I've stuck by Cryptic's side through several games; this is pretty hard to brush under the rug though... I've beta tested WoW, City of Villains, Auto Assault (BIG LOL), Battlefield 2142, LOTR: BFME2... I've played just about every MMO on the market... I've seen bad releases and poor/rushed games... but STO takes the cake.
I'm just looking at my lifetime subscription as a $250.00 lesson learned.
I sincerely hope you guys redeem yourselves or in the worse case... I hope that the 20,000,000$ bonus was worth losing a massive amount of suscribers as a result of a rushed out half-___ed MMO.
I'm sticking with you guys for old time sake and because of the fact that I love Star Trek; not to mention I hope I get some enjoyment out of this lifetime sub... but unless there are some dramatic improvements... I know I'm not the only person who won't be picking up another Cryptic game.
I have nothing but love for the Developers, it's the suits at the top that are at fault.
I've stuck by Cryptic's side through several games; this is pretty hard to brush under the rug though... I've beta tested WoW, City of Villains, Auto Assault (BIG LOL), Battlefield 2142, LOTR: BFME2... I've played just about every MMO on the market... I've seen bad releases and poor/rushed games... but STO takes the cake.
I'm just looking at my lifetime subscription as a $250.00 lesson learned.
I sincerely hope you guys redeem yourselves or in the worse case... I hope that the 20,000,000$ bonus was worth losing a massive amount of suscribers as a result of a rushed out half-___ed MMO.
I'm sticking with you guys for old time sake and because of the fact that I love Star Trek; not to mention I hope I get some enjoyment out of this lifetime sub... but unless there are some dramatic improvements... I know I'm not the only person who won't be picking up another Cryptic game.
I have nothing but love for the Developers, it's the suits at the top that are at fault.
I've stuck by Cryptic's side through several games; this is pretty hard to brush under the rug though... I've beta tested WoW, City of Villains, Auto Assault (BIG LOL), Battlefield 2142, LOTR: BFME2... I've played just about every MMO on the market... I've seen bad releases and poor/rushed games... but STO takes the cake.
I'm just looking at my lifetime subscription as a $250.00 lesson learned.
I sincerely hope you guys redeem yourselves or in the worse case... I hope that the 20,000,000$ bonus was worth losing a massive amount of suscribers as a result of a rushed out half-___ed MMO.
I'm sticking with you guys for old time sake and because of the fact that I love Star Trek; not to mention I hope I get some enjoyment out of this lifetime sub... but unless there are some dramatic improvements... I know I'm not the only person who won't be picking up another Cryptic game.
I have nothing but love for the Developers, it's the suits at the top that are at fault.
I'm actually commenting about your signature... I' pretty much agree and add one point:
Ground combat smooth like ST: Elite Force -games. I enjoyed those and am wondering why can't ground combat be more like that? I mean even Klingon Honor Guard has better ground combat that STO. In my 3 days of playing I'm already fed up and not rolling for any ground combat action.
This whole thing reeks of management. The ONLY way they'll listen is if people start canceling subscriptions.
Lifetime Membership or not...you can get a refund due the lack of playability on their end. It call "Specific Performance." You purchased, nit just a product, but the promise the product brought with it. They are NOT delivering on the promise, so a "No Refunds" will not hold up in court. :mad:
Thank you Milenko. I got the number on my phone and will see how the free month plays out.
I love how the copntent patch is coming out after the free month... I put blind faith in the game once with a lifetime subscription... I doubt I'll do it again. I still got guest passes to check out that patch:) Besides, if they fix this atrocity then I won't mind paying 300$ for a lfietime... but 250$ for THIS? No. I payed for 3 eve accounts at once before... I don't even feel this is paid MMO quality as it stands.
To be honest I was prepared to eat the 250... thanks for bringing this to my attention.
Was just reading your siggy... I think it's curious that if they hadn't shoe-horned all this fluff like sector space where it should never have been and taken this clearly kaizen inspired cost-cutting "shard" approach to server loads, and if the management wasn't so obviously taking the Michael Bay approach (all balls no thinkies) to game creating, they would have likely had half the new development and twice the happy customers...
Some designers with vision need to tell the managers at Cryptic to stuff their iPhones and butt-out before they destroy what's salvageable... These boards are almost a clone of the SWG boards in 2005... Not a good thing...
