I afficially do not trust MMORPG.com reviews when this game gets 7.4 and user rating 6.6 and Darkfall Online (funnest game I've ever played) gets 6.0 rating from this site yet users gave it rating 7.7 even with all of the trolls and hate . .. how does that work?
I'm not gonna tell them what they should have rated this game, but it does not deserve even a decent rating (in my opinion). Frankly, I'd be a tad pissed if I knew little about the game and visited this site and made a purchase based off of this review.
Space combat is fun for a very brief amount of time, but the rest of this game is simply atrocious. It's common knowledge that the game is beyond lackluster and is nothing short of a molestation of the IP.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
I'm going to refrain from any detailed discussions about my article. It generated a range of opinions. I knew it would. If Cryptic can make good on Klingons, I'll happily reverse my assessment. They've previewed some nice content in the past few days.
This review is a six month re-review. All games are eligible for one if someone is interested in re-reviewing one.
I based my score on the numeric breakdown for MMOs this site has reviewed in the past. Here's my score breakdown, for those interested:
Graphics: 9
Sound: 7
Role-Playing: 9
Value: 9
Fun: 7
Community: 2
Performance/Lag: 8
Customer Service: 8
Overall: 7.4
That's how I arrive at a 7.4 overall.
I'd rather you draw your own conclusions about me or my article. You're absolutely welcome to disagree. I'm here because I wanted to illuminate where the score came from... and elaborate that much of the article was written awhile back, before the recent wave of Klingon related statements and feedback. At that point, especially, I felt Cryptic had made a design choice to have two factions and had failed to justify it, leading to a pretty cataclysmic rift in the community that would not have occurred had they focused on one faction at a time. I remain somewhat skeptical about whether it was a wise decision for them to do it... But we'll see how that pans out in six months.
Cryptic did not make a Star Trek game, they made a space shooter with Trek skins and look and feel.
In Star Trek, every effort is made to avoid combat, violence is the last resort. In STO, violence is the only resort. STO is not Star Trek.
Although I'd be first in line to say that this game has glaring problems I don' think your being entirely realistic or fair here. Tell me one MMO or other video game based on Star Trek that isn't almost entirely about combat?? Besides puzzle games (something that takes quite a bit of work to create, is not repeatable, and is very easy to make too hard or too easy) how are you going to really emulate "diplomacy" in a mmo? I have never seen any video game, Star Trek or otherwise, that doesn’t emphasize the "action" portions of the IP. I mean in the Lord of the Rings books, it took the fellowship weeks to travel what takes minutes in the game. Part of the "IP" of Lord of the Rings is the size of the world, and vastness of it. Since the game doesn’t emulate the epic size of Middle Earth it sucks? Some things are just part of making a game, and space combat in STO isn't half bad.
Combat is part of MMO archetype; it is also part of most if not all video games. Granted STO could have made things more "immersive in the Star Trek sense with multi-player crews and the like, but ultimately combat is any games bread and butter. This fact is not really a Cryptic problem.
If you ask me one of the things they really screwed up is that they didn’t introduce more “combat” content, as they should have emphasised what they already had that was good: SPACE COMBAT. Instead of making new Klingon PvE content (although they should have done that as well) they should have expanded their PvP to make it more meaningful and immersive. A war that wasn’t just pointless arena matches would have given all us initial klingons something to do and kept a lot of us subscribing. Almost all of the good PvP fleets and players have left the game because there was nothing to do. It would have also given Feds something to do when they had exhausted all the PvE content, and if they rolled Klingon they would be forced to learn how to PvP to level. I don’t know but epic space battles have always been pretty dang cool in Star Trek when they happen. The best star trek movie imho: The Wrath of Khan was all about space combat.
STO pvp is actually very well balanced, and offers different mixes of skills and abilities to allow different roles. Skill is a huge factor between winning and losing, and gear helps but it’s not the I WIN button that you would get in say something like WoW. Contrary to what some people think you can’t just "spam space bar" and win in PvP in this game at all. This is how they could have made most of the Klingons happy, since that’s what they advertised about them in the first place. When I went into Beta I was expecting a huge neutral zone war. All we got is endless boring arena matches.
