Lol what has he won? He just posted a wall of text that most people won't even read. But Massively on the other hand is a major gaming publisher with a large following that will read that article.
Why, most of what VD writes is way over my head. :P But the man knows his stuff, for sure.
As for Massive, this is not case where a Dev can step in and brush things off, saying how 'wrong' we all are: Cryptic will simply need to take this seriously.
P.S. Do I want to stick it to 'the man'? Yes. But not enough that the game will die. All I want is for Cryptic to listen (or, actually, the latter part of listening: the acting upon accordingly).
I'd make a suggestion to Cryptic. CryEngine is now only $10 a seat per month. You have 40 people working on STO. It wouldn't take too long to transition to CE. Get a decent animation team onboard for the FPS movement, revamp the FPS play so it's not clunky and well TRIBBLE, remove time delays on activation of abilities and you'd be amazed at what can be done.
The space battles would be even more epic, especially if you used the 64bit upgrade to CE that is being pioneered by Star Citizen...
Then you'll be able to overhaul the game without a problem. Plus as you do it you can remove all that spaghetti code that keeps you from fixing any bugs...
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
I'd make a suggestion to Cryptic. CryEngine is now only $10 a seat per month. You have 40 people working on STO. It wouldn't take too long to transition to CE. Get a decent animation team onboard for the FPS movement, revamp the FPS play so it's not clunky and well TRIBBLE, remove time delays on activation of abilities and you'd be amazed at what can be done.
The space battles would be even more epic, especially if you used the 64bit upgrade to CE that is being pioneered by Star Citizen...
Then you'll be able to overhaul the game without a problem. Plus as you do it you can remove all that spaghetti code that keeps you from fixing any bugs...
I know you don't really understand game development. What your suggesting is to rewrite STO. Cryptics MMO engine isn't the issue anyway. Also the Cryengine is hardly ideal for a MMO title. I know a few small developers are or have tried still not really a great MMO creation tool. Also you get that that 10 bucks is per user right, it doesn't mean you don't have to pay royalties for a commercial game. Do you think Cryptic is going to sign over more then half there profits to someone else just to fancy up there GFX. No in the end Cryengine for a MMO is a bad idea... also a HUGE reason why people should realize Chris Roberts SC is a pure scam. Paying for a game engine every month for something like a MMO is just not a great way to make money.
I'd make a suggestion to Cryptic. CryEngine is now only $10 a seat per month. You have 40 people working on STO. It wouldn't take too long to transition to CE. Get a decent animation team onboard for the FPS movement, revamp the FPS play so it's not clunky and well TRIBBLE, remove time delays on activation of abilities and you'd be amazed at what can be done.
The space battles would be even more epic, especially if you used the 64bit upgrade to CE that is being pioneered by Star Citizen...
Then you'll be able to overhaul the game without a problem. Plus as you do it you can remove all that spaghetti code that keeps you from fixing any bugs...
$10 a seat per month doesn't work very well with a game that has a business model based around 5% of people spending. In fact, no MMO could operate profitably with a license expense of $10 per seat per month without an unprecedented monthly fee. Maybe $30 a month, guesstimating.
The fact is that Cryptic's engine could likely support Crysis level graphics with some work but they don't want it to.
The delays on abilities are also there deliberately. They are only an engine limitation in the sense that Cryptic insists that the engine delay ability triggering. If they used a different engine, they would force the delay in that engine too. The delay is deliberate.
I know you don't really understand game development. What your suggesting is to rewrite STO. Cryptics MMO engine isn't the issue anyway. Also the Cryengine is hardly ideal for a MMO title. I know a few small developers are or have tried still not really a great MMO creation tool. Also you get that that 10 bucks is per user right, it doesn't mean you don't have to pay royalties for a commercial game. Do you think Cryptic is going to sign over more then half there profits to someone else just to fancy up there GFX. No in the end Cryengine for a MMO is a bad idea... also a HUGE reason why people should realize Chris Roberts SC is a pure scam. Paying for a game engine every month for something like a MMO is just not a great way to make money.
