mail got deleted I will try again.
First I am not lying about playing STO, it was me who gave an average number of people per instance and you who said it was completely false without giving any credible reason as to why or giving an alternate number.
Secondly, everything in this game is instanced so that is not false information (another accusation you put out without giving any reason as to why). Are you claiming there is something in this game which is not instanced. If so please tell me what zone is not instanced.
The number 20 was based on:
Number of people in small mission instances 1-12 (I believe the cap is 12 as I have never seen more than that) where average is around 3-4.
Number of people in fleet action instanced 1-50 with the average being around 25.
Number of people in starbases 1-50 with the average being over 40.
Number of people in sector map 1-50 with the average being around 35.
Seeing as small mission instances is by far the most common I think 20 people on average per instance is quite generous. More like the average people per instance is probably lower.
So again, do you have any factual information about me spreading false information? Because if you read the title and the OP it clearly says he want facts about STO and those numbers I have put out there are facts. If you dispute them then atleast say why they are not facts without just accusing me of spreading false information.
Nowhere did I say this game wasn't 100% instanced. If you think I did, then you need to do some rereading.
However, I'm refuting your claims on these numbers. Did you actually go around and record these numbers to come to create this "average"? If you did, then that explains a lot about why you dislike this game so much.
And, to preempt you, no, I haven't gone around to record instance numbers. That's because I play the game to enjoy it rather than continuously data mine just for the sole purpose of bashing STO.
Oh, and I called your information false because you threw an "average" up there while providing no proof what-so-ever. And, these numbers provide no proof either. You could've made them up for all we know.
Aye, and it is an important distinction to be made as everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, in this game occurs in small instances with an average population of 20 people. Completely false. So if people come here and expect large zones with houndreds of people, they will be dissapointed. This game actually takes it one more step than in CO because in that game there was rather large instanced zones where as here the zones are small and short lived. This is the main reason why I dont think PvP territorial control is possible in this game. How can you have territorial control over a bunch of instances? Fleet X control instance #2 and Fleet Y control instance #4?
Average of 20 people per instance is completely false? Really, what is the average population then? In my experience it is even lower than that as some has only 3-4 people in them and some I was completely alone.
Saying completely false, does not make it so.
Why should I give out this number to you when you claim that you play STO? If you do, then you should know this. Unless of course you are lying about playing STO as well.
And, as Rocketeer pointed out in post #51... you cannot say "EVERYTHING" and then go on to provide false information. Which is exactly what you did.
As my previous reply to this mail got deleted I will try again.
First I am not lying about playing STO, it was me who gave an average number of people per instance and you who said it was completely false without giving any credible reason as to why or giving an alternate number.
Secondly, everything in this game is instanced so that is not false information (another accusation you put out without giving any reason as to why). Are you claiming there is something in this game which is not instanced. If so please tell me what zone is not instanced.
The number 20 was based on:
Number of people in small mission instances 1-12 (I believe the cap is 12 as I have never seen more than that) where average is around 3-4.
Number of people in fleet action instanced 1-50 with the average being around 25.
Number of people in starbases 1-50 with the average being over 40.
Number of people in sector map 1-50 with the average being around 35.
Seeing as small mission instances is by far the most common I think 20 people on average per instance is quite generous. More like the average people per instance is probably lower.
So again, do you have any factual information about me spreading false information? Because if you read the title and the OP it clearly says he want facts about STO and those numbers I have put out there are facts. If you dispute them then atleast say why they are not facts without just accusing me of spreading false information.
Nowhere did I say this game wasn't 100% instanced. If you think I did, then you need to do some rereading.
However, I'm refuting your claims on these numbers. Did you actually go around and record these numbers to come to create this "average"? If you did, then that explains a lot about why you dislike this game so much.
And, to preempt you, no, I haven't gone around to record instance numbers. That's because I play the game to enjoy it rather than continuously data mine just for the sole purpose of bashing STO.
Oh, and I called your information false because you threw an "average" up there while providing no proof what-so-ever. And, these numbers provide no proof either. You could've made them up for all we know.
Oh, so in other words since I didnt have any hard proof (whatever that can be) then the info is completely false?
Well to clarify, if it was not clear already, I did not record an exact average number of people but that is rather based on the experience I had playing the game. If you have any other experience, which is far of the number I said, then by all means. Do share.
People can go back and forth on this issue of is it an MMO or is it not when in the end, what probably really defines an MMO these days is the pay model and it is sold as an MMO so it therefore is an MMO (though I still think there is a difference between old school MMORPGs and these new MMOs as I explained earlier). The real issue with STO is not what you call it but if it really lives up to the various elements that define or are otherwise characteristic of the genre and in that regard there is a good argument that it falls short.
Consider the persistence, or lack there of - to me this is STOs biggest failing as an MMO because there simply is ZERO world - it is just a series of static maps that player load to, move through, and load off - there is no world. I spent some time this weekend playing a Klingon. Klingon is the second faction, the only thing other than Federation you can play. It is largely devoid of PvE content and is nearly entirely reliant on PvP. So how do you play a Klingon? Do you move through the world looking for prey to attack? No, for one, there is no world and certainly no world PvP. You open a window that displays the PvP matches and even from the ground (say the ground base on the Klingon homeworld) you just load to the match be it a ground PvP match or a space PvP match. Boy, that seems pretty much just like a RTS game lobby or even like an FPS game where you browse a server listing and join a game. You can actually play Klingon to max level without ever leaving the building you first spawn to after character creation (meaning you just load from there to match and back and to match and back). STO is entirely devoid of a real world, a persistent play space that players move through and exist in - like it or dislike it the reality is that this is the case and it is missing a major component of what makes, at least traditionally, an MMORPG.
Consider the massive part. If they removed the zone chat (which let's you chat across multiple instances of the same map) then the game would NEVER involve more than 50 people at any given time in any given way and in most cases it would involved around 2 or 3 to 30 or 40 people - this is simply not massive. FPS games have do this for years, so if an "MMO" is only bringing as many players together as do FPS games and only exceeding that with a chat channel then it is arguably lacking in the massive part. So on these two big counts, persistent world and massive, STO is very much cheating the genre definition and rightly drawing questions from people as to whether it is really a true MMO or MMORPG.
Vato, how the hell do you think the guy is 'data-mining' the numbers. 1 hours play will tell you that the number he suggested are entirely reasonable.
As for playing the game, are you doing things with your fleet? Any missions? Any pvp? Or is it as I suspect too much effing hassle to try and get together and play together... entirely defeating the point of an MMO. Makes me feel *you* are the one who isn't really playing the game.
It is an arcade game experience, not an mmo experience. Not impossible to enjoy it anyway for however long it takes you to hit the cap / do the episode missions, but good luck finding anything meaningful to do afterwards. To make the point, MMOs tend to have 'end-game' which is character progression once you've hit the cap. STO has none. Maybe the raid content will help, maybe not... I'm not content to subscribe on the off-chance as it looks like Cryptic are doing a CO and promising this content for month 2. Fool me once...
The zones are 50 players max. We couldn't get even a large share of the fleet I was with into a single zone to socialize. This is not an MMOG. MMOGs are social spaces - without the 'social' it would be a single player game with online play.
This IP could have been turned into something revolutionary - a MMOG done right could have literally replaced television as a vehicle for the Star Trek IP. Space is the final frontier, not a hyperlink to a planetpage.
