No game is 'perfect,' in fact.. it will never happen.
There are things about STO that I don't like, but all I know is that I have quit every MMO I have ever played after 3-8 months tops. I have played STO for years.
Is it the best MMO? In my opinion, it is. But when people say it's not, I certainly understand their view point.
Other then this, I think the longest I made it on any MMO was Guild Wars 2 which I played for slightly over a year. I have stopped playing STO a couple times over the years for a couple months and then picked it up again. Every other MMO I have played, I quit and never played it again.
STO actually does a lot of things right. It's probably the only game where I have bought items just to support the game.
I don't think of MMOs in terms of what's better but in terms of the mood I am in and what kind of game I want to play. My heart belongs to COH...the fact that you could spend hours making a character and never run into anyone that looked like you was a big draw. I tried Matrix Online and it seemed like a good idea but was buggy as hell. Galaxies was boring. I did enjoy Age of Conan. Not a big fan of sword and sorcery but it had nudity so that was a plus. Of course I tried WOW and but just not a fan of the genre. I tried Eve Online but that game needs a college degree to play. I do like DC Universe Online but I'm console-less at the moment.
I enjoy STO. It's my current creative outlet. It's Star Trek and IMO seems more like TOS than TNG
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
STO isn't a lot of things...but STO is the freest game I've ever played...no matter how many people will claim...STO isn't P2W...you can earn everything pretty much for free. If you aren't will to put the time and effort into it because it's easier to toss money at the screen, that isn't Cryptic's fault.
The freest game you ever played? Lol. Go check path of exile for exemple you'll see the what is a real free to play.
Sorry but for me a game that give you any advantage when paying is a P2W. And yes you can earn everything much for free, but that's an illusion because there are too many things you need that you can't afford without paying.
So under that reasoning, for something to qualify as "Not-P2W" then paying for something would be the exact same as not paying. In that case, why would someone pay for something?
...Why would they pay for anything?
Well, so that you could have your bacon, of course!
"You Iconians just hung a vacancy sign on your asses and my foot's looking for a room!"
--Red Annorax
It's probably the best for many of the people here, but it's not the best and it's not without its flaws.
Modern MMOs are more like single player games in a online environment. This game consistent detracts from the fact other players are there. I was a Gorn teamed with a Romulan the other day and playing the Roms missions were reading as if I was the Romulan.......that shouldn't be the case.
Whenever you have two factions and PvP is marginalized, you've also marginalized the factions and taken away from the immersion.
The Romulan faction was done poorly....period. They could have easily been their own thing, and a lack of willingness to do some extra research and slap in some more ships and another race or two (Suliban always comes to mind). It also ensure they didn't have to work as hard on them in the future. But belong to a "mutt" faction is never fun, but I notice people saying "CoH is great" and leaving out the part CoV was sold as a seperate game that was consistently left with table scraps until they found a way to essentially abolish the game, which was more done to give CoH players more missions.
The game is too easy. Player ships are beefed up while AI is never adjusted.
I don't know if STO is the best mmo; because the only mmo which I play, is STO. And I like this game.
It is the only and the last mmo which I'll play, because I'm too old now .
what I like in this game:
- it is easy to understand, no need to pass weeks to understand how it works
-good customization, even if the tailor and some clothes need some improvements
-you can grind what you want or need.
- the events ( I would like to have more events, but not the mirror event <- the most boring event)
- fleets
- my away teams (need more things to do with them though), it is a really good feature.
what i don't like:
-the upgrade system and the r&d system; they are ridiculous, and the r&d system is not a real crafting system (this is just a gamble game)
- the lack of things to past level60 (quests or something, exploration )
- some models and textures have an average quality (sorry to say that, but it is true); the intel uniform has glitches, the windows on the ship are really meh (take a look at the rom pilot ship), etc
City of Villains was the best MMO I have ever played and I so miss the game. A shame that it was shut down in such a manner, as it was that good. And ever since I have not played a NCSoft game due to how they just shut it down.
I do enjoy STO, but. I tend to find much of the game has issues that really could be refined better. I tend to rate STO around fourth out of the MMO's I played. Due to a MMO feeling like single player a good 70% of the time. This is not the fault of the game, but the people in it I guess.
I enjoyed Star Wars Online, but that got tedious quickly. Lord of the Rings online, which was good fun as I am a big Tolkien fan. But like all MMO's, I leave and come back with a fresh mind to enjoy it for a little while.