You can blame them for "rushing" it. But their are CORE PROBLEMS that have nothing to do with the suits.
The suits did not say make an entirely instanced boxey game for example.
True... but they're the one's standing over the Dev's shoulder... 'Are you done yet, are you done yet? I want my 20,000,000... I promised my wife a third house... are you done yet?'
TeeDge, i totaly agree. i so wanted to be able to afford a lifetime sub, when it was in beta stage. now, i feel sad for all who bought one. i hear you can get it refunded?
oh, and dont forget the cryptic way : keep ppl almost happy with little tidbits of updating, and then rail them up about a huge comming update, at wich point they release a PAYED update, wich judging by what they have done in other games, is 6 months after release.
Personally I dont think they will looes the whole player base... all other games lost a bunch of people the first month...
I might stay or I might leave but that is cause of content...
downtime is ok by me cause its the only time I take time to work in second life almost.
ruin a company I doubt it...
as for the why it was released... cryptic asked for holding up a while longer... atari said no.
server issues... cryptic asked for more servers and such atari said "wait abit"
guess who sits on most of the money for this....
atari can afford to loose a few games. all tho I doubt this will be one they will loose
Seriously? It is only been a few weeks after release. Every game has its issues. As for the people who bought a lifetime subscription without researching, you do NOT deserve a refund. I personally think this MMO is fantastic, its combat keeps me interested, its not like wow were you can just button mash, the pvp is fine and i wouldnt change anything. How would you suggest they do without the sectors? If you have any understanding of how servers work can you imagine the server load it would require to do such a thing? Get real.
I'm actually commenting about your signature... I' pretty much agree and add one point:
Ground combat smooth like ST: Elite Force -games. I enjoyed those and am wondering why can't ground combat be more like that? I mean even Klingon Honor Guard has better ground combat that STO. In my 3 days of playing I'm already fed up and not rolling for any ground combat action.
Takes a while to tweak the client settings to get the ground combat into normal mode. There are a bunch of non standard settings people have to get used to using like auto face target and do not target objects etc. Litterly took me days to perfect my ground combat settings and they still will probably get a tweak or two in the near future. Also the camera physx system is a bit weak. Reminds me of PotBS the way the camera reacts at times. When it gets stuck it likes to bounce around and shimmy. I find I'm either zoomed too far in or out. There is this happy medium that prevents the camera from bouncing around so much.
Aside from that and a few animation issues when other actions are in progress I find the ground combat to be fun. As for balancing well that will have to come later with more experience but for now its alot of fun with a good team. if your with a bunch of pugs in pvp against a fleet on coms it can get ugly. Still I really enjoy the action aspect of it and hope to see Cryptic flush it out with more sounds and polish. The visuals and performance of ground combat is great.
OP you claim to have been in mmo launches that were better or worse, would you please list which were better or worse and why? all the games you mentioned were much worse at launch then STO is.
however i see where your problem may lie in reading your sig
My Ideal STO: One single open sector space, seamless zoning from one sector to another, the transition shown by a subtle change in ambiance; more visuals - less star charts; PVP-enabled zones and uninstanced encounters; instanced & unsharded space stations with more room to accommodate a large community; NO SHARDS except system and pvp instance
even if you didn't play in beta, which i think you must've, had you research the game at all you would've known it would be heavily instanced, no open world pvp. further your demosntrate your ignorance by saying "no shards". do oyou know what a shard is? it si teh technical term for what most people call a server.
in wow for instance a realm is a shard. it is a collection of servers, even in wow. in eve the shard is many more servers than the typical wow shard. no matter what, an mmo is going to be a shard.
so you spent 200$ + on a game you didn't research, and didn't play. or you played the game and took teh risk by buying a lifetime sub, even though the game wasn't what you want it to be.
i personally like the game quite a bit. have liked it since i first tried it in OB. i realize that no mmo is perfect at launch. but i still didn't feel it was worth the risk of paying the money for a lifetime sub. even if i play the game long enough to have justified the costs, i will not regret not getting the LTS, because i've learned in the world of gaming that no game is worth that kind of money upfront, even if it ends up costing me more in the long run.
so i hope you end up staying subbed past the deadline for a refund, as you made a rash purchase. when i make an impulse buy i do not ask for a refund. but i rarely spend money on something i might regret buying later, or something i know is different from what i want it to be.
