Well my 30 days will be officially up on the 19th and I will continue to play until then but I figured now is as good as any to throw what I think into the forums.
As much as I would have rather had a lifetime subscription even if it were for the ease of getting back into the game later, financially it didn't seem viable option for me. Likely the same as others. Anyway, I still have the box and an account here so that is about as close to lifetime as I'll be getting.
Some may classify this as an "I quit" thread, and if so, well to each their own. I'm not "quitting", just merely stopping the subscription at the moment. And no, you can't have my stuff.
So 30 days as a casual player. Its been fun, its been annoying, its been interesting, and its been confusing. But I still logged in and played a few missions or patrolled a few sectors until I got bored of the repetition.
I'm a Lt. Commander 9 if I remember correctly. I took my time leveling up my character as I wasn't in the same hurry as everyone else was to make RA5. I tried as best I could to read the dialog that came in the massive amounts that it did. I tried to throw myself as best I could into the game. Hell, I even started watching TOS on youtube since I've never seen them before (its very hard to get through some of those episodes btw)
For the shortest part of my review I want to mention PVP. I was introduced to it in the Lt. area and quickly stopped with PVP. In a KvF match, the Feds got their butts handed to them pretty hard. I have a feeling that most of the Klingons were probably alts to other RA5's, and knew exactly what to do, how to do it, what needed to be on their ships, had the experience, etc. That's like putting a little league catcher up against a pro pitcher. Just didn't bode well. That was the end of my PvP matches. Besides, it took an annoyingly long time to find a match anyway.
The music was alright for a while. I wish there were a few more tracks involved. I ended up having to setup Winamp in order to kill the redundancy of the same ol music playing. At least the in-game music player was there to help resolve that. I know that this subject has been hit on before in the past, so I won't dwell too much on the obvious points. But some more music would be cool.
When I started playing the game, everything was pretty cool to me. Pretty lights, things flashed, I had the captain calling for my help already. Was interesting. For a while. Kill this, kill that, rescue him after you kill that, kill the couple others then kill that and then hey look, you're captain! That pretty much sums up my PvE experience to an extent. I have had my issues with some things in the game, and I know that a lot of the answers to them have been that they were trying to keep the game to resemble the movies or shows. I think they are trying just a bit too hard to do that.
I'd say one of my biggest gripes was that I couldn't go straight down, straight up, etc. Its space. I understand that Roddenberry was a navy man and all, but we are still in space. Not water. Just boggles the mind.
Second gripe was being sucked into random space encounters and then instantly attacked by sometimes one group, two, or on one occasion 3 different groups that were passing over the spawn location. If a person were to be sucked into an encounter like that, they should be given about a minute of being unable to fire and unable to be fired on, so they can get their bearings straight and dialog boxes closed.
I know that there have been a couple really great improvements to the game lately, and they have been interesting to see. Memory Alpha I only got to take a look at recently and I have to say that it is a little less confusing (to me, I can't speak for others) and I actually made a few items this time around.
The exchange could use a little more work. With all of the information that is put into the info of items, it would have been great to filter a way to at least search inside that info text rather then just a title word. More specifically, if I wanted to find a skill of a BOff then I could filter the results to only show officers with that skill. I couldn't tell you how many times I spent going through the exchange, page after page, looking for any officer with a particular skill for a particular rank. Still haven't found that officer either heh.
Lets see... C-Store. I have not so good things to say about that really. I know that its another way for Cryptic to get some revenue. But I also assume that in the future, it won't contain just cosmetic items anymore. I still believe that anything, ANYTHING, that is on that store, should be available in the game, and never just exclusive to the people that have the extra money.
Oh I wanted to also mention another gripe. Ranks of items. Common, uncommon, rare, and very rare. I think its something like that. Should probably reconsider what your idea of "rare" is. To me rare means virtually unavailable to me. Something that isn't very common. Here in STO rare is about as common as finding grass IRL.
No economy. At all. What so ever. As soon as items were given a computer generated price, I think you shot yourself in the foot to offer supply and demand. You can't really even do anything anyway other then fly around, kill things, and take a whack at making a couple items. It'd been cool to have seen shipyards where engineers fix ships, science heal injuries, tactical... kill things some more... more stuff like that.
Well my allergy meds are kicking in and I'm getting drowsy, so I will leave this as it stands. I think I hit on the points of the game that have made me think the most. There are some others I'm sure, but at the moment I'll just leave them be.
Remember, this is not an "I quit" thread (though I'm sure it will get labeled as that and locked), I'm merely finished with my sub, and some thoughts until I can reactivate it later. 2 more days left. I'm sure I'll see a few of you.
As for true vertical, Cryptic keeps trying to give us bull$h1t that they can't enable it, or that it is not feasible.
They can't enable it because it isn't built into the engine, which mean it is not feasible with the current engine. Which isn't bull$h1t, they are telling the truth, but it stinks like bull$h1t which is probably why you think it is bull$h1t.
This is a super-hero game engine. My super power is warp factor 7.
I wouldn't go as far as to say it was BS as much as a known restriction. It's just been a minor pet peeve of mine for the duration of my time here.
I have seen the comments by devs stating its more to stay within the element of the shows/movies. I've also read that they were looking into at the least increasing the angle of which you can "climb" and "descend". I hate to use those words for a space sim.
Comments
As for true vertical, Cryptic keeps trying to give us bull$h1t that they can't enable it, or that it is not feasible.
They can't enable it because it isn't built into the engine, which mean it is not feasible with the current engine. Which isn't bull$h1t, they are telling the truth, but it stinks like bull$h1t which is probably why you think it is bull$h1t.
This is a super-hero game engine. My super power is warp factor 7.
I have seen the comments by devs stating its more to stay within the element of the shows/movies. I've also read that they were looking into at the least increasing the angle of which you can "climb" and "descend". I hate to use those words for a space sim.