My friends and I have hung with STO since beta. We had high hopes that STO would help us play out our Star Trek fantasies for years to come. But we have come to the resolution that this game is dying and desevedly so. The game was released no where close to finished, has a terrible business model, and it seems Cryptic just wants to nickle an dime us to death. My friends and i each spent quit a bit of money to purchase the game and pay the monthly fee. We feel somewhat ripped off. Although we had some fun with the game since launch we don't feel we got any value fun vs price. My friends and i have canceled our accounts and are done. Most of us are RA5 and are bored to death. No endgame was a killer. This is another game that could have been successful since there isn't much competition for space MMO's but is a potential fatality of corporate greed. We feel sorry for the developers because their hard work and art is subject to the higher ups and the almighty $. The higher ups like most businesses are only interested in the short term and fail long term.
Below is a blog not written by us but tells the story of why STO may be in ICU. I really hope Cryptic cleans up this game and if still around in a year or 2 we will check back. We just can't support this game anymore.
1. Cryptic failed to finish the game.
You only get one chance to make a first impression. Maybe no one at Cryptic has ever heard that old adage; if they had they might not have delivered a half-finished game.
Star Trek Online is unfinished. It was unfinished at release and it's still unfinished, today. And not in just a small way, either, like things need to be polished up or there needs to be a little more content. No, STO is unfinished on an intergalactic scale.
There were suppose to be two playable factions the Federation and the Klingons. The Federation side is well flushed out with a good variety of things to do; the Klingon side has nothing to do but PvP. Except for a few grind quests, there's zero PvE on the Klingon side.
In any MMO, at least half the players want to play the bad guys also known as the Klingons in Star Trek lore but Cryptic didn't give those players the opportunity. If you wanted to play Klingons, but weren't that keen on PvP, chances are good you left the game and chances are good you left as soon as your first month's subscription expired.
2. Atari and Cryptic failed to keep their greed in check.
From the very beginning, Atari and Cryptic Studios have been too greedy. They went with the too-popular, $14.99-a-month model and made players pony up some extra cash for the collector's edition of the game. That's fine. Gamers are reluctantly getting used to this formula.
But STO has gone a little too far. Right out of the gate, they've behaved like they're successful and have a solid player-base they can rely on to buy their stuff: There's so much desirable stuff in the STO cash store, you'd think it was a free-to-play game.
If you want to play a Federation Klingon like Worf it will cost you money. So will playing a Ferengi. Do you want to respec? More money. Rename? More mullah. Special ships, emotes and bridge designs are all being touted in the cash store, and you can't get them in the game.
More character slots? STO only allows three. That's right. Only 3! Is there another pay-to-play MMO that only allows three character slots? If you want more, you have to buy them from the cash store.
All this nickel-and-diming of the player-base only helps to drive people from the game.
3. STO fails as an MMO.
Cryptic failed to provide some basic tools that enhance the social aspects of STO. For instance, simply communicating with other players, a single click or keystroke in other MMOs, tends to require two or three clicks in STO.
Guilds are important to the player community of any MMO, because they serve as centers of camaraderie and provide a ready source for partying up and doing quests; but Cryptic has paid little attention to fleets in STO, providing players with almost a bare minimum of fleet tools.
There are no alerts for when people in your fleet come online. You can't tell which fleet people belong to, because the fleet isn't displayed with the character name. There's no competition between fleets, because there's no fleet ranking system. If you want to join a fleet, there isn't even a way to search for them.
By ignoring some simple social tools, Cryptic has made it harder for a STO player community to develop. If an MMO community is slow to develop, player are likely to leave a game like STO faster than they normally would.
4. Non-PvE activities fail.
STO has minimal crafting it's really just a store where you exchange your materials for gear and the quest rewards are so much better than anything you can get from crafting there's little reason or motivation to spend your time crafting.
PvP is imbalanced. It should favor the Federation, because the Feds have all the PvE quests and get all the great world drops, but the ironic thing is the Klingons tend to dominate. They dominate, because all they have to do is PvP. The same group of Klingons will end up playing together all night long and often, because they play together so much, they'll end up dominating the Feds. The unfortunate result is many Feds quit or just totally avoid PvP.
