WoW has it right... you have a level of progression you must go down to get to a certain tier... then you have to work on the next one.
Sure, if you're a member of one of the uber guilds, and have no life, you can complete all that WoW has to offer in a short amount of time.. but I've played it since launch(until a few months ago), and I've NEVER run out of things to aspire to in that game.
2. No Uber Gear
This ties in with the first thing. Sure, we've got epic gear.. but it's super easy to get. You have a few rare pieces that are gotten through semi-hard STF's, but I can count them on my hands. The rest of the epic gear is handed to us on a silver platter, or turned in for badges.
Even worse, the greatest items in the game, the things that we really SHOULD be working hard towards, are the ships... and you only get special ships by PAYING MONEY FOR THEM. Sure, you can grind eleventy billion badges(which is so tedious and boring to do, no one in their right mind actually does).
We should be Crafting/Earning/Putting together our ships. I should have to go do a mission to get a critical piece of technology, then another one, then another... eventually putting together a ship. Maybe take a page from Eve's playbook(not saying Eve's better), and have a few AWESOME ships that require a fleet effort to put together. One of the main draws of guilds/fleets is status, and what better status symbol is there than a big honking rare battleship?
3. Why are there fleets?
I have run a fleet, but I'm always left feeling as though it is nothing but a chatroom and a shared bank. Actually, I don't just feel that way, that's what it actually is. Oh, and a calendar. I guess that's cool.
I want to be able to take my fleet on awesome adventures. I'd like to load 20 of us in a group, and head out to a Fleet Action, and take on the Klingons as a fleet. I'd like there to be STF's that support more than five guys, I'd like to be able to actually coordinate a battle(not necessarily the current Fleet Actions/DSE's, since those are just grind fests).
I want there to be more of a reason to have a fleet than a chatroom and a bank.
4. Ground Combat
Yeah, yeah, I know.. it's getting revamped. Doesn't mean it doesn't still suck.
Nothing worse than getting in a battle with a group that has both a med officer AND an engineer. Especially if that engineer is a Commander.. I once got in a fight where there was a Captain engineer, and a Commander Medic... I nearly logged out of the game right then and there.
I hate the fact that I can't use my abilities when knocked on my TRIBBLE, but when my tac buddy goes and tries to interrupt the healer by keeping them knocked down, they're steadily healing all of their buddies(and themselves).
I hate that there are bad guys out there that can chain stun me without any diminishing returns. I ran into a group of gorn who kept doing this thing where I get chained to the ground by yellow lightning... everytime I broke free, I got another thrown on me. At least I had a nice view of the ten minute battle where my useless BO's played the game for me.
I'm gonna stop right there... because if I continue to complain about Ground Combat, I'll hit the max characters for this post.
5. Bugs
I hate bugs. I understand that there is no such thing as bug free software. But, I do not understand when I encounter the same bugs a year and a half after I first saw them.
I want phaser a dev in the face everytime I line up a perfect high yield shot alongside an enemy's open shields, and watch as the ability either doesn't fire(but still counts as being used), or goes into an additional cooldown(something I've noticed happens when I activate an ability right as it comes off cooldown).
I want to shove my wireless keyboard through my 32 inch HD monitor everytime an enemy slams into an asteroid, and becomes untargetable to me, but has no problem firing weapons through it at me.
Bugs are understandable, but they have to be rectified in a decent amount of time. I can understand some bugs must wait for the next patch, but there's no reason why a year should pass without them getting addressed.
1) End game
2) Bug fixes are late or some don't get fixed at all
3) Ship Weapon scales "way off" the beams are like 1/5 the size of the ship Oo same for cannons.
4) Ground Weapon models! need more models or the ability to change the models ur selfs! like some mmo's have.
5) C-Store (For the love of god why, we pay monthly and yet we have to pay extra for all the real "star trek" stuff) *
* : i know i don't pay monthly anymore but allot of you still do, its not fair for a game that has subs and an micro-transaction store! thats just plain GREEDY in my book, shame on you cryptic. this is exploitation of your fan base well done! cus you know we will buy the c-store stuff cus costumes and ships thats what star trek all about!
In no particular order, I will list mine.
For each of those, I post reason and proposal for fix.
Please remember, I'm stating my 5 disappointments, and the fixes for my disappointments.
I know it is not feasible, from commercial or technical perspective to implement many of them.
I have gone a long way from trying to accept this game as Star Trek universe.
As it is now, It's just another game.... and that is my TOP disappointment.
...here we go:
1. Lack of Star Trek universe feel and immersion
Reason: I don't want to repeat statements after several other posters have already made the point.
This game is supposed to be 2409 Star Trek.
Instead, it is 22nd-25th century museum with NX-01 flying next to Starcruiser. Sooner or later we will see F-22 Raptor as Federation fighter craft.
Instead, it is Hawaiian party with rainbow colored uniforms, lacking any sense of organized institution (aka Starfleet)
Fix: Force uniform rendering using player defined style. Focus development on era-appropriate ships and discourage era inappropriate ships by limiting them to lower tiers.
2. Overall lack of resemblance to Perpetual's design
Reason: I was really looking forward for Perpetual's game. I really liked many of the designs, developed by Star Trek veteran artists. They looked Trek. They looked as a design progression of Starfleet into 25th century.
Most of Cryptic designed stuff (sorry, this is my opinion) does not even get close. Many of ships just look weird and if I wouldn't know, I would not relate them to Star Trek at all.
Fix: Arrange design folks education with Star Trek designers. Set up a boot camp or whatever. Revamp current designs. (CBS will be immediately happier with game environment).
3. Starship / Starbase interiors
Reason: Look like large warehouse areas, instead of starship interior. Compared to realistic Perpetual's interior screens they look horrible.
I recognize this is game engine problem, but that does not reduce the impact of the issue. Interiors lack any immersion factor whatsoever.
Fix: Honestly, at this point I wouldn't know. Fundamental underlying technology problem is not easy to solve.
4. Open space
Reason: Players were promised boldly going where no one has gone before. Instead we're treated with small closed boxes with repeatable content, randomly even not making any sense (Borg political machinations anyone?)
Fix: Open instances with promised Genesis engine. Significant and large scale update to random mission generator, incl. sort of mutual applicability factor (preventing Borg leaving colony in terror and hurry).
Remove borders from sector spaces.
