It's the same reason you will never see another raging bull or apocalypse now etc.
Most of us old-timers do remember the heyday of gaming where you'd see brand new technology and creativity being pushed to see gameplay never seen before.
But that has been over for 10-15 years.
They call it the stagnation of gaming by the way but could easily translate into a universal term to describe the processes of the movie idiocracy, which is a prophecy not a comedy
If you look around a bit, you can see that there are still some amazing and interesting movies being made. Have you seen Frozen? (I kid, I kid). There are though.
There are still some great PC and console games being made too, but the longer things are done, the harder it is to do something truly original.
STOs engine is so old though and the game is just hella dated. What we want is a different game than STO will ever be.
But we never had the mission quality that we currently have with the most recent missions with P2P. Sphere of Influence, A Step Between Stars, and Surface Tension are far better than any mission we got when Atari was in charge. So the whole idea that F2P only brings quantity and P2P brings quality is flawed.
Yeah,
In fairness I never played the game when it was p2p, so I don't have that frame of reference. But do you honestly think the change to f2p improved the game or maybe could it have been the fact that atari were incompetent and the game needed decent production management (that PWE provides but unfortunately under a f2p model).
Could the game have faired just as well with another company that worked a p2p model? Under p2p I think we'd have a far different game than we have now, but I don't think it would be a disaster
Your idea makes you a hypocrite...or did you forget your own sig? Sighting 1 sandbox game, that quite frankly gets rly boring fast, doesn't make the whole genre feasible.
You're wrong. If the game went p2p, it would be a much smaller operation with less profits, but it would still keep going.
And also, please tell me what's the name of the biggest space based MMO again? Can't remember off the top of my head, but I believe it is a P2P model
Were you not here in the beginning? The game was P2P when it launched...It was that way for 2 years. It fell through because the game released in a beta state and we're still far behind the curve when it comes to where this game should be 4-5 years post launch.
This game will never be P2P worthy without Cryptic shutting down the servers and spending another two or so years correcting all of their pre-launch and post-launch mistakes.
I'm not pretending anything. I am simply asking whether people thought it was just the fact it was p2p or maybe it was being managed incompetently which is why it had to be sold off. As I've said, I wasn't around when it was p2p so I'm asking people who were there what they thought. Were you playing the game when it was p2p? If so, then I'm interested in your opinion about it.
Oh yeah. My opinion is my opinion. It's not meant to be 100% factual, it's based around speculation and experience of what I've played online and you are perfectly entitled to disagree with it but you're not going to change it by claiming factual inconsistencies because of your experience and speculation. We may have had vastly different gaming experiences over the years, so our opinions will be different. There is nothing right or wrong, it's just an opinion. However, good debate is a wonderful thing .
reason you are claiming p2p brings quality is because of one reason only, more games died trying to use it.
this is because people where not willing to pay a sub worth 200 bucks a year when they could get a getter experience for a one off purchase of 50 bucks.
or had other better games to go to.
Ok, so using this logic basically what you're saying is that a lot of p2p games went out of business because gamers saw more value for money from the cheaper games. That's not a problem with the p2p model, that's a problem with the game. Gamers did not see value for money in paying $200 per year to play. But when they find a game that is value for money (ie the 800lb gorilla mentioned earlier) they go to it in their droves. Also a side effect of the f2p model is that people who normally wouldn't pay $200 on a p2p end up paying far more than that per year if they're not careful on f2p.
Now, don't get me wrong on this. I play this game and I enjoy it and I also think (and have said on the forums before) that for the amount of money I've put into the game (I normally buy some zen once per month) I get good value. I'm just concerned that in 6 months time, it will be like every other f2p game I've played and become monotonous, repeatable grind just so you can get that last vulnerability locator to mkXIV gold quality and get the extra 2-5% crit chance.
p2p is not the disaster you are making it out to be and STO could be successful in a p2p environment if it is managed correctly. And again, I'm not advocating removing the f2p model. But what do you think about my idea about opening a p2p server with a slightly altered client in tandem with the f2p server? The population is large enough so any migration to p2p wouldn't be that noticeable and it would give the gamers a choice.
I'd like to see sto be far more in depth. I wanna run my own equipment shop, and travel to other planets to expand, hire workers, do actual maintenance on my ship, run into friendly and hostile characters in between systems, and I'd like to see warp speed take on a lice of its own. When I want to go from system to system, I want it to be like EVE Online, but even more advanced. I ant to have to plot a course around stars and planets. I want to be able to come out of warp to investigate a strange reading, or stop to explore some random class m world that I have to data on. I want real exploration, and to be able to send an away team and coordinate with them from my bridge. I want to be able to tell my science officer to scan specific areas of the planet, or asteroid belt, and I want to run into unknown traps or random space anomolies that my engineering team has to work to get us out of. I want it to feel real. Compared to what I've seen, most games are mere shadows of what I'd like to see happen.
Not sure if it's been mentioned but perhaps the issue is with the IP itself.
On the surface of it you'd think Star Trek is the perfect base for a sandbox game. Exploring a massive randomly generated universe filled with galaxies, life and so on. But the problem here is that such content is outside any sort of control. Plenty of stuff cooked up by the system that breaks canon to such a degree it just doesn't fit with the IP on the product label, so in turn will break immersion.
Something else to consider is that sandbox games in general are for me at least, still a bit of a niche genre. This could have changed in recent times but I feel the majority of gamers out there prefer to have a known progression route to follow, rather than try to come up with one themselves.
Then of course this is STO, a casual F2P MMO that focuses on instant gratification and speed. Fast levelling, pretty fast missions for the most part, and I daresay the endgame reputation grinds are far quicker than alternatives too.
A more organic experience would be great. Or content released at a quicker pace to keep me busy. Foundry needs to be integrated better and not hidden behind a UI.
i don't care for sandbox. eve bored me to death. flying around scanning TRIBBLE and mining and pretending i was doing something fun for hours. no thanks. sandbox games are for people without imaginations who are content standing at the same assembly line working for 40 years until they retire. sandbox isn't about doing anything exciting. it's just about killing time.
i don't want to spend 3 hours scanning a pulsar for some drop. i want to scan the pulsar, find out there's alien microbes in it that contaminated the dolphins in my ship and mutated them into godzilla like creatures, but we can't kill them outright because they're dolphins so we need to contain them and then fly off to the xindi aquatics to see if their scientists can help us. but when we get there we find the xindi are having secret trade negotiations with the romulans, so we have to go into espionage mode to scope out what the situations is between the two groups. we find out the roms are holding some important xindi as hostages and then our godzilla dolphins end up saving the day.
Idk how long you've been playing MMOs, sounds like a while, but the population has changed drastically. Sandbox games appeal to a small percentile. I have fond memories of past MMOs that failed, a few were ahead of their time and see their influence still today. Unfortunately ppl have become antisocial IRL and this extends into online gaming. Companies are trying to cater to a broad base as they've had/seen too many niche failures.
But City of Heroes didn't have a massive well recognised IP like the Star Trek name has.
City of Heroes was one of the most well recognized IP's in MMO history, up there with WoW and Everquest. It was one of the most original superhero franchises we've seen in decades and is still the only MMO to ever have a friendly and positive community throughout it's entire run.
It brought in tons of cash even after Free 2 Play was initiated. The reason it got shut down was because NCsoft wanted the servers for a Korean grinder MMO that, thankfully, failed to reach our shores.
"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP"
i don't care for sandbox. eve bored me to death. flying around scanning TRIBBLE and mining and pretending i was doing something fun for hours. no thanks. sandbox games are for people without imaginations who are content standing at the same assembly line working for 40 years until they retire. sandbox isn't about doing anything exciting. it's just about killing time.
Sandbox is about doing whatever you want. The social zones in STO are all sandbox, you do whatever you want/need to do instead of follow some predefined script like a mindless robot. Go get supplies, go check the exchange, go get some DOFFs, whatever... are you saying you cant use your bank unless you are told to do it by an NPC first? The adventure zones in STO are about halfway there as well. I say halfway because they are mostly questing zones, but you are free to pick whatever quest and do not have to follow a defined sequence, and there are some random encounters as well. Kerrat is mostly unscripted.
Best example of a sandbox resource that would make a ton of money for cryptic: ship interior customization. They give you predefined decks, but you can move walls around, add furniture, etc. Tie it into a crew revamp so that you have ~5 astrometrics stations or whatever. Cryptic could sell a bunch of assets in the c-store, consoles, hydroponics, furniture, whatever.
What we have instead is nothing, because cryptic hasnt gotten around to making a prebuilt experience for you. And they will never get around to it because there is no return on it.
That is how scripted stuff ruins these games for players and provider alike. Sandbox fixes it.
Two problems with it here: One is that I'm not sure Cryptics client engine and back-end databases could handle this stuff without major revamping--you ever notice that you cant drop something on the ground?--not sure they would have to rework major portions of the code to make it work. The bigger problem is that they have shifted their business model away from making games to making grinders that exploit Star Trek fans, so the culture would have to shift as well and that seems even more unlikely. Its too late for STO.
City of Heroes was one of the most well recognized IP's in MMO history, up there with WoW and Everquest. It was one of the most original superhero franchises we've seen in decades and is still the only MMO to ever have a friendly and positive community throughout it's entire run.
It brought in tons of cash even after Free 2 Play was initiated. The reason it got shut down was because NCsoft wanted the servers for a Korean grinder MMO that, thankfully, failed to reach our shores.
I have heard of City of Heroes, but I've no idea what it was about. However, I grew up with Star Trek. I watched TNG religiously on TV, I saw the movies, then went back and watched all of TOS (because I'm old, but I'm not that old), started watching DS9, Voyager and then Enterprise. The reach of the Star Trek IP is far, far greater than City of Heroes. It doesn't just bring in gamers, it brings in ST fans. The ST IP includes TV, movies, Books, comic books, toys, action figures and in the last 5 years a MMO.
You just can't compare the IP from a game like city of heroes to something like the ST beast .
You and I both. Lack of playable Content has been my biggest complaint about STO for the last 4.5 years. It is not like I expected something new every week, but something new every 4-6 weeks would have been cool.
Lack of playable content??? seriously guys.. i think you not playing STO.
Every few months you get playable content. What the hell do you expect?? seriously?? obviously you didnt play too many mmorpgs..
And no please,, new content every 4-6 weeks?? so, if now, we dont have bug fixing at all, then we will have a completely unplayable game lol.
People should think deeper before they write non sense.. seriously :P
Lack of playable content??? seriously guys.. i think you not playing STO.
Every few months you get playable content. What the hell do you expect?? seriously?? obviously you didnt play too many mmorpgs..
And no please,, new content every 4-6 weeks?? so, if now, we dont have bug fixing at all, then we will have a completely unplayable game lol.
People should think deeper before they write non sense.. seriously :P
Go troll somewhere else little boy. I have played well over 100 MMOs, starting with Ultima Online back in '97 and extending into two current Closed Betas for games that are not even out yet. I was a Closed Beta playtester on WoW, as well as 2 of its Expansion Packs. I was in the Closed Beta for GW2, DCUO, ***, CoH, as well as CO and STO. I have plenty of gaming experience.
I think you will be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks STO has put out too much playable Content over the last 4.5 years. 3 FEs episodes over the last year is not a lot of playable new Content. Yes, there has been plenty of grind Content - like doing New Romulus Rep over and over - but very little regular mission Content.
Maybe you should think deeper before you start posting?
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
i don't care for sandbox. eve bored me to death. flying around scanning TRIBBLE and mining and pretending i was doing something fun for hours. no thanks. sandbox games are for people without imaginations who are content standing at the same assembly line working for 40 years until they retire. sandbox isn't about doing anything exciting. it's just about killing time.
i don't want to spend 3 hours scanning a pulsar for some drop. i want to scan the pulsar, find out there's alien microbes in it that contaminated the dolphins in my ship and mutated them into godzilla like creatures, but we can't kill them outright because they're dolphins so we need to contain them and then fly off to the xindi aquatics to see if their scientists can help us. but when we get there we find the xindi are having secret trade negotiations with the romulans, so we have to go into espionage mode to scope out what the situations is between the two groups. we find out the roms are holding some important xindi as hostages and then our godzilla dolphins end up saving the day.
You've got that backwards. Sandboxes are for indulging your imagination; you need one to really enjoy them, because nobody is telling you what to do or how to do it. Sandboxes are for making your own adventures, instead of playing one made by someone else.
However, at the end of the day I have yet to see anything come about which truly sustains the interest of the players for a prolonged period of time.
...I feel care needs to be taken to give players, per-character, new content which will sustain the interest of the player for a substantially longer period of time then it does now.
...Events which are not only unscripted but not predetermined in any way.
...there are many benefits to be gained from a shift in focus to content which will give players more to do for a longer period of time.
What are you suggesting exactly? I can TRIBBLE away hours playing this game and have a blast. No pun intended.
As I see it, the things that are missing from this game are elements that make it feel more like Star Trek. For example...would it be possible to have ship to ship communications on a view screen with another player? Things that add additional look and feel would be a welcome addition.
It's the same reason you will never see another raging bull or apocalypse now etc.
Most of us old-timers do remember the heyday of gaming where you'd see brand new technology and creativity being pushed to see gameplay never seen before.
But that has been over for 10-15 years.
They call it the stagnation of gaming by the way but could easily translate into a universal term to describe the processes of the movie idiocracy, which is a prophecy not a comedy
You are seeing that old spirit with cable dramas and Netflix/Hulu/Amazon programming.
And the Networks, who are scrambling to stay alive, have adopted some of that spirit.
As a comic book fan, I have seen that spirit come and go in comics.
And my observation in all of these areas is that ingenuity improves and artistry flourishes without gouging the consumer in two places:
1) In new and heavily evolving technologies. The introduction of video vs. film. Home video. Streaming media. The suits don't know what they need to spend and are actively developing a new market so money flows in.
2) In areas after the bottom crashed out. Comics were producing a lot of crud in the 90s. Then around the time Marvel went backrupt, you had waves of creativity and new talent. Suddenly indy creators were unleashed on corporate properties. Existing creators were allowed broad freedom. This era gave us the rise of Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison on mainstream comics, Kingdom Come, the Ultimate line, Joe Kelly's amazing revamp of Deadpool, the reinvention of Image Comics into an art house studio. Anybody who wanted to try something was given the opportunity to try.
In this case, again, companies were trying to develop or at least salvage a market and so they pumped money in but they also allowed people to try untested things.
In some ways, I think an unhealthy market (too new or dying) is the best kind for a consumer because companies will pump more money in than they're presently getting out. The downside is that your favorite shows or games have no security and that companies will fling random junk against the wall to see what sticks. But the best work comes from there, I think.
I have heard of City of Heroes, but I've no idea what it was about. However, I grew up with Star Trek. I watched TNG religiously on TV, I saw the movies, then went back and watched all of TOS (because I'm old, but I'm not that old), started watching DS9, Voyager and then Enterprise. The reach of the Star Trek IP is far, far greater than City of Heroes. It doesn't just bring in gamers, it brings in ST fans. The ST IP includes TV, movies, Books, comic books, toys, action figures and in the last 5 years a MMO.
You just can't compare the IP from a game like city of heroes to something like the ST beast .
Cheers!
Actually, you can. I spent years of my life playing CoH. I followed the lore and it was the first subscription based MMO I subbed to. It brought in both gamers and comic book fans. It inspired thousands of non DC/Marvel stories and characters and became a beacon of online civility. I had only heard of Star Trek, but never saw a single episode or film until I started playing STO about a year ago.
Just because ST was around longer doesn't make it a superior IP. Both franchises impacted lives and inspired the best from it's communities.
"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP"
Go troll somewhere else little boy. I have played well over 100 MMOs, starting with Ultima Online back in '97 and extending into two current Closed Betas for games that are not even out yet. I was a Closed Beta playtester on WoW, as well as 2 of its Expansion Packs. I was in the Closed Beta for GW2, DCUO, ***, CoH, as well as CO and STO. I have plenty of gaming experience.
I think you will be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks STO has put out too much playable Content over the last 4.5 years. 3 FEs episodes over the last year is not a lot of playable new Content. Yes, there has been plenty of grind Content - like doing New Romulus Rep over and over - but very little regular mission Content.
Maybe you should think deeper before you start posting?
So, grind content is not new playable content?? really dude, stop saying non sense things. Seriously. Yeah i also played ultima online (and it was before '97, btw). And well, if you think STO didnt have enough new content, i tell you again, you didnt play enough mmorpgs.
Comments
If you look around a bit, you can see that there are still some amazing and interesting movies being made. Have you seen Frozen? (I kid, I kid). There are though.
There are still some great PC and console games being made too, but the longer things are done, the harder it is to do something truly original.
STOs engine is so old though and the game is just hella dated. What we want is a different game than STO will ever be.
Yeah,
In fairness I never played the game when it was p2p, so I don't have that frame of reference. But do you honestly think the change to f2p improved the game or maybe could it have been the fact that atari were incompetent and the game needed decent production management (that PWE provides but unfortunately under a f2p model).
Could the game have faired just as well with another company that worked a p2p model? Under p2p I think we'd have a far different game than we have now, but I don't think it would be a disaster
Cheers!
Your idea makes you a hypocrite...or did you forget your own sig? Sighting 1 sandbox game, that quite frankly gets rly boring fast, doesn't make the whole genre feasible.
Were you not here in the beginning? The game was P2P when it launched...It was that way for 2 years. It fell through because the game released in a beta state and we're still far behind the curve when it comes to where this game should be 4-5 years post launch.
This game will never be P2P worthy without Cryptic shutting down the servers and spending another two or so years correcting all of their pre-launch and post-launch mistakes.
When they first came out with multiplayer for games years ago I knew this was the beginning of the end for computer games.
The game companies rely on other players to provide the "AI" for most of the content.
This allows he companies to be lazy and put less work into the real game AI.
Sadly many players embrace this togetherness.
I can only imagine the future where guys need 4 other people to accompany them to the bathroom.
It's like the writers strike where the networks substituted "Reality" TV for real programming and now that's all there is.
I'm not pretending anything. I am simply asking whether people thought it was just the fact it was p2p or maybe it was being managed incompetently which is why it had to be sold off. As I've said, I wasn't around when it was p2p so I'm asking people who were there what they thought. Were you playing the game when it was p2p? If so, then I'm interested in your opinion about it.
Oh yeah. My opinion is my opinion. It's not meant to be 100% factual, it's based around speculation and experience of what I've played online and you are perfectly entitled to disagree with it but you're not going to change it by claiming factual inconsistencies because of your experience and speculation. We may have had vastly different gaming experiences over the years, so our opinions will be different. There is nothing right or wrong, it's just an opinion. However, good debate is a wonderful thing
Ok, so using this logic basically what you're saying is that a lot of p2p games went out of business because gamers saw more value for money from the cheaper games. That's not a problem with the p2p model, that's a problem with the game. Gamers did not see value for money in paying $200 per year to play. But when they find a game that is value for money (ie the 800lb gorilla mentioned earlier) they go to it in their droves. Also a side effect of the f2p model is that people who normally wouldn't pay $200 on a p2p end up paying far more than that per year if they're not careful on f2p.
Now, don't get me wrong on this. I play this game and I enjoy it and I also think (and have said on the forums before) that for the amount of money I've put into the game (I normally buy some zen once per month) I get good value. I'm just concerned that in 6 months time, it will be like every other f2p game I've played and become monotonous, repeatable grind just so you can get that last vulnerability locator to mkXIV gold quality and get the extra 2-5% crit chance.
p2p is not the disaster you are making it out to be and STO could be successful in a p2p environment if it is managed correctly. And again, I'm not advocating removing the f2p model. But what do you think about my idea about opening a p2p server with a slightly altered client in tandem with the f2p server? The population is large enough so any migration to p2p wouldn't be that noticeable and it would give the gamers a choice.
Cheers!
On the surface of it you'd think Star Trek is the perfect base for a sandbox game. Exploring a massive randomly generated universe filled with galaxies, life and so on. But the problem here is that such content is outside any sort of control. Plenty of stuff cooked up by the system that breaks canon to such a degree it just doesn't fit with the IP on the product label, so in turn will break immersion.
Something else to consider is that sandbox games in general are for me at least, still a bit of a niche genre. This could have changed in recent times but I feel the majority of gamers out there prefer to have a known progression route to follow, rather than try to come up with one themselves.
Then of course this is STO, a casual F2P MMO that focuses on instant gratification and speed. Fast levelling, pretty fast missions for the most part, and I daresay the endgame reputation grinds are far quicker than alternatives too.
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
Sums up my thoughts on current state.
A more organic experience would be great. Or content released at a quicker pace to keep me busy. Foundry needs to be integrated better and not hidden behind a UI.
i don't want to spend 3 hours scanning a pulsar for some drop. i want to scan the pulsar, find out there's alien microbes in it that contaminated the dolphins in my ship and mutated them into godzilla like creatures, but we can't kill them outright because they're dolphins so we need to contain them and then fly off to the xindi aquatics to see if their scientists can help us. but when we get there we find the xindi are having secret trade negotiations with the romulans, so we have to go into espionage mode to scope out what the situations is between the two groups. we find out the roms are holding some important xindi as hostages and then our godzilla dolphins end up saving the day.
Idk how long you've been playing MMOs, sounds like a while, but the population has changed drastically. Sandbox games appeal to a small percentile. I have fond memories of past MMOs that failed, a few were ahead of their time and see their influence still today. Unfortunately ppl have become antisocial IRL and this extends into online gaming. Companies are trying to cater to a broad base as they've had/seen too many niche failures.
City of Heroes was one of the most well recognized IP's in MMO history, up there with WoW and Everquest. It was one of the most original superhero franchises we've seen in decades and is still the only MMO to ever have a friendly and positive community throughout it's entire run.
It brought in tons of cash even after Free 2 Play was initiated. The reason it got shut down was because NCsoft wanted the servers for a Korean grinder MMO that, thankfully, failed to reach our shores.
-Leonard Nimoy, RIP
Best example of a sandbox resource that would make a ton of money for cryptic: ship interior customization. They give you predefined decks, but you can move walls around, add furniture, etc. Tie it into a crew revamp so that you have ~5 astrometrics stations or whatever. Cryptic could sell a bunch of assets in the c-store, consoles, hydroponics, furniture, whatever.
What we have instead is nothing, because cryptic hasnt gotten around to making a prebuilt experience for you. And they will never get around to it because there is no return on it.
That is how scripted stuff ruins these games for players and provider alike. Sandbox fixes it.
Two problems with it here: One is that I'm not sure Cryptics client engine and back-end databases could handle this stuff without major revamping--you ever notice that you cant drop something on the ground?--not sure they would have to rework major portions of the code to make it work. The bigger problem is that they have shifted their business model away from making games to making grinders that exploit Star Trek fans, so the culture would have to shift as well and that seems even more unlikely. Its too late for STO.
I have heard of City of Heroes, but I've no idea what it was about. However, I grew up with Star Trek. I watched TNG religiously on TV, I saw the movies, then went back and watched all of TOS (because I'm old, but I'm not that old), started watching DS9, Voyager and then Enterprise. The reach of the Star Trek IP is far, far greater than City of Heroes. It doesn't just bring in gamers, it brings in ST fans. The ST IP includes TV, movies, Books, comic books, toys, action figures and in the last 5 years a MMO.
You just can't compare the IP from a game like city of heroes to something like the ST beast
Cheers!
Lack of playable content??? seriously guys.. i think you not playing STO.
Every few months you get playable content. What the hell do you expect?? seriously?? obviously you didnt play too many mmorpgs..
And no please,, new content every 4-6 weeks?? so, if now, we dont have bug fixing at all, then we will have a completely unplayable game lol.
People should think deeper before they write non sense.. seriously :P
I think you will be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks STO has put out too much playable Content over the last 4.5 years. 3 FEs episodes over the last year is not a lot of playable new Content. Yes, there has been plenty of grind Content - like doing New Romulus Rep over and over - but very little regular mission Content.
Maybe you should think deeper before you start posting?
You've got that backwards. Sandboxes are for indulging your imagination; you need one to really enjoy them, because nobody is telling you what to do or how to do it. Sandboxes are for making your own adventures, instead of playing one made by someone else.
What are you suggesting exactly? I can TRIBBLE away hours playing this game and have a blast. No pun intended.
As I see it, the things that are missing from this game are elements that make it feel more like Star Trek. For example...would it be possible to have ship to ship communications on a view screen with another player? Things that add additional look and feel would be a welcome addition.
You are seeing that old spirit with cable dramas and Netflix/Hulu/Amazon programming.
And the Networks, who are scrambling to stay alive, have adopted some of that spirit.
As a comic book fan, I have seen that spirit come and go in comics.
And my observation in all of these areas is that ingenuity improves and artistry flourishes without gouging the consumer in two places:
1) In new and heavily evolving technologies. The introduction of video vs. film. Home video. Streaming media. The suits don't know what they need to spend and are actively developing a new market so money flows in.
2) In areas after the bottom crashed out. Comics were producing a lot of crud in the 90s. Then around the time Marvel went backrupt, you had waves of creativity and new talent. Suddenly indy creators were unleashed on corporate properties. Existing creators were allowed broad freedom. This era gave us the rise of Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison on mainstream comics, Kingdom Come, the Ultimate line, Joe Kelly's amazing revamp of Deadpool, the reinvention of Image Comics into an art house studio. Anybody who wanted to try something was given the opportunity to try.
In this case, again, companies were trying to develop or at least salvage a market and so they pumped money in but they also allowed people to try untested things.
In some ways, I think an unhealthy market (too new or dying) is the best kind for a consumer because companies will pump more money in than they're presently getting out. The downside is that your favorite shows or games have no security and that companies will fling random junk against the wall to see what sticks. But the best work comes from there, I think.
Actually, you can. I spent years of my life playing CoH. I followed the lore and it was the first subscription based MMO I subbed to. It brought in both gamers and comic book fans. It inspired thousands of non DC/Marvel stories and characters and became a beacon of online civility. I had only heard of Star Trek, but never saw a single episode or film until I started playing STO about a year ago.
Just because ST was around longer doesn't make it a superior IP. Both franchises impacted lives and inspired the best from it's communities.
-Leonard Nimoy, RIP
So, grind content is not new playable content?? really dude, stop saying non sense things. Seriously. Yeah i also played ultima online (and it was before '97, btw). And well, if you think STO didnt have enough new content, i tell you again, you didnt play enough mmorpgs.