The irony of it all is if it didn't have the words 'star trek' attached to it, you probably don't have half the complaining as you do now. Perhaps that's the problem as well. Because it is Star Trek, it's been exposed to 3-5 times the number of players then if it was called 'Space Battles'.
They have no one to blame but themselves. Games over the past how many years that launched incomplete, how many of those turned out well? The idea behind lessons learned were completely bypassed by Cryptic especially after their own title CO came out and died of a massive heart attack in almost record time. Instead they are a money grubbing company that preferred to launch a title early even though it was incomplete to start seeing green and figured everyone would just stick around and wait for more of it. Seriously....who lets these people keep their jobs? All they are trying to do now is slow the rate at which people are leaving with more talk about "the future" blah blah blah but I guarantee you that they will be laying off a lot of people this year cause both games they launched in the past year have completely gone belly up.
Actually it IS very 'Star-Trek'.. That is one aspect that I do feel Cryptic have done.
What you all have to remember is that this version of startrek is 30 years beyond the latest film!... so of course things change, people are comparing it to TNG, which is old by now!.. and people dont even think about Original Star-trek.
whenver you press a button or look at an icon or the colours.. its all very 'Star-treky' ... I do very much feel like im in the ST univerise, all be it limited in typical star-trek activities like 'Diplomacy' and non-violent conflict.
You are correct that content is King. I was only commenting on the topics brought up initially. TO MAKE THIS SUCESSFUL in the long term..1. A fully developed Klingon world with twice the existing federation content. Don't worry about other playable races until content is far more developed.
Double existing content in the Federation and I'm talking quests. Fix some of the existing unknown world explorables to make them interesting.
GET VOICE SYSTEM. People stay longer when they are having fun on a daily basis with friends chating as they play the game. Getting an external voice system is too initimidating for the average gamer.
Time frame. Sad but you only have about sixty days to get real content out before that 100K player base starts to drop off and will stay off unless you put major dollars into marketing like Turbine did for DDO.
Oh Cryptic, you have suckered us into purchasing your "product" via D2D.
I have written (count 'em) SIX times to your illustrious company. Each and every time, I received a "fix" or a brand spanking new "ticket" only to ask for another and another, ad nauseum.
Finally, after my final plea for help, they had the absolute balls -- pardon me -- to gloriously announce that if I did not respond via voice (customer service for a minimum of 30 minutes+) or e-mail and wait for several days for yet another "ticket" sincerely "apologizing" for their delay because they are so so very busy. I drew the line in the ST:O sand.
I will both visit USBank, with documentation in hand as well as file a scathing Better Business Bureau complaint. I'm quite sure that Cryptic have cubicles galore manned with personnel (minimum wage, of course) to deal with what they stated:
Oh yes, I forgot:
"Addressing Some Complaints"
Cryptic has placed ST:O into the HALL OF SHAME & Paramount was also stupid enough to license their long-lasting Holy Grail to this "company."
Ok. I haven't read whole topic cause its like for few hours but I tried STO for month. I know its not much but.. I think Star Trek world as MMO should be something like Ultima Online, EvE or Darkfall.
Star Trek is world of UNKNOWN. It should be huge space with many planets where you can walk as you want, 10 possibilities to every problem, fight shouldnt be only about destroying ship as someone said but also you can be diplomatic, you can capture that ship.
To do Star Trek online is, imho, neccesary to have team full of ppl who likes Star Trek, not only ppl who wants to make money from it. Also you need big and best team in the world cause Star Trek is just so big and so old you cant do it like Cryptic did. I was way excited to play STO but.. Instances is one of things which should never be in Star Trek. I mean.. You can have instances on planets and stations, but not anywhere else. I feel about STO something like Lotro - but Lotro is well done game, cause its not sci-fi. Star Trek is just much bigger than everything. They just thought hey there is not any star trek mmo yet? Ok how about to do some and get money from it.. BAAD IDEA!
I agree that there is tons of ST fans around the world. But they watch Star Trek, they know star trek. They haven't seen only last movie of ST. I know DS9, every movie, Voyager, now I'm watching original series (which i love most ) but.. When I tried STO i wasn't feeling like at star trek world. Also ship moving. Wasnt that bad, could be worse i think but why they didnt do it like at Star Trek Bridge Commander way? That was just awesome.
Imo biggest problem is most companies are doing new MMO's in two ways - rly hard core or WoW simple. You tried to do it like WoW - not working for this theme. Look at EvE. Thats they way you should started thinking at the beggining (why is that? - sci-fi mmo with ships and succesfull.). Now its too late so I hope some other company will try to do ST at least few years later.
P.S. also i bought STO from Steam which was only US version - I didn't see that nowhere when i was buying it so.. If I would want to play it again I would have to buy new EU version of game.. rly nice
Played: Lineage 2,Guild Wars 1 and 2, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online, LOTRO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EvE online Tried: KAL Online, Face of Mankind, ROSE online Playing: CS:GO
This seems to be a soft and safe generalized piece. Following the hype and the disaster, I do not recall the C-Store being at the forefront of the disdain at all, but an excuse to continue the well-deserved pile-on about the most non-mmorpg of the past 12-months.
The other points being ‘Lack of Social Interaction’, ‘Easy Mode Combat’, and ‘It’s Just not Star Trek’, are but generalizations without specificity that offers Cryptic the out to allow them journalistic spin, as they have done with their side-stepping of the real issues, without addressing core specifics as to why this game is a failure to most, and resulted in a mass exodus of subscribers. I may not be the best at categorizing all the mundane myself, but I can lay it out more specifically.