Relative directional distance calculator from Sect 001 - to put it simply and push the limit, if you fly far enough in Genesis dynamic space, you start encountering specific races, ending with opposite quadrant guys (Hirogen, Kazon, Dominion)...
5. Endgame content
Reason: I was expecting episodic experience, such as in Star Trek show. This game was even advertised on several occasions like this.
Instead, very limited content is available at endgame, mostly repeatable down to frustrating levels (STO teaches player what does it mean daily grind. )
Fix: More featured episodes, maybe even several series arcs overlapping. Experiment with mixing feature episodes. Why to play 2 months Breen, 2 months Devidians, when instead we can mix it up (1 week Breen, next we have some Cardassian diplomacy stuff, next week Romulans and we will finish the months with visit to Klingon temple).
This is going well in the direction of feature episodes, the proposal is just to break down the arcs and make it little more episodic. Trek always was episodic (except for ST: Enterprise season 3 that actually killed the show)
1. Overall general lack of KDF content - faction specific costumes, weapons, ships, ship skins, etc etc etc
2. Lack of follow through on stated KDF content additions - been waiting since it was announced last year that there would be a T5/6 K't'inga, haven't seen a thing about it since. Almost no costume choices for the characters, given that there is so little you would think they'd open up costume choices to be cross species giving the illusion of some variety without creating new assets, however choices are locked down limiting what little there is to pick from.
3. Lack of polish on existing content - KDF ship models have glitches and inaccuracies that have existed for over a year now with no mention or seeming intent to deal with them. Rank baldrics still have all sorts of problems.. especially the final rank currently available which was fine, then resized for no apparent reason and glitched, has also been broken now for more than a year.
4. Lack of any real press focus on KDF side. Web presence for KDF is practically non-existent, nothing to pump up interest in the faction. Every time any addition to the FED faction is made there is much hoopla and multimedia extolling the virtues of said new FED ships, missions, costumes, or other items - yet almost nothing is really ever mentioned or bandied about in regards to KDF additions (when there are any). Again nothing to drum up interest in the faction. Take the 500 day vet award for example - all I heard about was the new FED "Jupiter" uniform with endless forum mentions, tweets and sneak peak camera shots. Yet I had to stumble on a mention that there was even something being offered to the KDF on STOWIKI, but definitely no hype about it.
5. I have very little interest in playing the FED faction in general but the one thing that would make me want to play isn't available, and apparently won't be, which is a T5/6 TOS style Constitution. I see recently where there are no plans for it at all, which for me solidifies my lack of any interest in playing the Blue side of things. I even was foolish enough to buy the Value Bundle - The Original Series just for it... I feel stupid now on wasting that cash before finding out all the details. I won't do that again.
Having listed my top 5 disappointments I have to say there are things I do like about STO and the KDF specific work that was generated, however there is still a long way to go. I dropped my subscription last August because of this. Recently I opened my account back up hearing there have been improvements to STO in general, I was disappointed to find how little has been done for the KDF. I'm not asking for equal parity with the FED side that's never going to happen, but after a year and simple things are not fixed or followed through on, it doesn't look good. That being the case I'll take another break soon and hope that someone puts in some effort.
There are much more things that have been a dissapointment for me in this game. (I hope that no one bothers)
Cryptics ship design *choke (Ships don't really look more advanced just over the top and out of place. Some concepts are awesome (like the Star Cruisers) but most of them are just unbalanced and ugly. I won't say anything more now it would get too harsh.)
Too much war everywhere, i mean the federation is at war with the klingons, ok. But they are at war with virtually every other race too...thats just too much. Star Treks main theme is "to explore strange new worlds..." if i remember correctly...
Exploration should have a lot more variety, the way it is now is just boring.
The devs have a lot of good ideas but it takes ages to realize them. (I can't really blame cryptic for that. But it is just annoying to wait half a year for season 4)
Too many bugs not taken care of.
kill 5 here kill 5 there, just stupid. Less killing and more mystery solving would have been much better.
Interiors are just absurdly HUGE.
Space is laughable tiny. Period.
In general i never thought that Star Trek fits very well as background for a MMO. Pressing Star Trek into a MMO mechanic just doesn't work well, IMHO. Just too many things had to be balanced that aren't supposed to be.
In Star Trek there are just too much things that need to be done alone, and so little things to do together with others.
Example: to make a real good Star Trek game the devs should have made the ship interiors a much bigger part of the game. Many episodes just play inside the ship.
In contrast, how many big fleet engegments have we seen in over 700 episodes and 10 movies? Big space battles are just not a Star Trek thing IMHO.
I would have been much more happy with this game if it where a single player game with growing content and an optional PvP multiplayer mode.
One of the disapointment I have is the whole franchise is put into a blender and presented as STO. I wish it was set in ONE era and left it at that. Visualy its a mashing of TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY.
The KDF faction was supposed to be a PVP only race. So, everyone who said there is a lack of ****ent in the KDF faction, think about it again. They are improving the KDF even though they wouldn't have to, there never was a promise to make KDF like UFP. They reacted on the wishes of the members, and that's already a lot of customer service in my opinion!
As for the uniforms ... it would be cool to have the opportunity to do erasodes, meaning episodes of certain eras where the game is forcing you to wear some sort of era-based uniform, like TNG series, TOS series, TMP series etc.
What I really do NOT like about STO, well here are my top five points:
1.
There is not enough endgame ****ent overall, and I think lots of others have agreed to that one already. Only four STF's, three of them Borg and one Undine (no other races involved as enemies). Why not have let's say one STF per main villain race? How about if you make "Starbase 24" and "Breaking the Planet" an STF for teams of 5 players, or "The Big Dig", with some tweaks to make it more story-based and better for teams? The same would apply to "DS9 Under Siege", in combination with "Fox Hunt" it would be a perfect STF! There would be not much of effort needed to convert some of the good fleet actions into STF's, and people would love it!
2.
Too much C-store based stuff. We get a new item or item bundle nearly every 14 days nowadays. Is that the new strategy? We pay monthly fees to play the game in the first place, why does there have to be so much C-store stuff? Granted, some of the high-end items, such as ships, can now also be grinded by emblems, but you all know that not even 5% of all the gamers are going to claim these ships by grinding.
3.