My Ideal STO: One single open sector space, seamless zoning from one sector to another, the transition shown by a subtle change in ambiance; more visuals - less star charts; PVP-enabled zones and uninstanced encounters; instanced & unsharded space stations with more room to accommodate a large community; NO SHARDS except system and pvp instances.
I actually think this is pretty funny. You paid $250 hoping that STO would turn out to be a completely different game than all of the descriptions and the beta showed it to be? And seriously, $250? That's 17 months at the most expensive monthly rate before you break even. Who ever plays a game that long?
I'm not sure what you mean by no shards since you clearly don't know what one is. But I think the game you're describing is EVE, you should look into it.
OP you claim to have been in mmo launches that were better or worse, would you please list which were better or worse and why? all the games you mentioned were much worse at launch then STO is.
however i see where your problem may lie in reading your sig
even if you didn't play in beta, which i think you must've, had you research the game at all you would've known it would be heavily instanced, no open world pvp. further your demosntrate your ignorance by saying "no shards". do oyou know what a shard is? it si teh technical term for what most people call a server.
in wow for instance a realm is a shard. it is a collection of servers, even in wow. in eve the shard is many more servers than the typical wow shard. no matter what, an mmo is going to be a shard.
This is sophistry and semantics. A Shard in WOW may be a cluster of servers just like in this game but the functional aspect of how it works is far different. This game has no community. In Wow or any other "server" based game you get to know the people on your server, both the good and the bad because they are stuck there with you. In a heavily instanced shard system like Cryptic has not only do you get nowhere near the same feel of community, but you can be separated from your friends and teammates because of the server architecture into different instance groups even when you specifically pre-form a group.
A shard and a server are not the same thing, a server has a smaller group of people who are physically linked to a server cluster and to each other by community, whereas a shard is a randomly formed instance generated to siphon some small subset of a vastly larger whole into a virtual room.
So far, I don't feel suckered on my lifetime. The devs are showing they ARE trying to get stuff out. I just hope the suits put that 20 mill towards development of the IP & STO vs skating to the Bahamas. I mean 20 mill can hire several content developers with nice performance bonuses over the next 2-3 years.
I've stuck by Cryptic's side through several games; this is pretty hard to brush under the rug though... I've beta tested WoW, City of Villains, Auto Assault (BIG LOL), Battlefield 2142, LOTR: BFME2... I've played just about every MMO on the market... I've seen bad releases and poor/rushed games... but STO takes the cake.
I'm just looking at my lifetime subscription as a $250.00 lesson learned.
I sincerely hope you guys redeem yourselves or in the worse case... I hope that the 20,000,000$ bonus was worth losing a massive amount of suscribers as a result of a rushed out half-___ed MMO.
I'm sticking with you guys for old time sake and because of the fact that I love Star Trek; not to mention I hope I get some enjoyment out of this lifetime sub... but unless there are some dramatic improvements... I know I'm not the only person who won't be picking up another Cryptic game.
I have nothing but love for the Developers, it's the suits at the top that are at fault.
You beta tested WoW and you think STO has a poor launch? lol.
I still don't understand lifers and I mean no direct offense. If you may one day regret your lifetime purchase, why did you bother to get it in the first place?
I've stuck by Cryptic's side through several games; this is pretty hard to brush under the rug though... I've beta tested WoW, City of Villains, Auto Assault (BIG LOL), Battlefield 2142, LOTR: BFME2... I've played just about every MMO on the market... I've seen bad releases and poor/rushed games... but STO takes the cake.
I'm just looking at my lifetime subscription as a $250.00 lesson learned.
I sincerely hope you guys redeem yourselves or in the worse case... I hope that the 20,000,000$ bonus was worth losing a massive amount of suscribers as a result of a rushed out half-___ed MMO.
I'm sticking with you guys for old time sake and because of the fact that I love Star Trek; not to mention I hope I get some enjoyment out of this lifetime sub... but unless there are some dramatic improvements... I know I'm not the only person who won't be picking up another Cryptic game.