All-in-all, STO is a shallow third-person space shooter that lacks much of the staples of mainstream mmorpgs
- Content is sorely lacking to the point where very very early on in this game, the 'instanced' pve quests are nothing more than similar repeatable maps and mobs of previous quests done; the static nature of pve and its' redundancy is astounding.
- Space is space-less. Each map is nothing more than a confining shoe-box, a small space of nothing to interact with.
- There is no game-play freedom of exploration. No exploration to other planets or discovery; again, your confined to your shoe-box instance. There's nothing dynamically to do in this game that would be reminiscent of Star Trek.
- No exploration or away-team capability. If you do see a planet on an instanced map, there is no "away-team" capability to freely explore its surface. Its nothing more than a static inactive marble that you bounce off of in your confined instance.
- Space is life-less. Other than the instance nodes that you bump into to enter for a ship pve encounter, or to wait in a long line of trying to perform pvp with other players; its essentially a single-player lobby system game that your forced to pay $15 a month for. If you see an opposing faction player on a system map, there is absolutely no engagement.
- Space flight is confining. Space flight lacks freedom with a limited z-axis that prevents looping or gaining weapons locks on ships that are above or below, yet in front of you in many cases. It just adds to the unnecessary maneuvering of your ship.
- Quest copywriting seems very week that leads to weak story engagement or sense of draw that you’re actually contributing to a story-arc or meaningfully contributing to federation or klingon game-play.
- Space and ground game-play combat has the most limiting, redundant, Quake 3rd-person shooter type feel of any game in the mmorpg market; its shallow.
- There is no physics to ground combat as there is no physics to space combat that factor into game-play.
- Ground and Space pvp combat amounts to a frag-fest of limited players and non-tactical or strategic importance in any respect to story or game-play in this faction vs. faction environment.
- Like a 3rd-person or first-person shooter, the player-vs-player stuff is without any game-play contributory value, other than winning a small confining map, it amounts to run, gun, die, or run,gun, win, limp, die. But your rewarded as much for being a loser as a winner; no mmoprg game-play distinction. I havent found the game-play nutrition in this yet.
- There is no reasonable complimentary opposite to winning. You win in space and on ground, you get a battery or such (a weak reward), you lose on space or on ground, you miraculously reappear next to the fight to battle like a button mashing mindless drone without consequences again. Lack of consequences to death has turned this title into a series of suicide runs for the same exact reward I get for battling tactically and strategically. The grossly equivalent rewards for those that die often is enough to leave this game.
The lack of any penalty for being a suicide player is astounding. So, as a Klingon that must rely on pvp matches to level, when these suicide players enter a match just to roll into klingons without putting up any fight, but just to died repeatedly and quickly to get the match over so they can rinse and repeat, thats considered good game-design and fauir play at my game-play expense?
There are several things missing, underwelming and poorly implemented in STO, and this has got to rank at the top of the list. . .they, those that die purposely and repeatedly without consequence, advance their own rush for experience at others game-play and immersion expense are exasperating a real problem; they are rewarded handsomely for being losers; figuratively and literally by Cryptic.
- The community (massively multiplayer) element of this mmorpg is very fragmented (as opposed to expanded and cooperative) due to the great number of single-player feel instances. Community feels fragmented to one of those several small instanced zones that does nothing to encourage the feel of massively multiplayer entertainment.
- No alternative industry, aka, no resource gathering towards community crafting, enterprise, or merchandising elements for the federation or klingons. Would be nice if this mmorpg staple were available to players, rather than being non-existant.
Imho the problems of Star Trek Online is more complex than this. A good MMORPG tries to attract many kinds of players, to make sure you can play with a lot of friends. People who enjoy PVP, people who hate it, people who want to focus on killing, others who focus on industry or trade should be able to play together.
Eve Online is almost perfect, but with a too strong focus on PVP and not enough long term PVE goals, but while your goals last it is an excellent game."
In Star Trek online we see merchants but we cannot be merchants.
We see how the world works, but we cannot be part of that world, we can be "generic adventurers" in a "Generic instanced game" that isn't only a generic MMO, but also a weak and bad MMO for lack of content for many kinds of players.
It reduces importance of long term teamwork and has a negative effect on community, and it also makes talking between players less important. Generic looks of kits don't help much either.
You don't feel the infinite space, but there are several instances of a starbase, when a bigger wold map, more bases would make more sense.
When you are on board of a spaceship, its layout doesn't make sense.
You have too many loading screens.
Areas on planets are often too small and simple to represent a town, etc.
This is just what happens when you spend only a year (2 at the maximum) to develop a game and then put in the very minimum amount of work required to get it to a playable MMO state.
Cryptic has no one to blame but themselves. Ever since their design concepts were first announced, the playerbase reacted very negatively. Any smart company would have taken a step back and examined why those players they are trying to attract are not excited. They would have listened to the mountains of feedback given during the closed and open betas and actually re-evaluated their strategy. In the end, it comes down to the fact that Crptic simply didn't care enough to make the game the way their fans wanted it. They already had a mediocre MMORPG engine and they knew it would be easiest to just make a carbon copy of CO with a Star Trek skin.
When a developer shows this little care and effort towards its community, it is to be expected that they will react negatively. Anyone with any real knowledge of the genre could have predicted this and there were hundreds of threads on the forums about this very topic during the entire beta process.
