I'd like to begin with a little preface.
I was a fan of City of Heroes, and (after having played the beta) dutifully bought Champions Online at launch. Whoo-boy. After a relatively short time, I simply quit in disgust at how incomplete the game was. I checked in on occasion, but never returned - even after F2P. I felt cheated out of the box price. My faith in Cryptic was irreveribly damaged; so much so that I completely skipped the launch of STO, regardless as to how strong my passion was for all things Star Trek (read: great). It was a Cryptic game. Never again. Needless to say, I gave STO a shot. I guess time heals all wounds. I mean, It's been a couple years, it's F2P now, and it's Star Trek. What's the worst that could happen?
I've been having a blast. I've heard the game suffered a rough launch, and may not have a viable endgame, but it's still thoroughly surpassed my expectations. Now, it may be that my expectations were so tarnished from CO that I'm that much easier to please, but I don't think so. The game certainly has faults: It is much less "Star Trek" (and a little more Everquest) than I'd like. There isn't much of a death penalty. Why is my bridge so HUGE? Everyone has a different uniform? They give ensigns their own ships!? This is just silly!
Regardless: Ground combat is a fun, fast-paced third-person shooter. Space combat screams of Fleet Commander 3 and really gets the blood flowing. The ships are all (mostly) beautiful and very, very cool. The duty officer system is a fantastic diversion (and very Star Trek). The variety of weapons. Bridge officers. Scanning for anomalies. Patrolling federation space for borg incursions. Replicators. Tea, earl grey, hot.
tldr; Great fun. A lot better than I expected. I hope to play for a long time.
Just thought I'd share.
Comments
Ground missions need surface and air support vehicles on both sides, larger-scale battles, planetary bombardments, tactical-scale weapons, strafing runs, shuttle-to-shuttle dogfighting in the atmosphere and so much more. Lastly, fix the dumb AI... what kind of enemy conveniently disperses its forces into bite-sized chunks that a team of four can wipe out? What kind of enemy sits in the next room, apparently oblivious, while their team-mates are wiped out in a very noisy firefight? Must do better!!
Yeah there are many faults I can see in ground battles, but as a newer player, we actually enjoy the variety, and when you learn the tactics of ground battles it can be quite fun. Im sure over time we will start to dislike it or become tired of it, but right now we aren't really in the burn out phase so we are still "honeymooning".
I completely agree, but these are symptoms of the "too much like Everquest" problem. Very traditional mmo, very lazy. Conviently-sized groups of mobs that have a 6-foot sight range and apparently no empathy for their peers. I enjoy ground combat for the same reason I enjoy the duty officer system: it's a mindless, simple diversion. Ship combat is the cake, and everything else is the icing. Also, my expectations for ground combat were extremely low, and subsequently I think I enjoyed it much more. Could it be better? ABSOLUTELY. But try to enjoy it for what it is: a diversion, nothing more.
This sums it up nicely. Its a good diversion so its not all space combat. I enjoy the puzzles as well so its nice to have ground missions for more then just combat diversions as well. I am currently working on the romulan episodes and the code puzzles inthe last few parts of that episode were quite fun and made me think.
"No empathy for their peers" Lol. Good way of putting it.
ROM 1: "Oh dear, Slamek just went down......should we do something?"
ROM 2: "No, no. Just keep working on these consoles maybe they won't notice us"