I have nothing but love for the Developers, it's the suits at the top that are at fault.
hm, did someone tell him yet battlefield is no mmo?
don't wanna ruin any dreams here ^^
This is sophistry and semantics. A Shard in WOW may be a cluster of servers just like in this game but the functional aspect of how it works is far different. This game has no community. In Wow or any other "server" based game you get to know the people on your server, both the good and the bad because they are stuck there with you. In a heavily instanced shard system like Cryptic has not only do you get nowhere near the same feel of community, but you can be separated from your friends and teammates because of the server architecture into different instance groups even when you specifically pre-form a group.
A shard and a server are not the same thing, a server has a smaller group of people who are physically linked to a server cluster and to each other by community, whereas a shard is a randomly formed instance generated to siphon some small subset of a vastly larger whole into a virtual room.
No community? STO has plenty of community, and more of it. Also, WoW had to implement server clusters and battle groups so pvp didn't suck, and no its the same for even PvP. Half the time I do a pug now its with people from other servers who I will most likely never get to know.
Sure, STO could have gone that route, and had like 10 Klingon per server, and smaller amounts of people and then had people complaining about some shards not having enough population like what happened in WoW. :rolleyes:
Your definition of "shard" couldn't be more wrong.
Shard was originally coined by Ultima Online, and a "shard" was the name for a specific server where there was only one instance. Seeing how you try to claim WoW has a better community than STO its no wonder you wouldn't know where the term Shard came from.
Also, I have never had a problem getting into the same instance as my group. The only time its tricky is when we do DSE's and even then, we just coordinate to choose the same instance and it works fine.
Try setting you group to "closed" instead of "open" and you might also have better luck. 9 times out of 10, its user error that ruins a game. Lack of research and want to read.
I still don't understand lifers and I mean no direct offense. If you may one day regret your lifetime purchase, why did you bother to get it in the first place?
I bought a lifetime because A. I had the money, and B. because even if I stop playing a game, especially an MMO I will often times go back to that game later on. Lifetime subscription was an option that made me not have to worry about what state financially I was in. If later down the road I stop playing and then get financially unstable but want a game to play, I have my lifetime sub.
What I don't understand is if people cancel their accounts... why do they feel the need to bother with the forums?
I actually think this is pretty funny. You paid $250 hoping that STO would turn out to be a completely different game than all of the descriptions and the beta showed it to be? And seriously, $250? That's 17 months at the most expensive monthly rate before you break even. Who ever plays a game that long?
I'm not sure what you mean by no shards since you clearly don't know what one is. But I think the game you're describing is EVE, you should look into it.
Good MMO's have years worth of play and a nice thing called replayability (which STO lacks in both). If they had offered Lifetime subs for SWG and EQ I would have saved thousands of dollars off the 6-7 years I played 4+ accounts on EQ and the 4 I had in SWG for several years.
I've stuck by Cryptic's side through several games; this is pretty hard to brush under the rug though... I've beta tested WoW, City of Villains, Auto Assault (BIG LOL), Battlefield 2142, LOTR: BFME2... I've played just about every MMO on the market... I've seen bad releases and poor/rushed games... but STO takes the cake.
I'm just looking at my lifetime subscription as a $250.00 lesson learned.
I sincerely hope you guys redeem yourselves or in the worse case... I hope that the 20,000,000$ bonus was worth losing a massive amount of suscribers as a result of a rushed out half-___ed MMO.
I'm sticking with you guys for old time sake and because of the fact that I love Star Trek; not to mention I hope I get some enjoyment out of this lifetime sub... but unless there are some dramatic improvements... I know I'm not the only person who won't be picking up another Cryptic game.
I have nothing but love for the Developers, it's the suits at the top that are at fault.
I am not sure why you would consider that STO would be different then its predecessors Champions online, and COH/COV. Those games were more or less identical to STO both in format, and overall gameplay although there were minor differences between them all.
If the developers really wanted what you list in the Sig they would have made it. Its possible that Atari would not let them make it. Simple fact is its the way business works. you give the customer the product he wants, or you wont stay in business.
With that said, STO is a game that will never do all that well. Its life cycle will be exactly like the last few MMO's to come out, where people buy it, stay for a month or two then head back to WoW, Lotro or whatever games they were playing. i picked up the game myself due to friends, and due to space combat being relatively fun. I just hit admrial this weekend, with my buddies being a few days ahead of me.