Then, on top of all of the flaws in their game design, Cryptic has the NERVE to add a cash shop and throw items in left and right while the basic subscription game remains hopelessly light on content... If it isn't clear by now, let me spell it out for you. Cryptic never wanted to make a game that people would truly love... they wanted to do the bare minimum necessary and then milk the Star Trek fans for every dime they possibly could. And that is why I will never ever buy another Cryptic game.
Yeah, I am certainly on an early morning I.V. Drip Coffee Rant and (Last Msg: Honest!) - it is what it is. Some agree and others do not, I can accept that, really.
I'm an Old (Meaning Old as in Age) hard-core Fan of Trek and I've seen them all. I also had the profound privilege of being one of 100 Volunteers for the 25th Anniversery of Star Trek at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
Great Badges! Great Gifts!
When the exhibit closed, there was a 10 PM Evening Party at NASM attended by such individuals as the Director NASM, Majel Barrett and Mark Leonard. God Rest Their Souls.
As you can assume by my fervor for this license as well as our true history in the real world, I had to state my anger as well as my (yes) opinion on these issues. I had to.
Star Trek Online could have been imo a great MMORPG if it had been done properly. From the open beta to the actual launch, the only feeling i had was from Cryptic : We want your money. Pay this and you gonna get that, buy a super mega pepsi drink and you'll get a shuttle.
Someome stated that star trek was huge and space is huge, and i agree it should be but you just don't get that feeling playing STO. Space is small in STO for example if i remember well one of the quadrant was like 4 square of the board only i think it was the delta one...
Big deception as listed in the article was the lack of diplomatic mission wich is a really important part of Star Trek. Space pew pew is ok but redundant. Go there, kill everything, get back, go somewhere else, do the same, come back etc...
Cryptic saying they are offended that we believe STO doesn't really catch up the Star Trek feeling : Well guy's if you had done your job properly, no one would be saying that right now. STO as been rushed out on the pretext that you already had the engine and your technologie was stable and working. I on the other hand believe you know that STO fail or not would make money right away and you jumped on the opportunity, heck the closed beta wasnt out already you were charging people to play it by some obscurs publicity.
So you rushed out the game and now you have the result : People complaining.
Sad but i predict a bankruptcy for Cryptic one day and as much as i'll be sad to see a game company go down, ill be happy to know that i won't have this feeling again of : We want your gold, the rest? We don't care.
This is just what happens when you spend only a year (2 at the maximum) to develop a game and then put in the very minimum amount of work required to get it to a playable MMO state.
Cryptic has no one to blame but themselves. Ever since their design concepts were first announced, the playerbase reacted very negatively. Any smart company would have taken a step back and examined why those players they are trying to attract are not excited. They would have listened to the mountains of feedback given during the closed and open betas and actually re-evaluated their strategy. In the end, it comes down to the fact that Crptic simply didn't care enough to make the game the way their fans wanted it. They already had a mediocre MMORPG engine and they knew it would be easiest to just make a carbon copy of CO with a Star Trek skin.
When a developer shows this little care and effort towards its community, it is to be expected that they will react negatively. Anyone with any real knowledge of the genre could have predicted this and there were hundreds of threads on the forums about this very topic during the entire beta process.
Then, on top of all of the flaws in their game design, Cryptic has the NERVE to add a cash shop and throw items in left and right while the basic subscription game remains hopelessly light on content... If it isn't clear by now, let me spell it out for you. Cryptic never wanted to make a game that people would truly love... they wanted to do the bare minimum necessary and then milk the Star Trek fans for every dime they possibly could. And that is why I will never ever buy another Cryptic game.
and it really makes you wonder what the hell the betas are for if not to listen to player feedback might as well forget betas altogether and just start releasing the games as is
whats sad is from everything ive seen looks like they just ripped off of coh and slapped a sto label on it
so in otherwords they didnt do anything just took a preexisting game and modded it
Nice interview. For me it shows 2 major things that would ultimetly lead to the downfall of STO and maybe Cryptic all together.
1- They dont care what you think
2- They know better than you.
These are the 2 major point any serious game developer should never take for granted. When devs think they know what's good for players and just ignore cristicism or at least diminish it, that's a very bad sign.
These guys are in the entertainment business. Your product is only good if peoples likes it. If peoples dont like it, dont come up to them and say you know better than them, it's just insulting.
WoW/Everquest1-2/Lord of the Rings Online are the traditional MMORPG's. Turn-based tactical games. As a lore-master in Lotro, I am not twitching like a Quake player, I am deciding which of the 30 or more skills to use considering the tactical situation I am presented with. And for some classes that might even mean that right now, I do nothing.
Every classic MMO DPS player knows that sometimes you just got to hold of, to let the tanks do their thing first. Good healers don't spam heal everytime someone takes a tiny hit. And you don't waste root/stun on the enemy the tank is engaging, you save them for when you need them.
Now there is a large vocal group of players that don't like this. I could suggest that these players lack the intelligence for it, but that would be nasty. Instead I would say that these people enjoy games like Quake but want to play them in a MMO setting. And the traditional MMO's just don't provide that.
There has been a move among MMO developers to attempt to cater to the twitch crowd. Try to make games play more like a FPS and make things like aiming more a matter of hand-eye coordination, rather then being based on the players avatar stats. Some call this twitch game play, skill based. A slur as it suggests that using tactics is not a skill.
The problem however is simple. FPS is hard to do in a MMO. Not a single one so far has gotten it right. So you end up with games with a lot of twitch but where ultimately, wether you hit or miss is still down to stats OR even worse, down to lag. Take "Fallen Earth". Played the free trial and missed shots simply because an enemy jerked back and forth, or was on a rubber band. These things are well known to MMO players, but they matter if you have to line up the cross-hairs on a target.