Yes I am, btw I do have a good idea about game development, I was being facetious. Probably didn't come across well in my comments.
CE has been used as the basis for Archeage, one of the larger MMO's out there. It's actually quite a versatile engine, albeit a rather complicated one at times. The cost isn't 50% to Crytek, for full source access 3 years ago it was only 250,000 for 25 seats, and 5% royalties.
The funny part is that with every sentence you wrote in the above quote you show more and more ignorance to the actual costs involved and then add exaggeration on top in spades. The bit I like is the attack on SC being a pure scam. That I find really funny, especially after talking with Chris Roberts, Erin Roberts and Sandi Gardener personally.
It doesn't matter which of the other engines used I used CE as an example, it could be Unreal 4, it could be Unigine, it doesn't matter. They are all far more developed than Cryptic's engine.
I guess you haven't actually looked into the tech that CIG are implementing in CryEngine, such as altering it to be 64bit to allow maps to be huge without losing positional accuracy, updating the streaming of areas from the map streaming CryEngine added to allow MMO's such as Archeage to work a few years back. I guess ignorance is bliss though, enjoy it while it lasts.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
We are plenty of people who have said everything that was said in that article even before DR was released, and they were Trolled, Flamed and insulted.
Yet, when MASSIVELY makes an article about it... Then it's all correct.
Don't look silly... Don't call it the "Z-Store/Zen Store"...
We are plenty of people who have said everything that was said in that article even before DR was released, and they were Trolled, Flamed and insulted.
Yet, when MASSIVELY makes an article about it... Then it's all correct.
$10 a seat per month doesn't work very well with a game that has a business model based around 5% of people spending. In fact, no MMO could operate profitably with a license expense of $10 per seat per month without an unprecedented monthly fee. Maybe $30 a month, guesstimating.
Seeing as you have zero idea of the monthly costs or profit of STO this part of your comment is utterly irrelevant. Not to mention it wouldn't require all 40 staff to have a CE licence...
The fact is that Cryptic's engine could likely support Crysis level graphics with some work but they don't want it to.
It probably could, but it would need to catch up with 6 years of development that hasn't been done on Cryptic's engine. I don't see PWE spending out on upgrading that engine any time soon.
The delays on abilities are also there deliberately. They are only an engine limitation in the sense that Cryptic insists that the engine delay ability triggering. If they used a different engine, they would force the delay in that engine too. The delay is deliberate.
I'm fully aware they are there deliberately. Doesn't make it any less annoying that they exist at all. I'm aware of things like channelling and so on in other games, but I'm not aware of any that include a delay on activation of up to 1s. If anything I'd put it down to lazy coding so they don't have to sync things as accurately with the server. Either way it's not a good thing to implement, just from a basics of game development point of view.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
We are plenty of people who have said everything that was said in that article even before DR was released, and they were Trolled, Flamed and insulted.
Yet, when MASSIVELY makes an article about it... Then it's all correct.
It was always correct. Now, when game magazines are saying it too, they just can't dismiss it any more, is the difference.
I guess ignorance is bliss though, enjoy it while it lasts.
Yes 50% is obviously not the royalty rate. However there not going to rework there entire game to use someone another companies engine when theres works. There engine is powering never winter and it powered City of Heros before STO. There are newer engine features in Neverwinter that they have yet to implement in STO. With that in mind you think they would completely rework the game from the ground.
CryE may work for a new game just fine. There is simply zero reason for Cryptic to go back and do a year of work rebuilding there game for another engine. That 50% number I pulled out of the air guess what it would be closer to true... cause after paying the redevelopment costs in terms of man hours to make it happen. 50% of what they make would be closer to right... with something like 3-6% going to the Cry guys and another big chunk having to be recouped to pay for the work they put in on it.