Picard's Enterprise had 42 decks with a total crew and passenger capacity of 1014. It was a self contained, self sustaining community of people. These Starships were massive. Star Trek is more a social drama than action flick - they spent maybe 10 minutes out of every other episode blowing crap up - the rest was politics, socialization, investigation, recreation etc. The major setting was the ship - 10 forward, sick bay, your quarters, the ready room, the holodeck, the cafeteria, the bridge. Star Trek took place there.
I'm not suggesting that you could create a game exactly like the television show - no one wants to be ensign shoe-shine boy or ensign toilet scrubber, but the IP is in a large part social - you should be able to fit at least the same amount of people into one instance as one starship could hold. I mean, please - 50 people on Deep Space 9?? Quarks could hold more than 50 customers itself.
I think that's what people are frustrated about with this game - they wanted to play Star Trek. They wanted to be immersed in the IP, to socialize inside the Star Trek universe. Everything about instances breaks that immersion. Having your ship come to a dead standstill in hyperspace when you visit the bridge breaks that immersion. Having to back up just right and emote to sit in the captain's chair breaks that immersion. You feel like you're either flying a tiny little ship or running around in some free to play japanese grinder dressed in Star Trek shirts. And above and beyond all of that - you can't even socialize with a world of people. Did I mention we couldn't even fit one fleet into an instance?
The zones are 50 players max. We couldn't get even a large share of the fleet I was with into a single zone to socialize. This is not an MMOG. MMOGs are social spaces - without the 'social' it would be a single player game with online play. This IP could have been turned into something revolutionary - a MMOG done right could have literally replaced television as a vehicle for the Star Trek IP. Space is the final frontier, not a hyperlink to a planetpage. Picard's Enterprise had 42 decks with a total crew and passenger capacity of 1014. It was a self contained, self sustaining community of people. These Starships were massive. Star Trek is more a social drama than action flick - they spent maybe 10 minutes out of every other episode blowing crap up - the rest was politics, socialization, investigation, recreation etc. The major setting was the ship - 10 forward, sick bay, your quarters, the ready room, the holodeck, the cafeteria, the bridge. Star Trek took place there. I'm not suggesting that you could create a game exactly like the television show - no one wants to be ensign shoe-shine boy or ensign toilet scrubber, but the IP is in a large part social - you should be able to fit at least the same amount of people into one instance as one starship could hold. I mean, please - 50 people on Deep Space 9?? Quarks could hold more than 50 customers itself. I think that's what people are frustrated about with this game - they wanted to play Star Trek. They wanted to be immersed in the IP, to socialize inside the Star Trek universe. Everything about instances breaks that immersion. Having your ship come to a dead standstill in hyperspace when you visit the bridge breaks that immersion. Having to back up just right and emote to sit in the captain's chair breaks that immersion. You feel like you're either flying a tiny little ship or running around in some free to play japanese grinder dressed in Star Trek shirts. And above and beyond all of that - you can't even socialize with a world of people. Did I mention we couldn't even fit one fleet into an instance?
It is a weak game. It has a bunch of already existing things thrown together with a STO skin on it. If it were not STO it would have very few subscribers based off its weak engine and play system. There is nothing groundbreaking or even ground smudging in this offering.
It is buggy. Really buggy. Like call the ORKIN man buggy. They are fixing it but it needed at least a month of heavy beta with reporting to fix a lot of these fairly glaring issues. Some suit out there needs their pin stripes removed for pushing this baby out the door unfinished.
The storylines are good however they do not really amount to much in the way of interaction at low level. It is read, rinse, and repeat. Some missions are unbelievably complex while others are quick collect missions. Truly not bad but not stellar, and even higher levels have very few “wow” moments to them. Again nothing earth shattering or innovative.
Massive? No. Large? Not really. Moderate? Maybe. For the most part I have played a solo game. Not very social, not very group oriented. Why? Because other than a few auto joined instances I have not really needed to group. Yes it goes faster if you have a group however in my opinion the groups take all the challenge out and it becomes a zerg fest. Not a bad thing if all you are doing is leveling but kind of a downer when you want to play for fun.
All things considered I was truly saddened when the old game imploded. It probably had too broad a scope, however I thought starting in Star Fleet Academy and working up through the ranks and having a reputation system that put you onto the flagship of the Federation (for example) was a very kewl idea. That idea was an MMORPG. In the end it just did not work, and that my friend is sad.
The game we have now is ok. I like it, it is fun. It is a bit simple. I do not see playing it for years or maybe even for a year. They will get their purchase money and some monthly from me but in the end it will be an end game grind fest for gear and I will do a quick fade to another game that is fun and engaging.
The zones are 50 players max. We couldn't get even a large share of the fleet I was with into a single zone to socialize. This is not an MMOG. MMOGs are social spaces - without the 'social' it would be a single player game with online play. Completely false. I saw a few instances in Earth Space Dock last night that had 55 to 60. So, the max for zones is not 50. Also, Space docks = social hubs. Social hubs = place where people can trade and talk. If it is your requirement for social areas to be in a game for it to be considered an MMORPG... well, STO is an MMORPG then. This IP could have been turned into something revolutionary - a MMOG done right could have literally replaced television as a vehicle for the Star Trek IP. Space is the final frontier, not a hyperlink to a planetpage. Picard's Enterprise had 42 decks with a total crew and passenger capacity of 1014. It was a self contained, self sustaining community of people. These Starships were massive. Star Trek is more a social drama than action flick - they spent maybe 10 minutes out of every other episode blowing crap up - the rest was politics, socialization, investigation, recreation etc. The major setting was the ship - 10 forward, sick bay, your quarters, the ready room, the holodeck, the cafeteria, the bridge. Star Trek took place there. I'm not suggesting that you could create a game exactly like the television show - no one wants to be ensign shoe-shine boy or ensign toilet scrubber, but the IP is in a large part social - you should be able to fit at least the same amount of people into one instance as one starship could hold. I mean, please - 50 people on Deep Space 9?? Quarks could hold more than 50 customers itself. I think that's what people are frustrated about with this game - they wanted to play Star Trek. They wanted to be immersed in the IP, to socialize inside the Star Trek universe. Everything about instances breaks that immersion. Subjective negative. Having your ship come to a dead standstill in hyperspace when you visit the bridge breaks that immersion. Having to back up just right and emote to sit in the captain's chair breaks that immersion. You feel like you're either flying a tiny little ship or running around in some free to play japanese grinder dressed in Star Trek shirts. And above and beyond all of that - you can't even socialize with a world of people. Did I mention we couldn't even fit one fleet into an instance?