The twitch games often end up being very simplistic twitch games, with moronic AI in which you perform exactly the same action over and over again. Think the worsed user created Doom levels, and then you got the best of Twitch MMO's.
You could play Champions Online with just 1 attack. Whoopee! Yes, it is easy to get into. No it isn't "elitist" in that you can only "play" the game if you read the manual. Yes levels come easy. But at the end, what is there to challenge you?
That is where cryptic has always failed. Their games have a high twitch factor, are easy to get into, but they lack the long term challenge, the community, the draw that have allowed the "real" mmo's to survive for years.
Give the loud customers what they want, and you end up with a game so shallow, that nobody wants to play it for very long. With COH, cryptic had something original, but with Champions and Star Trek, they just build the same game again, and people are seeing that it ain't enough. It is decent enough for a while, but not 3+ years a MMO needs to be considered a success.
You are right sir, when they made that statement : We are offended bla bla bla... I believe they wanted the community to say : Oh shit...were being ass by insulting poor devs who only want to entertain us. But i believe we arent stupid... STO doesn't just have like 2 or 3 complaints, the whole game can be complained about.
Cryptic was and still is after : your cash, they knew it when they bought the license, and thats why we have something that could have been great destroyed like that
WoW/Everquest1-2/Lord of the Rings Online are the traditional MMORPG's. Turn-based tactical games. As a lore-master in Lotro, I am not twitching like a Quake player, I am deciding which of the 30 or more skills to use considering the tactical situation I am presented with. And for some classes that might even mean that right now, I do nothing.
Every classic MMO DPS player knows that sometimes you just got to hold of, to let the tanks do their thing first. Good healers don't spam heal everytime someone takes a tiny hit. And you don't waste root/stun on the enemy the tank is engaging, you save them for when you need them.
Now there is a large vocal group of players that don't like this. I could suggest that these players lack the intelligence for it, but that would be nasty. Instead I would say that these people enjoy games like Quake but want to play them in a MMO setting. And the traditional MMO's just don't provide that.
There has been a move among MMO developers to attempt to cater to the twitch crowd. Try to make games play more like a FPS and make things like aiming more a matter of hand-eye coordination, rather then being based on the players avatar stats. Some call this twitch game play, skill based. A slur as it suggests that using tactics is not a skill.
The problem however is simple. FPS is hard to do in a MMO. Not a single one so far has gotten it right. So you end up with games with a lot of twitch but where ultimately, wether you hit or miss is still down to stats OR even worse, down to lag. Take "Fallen Earth". Played the free trial and missed shots simply because an enemy jerked back and forth, or was on a rubber band. These things are well known to MMO players, but they matter if you have to line up the cross-hairs on a target.
The twitch games often end up being very simplistic twitch games, with moronic AI in which you perform exactly the same action over and over again. Think the worsed user created Doom levels, and then you got the best of Twitch MMO's.
You could play Champions Online with just 1 attack. Whoopee! Yes, it is easy to get into. No it isn't "elitist" in that you can only "play" the game if you read the manual. Yes levels come easy. But at the end, what is there to challenge you?
That is where cryptic has always failed. Their games have a high twitch factor, are easy to get into, but they lack the long term challenge, the community, the draw that have allowed the "real" mmo's to survive for years.
Give the loud customers what they want, and you end up with a game so shallow, that nobody wants to play it for very long. With COH, cryptic had something original, but with Champions and Star Trek, they just build the same game again, and people are seeing that it ain't enough. It is decent enough for a while, but not 3+ years a MMO needs to be considered a success.
but one thing i wonder is what is a company to do when everyone wants to be the tank/dps/healer almost everyone ive ran into is more into soloing everything
/sarcasm on
team? whats that you mean i cant be everything all the time? you mean i actually have to work with other people but thats a social activity id rather do it myself then have to interact with ppl who arent as good as me
The problem however is simple. FPS is hard to do in a MMO. Not a single one so far has gotten it right. So you end up with games with a lot of twitch but where ultimately, wether you hit or miss is still down to stats OR even worse, down to lag. Take "Fallen Earth". Played the free trial and missed shots simply because an enemy jerked back and forth, or was on a rubber band. These things are well known to MMO players, but they matter if you have to line up the cross-hairs on a target.
Battleground Europe nailed pretty well the MMOFPS genre. No nice graphics but who cares? It's a blast to play!
The problem however is simple. FPS is hard to do in a MMO. Not a single one so far has gotten it right. So you end up with games with a lot of twitch but where ultimately, wether you hit or miss is still down to stats OR even worse, down to lag. Take "Fallen Earth". Played the free trial and missed shots simply because an enemy jerked back and forth, or was on a rubber band. These things are well known to MMO players, but they matter if you have to line up the cross-hairs on a target.
Battleground Europe nailed pretty well the MMOFPS genre. No nice graphics but who cares? It's a blast to play!
blackshot wasnt too bad for an mmofps kept getting kicked out of rooms for too many headshots but whatever
Yeah, I am certainly on an early morning I.V. Drip Coffee Rant and (Last Msg: Honest!) - it is what it is. Some agree and others do not, I can accept that, really.
I'm an Old (Meaning Old as in Age) hard-core Fan of Trek and I've seen them all. I also had the profound privilege of being one of 100 Volunteers for the 25th Anniversery of Star Trek at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
Great Badges! Great Gifts!
When the exhibit closed, there was a 10 PM Evening Party at NASM attended by such individuals as the Director NASM, Majel Barrett and Mark Leonard. God Rest Their Souls.