I'm fully aware they are there deliberately. Doesn't make it any less annoying that they exist at all. I'm aware of things like channelling and so on in other games, but I'm not aware of any that include a delay on activation of up to 1s. If anything I'd put it down to lazy coding so they don't have to sync things as accurately with the server. Either way it's not a good thing to implement, just from a basics of game development point of view.
He is referencing the fact that most MMOs attempt to show you what is happening on the server side. This means they have to add an artificial lag. Most users are going to average 60-110ms lags all the time. So developers in most cases delay everything that happens by some arbitrary average they hope will mask actual lag. Some devs don't show you what is happening real time on the server at all and seem to mask this better.
If you have played a game like say Wow where they just animate everything from the local side. You will under times of bad lag notice the animation goes off and the dmg doesn't show up right away. In STO they don't attempt to activate everything local (animations start when server has the go) so when you have lag issues the game seems lagged out instantly.
You can argue which is better either way. The WoW local render system is nice for very short lag spikes where most players likely never notice that there dmg didn't roll up for .25s after there animation went off.
We are plenty of people who have said everything that was said in that article even before DR was released, and they were Trolled, Flamed and insulted.
Yet, when MASSIVELY makes an article about it... Then it's all correct.
Agreed. I'd like to take this opportunity to politely and gracefully say I TOLD YOU SO to everyone who called me a troll for saying pretty much everything in the article, weeks ago.
just another opinion and the reviewer just abusing his position to try make his opinion look more important then the rest, hes beating a dead horse especially since its been flogged around enough on the forums the past weeks.
swtor is increasing its level cap tomorrow and bringing 198 gear, however the current thinking on that is that the current 180 gear will be nerfed back a little and 198 will instead become the new 180 with the same dps numbers, storyline npcs and critters will have less hp to deal with less dps from starter to 50, and dailies will also be with less hp to compensate from 50-55 area and makeb. this is certainly one way to deal with power creep and one the sto dev team could of dealt with along the way and did their own but didnt, its only a matter of time before more stuff comes and power creep is on rails.
what else is new, its been like this for as long as i can remember, old news.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
He is referencing the fact that most MMOs attempt to show you what is happening on the server side. This means they have to add an artificial lag. Most users are going to average 60-110ms lags all the time. So developers in most cases delay everything that happens by some arbitrary average they hope will mask actual lag. Some devs don't show you what is happening real time on the server at all and seem to mask this better.
If you have played a game like say Wow where they just animate everything from the local side. You will under times of bad lag notice the animation goes off and the dmg doesn't show up right away. In STO they don't attempt to activate everything local (animations start when server has the go) so when you have lag issues the game seems lagged out instantly.
You can argue which is better either way. The WoW local render system is nice for very short lag spikes where most players likely never notice that there dmg didn't roll up for .25s after there animation went off.
Thing is what happens in STO quite a lot is you hit a button to activate something, it then fails to activate because of the activation delay getting interrupted for whatever reason.
In WoW or pretty much any other MMO, you hit the button, it activates and then confirms this with the server. It doesn't automatically fail from other cooldowns, weapons firing etc...
The activation delay can occur regardless of other actions once it's a message sent to the server that is no longer interuptable something that is NOT the case with STO.
That's the issue I have with it. It's a poorly thought out mechanism. That's not even considering the other issues with the UI like bits randomly going missing, BoFF's, DoFF's and even items etc...
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
I'd make a suggestion to Cryptic. CryEngine is now only $10 a seat per month. You have 40 people working on STO. It wouldn't take too long to transition to CE. Get a decent animation team onboard for the FPS movement, revamp the FPS play so it's not clunky and well TRIBBLE, remove time delays on activation of abilities and you'd be amazed at what can be done.
The space battles would be even more epic, especially if you used the 64bit upgrade to CE that is being pioneered by Star Citizen...
Then you'll be able to overhaul the game without a problem. Plus as you do it you can remove all that spaghetti code that keeps you from fixing any bugs...