Like CoH/CO this game just has minimal long term potential. It doesnt make it a bad game, just a bad business model for a MMO which has to maintain subscriptions to make money. Until people stop chasing the WoW type of gameplay, and choose to take the risk to create something different and new, not much is going to change. Sadly the biggest issue facing MMO's these days is investment, and frankly there are very few corporations who can invest the money and time into a product in the hope its the next big thing, given the risks.
Good MMO's have years worth of play and a nice thing called replayability (which STO lacks in both). If they had offered Lifetime subs for SWG and EQ I would have saved thousands of dollars off the 6-7 years I played 4+ accounts on EQ and the 4 I had in SWG for several years.
EQ didn't have years worth of content. -.- Don't remember how long I spent in Lower Guk grinding to 50 back in the day.
Thats not what most people are looking for, as I can easily do the same thing in STO through DSE's and Explore missions.
hm, did someone tell him yet battlefield is no mmo?
don't wanna ruin any dreams here ^^
Klingonwhateveryournameis... unless you're going to hire me for something, I don't see the need to waste time posting my resume of nerdom, thanks for your concern though.
Your comments aside...
Other issues I see fanbois firing at me blindly, much like I did my cash at Cryptic.
Me asking for a refund: I never did, I typed "250 dollar lesson learned." It was another member of the community who linked a thread about canceling lifetime subs. Besides, why not? A free lesson learned is better than a 250 dollar one...
I was not aware this thread was about my signature; however, since my idea of sharding is under scrutiny I will go into detail that I support more than one server. Unfortunately there's only so much signature space and I wanted to fit my former fanboy tropheys in the sig. Also, please note: I said my "Ideal STO" not ZOMG GIVE ME THIS RIGHT NOW OR I'LL POST ANOTHER CANCELLATION THREAD AND TROLL THE FORUMS FOR A COUPLE MONTHS (while still playing) /simulated_nerdrage. That was not my point. Now that I DO know that I can try to cancel my lifetime sub, I'll sure try, who wouldn't? I'm not quitting the game though, I just don't see myself playing this game 16 months down the road like I originally did with the way things are going right now.
My lack of research: Before I even knew about STO, I beta tested CoV which was horrible before release. They did pull through and the game launched relatively smooth. I had faith in Cryptic's ability to pull through and fix bugs at the time. The game itself lacked, but I did play for 2 years...
Fast-forwarding to STO: I was in Open Beta... THE BUGS DO NOT BOTHER ME, I know and understand that its part of MMOs and it will always be. My problem is Cryptic's response to them. My problem is Cryptic's business moves (first content patch AFTER free month, throwing out a game that lacks major content and community for that little bonus for Atari). Rush-ordered servers/hardware, lol. Finally, Cryptic's dodging of issues, unanswered tickets, copy-paste alerts of downtime, more time spent locking posts than actually communicating with the fanbase... I should have clarified in the OP, but by worst lauch... I was talking about the former issues.
Buying a lifetime sub: I played WoW for 4 years... Eve for 3-4... CoX for around 2. I played Planetside and MxO never touching Sony again. I played Auto Assault long enough to know it was not going to last, and at the end of year one NCSoft pulled the plug. I usually invest a lot of time into MMOs and it made sense to me to grab a lifetime sub. Besides, if my history with Cryptic repeated itself I would be coming out on top. I gambled that I would play the game for the same amount of time I've played other MMOs, Cryptic gambled that I would leave with the masses that they knew would leave (why they never upgraded server capacity it seems...) Good business move, not very ethical though. If they put as much faith in their own game as they put faith in people leaving, they might have had a hit on their hands. I was also under the impression that we were not experiencing the full content... I didn't know they meant a little Borg patch after release. That's not my problem though, I don't mind. Like I said, stupid choice, I paid for it, oh well.
My discontent of this post is simply aimed at Cryptic executives rushing the game out and their business decisions, not the Devs; as a matter of fact maybe 10% of my disappointment is with the actual game... mostly scan 5x, kill 5x, do a cool well-written episode, then back to the rushed garbage for a bit while I wait for the newly installed hardware to go down again. MMO launches are chaotic... I never said they weren't... maybe this one's just my final straw... maybe I'm just getting tired of this lifeless MMO TRIBBLE big companies are selling these days... maybe some of my OP was emotionally charged. However, in the end, I think Cryptic has what it takes... I hope they use it.