With no real crafting and PvP being imbalanced and frustrating for many players, there aren't any alternative activities in STO. If players don't want to PvE, they just don't log in.
5. The endgame fails.
There's very little to do once you hit the level cap in STO. You get a daily explore mission and a daily PvP mission (See item 4.) and a couple of Special Task Force missions, essentially PvE dungeons, you can run. That's it.
This lack of endgame content might not be so bad if players didn't hit the level cap so fast. Even an fairly casual player can max out in about a month and there are stories of more hardcore players doing it in a week. That short leveling curve means lots of people are getting to the endgame and they're getting there fast. And once they get there, they're finding there's not much to do, so they leave.
At this point, it would be pithy to say, STO fails. and end this article at that. But STO doesn't fail, not completely. It's a game with a lot of potential. The space combat and ground combat works. The Federation side has some good content and the little bit of endgame content that is there is pretty good. In fact, if Cryptic added some more endgame content and finished the Klingon faction, STO could be a supersweet MMO.
Cryptic seems to be scrambling to fix the game and flush out its content. But will it be enough? Have they already dug themselves too deep a hole by releasing STO too early? At this point, the hole seems awfully deep, probably too deep. If it is, STO will quickly devolve to maintenance mode and join a growing list of MMO failures.
(The author has played STO since beta. He has a maxed-out rear admiral with the Federation and a captain with the Klingons. He actually enjoys STO.)
I can already tell you someone without reading comprehension skills is going to make a reply in response to your #1 point and say "an MMO is never finished". Of course, people who HAVE reading comprehension skills understand that by "unfinished", the person who wrote that blog actually means "not ready for launch", even if they dont actually agree with that point.
I can already tell you someone without reading comprehension skills is going to make a reply in response to your #1 point and say "an MMO is never finished". Of course, people who HAVE reading comprehension skills understand that by "unfinished", the person who wrote that blog actually means "not ready for launch", even if they dont actually agree with that point.
STO is unfinished, regardless of people definition of finished and launch finished (someone once used the term 100% finished, which opens up another can or worms) but all that aside there are not many that would say STO is launch ready, depending on season 2 we might almost have a product that is launch ready although thats probably hoping for too much.
Ironically if they have never put the klingons in it would actually look more finished than it is now, as if something was never there in the first place you cant miss it or say its not completed, but they did put the klingons in. they did under cook them and now they have to try to bring them up to launch status.
the only thing i would say is that its been covered to death. too many posts are constantly covering the past. there is not much we can do about whats done. the only thing we can do is look forward and hope things go the way we want them.
I agree with everything said. I too have given up on this game for now. I hope they can get things turned around, because this game does have a ton of potential.
Sorry, you are leaving the game that it didn't have enough to keep you here. Come back and check STO out again when your ready. All your points were covered two months ago. So I will just say goodbye and good luck.
the only thing we can do is look forward and hope things go the way we want them.
Which is one way that releasing an unfinished game can work to their advantage. They certainly do know what the "problem areas" are and do have a full plate of things in the works. I just hope they can deliver on them.
To the OP: Sorry to see you go and may you find something fun wherever you wind up. I agree with everything you've said and thank you for providing your comments in a constructive manner.
I will give them 3 more months of my time and wait it out. I like the game and if they repair one third of the defects people will stay on longer. The Hard Core will give it more time since we did invest the time in playing. If Cryptic just focuses on fixing a few of the major flaws subs will start to go up. I have "sent a friend" and am waiting for his opinion.
Which is one way that releasing an unfinished game can work to their advantage. They certainly do know what the "problem areas" are and do have a full plate of things in the works. I just hope they can deliver on them.
Season 2! Season 2 is going to save us all! Season 2 has everything this guy asked for...and MORE! MUCH MUCH MORE!
that is debatable. some people will say. " a MMO is never finished " while others say that they launched it way to soon, and then there are some who say it was a complete fail. I agree with the people that say it launched to soon, this game needed a good 6 months to a year. it wasn't completely done, it was finished in the sense that you could eat it, but it could be cooked better.