Oh... And regarding value, I think $20 is a great value if you complete the content inside a month, it's worth $35 over two months ($20 box and one month fee) and that the weekly episodes being added (and daily episodes) are well worth $3.50 a week in a world where a fast food combo meal is over $5 and a comic book is $4.
I'm going to refrain from any detailed discussions about my article. It generated a range of opinions. I knew it would. If Cryptic can make good on Klingons, I'll happily reverse my assessment. They've previewed some nice content in the past few days.
This review is a six month re-review. All games are eligible for one if someone is interested in re-reviewing one.
I based my score on the numeric breakdown for MMOs this site has reviewed in the past. Here's my score breakdown, for those interested:
Graphics: 9
Sound: 7
Role-Playing: 9
Value: 9
Fun: 7
Community: 2
Performance/Lag: 8
Customer Service: 8
Overall: 7.4
That's how I arrive at a 7.4 overall.
I'd rather you draw your own conclusions about me or my article. You're absolutely welcome to disagree. I'm here because I wanted to illuminate where the score came from... and elaborate that much of the article was written awhile back, before the recent wave of Klingon related statements and feedback. At that point, especially, I felt Cryptic had made a design choice to have two factions and had failed to justify it, leading to a pretty cataclysmic rift in the community that would not have occurred had they focused on one faction at a time. I remain somewhat skeptical about whether it was a wise decision for them to do it... But we'll see how that pans out in six months.
Thanks... and carry on!
So can you explain how a MMO that took 18 month to make and has very little content but yet is one of the most expensive MMOs to play get 9 for value??? I think maybe 2/10 for value seems more accurate.
Graphics and role-playing seems extremly high aswell.
Thanks for posting though!
If WoW = The Beatles and WAR = Led Zeppelin Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
I afficially do not trust MMORPG.com reviews when this game gets 7.4 and user rating 6.6 and Darkfall Online (funnest game I've ever played) gets 6.0 rating from this site yet users gave it rating 7.7 even with all of the trolls and hate . .. how does that work?
It works pretty much the same way as everything else in RL where the "professionals" and average joes dont usually agree.
As for the C-Store, with Lifetime Subscriptions still available and more players taking advantage of it, from a financial aspect it makes sense; the fact that Stahl is working hard on making ways to make as much from the C-Store available in game through other means as possible gives me a lot of hope for the future of this game. I look forward to seeing yet another re-review at the 1-year anniversary mark.
Another review at the one year mark? How many chances do you think STO deserves?
As for the C-Store, with Lifetime Subscriptions still available and more players taking advantage of it, from a financial aspect it makes sense; the fact that Stahl is working hard on making ways to make as much from the C-Store available in game through other means as possible gives me a lot of hope for the future of this game. I look forward to seeing yet another re-review at the 1-year anniversary mark.
Another review at the one year mark? How many chances do you think STO deserves?
The difference between an MMO and a single player game is that the MMO is always changing. If you want proof of that, look at SWG 6 months before the NGE and 6 months after. Dont you think the game deserved a different rating AFTER the NGE than it had before? And if a game's rating can change because of foolish decisions like the NGE, the other side of the coin means that it should also be able to change because of improvements after the last review.
Oh... And regarding value, I think $20 is a great value if you complete the content inside a month, it's worth $35 over two months ($20 box and one month fee) and that the weekly episodes being added (and daily episodes) are well worth $3.50 a week in a world where a fast food combo meal is over $5 and a comic book is $4.
Most subscription MMO's offer the first month free, so that is no big deal. You seem to forget the game has a cash shop that has many items that cannot be attained in game (which represents alot of potential content up for sale), so many players end up spending more than the $15 per month subscription fee - not a great value in my book. STO is not doing anything extraordinary, especially compared to other current MMO's that offer so much more bang for the buck.
As for the C-Store, with Lifetime Subscriptions still available and more players taking advantage of it, from a financial aspect it makes sense; the fact that Stahl is working hard on making ways to make as much from the C-Store available in game through other means as possible gives me a lot of hope for the future of this game. I look forward to seeing yet another re-review at the 1-year anniversary mark.
Another review at the one year mark? How many chances do you think STO deserves?
The difference between an MMO and a single player game is that the MMO is always changing. If you want proof of that, look at SWG 6 months before the NGE and 6 months after. Dont you think the game deserved a different rating AFTER the NGE than it had before?