Even if STO would upgrade to the best graphics ever, even be the very first media to use holographic display, or even the very first holodeck, we would still have the same problem : IE grinding for the level cap, and pretty much everything.
Also, revamping a game into another engine is not something that is easy. It's basically making a new game.
Finally, a lot of players have a crappy PC that couldn't run on CE at all.
So yeah, it's simply unrealistic. By a large margin, and it wouldn't solve any problem at all. Nobody is complaining about the graphic quality, DR is as pretty/ugly (pick one) as before.
Agreed. I'd like to take this opportunity to politely and gracefully say I TOLD YOU SO to everyone who called me a troll for saying pretty much everything in the article, weeks ago.
You didn't need to tell me so. I've just been taking the month and a half to figure out how to say nice things about Battleship Royal Rumble and have people take me seriously. :P
You are absolutely right though that the signs of this near meltdown situation were apparent very early. I'd argue as early as the launch of the crafting system. That's when I started really watching. And that's when my eyes were opened (or something ridiculous like that).
Here's the thing. I honestly think that the Dev team wants to give the community as close to a STAR TREK experience in this MMO as they can. I think they have some constraints we don't begin to understand when we discuss and theorize here on the forums or on reddit or our fleets. I think that years of miscommunication and people not trained in good PR with sort of playerbase, have led to a Players/Devs situation. Essentially two "communities" of Star Trek fans, when it could be Players and Devs and Devs and Players and One Community trying to craft and enjoy an experience of Trek.
Yeah, I'm a hippie. But I know that what I am saying is true.
It comes down to. Whether it's well written or not, Whether it's just his opinion or whatever you think of the reviewer, that review (way more scathing than mine and I cuss a few times) was just published on Massively.
Whatever anyone may personally think about Massively, they are (arguably) a major(ish) gaming site.
A whole lot more people than just our little insular community ARE going to read that.
and discuss it.
Shrug, and discount it if you want. But the review/column by Eliot Lefebvre means a bunch more than anything we say on the forums, or reddit, or anywhere else we converse and theorize about this game.
Even if STO would upgrade to the best graphics ever, even be the very first media to use holographic display, or even the very first holodeck, we would still have the same problem : IE grinding for the level cap, and pretty much everything.
Also, revamping a game into another engine is not something that is easy. It's basically making a new game.
Finally, a lot of players have a crappy PC that couldn't run on CE at all.
So yeah, it's simply unrealistic. By a large margin, and it wouldn't solve any problem at all. Nobody is complaining about the graphic quality, DR is as pretty/ugly (pick one) as before.
Going off old school CE I would agree, having worked with the current builds of it, I would say otherwise. It works perfectly well on my old Phenom II X2 555 unlocked to quadcore. with only a AMD/ATi 5450 running in it. It's running on low gfx settings (still looking better than a lot of engines) but it runs smoothly at 30 FPS. It's the same with most current engines in that they have improved scalability for older systems, especially with the advent of detail through tessellation.
I feel most people missed the point that my comment was facetious regarding the engine switch. I was suggesting that it would be simpler to fix the issues by fully remaking the game using another studio than let them try to fix it at Cryptic. But hey the literal responses have been fun too
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
I feel most people missed the point that my comment was facetious regarding the engine switch. I was suggesting that it would be simpler to fix the issues by fully remaking the game using another studio than let them try to fix it at Cryptic. But hey the literal responses have been fun too
My bad then, but you would be surprised by how many people are asking to change the engine to something else. Seriously.
I think He was a little too good with devs. My major complain about the game is not the speed of levelling because you level your toon while playing, but how much we have to grind for everything. Actualy the game requires grinding a lot, you have to grind reputation marks, EC, crafting materials and dilithium to acquire/upgrade items, to advance in too many reputations, to build fleet bases and holdings... and to grind so much resources, you have to play the same contents "ad infinitum". That is crazy and orrible.
Moreover devs added ships, items and new mechanics introducing so much power creep that pve contents have become prosaic. The new expansion did not change anything, just delayed this issue giving us the need to grind much more to acquire the items and show again how prosaic is playing pve contens.
