STO Sucks

It absolutely is. I don't know if it's still active, but at one point recently, they had an instance up where you could play from the original launch coding, just to see how much things had changed.

Probably feels like you're playing a game because you're, um, playing a game? They redid sector space recently and got rid of a ton of load screens, so you can now fly for what feels like forever without reloading. Not sure how you think you would get from sector space to a system (or mission) without a load screen, as it would just be a massively big thing that way, plus there are different mechanics involved in how the missions work. Imagine the bug where the bad guy you have to kill just wanders off and is off in the DQ when you were fighting him around Vulcan. Hell, try beaming down somewhere, even if you lived real life in the Trek universe, that's a NATURAL load screen. Never heard Kirk complain about breaking immersion

Again, are you basing this off of the Beta, or have you played in the last 5 years? This WAS a big problem in the beginning, but has been changed drastically since. Still a few patrol missions and whatnot, but way more Featured Episodes, remastered content, and variation in how you get there. The days of scanning 5 things after fighting 3 groups of bad guys near the asteroid that looked like a donut are mostly gone.

yes, they HAVE gone back specifically and redone a bunch of models. When was the last time you checked? The Galaxy class just got a total redo in the past 6 months or so, know there were a bunch of others. Voyager also got some nice stuff done. Whether you like the design of the new ships (admittedly not all awesome), the models are the exact opposite of the "increasingly crude" that you're stating.

Honestly, a lot of the stuff you're complaining about are NOT problems with the game, and some of it is just plain wrong. Problem seems to be that this MMO is not what you want it to be, and it wasn't designed to appeal directly to you.

Fun enough game, although has its issues, and is more grindy than I'd prefer. Wish it had more 25th Anniversary-type game content, but it is what it is. It's NOT that, plus a fighting game, plus Bridge Commander, plus Armada, and Quake, and an interactive Star Trek museum. It can't be. An impossible standard to hold it to.

 

But there have been a lot of improvements, online and the game itself have seen big improvments on the games stabilty, servers have also been improved, were lag and rubber banding was common, it's now quite rare, plus changing charactor no longer requires you to log out of the game, and the game also supports Dx11 and a ton of new graphical effects, has tons of content both single and multi, clans, charactor building, fleets, the crafting system has been overhauled, added factions, added races, added ships, addd systems.

But i do not think the game is even close to the mess it was on launch, not perfect but it is hard to deny it has not improved somewhat.

 

I will agree to join only if you voted AYE.

Also, who can forget 'Dervishgate'

 

All this talk has made me want to dust off the .dmg and play it again.

 

eh, my main issue is the grind. Been busy (new house, baby, etc will do that to you I suppose), so i log in, but not a lot of real play time. Manage to get in and rotate assignments, maybe even play the featured episode for the reward, but lots of grinding, and gotta keep doing things to not fall so far behind...

 

And I think a number of Eric's quotes really explain what was going on at at Perpetual and eventually Cryptic.

You can actually "hear" it. Eric I am sure is a great designer, but he and cryptic suffered from being way too "in the box".

Eric and Cryptic both came at it by trying to make ST fit into a specific MMO game paradigm rather than making a ST game.

They discussed the issues that should be different in a ST MMO, and then rationalized why they should not be different.

The development team listened to fans and beta testers. Then ignored anything they had to say that wasn't simply cosmetic - basically on the premise that they could never satisfy the enthusiasts - just like Eric said. So they copped out. There seemed to always be excuses.

They made assumptions (just like Eric) about what kind of games people wanted to play versus what kind of game ST folk wanted to play. They very much wanted to aim for non-ST gamers because they felt they needed them. But they also wanted ST fans. They obviously hadn't seen a Venn diagram.


The engine was not the right one to use - and I would be kind to Cryptic on this had they not volunteered to do the job. They should have licensed another.

Some on the development team had never really watched ST and none of them had seen all of the versions much less every episode. They were not trekkies. They openly made that clear and set about seeing every episode (a credit to them).

To cryptic's credit, they accomplished about 4 years worth of work in 2 - but the rollout was really really bad. The game went gold before it was complete. Cryptic's response as I recall was that was normal for MMO's - which evolve. But the PVE was flat and unrewarding and the PVP was under-developed. It was a huge turn off for many early players and many left and didn't come back.

Eric and Cryptic both came at it like they were making ST fit into a specific game paradigm they had been taught. They were trying to follow aspects of EVE and WoW (while denying it - maybe even to themselves) that make a "popular game". But you know what? EVE and WoW were successes, not because they followed the proper game development paradigm, but because the didn't - they actually established paradigms. Nowhere was that type of attitude needed more than in the development of STO. They boldly went where everyone had gone before - and where many had failed before.

In the end, STO is a decent space game. It looks like ST. They got the cosmetics right. But unless they made huge and dramatic changes in the last 2 years, it doesn't feel like ST and didn't from the beginning. The space combat is simplistic and lacks strategy and drama - it's basically an arcade game. That may be "fun" - but it is not Star Trek. Star Wars maybe - not ST. The ground interactions improved dramatically, but they don't evolve and the balance was off.