As you can assume by my fervor for this license as well as our true history in the real world, I had to state my anger as well as my (yes) opinion on these issues. I had to.
This Forum will be very interesting indeed...
Which is great. The problem is so many people seem to have had a brain bypass and completely ignored the fact that this is a GAME. As such it can NEVER live up to the iconic, boyhood daydreams of being a starship captain in a extraordinary universe.
Clik's long list of what STO is and isn't is plain silly. Looking at some of the things there are fanciful, "non explorable planets" ~ i'm not surprised. How do you find the time and man hours to create exciting, living, breathing ecosystems on countless planets? Not even EvE has managed that after 7 years of TLC from CCP. Would it be nice? yes it would be brilliant, but I can understand the limits of what is viable.
"Space is space-less". Again, by and large space is empty, boring and void of anything of interest. Why simulate that? Why simulate travelling for DAYS at warp 9 to get to places?
Does STO have short comings? God yes, much like many "games" at release, let alone games trying to live up to something as truly massive as Star Trek. "Not Trek" ? Diplomacy can only be exciting for so long before it becomes another meaningless interface to be clicked through hurridly while you speed to the next dollop of XP and loot. Again, TV. Film and computer games are very different in what they can and can't do well.
As a side note, and since it is relevant, I would have probably asked how the "moderation" over at the offical site was working out for them in regards to customer feedback, since all complaint threads are either quickly deleted or trolled/flamed to the point that they are locked and also deleted.
If paying customers are not allowed to "complain", how can those complaints even be answered? When the ban hammer flies around the offical site for the slightest reasons, you leave people with the choice of not having their concerns heard, or upsetting people and making them quit, which many, many people have apparently been doing.
Cryptic was quick to brag that they had 1 mil forum accts signed up, I would like to know how many have been banned or abandoned.
As a side note, and since it is relevant, I would have probably asked how the "moderation" over at the offical site was working out for them in regards to customer feedback, since all complaint threads are either quickly deleted or trolled/flamed to the point that they are locked and also deleted.
If paying customers are not allowed to "complain", how can those complaints even be answered? When the ban hammer flies around the offical site for the slightest reasons, you leave people with the choice of not having their concerns heard, or upsetting people and making them quit, which many, many people have apparently been doing.
Cryptic was quick to brag that they had 1 mil forum accts signed up, I would like to know how many have been banned or abandoned.
yes but as others will tell you the forums arent yours they are for cryptic to talk to themselves apprently i dont care what anyone else beilives its utter nonsense to think forums that were made for sto should be for sto not the developers
those forums didnt get made for looks they got made for the purpose of discusions and issues pertaining to sto
any company ignorant enough to ignore players or act like they know more is a very bad sign
Comments
The irony of it all is if it didn't have the words 'star trek' attached to it, you probably don't have half the complaining as you do now. Perhaps that's the problem as well. Because it is Star Trek, it's been exposed to 3-5 times the number of players then if it was called 'Space Battles'.
I just let my account expire the other day.
They have no one to blame but themselves. Games over the past how many years that launched incomplete, how many of those turned out well? The idea behind lessons learned were completely bypassed by Cryptic especially after their own title CO came out and died of a massive heart attack in almost record time. Instead they are a money grubbing company that preferred to launch a title early even though it was incomplete to start seeing green and figured everyone would just stick around and wait for more of it. Seriously....who lets these people keep their jobs? All they are trying to do now is slow the rate at which people are leaving with more talk about "the future" blah blah blah but I guarantee you that they will be laying off a lot of people this year cause both games they launched in the past year have completely gone belly up.
Actually it IS very 'Star-Trek'.. That is one aspect that I do feel Cryptic have done.
What you all have to remember is that this version of startrek is 30 years beyond the latest film!... so of course things change, people are comparing it to TNG, which is old by now!.. and people dont even think about Original Star-trek.
whenver you press a button or look at an icon or the colours.. its all very 'Star-treky' ... I do very much feel like im in the ST univerise, all be it limited in typical star-trek activities like 'Diplomacy' and non-violent conflict.
You are correct that content is King. I was only commenting on the topics brought up initially. TO MAKE THIS SUCESSFUL in the long term..1. A fully developed Klingon world with twice the existing federation content. Don't worry about other playable races until content is far more developed.
Double existing content in the Federation and I'm talking quests. Fix some of the existing unknown world explorables to make them interesting.
GET VOICE SYSTEM. People stay longer when they are having fun on a daily basis with friends chating as they play the game. Getting an external voice system is too initimidating for the average gamer.
Time frame. Sad but you only have about sixty days to get real content out before that 100K player base starts to drop off and will stay off unless you put major dollars into marketing like Turbine did for DDO.
Oh Cryptic, you have suckered us into purchasing your "product" via D2D.
I have written (count 'em) SIX times to your illustrious company. Each and every time, I received a "fix" or a brand spanking new "ticket" only to ask for another and another, ad nauseum.
Finally, after my final plea for help, they had the absolute balls -- pardon me -- to gloriously announce that if I did not respond via voice (customer service for a minimum of 30 minutes+) or e-mail and wait for several days for yet another "ticket" sincerely "apologizing" for their delay because they are so so very busy. I drew the line in the ST:O sand.
I will both visit USBank, with documentation in hand as well as file a scathing Better Business Bureau complaint. I'm quite sure that Cryptic have cubicles galore manned with personnel (minimum wage, of course) to deal with what they stated:
Oh yes, I forgot:
"Addressing Some Complaints"
Cryptic has placed ST:O into the HALL OF SHAME & Paramount was also stupid enough to license their long-lasting Holy Grail to this "company."
