A plea for sanity

geistkreiger · January 2014

This is a plea for sanity to the game developers. PLEASE STOP trying to up the ante with the graphics with each update. Most, and I do mean most of your loyal players do NOT have the top of the like computers and can barely play the game on low graphics settings. if you do not want to alienate the vast majority of your paying members. please tone down the ever increasing demand on our video cards. Sure pretty graphics are nice and all, but what the vast, and i do mean vast number of gamers want in your or any game is playability. it seems you are pursuing form over function. I love this game, but i want you to make it where me and so many others can play it more easily. I hope this does not fall on deaf ears.

The average PAYING subscriber.

alan171717 · January 2014

I second this, my framerate chugs when I play battlezone, or Voth space zone

neoakiraii · January 2014

And what about us paying customers with good computers, stop giving Cryptic money, and buy a better PC

architecton · January 2014

How old is your system exactly??

The game runs smooth as butter on my 6 year old first gen Phenom X4 9950BE @3GHz with 4GB ram and a Geforce 9600GT...

kamakaze101 · January 2014

Well then you can find a way to pay us all the money it takes for a good gaming computer ok???

tobar26th · January 2014

kamakaze101 wrote: »

Well then you can find a way to pay us all the money it takes for a good gaming computer ok???

To be fair STO only required a 'good' gaming computer four years ago when it launched. There's not been any major graphic engine overhaul since that time, some pretty new textures but not a lot else.

I can, for example, run it on a 1.7ghz Dual Core 2nd Gen i5 with Intel HD Graphics 3000 - sure it's not pretty as it is on my desktop (2.7ghz Quad 2 Core with a Radeon HD4550) but it's playable.

What exactly are you running?

kamakaze101 · January 2014

I myself have no problem, just very, VERY laggy in the voth zones, unless sometimes when I drop the graphics all the way. I'm no geek, I have no clue what graphics card I have running, but I'm happy, I run windows xp on a old, kick cluttered, laptop and if I lower the graphics in the zones that I lag, I'm ok. But I really wish I could se the game the way others do.

milner62 · January 2014

My issue isnt with the graphical upgrades, they dont hender me on my Laptop which is pushing 4 years old. The two big problems I have with graphics is having TRIBBLE ups like in the space walk part of the current event, or excessive use of background graphics such as was done at one time on the mirror event that resulted in frame rates dropping to almost 0 when you had the excessive background detail in your field of view. I think that was either toned down or removed, been a while since I did the mirror event but I recall it being resolved.

maxvitor · January 2014

I only notice reduced frame rate in extremely high traffic areas, some of the huge encounters in the Dyson sphere and the like but even it just gets where I notice that the frame rate starts to stutter and drop down but not enough that I can't continue to play. There are other times where it seems like it takes a while for the game to completely load elements of the map where things seem incomplete and fill in around you but I think that has more to do with however the map was compiled. Maybe some kind of autoscaling system would help, plus keeping very low detail options available for users with low end systems.

asches1 · January 2014

I agree. Shiny is nice, but not essential. I bet the space-walk part in the new episode is awesome. i say "bet" because i never saw it. And from the forum posts, I'm not the only one missing it because of huge black spaces. Not much to see there. And no, the suggested go back to DX9 isn't helping. I love cryptic for making a Mac version, really. Endlessly thankful, and the hole game runs very OK, but with bringing out the Mac version your job is not done! Please, consider what the OP wrote. Not everybody can afford modern computers for gaming. Some people have to live with older than 4 year old machines. Yes, if you had a high end machine before 4 years, you can play it easily now. But what if you couldn't (and still can't) afford a gaming PC / Mac (don't believe there is such a thing)? And wasn't / shouldn't be STO rather be about story than "shiny-ness"? Don't get me wrong, your stories are mostly very very Star Trek and i like the stories a lot, but please don't go overboard with the system requirements. That's all we ask you to consider. Essentially what the OP posted

BTW: i know the system requirements now are not high. I'm just saying for the future. If environment dev goes on like this, you gonna lose people...

tareruntalion · February 2014

well you must have a VERY old computer to not be able to play this game at decent graphics, my computer has these:
cpu AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000
ram 2,00GB
and a nvidia 8800 gts 256 mb graphics card and with these i was able to rum the game at relatively high settings on a 1680x1050 resolution, the only case was some minor lag at crowded places but i had no problem running pve's and i have this system for 7 years with windows 7 on them who are heavier on the memory

now this graphic card i had for seven years a month ago died and i bought a 2048MB ATI Radeon R7 spending only 70 euros and now with the same system except the gpu i run everything maxed out with no problem at all, with the former i could run crysis 2 at very low settings and for a short time and now i have them at medium to high, so because a graphic's card is that important sacrifice a 70-90 dollars or euros and buy a good graphics card you don't need a nvidia gtx titan or ati r9 who are VERY VERY expencive but an ati r7 or nvidia 520 should give you very good results

amdarkwolf · February 2014

Ya hate to chime in like others here, but wtf, are you playing STO on a old apple II e or something? I have my old system thats MORE than 10 years old, and it runs sto at max settings, NO Slowdown at all.

I really have to wonder, how bad is it to spend 200-300 bucks and 'upgrade' (Really, look though some bargain finder or something, MANY comps are a year or two old, can EASILY handle sto, and are selling for 100-200 bucks because people upgrade, and have no use for the old system.)

I really wonder, because honestly, sto is one of the 'lowest' demanding games there is out there. You either have a old computer carved from stone that the flintstones passed down to you, or your using a 'dell' buck a day pos computer and just don't know better?

kodachikuno · February 2014

Time moves on and games that remains static close. Im a broke bastich 99% of the time but even I had to knuckle down and upgrade my computer. Expecting a company interested in profits to remain stuck is never going to work. They'll keep making the game look as good as they can on the engine its built on and lower(older) pc's will be s.o.l. As long as they dont try to be Star Citizen and push the highest end video cards constantly, be happy. 4-5yr old video cards are pretty cheap if you really need to upgrade and well above minimum for STO

giannicampanella · February 2014

Typical that this should turn into an e-manhood competition. The issue isn't so much about old vs new comps, as much as it's about mounting incompatibility with certain graphics manufacturers, and confusion arising from extreme performance variation in a single game. Even if erroneous, these problems can can suggest a lack of design unity and ecosystem consciousness that can frustrate casual players. The pressure on the part of the consumer is to "upgrade" to mainstream tech, not necessarily newer and more expensive stuff.