My favorite is set hands down. No game comes close to what it had. I like store but not as much as set. I played Astor for 2 years and it sucks in comparison to both. It might have better graphics but it is on rails and boring.
STO is my favorite
Lotro is second. Although the lotro world is more impressive, the grind there gets frustrating at times.
a very very distant 3rd is BGO. Believe it or not I was here on day one of STO but a couldn't do the tutorial. I was just that hopeless with this type of game. I also quit lotro for quite a while becuase I kept getting lost on the way from Hobbiton to Michel Delving.
Anyway, I went and played Battlestar when it came out and learned to fly well for a good year, then I came back and will be here indefinitely. BGO has to be one of the worst mmos in history. There is very close to zero development since day 1. Nothing substantive added. No story at all. A real shame too.
Anyway, these are my favorite three worlds and I feel very blessed to have had the chance to live in them.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I wont let my love for a game or an IP cloud my judgement when it comes to comparing it to other games. As much as i like Star Trek and to a lesser extent Star Wars, i cant say that they are better than other games.
Well, I'm bored in the office, so here I am. Dear god, I'm on the STO forums again.
First, let's get the requisite "I'm so spiff" stuff out of the way. I'm a 40+ year fan of Star Trek - the point that I have spent exorbitant amounts of money over my life collecting props and costumes from the various incarnations (although I don't go so far as to wear the costumes because that's just... silly). It's at the point where I have been told to thin out the collection or sleep on the couch. I've been playing games since before they were "video" games, and have played umpteen million MMOs.
There. Now, the only thing that matters in that previous paragraph is the fact that I'm a MAJOR Star Trek fan, and STO - as the only option we have to go and play in the Star Trek universe - couldn't keep me coming back.
I bought four copies of STO because, of course, you had to buy different copies to get different "exclusive" in-game pre-order items (and they WERE advertised as exclusive at the time, kids), only to have them show up in the C-Store later. I'm not going to get started on that.
I did not buy a lifetime subscription (which I am well chuffed about, it would have been a very big waste).
I've been known on these forums since Beta for blasting Cryptic and STO, because with such a time-honored and well-loved franchise, STO could have been a million times more than it was at launch.
I have found, throughout the years, that STO is not what I would consider the "best MMO ever," and in fact, I think it's been one of the worst I ever played. Maybe it's gotten better since I stopped playing. Since, in fact, my entire fleet stopped playing almost immediately after they opened up the Delta Quadrant.
At that time, Cryptic made some serious changes to game difficulty - and here I'm speaking specifically about Fleet Actions/STFs. There was no more "normal." What they called "normal" was hard, and what was "hard" they made "Elite." "Elite" they made insane. They made it nearly impossible to handle much of anything without having to grind (and grind hard) for dilithium in order to make what really did amount to a TRIBBLE-shoot (the gambling kind, people, not the toilet kind) to upgrade your weapons and equipment so you could be effective in there.
In one fell swoop Crytpic turned STO from a casual game into a hardcore gamer grindfest. My entire fleet just quit. Just... quit. And none of us has been back. We've all been busy playing other games since then.
Has it actually changed to something that people who work 10-14 hours a day can come home and log in to without wanting to belt someone at Cryptic in the face (as it was put by one of my fleetmates)? Or is it still that hardcore gamer grindfest with nothing to do but repetitive and frankly vapid mission stories with stilted, hackneyed dialogue?
In essence, if I reinstall STO, will I find the same awful game I left when Delta Rising came out?
I will stop with that question, except to make one uncharacteristically kind comment about STO: The F2P matrix in STO really is one of the most generous I've seen in a while. It's not punishing or crushing. That at least, I think, they got right.
But best MMO ever? Sure. Right behind Hello, Kitty Online.
For myself STO is nowhere near the best MMO ever, nor is it in the view of majority of gamers or critics and isnt hailed as one. That said i dont disagree with your opinions that this game is the best for you...great you found a good game for your particular taste. Other MMO out there do certain things far better then STO. Storytelling already mentioned for example in SWOTR....ground combat is terrible in STO there are far better MMO with it, but i must say that combination of ground and space does give the game a certain appeal...F2P element is done better in many other games while here if you are prepared to grind its still okay...PVP i wont even mention...and so on. STO isnt known as a game that brought something revolutionary to the table, its an average MMO that does good and bad things. Why I do play it passionately is simply because its Star trek and for most of the time it does retain that feeling.