Not talking about pvp, totally left to its own devices, and klingon and romulan faction...
What devs should do is removing a lot of grinding, balance the game (too much power creep combining some mechanics) and develop real contents (ex. a complete restyling of old/classic STFs) introducing a good pvp system and give new life to the klingon faction.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
I honestly think that the Dev team wants to give the community as close to a STAR TREK experience in this MMO as they can. I think they have some constraints we don't begin to understand when we discuss and theorize here on the forums or on reddit or our fleets.
My bad then, but you would be surprised by how many people are asking to change the engine to something else. Seriously.
I know, it would require a full redesign of the core mechanics to port STO to another engine. I do think it would be a good idea if another studio took on STO 2.0 and revamped the whole concept of the game to be less of a mass murder simulator and more a of a space exploration game. It would give STO a unique draw that other games couldn't really match due to the ST IP having a lot of it built in. Remove the idea of the triad from the game, it's not required. Having the different ship classes be the core of the differential's the officer types are less relevant. Change the way abilities work so some of the manoeuvre's are one use per battle and can leave you vulnerable if you fail to pull it off correctly. There are so many options for how to make the game good, unfortunately Cryptic are doing the exact opposite.
I'm personally playing a lot of Elite Dangerous at the moment so I can have some space fun. It's getting there, but I'm looking forward to the full release.
There are too many good space games coming out for STO to be able to hide behind it's veneer any more.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
The idea that developers are posting with fake accounts is hilarious.
It would certainly explain why they never feel the need to post - if they've been at it all day already
And it also explains the 5-7 developer apologists we have here on the forums
It sounds like the perfect job for an intern, or some minor responsibility for a junior.
But hey, if there is such a thing as a paid pro-dev forumite where can I apply? I have great written communication skills, and I happen to be working through a fiction writing course as well. I'd be perfect!
Pretty much agree with the article, he even missed a couple things such as the state of PVP and the un-killable tray bug among others.
However, I'm still capable of having tons of fun playing, and I would have felt better about his opinion if he had at least managed to get a character to 60 before just repeating other peoples opinions.
Yeah, as someone who really doesn't have too many complaints about this expansion, and I'm certainly not letting the ones I do have stop me from having fun, I think that sums up everything pretty nicely.
-edit-
I do think it overemphasizes the complaints about the upgrade system, though. That's the highlight of this expansion for me, not making our old gear worthless, letting us pay a small amount (and it is small if you don't go for quality increases) to bring it up to the next level instead. That is so much better than what the alternative could have been -- imagine if they had just added mk XIV to all the stores and told you to buy again, with the existing X -> XI -> XII price scale in place.
No. Worse would have been if they said: "Oh,all the old sets. THey are the old sets. We will make new Mark XIV ones and you can throw them away completely. Oh, you liked your set visuals? Well, you can keep using Mark XII gear, PvE content will stay easy enough on Normal."
The new system is basically hidden re-buying the old sets. But it's a neat system. And it also gave us the option to bring up gear to speed that was just obsolete before, like mission rewards that never had a Mark XII version.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Massively doesn't even touch the really big problem. The game has become an incredible greed grind fest. It takes millions of Dilithium to upgrade a single weapon to XIV epic.
While that isn't completely off the hook, you now will never be able to switch to a new weapon type because the cost of switching is beyond even the shut ins playing this game.
Massively doesn't even touch the really big problem. The game has become an incredible greed grind fest. It takes millions of Dilithium to upgrade a single weapon to XIV epic.
While that isn't completely off the hook, you now will never be able to switch to a new weapon type because the cost of switching is beyond even the shut ins playing this game.
I thought the author was pretty restrained tbh, could have been a whole lot worse for Cryptic, nonetheless I am sure they won't like reading this and perhaps it will be the kick up the jacksey they need to sort stuff out.