Although I'd be first in line to say that this game has glaring problems I don' think your being entirely realistic or fair here. Tell me one MMO or other video game based on Star Trek that isn't almost entirely about combat??
I don't think there has been another MMORPG based on Star Trek. There have, of course, been ship-based shooters, like STO, based on the Star Trek look and feel.
In RPG games, you get to pick the role you want to play. I spent last night on Lotro just exploring ruins, clicking hidden spots for deeds, and harvesting and crafting. The world is immersive, and fun to explore.
You don't get to pick a role in STO, you are forced to be a ship captain in battle.
Value? Good lord... Are you aware that you're reviewing a MMO and not a single player game? You say it's a good value that for the month it takes you to get through the content, it won't cost y much. So the value is saving on a subscription? All you did was take their lack of content and somehow turn that into a pro by saying they'll save you money unlike those other pesky MMO's with their fancy content that keeps you paying for years... Real slick, dude.
The review has the numbers flipped around this game is a 4 at best. The fact that "two are now gone" is not a defense of the company's plan to milk every easy cent out of the true StarTrek fan's wallets. This game was never built to be a good MMO or even a good game. It was made specifically to display ST universe models in a 3d environment which can be bought and enhanced through micropayments over time. Even calling this charade a decent game is a stretch but to infer it is a decent StarTrek game is downright ludicrus. It's all the fans have atm so they'll have to live with it, but if another was available there's no doubt most of the people would jump ship. I had to give the game a try when it hit 20 bux but I was disgusted at what I found. There's my opinion as a true ST fan. If you want to play a good startrek game go play Voyager Elite Force that was the first and last good ST game ever made.
"I'm not cheap I'm incredibly subconsciously financially optimized" "The worst part of censorship is ------------------"
Yeah... seems like a noob review to me. Well, seems the reviewer just joined the site so it's predictable that he will be soft as pillow. Everyone's a Vice Admiral sure seems to capture Star Trek and Starfleet awesomely. I remember in the shows where you had 300 Vice Admiral's per ship fighting Borg, it was just awesome! Giving Roleplaying 9 when you just command your own ship full of NPC's in an empty universe with instances and maybe around 20 other players (ships with their kazillion NPC's in it) is rubbish. You can't even roleplay the sole purpose of Star Trek; "To boldly go where no man has gone before". Planets are barren wastelands when you get there and your away team does nothing, but hinder your progress.
Saying the game's good value, because you can buy the box cheap also completely bypasses the whole idea of having a MMORPG. Well, not that you can call STO MMORPG, but still. STO even has a C-Store and I believe some lifetimers even say STO is C-Store Online, you pay monthly fee to access their nickle and dime store.
Honestly, I can accept cash stores.. adding stuff like uniforms I can live with, but I will not accept adding ships and even simple things like emotes to them with no way of obtaining equal items in-game. It's just robbery and I see how Cryptic is paying for their greed nicely. Hope they burn.
Thanks for the review and the follow-up. Interesting stuff. I'm one of these whimpy casuals, so I may give this game a looksee one day, esp now that I've read about weekly missions. Sounds fun.
re: All the people who say "another review? Why?"
I can't believe you're complaining about a new review of an MMO. There's nothing wrong with a second look, esp of something that's changed. If your complaint is that <your favorite game> hasn't gotten a second chance, then write up a review yourself. I don't mean that as a challenge either - these things are interesting to a lot of people.
re: "In Star Trek, every effort is made to avoid combat, violence is the last resort. In STO, violence is the only resort. STO is not Star Trek."
Huh? Yes, there was diplomacy and dialogue, but there was plenty of fighting too. Kirk certainly loved to fight, and DS9 featured a war for a number of seasons.
Meanwhile, how do you represent diplomacy meaningfully in an MMO? Take the episode in which Picard rescues the earth boy captured by <whatever bumpy-head race> - what exactly are you going to do in an MMO? Click lots of dialogue buttons, then choose the one that says "don't fight, give the boy back", and that's the end?
You need to think this through. The only interesting diplomacy I've ever seen in MMOs involves players, not the game.
I'm going to refrain from any detailed discussions about my article. It generated a range of opinions. I knew it would. If Cryptic can make good on Klingons, I'll happily reverse my assessment. They've previewed some nice content in the past few days.