The foundry. Okay, we got the foundry now which is basically a wonderful thing. However, there are so many restrictions in the foundry that most authors have stopped doing missions because of those restrictions. You cannot beam out NPC's, you cannot "disable" enemies, you cannot use a timer, no way to have branching mission objectives except a huge hell of a lot of workarounds, and all the new scenery sets and props (Cloaked Intentions & Devidian Weaklies) aren't even available. You cannot have non-scaling space enemies, no Dreadnought fights for example unless you're teamed with 3 or 4 other players, no way to know who is the medic of a certain ground mob (Romulan, Federation) because they are all randomly put ... why not let the author choose what kind of specific ground mob he wishes to place? For example: Romulan Squadron - Size 7 ... then a small menu where the author can select critters in, e. g. 3 Centurions (one Medic, one Engineer, one Grenadeer) and 4 Uhlans, 1 of them a Sublieutenant Medic. It would be so easy, folks.
4.
Long time bugs that are not fixed ever since. One example is the forced decloak when a dialog box appears. Another is all those ground powers which do not scale up or work properly. Another is the secondary fire mode that causes the player to get stuck in a certain emoticon, being forced to log out and back in. Then we have the spinning around issue on ground, makes you feel dizzy! And we have all those space consoles with mismatched values in them. And there is Ker'rat, and we still have some stuck ground anomalies that irritate tricorder scanning for artifacts, and and and ... you get what I mean.
5.
Fleets. For example the fleet bank thing ... why is an item "removed" when you only move it around inside? Why can't you add something to a stack of items in the fleet bank if you have no permission to take out anything? You got 30 Radiation Samples and want them to add to a stack of 150 Radiation Samples in the fleet bank ... no way to do that, unless you are permitted to remove an item ... that's the thing! You never remove anything, for the Founder's sake!
5a.
There is also no real rank system in the fleet. We have 7 access levels, but why can't we have real ranks like in Starfleet? And why can't the fleet have a flagship which belongs to the fleet and can be used by fleet members for a certain amount of time, perhaps a Dreadnought-leveled ship like the Jupiter class or the Galaxy DN?
The KDF faction was supposed to be a PVP only race. So, everyone who said there is a lack of ****ent in the KDF faction, think about it again.
That statement is incorrect. Anyone who would like to learn about the details refuting that particular bit of mythology should take a look at this thread http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=217322. So long as forum policy is not violated people have the right to voice what changes they want to see happen and express the disappointments they have.
1. Enemies have too much health during ground combat and it feels like a grind during solo-play. This also becomes a nightmare when fighting against the Borg and their proto-drone spawning spam.
2. Again a Borg complaint, it's been 40-some-odd-years since the first recorded contact against the borg (in-game and canon terms) and yet we seem to have no way to defend against their attacks. When fighting them it becomes a unmitigated slog.
3. The weapons feel uneven and clunky. Why are their three expose assault weapons instead of an even two expose/exploit system? Why are people dropping rapid bolt, which should have uncompromising DPS, for split beam weapons? Why do all the assault weapons have the same firing/idle animations? Where are the photon/quantum launchers? Where's my I-MOD?
4. Lots of recycled text during nebula missions. For some reason the Romulans, Klingons, True Way Jem'hadar and Remans all feel they're the strongest force in the galaxy and can't be beat.
5. The skill tree, really cluttered. Is the difference between a Fleet Escort and Advanced Escort really that big that they can't be combined? Not a lot of support for personal weapon damage outside of the Tac officer abilities.
That's pretty much it. Also, no option to put your Away team through Hazard team training. Really big bummer.
1- TOS uniforms, check. TOS bridge, check. TOS hand phaser, check. TOS Constitution I can fly at the endgame? No? WTH? Thanks for nothing Cryptic. Lame lame lame.
2- The Excelsior is the superior offensive cruiser. The excelsior. A dated ship from the movie time period. The only reason it is like this? Because it's a C-Store ship. This disappointment goes away if/when they make T6 or they let the new Enterprise-F be top dog. Until then, almost as lame as point 1 for me.
3- 45 day patch didn't flesh out the Klingon faction. Season 2 didn't flesh out the KDF enough. Season 3 came and went. The KDF still can't level from beginning to end properly. It's a travesty. It's half a game right now. That's just a glaring hole in the game's design.
4- Nausicaans were given Klingon hair. Pakleds are too thin. Romulan foreheads don't exist in alien options. Ferengi weren't given mental/psionic resistances in their racial traits. One Galaxy can not separate its saucer. The one you pay money for or get at end-game can. There's way too much inconsistency in the details of this game, and since Trek is detail oriented, that's very disappointing.
5- Diplomacy and Exploration and everything in the game that is supposed to promote non-combat and capture some of that aspect of the federation is shallow, poorly implemented and follows horrible design logic. I got a character to Commander level solely on diplomacy missions (which meant I dropped all explores that were not DXP granting). And I basically levelled in a haphazard way, and the height of my diplomatic experience was scanning greek columns with my tricorder. Fail, fail, fail. When I finally got to the top level of diplomat ... the transwarp cooldown is inane ... the vote system on DS9 doesn't work well and was not explained coherently at all ... Diplomatic Immunity is a joke and works backwards ... and the Diplomatic exchange officer was a common BO that was not customizable whatsoever so would be an eyesore and a downgrade of a BO slot. Ugh.
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Diplomacy and Exploration and everything in the game that is supposed to promote non-combat and capture some of that aspect of the federation is shallow, poorly implemented and follows horrible design logic.
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5- Diplomacy and Exploration and everything in the game that is supposed to promote non-combat and capture some of that aspect of the federation is shallow, poorly implemented and follows horrible design logic. I got a character to Commander level solely on diplomacy missions (which meant I dropped all explores that were not DXP granting). And I basically levelled in a haphazard way, and the height of my diplomatic experience was scanning greek columns with my tricorder. Fail, fail, fail. When I finally got to the top level of diplomat ... the transwarp cooldown is inane ... the vote system on DS9 doesn't work well and was not explained coherently at all ... Diplomatic Immunity is a joke and works backwards ... and the Diplomatic exchange officer was a common BO that was not customizable whatsoever so would be an eyesore and a downgrade of a BO slot.
1. The skilltree is poorly done. It is very hard to be competent in both space and ground. Also the way some weapon specialization cost more to get it makes people less likely to invest in other weapon types than the lowest tier ones. Also many weapons were made useless or unbalanced. Anyone use Plasma torpedoes seriously? Why must it suck?