The zones are 50 players max. We couldn't get even a large share of the fleet I was with into a single zone to socialize. This is not an MMOG. MMOGs are social spaces - without the 'social' it would be a single player game with online play. a) Completely false. I saw a few instances in Earth Space Dock last night that had 55 to 60. So, the max for zones is not 50. Also, Space docks = social hubs. Social hubs = place where people can trade and talk. If it is your requirement for social areas to be in a game for it to be considered an MMORPG... well, STO is an MMORPG then. This IP could have been turned into something revolutionary - a MMOG done right could have literally replaced television as a vehicle for the Star Trek IP. Space is the final frontier, not a hyperlink to a planetpage. Picard's Enterprise had 42 decks with a total crew and passenger capacity of 1014. It was a self contained, self sustaining community of people. These Starships were massive. Star Trek is more a social drama than action flick - they spent maybe 10 minutes out of every other episode blowing crap up - the rest was politics, socialization, investigation, recreation etc. The major setting was the ship - 10 forward, sick bay, your quarters, the ready room, the holodeck, the cafeteria, the bridge. Star Trek took place there. I'm not suggesting that you could create a game exactly like the television show - no one wants to be ensign shoe-shine boy or ensign toilet scrubber, but the IP is in a large part social - you should be able to fit at least the same amount of people into one instance as one starship could hold. I mean, please - 50 people on Deep Space 9?? Quarks could hold more than 50 customers itself. I think that's what people are frustrated about with this game - they wanted to play Star Trek. They wanted to be immersed in the IP, to socialize inside the Star Trek universe. Everything about instances breaks that immersion. b) Subjective negative. Having your ship come to a dead standstill in hyperspace when you visit the bridge breaks that immersion. Having to back up just right and emote to sit in the captain's chair breaks that immersion. You feel like you're either flying a tiny little ship or running around in some free to play japanese grinder dressed in Star Trek shirts. And above and beyond all of that - you can't even socialize with a world of people. Did I mention we couldn't even fit one fleet into an instance?
a) I've never seen 55-60 players in a zone; Screenshots? - right now there are 20 zones up with at most, 17 players per zone at Sol System. When a zone fills up, it'll say "Full" on the "Choose an instance" screen - when the zone says "full" the instance # reads 50 Player. If they upped it to 60 this week, I still feel my point is still valid - it isn't "Massive" in my opinion, just a single player game with an online option.
b) If "Subjective negative" means that I have a subjective opinion of that feature/problem that is negative then you're correct. It would be easier to respond to an argument as to how instancing doesn't break immersion than a quote with a red correction.
The lowest denominator for MMOGs is probably the persistance, i.e. the world exists and persists on a server, not your pc. The massive enters the equation on the amount of players that could potentially interact.
Just two examples here:
1. I played on the german server of CoH/CoV. On villain side we had at late afternoon between 5-30 people online, and thats put very generous. Yet nobody would question its a MMORPG.
2. I logged onto my rogue alt in WoW, which is on a small RP-PVP german server in WoW. Went to the AH and wanted to buy some green weapons, swords, daggers, maces i didnt care. Turned out there where 5 green items in the lvlrange from 1-33. The rest of the AH was a wasteland too.
It is not just people in one place that define a MMOG. Its the people who can potentially interact on the same server(otherwise some WOW servers would loose the MMORPG status, which is ridiculous). Interacting is not just bumping into each other, interacting is also talking, trading or forming groups/fleets.
The only thing limited by a heavy instancing system is the ability to crowd each other or bump into each other. Which for me isnt the definition of a mmorpg, if counterstrike had a maxplayer setting of 500 it still wouldnt be a mmorpg for me.
P.S.: Imho people here are spoiled. I have seen plenty of mmorpg servers that didnt even have 50 players online unless at primetime, and here people are complaining of having only 50 people online in one instance. I blame it on the americans , your so used to full/plenty of servers that you dont see how refreshing this is for those of us that played other games on some silly small localised server(which we had to do cause of friends with poor english).
That screenshot shows a transition instance, the only purpose of that instance is to fly over to the spacedock and dock there. Its ... like the ships traveling between the continents in wow for lack of a better comparsion. It would make very much sense if cryptic put a lower limit on that instance so that it loads faster.
The zones are 50 players max. We couldn't get even a large share of the fleet I was with into a single zone to socialize. This is not an MMOG. MMOGs are social spaces - without the 'social' it would be a single player game with online play. a) Completely false. I saw a few instances in Earth Space Dock last night that had 55 to 60. So, the max for zones is not 50. Also, Space docks = social hubs. Social hubs = place where people can trade and talk. If it is your requirement for social areas to be in a game for it to be considered an MMORPG... well, STO is an MMORPG then. This IP could have been turned into something revolutionary - a MMOG done right could have literally replaced television as a vehicle for the Star Trek IP. Space is the final frontier, not a hyperlink to a planetpage. Picard's Enterprise had 42 decks with a total crew and passenger capacity of 1014. It was a self contained, self sustaining community of people. These Starships were massive. Star Trek is more a social drama than action flick - they spent maybe 10 minutes out of every other episode blowing crap up - the rest was politics, socialization, investigation, recreation etc. The major setting was the ship - 10 forward, sick bay, your quarters, the ready room, the holodeck, the cafeteria, the bridge. Star Trek took place there. I'm not suggesting that you could create a game exactly like the television show - no one wants to be ensign shoe-shine boy or ensign toilet scrubber, but the IP is in a large part social - you should be able to fit at least the same amount of people into one instance as one starship could hold. I mean, please - 50 people on Deep Space 9?? Quarks could hold more than 50 customers itself. I think that's what people are frustrated about with this game - they wanted to play Star Trek. They wanted to be immersed in the IP, to socialize inside the Star Trek universe. Everything about instances breaks that immersion. b) Subjective negative. Having your ship come to a dead standstill in hyperspace when you visit the bridge breaks that immersion. Having to back up just right and emote to sit in the captain's chair breaks that immersion. You feel like you're either flying a tiny little ship or running around in some free to play japanese grinder dressed in Star Trek shirts. And above and beyond all of that - you can't even socialize with a world of people. Did I mention we couldn't even fit one fleet into an instance?
a) No you didn't see 55-60 players in a zone; Screenshots or its just a lie - right now there are 20 zones up with at most, 17 players per zone at Sol System. When a zone fills up, it'll say "Full" on the "Choose an instance" screen - when the zone says "full" the instance # reads 50 Player. If they upped it to 60 this week, big whoop my point is still valid - it isn't "Massive" it's merely a single player game with an online option.
[Mod Edit]
I said Earth Spacedock not Sol System. Big difference there. I question when your screenshot was actually taken as I have definitely seen more than 17 ships hanging outside of spacedock during prime-time. Also, who are you to say that it "isn't massive"? Massive is a subjective term. It means different things to different people. Anyways, you are conveniently forgetting that anyone can trade with anyone in this game via exchange (including between factions) and anyone can talk to anyone else in the same zone regardless of whatever instance they are in. Sounds pretty "massive" to me despite being instanced.