This review is a six month re-review. All games are eligible for one if someone is interested in re-reviewing one.
I based my score on the numeric breakdown for MMOs this site has reviewed in the past. Here's my score breakdown, for those interested:
Graphics: 9
Sound: 7
Role-Playing: 9
Value: 9
Fun: 7
Community: 2
Performance/Lag: 8
Customer Service: 8
Overall: 7.4
That's how I arrive at a 7.4 overall.
I'd rather you draw your own conclusions about me or my article. You're absolutely welcome to disagree. I'm here because I wanted to illuminate where the score came from... and elaborate that much of the article was written awhile back, before the recent wave of Klingon related statements and feedback. At that point, especially, I felt Cryptic had made a design choice to have two factions and had failed to justify it, leading to a pretty cataclysmic rift in the community that would not have occurred had they focused on one faction at a time. I remain somewhat skeptical about whether it was a wise decision for them to do it... But we'll see how that pans out in six months.
Thanks... and carry on!
A couple of things firstly , value ? Really ? The game goes from $ 50 to $ 20 , basically bargin bin. Which means they have to drop it to rock bottom to get to sell. Not a good sign if you are a Distributor, worse if you're a developer.
Customer Service has been the bain of this game, GM ticket anyone , bug anything lately ? Not to mention the unresponsive issues with account services. LOL, you obviously used them a great deal. Lag and rubberbanding were pretty frequent as of late , more then I can recall.
As for your comments about Klingons , first to comment on them, I'd suggest you actually play the faction . You still persist on forwarding your false subjective opinions about the game design and multi faction game this was designed to be. The execution of the Klingon faction was horrible and hurt the game. This is acceptible language, what you stated was the a line meant to deflect criticism off of Cryptic. As a reporter you've forgotten the number one rule :
I dont know how you can rate the fun and role-playing factors so high. Do you have a high level char at all? All you get is one new episode a week, other than that you do a daily. That is not fun. If the game were so much fun, why is it a ghosttown? How many AAA titles lauch and fall below 100k in subs in less than 6 months? Can you jump in as a new person and have fun for a few weeks, YES. Can you continue to have fun after you max one char, not really unless you enjoy doing the EXACT same missions over and over again. Unlike other MMO's with different content for different classes, STO only has one track to follow for ALL chars. And dont get me started on the fun factor for klingons. I dare you to start one and see what life is like for them and then come back here and back up your claim of rating this game a 7 for fun.
What role-playing? You cant even join a task force in a group and there is NO purpose to having fleets in game. They give no benefit other than a shared bank. You can invite others to your bridge to stare at the upside down textures on the walls but good luck sitting down or doing ANYTHING except enjoying the view. What did you do, role play by yourself? Did you pretent you were a ship captain and talk to yourself while playing? Thats not really what most people consider roleplaying content in a game.
This game does not deserve a score above 6.9 at best. I really wonder what the motivation was for your re-review.
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
i am a die hard trek fan and morg player. Was very much looking forward to sto but the platform disappointed me and so i did not buy it. I was hoping for a trek game where you could choose to be an engineer, doctor or bridge officer, when i read everyone was a capt, and you had a bunch of npc pets, was not what i was hoping for, i wondered then and speculated that the community aspect of the game might not be too strong and seeing some of the posts that appears to be the case
Originally posted by Ruivoml just viewed the review. It does a nice review of the things we have recently viewed in STO.
Its nice to view that there are some who view the need of re-viewing sto to make a rereview of previous reviews..
And i must say that, right now, in retrospect i do believe that Star Trek Online will soar high in the years to come. The devs DO hear us, and Daniel Stahl is as good a executive producer as we could ever desire. Most executives these days seem to think that they are far too important to debate ideas with the community, but dstahl, rekhan and others are so in touch with the community that we sometimes forget who we are talking to.
All in all, i surprisingly found myself playing STO every single day again since last week, and only after reading this re-review i noticed that i was once more having fun. STO future does looks brighter and brighter from where we stand
And another thing i must say is.. most people in here who are complaining and whining should be a little more involved in STO's community before saying that this game sucks. The thing is that STO was plagued by bad decisions in the past, and now it is entirely under new management. In the past 3 months, dStahl managed to turn water into wine regarding some aspects of the game, and there still is much more to come. Just wait until the new ground-combat system hits the main server...