Or more likely they'll trot out a Dev to explain how DR is actually wonderful ... , and really how it has been the best expansion ever, and how the players love it .
Comments
Why, most of what VD writes is way over my head. :P But the man knows his stuff, for sure.
As for Massive, this is not case where a Dev can step in and brush things off, saying how 'wrong' we all are: Cryptic will simply need to take this seriously.
P.S. Do I want to stick it to 'the man'? Yes. But not enough that the game will die. All I want is for Cryptic to listen (or, actually, the latter part of listening: the acting upon accordingly).
The space battles would be even more epic, especially if you used the 64bit upgrade to CE that is being pioneered by Star Citizen...
Then you'll be able to overhaul the game without a problem. Plus as you do it you can remove all that spaghetti code that keeps you from fixing any bugs...
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
I know you don't really understand game development. What your suggesting is to rewrite STO. Cryptics MMO engine isn't the issue anyway. Also the Cryengine is hardly ideal for a MMO title. I know a few small developers are or have tried still not really a great MMO creation tool. Also you get that that 10 bucks is per user right, it doesn't mean you don't have to pay royalties for a commercial game. Do you think Cryptic is going to sign over more then half there profits to someone else just to fancy up there GFX.
$10 a seat per month doesn't work very well with a game that has a business model based around 5% of people spending. In fact, no MMO could operate profitably with a license expense of $10 per seat per month without an unprecedented monthly fee. Maybe $30 a month, guesstimating.
The fact is that Cryptic's engine could likely support Crysis level graphics with some work but they don't want it to.
The delays on abilities are also there deliberately. They are only an engine limitation in the sense that Cryptic insists that the engine delay ability triggering. If they used a different engine, they would force the delay in that engine too. The delay is deliberate.
Yes I am, btw I do have a good idea about game development, I was being facetious. Probably didn't come across well in my comments.
CE has been used as the basis for Archeage, one of the larger MMO's out there. It's actually quite a versatile engine, albeit a rather complicated one at times. The cost isn't 50% to Crytek, for full source access 3 years ago it was only 250,000 for 25 seats, and 5% royalties.
The funny part is that with every sentence you wrote in the above quote you show more and more ignorance to the actual costs involved and then add exaggeration on top in spades. The bit I like is the attack on SC being a pure scam. That I find really funny, especially after talking with Chris Roberts, Erin Roberts and Sandi Gardener personally.
It doesn't matter which of the other engines used I used CE as an example, it could be Unreal 4, it could be Unigine, it doesn't matter. They are all far more developed than Cryptic's engine.
I guess you haven't actually looked into the tech that CIG are implementing in CryEngine, such as altering it to be 64bit to allow maps to be huge without losing positional accuracy, updating the streaming of areas from the map streaming CryEngine added to allow MMO's such as Archeage to work a few years back. I guess ignorance is bliss though, enjoy it while it lasts.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
We are plenty of people who have said everything that was said in that article even before DR was released, and they were Trolled, Flamed and insulted.
Yet, when MASSIVELY makes an article about it... Then it's all correct.
Sometimes, the truth takes time to surface.
It probably could, but it would need to catch up with 6 years of development that hasn't been done on Cryptic's engine. I don't see PWE spending out on upgrading that engine any time soon.
I'm fully aware they are there deliberately. Doesn't make it any less annoying that they exist at all. I'm aware of things like channelling and so on in other games, but I'm not aware of any that include a delay on activation of up to 1s. If anything I'd put it down to lazy coding so they don't have to sync things as accurately with the server. Either way it's not a good thing to implement, just from a basics of game development point of view.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
It was always correct.
Yes 50% is obviously not the royalty rate. However there not going to rework there entire game to use someone another companies engine when theres works. There engine is powering never winter and it powered City of Heros before STO. There are newer engine features in Neverwinter that they have yet to implement in STO. With that in mind you think they would completely rework the game from the ground.