For Shame.
-- The Maxx
You have to be kidding. Really...
Again to state the obvious in today's news:
"Stsr Trek Online: Addresing "Some" Complaints."
There are Good Games and Bad Games. This game is Trash.
-- The Maxx
Wow, 113 threads, and this is only "Some" complaints...
RIP Orc Choppa
Ok. I haven't read whole topic cause its like for few hours but I tried STO for month. I know its not much but.. I think Star Trek world as MMO should be something like Ultima Online, EvE or Darkfall.
Star Trek is world of UNKNOWN. It should be huge space with many planets where you can walk as you want, 10 possibilities to every problem, fight shouldnt be only about destroying ship as someone said but also you can be diplomatic, you can capture that ship.
To do Star Trek online is, imho, neccesary to have team full of ppl who likes Star Trek, not only ppl who wants to make money from it. Also you need big and best team in the world cause Star Trek is just so big and so old you cant do it like Cryptic did. I was way excited to play STO but.. Instances is one of things which should never be in Star Trek. I mean.. You can have instances on planets and stations, but not anywhere else. I feel about STO something like Lotro - but Lotro is well done game, cause its not sci-fi. Star Trek is just much bigger than everything. They just thought hey there is not any star trek mmo yet? Ok how about to do some and get money from it.. BAAD IDEA!
I agree that there is tons of ST fans around the world. But they watch Star Trek, they know star trek. They haven't seen only last movie of ST. I know DS9, every movie, Voyager, now I'm watching original series (which i love most
Imo biggest problem is most companies are doing new MMO's in two ways - rly hard core or WoW simple. You tried to do it like WoW - not working for this theme. Look at EvE. Thats they way you should started thinking at the beggining (why is that? - sci-fi mmo with ships and succesfull.). Now its too late so I hope some other company will try to do ST at least few years later.
P.S. also i bought STO from Steam which was only US version - I didn't see that nowhere when i was buying it so.. If I would want to play it again I would have to buy new EU version of game.. rly nice
Played: Lineage 2,Guild Wars 1 and 2, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online, LOTRO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EvE online
Tried: KAL Online, Face of Mankind, ROSE online
Playing: CS:GO
There are opinions and facts, the above is an opinion.
This seems to be a soft and safe generalized piece. Following the hype and the disaster, I do not recall the C-Store being at the forefront of the disdain at all, but an excuse to continue the well-deserved pile-on about the most non-mmorpg of the past 12-months.
The other points being ‘Lack of Social Interaction’, ‘Easy Mode Combat’, and ‘It’s Just not Star Trek’, are but generalizations without specificity that offers Cryptic the out to allow them journalistic spin, as they have done with their side-stepping of the real issues, without addressing core specifics as to why this game is a failure to most, and resulted in a mass exodus of subscribers. I may not be the best at categorizing all the mundane myself, but I can lay it out more specifically.
All-in-all, STO is a shallow third-person space shooter that lacks much of the staples of mainstream mmorpgs
- Content is sorely lacking to the point where very very early on in this game, the 'instanced' pve quests are nothing more than similar repeatable maps and mobs of previous quests done; the static nature of pve and its' redundancy is astounding.
- Space is space-less. Each map is nothing more than a confining shoe-box, a small space of nothing to interact with.
- There is no game-play freedom of exploration. No exploration to other planets or discovery; again, your confined to your shoe-box instance. There's nothing dynamically to do in this game that would be reminiscent of Star Trek.
- No exploration or away-team capability. If you do see a planet on an instanced map, there is no "away-team" capability to freely explore its surface. Its nothing more than a static inactive marble that you bounce off of in your confined instance.
- Space is life-less. Other than the instance nodes that you bump into to enter for a ship pve encounter, or to wait in a long line of trying to perform pvp with other players; its essentially a single-player lobby system game that your forced to pay $15 a month for. If you see an opposing faction player on a system map, there is absolutely no engagement.
- Space flight is confining. Space flight lacks freedom with a limited z-axis that prevents looping or gaining weapons locks on ships that are above or below, yet in front of you in many cases. It just adds to the unnecessary maneuvering of your ship.
- Quest copywriting seems very week that leads to weak story engagement or sense of draw that you’re actually contributing to a story-arc or meaningfully contributing to federation or klingon game-play.
- Space and ground game-play combat has the most limiting, redundant, Quake 3rd-person shooter type feel of any game in the mmorpg market; its shallow.
- There is no physics to ground combat as there is no physics to space combat that factor into game-play.
- Ground and Space pvp combat amounts to a frag-fest of limited players and non-tactical or strategic importance in any respect to story or game-play in this faction vs. faction environment.
- Like a 3rd-person or first-person shooter, the player-vs-player stuff is without any game-play contributory value, other than winning a small confining map, it amounts to run, gun, die, or run,gun, win, limp, die. But your rewarded as much for being a loser as a winner; no mmoprg game-play distinction. I havent found the game-play nutrition in this yet.
- There is no reasonable complimentary opposite to winning. You win in space and on ground, you get a battery or such (a weak reward), you lose on space or on ground, you miraculously reappear next to the fight to battle like a button mashing mindless drone without consequences again. Lack of consequences to death has turned this title into a series of suicide runs for the same exact reward I get for battling tactically and strategically. The grossly equivalent rewards for those that die often is enough to leave this game.
The lack of any penalty for being a suicide player is astounding. So, as a Klingon that must rely on pvp matches to level, when these suicide players enter a match just to roll into klingons without putting up any fight, but just to died repeatedly and quickly to get the match over so they can rinse and repeat, thats considered good game-design and fauir play at my game-play expense?