I respect your point of view but you do not understand our point of view at all it seems. What is acceptable to you is not acceptable to most.
The Game Engine itself... is substandard and never should have been considered for use with anything but a cheap console game. It is not suitable for use for a online multiplayer game and no amount of fixes can fix this one... the whole game needs to be scrapped software wise and remade from scratch.
How space was done in STO is horrible to most players that bought and played the game... I am talking not only space combat with no Z axis but also how the ship classes were designed, Sector space itself, even the lay out of the galaxy is wrong. Note I am not talking about walking in ships... even running the game as a "ship character" space in so many ways is substandard.
Ground combat misses the mark because it SHOULD be ground SURVEY, EXPLORATION, CONTACT, and DIPLOMACY first and then combat if necessary, which means ground CONTENT needs a complete re-create. Planet zones need to have many times more area than they do not, environment needs serious work, LOS issues, collision issues, character animations need serious work, Missions... oh man where do I start with that mess...
Factions... this is Star Trek for god's sake, Klingons get worse treatment than my mother in law, no Romulans? seriously? We fight Borg from day one and kick their tails? Give me a break. Note I am a Federation all the way and even I think the Klingon faction got screwed.... Gene is turning over in his grave I would imagine...
Philosophy of game content and Missions relative to the Intellectual Property... Blatant disregard for the IP in both subtle and gross fashion. I am going to stop right there... either you know what I speak of or you never will understand that STO is NOT Star Trek, only an insulting joke of what it should be.
And you say it is getting better?
OF COURSE IT'S GETTING BETTER.... IT WAS SO BAD IT HAD NO WHERE TO GO BUT UP!
If you like STO fine, but please be advised that many, many Players feel that Cryptic should have lost the IP as soon as STO's release was public because of the horrible job they did with it. No amount of encouragement from Players that still play will ever fix that to many of us.
The only way to fix this mess to to abandon the software, shut down the servers, refund the customers what they have paid, and sell off the IP to a Dev Team that will do it right the second time.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!" ............... "I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. " __Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__ ...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
You, the staff of MMORPG.COM, have sold your loyalty shamelessly. You have lost what respect I had for you as a MMO news site.
I will not be reading anymore of the reviews posted by MMORPG.COM.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!" ............... "I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. " __Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__ ...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
Comments
I'm not gonna tell them what they should have rated this game, but it does not deserve even a decent rating (in my opinion). Frankly, I'd be a tad pissed if I knew little about the game and visited this site and made a purchase based off of this review.
Space combat is fun for a very brief amount of time, but the rest of this game is simply atrocious. It's common knowledge that the game is beyond lackluster and is nothing short of a molestation of the IP.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
I'm going to refrain from any detailed discussions about my article. It generated a range of opinions. I knew it would. If Cryptic can make good on Klingons, I'll happily reverse my assessment. They've previewed some nice content in the past few days.
This review is a six month re-review. All games are eligible for one if someone is interested in re-reviewing one.
I based my score on the numeric breakdown for MMOs this site has reviewed in the past. Here's my score breakdown, for those interested:
Graphics: 9
Sound: 7
Role-Playing: 9
Value: 9
Fun: 7
Community: 2
Performance/Lag: 8
Customer Service: 8
Overall: 7.4
That's how I arrive at a 7.4 overall.
I'd rather you draw your own conclusions about me or my article. You're absolutely welcome to disagree. I'm here because I wanted to illuminate where the score came from... and elaborate that much of the article was written awhile back, before the recent wave of Klingon related statements and feedback. At that point, especially, I felt Cryptic had made a design choice to have two factions and had failed to justify it, leading to a pretty cataclysmic rift in the community that would not have occurred had they focused on one faction at a time. I remain somewhat skeptical about whether it was a wise decision for them to do it... But we'll see how that pans out in six months.
Thanks... and carry on!