2. The PvP looks more like Star Wars than Star Trek. Ships are exploding in a matter of seconds wether they are escorts or cruisers or whatever.. We are very far away from classic sea battles where two capital ships were slugging it out on the line. Now it looks like X-wings versus Tie Fighters even when piloting cruisers... Meh..
3. The game is not very team friendly and way too "instancing" everything. There are many players online but they most of the time all doing their little thing alone.
4. Ground Combat is awkward, not very responsive, especially in PvP when doing melee. Moving around and meleeing is very hard... Maybe adding an option of FPS view camera could help?
5. There is not much to do once you have one character of each class at VA level.
I really have to agree with what Superchum has said about the diplomacy and exploration. Non combat in general is still missing a lot. The duty officer will add some more flare to non combat stuff, but exploration still needs a ton of work.
I'm looking forward to duty officers. There's still a lot about this game I like. And that's why I keep playing it.
But yeah, diplomacy was a pretty big disappointment for me. Glad to see I wasn't the only one. It's an idea that had so much potential. And really does capture something very very Trek you know?
The KDF faction was supposed to be a PVP only race. So, everyone who said there is a lack of ****ent in the KDF faction, think about it again.
Setting aside PFalcon's amazing post on that topic ... I think it's still very possible to be disappointed with KDF content. Mainly because people wanted it to be something else. So when it wasn't, they were disappointed. You dig?
We'll see what happens to the KDF when they rework Quonos and all that with the new tutorial and neighborhoods and fancy whatnots. All the changes have been pretty well hyped up on the forums. I hope the final product matches the vision put forth by the devs.
1- TOS uniforms, check. TOS bridge, check. TOS hand phaser, check. TOS Constitution I can fly at the endgame? No? WTH? Thanks for nothing Cryptic. Lame lame lame.
2- The Excelsior is the superior offensive cruiser. The excelsior. A dated ship from the movie time period. The only reason it is like this? Because it's a C-Store ship. This disappointment goes away if/when they make T6 or they let the new Enterprise-F be top dog. Until then, almost as lame as point 1 for me.
Um... not that I'm not empathetic on the whole TOS Constitution issue, but aren't your 1 and 2 mutually exclusive? If the Excelsior, a dated ship from the movie time period is superior to all other ships because it is a C-store only ship, then obviously the TOS Constitution, a dated ship from the TOS time period will ALSO be superior to all other ships because it will also be a C-store only ship -- just like it currently is.
If the one is bad, then the other would also be bad. Wouldn't it?
Now, granted, there have been discussions about making a engame viable Connie which isn't superior to all other ships. But your claim is that the Excelsior is superior BECAUSE IT IS IN THE C-STORE. So the Connie would also be exclusive to the C-Store.
Top 5 dissapointments...? Well I don't know if I can come up with 5 legitimate examples, as the game is tremendously satisfying, but I will give it a shot nonetheless!
1. HAWT SKIRTS FOR THE KDF!! Yep, thats my #1 complaint... lack of sexy female KDF costumes for anyone other than Orions. I just don't have the attraction to green women that Kirk did...
2. Lack of ability to customize/upgrade lower teir ships and a statistical advantage/disadvantege to doing so. Yeah, I realize that flying a teir 5 miranda or constitution would be kinda lame... but at the same time it would just be nice to pick a ship you like and stick with it, upgrading it along the way. Sure it may not be as sturdy, but smaller size and faster manuverabillity might be a tactical benefit.
3. Need more skills... but I would have to imagine that this is coming eventually.
4. Hair on Caitian females... ugh I just can't play my unlocked Caitians unless I can make her look a little less... bestial.
5. And finally... (Yay, I made it to 5!) More alien gen customization options.
Really, the game itself is just so dynamic and fluid. No other game I have EVER played compares to the incredibly epic space battles and challenging space based PvP! I love it! Once ground combat is changed, I think this may be the best game ever! LOL
I must make this comment about the old ships thing.
How is the tech outdated if the hull design is used on a brand new ship just out of the shipyards?
Trea, completely agree about that more alien options would be epic. (Tails, different style of legs *Elite style from halo?*, etc). Hair on Caitians would be nice as well, as the animated series had a Caitian female with hair. Caitian females currently look weird to me, like they are completely bald...
Um... not that I'm not empathetic on the whole TOS Constitution issue, but aren't your 1 and 2 mutually exclusive? If the Excelsior, a dated ship from the movie time period is superior to all other ships because it is a C-store only ship, then obviously the TOS Constitution, a dated ship from the TOS time period will ALSO be superior to all other ships because it will also be a C-store only ship -- just like it currently is.
If the one is bad, then the other would also be bad. Wouldn't it?
Now, granted, there have been discussions about making a engame viable Connie which isn't superior to all other ships. But your claim is that the Excelsior is superior BECAUSE IT IS IN THE C-STORE. So the Connie would also be exclusive to the C-Store.
Well that's my beef, you know? To do it for one ship, the excelsior. And then waffle and flip flop on the much much MUCH more popular ship, the Constitution? It seems like such a disappointing cop out. And causes disappointment for me. To do all of that other fun, cool, and enjoyable TOS stuff and then stop short? To design that beautiful bridge and then not let players fly the ship it goes with outside of the first tier? And then to sit there and look at the Excelsior tearing it up at T5?
It's inane. That they put the excelsior in the c-store bugged me. A lot. That they then didn't KEEP UP that trend and put the Connie in there? Ugh.
Granted none of that bugs me as much as my 5th point (diplomacy turned into tricorder scanning greek columns mislabeled as plant life, hahahahahahahah). But still.
1) Ship interiors still have no use - I know that updates are supposedly coming in the "future" but I still find myself frustrated when going to the bridge. Aside from the occasional mission, ship interiors still serve no function. Hell, once you sit down in the Ready Room you can't access the Ship's Logs console, which is inches away from you!
2) Endgame almost nonexistent - No need to beat the decomposing and putrid dead horse on this one.
3) Same story line regardless of class - This is why I've found it so difficult to roll new characters. Basically the exact same story line over and over and over... Adding additional ways to complete a mission, based on class type, barely scratches the surface. Tactical, Engineer and Science should have completely different story lines, and should only converge on the feature episodes. Gaining high level diplomatic rank should unlock a completely new set of missions.