The lowest denominator for MMOGs is probably the persistance, i.e. the world exists and persists on a server, not your pc. The massive enters the equation on the amount of players that could potentially interact. I agree. Just two examples here: 1. I played on the german server of CoH/CoV. On villain side we had at late afternoon between 5-30 people online, and thats put very generous. Yet nobody would question its a MMORPG. I haven't played CoH in a while, but I believe it was cited as an example of a very instanced game elswhere on the forums. 2. I logged onto my rogue alt in WoW, which is on a small RP-PVP german server in WoW. Went to the AH and wanted to buy some green weapons, swords, daggers, maces i didnt care. Turned out there where 5 green items in the lvlrange from 1-33. The rest of the AH was a wasteland too. Here I think the game itself has the potential to be Massively Multiplayer (and is) but is crippled due to the situation. I don't think I'd play very long with 5-30 people total unless they were close friends - no economy, etc. It is not just people in one place that define a MMOG. Its the people who can potentially interact on the same server(otherwise some WOW servers would loose the MMORPG status, which is ridiculous). Interacting is not just bumping into each other, interacting is also talking, trading or forming groups/fleets. I agree with these statement The only thing limited by a heavy instancing system is the ability to crowd each other or bump into each other. Which for me isnt the definition of a mmorpg, I disagree here for a couple of reasons. Game-feel-wise, I feel that the constant loading screens encountered in STO break immersion. Space isn't continuous - I can't fly from Earth to Mars even, or out of SOL on full impulse. Traveling feels more like clicking links and loading webpages to me then entering/exiting warp and approaching/orbiting planets. Socially, I feel the instances make it hard to get to know other players in-world - you're constantly mixed up with different player groups even if you're working on the same level range. One thing I like about the way LotRO/WoW/FE is set up is that you get to meet players working on the same stuff as you. In the past, this is how I've made new friends online. Another social example is player run events - In FE right now a clan called Rapid Fire is sponsoring the "7 days of Mardi Gras" - in a certain location each night there is an event - bareknuckle boxing Monday, hide and seek last night - the response has been awesome and its cool to see that many people in one spot dancing, talking and playing. I tried something similar while listening to Subspace radio on Risa and ran into a full instance - after repeated trying I was able to make it in, but in STO you aren't likely to just "run across" players doing something like this where in open-world games you could. I think there might be a possible solution to this if they would remove some of the randomness associated with choosing your instance - I know they do this already if you're on a team and I've heard rumors that there might be a higher likelihood that you join an instance with other fleet members, but I haven't experienced that working. If they were able to choose instances based on your normal playing hours and level that might help connect you to other players. Based on repetition of encounter you might be able to get to know other people more easily. if counterstrike had a maxplayer setting of 500 it still wouldnt be a mmorpg for me. Agreed P.S.: Imho people here are spoiled. I have seen plenty of mmorpg servers that didnt even have 50 players online unless at primetime, and here people are complaining of having only 50 people online in one instance. I blame it on the americans , your so used to full/plenty of servers that you dont see how refreshing this is for those of us that played other games on some silly small localised server(which we had to do cause of friends with poor english). If they'd get that darn Universal Translator online we wouldn't have that problem anymore Edit @Vinemt: That screenshot shows a transition instance, the only purpose of that instance is to fly over to the spacedock and dock there. Its ... like the ships traveling between the continents in wow for lack of a better comparsion. It would make very much sense if cryptic put a lower limit on that instance so that it loads faster. I agree that it would make more sense for me to get a shot of the standard instance and I'll try to show a full spacedock listing later tonight, but I would like to point out that 'transition instances' are part of the immersion disrupting feeling that I pointed out earlier. It would get better if the transition instance included all of our solar system to fly around however.
Originally posted by Vato26I said Earth Spacedock not Sol System. Big difference there. I question when your screenshot was actually taken as I have definitely seen more than 17 ships hanging outside of spacedock during prime-time. Also, who are you to say that it "isn't massive"? Massive is a subjective term. It means different things to different people. Anyways, you are conveniently forgetting that anyone can trade with anyone in this game via exchange (including between factions) and anyone can talk to anyone else in the same zone regardless of whatever instance they are in. Sounds pretty "massive" to me despite being instanced.
You're right - I'll try for a better screenshot maybe even showing a full instance tonight. Could you also make one showing 55-60 people in one instance? I took mine at approximately 8:15 EST last night (20:15 EST).
Massive is subjective and yes, it's my opinion that 50 isn't massive.
I agree that anyone can trade with anyone and even talk- did you know that with their chat system though you can connect not only to people playing STO but also to people playing CO? Steam chat and XBOX live chat etc work the same way but they are not MMOs, so I'm not sure if the zone chat in itself can be used as evidence.
The zones are 50 players max. We couldn't get even a large share of the fleet I was with into a single zone to socialize. This is not an MMOG. MMOGs are social spaces - without the 'social' it would be a single player game with online play. a) Completely false. I saw a few instances in Earth Space Dock last night that had 55 to 60. So, the max for zones is not 50. Also, Space docks = social hubs. Social hubs = place where people can trade and talk. If it is your requirement for social areas to be in a game for it to be considered an MMORPG... well, STO is an MMORPG then. This IP could have been turned into something revolutionary - a MMOG done right could have literally replaced television as a vehicle for the Star Trek IP. Space is the final frontier, not a hyperlink to a planetpage. Picard's Enterprise had 42 decks with a total crew and passenger capacity of 1014. It was a self contained, self sustaining community of people. These Starships were massive. Star Trek is more a social drama than action flick - they spent maybe 10 minutes out of every other episode blowing crap up - the rest was politics, socialization, investigation, recreation etc. The major setting was the ship - 10 forward, sick bay, your quarters, the ready room, the holodeck, the cafeteria, the bridge. Star Trek took place there. I'm not suggesting that you could create a game exactly like the television show - no one wants to be ensign shoe-shine boy or ensign toilet scrubber, but the IP is in a large part social - you should be able to fit at least the same amount of people into one instance as one starship could hold. I mean, please - 50 people on Deep Space 9?? Quarks could hold more than 50 customers itself. I think that's what people are frustrated about with this game - they wanted to play Star Trek. They wanted to be immersed in the IP, to socialize inside the Star Trek universe. Everything about instances breaks that immersion. b) Subjective negative. Having your ship come to a dead standstill in hyperspace when you visit the bridge breaks that immersion. Having to back up just right and emote to sit in the captain's chair breaks that immersion. You feel like you're either flying a tiny little ship or running around in some free to play japanese grinder dressed in Star Trek shirts. And above and beyond all of that - you can't even socialize with a world of people. Did I mention we couldn't even fit one fleet into an instance?
a) No you didn't see 55-60 players in a zone; Screenshots or its just a lie - right now there are 20 zones up with at most, 17 players per zone at Sol System. When a zone fills up, it'll say "Full" on the "Choose an instance" screen - when the zone says "full" the instance # reads 50 Player. If they upped it to 60 this week, big whoop my point is still valid - it isn't "Massive" it's merely a single player game with an online option.
[Mod Edit]
I said Earth Spacedock not Sol System. Big difference there. I question when your screenshot was actually taken as I have definitely seen more than 17 ships hanging outside of spacedock during prime-time. Also, who are you to say that it "isn't massive"? Massive is a subjective term. It means different things to different people. Anyways, you are conveniently forgetting that anyone can trade with anyone in this game via exchange (including between factions) and anyone can talk to anyone else in the same zone regardless of whatever instance they are in. Sounds pretty "massive" to me despite being instanced.
50 or 60 is not "completely false", in the context of what he was saying 50 or 60 really is not the issue. The issue is that is not considered massive which leads me to your second point.
Massive is subjective but even in subjective terms you can find a common understanding for most people. Yeah sure, there will be some people who says that an adult who weighs 100 pounds is "massive" but generally that wont be the case for most people.
Likewise, in this context, having a maximum of 50 (or 60) and an average of much lower is not considered massive by MMO standards.
You may feel that playing in zones with 4-5 people, in small mission instances, or 30-40 in fleet actions or 50 in starbases is massive for you but I think it is a safe bet to say that it is not what most MMOG players label as massive amount of people.
Ok im trying to break the monsterquote thingy here, hope everyony still gets this into context .
I think people are just ... unacustomed to the way instancing here works. For example even if your in different instances your still in the same zone, and can talk with each other over zonechat. And i still meet people, even easier due to the autogrouping feature. Just today i got teamed up with someone and he remarked how much better these mission go with two ships, so i asked if he wanted to stay in team with me for other missions in the area and he said sure.