There are several things missing, underwelming and poorly implemented in STO, and this has got to rank at the top of the list. . .they, those that die purposely and repeatedly without consequence, advance their own rush for experience at others game-play and immersion expense are exasperating a real problem; they are rewarded handsomely for being losers; figuratively and literally by Cryptic.
- The community (massively multiplayer) element of this mmorpg is very fragmented (as opposed to expanded and cooperative) due to the great number of single-player feel instances. Community feels fragmented to one of those several small instanced zones that does nothing to encourage the feel of massively multiplayer entertainment.
- No alternative industry, aka, no resource gathering towards community crafting, enterprise, or merchandising elements for the federation or klingons. Would be nice if this mmorpg staple were available to players, rather than being non-existant.
Imho the problems of Star Trek Online is more complex than this. A good MMORPG tries to attract many kinds of players, to make sure you can play with a lot of friends. People who enjoy PVP, people who hate it, people who want to focus on killing, others who focus on industry or trade should be able to play together.
Eve Online is almost perfect, but with a too strong focus on PVP and not enough long term PVE goals, but while your goals last it is an excellent game."
In Star Trek online we see merchants but we cannot be merchants.
We see how the world works, but we cannot be part of that world, we can be "generic adventurers" in a "Generic instanced game" that isn't only a generic MMO, but also a weak and bad MMO for lack of content for many kinds of players.
It reduces importance of long term teamwork and has a negative effect on community, and it also makes talking between players less important. Generic looks of kits don't help much either.
You don't feel the infinite space, but there are several instances of a starbase, when a bigger wold map, more bases would make more sense.
When you are on board of a spaceship, its layout doesn't make sense.
You have too many loading screens.
Areas on planets are often too small and simple to represent a town, etc.
Check my home page for gaming related articles
This is just what happens when you spend only a year (2 at the maximum) to develop a game and then put in the very minimum amount of work required to get it to a playable MMO state.
Cryptic has no one to blame but themselves. Ever since their design concepts were first announced, the playerbase reacted very negatively. Any smart company would have taken a step back and examined why those players they are trying to attract are not excited. They would have listened to the mountains of feedback given during the closed and open betas and actually re-evaluated their strategy. In the end, it comes down to the fact that Crptic simply didn't care enough to make the game the way their fans wanted it. They already had a mediocre MMORPG engine and they knew it would be easiest to just make a carbon copy of CO with a Star Trek skin.
When a developer shows this little care and effort towards its community, it is to be expected that they will react negatively. Anyone with any real knowledge of the genre could have predicted this and there were hundreds of threads on the forums about this very topic during the entire beta process.
Then, on top of all of the flaws in their game design, Cryptic has the NERVE to add a cash shop and throw items in left and right while the basic subscription game remains hopelessly light on content... If it isn't clear by now, let me spell it out for you. Cryptic never wanted to make a game that people would truly love... they wanted to do the bare minimum necessary and then milk the Star Trek fans for every dime they possibly could. And that is why I will never ever buy another Cryptic game.
Greetings,
Yeah, I am certainly on an early morning I.V. Drip Coffee Rant and (Last Msg: Honest!) - it is what it is. Some agree and others do not, I can accept that, really.
I'm an Old (Meaning Old as in Age) hard-core Fan of Trek and I've seen them all. I also had the profound privilege of being one of 100 Volunteers for the 25th Anniversery of Star Trek at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
Great Badges! Great Gifts!
When the exhibit closed, there was a 10 PM Evening Party at NASM attended by such individuals as the Director NASM, Majel Barrett and Mark Leonard. God Rest Their Souls.
As you can assume by my fervor for this license as well as our true history in the real world, I had to state my anger as well as my (yes) opinion on these issues. I had to.
This Forum will be very interesting indeed...
-- The Maxx
Star Trek Online could have been imo a great MMORPG if it had been done properly. From the open beta to the actual launch, the only feeling i had was from Cryptic : We want your money. Pay this and you gonna get that, buy a super mega pepsi drink and you'll get a shuttle.
Someome stated that star trek was huge and space is huge, and i agree it should be but you just don't get that feeling playing STO. Space is small in STO for example if i remember well one of the quadrant was like 4 square of the board only i think it was the delta one...
Big deception as listed in the article was the lack of diplomatic mission wich is a really important part of Star Trek. Space pew pew is ok but redundant. Go there, kill everything, get back, go somewhere else, do the same, come back etc...
Cryptic saying they are offended that we believe STO doesn't really catch up the Star Trek feeling : Well guy's if you had done your job properly, no one would be saying that right now. STO as been rushed out on the pretext that you already had the engine and your technologie was stable and working. I on the other hand believe you know that STO fail or not would make money right away and you jumped on the opportunity, heck the closed beta wasnt out already you were charging people to play it by some obscurs publicity.
So you rushed out the game and now you have the result : People complaining.
Sad but i predict a bankruptcy for Cryptic one day and as much as i'll be sad to see a game company go down, ill be happy to know that i won't have this feeling again of : We want your gold, the rest? We don't care.
and it really makes you wonder what the hell the betas are for if not to listen to player feedback might as well forget betas altogether and just start releasing the games as is
whats sad is from everything ive seen looks like they just ripped off of coh and slapped a sto label on it
so in otherwords they didnt do anything just took a preexisting game and modded it
Nice interview. For me it shows 2 major things that would ultimetly lead to the downfall of STO and maybe Cryptic all together.