4) Lack of iconic Trek characters - Spock was interesting for maybe the first week of game play and then became completely irrelevant. Yes I know that Scotty shows up later but more of the same. Problem is we're in 2409, not 2309. I know there are costs associated with gaining rights to actor likenesses but couldn't we at least have gotten one from each series? Going to DS9 feels like showing up at a party right as they start shutting everything down. You can tell something awesome happened before you got there, but you missed all of it.
5) Where's my exploration? - Strange new worlds? New civilizations? Boldly going where no one has gone before? Star clusters simply don't cut it in this regard. The first thing you usually see when entering a cluster is... other players. No sense of deep space exploration. Cryptic should take a lesson from CCP in this regard. I played EVE for 4 years, and to this day, there are still systems I never visited. I know this is a resource and engine issue but that doesn't really address the fact that there is no real exploration in this game.
1. Environment. Firstly the systems graphics for missions look great and feel trek!. However the chess board of sector space still exists and you simply can visit each sector for random mission or to explore. Quite frankly its boring once you have completed most of the missions. You should feel like the space between sectors is vast. Look at Eve if you want to see how it can be done whilst still allowing zoning for server stability.
2.Ships. You should be able to rank up ships with you not have to jump ship each time you ping. Also ships should be customisable for the class. You should not be forced to be in a sci vassal simple because your Sci for officer slots. The ship should offer a bonus but should not be console dependant.
3.PVP and territory. If I wanted to queue randomly to pvp for a match I would go play M.W.2. We are supposed to be at war with the K.D.F but the neutral zone means nothing and feels more like a spat with a neighbour over a fence that a war.
4.End game content. Simply put there isn't any. You switch off and log off when you cap. The S.T.F's are buggy and boring due to the sheer amount of grinding. I counted 600 borg one time in Infected. Simply put that not fun.
5. Healing! This is a real announce for me. Star trek ships do not nearly blow up and magically heal 70 or 100% of hull. These need to be heal over time skills. That coupled with the magical death respawn really ruin the whole feeling. Nothing has been done to even attempt to explain how the ships destroyed and magically re appears 10 sec later all new.
That is all. There are some things that are a little disappointing but the implementation of the skill point cap, when the game was originally advertised as not having one, was an absolutly HUGE disappointment.
That is all. There are some things that are a little disappointing but the implementation of the skill point cap, when the game was originally advertised as not having one, was an absolutly HUGE disappointment.
I never really got what people mean when talking about removing the skill point cap.
Do they really want to have unlimited skill points so they can skill EVERYTHING ?
Comments
WoW has it right... you have a level of progression you must go down to get to a certain tier... then you have to work on the next one.
Sure, if you're a member of one of the uber guilds, and have no life, you can complete all that WoW has to offer in a short amount of time.. but I've played it since launch(until a few months ago), and I've NEVER run out of things to aspire to in that game.
2. No Uber Gear
This ties in with the first thing. Sure, we've got epic gear.. but it's super easy to get. You have a few rare pieces that are gotten through semi-hard STF's, but I can count them on my hands. The rest of the epic gear is handed to us on a silver platter, or turned in for badges.
Even worse, the greatest items in the game, the things that we really SHOULD be working hard towards, are the ships... and you only get special ships by PAYING MONEY FOR THEM. Sure, you can grind eleventy billion badges(which is so tedious and boring to do, no one in their right mind actually does).
We should be Crafting/Earning/Putting together our ships. I should have to go do a mission to get a critical piece of technology, then another one, then another... eventually putting together a ship. Maybe take a page from Eve's playbook(not saying Eve's better), and have a few AWESOME ships that require a fleet effort to put together. One of the main draws of guilds/fleets is status, and what better status symbol is there than a big honking rare battleship?
3. Why are there fleets?
I have run a fleet, but I'm always left feeling as though it is nothing but a chatroom and a shared bank. Actually, I don't just feel that way, that's what it actually is. Oh, and a calendar. I guess that's cool.
I want to be able to take my fleet on awesome adventures. I'd like to load 20 of us in a group, and head out to a Fleet Action, and take on the Klingons as a fleet. I'd like there to be STF's that support more than five guys, I'd like to be able to actually coordinate a battle(not necessarily the current Fleet Actions/DSE's, since those are just grind fests).
I want there to be more of a reason to have a fleet than a chatroom and a bank.
4. Ground Combat
Yeah, yeah, I know.. it's getting revamped. Doesn't mean it doesn't still suck.
Nothing worse than getting in a battle with a group that has both a med officer AND an engineer. Especially if that engineer is a Commander.. I once got in a fight where there was a Captain engineer, and a Commander Medic... I nearly logged out of the game right then and there.
I hate the fact that I can't use my abilities when knocked on my TRIBBLE, but when my tac buddy goes and tries to interrupt the healer by keeping them knocked down, they're steadily healing all of their buddies(and themselves).
I hate that there are bad guys out there that can chain stun me without any diminishing returns. I ran into a group of gorn who kept doing this thing where I get chained to the ground by yellow lightning... everytime I broke free, I got another thrown on me. At least I had a nice view of the ten minute battle where my useless BO's played the game for me.
I'm gonna stop right there... because if I continue to complain about Ground Combat, I'll hit the max characters for this post.
5. Bugs
I hate bugs. I understand that there is no such thing as bug free software. But, I do not understand when I encounter the same bugs a year and a half after I first saw them.
I want phaser a dev in the face everytime I line up a perfect high yield shot alongside an enemy's open shields, and watch as the ability either doesn't fire(but still counts as being used), or goes into an additional cooldown(something I've noticed happens when I activate an ability right as it comes off cooldown).
I want to shove my wireless keyboard through my 32 inch HD monitor everytime an enemy slams into an asteroid, and becomes untargetable to me, but has no problem firing weapons through it at me.
Bugs are understandable, but they have to be rectified in a decent amount of time. I can understand some bugs must wait for the next patch, but there's no reason why a year should pass without them getting addressed.
1) End game
2) Bug fixes are late or some don't get fixed at all
3) Ship Weapon scales "way off" the beams are like 1/5 the size of the ship Oo same for cannons.
4) Ground Weapon models! need more models or the ability to change the models ur selfs! like some mmo's have.