I cant believe that that was a uncommon occurence. Also the instancing has another effect, you meet alot more people, which means you have alot more chances meeting nice poeple for your f-list. Sounds cheesy but its simple logic. Sure most just look for a quick team or dont even talk in teams, but a high troughput means its still quite easy to meet lots of good people.
What people have to be aware about that there are different classes of questgivers, some give you pvp missions, some advance the main storyline, and some give out mostly solomissions. And then there are some who basicly always give out pure teammissions. Obviously cryptic should have marked them so people could easily recognize them, but this would explain why some people hardly ever meet anyone, your doing the wrong missions from the wrong questgiver.
Now about the immersion breaking due to zoning i can agree, i simply dont get what purpose those transition zones like the Sol system for example serve. Maybe they are placeholders, and will get some content/purpose in a future patch? Obviously there has to be some kind of loading screen if you go from space to walking around a planet/starbase, and i guess warping out of the sol system for example also requires a loading screen, even with warp it would be a bit tedious to have to watch it in realtime.
Oh and about wether that 50 people are massive or not, that question is probably purely academic in nature. Bottomline is, if you asked the players if they wanted to have more than 50 people around them the results would probably split. Especially groundside i see a problem there with to many people in one place, all in unique uniforms with attached gimmicks etc, my comp isnt that old, but on really crowded days it already had problems in dalaran, and the graphics here are arguably more stressing than in wow.
Im pretty sure the limit is intentional, i have already seen instances with 5 man limits, 15 man limits, 20 man limits and the asumed 50 man limit in starbases. So obviously their system is cabable of handling and automatically distributing wildly different playercounts over instances. I just assume that they didnt just roll two dice to come up with the number 50, but that it is a mix out of client hardware/server performance/gameplay reasons that lead them to this number.
The question would be, what would the majority of players be willing to sacrifice in order to get higher playercounts at stations? If a significant part of the playerbase wants bigger instances i could imagine cryptic simply creating two queues, one for the current 50 man instances and one for lets say 500 man instances, which queue you land in would be decided by a setting in options. Alas i simply dont think a majority of players would care for such a option, there are literally dozens of things people rather would see id say.
Comments
The technics behind the instance system are really interesting btw. Im not 100% sure yet but i think it is very dynamic. The way i think it works is that, if player a from instance Sol 1, and player b from instance Sol 2 would enter the same missionobject on their respective map, they could still end up in the same instance of that mission. So even if the other 49 people in your instance igore the object, you still wont necessarily be alone since people from other instances can enter it too.
I think another good thing about the STO instancing is that I think it serves the Star Trek IP in a way that traditional mmo's can't, in Star Trek the Enterprise very rarely ran into anyone else from the Fed while exploring in space and this is played out wonderfully by the set up they use, with my main I have the open team option off so I always generally enter my mission zones alone instead of again being around some other twenty five ships that make me wonder "if they have so many ships here why in the hell do they need to send me to do this?". And with an alt I keep the team option open so I often do get the sense of being a part of something bigger, like a war is going on.
As far as the thread goes it is one of the most fact based posts I've read but I think it undersells what is offered and available in the game (it's not as cut and dried black and white as op makes it seem.). And I'm a bit mixed on the entire "non traditional" mmo statement because the truth of the matter is, as someone who is a gamer first mmo player second the differences between the two are not as varied as "mmo players" say. Basically who cares if GW says it's not an mmo or if it isn't made exactly like EQ if you just do the knowledge to what an mmo is and forget your own vast personal knowledge then you can see it is an mmo.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
wrong. eq 1 would lag with 150 people. I don't remember the zone but if two raids were going in it the the zone would lag. we had problems with this zone a lot. This was the one in the area where their was no air and you ran to the zone. When eq1 first came out it was even worse. 100+ people in a zone during an event would lag the zone or worse crash it. This problem never went away while I played the game up through god or so. Heavily populated zones would lag and could easily lag to the point of being unplayable.
Now client lag wasn't really much of a problem. Having a raid with 60-72 people wasn't an issue. some zones were better then others. Lots of fighting would cut the capacity of the zone.
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Ethion
I didn't like the setup of STO and really don't card for the design of the game world at all. But that aside it is a massively multiplayer game. It is not a single player game. And it is not a game with multiplayer capability. As far as I know there are only the 3 types of game definitions and this game fits the MMO definition. cryptic is don't things a bit different in that the build one since world with many instances vs many copies of the world and separating people up. I prefer their approach to say the wow/eq approach since I don't have to have my friends play on the same server and that kinda stuff. Everyone plays in he same game world. I don't mind instancing as it is far preferable to either empty zones or overpopulated zones.
Course I don't like how cryptic put these tools together to create the sto world. Everything feels very artificial and doesn't feel contiguous. I had the warp space things most of all. And I feel this game is a half assed game. It should have had far more development time.
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Ethion
As far as weather or not STO is an MMO or not, it's all opinion. 50 people in an instance isn't massive, well to most people. The limited amount of needed grouping is another. You will find most seem to not consider STO an MMO. And as far as this site considering it an MMO... again it depends on who you ask.
Do you have proof of this "most" that you stated?
Again http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/staffblog/102009/4897_Definition-Insanity-What-is-an-MMO
Is Dana the absolute authority as to what constitutes a game as an MMORPG? I would say no. Just another person expressing his opinion on what he believes an MMORPG should be. Oh, and he never mentioned STO once in that blog.
STO being an MMO is a matter of opinion. I'll let you decide which is the more popular opinion. Bottom line though is, it's all opinion.
I stated fact, I played from closed beta till around open. You click blinkies or engage in combat. Even exploration is click blinky or engage in combat. Scanning an anomaly is still clicking a blinky.
I've clicked things for missions in STO... oh... maybe 15 times max. And I've been through closed beta, open beta, and still playing today.
This wasn't opinion lol. It's the same system they use in CO.
Aye, and it is an important distinction to be made as everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, in this game occurs in small instances with an average population of 20 people. Completely false.
So if people come here and expect large zones with houndreds of people, they will be dissapointed. This game actually takes it one more step than in CO because in that game there was rather large instanced zones where as here the zones are small and short lived.
This is the main reason why I dont think PvP territorial control is possible in this game. How can you have territorial control over a bunch of instances? Fleet X control instance #2 and Fleet Y control instance #4?
Instancing is a personal preference. Despite people's complaining, it will not go away anytime soon. So, truthfully, it is only a subjective negative rather than a factual negative.
Too much of anything is usually bad thing. Like STO, over instancing was one of the main reasons POTBS tanked, and not only that, but the type of game (or doing it well, at least) lent itself to more open world and less restrictive mechanics. In GW, it was not game breaking, because the game revolved around matched area combat anyway.
In STO, this much over instancing breaks the game into little tiny boxes to go play in. For me and for many, this made it a crappy game, and a poor ST game (like many other poor ST games) and breaks the flow of the game. If little shoeboxes are good enough for you, enjoy.
Yet, this is all your OPINION, not fact. I, and many others totally disagree with your opinion that this is a "crappy game".
My statement still stands that instancing is based on personal preference, which is a subjective negative rather than a factual negative.
the guild I tried hooking up with could not fit into one instance - we couldn't even all meet each other at the same time in world. what a joke
Aye, and it is an important distinction to be made as everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, in this game occurs in small instances with an average population of 20 people. Completely false.