Well.. I hate to say this, but I will be cancelling my subscription. Was very much looking forward to this game, but it's just not finished. Maybe it will be an awesome game in 8 months but by then it will be a ghost town. Sure... then cryptic will advertise out the wahzoo to try to get the community back, free trials and what not... but by then the new star wars will be out. From the looks of that game, the devs are actually taking the time to release a good product, unlike this this one.
I love Star Trek but this TRIBBLE is just too much to handle. Good luck to everyone staying.
Comments
If you are that unhappy try here:
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=106546&highlight=apparently+there+refund
A possibility of a refund is better than NO possibility
I'm actually commenting about your signature... I' pretty much agree and add one point:
Ground combat smooth like ST: Elite Force -games. I enjoyed those and am wondering why can't ground combat be more like that? I mean even Klingon Honor Guard has better ground combat that STO. In my 3 days of playing I'm already fed up and not rolling for any ground combat action.
Lifetime Membership or not...you can get a refund due the lack of playability on their end. It call "Specific Performance." You purchased, nit just a product, but the promise the product brought with it. They are NOT delivering on the promise, so a "No Refunds" will not hold up in court. :mad:
I love how the copntent patch is coming out after the free month... I put blind faith in the game once with a lifetime subscription... I doubt I'll do it again. I still got guest passes to check out that patch:) Besides, if they fix this atrocity then I won't mind paying 300$ for a lfietime... but 250$ for THIS? No. I payed for 3 eve accounts at once before... I don't even feel this is paid MMO quality as it stands.
To be honest I was prepared to eat the 250... thanks for bringing this to my attention.
You can blame them for "rushing" it. But their are CORE PROBLEMS that have nothing to do with the suits.
The suits did not say make an entirely instanced boxey game for example.
Was just reading your siggy... I think it's curious that if they hadn't shoe-horned all this fluff like sector space where it should never have been and taken this clearly kaizen inspired cost-cutting "shard" approach to server loads, and if the management wasn't so obviously taking the Michael Bay approach (all balls no thinkies) to game creating, they would have likely had half the new development and twice the happy customers...
Some designers with vision need to tell the managers at Cryptic to stuff their iPhones and butt-out before they destroy what's salvageable... These boards are almost a clone of the SWG boards in 2005... Not a good thing...
True... but they're the one's standing over the Dev's shoulder... 'Are you done yet, are you done yet? I want my 20,000,000... I promised my wife a third house... are you done yet?'
How do you know the suits did not say that? Most of what we see on the forums here is conjecture at best. I'm just saying keep an open mind.
The hell they didn't....
They wanted an efficient ($$$$), modular design....
They are *singularly* to blame....
If you think the bean-counters aren't the ones who sign-off in the end, then you've been in college too long...
oh, and dont forget the cryptic way : keep ppl almost happy with little tidbits of updating, and then rail them up about a huge comming update, at wich point they release a PAYED update, wich judging by what they have done in other games, is 6 months after release.
I might stay or I might leave but that is cause of content...
downtime is ok by me cause its the only time I take time to work in second life almost.
ruin a company I doubt it...
as for the why it was released... cryptic asked for holding up a while longer... atari said no.
server issues... cryptic asked for more servers and such atari said "wait abit"
guess who sits on most of the money for this....
atari can afford to loose a few games. all tho I doubt this will be one they will loose
Takes a while to tweak the client settings to get the ground combat into normal mode. There are a bunch of non standard settings people have to get used to using like auto face target and do not target objects etc. Litterly took me days to perfect my ground combat settings and they still will probably get a tweak or two in the near future. Also the camera physx system is a bit weak. Reminds me of PotBS the way the camera reacts at times. When it gets stuck it likes to bounce around and shimmy. I find I'm either zoomed too far in or out. There is this happy medium that prevents the camera from bouncing around so much.