5) C-Store (For the love of god why, we pay monthly and yet we have to pay extra for all the real "star trek" stuff) *
* : i know i don't pay monthly anymore but allot of you still do, its not fair for a game that has subs and an micro-transaction store! thats just plain GREEDY in my book, shame on you cryptic. this is exploitation of your fan base well done! cus you know we will buy the c-store stuff cus costumes and ships thats what star trek all about!
For each of those, I post reason and proposal for fix.
Please remember, I'm stating my 5 disappointments, and the fixes for my disappointments.
I know it is not feasible, from commercial or technical perspective to implement many of them.
I have gone a long way from trying to accept this game as Star Trek universe.
As it is now, It's just another game.... and that is my TOP disappointment.
...here we go:
1. Lack of Star Trek universe feel and immersion
Reason: I don't want to repeat statements after several other posters have already made the point.
This game is supposed to be 2409 Star Trek.
Instead, it is 22nd-25th century museum with NX-01 flying next to Starcruiser. Sooner or later we will see F-22 Raptor as Federation fighter craft.
Instead, it is Hawaiian party with rainbow colored uniforms, lacking any sense of organized institution (aka Starfleet)
Fix: Force uniform rendering using player defined style. Focus development on era-appropriate ships and discourage era inappropriate ships by limiting them to lower tiers.
2. Overall lack of resemblance to Perpetual's design
Reason: I was really looking forward for Perpetual's game. I really liked many of the designs, developed by Star Trek veteran artists. They looked Trek. They looked as a design progression of Starfleet into 25th century.
Most of Cryptic designed stuff (sorry, this is my opinion) does not even get close. Many of ships just look weird and if I wouldn't know, I would not relate them to Star Trek at all.
Fix: Arrange design folks education with Star Trek designers. Set up a boot camp or whatever. Revamp current designs. (CBS will be immediately happier with game environment).
3. Starship / Starbase interiors
Reason: Look like large warehouse areas, instead of starship interior. Compared to realistic Perpetual's interior screens they look horrible.
I recognize this is game engine problem, but that does not reduce the impact of the issue. Interiors lack any immersion factor whatsoever.
Fix: Honestly, at this point I wouldn't know. Fundamental underlying technology problem is not easy to solve.
4. Open space
Reason: Players were promised boldly going where no one has gone before. Instead we're treated with small closed boxes with repeatable content, randomly even not making any sense (Borg political machinations anyone?)
Fix: Open instances with promised Genesis engine. Significant and large scale update to random mission generator, incl. sort of mutual applicability factor (preventing Borg leaving colony in terror and hurry).
Remove borders from sector spaces.
Relative directional distance calculator from Sect 001 - to put it simply and push the limit, if you fly far enough in Genesis dynamic space, you start encountering specific races, ending with opposite quadrant guys (Hirogen, Kazon, Dominion)...
5. Endgame content
Reason: I was expecting episodic experience, such as in Star Trek show. This game was even advertised on several occasions like this.
Instead, very limited content is available at endgame, mostly repeatable down to frustrating levels (STO teaches player what does it mean daily grind. )
Fix: More featured episodes, maybe even several series arcs overlapping. Experiment with mixing feature episodes. Why to play 2 months Breen, 2 months Devidians, when instead we can mix it up (1 week Breen, next we have some Cardassian diplomacy stuff, next week Romulans and we will finish the months with visit to Klingon temple).
This is going well in the direction of feature episodes, the proposal is just to break down the arcs and make it little more episodic. Trek always was episodic (except for ST: Enterprise season 3 that actually killed the show)
2. Lack of follow through on stated KDF content additions - been waiting since it was announced last year that there would be a T5/6 K't'inga, haven't seen a thing about it since.
3. Lack of polish on existing content - KDF ship models have glitches and inaccuracies that have existed for over a year now with no mention or seeming intent to deal with them. Rank baldrics still have all sorts of problems.. especially the final rank currently available which was fine, then resized for no apparent reason and glitched, has also been broken now for more than a year.
4. Lack of any real press focus on KDF side. Web presence for KDF is practically non-existent, nothing to pump up interest in the faction. Every time any addition to the FED faction is made there is much hoopla and multimedia extolling the virtues of said new FED ships, missions, costumes, or other items - yet almost nothing is really ever mentioned or bandied about in regards to KDF additions (when there are any). Again nothing to drum up interest in the faction. Take the 500 day vet award for example - all I heard about was the new FED "Jupiter" uniform with endless forum mentions, tweets and sneak peak camera shots. Yet I had to stumble on a mention that there was even something being offered to the KDF on STOWIKI, but definitely no hype about it.
5. I have very little interest in playing the FED faction in general but the one thing that would make me want to play isn't available, and apparently won't be, which is a T5/6 TOS style Constitution. I see recently where there are no plans for it at all, which for me solidifies my lack of any interest in playing the Blue side of things. I even was foolish enough to buy the Value Bundle - The Original Series just for it... I feel stupid now on wasting that cash before finding out all the details. I won't do that again.
Having listed my top 5 disappointments I have to say there are things I do like about STO and the KDF specific work that was generated, however there is still a long way to go. I dropped my subscription last August because of this. Recently I opened my account back up hearing there have been improvements to STO in general, I was disappointed to find how little has been done for the KDF. I'm not asking for equal parity with the FED side that's never going to happen, but after a year and simple things are not fixed or followed through on, it doesn't look good. That being the case I'll take another break soon and hope that someone puts in some effort.
2: PvP Content
3: Too easy PvE
4: Endgame content
5: Too much outdated/ill fitting junk (Connie - NX - D'kyr - TOS uniforms - Mirror uniforms etc)
(I hope that no one bothers)
(Ships don't really look more advanced just over the top and out of place. Some concepts are awesome (like the Star Cruisers) but most of them are just unbalanced and ugly. I won't say anything more now it would get too harsh.)
Star Treks main theme is "to explore strange new worlds..." if i remember correctly...
(I can't really blame cryptic for that. But it is just annoying to wait half a year for season 4)
In general i never thought that Star Trek fits very well as background for a MMO. Pressing Star Trek into a MMO mechanic just doesn't work well, IMHO. Just too many things had to be balanced that aren't supposed to be.
In Star Trek there are just too much things that need to be done alone, and so little things to do together with others.
Example: to make a real good Star Trek game the devs should have made the ship interiors a much bigger part of the game. Many episodes just play inside the ship.