I am looking at MMOs from the beginning until now and trying to use some sort of relativism. If you want to compare single aspects of STO to single aspects of other games then no...it won't hold a candle.
For instance, SWTOR is hands down the best storytelling MMO out there. Is it better than STO? Yes. THAT aspect is better. But the game is brand new compared to STO. Does EVE have better PVP than STO...you betcha. Does WoW have better raids and end game. Sure.
The critics slaughtered this game when it was released because it sucked. I remember how bad it sucked. Recent reviews are much different. I think having a space and ground based MMO was pretty revolutionary at the time. Even today it has yet to be done. SWTOR has great ground but fly by rails arcade space. EVE was all space and they integrated a ground game much later on. Beyond Earth was all space but no ground.
I have played all of these games from the very start. I have revisited them often. The only two games that I always come back to are WoW and STO. I usually lose interest in these games after about a month or two and I find my interest in STO has only grown over the years. I think we would all love an MMO that had the storytelling of SWTOR, the space combat of EVE, the raids and end game content of WoW, AND be F2P where everything you buy was merely cosmetic. Unfortunately that game doesn't and probably won't ever exist.
I have plenty of gripes but yes, I agree totally with the OP. When I play games like Old Republic of Secret World, sure they're slicker and they have lots of cut scenes and great VO but personally I find they rapidly become too much work. The difficulty curve seems very steep and I have to keep fighting through the same blocks of enemies again and again. With STO I can play the way I want to play and if I fancy trying a different challenge I can go seek that out, if not I don't feel like I am missing out on essential plot development. I really do prefer STO's way of doing things to any other game. Even if I do wish they'd take a few tips off the good points of the other MMOs. Other MMOs I play to try something new and because they're recommended but if I just want to enjoy myself, I play STO.
STO best MMO of all time ? Not by a longshot. My most favorite Star Trek game ? Nope, maybe 4th or 5th in the online list but hardly worth mention in my overall trek ranking, tho I've got far more hours into STO than anything else I've ever played. Hours in doesn't make it 'best', good, or my favorite. Just means I've HAD to put in the time as the other games I play don't have such a high grind requirement. Playing STO is more of a daily ritual than an activity for pure pleasure, tho it does have it moments (er...had, when PvP was still viable).
I think we would all love an MMO that had the storytelling of SWTOR, the space combat of EVE, the raids and end game content of WoW, AND be F2P where everything you buy was merely cosmetic. Unfortunately that game doesn't and probably won't ever exist.
And the F2P elements of Path of Exile where everything is free except cosmetics...EVERYTHING True such a game with the elements you described would be mind bogglingly awesome and great and sadly might not happen, but who knows...
The Best MMORPG is different depending on who you ask. I'd say FFXIV Online because of a successful reboot. There is no such thing as the "best" MMORPG.
Defending The Galaxy By Breaking One Starfleet Regulation After The Next.
I think we would all love an MMO that had the storytelling of SWTOR, the space combat of EVE, the raids and end game content of WoW, AND be F2P where everything you buy was merely cosmetic. Unfortunately that game doesn't and probably won't ever exist.
And the F2P elements of Path of Exile where everything is free except cosmetics...EVERYTHING True such a game with the elements you described would be mind bogglingly awesome and great and sadly might not happen, but who knows...
Good, now try to respec in that game...... I'll wait here...
Shortened because of long post but I did read it !
I think I understand what you mean about not having fun because you want to teach others and have a good time in sto with a group of people. At the risk of sounding sentimental I will tell you something though. Alot of the times and for a great majority of the case it's the people you hang out with that (at least for me) can make or break for a good time in game.
More often than not it was the conversations, the trivia and theories about a game or any other subject for that matter that made the grind seem so less tedious. It's that one joke one of your fleet mate said on team speak that had everyone laughing and killed whatever bad mood you were in. Hell even the mundane conversation worked. I remember once in another game my team and I were talking for something for like an hour or so comparing what we were having breakfast that day and actually voting to see who had the best one. Yeah, pretty dumb and not too cool sounding but you know...it really was a fun morning and no one bitched over the grind.