Aside from that and a few animation issues when other actions are in progress I find the ground combat to be fun. As for balancing well that will have to come later with more experience but for now its alot of fun with a good team. if your with a bunch of pugs in pvp against a fleet on coms it can get ugly. Still I really enjoy the action aspect of it and hope to see Cryptic flush it out with more sounds and polish. The visuals and performance of ground combat is great.
however i see where your problem may lie in reading your sig even if you didn't play in beta, which i think you must've, had you research the game at all you would've known it would be heavily instanced, no open world pvp. further your demosntrate your ignorance by saying "no shards". do oyou know what a shard is? it si teh technical term for what most people call a server.
in wow for instance a realm is a shard. it is a collection of servers, even in wow. in eve the shard is many more servers than the typical wow shard. no matter what, an mmo is going to be a shard.
so you spent 200$ + on a game you didn't research, and didn't play. or you played the game and took teh risk by buying a lifetime sub, even though the game wasn't what you want it to be.
i personally like the game quite a bit. have liked it since i first tried it in OB. i realize that no mmo is perfect at launch. but i still didn't feel it was worth the risk of paying the money for a lifetime sub. even if i play the game long enough to have justified the costs, i will not regret not getting the LTS, because i've learned in the world of gaming that no game is worth that kind of money upfront, even if it ends up costing me more in the long run.
so i hope you end up staying subbed past the deadline for a refund, as you made a rash purchase. when i make an impulse buy i do not ask for a refund. but i rarely spend money on something i might regret buying later, or something i know is different from what i want it to be.
I actually think this is pretty funny. You paid $250 hoping that STO would turn out to be a completely different game than all of the descriptions and the beta showed it to be? And seriously, $250? That's 17 months at the most expensive monthly rate before you break even. Who ever plays a game that long?
I'm not sure what you mean by no shards since you clearly don't know what one is. But I think the game you're describing is EVE, you should look into it.
This is sophistry and semantics. A Shard in WOW may be a cluster of servers just like in this game but the functional aspect of how it works is far different. This game has no community. In Wow or any other "server" based game you get to know the people on your server, both the good and the bad because they are stuck there with you. In a heavily instanced shard system like Cryptic has not only do you get nowhere near the same feel of community, but you can be separated from your friends and teammates because of the server architecture into different instance groups even when you specifically pre-form a group.
A shard and a server are not the same thing, a server has a smaller group of people who are physically linked to a server cluster and to each other by community, whereas a shard is a randomly formed instance generated to siphon some small subset of a vastly larger whole into a virtual room.
You beta tested WoW and you think STO has a poor launch? lol.
I call shenanigans.
hm, did someone tell him yet battlefield is no mmo?
don't wanna ruin any dreams here ^^
No community? STO has plenty of community, and more of it. Also, WoW had to implement server clusters and battle groups so pvp didn't suck, and no its the same for even PvP. Half the time I do a pug now its with people from other servers who I will most likely never get to know.
Sure, STO could have gone that route, and had like 10 Klingon per server, and smaller amounts of people and then had people complaining about some shards not having enough population like what happened in WoW. :rolleyes:
Your definition of "shard" couldn't be more wrong.
Shard was originally coined by Ultima Online, and a "shard" was the name for a specific server where there was only one instance. Seeing how you try to claim WoW has a better community than STO its no wonder you wouldn't know where the term Shard came from.
Also, I have never had a problem getting into the same instance as my group. The only time its tricky is when we do DSE's and even then, we just coordinate to choose the same instance and it works fine.
Try setting you group to "closed" instead of "open" and you might also have better luck.
I bought a lifetime because A. I had the money, and B. because even if I stop playing a game, especially an MMO I will often times go back to that game later on. Lifetime subscription was an option that made me not have to worry about what state financially I was in. If later down the road I stop playing and then get financially unstable but want a game to play, I have my lifetime sub.
What I don't understand is if people cancel their accounts... why do they feel the need to bother with the forums?
Good MMO's have years worth of play and a nice thing called replayability (which STO lacks in both). If they had offered Lifetime subs for SWG and EQ I would have saved thousands of dollars off the 6-7 years I played 4+ accounts on EQ and the 4 I had in SWG for several years.
I am not sure why you would consider that STO would be different then its predecessors Champions online, and COH/COV. Those games were more or less identical to STO both in format, and overall gameplay although there were minor differences between them all.
If the developers really wanted what you list in the Sig they would have made it. Its possible that Atari would not let them make it. Simple fact is its the way business works. you give the customer the product he wants, or you wont stay in business.
With that said, STO is a game that will never do all that well. Its life cycle will be exactly like the last few MMO's to come out, where people buy it, stay for a month or two then head back to WoW, Lotro or whatever games they were playing. i picked up the game myself due to friends, and due to space combat being relatively fun. I just hit admrial this weekend, with my buddies being a few days ahead of me.