Although I'd be first in line to say that this game has glaring problems I don' think your being entirely realistic or fair here. Tell me one MMO or other video game based on Star Trek that isn't almost entirely about combat?? Besides puzzle games (something that takes quite a bit of work to create, is not repeatable, and is very easy to make too hard or too easy) how are you going to really emulate "diplomacy" in a mmo? I have never seen any video game, Star Trek or otherwise, that doesn’t emphasize the "action" portions of the IP. I mean in the Lord of the Rings books, it took the fellowship weeks to travel what takes minutes in the game. Part of the "IP" of Lord of the Rings is the size of the world, and vastness of it. Since the game doesn’t emulate the epic size of Middle Earth it sucks? Some things are just part of making a game, and space combat in STO isn't half bad.
Combat is part of MMO archetype; it is also part of most if not all video games. Granted STO could have made things more "immersive in the Star Trek sense with multi-player crews and the like, but ultimately combat is any games bread and butter. This fact is not really a Cryptic problem.
If you ask me one of the things they really screwed up is that they didn’t introduce more “combat” content, as they should have emphasised what they already had that was good: SPACE COMBAT. Instead of making new Klingon PvE content (although they should have done that as well) they should have expanded their PvP to make it more meaningful and immersive. A war that wasn’t just pointless arena matches would have given all us initial klingons something to do and kept a lot of us subscribing. Almost all of the good PvP fleets and players have left the game because there was nothing to do. It would have also given Feds something to do when they had exhausted all the PvE content, and if they rolled Klingon they would be forced to learn how to PvP to level. I don’t know but epic space battles have always been pretty dang cool in Star Trek when they happen. The best star trek movie imho: The Wrath of Khan was all about space combat.
STO pvp is actually very well balanced, and offers different mixes of skills and abilities to allow different roles. Skill is a huge factor between winning and losing, and gear helps but it’s not the I WIN button that you would get in say something like WoW. Contrary to what some people think you can’t just "spam space bar" and win in PvP in this game at all. This is how they could have made most of the Klingons happy, since that’s what they advertised about them in the first place. When I went into Beta I was expecting a huge neutral zone war. All we got is endless boring arena matches.
Oh... And regarding value, I think $20 is a great value if you complete the content inside a month, it's worth $35 over two months ($20 box and one month fee) and that the weekly episodes being added (and daily episodes) are well worth $3.50 a week in a world where a fast food combo meal is over $5 and a comic book is $4.
So can you explain how a MMO that took 18 month to make and has very little content but yet is one of the most expensive MMOs to play get 9 for value??? I think maybe 2/10 for value seems more accurate.
Graphics and role-playing seems extremly high aswell.
Thanks for posting though!
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
It works pretty much the same way as everything else in RL where the "professionals" and average joes dont usually agree.
Another review at the one year mark? How many chances do you think STO deserves?The difference between an MMO and a single player game is that the MMO is always changing. If you want proof of that, look at SWG 6 months before the NGE and 6 months after. Dont you think the game deserved a different rating AFTER the NGE than it had before? And if a game's rating can change because of foolish decisions like the NGE, the other side of the coin means that it should also be able to change because of improvements after the last review.
Most subscription MMO's offer the first month free, so that is no big deal. You seem to forget the game has a cash shop that has many items that cannot be attained in game (which represents alot of potential content up for sale), so many players end up spending more than the $15 per month subscription fee - not a great value in my book. STO is not doing anything extraordinary, especially compared to other current MMO's that offer so much more bang for the buck.
Another review at the one year mark? How many chances do you think STO deserves?The difference between an MMO and a single player game is that the MMO is always changing. If you want proof of that, look at SWG 6 months before the NGE and 6 months after. Dont you think the game deserved a different rating AFTER the NGE than it had before?
Well good point, I'll give you that.Although I'd be first in line to say that this game has glaring problems I don' think your being entirely realistic or fair here. Tell me one MMO or other video game based on Star Trek that isn't almost entirely about combat??
I don't think there has been another MMORPG based on Star Trek. There have, of course, been ship-based shooters, like STO, based on the Star Trek look and feel.
In RPG games, you get to pick the role you want to play. I spent last night on Lotro just exploring ruins, clicking hidden spots for deeds, and harvesting and crafting. The world is immersive, and fun to explore.
You don't get to pick a role in STO, you are forced to be a ship captain in battle.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
Value? Good lord... Are you aware that you're reviewing a MMO and not a single player game? You say it's a good value that for the month it takes you to get through the content, it won't cost y much. So the value is saving on a subscription? All you did was take their lack of content and somehow turn that into a pro by saying they'll save you money unlike those other pesky MMO's with their fancy content that keeps you paying for years... Real slick, dude.