I have been very lucky to find people like these in almost every mmo I have played. My youngest brother got into the whole mmo thing when I introduced him to The Matrix Online and ever since then from City of Heroes to APB Reloaded, he has been one of the funniest guys I have been ever had the fortune to being related to. But the point is he and friends like him have made my in game experience better (it sucks though my wife turns her nose up at this game and anything Star Trek, Oh but Vampire Diaries is so freaking great! Vampires that walk around in the daytime no less! Oh yeah that's canon! Where the hell is Blade anyway?!?!? Damn vampires! Missus back in the room).
I hope this in some way helps and it hopefully you got a chuckle from it!
"There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life... or death. It shall be life." - Ten Bears (Will Sampson)
WoW - I just dipped my toe in and went "meh"; I'm not sure why, but it never struck a chord. It was probably due to age, since my prior gaming experience amounted to buying a game and playing it, rather than buying the game then buying time to play the game that I'd just bought; fortunately, a friend was letting me try it out on his account. WoW was decent, but it didn't feel like something worth re-purchasing every month. It was awhile before I bothered with another MMO.
DDO - I tried it out because I'd liked old pen-and-paper D&D for awhile, and I ended up playing DDO for years. I spend a decent chunk of money on it over time due to ever-expanding adventures and a solid design around teamwork. Aging systems, outdated graphics, gameplay changes, and a level cap increase eventually led me to wander off... but at one time it was great.
LOTRO - It was made by Turbine, so I tried it when I found I liked DDO... and went "meh"; I'm not sure what it was missing, but it was missing something.
STO - When I got tired of DDO (level cap increased, thinning out the playerbase in a game that revolved around grouping with players of your character level; there were other side-effects, but that was the big one that led to me wandering off) a fellow Trek nerd mentioned that STO had gone F2P; I tried it out and found it to be pretty good, and the F2P model itself was rather nice given that we had access to all of what I consider content (missions, classes, levels, etc.). It wasn't perfect, but it was the best SciFi MMO I'd ever played to that point.
Neverwinter - Having enjoyed both DDO and STO, when I found out that Cryptic was releasing a D&D game I thought it would be awesome. So I waited, downloaded the game when it became available, and dove in. What I hadn't anticipated was the ruleset... Neverwinter's version of D&D was a real "Uh... wtf is this?" moment; I had to have it explained that it had been based on 4E. Still, I played a bit, tinkering about and trying to sort out the mechanics and see if I could play how I wanted to, or if the game even required that kind of gameplay. In the end, the answer was "Not really...", and since they kept altering the capabilities of my character again and again I simply wandered off (it was fairly early on, so the alterations were frequent). This was a case of expectations being completely different from the actual product, and despite giving it a shot the ruleset just ruined Neverwinter for me.
SWTOR - When SWTOR went F2P, I figured I'd give it a shot. It had great graphics, storytelling, and ground gameplay... but it also had no space gameplay to speak of and one of the more obnoxious F2P designs that I'd encountered. Where DDO gave you the early levels to try out the game and STO gave you full access to the content while charging for ships/species, etc. SWTOR charged just to be able to equip item drops above a certain quality. In many ways I liked SWTOR more than STO, but eventually was irritated by its F2P model into wandering off rather than into subscribing.
ESO - I really like the Elder Scrolls series; the unrestricted character design, huge amount of interaction with the world, and a gigantic map you traverse to discover adventure and treasure... they all make the series one of my favorites. So when ESO hit I was pre-ordered and ready... and then I found that the 30 days that you got when you bought the game weren't actually useable until you bought the next 30 days or provided your credit card information. That started things off on the wrong foot, shall we say, but I bought my damn extra 30 days and got into the game. Once there, I found a decent game... if I hadn't been expecting an Elder Scrolls game I might have actually liked it. I came in expecting Elder Scrolls and found that there were fixed character classes with restricted access to their skill lines, the classes themselves were poorly balanced (and the main feature of the class I wanted to play was bugged for ages), you couldn't pick up the sword that the NPC had just smacked you with, the grouping systems were less than impressive, there was no global auction house/exchange/whatever, they relied on Mods designed by the community to come up with a worthwhile UI, and... so much more. In the end, ESO just felt like it missed the mark both as an Elder Scrolls game (versatility and depth) and an MMO (grouping and trade). When I read "Elder Scrolls" and "Online" I apparently set my expectations too high, and it ended up as something significantly less impressive; I played my 60 days, checked back in to see how it was doing when it went F2P, but never really developed any particular affection for the game. At present, I've played Elder Scrolls: Oblivion more recently than I have ESO.
