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I want to love you but...

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I've been playing STO since beta too and I'm still desperately hoping to find whatever it is that makes fellow Star Trek fans feel so engrossed. When I first read about the concept of having 'quests' made up of episodes I thought that was great, very original and very Star Trek. The truth of the matter is, however, that you get a mission to visit a system, you arrive and have to kill x Klingon/Orion/Other ships, then beam down to the planet/station and kill x Klingon/Orion/Other bad guys, then beam back to your ship to fill x more difficult Klingon/Orion/Other ships. And that's it. It's like paint-by-numbers content creation. The reason for killing the bad guys may change, the backdrop to the mindless slaughter may change but essentially it's always the same. And for that reason it gets very boring very quickly.

You might argue that this is typical of any MMO but I disagree. I played WoW for years and although that also required you to kill lots and lots of bad guys in one place after another for dubious, arbitrary reasons at least you felt like you were progressing through the game at the same time. When you start off in Elwyn Forest you wouldn't dream of crossing over into Darkshire because you'll get killed in seconds. But when you finally level up to the point where you can nervously venture into the next 'zone' you feel a sense of achievement that you can finally cross borders into new, exciting, dangerous areas with their unique scenery, inhabitants, quests etc. In Star Trek you can go anywhere you like right from the off and it all looks much the same. There is no sense of achievement in gaining a rank - it's not as if you can suddenly explore new territories as a result. In fact the only incentive to gain a rank at all is to get a new ship and that's only going to happen so many times.

The whole game feels small. You can traverse the galaxy such as it is in a few minutes and with no prerequisites. The ability to explore far-flung, unknown systems which was hinted at pre-launch just doesn't exist. The galaxy is far too small, no part of it feels remote or distant and any system you choose to visit will already be in the midst of an attack by agressive aliens, hence invoking another standard-template mission on arrival. At which point you'll be grouped with other players who you'll co-operate with just fine but have no need at all to communicate with. I've never been in an MMO with so little player interaction. I used to love visiting the big cities in WoW where people would just sit around and talk to pass the time. I hoped something similar would happen in bars on starbases, but no such luck.

Also, this game offers absolutely no penalty at all for dying. That is just ridiculous. I'm not some hardcore MMO player who believes that death should result in you losing all of you inventory and a half-hour walk back from a respawn point. But even though WoW was pretty lenient in the penalty for death - a short walk back to your corpse - at least there was SOME penalty. Your armour took a hit and you could only die so many times before you'd have to visit a town and get your armour repaired, at some significant cost. That was enough disincentive to die.

In STO there is no penalty at all. Even your 'crew', which diminishes as you take a battering during combat, replenishes itself when the fight is over. How is that supposed to happen? It's utterly ridiculous, and it'd be so much better if your crew depleted to the point where you have to visit a starbase to 're-crew', at some kind of cost. As it is, you know that however tough the battle you face you will always prevail eventually because, whereas you can die, come back to life and rejoin the fight as many times as necessary your poor foes only live once and are slowly worn down and defeated by your relentless immortality. A battle with no fear of defeat and no penalty for death is an extremely boring one. And STO is full of them.

Please, Cryptic, PLEASE make this better. I want to love it so badly. Never mind bleating on about adding new content in the coming months when all that is likely to mean is Borg skins being added to the countless aggressors orbiting every planet in the universe and new, flimsy excuses to go and slaughter them until every last one is gone, however many reincarnations it may take you. Add some ACTUAL content. Some STORY. Something to get people interested (I know I'm not alone in my views) and stay entertained by. Hire some proper story writers or something. Add some intrigue, some mystery, some puzzles to solve. The engine is there and it's good (quite good - ground combat kinda sucks) but it's just not engaging at all!
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    The game is low-budget and was made in a very, VERY, short time.
    Of course its going to be small.

    Whats fubar though, and ****ing a lot of people off, is that its the most expensive MMO in the world right now. I cant see any way to explain that other than Cryptic is trying to milk as much money from Star Trek fans as possible and then move on to a new MMO project?

    ... greed....... :mad:
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Securion wrote: »
    The game is low-budget and was made in a very, VERY, short time.
    Of course its going to be small.

    Whats fubar though, and ****ing a lot of people off, is that its the most expensive MMO in the world right now. I cant see any way to explain that other than Cryptic is trying to milk as much money from Star Trek fans as possible and then move on to a new MMO project?

    ... greed....... :mad:

    Exactly. The most expensive game with a monthly fee. I refuse to call this an M ->M<- ORPG, because it isn't one.

    It's a cheap single player game with a chat system and some multiplayer features.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    I actually think of this game as more of a direct rip of CoX's (seriously everyone is a laser mastermind rofl) ground combat aspect, and the space combat is taken directly from startrek legacy, or the PSP one (PSP one is single ship, legacy 4 ships at a time), overall this game feels like a more multiplayer version of legacy, and not massively multiplayer at that.

    As has been said before, i agree that right now the only thing that drives one to level, is to get the bigger, badder ship, and that novelty wears off 2 lvl's into the next tier.

    No choices as a player, no open ended missions where you are given a choice, have a puzzle to solve beyond "go talk to each NPC, then answer 5 questions DUR". There doesnt seem to be much of a difference between planets and space stations in terms of size, one map, maby an inner installation map on top of pretty much every planet based mission, and stations all have the one, why wasnt there 8+ maps PER planet, and quests that maby are hidden, or out of the way on each planet, instead it ends up feeling quite under-used.

    Seriously in most maps, you only need to go into the circled area that occupies 20% of the total map, then you are gone. Heavy use of instancing makes you feel separated from the world in general, and there is no space exploration beyond flying in circles in a nebula? give me a break.

    I know the game just came out, i know content is coming down the line, i just dont trust a company that is willing to shill such a shallow, attempt at star trek, its actually kinda insulting, city of heroes was one thing, i wasnt expecting a riveting experience, but from this i was.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    In the first two thirds of beta, space combat was actually challenging (potentially difficult) and rewarding. When you won a difficult space battle, you really felt that you had earned something. That was the one thing this game had going for it. If they implement a difficulty slider, it might become worth playing again, otherwise...
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