Dear Cryptic and fellow Trekkies or Trekkers (whatever you prefer),
This is an open letter to Cryptic to inform you that I have canceled my sub. It is with a very heavy heart I do this, but I can no longer justify the expenditure and I would like to tell you why. First I'd like to give you a little background. This won't be a rage-quit post, I will try to be as constructive as possible. I love Star Trek and have loved it as long as I can remember. I have longed for a good Star Trek game for all that time. After all this time I thought STO might finally provide the feeling of actually commanding my own starship in my own episode of Star Trek. I wanted this game to work with akk my heart. My fanboyishness kept me playing much longer than any other game of this quality. It even got to the point where I would pop in my Star Trek DVDs while playing to fool myself into thinking I was playing a Star Trek game. But despite the use of Star Trek ships, weapons, settings, and lore it ultimately fell flat for me.
As I said before I don't want this to be seen as a ragequit post, I myself, have railed against those posts in the past. I also don't want anyone to think that I am trying to convince those who are still enjoying the game to quit. Rather, I want to offer the following as constructive criticism:
1. The game was released far too early, however I guess nothing can change this so no help there.
2. Player's ship interiors shoulld have been featured from the start, on average 50% of any given Star Trek episode takes place inside the ship ( or station in DS9 ). Also ship/station interiors are way too big in proportion to characters, a minor point, but it always bothered me.
3. Klingons should have had at least as much content as the Feds on launch day, but again too late. Could still be rectified though.
4. Ships: This is just my opinion, but I think pretty much all of the Cryptic non-canon starships (excepting the Vesper and Excalibur) are ugly as sin. Also the lack of series classics like the Nebula and Excelsior class is unacceptable.
5. One of the M's stands for multiplayer: Rarely did I ever get a real sense of teamwork. Most of the time even when fighting with or against human players I felt completely alone. The social systems in the game are lacking a smooth intuitive interface. For example a way to expand the messaging box would be nice.
6. Near total lack of immersion: Star Trek is about exploration, human morality, and lovable characters. You'll find none of that here in any substantive way. Sure there's plenty of text during missions that pays lip service to this, but none of these things are integrated into the missions. I'm not sure how to resolve this, but more attention should be given to it. For example, every Trek series has likable, memorable crew members, but in STO your crew is either:
a, faceless number used for hull repairs
or b. silent characters used for combat
Admittedly, I might be expecting too much here, but I would still like to see some effort here.
7. Greedy presumptuous Atari/Cryptic: The C-store has entirely too much stuff that should have been in the original game. Renames and respecs I can understand, but playable races? It's not like I can't afford it, but it's annoying nonetheless.
8. Space flight: I never felt like I was captaining a ship, but rather piloting a rather large and slow starfighter. Being able to command the ship from a view inside the ship would have been cool, along with an optional exterior view.
I could go on, but I'm getting tired of typing(and I'm sure your getting bored:o) and I got my biggest beefs out there. I'm sorry I can't support this game anymore. I wish you all the best, and I would like to say not goodbye, but see you later, as I still have hope that Cryptic/Atari will get their acts together some day. On that day I will renew my sub and we will meet again. Until then I'm setting course for the ether of cancellation and signing out.
Safe journey.
-Vlad
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