Best MMO of All Time:
I have no idea, but I doubt I've played it.
Best MMO I play:
STO, because it's the only one I still play. It's not perfect, I do have my complaints... but it's still good enough that I play STO and not any of the other games I've tried. In many ways that goes all the way back to age; I grew up buying a game and playing it, not paying to play the game that I'd just paid to acquire. STO has a F2P model that works similarly, allowing full access to the game itself so long as you actually have the game; no monthly sub required, no cost to add missions/etc. I'll admit that my gameplay went even more casual than it had been before when Delta Rising hit (PvP and top-tier DPS took more work than I wanted to put in due to some of the changes introduced), but I still hang about and enjoy STO in my own way. The Black Friday Sale saw me picking up the Pilot 9-Pack, and so far I've found them to be good fun... I may not be great at flying them yet, but the Maneuvers are fun, pure and simple.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
I think we would all love an MMO that had the storytelling of SWTOR, the space combat of EVE, the raids and end game content of WoW, AND be F2P where everything you buy was merely cosmetic. Unfortunately that game doesn't and probably won't ever exist.
And the F2P elements of Path of Exile where everything is free except cosmetics...EVERYTHING True such a game with the elements you described would be mind bogglingly awesome and great and sadly might not happen, but who knows...
Good, now try to respec in that game...... I'll wait here...
wha? why did you uninstalled that game?
The large passive skill tree that you are talking about is not difficult even if you dont use the million guides available. The color code representing each class in the skill tree makes it that anyone who puts at least a bit of brain into the game to have a decent build, and for any fine tuning there are respec points and items which you can get from missions...for free.
"If you want to adjust your passive build during game play, there are Passive Skill Refund points available from quests or relatively rare items in the game that can be found or traded for. Fixing mistakes with a character build or improving small-medium sized aspects is relatively easy, but our intention is that players who want to try substantially divergent character builds are encouraged to play a new character through the game, organically leveling it up rather than just respeccing into it."
From PoE website.
But if that tiny thing challenges you to much and you want a game where you press 1 button and that does everything for you, like STO sadly does in a lot of things then do follow your advice and uninstall PoE if you didn't already, because about 11 milion registered users arent bothered to much by it.
While I am certainly not the right person to say anything about "best MMO" (I just haven't played enough of those), I really like the game, despite the huge amount of flaws it has. But it has kept me entertained for ca 2.5 years already and I don't feel like I've wasted my time or money playing it. For me, it is the best MMO.
Well, I'm bored in the office, so here I am. Dear god, I'm on the STO forums again.
At that time, Cryptic made some serious changes to game difficulty - and here I'm speaking specifically about Fleet Actions/STFs. There was no more "normal." What they called "normal" was hard, and what was "hard" they made "Elite." "Elite" they made insane. They made it nearly impossible to handle much of anything without having to grind (and grind hard) for dilithium in order to make what really did amount to a TRIBBLE-shoot (the gambling kind, people, not the toilet kind) to upgrade your weapons and equipment so you could be effective in there.
Elite is supposed to be insane (however, it depends on mission, some are not very challenging), it was at least intended for only the best. "Advanced" is certainly "normal" and "Normal" is "cook your dinner, call your parents, do the laundry while playing the game" mode. And once more, you don't have to upgrade anything if you don't want to, at least when you are not planning to join Elites. Just because you can't grasp the game mechanics doesn't matter everyone can't.
STO is not THE best as mmo , its unballanced , and it lacks the „trinity” . The best mmo that i played was Lineage 2 . But STO is one of the best, and second best mmo with space combat , first one is EVE , but EVE requires monthly fee and most important ... time . You have to actually live in that game ... and its adictive. At my age (31 y old on 13 dec.) i have no time to spend on this kind of games. So the best mmo for me is Star Trek ... the ships and other stuff in C-store are cheap because is game lifetime unlock. Is really easy to level , the STFs are easy , you dont need alot of grinding for your gear , and at some point you can get really good stuff by not spending real money(i got more than 20 lockbox ships including the Vonph w/o any euro spent) . People are saying that this game is a „grind fest” well they probably didn't play other mmos . If STO had a ballanced pvp , and the need of some kind of classes , like the „trinity” mmos (not just tactical dps focus) , it would be THE best mmo.