So if people come here and expect large zones with houndreds of people, they will be dissapointed. This game actually takes it one more step than in CO because in that game there was rather large instanced zones where as here the zones are small and short lived.
This is the main reason why I dont think PvP territorial control is possible in this game. How can you have territorial control over a bunch of instances? Fleet X control instance #2 and Fleet Y control instance #4?
Instancing is a personal preference. Despite people's complaining, it will not go away anytime soon. So, truthfully, it is only a subjective negative rather than a factual negative.
Too much of anything is usually bad thing. Like STO, over instancing was one of the main reasons POTBS tanked, and not only that, but the type of game (or doing it well, at least) lent itself to more open world and less restrictive mechanics. In GW, it was not game breaking, because the game revolved around matched area combat anyway.
In STO, this much over instancing breaks the game into little tiny boxes to go play in. For me and for many, this made it a crappy game, and a poor ST game (like many other poor ST games) and breaks the flow of the game. If little shoeboxes are good enough for you, enjoy.
Yet, this is all your OPINION, not fact. I, and many others totally disagree with your opinion that this is a "crappy game".
My statement still stands that instancing is based on personal preference, which is a subjective negative rather than a factual negative.
the guild I tried hooking up with could not fit into one instance - we couldn't even all meet each other at the same time in world. what a joke
You're hard pressed to get a single team into the same instance half the time unless it's PvP, nevermind a guild.
wrong. eq 1 would lag with 150 people. I don't remember the zone but if two raids were going in it the the zone would lag. we had problems with this zone a lot. This was the one in the area where their was no air and you ran to the zone. When eq1 first came out it was even worse. 100+ people in a zone during an event would lag the zone or worse crash it. This problem never went away while I played the game up through god or so. Heavily populated zones would lag and could easily lag to the point of being unplayable.
Now client lag wasn't really much of a problem. Having a raid with 60-72 people wasn't an issue. some zones were better then others. Lots of fighting would cut the capacity of the zone.
Kael and ToV was great for this to happen and CL when everyone sold there
Average of 20 people per instance is completely false? Really, what is the average population then? In my experience it is even lower than that as some has only 3-4 people in them and some I was completely alone.
Saying completely false, does not make it so.
Why should I give out this number to you when you claim that you play STO? If you do, then you should know this. Unless of course you are lying about playing STO as well.
And, as Rocketeer pointed out in post #51... you cannot say "EVERYTHING" and then go on to provide false information. Which is exactly what you did.
As my previous reply to this mail got deleted I will try again.
First I am not lying about playing STO, it was me who gave an average number of people per instance and you who said it was completely false without giving any credible reason as to why or giving an alternate number.
Secondly, everything in this game is instanced so that is not false information (another accusation you put out without giving any reason as to why). Are you claiming there is something in this game which is not instanced. If so please tell me what zone is not instanced.
The number 20 was based on:
Number of people in small mission instances 1-12 (I believe the cap is 12 as I have never seen more than that) where average is around 3-4.
Number of people in fleet action instanced 1-50 with the average being around 25.
Number of people in starbases 1-50 with the average being over 40.
Number of people in sector map 1-50 with the average being around 35.
Seeing as small mission instances is by far the most common I think 20 people on average per instance is quite generous. More like the average people per instance is probably lower.
So again, do you have any factual information about me spreading false information? Because if you read the title and the OP it clearly says he want facts about STO and those numbers I have put out there are facts. If you dispute them then atleast say why they are not facts without just accusing me of spreading false information.
I have to chime in too.. 100% of this game is instanced.. Period
Have a great day
Average of 20 people per instance is completely false? Really, what is the average population then? In my experience it is even lower than that as some has only 3-4 people in them and some I was completely alone.
Saying completely false, does not make it so.
Why should I give out this number to you when you claim that you play STO? If you do, then you should know this. Unless of course you are lying about playing STO as well.
And, as Rocketeer pointed out in post #51... you cannot say "EVERYTHING" and then go on to provide false information. Which is exactly what you did.
As my previous reply to this mail got deleted I will try again.
First I am not lying about playing STO, it was me who gave an average number of people per instance and you who said it was completely false without giving any credible reason as to why or giving an alternate number.
Secondly, everything in this game is instanced so that is not false information (another accusation you put out without giving any reason as to why). Are you claiming there is something in this game which is not instanced. If so please tell me what zone is not instanced.
The number 20 was based on:
Number of people in small mission instances 1-12 (I believe the cap is 12 as I have never seen more than that) where average is around 3-4.
Number of people in fleet action instanced 1-50 with the average being around 25.
Number of people in starbases 1-50 with the average being over 40.
Number of people in sector map 1-50 with the average being around 35.
Seeing as small mission instances is by far the most common I think 20 people on average per instance is quite generous. More like the average people per instance is probably lower.
So again, do you have any factual information about me spreading false information? Because if you read the title and the OP it clearly says he want facts about STO and those numbers I have put out there are facts. If you dispute them then atleast say why they are not facts without just accusing me of spreading false information.
Nowhere did I say this game wasn't 100% instanced. If you think I did, then you need to do some rereading.
However, I'm refuting your claims on these numbers. Did you actually go around and record these numbers to come to create this "average"? If you did, then that explains a lot about why you dislike this game so much.
And, to preempt you, no, I haven't gone around to record instance numbers. That's because I play the game to enjoy it rather than continuously data mine just for the sole purpose of bashing STO.
Oh, and I called your information false because you threw an "average" up there while providing no proof what-so-ever. And, these numbers provide no proof either. You could've made them up for all we know.
Average of 20 people per instance is completely false? Really, what is the average population then? In my experience it is even lower than that as some has only 3-4 people in them and some I was completely alone.
Saying completely false, does not make it so.
Why should I give out this number to you when you claim that you play STO? If you do, then you should know this. Unless of course you are lying about playing STO as well.
And, as Rocketeer pointed out in post #51... you cannot say "EVERYTHING" and then go on to provide false information. Which is exactly what you did.
As my previous reply to this mail got deleted I will try again.
First I am not lying about playing STO, it was me who gave an average number of people per instance and you who said it was completely false without giving any credible reason as to why or giving an alternate number.
Secondly, everything in this game is instanced so that is not false information (another accusation you put out without giving any reason as to why). Are you claiming there is something in this game which is not instanced. If so please tell me what zone is not instanced.
The number 20 was based on:
Number of people in small mission instances 1-12 (I believe the cap is 12 as I have never seen more than that) where average is around 3-4.
Number of people in fleet action instanced 1-50 with the average being around 25.
Number of people in starbases 1-50 with the average being over 40.
Number of people in sector map 1-50 with the average being around 35.
Seeing as small mission instances is by far the most common I think 20 people on average per instance is quite generous. More like the average people per instance is probably lower.
So again, do you have any factual information about me spreading false information? Because if you read the title and the OP it clearly says he want facts about STO and those numbers I have put out there are facts. If you dispute them then atleast say why they are not facts without just accusing me of spreading false information.
Nowhere did I say this game wasn't 100% instanced. If you think I did, then you need to do some rereading.
However, I'm refuting your claims on these numbers. Did you actually go around and record these numbers to come to create this "average"? If you did, then that explains a lot about why you dislike this game so much.
And, to preempt you, no, I haven't gone around to record instance numbers. That's because I play the game to enjoy it rather than continuously data mine just for the sole purpose of bashing STO.