CryE may work for a new game just fine. There is simply zero reason for Cryptic to go back and do a year of work rebuilding there game for another engine. That 50% number I pulled out of the air guess what it would be closer to true... cause after paying the redevelopment costs in terms of man hours to make it happen. 50% of what they make would be closer to right... with something like 3-6% going to the Cry guys and another big chunk having to be recouped to pay for the work they put in on it.
He is referencing the fact that most MMOs attempt to show you what is happening on the server side. This means they have to add an artificial lag. Most users are going to average 60-110ms lags all the time. So developers in most cases delay everything that happens by some arbitrary average they hope will mask actual lag. Some devs don't show you what is happening real time on the server at all and seem to mask this better.
If you have played a game like say Wow where they just animate everything from the local side. You will under times of bad lag notice the animation goes off and the dmg doesn't show up right away. In STO they don't attempt to activate everything local (animations start when server has the go) so when you have lag issues the game seems lagged out instantly.
You can argue which is better either way. The WoW local render system is nice for very short lag spikes where most players likely never notice that there dmg didn't roll up for .25s after there animation went off.
Agreed. I'd like to take this opportunity to politely and gracefully say I TOLD YOU SO to everyone who called me a troll for saying pretty much everything in the article, weeks ago.
Free Tibet!
just another opinion and the reviewer just abusing his position to try make his opinion look more important then the rest, hes beating a dead horse especially since its been flogged around enough on the forums the past weeks.
swtor is increasing its level cap tomorrow and bringing 198 gear, however the current thinking on that is that the current 180 gear will be nerfed back a little and 198 will instead become the new 180 with the same dps numbers, storyline npcs and critters will have less hp to deal with less dps from starter to 50, and dailies will also be with less hp to compensate from 50-55 area and makeb. this is certainly one way to deal with power creep and one the sto dev team could of dealt with along the way and did their own but didnt, its only a matter of time before more stuff comes and power creep is on rails.
what else is new, its been like this for as long as i can remember, old news.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Thing is what happens in STO quite a lot is you hit a button to activate something, it then fails to activate because of the activation delay getting interrupted for whatever reason.
In WoW or pretty much any other MMO, you hit the button, it activates and then confirms this with the server. It doesn't automatically fail from other cooldowns, weapons firing etc...
The activation delay can occur regardless of other actions once it's a message sent to the server that is no longer interuptable something that is NOT the case with STO.
That's the issue I have with it. It's a poorly thought out mechanism. That's not even considering the other issues with the UI like bits randomly going missing, BoFF's, DoFF's and even items etc...
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
Also, revamping a game into another engine is not something that is easy. It's basically making a new game.
Finally, a lot of players have a crappy PC that couldn't run on CE at all.
So yeah, it's simply unrealistic. By a large margin, and it wouldn't solve any problem at all. Nobody is complaining about the graphic quality, DR is as pretty/ugly (pick one) as before.
You didn't need to tell me so. I've just been taking the month and a half to figure out how to say nice things about Battleship Royal Rumble and have people take me seriously. :P
You are absolutely right though that the signs of this near meltdown situation were apparent very early. I'd argue as early as the launch of the crafting system. That's when I started really watching. And that's when my eyes were opened (or something ridiculous like that).
Here's the thing. I honestly think that the Dev team wants to give the community as close to a STAR TREK experience in this MMO as they can. I think they have some constraints we don't begin to understand when we discuss and theorize here on the forums or on reddit or our fleets. I think that years of miscommunication and people not trained in good PR with sort of playerbase, have led to a Players/Devs situation. Essentially two "communities" of Star Trek fans, when it could be Players and Devs and Devs and Players and One Community trying to craft and enjoy an experience of Trek.
Yeah, I'm a hippie. But I know that what I am saying is true.
It comes down to. Whether it's well written or not, Whether it's just his opinion or whatever you think of the reviewer, that review (way more scathing than mine and I cuss a few times) was just published on Massively.
Whatever anyone may personally think about Massively, they are (arguably) a major(ish) gaming site.