1- They dont care what you think
2- They know better than you.
These are the 2 major point any serious game developer should never take for granted. When devs think they know what's good for players and just ignore cristicism or at least diminish it, that's a very bad sign.
These guys are in the entertainment business. Your product is only good if peoples likes it. If peoples dont like it, dont come up to them and say you know better than them, it's just insulting.
They gave customers what they wanted...
Well, what customers think they want.
WoW/Everquest1-2/Lord of the Rings Online are the traditional MMORPG's. Turn-based tactical games. As a lore-master in Lotro, I am not twitching like a Quake player, I am deciding which of the 30 or more skills to use considering the tactical situation I am presented with. And for some classes that might even mean that right now, I do nothing.
Every classic MMO DPS player knows that sometimes you just got to hold of, to let the tanks do their thing first. Good healers don't spam heal everytime someone takes a tiny hit. And you don't waste root/stun on the enemy the tank is engaging, you save them for when you need them.
Now there is a large vocal group of players that don't like this. I could suggest that these players lack the intelligence for it, but that would be nasty. Instead I would say that these people enjoy games like Quake but want to play them in a MMO setting. And the traditional MMO's just don't provide that.
There has been a move among MMO developers to attempt to cater to the twitch crowd. Try to make games play more like a FPS and make things like aiming more a matter of hand-eye coordination, rather then being based on the players avatar stats. Some call this twitch game play, skill based. A slur as it suggests that using tactics is not a skill.
The problem however is simple. FPS is hard to do in a MMO. Not a single one so far has gotten it right. So you end up with games with a lot of twitch but where ultimately, wether you hit or miss is still down to stats OR even worse, down to lag. Take "Fallen Earth". Played the free trial and missed shots simply because an enemy jerked back and forth, or was on a rubber band. These things are well known to MMO players, but they matter if you have to line up the cross-hairs on a target.
The twitch games often end up being very simplistic twitch games, with moronic AI in which you perform exactly the same action over and over again. Think the worsed user created Doom levels, and then you got the best of Twitch MMO's.
You could play Champions Online with just 1 attack. Whoopee! Yes, it is easy to get into. No it isn't "elitist" in that you can only "play" the game if you read the manual. Yes levels come easy. But at the end, what is there to challenge you?
That is where cryptic has always failed. Their games have a high twitch factor, are easy to get into, but they lack the long term challenge, the community, the draw that have allowed the "real" mmo's to survive for years.
Give the loud customers what they want, and you end up with a game so shallow, that nobody wants to play it for very long. With COH, cryptic had something original, but with Champions and Star Trek, they just build the same game again, and people are seeing that it ain't enough. It is decent enough for a while, but not 3+ years a MMO needs to be considered a success.
You are right sir, when they made that statement : We are offended bla bla bla... I believe they wanted the community to say : Oh shit...were being ass by insulting poor devs who only want to entertain us. But i believe we arent stupid... STO doesn't just have like 2 or 3 complaints, the whole game can be complained about.
Cryptic was and still is after : your cash, they knew it when they bought the license, and thats why we have something that could have been great destroyed like that
but one thing i wonder is what is a company to do when everyone wants to be the tank/dps/healer almost everyone ive ran into is more into soloing everything
/sarcasm on
team? whats that you mean i cant be everything all the time? you mean i actually have to work with other people but thats a social activity id rather do it myself then have to interact with ppl who arent as good as me
/sarcasm off
Battleground Europe nailed pretty well the MMOFPS genre. No nice graphics but who cares? It's a blast to play!
blackshot wasnt too bad for an mmofps kept getting kicked out of rooms for too many headshots but whatever
Which is great. The problem is so many people seem to have had a brain bypass and completely ignored the fact that this is a GAME. As such it can NEVER live up to the iconic, boyhood daydreams of being a starship captain in a extraordinary universe.
Clik's long list of what STO is and isn't is plain silly. Looking at some of the things there are fanciful, "non explorable planets" ~ i'm not surprised. How do you find the time and man hours to create exciting, living, breathing ecosystems on countless planets? Not even EvE has managed that after 7 years of TLC from CCP. Would it be nice? yes it would be brilliant, but I can understand the limits of what is viable.
"Space is space-less". Again, by and large space is empty, boring and void of anything of interest. Why simulate that? Why simulate travelling for DAYS at warp 9 to get to places?
Does STO have short comings? God yes, much like many "games" at release, let alone games trying to live up to something as truly massive as Star Trek. "Not Trek" ? Diplomacy can only be exciting for so long before it becomes another meaningless interface to be clicked through hurridly while you speed to the next dollop of XP and loot. Again, TV. Film and computer games are very different in what they can and can't do well.
As a side note, and since it is relevant, I would have probably asked how the "moderation" over at the offical site was working out for them in regards to customer feedback, since all complaint threads are either quickly deleted or trolled/flamed to the point that they are locked and also deleted.
If paying customers are not allowed to "complain", how can those complaints even be answered? When the ban hammer flies around the offical site for the slightest reasons, you leave people with the choice of not having their concerns heard, or upsetting people and making them quit, which many, many people have apparently been doing.
Cryptic was quick to brag that they had 1 mil forum accts signed up, I would like to know how many have been banned or abandoned.
yes but as others will tell you the forums arent yours they are for cryptic to talk to themselves apprently i dont care what anyone else beilives its utter nonsense to think forums that were made for sto should be for sto not the developers
those forums didnt get made for looks they got made for the purpose of discusions and issues pertaining to sto
any company ignorant enough to ignore players or act like they know more is a very bad sign