Oh, and I called your information false because you threw an "average" up there while providing no proof what-so-ever. And, these numbers provide no proof either. You could've made them up for all we know.
Oh, so in other words since I didnt have any hard proof (whatever that can be) then the info is completely false?
Well to clarify, if it was not clear already, I did not record an exact average number of people but that is rather based on the experience I had playing the game. If you have any other experience, which is far of the number I said, then by all means. Do share.
People can go back and forth on this issue of is it an MMO or is it not when in the end, what probably really defines an MMO these days is the pay model and it is sold as an MMO so it therefore is an MMO (though I still think there is a difference between old school MMORPGs and these new MMOs as I explained earlier). The real issue with STO is not what you call it but if it really lives up to the various elements that define or are otherwise characteristic of the genre and in that regard there is a good argument that it falls short.
Consider the persistence, or lack there of - to me this is STOs biggest failing as an MMO because there simply is ZERO world - it is just a series of static maps that player load to, move through, and load off - there is no world. I spent some time this weekend playing a Klingon. Klingon is the second faction, the only thing other than Federation you can play. It is largely devoid of PvE content and is nearly entirely reliant on PvP. So how do you play a Klingon? Do you move through the world looking for prey to attack? No, for one, there is no world and certainly no world PvP. You open a window that displays the PvP matches and even from the ground (say the ground base on the Klingon homeworld) you just load to the match be it a ground PvP match or a space PvP match. Boy, that seems pretty much just like a RTS game lobby or even like an FPS game where you browse a server listing and join a game. You can actually play Klingon to max level without ever leaving the building you first spawn to after character creation (meaning you just load from there to match and back and to match and back). STO is entirely devoid of a real world, a persistent play space that players move through and exist in - like it or dislike it the reality is that this is the case and it is missing a major component of what makes, at least traditionally, an MMORPG.
Consider the massive part. If they removed the zone chat (which let's you chat across multiple instances of the same map) then the game would NEVER involve more than 50 people at any given time in any given way and in most cases it would involved around 2 or 3 to 30 or 40 people - this is simply not massive. FPS games have do this for years, so if an "MMO" is only bringing as many players together as do FPS games and only exceeding that with a chat channel then it is arguably lacking in the massive part. So on these two big counts, persistent world and massive, STO is very much cheating the genre definition and rightly drawing questions from people as to whether it is really a true MMO or MMORPG.
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Achiever 60.00%, Socializer 53.00%, Killer 47.00%, Explorer 40.00%
Intel Core i7 Quad, Intel X58 SLi, 6G Corsair XMS DDR3, Intel X-25 SSD, 3 WD Velociraptor SATA SuperTrak SAS EX8650 Array, OCZ 1250W PS, GTX 295, xFi, 32" 1080p LCD
Vato, how the hell do you think the guy is 'data-mining' the numbers. 1 hours play will tell you that the number he suggested are entirely reasonable.
As for playing the game, are you doing things with your fleet? Any missions? Any pvp? Or is it as I suspect too much effing hassle to try and get together and play together... entirely defeating the point of an MMO. Makes me feel *you* are the one who isn't really playing the game.
It is an arcade game experience, not an mmo experience. Not impossible to enjoy it anyway for however long it takes you to hit the cap / do the episode missions, but good luck finding anything meaningful to do afterwards. To make the point, MMOs tend to have 'end-game' which is character progression once you've hit the cap. STO has none. Maybe the raid content will help, maybe not... I'm not content to subscribe on the off-chance as it looks like Cryptic are doing a CO and promising this content for month 2. Fool me once...
The zones are 50 players max. We couldn't get even a large share of the fleet I was with into a single zone to socialize. This is not an MMOG. MMOGs are social spaces - without the 'social' it would be a single player game with online play.
This IP could have been turned into something revolutionary - a MMOG done right could have literally replaced television as a vehicle for the Star Trek IP. Space is the final frontier, not a hyperlink to a planetpage.
Picard's Enterprise had 42 decks with a total crew and passenger capacity of 1014. It was a self contained, self sustaining community of people. These Starships were massive. Star Trek is more a social drama than action flick - they spent maybe 10 minutes out of every other episode blowing crap up - the rest was politics, socialization, investigation, recreation etc. The major setting was the ship - 10 forward, sick bay, your quarters, the ready room, the holodeck, the cafeteria, the bridge. Star Trek took place there.
I'm not suggesting that you could create a game exactly like the television show - no one wants to be ensign shoe-shine boy or ensign toilet scrubber, but the IP is in a large part social - you should be able to fit at least the same amount of people into one instance as one starship could hold. I mean, please - 50 people on Deep Space 9?? Quarks could hold more than 50 customers itself.
I think that's what people are frustrated about with this game - they wanted to play Star Trek. They wanted to be immersed in the IP, to socialize inside the Star Trek universe. Everything about instances breaks that immersion. Having your ship come to a dead standstill in hyperspace when you visit the bridge breaks that immersion. Having to back up just right and emote to sit in the captain's chair breaks that immersion. You feel like you're either flying a tiny little ship or running around in some free to play japanese grinder dressed in Star Trek shirts. And above and beyond all of that - you can't even socialize with a world of people. Did I mention we couldn't even fit one fleet into an instance?
VERY well put. Agree 100%!
Let me say first that I truly enjoy the game.
With that being said there are problems.
It is a weak game. It has a bunch of already existing things thrown together with a STO skin on it. If it were not STO it would have very few subscribers based off its weak engine and play system. There is nothing groundbreaking or even ground smudging in this offering.
It is buggy. Really buggy. Like call the ORKIN man buggy. They are fixing it but it needed at least a month of heavy beta with reporting to fix a lot of these fairly glaring issues. Some suit out there needs their pin stripes removed for pushing this baby out the door unfinished.
The storylines are good however they do not really amount to much in the way of interaction at low level. It is read, rinse, and repeat. Some missions are unbelievably complex while others are quick collect missions. Truly not bad but not stellar, and even higher levels have very few “wow” moments to them. Again nothing earth shattering or innovative.
Massive? No. Large? Not really. Moderate? Maybe. For the most part I have played a solo game. Not very social, not very group oriented. Why? Because other than a few auto joined instances I have not really needed to group. Yes it goes faster if you have a group however in my opinion the groups take all the challenge out and it becomes a zerg fest. Not a bad thing if all you are doing is leveling but kind of a downer when you want to play for fun.
All things considered I was truly saddened when the old game imploded. It probably had too broad a scope, however I thought starting in Star Fleet Academy and working up through the ranks and having a reputation system that put you onto the flagship of the Federation (for example) was a very kewl idea. That idea was an MMORPG. In the end it just did not work, and that my friend is sad.
The game we have now is ok. I like it, it is fun. It is a bit simple. I do not see playing it for years or maybe even for a year. They will get their purchase money and some monthly from me but in the end it will be an end game grind fest for gear and I will do a quick fade to another game that is fun and engaging.
a) I've never seen 55-60 players in a zone; Screenshots? - right now there are 20 zones up with at most, 17 players per zone at Sol System. When a zone fills up, it'll say "Full" on the "Choose an instance" screen - when the zone says "full" the instance # reads 50 Player. If they upped it to 60 this week, I still feel my point is still valid - it isn't "Massive" in my opinion, just a single player game with an online option.
b) If "Subjective negative" means that I have a subjective opinion of that feature/problem that is negative then you're correct. It would be easier to respond to an argument as to how instancing doesn't break immersion than a quote with a red correction.