In contrast, how many big fleet engegments have we seen in over 700 episodes and 10 movies? Big space battles are just not a Star Trek thing IMHO.
I would have been much more happy with this game if it where a single player game with growing content and an optional PvP multiplayer mode.
Live long and prosper.
could you elaborate a little on why these disappoint you? Just curious.
As for the uniforms ... it would be cool to have the opportunity to do erasodes, meaning episodes of certain eras where the game is forcing you to wear some sort of era-based uniform, like TNG series, TOS series, TMP series etc.
What I really do NOT like about STO, well here are my top five points:
1.
There is not enough endgame ****ent overall, and I think lots of others have agreed to that one already. Only four STF's, three of them Borg and one Undine (no other races involved as enemies). Why not have let's say one STF per main villain race? How about if you make "Starbase 24" and "Breaking the Planet" an STF for teams of 5 players, or "The Big Dig", with some tweaks to make it more story-based and better for teams? The same would apply to "DS9 Under Siege", in combination with "Fox Hunt" it would be a perfect STF!
2.
Too much C-store based stuff. We get a new item or item bundle nearly every 14 days nowadays. Is that the new strategy? We pay monthly fees to play the game in the first place, why does there have to be so much C-store stuff? Granted, some of the high-end items, such as ships, can now also be grinded by emblems, but you all know that not even 5% of all the gamers are going to claim these ships by grinding.
3.
The foundry. Okay, we got the foundry now which is basically a wonderful thing. However, there are so many restrictions in the foundry that most authors have stopped doing missions because of those restrictions. You cannot beam out NPC's, you cannot "disable" enemies, you cannot use a timer, no way to have branching mission objectives except a huge hell of a lot of workarounds, and all the new scenery sets and props (Cloaked Intentions & Devidian Weaklies) aren't even available. You cannot have non-scaling space enemies, no Dreadnought fights for example unless you're teamed with 3 or 4 other players, no way to know who is the medic of a certain ground mob (Romulan, Federation) because they are all randomly put ... why not let the author choose what kind of specific ground mob he wishes to place? For example: Romulan Squadron - Size 7 ... then a small menu where the author can select critters in, e. g. 3 Centurions (one Medic, one Engineer, one Grenadeer) and 4 Uhlans, 1 of them a Sublieutenant Medic. It would be so easy, folks.
4.
Long time bugs that are not fixed ever since. One example is the forced decloak when a dialog box appears. Another is all those ground powers which do not scale up or work properly. Another is the secondary fire mode that causes the player to get stuck in a certain emoticon, being forced to log out and back in. Then we have the spinning around issue on ground, makes you feel dizzy! And we have all those space consoles with mismatched values in them. And there is Ker'rat, and we still have some stuck ground anomalies that irritate tricorder scanning for artifacts, and and and ... you get what I mean.
5.
Fleets. For example the fleet bank thing ... why is an item "removed" when you only move it around inside? Why can't you add something to a stack of items in the fleet bank if you have no permission to take out anything? You got 30 Radiation Samples and want them to add to a stack of 150 Radiation Samples in the fleet bank ... no way to do that, unless you are permitted to remove an item ... that's the thing! You never remove anything, for the Founder's sake!
5a.
There is also no real rank system in the fleet. We have 7 access levels, but why can't we have real ranks like in Starfleet? And why can't the fleet have a flagship which belongs to the fleet and can be used by fleet members for a certain amount of time, perhaps a Dreadnought-leveled ship like the Jupiter class or the Galaxy DN?
~ Eris The Vorta
That statement is incorrect. Anyone who would like to learn about the details refuting that particular bit of mythology should take a look at this thread http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=217322. So long as forum policy is not violated people have the right to voice what changes they want to see happen and express the disappointments they have.
2. Again a Borg complaint, it's been 40-some-odd-years since the first recorded contact against the borg (in-game and canon terms) and yet we seem to have no way to defend against their attacks. When fighting them it becomes a unmitigated slog.
3. The weapons feel uneven and clunky. Why are their three expose assault weapons instead of an even two expose/exploit system? Why are people dropping rapid bolt, which should have uncompromising DPS, for split beam weapons? Why do all the assault weapons have the same firing/idle animations? Where are the photon/quantum launchers? Where's my I-MOD?
4. Lots of recycled text during nebula missions. For some reason the Romulans, Klingons, True Way Jem'hadar and Remans all feel they're the strongest force in the galaxy and can't be beat.
5. The skill tree, really cluttered. Is the difference between a Fleet Escort and Advanced Escort really that big that they can't be combined? Not a lot of support for personal weapon damage outside of the Tac officer abilities.
That's pretty much it. Also, no option to put your Away team through Hazard team training. Really big bummer.
1- TOS uniforms, check. TOS bridge, check. TOS hand phaser, check. TOS Constitution I can fly at the endgame? No? WTH? Thanks for nothing Cryptic. Lame lame lame.
2- The Excelsior is the superior offensive cruiser. The excelsior. A dated ship from the movie time period. The only reason it is like this? Because it's a C-Store ship. This disappointment goes away if/when they make T6 or they let the new Enterprise-F be top dog. Until then, almost as lame as point 1 for me.
3- 45 day patch didn't flesh out the Klingon faction. Season 2 didn't flesh out the KDF enough. Season 3 came and went. The KDF still can't level from beginning to end properly. It's a travesty. It's half a game right now. That's just a glaring hole in the game's design.
4- Nausicaans were given Klingon hair. Pakleds are too thin. Romulan foreheads don't exist in alien options. Ferengi weren't given mental/psionic resistances in their racial traits. One Galaxy can not separate its saucer. The one you pay money for or get at end-game can. There's way too much inconsistency in the details of this game, and since Trek is detail oriented, that's very disappointing.
5- Diplomacy and Exploration and everything in the game that is supposed to promote non-combat and capture some of that aspect of the federation is shallow, poorly implemented and follows horrible design logic. I got a character to Commander level solely on diplomacy missions (which meant I dropped all explores that were not DXP granting). And I basically levelled in a haphazard way, and the height of my diplomatic experience was scanning greek columns with my tricorder. Fail, fail, fail. When I finally got to the top level of diplomat ... the transwarp cooldown is inane ... the vote system on DS9 doesn't work well and was not explained coherently at all ... Diplomatic Immunity is a joke and works backwards ... and the Diplomatic exchange officer was a common BO that was not customizable whatsoever so would be an eyesore and a downgrade of a BO slot. Ugh.