2. Atari and Cryptic failed to keep their greed in check.
I wouldn't call it greed more or less that they are a small company dealing with inflation. this is a good read on the subject.
There are some things to consider. The prices of subscriptions have pretty much remained constant over the years. Proceeding from 9.99 to the current 15.99. What is important in that, is that it hasn't kept up with the raise in inflation. What a person payed 14.99 for several years ago would now be like 17.99.
Market research done by EA, Activision and others have shown that most players don't see themselves paying to much more over the 15.99 a month price point. So the companies have been having to find new revenue streams to supplement the costs of an mmo. Over the years the margin per sub has shrank considerably. Several reason for this. One is inflation as I mentioned. Others include the price of energy, increased hardware requirements, larger cooling systems etc.
To give an example. The cooling for a moderate server farm can cost upwards to 500K+ a month. (Variables depending of course)
The introduction of the mictotransaction was to supplement the income of the mmo. Yet, in order to do that the companies must provide a value for that MT. Such as we see like, costume items, extra slots etc. Something that some players want but not all players want. Most companies agree that MTs are an excellent way to add value with out increasing the sub price per user which would drop the amount of subs they would normally obtain.
Some interesting information that I have found is like in DDO. There the majority of users spend very little on the MTs but a small minority (Less than 5 percent from what I read) spend a great deal on the MTs. Yes, I know DDO is F2P but you will see more and more sub mmos going to this type of set up. EA is extremely interested in using this type of model and there are rumors this situation might occur in TOR.
More character slots?
as for the character slots, I'm going to disagree that the low character slots is a money grab. Granted were not the highest on the list of games with character slots. that honer goes to WOW with a whooping 10 slots. Everquest tops in at 8, and ever quest 2 has 4 ( last time I checked ) Eve has the same amount of character slots as we do. by far the worst is SWG with two per server. ( or three if you unlocked jedi before they nerfed it, but that it rare )
Now you say that selling character slots is a money grab I disagree. it saves me money. every time I maxed out two characters in SWGs I would end up buying the game for another class. at one time I had four accounts active, and there were no discounts. so that was 60 bucks a month. ( my crazy guild leader had double that. ) EVE online I had two accounts there. 30 bucks a month. PothBS two accounts 30 bucks a month. Star Trek online one account, when I max out, 6 dollars one time for two slots, and I can repeat it. you can not call that a money grab with a straight face. it saves me money compared to the other games.
3. STO fails as an MMO.
While it does need more social areas, its not the worst. it needs work for sure. as for there not being pop ups with guild members. as I recall EVE, and SWG didn't have those, that is why I always added guild mates to my friends list. ( which do pop up in this game ) I also believe you can click on there name to get there guild information. As for click more then once to talk, every MMO I have played has taken more then two clicks to talk. be it the /tell name, or having to click on them to bring up a list and then click the chat button, you are still going to have to click more then once. if you want one click communication then I would look in to a team speak server.
4. Non-PvE activities fail.
This i agree with it, right now it is kind of setup like a console shooter. ( match making ) we need pvp battlefields where anyone can enter, and I feel we need a PVP flag system so we can open up the boarders.
5. The endgame fails.
I have not gotten there yet. but from what I understand STF are not that fun, we can blame Gozer for that, because he was so stuck on his high horse that he would not let them change his baby to make it more fun for us. but I'm not there yet so I'm going to end on that.
So to end it prescription time. So you enjoy the game, but you are getting board. one thing you have to remember is the fact that the cost is not that much it comes out to about 50 cents a day. ( that is what keeps me here ) one thing I would look at is update 1.3 that will add episode replay, and the biggest is thing, weekly episodes. So if you enjoy the game, and want to support it, stick with it, but my best advice is to take a month off. I did that, and I came back a new man. take two of these pills and see me in the morning.
.....the only thing i would say is that its been covered to death. too many posts are constantly covering the past. there is not much we can do about whats done. the only thing we can do is look forward and hope things go the way we want them.
I am not a Life Time Subscriber, I pay month to month. I am not totally happy with what I see but I tell you it's better than nothing. I play almost everynight for at least an hour and right now it's the only game I am playing. Sure I could get upset with things missing I personally want more PVE not PVP because I enjoy that better. I would like to see more interaction with the bridge crew when it comes to building relationships as we seen in TOS, TNG, DS9, Enterprise. Heck I would be happy with just text right now. But this game has the ablitly to grow and get better and that is what I am hoping for.