Please stay on topic and refrain from personal attacks.
Fortune favours the bold.
The lowest denominator for MMOGs is probably the persistance, i.e. the world exists and persists on a server, not your pc. The massive enters the equation on the amount of players that could potentially interact.
Just two examples here:
1. I played on the german server of CoH/CoV. On villain side we had at late afternoon between 5-30 people online, and thats put very generous. Yet nobody would question its a MMORPG.
2. I logged onto my rogue alt in WoW, which is on a small RP-PVP german server in WoW. Went to the AH and wanted to buy some green weapons, swords, daggers, maces i didnt care. Turned out there where 5 green items in the lvlrange from 1-33. The rest of the AH was a wasteland too.
It is not just people in one place that define a MMOG. Its the people who can potentially interact on the same server(otherwise some WOW servers would loose the MMORPG status, which is ridiculous). Interacting is not just bumping into each other, interacting is also talking, trading or forming groups/fleets.
The only thing limited by a heavy instancing system is the ability to crowd each other or bump into each other. Which for me isnt the definition of a mmorpg, if counterstrike had a maxplayer setting of 500 it still wouldnt be a mmorpg for me.
P.S.: Imho people here are spoiled. I have seen plenty of mmorpg servers that didnt even have 50 players online unless at primetime, and here people are complaining of having only 50 people online in one instance. I blame it on the americans
, your so used to full/plenty of servers that you dont see how refreshing this is for those of us that played other games on some silly small localised server(which we had to do cause of friends with poor english).
Edit @Vinemt:
That screenshot shows a transition instance, the only purpose of that instance is to fly over to the spacedock and dock there. Its ... like the ships traveling between the continents in wow for lack of a better comparsion. It would make very much sense if cryptic put a lower limit on that instance so that it loads faster.
a) No you didn't see 55-60 players in a zone; Screenshots or its just a lie - right now there are 20 zones up with at most, 17 players per zone at Sol System. When a zone fills up, it'll say "Full" on the "Choose an instance" screen - when the zone says "full" the instance # reads 50 Player. If they upped it to 60 this week, big whoop my point is still valid - it isn't "Massive" it's merely a single player game with an online option.
[Mod Edit]
I said Earth Spacedock not Sol System. Big difference there. I question when your screenshot was actually taken as I have definitely seen more than 17 ships hanging outside of spacedock during prime-time. Also, who are you to say that it "isn't massive"? Massive is a subjective term. It means different things to different people. Anyways, you are conveniently forgetting that anyone can trade with anyone in this game via exchange (including between factions) and anyone can talk to anyone else in the same zone regardless of whatever instance they are in. Sounds pretty "massive" to me despite being instanced.
You're right - I'll try for a better screenshot maybe even showing a full instance tonight. Could you also make one showing 55-60 people in one instance? I took mine at approximately 8:15 EST last night (20:15 EST).
Massive is subjective and yes, it's my opinion that 50 isn't massive.
I agree that anyone can trade with anyone and even talk- did you know that with their chat system though you can connect not only to people playing STO but also to people playing CO? Steam chat and XBOX live chat etc work the same way but they are not MMOs, so I'm not sure if the zone chat in itself can be used as evidence.
a) No you didn't see 55-60 players in a zone; Screenshots or its just a lie - right now there are 20 zones up with at most, 17 players per zone at Sol System. When a zone fills up, it'll say "Full" on the "Choose an instance" screen - when the zone says "full" the instance # reads 50 Player. If they upped it to 60 this week, big whoop my point is still valid - it isn't "Massive" it's merely a single player game with an online option.
[Mod Edit]
I said Earth Spacedock not Sol System. Big difference there. I question when your screenshot was actually taken as I have definitely seen more than 17 ships hanging outside of spacedock during prime-time. Also, who are you to say that it "isn't massive"? Massive is a subjective term. It means different things to different people. Anyways, you are conveniently forgetting that anyone can trade with anyone in this game via exchange (including between factions) and anyone can talk to anyone else in the same zone regardless of whatever instance they are in. Sounds pretty "massive" to me despite being instanced.
50 or 60 is not "completely false", in the context of what he was saying 50 or 60 really is not the issue. The issue is that is not considered massive which leads me to your second point.
Massive is subjective but even in subjective terms you can find a common understanding for most people. Yeah sure, there will be some people who says that an adult who weighs 100 pounds is "massive" but generally that wont be the case for most people.
Likewise, in this context, having a maximum of 50 (or 60) and an average of much lower is not considered massive by MMO standards.
You may feel that playing in zones with 4-5 people, in small mission instances, or 30-40 in fleet actions or 50 in starbases is massive for you but I think it is a safe bet to say that it is not what most MMOG players label as massive amount of people.
Ok im trying to break the monsterquote thingy here, hope everyony still gets this into context
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I think people are just ... unacustomed to the way instancing here works. For example even if your in different instances your still in the same zone, and can talk with each other over zonechat. And i still meet people, even easier due to the autogrouping feature. Just today i got teamed up with someone and he remarked how much better these mission go with two ships, so i asked if he wanted to stay in team with me for other missions in the area and he said sure.
I cant believe that that was a uncommon occurence. Also the instancing has another effect, you meet alot more people, which means you have alot more chances meeting nice poeple for your f-list. Sounds cheesy but its simple logic. Sure most just look for a quick team or dont even talk in teams, but a high troughput means its still quite easy to meet lots of good people.
What people have to be aware about that there are different classes of questgivers, some give you pvp missions, some advance the main storyline, and some give out mostly solomissions. And then there are some who basicly always give out pure teammissions. Obviously cryptic should have marked them so people could easily recognize them, but this would explain why some people hardly ever meet anyone, your doing the wrong missions from the wrong questgiver.
Now about the immersion breaking due to zoning i can agree, i simply dont get what purpose those transition zones like the Sol system for example serve. Maybe they are placeholders, and will get some content/purpose in a future patch? Obviously there has to be some kind of loading screen if you go from space to walking around a planet/starbase, and i guess warping out of the sol system for example also requires a loading screen, even with warp it would be a bit tedious to have to watch it in realtime.
Oh and about wether that 50 people are massive or not, that question is probably purely academic in nature. Bottomline is, if you asked the players if they wanted to have more than 50 people around them the results would probably split. Especially groundside i see a problem there with to many people in one place, all in unique uniforms with attached gimmicks etc, my comp isnt that old, but on really crowded days it already had problems in dalaran, and the graphics here are arguably more stressing than in wow.
Im pretty sure the limit is intentional, i have already seen instances with 5 man limits, 15 man limits, 20 man limits and the asumed 50 man limit in starbases. So obviously their system is cabable of handling and automatically distributing wildly different playercounts over instances. I just assume that they didnt just roll two dice to come up with the number 50, but that it is a mix out of client hardware/server performance/gameplay reasons that lead them to this number.
The question would be, what would the majority of players be willing to sacrifice in order to get higher playercounts at stations? If a significant part of the playerbase wants bigger instances i could imagine cryptic simply creating two queues, one for the current 50 man instances and one for lets say 500 man instances, which queue you land in would be decided by a setting in options. Alas i simply dont think a majority of players would care for such a option, there are literally dozens of things people rather would see id say.