A whole lot more people than just our little insular community ARE going to read that.
and discuss it.
Shrug, and discount it if you want. But the review/column by Eliot Lefebvre means a bunch more than anything we say on the forums, or reddit, or anywhere else we converse and theorize about this game.
That's just the fact.
Going off old school CE I would agree, having worked with the current builds of it, I would say otherwise. It works perfectly well on my old Phenom II X2 555 unlocked to quadcore. with only a AMD/ATi 5450 running in it. It's running on low gfx settings (still looking better than a lot of engines) but it runs smoothly at 30 FPS. It's the same with most current engines in that they have improved scalability for older systems, especially with the advent of detail through tessellation.
I feel most people missed the point that my comment was facetious regarding the engine switch. I was suggesting that it would be simpler to fix the issues by fully remaking the game using another studio than let them try to fix it at Cryptic. But hey the literal responses have been fun too
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
Moreover devs added ships, items and new mechanics introducing so much power creep that pve contents have become prosaic. The new expansion did not change anything, just delayed this issue giving us the need to grind much more to acquire the items and show again how prosaic is playing pve contens.
Not talking about pvp, totally left to its own devices, and klingon and romulan faction...
What devs should do is removing a lot of grinding, balance the game (too much power creep combining some mechanics) and develop real contents (ex. a complete restyling of old/classic STFs) introducing a good pvp system and give new life to the klingon faction.
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
Thanks man but you're making me self conscious. I should have said "when Massively starts taking shots."
https://youtube.com/channel/UCJZ5FBJ9bFaZ6yAFiNpZiRQ/featured?view_as=subscriber
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CaptainCidStorm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIgfiSzCy1o
But I do completely agree with your opinion about the miscommunication though....
I know, it would require a full redesign of the core mechanics to port STO to another engine. I do think it would be a good idea if another studio took on STO 2.0 and revamped the whole concept of the game to be less of a mass murder simulator and more a of a space exploration game. It would give STO a unique draw that other games couldn't really match due to the ST IP having a lot of it built in. Remove the idea of the triad from the game, it's not required. Having the different ship classes be the core of the differential's the officer types are less relevant. Change the way abilities work so some of the manoeuvre's are one use per battle and can leave you vulnerable if you fail to pull it off correctly. There are so many options for how to make the game good, unfortunately Cryptic are doing the exact opposite.
I'm personally playing a lot of Elite Dangerous at the moment so I can have some space fun. It's getting there, but I'm looking forward to the full release.
There are too many good space games coming out for STO to be able to hide behind it's veneer any more.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
It would certainly explain why they never feel the need to post - if they've been at it all day already
And it also explains the 5-7 developer apologists we have here on the forums
It sounds like the perfect job for an intern, or some minor responsibility for a junior.
But hey, if there is such a thing as a paid pro-dev forumite where can I apply? I have great written communication skills, and I happen to be working through a fiction writing course as well. I'd be perfect!
However, I'm still capable of having tons of fun playing, and I would have felt better about his opinion if he had at least managed to get a character to 60 before just repeating other peoples opinions.
No. Worse would have been if they said: "Oh,all the old sets. THey are the old sets. We will make new Mark XIV ones and you can throw them away completely. Oh, you liked your set visuals? Well, you can keep using Mark XII gear, PvE content will stay easy enough on Normal."
The new system is basically hidden re-buying the old sets. But it's a neat system. And it also gave us the option to bring up gear to speed that was just obsolete before, like mission rewards that never had a Mark XII version.
While that isn't completely off the hook, you now will never be able to switch to a new weapon type because the cost of switching is beyond even the shut ins playing this game.
I think this article covers the other part https://hippiereviewsstuff.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/hippie-reviews-delta-rising-rise-and-fall/
Talk about them coming back to work from the holidays and getting smacked from both of these articles.
Or more likely they'll trot out a Dev to explain how DR is actually wonderful ... , and really how it has been the best expansion ever, and how the players love it .
... coming soon from P1 ...