Anyways, that my review. I know come folks really like STO - and they should continue to. It's obviously fun for some. It is certainly pretty. But I hope if there is ever another multiplayer ST game, it's done by a group that is more indoctrinated into ST and less into following rules about gaming development that were established by those that succeed by not following them. The next multiplayer ST game?:

• The feel first, the look second.
• Don't do what "they" did. They already did it.
• Be bold or be gone - make the game fit ST, not ST fit the game.
• Hire trekkies as consultants (and keep a lot of salt in your pocket).
• Sweat the big stuff - Let the players deal with the ST philosophy, but capture the "function" of the ST universe (you can have an economy - just not one based on money).
• Don't be afraid to make the players think and work. STO = FAIL here.
• Play SFB and other/similar games a year before you really nail down the game outline.
• Pick an era - an early one - and then evolve forward, not just outward.

 

Hmm, but only the Federation doesn't use money. Everybody else AFAIK does, forcing even the Feds to use something when dealing with the outside world. 'Nuff to watch DS9 to see the crew paying Quark in some manner.

 

Sorry, It was an example of how to get around problems. And to be fair, I don't think STO really has a big issue with it - not that I noticed. But my point was don't look at things like that as difficult road blocks. The early developer in the blog I think repeatedly talked about it. MMOs need economies (supposedly). But they don't have to be money based - so don't make it a big deal. Make it a skill economy for example, or a task based economy.

EDIT - BTW - I couldn't edit that post. Whenever I tried it just gave me a blank screen...so sorry for the typos and not explaining my example better.

 

I'm in two minds to be honest.

I'd have preferred a game in the mold of Star Wars Galaxies. To be honest though, I don't think Star Trek's IP was/is healthy enough to support the development costs for such a game.

STO is good for what it is. Aspects of it have improved drastically over the years. Other aspects are dire. It's very much designed for casual play. You log in for about an hour a day, zap some things and log off. It is very much a theme-park MMO. If you tried taking it seriously, you'd realise it's very easy to make even the hardest content absurdly easy.

Yeah, if yo're looking for depth of gameplay, STO certainly isn't it. It also has an atrocious story, most of which is simply an excuse for the next grind content.

 

I like it. The official mission tree is very much one war after another though which fits the Federation story where they are fighting on so many fronts that they need ship commanders as fast as they can be trained (Faster really.)

 

Sorry, was having trouble quoting for some reason, but I agree with most of what you said. I'd been following early development of the game, even as a member of the PE forums, and if you remember, there was quite a big following and it was a pretty good forum overall.

In general, I don't know if what PE promised for the game was possible, but I loved their unique approach. Even their thought process behind it was refreshing, and to me felt like they were thinking outside the box. Maybe their goals were too lofty. But when Cryptic took it over, I felt like much of that creative vision had deflated. It's important for an MMO to be unique in order to stand out among the sea of MMOs, and I felt that rather than innovating and pushing the envelope, that they were going to fit the status quo. The end result IMHO, was rather disappointing.

Now then, maybe what PE was proposing was impossible for its time, but now you have games like Pulsar: The Lost Colony that propose to do the type of thing PE was proposing, albeit on a smaller scale, but feeling very much like Trek.

 

I knew it was there, but 2017 I tried it, I thought there would be an adventure aspect to it because Star Trek has always been about going on "peaceful missions" and adventuring. I discovered it was not really my genre, In my opinion, the story of the game more or less distrupts the vision of Gene Roddenberry, while there were (Adventure) Star Trek games before, that did not distrupt this in my view. But OK, I learned to see it as anouther MMO like Neverwinter Nights or something. But still it has some bugs and other annoyances that made me stop playing it:

Glitches and bugs. Can be stuck. When in a team, one lift can lock you alone on one floor after a sync glitch in the quest system.
The Sun is in Beta Quadrant. That's wrong. Everyone knows it's in Alpha.
Quest dialogs appear during fights, having you to loose that and this means respawning.
The turn rate of the ships is "too realistic", this prevent good fight against AI
An "Exploration and Diplomacy mode" where you only can use your _brain_ to explore and peacefully agree with
aliens, or turn them away in a somewhat "peacefulish" way. After all, Star Trek is not about just "warfare from
the beginning to end". But as a Star Trek teamed MMO, it could have potential, if they fix the bugs, add more content, I would like it to use another engine for example. We will see what happens in the future, I will certainly give it a new chance in a few years.

 

The game is a lot better than 4 years ago, when I first started. I haven't noticed many bugs. It's amazing how the game has changed (and what is coming in the future). The introduction of Salvage and Re-Engineering was a great add-on for the game. I have made all of my toons have a better ships and items. If someone is having problems, ask some of the folks here - many of us have been playing for many years.

With regards to where the sun is - that debate is so old, I remember some of the debates on the PE forums. Doesn't bother me where it is, as star maps show it on the border of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, and that is where PE got their information for where all planets are.

With regards to content? How much do you want. Can play 4 different factions and over 150 episodes (many of them tailed to a particular faction), then the many PvE queues, Patrol Missions and adventure zones. And also the Foundry, where there is a large amount of user-made content. And all of this content is free. Nothing is locked behind a paygate (like other MMO)

 

Wow, glad this threads pattern had not degraded because of all the time it has been in the transporter buffer. lol

 

Who in the hell resurrected this Zombie thread?

 

A thread is not dead, as long as you remember it....

(cue leaving Genesis Planet music)

 

Well I do a test run every now and then, to see if certain bugs are fixed or not. And it will not be forgotten... One day they may ride out all bugs and it gets really nice.