Comments
There are things about STO that I don't like, but all I know is that I have quit every MMO I have ever played after 3-8 months tops. I have played STO for years.
Is it the best MMO? In my opinion, it is. But when people say it's not, I certainly understand their view point.
Other then this, I think the longest I made it on any MMO was Guild Wars 2 which I played for slightly over a year. I have stopped playing STO a couple times over the years for a couple months and then picked it up again. Every other MMO I have played, I quit and never played it again.
STO actually does a lot of things right. It's probably the only game where I have bought items just to support the game.
I enjoy STO. It's my current creative outlet. It's Star Trek and IMO seems more like TOS than TNG
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Yes, I get frustrated with Cryptic's rushed rollouts; then I'll play an episode like "Butterfly Effect" that makes up for a multitude of Dev sins. : )
--Red Annorax
Modern MMOs are more like single player games in a online environment. This game consistent detracts from the fact other players are there. I was a Gorn teamed with a Romulan the other day and playing the Roms missions were reading as if I was the Romulan.......that shouldn't be the case.
Whenever you have two factions and PvP is marginalized, you've also marginalized the factions and taken away from the immersion.
The Romulan faction was done poorly....period. They could have easily been their own thing, and a lack of willingness to do some extra research and slap in some more ships and another race or two (Suliban always comes to mind). It also ensure they didn't have to work as hard on them in the future. But belong to a "mutt" faction is never fun, but I notice people saying "CoH is great" and leaving out the part CoV was sold as a seperate game that was consistently left with table scraps until they found a way to essentially abolish the game, which was more done to give CoH players more missions.
The game is too easy. Player ships are beefed up while AI is never adjusted.
I've got plenty more.
It is the only and the last mmo which I'll play, because I'm too old now
what I like in this game:
- it is easy to understand, no need to pass weeks to understand how it works
-good customization, even if the tailor and some clothes need some improvements
-you can grind what you want or need.
- the events ( I would like to have more events, but not the mirror event <- the most boring event)
- fleets
- my away teams (need more things to do with them though), it is a really good feature.
what i don't like:
-the upgrade system and the r&d system; they are ridiculous, and the r&d system is not a real crafting system (this is just a gamble game)
- the lack of things to past level60 (quests or something, exploration
- some models and textures have an average quality (sorry to say that, but it is true); the intel uniform has glitches, the windows on the ship are really meh (take a look at the rom pilot ship), etc
I do enjoy STO, but. I tend to find much of the game has issues that really could be refined better. I tend to rate STO around fourth out of the MMO's I played. Due to a MMO feeling like single player a good 70% of the time. This is not the fault of the game, but the people in it I guess.
I enjoyed Star Wars Online, but that got tedious quickly. Lord of the Rings online, which was good fun as I am a big Tolkien fan. But like all MMO's, I leave and come back with a fresh mind to enjoy it for a little while.
My character Tsin'xing
STO is my favorite
Lotro is second. Although the lotro world is more impressive, the grind there gets frustrating at times.
a very very distant 3rd is BGO. Believe it or not I was here on day one of STO but a couldn't do the tutorial. I was just that hopeless with this type of game. I also quit lotro for quite a while becuase I kept getting lost on the way from Hobbiton to Michel Delving.
Anyway, I went and played Battlestar when it came out and learned to fly well for a good year, then I came back and will be here indefinitely. BGO has to be one of the worst mmos in history. There is very close to zero development since day 1. Nothing substantive added. No story at all. A real shame too.
Anyway, these are my favorite three worlds and I feel very blessed to have had the chance to live in them.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I wont let my love for a game or an IP cloud my judgement when it comes to comparing it to other games. As much as i like Star Trek and to a lesser extent Star Wars, i cant say that they are better than other games.
First, let's get the requisite "I'm so spiff" stuff out of the way. I'm a 40+ year fan of Star Trek - the point that I have spent exorbitant amounts of money over my life collecting props and costumes from the various incarnations (although I don't go so far as to wear the costumes because that's just... silly). It's at the point where I have been told to thin out the collection or sleep on the couch. I've been playing games since before they were "video" games, and have played umpteen million MMOs.