The review has the numbers flipped around this game is a 4 at best. The fact that "two are now gone" is not a defense of the company's plan to milk every easy cent out of the true StarTrek fan's wallets. This game was never built to be a good MMO or even a good game. It was made specifically to display ST universe models in a 3d environment which can be bought and enhanced through micropayments over time. Even calling this charade a decent game is a stretch but to infer it is a decent StarTrek game is downright ludicrus. It's all the fans have atm so they'll have to live with it, but if another was available there's no doubt most of the people would jump ship. I had to give the game a try when it hit 20 bux but I was disgusted at what I found. There's my opinion as a true ST fan. If you want to play a good startrek game go play Voyager Elite Force that was the first and last good ST game ever made.
"I'm not cheap I'm incredibly subconsciously financially optimized"
"The worst part of censorship is ------------------"
Roleplaying: 9
Value: 9
Yeah... seems like a noob review to me. Well, seems the reviewer just joined the site so it's predictable that he will be soft as pillow. Everyone's a Vice Admiral sure seems to capture Star Trek and Starfleet awesomely. I remember in the shows where you had 300 Vice Admiral's per ship fighting Borg, it was just awesome! Giving Roleplaying 9 when you just command your own ship full of NPC's in an empty universe with instances and maybe around 20 other players (ships with their kazillion NPC's in it) is rubbish. You can't even roleplay the sole purpose of Star Trek; "To boldly go where no man has gone before". Planets are barren wastelands when you get there and your away team does nothing, but hinder your progress.
Saying the game's good value, because you can buy the box cheap also completely bypasses the whole idea of having a MMORPG. Well, not that you can call STO MMORPG, but still. STO even has a C-Store and I believe some lifetimers even say STO is C-Store Online, you pay monthly fee to access their nickle and dime store.
Honestly, I can accept cash stores.. adding stuff like uniforms I can live with, but I will not accept adding ships and even simple things like emotes to them with no way of obtaining equal items in-game. It's just robbery and I see how Cryptic is paying for their greed nicely. Hope they burn.
Thanks for the review and the follow-up. Interesting stuff. I'm one of these whimpy casuals, so I may give this game a looksee one day, esp now that I've read about weekly missions. Sounds fun.
re: All the people who say "another review? Why?"
I can't believe you're complaining about a new review of an MMO. There's nothing wrong with a second look, esp of something that's changed. If your complaint is that <your favorite game> hasn't gotten a second chance, then write up a review yourself. I don't mean that as a challenge either - these things are interesting to a lot of people.
re: "In Star Trek, every effort is made to avoid combat, violence is the last resort. In STO, violence is the only resort. STO is not Star Trek."
Huh? Yes, there was diplomacy and dialogue, but there was plenty of fighting too. Kirk certainly loved to fight, and DS9 featured a war for a number of seasons.
Meanwhile, how do you represent diplomacy meaningfully in an MMO? Take the episode in which Picard rescues the earth boy captured by <whatever bumpy-head race> - what exactly are you going to do in an MMO? Click lots of dialogue buttons, then choose the one that says "don't fight, give the boy back", and that's the end?
You need to think this through. The only interesting diplomacy I've ever seen in MMOs involves players, not the game.
-Jeff
People don't realize that an MMO with no combat, just diplomacy text will get boring extremely fast.
And an MMO with nothing but space ship combat will get boring just as fast.
Though I agree just combat DOES it get boring, I dont agree it gets boring "just" as fast. Just non-combat gets boring faster than just combat.
Well STO got 7.4 that felt really biased.
Whats next, give a guy money and he will write a review on hellokitty online and give it a perfect 10?
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
A couple of things firstly , value ? Really ? The game goes from $ 50 to $ 20 , basically bargin bin. Which means they have to drop it to rock bottom to get to sell. Not a good sign if you are a Distributor, worse if you're a developer.
Customer Service has been the bain of this game, GM ticket anyone , bug anything lately ? Not to mention the unresponsive issues with account services. LOL, you obviously used them a great deal. Lag and rubberbanding were pretty frequent as of late , more then I can recall.