I have watched the forums not taking part much but watched the PVP people poke fun at those of us that want PVE and the PVE people swinging back at them. Personally this MMO has the potential of being great for both sides. I want more PVE and heck it it takes me a month at the rate I play to level up to the next rank because I need to complete so many missions, wouldn;t hurt my feelings. I would love to join a fleet but I all hear is they want to do PVP, not really interested in it. Heck I stopped playing COD just because I get bored with the PVP there's....in my opion.....its not rewarding to me. Now before I get the PVP folks on my back, I have friends who o it and love it in this game and others and I am happy for them. But I like PVE and I like to be able to do it with other players on a quest as some would say. I think STO could do it if they would take their teams and split them into two one to handle the PVP part and one to take care of the PVE. Once those two areas are going and most people seem to be happy then worry if there is a way to blend them. I played EVE for a while stayed away from the PVP. PVE content was at the time I played not what I was looking for.
I guess what I what I am trying to say is I am willing to hang in here and see what happens, I too was here from almost the beginning I didn't get in for Closed Beta but I was in from the beginning of open beta. If this MMO is only 2 years old in coding then we who stay should be willing to help get it to where it should be. I am going to stay and help.
I agree with everything said. I too have given up on this game for now. I hope they can get things turned around, because this game does have a ton of potential.
I also agree with the OP on all the points discussed. All I do these days is just log in for 20 minutes to do my B'tran quest. I'm maxxed out on gear for my RA5, and will eventually have all the gear for alt sets. After that it will be virtually impossible to force myself to log on to get some semblance of my money's worth.
The two biggest fail factors are the lack of content (less than a single Warcraft zone even from vanilla WoW), and the greed. A premium sub, box fee AND micro transactions. Totally ridiculous. DDO has F2P with an item store, or you can sub and get all content with no need for the item store. DDO also has far more content that STO even at F2P. Turbine >>>>>>>>>> Cryptic.
Comments
STO is unfinished, regardless of people definition of finished and launch finished (someone once used the term 100% finished, which opens up another can or worms) but all that aside there are not many that would say STO is launch ready, depending on season 2 we might almost have a product that is launch ready although thats probably hoping for too much.
Ironically if they have never put the klingons in it would actually look more finished than it is now, as if something was never there in the first place you cant miss it or say its not completed, but they did put the klingons in. they did under cook them and now they have to try to bring them up to launch status.
the only thing i would say is that its been covered to death. too many posts are constantly covering the past. there is not much we can do about whats done. the only thing we can do is look forward and hope things go the way we want them.
Which is one way that releasing an unfinished game can work to their advantage. They certainly do know what the "problem areas" are and do have a full plate of things in the works. I just hope they can deliver on them.
To the OP: Sorry to see you go and may you find something fun wherever you wind up. I agree with everything you've said and thank you for providing your comments in a constructive manner.
hey, email me your stuff before you go :eek:
Season 2! Season 2 is going to save us all! Season 2 has everything this guy asked for...and MORE! MUCH MUCH MORE!
that is debatable. some people will say. " a MMO is never finished " while others say that they launched it way to soon, and then there are some who say it was a complete fail. I agree with the people that say it launched to soon, this game needed a good 6 months to a year. it wasn't completely done, it was finished in the sense that you could eat it, but it could be cooked better.
2. Atari and Cryptic failed to keep their greed in check.
I wouldn't call it greed more or less that they are a small company dealing with inflation. this is a good read on the subject.
More character slots?
as for the character slots, I'm going to disagree that the low character slots is a money grab. Granted were not the highest on the list of games with character slots. that honer goes to WOW with a whooping 10 slots. Everquest tops in at 8, and ever quest 2 has 4 ( last time I checked ) Eve has the same amount of character slots as we do. by far the worst is SWG with two per server. ( or three if you unlocked jedi before they nerfed it, but that it rare )
Now you say that selling character slots is a money grab I disagree. it saves me money. every time I maxed out two characters in SWGs I would end up buying the game for another class. at one time I had four accounts active, and there were no discounts. so that was 60 bucks a month. ( my crazy guild leader had double that. ) EVE online I had two accounts there. 30 bucks a month. PothBS two accounts 30 bucks a month. Star Trek online one account, when I max out, 6 dollars one time for two slots, and I can repeat it. you can not call that a money grab with a straight face. it saves me money compared to the other games.