Like CoH/CO this game just has minimal long term potential. It doesnt make it a bad game, just a bad business model for a MMO which has to maintain subscriptions to make money. Until people stop chasing the WoW type of gameplay, and choose to take the risk to create something different and new, not much is going to change. Sadly the biggest issue facing MMO's these days is investment, and frankly there are very few corporations who can invest the money and time into a product in the hope its the next big thing, given the risks.
EQ didn't have years worth of content. -.- Don't remember how long I spent in Lower Guk grinding to 50 back in the day.
Thats not what most people are looking for, as I can easily do the same thing in STO through DSE's and Explore missions.
At least Explore missions mix the map up a bit.
Klingonwhateveryournameis... unless you're going to hire me for something, I don't see the need to waste time posting my resume of nerdom, thanks for your concern though.
Your comments aside...
Other issues I see fanbois firing at me blindly, much like I did my cash at Cryptic.
Me asking for a refund: I never did, I typed "250 dollar lesson learned." It was another member of the community who linked a thread about canceling lifetime subs. Besides, why not? A free lesson learned is better than a 250 dollar one...
I was not aware this thread was about my signature; however, since my idea of sharding is under scrutiny I will go into detail that I support more than one server. Unfortunately there's only so much signature space and I wanted to fit my former fanboy tropheys in the sig. Also, please note: I said my "Ideal STO" not ZOMG GIVE ME THIS RIGHT NOW OR I'LL POST ANOTHER CANCELLATION THREAD AND TROLL THE FORUMS FOR A COUPLE MONTHS (while still playing) /simulated_nerdrage. That was not my point. Now that I DO know that I can try to cancel my lifetime sub, I'll sure try, who wouldn't? I'm not quitting the game though, I just don't see myself playing this game 16 months down the road like I originally did with the way things are going right now.
My lack of research: Before I even knew about STO, I beta tested CoV which was horrible before release. They did pull through and the game launched relatively smooth. I had faith in Cryptic's ability to pull through and fix bugs at the time. The game itself lacked, but I did play for 2 years...
Fast-forwarding to STO: I was in Open Beta... THE BUGS DO NOT BOTHER ME, I know and understand that its part of MMOs and it will always be. My problem is Cryptic's response to them. My problem is Cryptic's business moves (first content patch AFTER free month, throwing out a game that lacks major content and community for that little bonus for Atari). Rush-ordered servers/hardware, lol. Finally, Cryptic's dodging of issues, unanswered tickets, copy-paste alerts of downtime, more time spent locking posts than actually communicating with the fanbase... I should have clarified in the OP, but by worst lauch... I was talking about the former issues.
Buying a lifetime sub: I played WoW for 4 years... Eve for 3-4... CoX for around 2. I played Planetside and MxO never touching Sony again. I played Auto Assault long enough to know it was not going to last, and at the end of year one NCSoft pulled the plug. I usually invest a lot of time into MMOs and it made sense to me to grab a lifetime sub. Besides, if my history with Cryptic repeated itself I would be coming out on top. I gambled that I would play the game for the same amount of time I've played other MMOs, Cryptic gambled that I would leave with the masses that they knew would leave (why they never upgraded server capacity it seems...) Good business move, not very ethical though. If they put as much faith in their own game as they put faith in people leaving, they might have had a hit on their hands. I was also under the impression that we were not experiencing the full content... I didn't know they meant a little Borg patch after release. That's not my problem though, I don't mind. Like I said, stupid choice, I paid for it, oh well.
My discontent of this post is simply aimed at Cryptic executives rushing the game out and their business decisions, not the Devs; as a matter of fact maybe 10% of my disappointment is with the actual game... mostly scan 5x, kill 5x, do a cool well-written episode, then back to the rushed garbage for a bit while I wait for the newly installed hardware to go down again. MMO launches are chaotic... I never said they weren't... maybe this one's just my final straw... maybe I'm just getting tired of this lifeless MMO TRIBBLE big companies are selling these days... maybe some of my OP was emotionally charged. However, in the end, I think Cryptic has what it takes... I hope they use it.
I love Star Trek but this TRIBBLE is just too much to handle. Good luck to everyone staying.