This ... 100% agree
2) only one uniform slot for each BO
3) the state of PvP
4) ground combat and PvP
5) skill trees
Not necessarily in that order.
/signed
2. The PvP looks more like Star Wars than Star Trek. Ships are exploding in a matter of seconds wether they are escorts or cruisers or whatever.. We are very far away from classic sea battles where two capital ships were slugging it out on the line. Now it looks like X-wings versus Tie Fighters even when piloting cruisers... Meh..
3. The game is not very team friendly and way too "instancing" everything. There are many players online but they most of the time all doing their little thing alone.
4. Ground Combat is awkward, not very responsive, especially in PvP when doing melee. Moving around and meleeing is very hard... Maybe adding an option of FPS view camera could help?
5. There is not much to do once you have one character of each class at VA level.
But yeah, diplomacy was a pretty big disappointment for me. Glad to see I wasn't the only one. It's an idea that had so much potential. And really does capture something very very Trek you know?
Setting aside PFalcon's amazing post on that topic ... I think it's still very possible to be disappointed with KDF content. Mainly because people wanted it to be something else. So when it wasn't, they were disappointed. You dig?
Um... not that I'm not empathetic on the whole TOS Constitution issue, but aren't your 1 and 2 mutually exclusive? If the Excelsior, a dated ship from the movie time period is superior to all other ships because it is a C-store only ship, then obviously the TOS Constitution, a dated ship from the TOS time period will ALSO be superior to all other ships because it will also be a C-store only ship -- just like it currently is.
If the one is bad, then the other would also be bad. Wouldn't it?
Now, granted, there have been discussions about making a engame viable Connie which isn't superior to all other ships. But your claim is that the Excelsior is superior BECAUSE IT IS IN THE C-STORE. So the Connie would also be exclusive to the C-Store.
1. HAWT SKIRTS FOR THE KDF!! Yep, thats my #1 complaint... lack of sexy female KDF costumes for anyone other than Orions. I just don't have the attraction to green women that Kirk did...
2. Lack of ability to customize/upgrade lower teir ships and a statistical advantage/disadvantege to doing so. Yeah, I realize that flying a teir 5 miranda or constitution would be kinda lame... but at the same time it would just be nice to pick a ship you like and stick with it, upgrading it along the way. Sure it may not be as sturdy, but smaller size and faster manuverabillity might be a tactical benefit.
3. Need more skills... but I would have to imagine that this is coming eventually.
4. Hair on Caitian females... ugh I just can't play my unlocked Caitians unless I can make her look a little less... bestial.
5. And finally... (Yay, I made it to 5!) More alien gen customization options.
Really, the game itself is just so dynamic and fluid. No other game I have EVER played compares to the incredibly epic space battles and challenging space based PvP! I love it! Once ground combat is changed, I think this may be the best game ever! LOL
How is the tech outdated if the hull design is used on a brand new ship just out of the shipyards?
Trea, completely agree about that more alien options would be epic. (Tails, different style of legs *Elite style from halo?*, etc). Hair on Caitians would be nice as well, as the animated series had a Caitian female with hair. Caitian females currently look weird to me, like they are completely bald...
Well that's my beef, you know? To do it for one ship, the excelsior. And then waffle and flip flop on the much much MUCH more popular ship, the Constitution? It seems like such a disappointing cop out. And causes disappointment for me. To do all of that other fun, cool, and enjoyable TOS stuff and then stop short? To design that beautiful bridge and then not let players fly the ship it goes with outside of the first tier? And then to sit there and look at the Excelsior tearing it up at T5?
It's inane. That they put the excelsior in the c-store bugged me. A lot. That they then didn't KEEP UP that trend and put the Connie in there? Ugh.
Granted none of that bugs me as much as my 5th point (diplomacy turned into tricorder scanning greek columns mislabeled as plant life, hahahahahahahah). But still.
2) Endgame almost nonexistent - No need to beat the decomposing and putrid dead horse on this one.
3) Same story line regardless of class - This is why I've found it so difficult to roll new characters. Basically the exact same story line over and over and over... Adding additional ways to complete a mission, based on class type, barely scratches the surface. Tactical, Engineer and Science should have completely different story lines, and should only converge on the feature episodes. Gaining high level diplomatic rank should unlock a completely new set of missions.
4) Lack of iconic Trek characters - Spock was interesting for maybe the first week of game play and then became completely irrelevant. Yes I know that Scotty shows up later but more of the same. Problem is we're in 2409, not 2309. I know there are costs associated with gaining rights to actor likenesses but couldn't we at least have gotten one from each series? Going to DS9 feels like showing up at a party right as they start shutting everything down. You can tell something awesome happened before you got there, but you missed all of it.
5) Where's my exploration? - Strange new worlds? New civilizations? Boldly going where no one has gone before? Star clusters simply don't cut it in this regard. The first thing you usually see when entering a cluster is... other players. No sense of deep space exploration. Cryptic should take a lesson from CCP in this regard. I played EVE for 4 years, and to this day, there are still systems I never visited. I know this is a resource and engine issue but that doesn't really address the fact that there is no real exploration in this game.
2.Ships. You should be able to rank up ships with you not have to jump ship each time you ping. Also ships should be customisable for the class. You should not be forced to be in a sci vassal simple because your Sci for officer slots. The ship should offer a bonus but should not be console dependant.
3.PVP and territory. If I wanted to queue randomly to pvp for a match I would go play M.W.2. We are supposed to be at war with the K.D.F but the neutral zone means nothing and feels more like a spat with a neighbour over a fence that a war.
4.End game content. Simply put there isn't any. You switch off and log off when you cap. The S.T.F's are buggy and boring due to the sheer amount of grinding. I counted 600 borg one time in Infected. Simply put that not fun.
5. Healing! This is a real announce for me. Star trek ships do not nearly blow up and magically heal 70 or 100% of hull. These need to be heal over time skills. That coupled with the magical death respawn really ruin the whole feeling. Nothing has been done to even attempt to explain how the ships destroyed and magically re appears 10 sec later all new.
That is all. There are some things that are a little disappointing but the implementation of the skill point cap, when the game was originally advertised as not having one, was an absolutly HUGE disappointment.
Do they really want to have unlimited skill points so they can skill EVERYTHING ?
Live long and prosper.