3. STO fails as an MMO.
While it does need more social areas, its not the worst. it needs work for sure. as for there not being pop ups with guild members. as I recall EVE, and SWG didn't have those, that is why I always added guild mates to my friends list. ( which do pop up in this game ) I also believe you can click on there name to get there guild information. As for click more then once to talk, every MMO I have played has taken more then two clicks to talk. be it the /tell name, or having to click on them to bring up a list and then click the chat button, you are still going to have to click more then once. if you want one click communication then I would look in to a team speak server.
4. Non-PvE activities fail.
This i agree with it, right now it is kind of setup like a console shooter. ( match making ) we need pvp battlefields where anyone can enter, and I feel we need a PVP flag system so we can open up the boarders.
5. The endgame fails.
I have not gotten there yet. but from what I understand STF are not that fun, we can blame Gozer for that, because he was so stuck on his high horse that he would not let them change his baby to make it more fun for us. but I'm not there yet so I'm going to end on that.
So to end it prescription time. So you enjoy the game, but you are getting board. one thing you have to remember is the fact that the cost is not that much it comes out to about 50 cents a day. ( that is what keeps me here ) one thing I would look at is update 1.3 that will add episode replay, and the biggest is thing, weekly episodes. So if you enjoy the game, and want to support it, stick with it, but my best advice is to take a month off. I did that, and I came back a new man. take two of these pills and see me in the morning.
I am not a Life Time Subscriber, I pay month to month. I am not totally happy with what I see but I tell you it's better than nothing. I play almost everynight for at least an hour and right now it's the only game I am playing. Sure I could get upset with things missing I personally want more PVE not PVP because I enjoy that better. I would like to see more interaction with the bridge crew when it comes to building relationships as we seen in TOS, TNG, DS9, Enterprise. Heck I would be happy with just text right now. But this game has the ablitly to grow and get better and that is what I am hoping for.
I have watched the forums not taking part much but watched the PVP people poke fun at those of us that want PVE and the PVE people swinging back at them. Personally this MMO has the potential of being great for both sides. I want more PVE and heck it it takes me a month at the rate I play to level up to the next rank because I need to complete so many missions, wouldn;t hurt my feelings. I would love to join a fleet but I all hear is they want to do PVP, not really interested in it. Heck I stopped playing COD just because I get bored with the PVP there's....in my opion.....its not rewarding to me. Now before I get the PVP folks on my back, I have friends who o it and love it in this game and others and I am happy for them. But I like PVE and I like to be able to do it with other players on a quest as some would say. I think STO could do it if they would take their teams and split them into two one to handle the PVP part and one to take care of the PVE. Once those two areas are going and most people seem to be happy then worry if there is a way to blend them. I played EVE for a while stayed away from the PVP. PVE content was at the time I played not what I was looking for.
I guess what I what I am trying to say is I am willing to hang in here and see what happens, I too was here from almost the beginning I didn't get in for Closed Beta but I was in from the beginning of open beta. If this MMO is only 2 years old in coding then we who stay should be willing to help get it to where it should be. I am going to stay and help.
I also agree with the OP on all the points discussed. All I do these days is just log in for 20 minutes to do my B'tran quest. I'm maxxed out on gear for my RA5, and will eventually have all the gear for alt sets. After that it will be virtually impossible to force myself to log on to get some semblance of my money's worth.
The two biggest fail factors are the lack of content (less than a single Warcraft zone even from vanilla WoW), and the greed. A premium sub, box fee AND micro transactions. Totally ridiculous. DDO has F2P with an item store, or you can sub and get all content with no need for the item store. DDO also has far more content that STO even at F2P. Turbine >>>>>>>>>> Cryptic.
lolrof.....................:cool: