Why are you playing, why do you continue to play, or if you don't continue to play what did you enjoy the most?
for me:
1) Graphics. Inside the episodes, particularly space, its just a gorgeous sight. I'll add on that customization of character and bridge officers are amazing and I do enjoy looking at some of the aliens or my friends bridge officers during the game.
2) Space combat. Forever I've missed Wing Commander. I know this game isn't really much like it, but I really do enjoy the general space combat. It is very fun. (outside of dp, thrill, etc complaints) I know there is some criticism regarding directionally moving your ship, but I find the whole system works very well. There are some tweaks regarding combat that could add some enjoyment, but for the most part, piloting and fighting in a starship is an enjoyable experience.
Easily my top two reasons altho there are other things I enjoy in the game.
Awesome post. I still have Wing Commander on my PC with an emulator so I can still play it.
I like STO. The graphics are very good and have excellent options for slower PCs.
*Space Combat is excellent or at the very least pretty darn good with a lot of options and skills to make every ship a little different.
*Bridge Officers are a wonderful addition to an MMO. Its not just ME I have to customize, its them too. They are my people. Its a cool mechanic. And while Swtor is doing something similar, STO did it first.
*People complain about ground combat, but I like it. Ground PvP is amazingly fun and is the most fun Ive had in a battleground in YEARS.
*The difference in mission types is also pretty varied. Episodic, Patrol, Defend sector, Fleet actions, PvP, and Exploration. Lots to do and different ways to do it. Keeps things from getting stale.
Posts complaining about things are needed and even appreciated. But there arent enough threads like these. Bravo OP.
The graphics to me ar "ok". Nothing overly fancy enough to care much about. A nicely modded SFC:3 can be just as good , if not better. (in my oppinion).
As for customization......
It's cryptic. Customization is their calling-card. What they are known for. And frankly....they really always do an outstanding job of it.
For me, though....the best part of STO, is their space combat. I love it. Love love love. Thats 3 loves in a row there. Impressive, huh?
In my oppinion, they got it right.
If EvE stole the way STO did space combat, it would become unstopabale I think. The WoW of sci-fi games (in subsciptions and sales).
If STO adds/borrows/steals EvE's virtually unlimited "things to do" (via crafting, space station building, resource gathering, wars, claiming territory, etc....) I think it will become "unstoppable". And shower cryptic with more money and resources than they ever imagined.
Guess we'll see what happens.
(For the record, I hope it's cryptic who becomes the unstoppable force. Cuz.....I really find the ships in EvE to be quite ugly. )
What I like.
1. space combat, using the BO powers
2. getting quests from the "hail starfleet" button.
3. Graphics are ok. Good enough for me
4. I Like the UI even. Seems simple and streamlined
Things I don't like so much
1. All the loading screens, but it is not as bad as AoC. Time between loading screens isn't that bad.
2. THE DAMN LIMITED MAP!!! This is what gets me. These high-tech space ships with a map that can't show you where things are located in space. Many times I went off to find stuff or explore in my ship, then when I needed to return to the quest and find a ship/base my map was no use. Some of the time there is a circle around the area you need to be at but not always.
3. no crafting or other things to do when you don't want to quest. I need something to TRIBBLE around with.
STO doesn't make me want to hurry home to play like other mmos did but it has enough to keep me interested.
1. Space combat
2. Deepspace encounters - nothing other than Fleet actions is more epic then DSE. Probably the most generic type of content but really winner for me. All those ships firing, I suggest that everyone should try to pilot a Defiant between some Galaxies fighting Mirror Universe ships. Pure awesomeness.
3.Graphics - nice, but engine too much power hungry. Game runs worse than Crysis on max for me while all you have is gorgeous ship and then only space and some rocks. Bad optimization imo.
4. Bo skill system
5. Tribbles
Some of the stories are very interesting( looking at you City on the edge of Never and the Hobus storyline)
Marketing
Got wrong:
Really wasn't ready for release content wise. There simply aren't enough episodic missions. I have to do patrols or deep space encounters to level.
While I like the different sklills for BO's I am having a hard time with the sheer number of them. I am only a CDR 8 and I have about 15-20 captain and BO skills. Hard to manage all that.
Game is WAY too easy. Going back to the last point it it doesn't matter about my skills becuase i never need to use them to win. Ground combat is also way too easy. I just let my BO's zerg wherever they want becuase except in very rare cases I'm not dying anyway so why bother managing them.
Character class means what exactly? I mean seriously it really doesnt matter what class you are. All you get is a few skills you probably will forget to use anyway becuase you have so many other skills at your disposal.
I love the space scenery. However they really need more. Have started seeing to many repeats.
Space combat is a ton of fun.
I love ground combat.
Some of the missions are amazing. Just need to clean out all those copy and past missions and add more original ones.
Character customization is so much fun. However I was so excited to play a liberated borg. But was very disappointed
they were only human. Hope that changes.
Despite the obvious problems this game has I am still having lot's of fun. I fly around space with a group of RL friends and that's just an all around good time IMO. I look forward to the new content and I honestly can't wait to explore our own solar system hehe.
Got right: The graphics and sound. The space combat mechanics, even though the overall mission design is pretty bad.
Got wrong: Just about everything else. The awful story and mission design take the cake, though, particularly ground-based missoins. They really need to go back and just rewrite half the text, and redo all of the ground combat entirely. Then add in features where you're not killing everything you encounter. Then remove all the bad fanservice characters (I think Miral Paris was the only one that was even remotely believable, and even she made me groan, repeatedly).
I think my biggest gripe is the total lack of endgame and the fact this feels like a single player game from start to finish, and not a well designed one at that.
Skillsystem:
- not made for a skillcap: if you skill something else than phaser/disruptors quantums/photons youre gimping yourself heavily.
- still no respecs.
- almost no documentation
Items:
- purples do the same kind of damage as white weapons except for a bit crit severity and accuracy woho.
- there are no graphics for better items, kits look better and better each tier but thats about it, even the armor looks mostly the same. "oh that's some badass looking helmet! where did you get it?"-factor's missing, everyone's looking the same at the end.
- Klingons have no armor/kit graphics at all.
- general lack of interesting/desirables items
Missions:
- theyre boring and in the essence all the same. You warp in - first thing to do is blowing up ships, then blow up a station, then beam down to a planet, kill everything that has two legs and is not in your team, look for shiny consoles and use them, kill more people, beam up, kill remaining enemy ships. GREAT
- Patrol missions are boringly predicatble: kill 5 groups of enemy ships OR scan 5 asteroids OR beam to the planet and use 5 shiny rocks/talk to 5 people
*SPOILER* - the new highend missions, I finished the one with Q and I was so disappointed, I had to exit the game. Kill 5 Borg ships and 100 drones. That was more than a slap in the face.
- Ground maps are small squared, I never have the feeling of really standing on a huge planet somewhere deep in the galaxy.
- No cutscenes and most of the time no audio voices
- No missions on your own ship
- Planet graphics repeat. The first time I saw those trees with lava in them I though: wtf?! Ok, cool - alien planet. It was cool until I beamed to 5 other planets with exactly the same graphicset...
PvP:
- Bugs, bugs, bugs - getting stuck in one place, unable to move, getting stuck in a wall, relogging and being in the wrong team all of the sudden, carriers having hundreds of drones etc.
- Queues: oh my, when was the last time I didnt join a 1vs5 match??
- No penalties for leaving the arena or logging out while being in combat to prevent death (yeah I saw a lot of people using this cheap trick)
- Most of the maps are teamdeathmatch quake-style maps with random respawning somewhere on the map. Come on, take a look at Warhammer Online. Wasn't a great game, but at least you had a fixed and guarded spawnpoint.
- Not enough maps: It's the same mapset for all tiers, I honestly cant see them anymore. Again Warhammer had a different set of scenarios for each tier.
- Losers getting almost the same reward as winners: IMO losers should get nothing at all or only a small compensation for their time, but as it is right now, it's much easier to just run into the enemies and let them kill you instead of actually fighting and trying to win.
- No contested areas with something to lose/gain
Ship design:
- T5 ships: The non-cannon-design ships like the DSSV look horrible. The DSSV would be perfect for Star Wars but not Star Trek! The same goes for the Dervish-thing.
- Lack of detail on many ship models: Star Cruiser and Recon science ships look lowpoly and as if they were made last minute. Look at the T4 science ships, they look great.
Design in general:
- Instances with too few people in them, I never get the MASSIVELY multiplayer feeling.
- EVERYTHING in-door is HUGE: rooms, bridges etc. It doesnt remotely feel and look like how it was on the shows/movies. Shrink everything to 50% - really. Do with the camera whatever you have to do and saying it's a MMO and if many people running they need more space - why do most zones only support 20 people at once? Or did you see 300 people are running up the stairs at Quark's at the same time? No and you never will because of the TINY population each instance allows.
- Having the Klingons as the bad guys: It was so great when Federation and Klingons were allies. Now there could have been a Fed/Klingon combined faction and the other faction would have been Romulans/Remans/Breen/Hirogen etc. (as someone stated somewhere else) and we wouldnt have issues with PvP balance because of the cloaks.
Here's a more interesting question: What would Cryptic have to do to get this game up to 'retail-ready' status?
I have a list in mind, but I'd like to see other lists first.
I'm honestly not sure they CAN now that it's gone live. Any ideas I have would involve tearing down certain parts of the game at large, including skillpoint/leveling mechanics, and I'm pretty sure nobody is going to let Cryptic undo their bloody characters because 'oops, we suck at this'.
I think the skillpoint thing bothers me a lot, due to the way it's handled. Capped and non-capped systems require entirely different trees, yet they introduced the cap at the last minute, with no time or desire to modify everything else it takes to do that. The fact they DID it anyways shows a total lack of foresight and understanding when it comes to MMOs.
Shortly put, I'm pessimistic that things will get fixed because everything I've seen so far isn't only flawed, it's indicative that Cryptic has NO clue what they're doing at all.
Comments
I like STO. The graphics are very good and have excellent options for slower PCs.
*Space Combat is excellent or at the very least pretty darn good with a lot of options and skills to make every ship a little different.
*Bridge Officers are a wonderful addition to an MMO. Its not just ME I have to customize, its them too. They are my people. Its a cool mechanic. And while Swtor is doing something similar, STO did it first.
*People complain about ground combat, but I like it. Ground PvP is amazingly fun and is the most fun Ive had in a battleground in YEARS.
*The difference in mission types is also pretty varied. Episodic, Patrol, Defend sector, Fleet actions, PvP, and Exploration. Lots to do and different ways to do it. Keeps things from getting stale.
Posts complaining about things are needed and even appreciated. But there arent enough threads like these. Bravo OP.
As for customization......
It's cryptic. Customization is their calling-card. What they are known for. And frankly....they really always do an outstanding job of it.
For me, though....the best part of STO, is their space combat. I love it. Love love love. Thats 3 loves in a row there. Impressive, huh?
In my oppinion, they got it right.
If EvE stole the way STO did space combat, it would become unstopabale I think. The WoW of sci-fi games (in subsciptions and sales).
If STO adds/borrows/steals EvE's virtually unlimited "things to do" (via crafting, space station building, resource gathering, wars, claiming territory, etc....) I think it will become "unstoppable". And shower cryptic with more money and resources than they ever imagined.
Guess we'll see what happens.
(For the record, I hope it's cryptic who becomes the unstoppable force. Cuz.....I really find the ships in EvE to be quite ugly.
1. captain/BO/ship progression minus the skill cap.
2. space combat. let's face it - it's pretty cool.
3 sales/marketing campaign. They suckered a lot of people. And how.
Got wrong:
1. not persistent universe.
2. ground combat
3. no flying up/down
4. exploration missions - wayyy too repetitive
5. end game. what end-game?
6. difficulty. what difficulty?
7. content. where's the rest of it?
8. user interface. I have 40 skills and 30 hotkeys. WTF.
9. Exchange interface. lol at the exchange interface
10. fleets. why bother belonging to one?
The space scenes are beyond awesome. Desktop-Quality screenshots at 60 FPS.
That satisifying feeling when the secondary explosion of a Neg'Var takes two BOP's with it.
Once again using the Gorn Anchor.
Ahhh.
1. space combat, using the BO powers
2. getting quests from the "hail starfleet" button.
3. Graphics are ok. Good enough for me
4. I Like the UI even. Seems simple and streamlined
Things I don't like so much
1. All the loading screens, but it is not as bad as AoC. Time between loading screens isn't that bad.
2. THE DAMN LIMITED MAP!!! This is what gets me. These high-tech space ships with a map that can't show you where things are located in space. Many times I went off to find stuff or explore in my ship, then when I needed to return to the quest and find a ship/base my map was no use. Some of the time there is a circle around the area you need to be at but not always.
3. no crafting or other things to do when you don't want to quest. I need something to TRIBBLE around with.
STO doesn't make me want to hurry home to play like other mmos did but it has enough to keep me interested.
2. Deepspace encounters - nothing other than Fleet actions is more epic then DSE. Probably the most generic type of content but really winner for me. All those ships firing, I suggest that everyone should try to pilot a Defiant between some Galaxies fighting Mirror Universe ships. Pure awesomeness.
3.Graphics - nice, but engine too much power hungry. Game runs worse than Crysis on max for me while all you have is gorgeous ship and then only space and some rocks. Bad optimization imo.
4. Bo skill system
5. Tribbles
Customization of characters and BO's
Space combat is pretty cool
Ground combat is OK.
Some of the stories are very interesting( looking at you City on the edge of Never and the Hobus storyline)
Marketing
Got wrong:
Really wasn't ready for release content wise. There simply aren't enough episodic missions. I have to do patrols or deep space encounters to level.
While I like the different sklills for BO's I am having a hard time with the sheer number of them. I am only a CDR 8 and I have about 15-20 captain and BO skills. Hard to manage all that.
Game is WAY too easy. Going back to the last point it it doesn't matter about my skills becuase i never need to use them to win. Ground combat is also way too easy. I just let my BO's zerg wherever they want becuase except in very rare cases I'm not dying anyway so why bother managing them.
Character class means what exactly? I mean seriously it really doesnt matter what class you are. All you get is a few skills you probably will forget to use anyway becuase you have so many other skills at your disposal.
Space combat is a ton of fun.
I love ground combat.
Some of the missions are amazing. Just need to clean out all those copy and past missions and add more original ones.
Character customization is so much fun. However I was so excited to play a liberated borg. But was very disappointed
they were only human. Hope that changes.
Despite the obvious problems this game has I am still having lot's of fun. I fly around space with a group of RL friends and that's just an all around good time IMO. I look forward to the new content and I honestly can't wait to explore our own solar system hehe.
Got wrong: Just about everything else. The awful story and mission design take the cake, though, particularly ground-based missoins. They really need to go back and just rewrite half the text, and redo all of the ground combat entirely. Then add in features where you're not killing everything you encounter. Then remove all the bad fanservice characters (I think Miral Paris was the only one that was even remotely believable, and even she made me groan, repeatedly).
I think my biggest gripe is the total lack of endgame and the fact this feels like a single player game from start to finish, and not a well designed one at that.
- Graphics
- Music
Got wrong:
Skillsystem:
- not made for a skillcap: if you skill something else than phaser/disruptors quantums/photons youre gimping yourself heavily.
- still no respecs.
- almost no documentation
Items:
- purples do the same kind of damage as white weapons except for a bit crit severity and accuracy woho.
- there are no graphics for better items, kits look better and better each tier but thats about it, even the armor looks mostly the same. "oh that's some badass looking helmet! where did you get it?"-factor's missing, everyone's looking the same at the end.
- Klingons have no armor/kit graphics at all.