As for your comments about Klingons , first to comment on them, I'd suggest you actually play the faction . You still persist on forwarding your false subjective opinions about the game design and multi faction game this was designed to be. The execution of the Klingon faction was horrible and hurt the game. This is acceptible language, what you stated was the a line meant to deflect criticism off of Cryptic. As a reporter you've forgotten the number one rule :
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/objectivity
Especially where 3 a. is applied. Learn it.
This game isn't worthy of a re-review. If you want to re-review something, review Darkfall
I dont know how you can rate the fun and role-playing factors so high. Do you have a high level char at all? All you get is one new episode a week, other than that you do a daily. That is not fun. If the game were so much fun, why is it a ghosttown? How many AAA titles lauch and fall below 100k in subs in less than 6 months? Can you jump in as a new person and have fun for a few weeks, YES. Can you continue to have fun after you max one char, not really unless you enjoy doing the EXACT same missions over and over again. Unlike other MMO's with different content for different classes, STO only has one track to follow for ALL chars. And dont get me started on the fun factor for klingons. I dare you to start one and see what life is like for them and then come back here and back up your claim of rating this game a 7 for fun.
What role-playing? You cant even join a task force in a group and there is NO purpose to having fleets in game. They give no benefit other than a shared bank. You can invite others to your bridge to stare at the upside down textures on the walls but good luck sitting down or doing ANYTHING except enjoying the view. What did you do, role play by yourself? Did you pretent you were a ship captain and talk to yourself while playing? Thats not really what most people consider roleplaying content in a game.
This game does not deserve a score above 6.9 at best. I really wonder what the motivation was for your re-review.
i am a die hard trek fan and morg player. Was very much looking forward to sto but the platform disappointed me and so i did not buy it. I was hoping for a trek game where you could choose to be an engineer, doctor or bridge officer, when i read everyone was a capt, and you had a bunch of npc pets, was not what i was hoping for, i wondered then and speculated that the community aspect of the game might not be too strong and seeing some of the posts that appears to be the case
I respect your point of view but you do not understand our point of view at all it seems. What is acceptable to you is not acceptable to most.
The Game Engine itself... is substandard and never should have been considered for use with anything but a cheap console game. It is not suitable for use for a online multiplayer game and no amount of fixes can fix this one... the whole game needs to be scrapped software wise and remade from scratch.
How space was done in STO is horrible to most players that bought and played the game... I am talking not only space combat with no Z axis but also how the ship classes were designed, Sector space itself, even the lay out of the galaxy is wrong. Note I am not talking about walking in ships... even running the game as a "ship character" space in so many ways is substandard.
Ground combat misses the mark because it SHOULD be ground SURVEY, EXPLORATION, CONTACT, and DIPLOMACY first and then combat if necessary, which means ground CONTENT needs a complete re-create. Planet zones need to have many times more area than they do not, environment needs serious work, LOS issues, collision issues, character animations need serious work, Missions... oh man where do I start with that mess...
Factions... this is Star Trek for god's sake, Klingons get worse treatment than my mother in law, no Romulans? seriously? We fight Borg from day one and kick their tails? Give me a break. Note I am a Federation all the way and even I think the Klingon faction got screwed.... Gene is turning over in his grave I would imagine...
Philosophy of game content and Missions relative to the Intellectual Property... Blatant disregard for the IP in both subtle and gross fashion. I am going to stop right there... either you know what I speak of or you never will understand that STO is NOT Star Trek, only an insulting joke of what it should be.
And you say it is getting better?
OF COURSE IT'S GETTING BETTER.... IT WAS SO BAD IT HAD NO WHERE TO GO BUT UP!
If you like STO fine, but please be advised that many, many Players feel that Cryptic should have lost the IP as soon as STO's release was public because of the horrible job they did with it. No amount of encouragement from Players that still play will ever fix that to many of us.
The only way to fix this mess to to abandon the software, shut down the servers, refund the customers what they have paid, and sell off the IP to a Dev Team that will do it right the second time.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!"
...............
"I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. "
__Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__
...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
Now for MMORPG.COM and it's re-review of STO...
7.4?
You, the staff of MMORPG.COM, have sold your loyalty shamelessly. You have lost what respect I had for you as a MMO news site.
I will not be reading anymore of the reviews posted by MMORPG.COM.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!"
...............
"I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. "
__Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__
...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...