- general lack of interesting/desirables items
Missions:
- theyre boring and in the essence all the same. You warp in - first thing to do is blowing up ships, then blow up a station, then beam down to a planet, kill everything that has two legs and is not in your team, look for shiny consoles and use them, kill more people, beam up, kill remaining enemy ships. GREAT
- Patrol missions are boringly predicatble: kill 5 groups of enemy ships OR scan 5 asteroids OR beam to the planet and use 5 shiny rocks/talk to 5 people
*SPOILER* - the new highend missions, I finished the one with Q and I was so disappointed, I had to exit the game. Kill 5 Borg ships and 100 drones. That was more than a slap in the face.
- Ground maps are small squared, I never have the feeling of really standing on a huge planet somewhere deep in the galaxy.
- No cutscenes and most of the time no audio voices
- No missions on your own ship
- Planet graphics repeat. The first time I saw those trees with lava in them I though: wtf?! Ok, cool - alien planet. It was cool until I beamed to 5 other planets with exactly the same graphicset...
PvP:
- Bugs, bugs, bugs - getting stuck in one place, unable to move, getting stuck in a wall, relogging and being in the wrong team all of the sudden, carriers having hundreds of drones etc.
- Queues: oh my, when was the last time I didnt join a 1vs5 match??
- No penalties for leaving the arena or logging out while being in combat to prevent death (yeah I saw a lot of people using this cheap trick)
- Most of the maps are teamdeathmatch quake-style maps with random respawning somewhere on the map. Come on, take a look at Warhammer Online. Wasn't a great game, but at least you had a fixed and guarded spawnpoint.
- Not enough maps: It's the same mapset for all tiers, I honestly cant see them anymore. Again Warhammer had a different set of scenarios for each tier.
- Losers getting almost the same reward as winners: IMO losers should get nothing at all or only a small compensation for their time, but as it is right now, it's much easier to just run into the enemies and let them kill you instead of actually fighting and trying to win.
- No contested areas with something to lose/gain
Ship design:
- T5 ships: The non-cannon-design ships like the DSSV look horrible. The DSSV would be perfect for Star Wars but not Star Trek! The same goes for the Dervish-thing.
- Lack of detail on many ship models: Star Cruiser and Recon science ships look lowpoly and as if they were made last minute. Look at the T4 science ships, they look great.
Design in general:
- Instances with too few people in them, I never get the MASSIVELY multiplayer feeling.
- EVERYTHING in-door is HUGE: rooms, bridges etc. It doesnt remotely feel and look like how it was on the shows/movies. Shrink everything to 50% - really. Do with the camera whatever you have to do and saying it's a MMO and if many people running they need more space - why do most zones only support 20 people at once? Or did you see 300 people are running up the stairs at Quark's at the same time? No and you never will because of the TINY population each instance allows.
- Having the Klingons as the bad guys: It was so great when Federation and Klingons were allies. Now there could have been a Fed/Klingon combined faction and the other faction would have been Romulans/Remans/Breen/Hirogen etc. (as someone stated somewhere else) and we wouldnt have issues with PvP balance because of the cloaks.
ah I could go on and on...
I have a list in mind, but I'd like to see other lists first.
Well you bought it didnt ya?
yes i did and i wish i had not wasted that money 80 hours of game play was not worth the money i spent on the collector's edition
Honestly bought it b/c it is ST. Anything else and I wouldn't have given this game a second glance.
I'm honestly not sure they CAN now that it's gone live. Any ideas I have would involve tearing down certain parts of the game at large, including skillpoint/leveling mechanics, and I'm pretty sure nobody is going to let Cryptic undo their bloody characters because 'oops, we suck at this'.
I think the skillpoint thing bothers me a lot, due to the way it's handled. Capped and non-capped systems require entirely different trees, yet they introduced the cap at the last minute, with no time or desire to modify everything else it takes to do that. The fact they DID it anyways shows a total lack of foresight and understanding when it comes to MMOs.
Shortly put, I'm pessimistic that things will get fixed because everything I've seen so far isn't only flawed, it's indicative that Cryptic has NO clue what they're doing at all.