There. Now, the only thing that matters in that previous paragraph is the fact that I'm a MAJOR Star Trek fan, and STO - as the only option we have to go and play in the Star Trek universe - couldn't keep me coming back.
I bought four copies of STO because, of course, you had to buy different copies to get different "exclusive" in-game pre-order items (and they WERE advertised as exclusive at the time, kids), only to have them show up in the C-Store later. I'm not going to get started on that.
I did not buy a lifetime subscription (which I am well chuffed about, it would have been a very big waste).
I've been known on these forums since Beta for blasting Cryptic and STO, because with such a time-honored and well-loved franchise, STO could have been a million times more than it was at launch.
I have found, throughout the years, that STO is not what I would consider the "best MMO ever," and in fact, I think it's been one of the worst I ever played. Maybe it's gotten better since I stopped playing. Since, in fact, my entire fleet stopped playing almost immediately after they opened up the Delta Quadrant.
At that time, Cryptic made some serious changes to game difficulty - and here I'm speaking specifically about Fleet Actions/STFs. There was no more "normal." What they called "normal" was hard, and what was "hard" they made "Elite." "Elite" they made insane. They made it nearly impossible to handle much of anything without having to grind (and grind hard) for dilithium in order to make what really did amount to a TRIBBLE-shoot (the gambling kind, people, not the toilet kind) to upgrade your weapons and equipment so you could be effective in there.
In one fell swoop Crytpic turned STO from a casual game into a hardcore gamer grindfest. My entire fleet just quit. Just... quit. And none of us has been back. We've all been busy playing other games since then.
Has it actually changed to something that people who work 10-14 hours a day can come home and log in to without wanting to belt someone at Cryptic in the face (as it was put by one of my fleetmates)? Or is it still that hardcore gamer grindfest with nothing to do but repetitive and frankly vapid mission stories with stilted, hackneyed dialogue?
In essence, if I reinstall STO, will I find the same awful game I left when Delta Rising came out?
I will stop with that question, except to make one uncharacteristically kind comment about STO: The F2P matrix in STO really is one of the most generous I've seen in a while. It's not punishing or crushing. That at least, I think, they got right.
But best MMO ever? Sure. Right behind Hello, Kitty Online.
I am looking at MMOs from the beginning until now and trying to use some sort of relativism. If you want to compare single aspects of STO to single aspects of other games then no...it won't hold a candle.
For instance, SWTOR is hands down the best storytelling MMO out there. Is it better than STO? Yes. THAT aspect is better. But the game is brand new compared to STO. Does EVE have better PVP than STO...you betcha. Does WoW have better raids and end game. Sure.
The critics slaughtered this game when it was released because it sucked. I remember how bad it sucked. Recent reviews are much different. I think having a space and ground based MMO was pretty revolutionary at the time. Even today it has yet to be done. SWTOR has great ground but fly by rails arcade space. EVE was all space and they integrated a ground game much later on. Beyond Earth was all space but no ground.
I have played all of these games from the very start. I have revisited them often. The only two games that I always come back to are WoW and STO. I usually lose interest in these games after about a month or two and I find my interest in STO has only grown over the years. I think we would all love an MMO that had the storytelling of SWTOR, the space combat of EVE, the raids and end game content of WoW, AND be F2P where everything you buy was merely cosmetic. Unfortunately that game doesn't and probably won't ever exist.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
And the F2P elements of Path of Exile where everything is free except cosmetics...EVERYTHING
Defending The Galaxy By Breaking One Starfleet Regulation After The Next.
Good, now try to respec in that game...... I'll wait here...
wha? why did you uninstalled that game?
I think I understand what you mean about not having fun because you want to teach others and have a good time in sto with a group of people. At the risk of sounding sentimental I will tell you something though. Alot of the times and for a great majority of the case it's the people you hang out with that (at least for me) can make or break for a good time in game.
More often than not it was the conversations, the trivia and theories about a game or any other subject for that matter that made the grind seem so less tedious. It's that one joke one of your fleet mate said on team speak that had everyone laughing and killed whatever bad mood you were in. Hell even the mundane conversation worked. I remember once in another game my team and I were talking for something for like an hour or so comparing what we were having breakfast that day and actually voting to see who had the best one. Yeah, pretty dumb and not too cool sounding but you know...it really was a fun morning and no one bitched over the grind.
I have been very lucky to find people like these in almost every mmo I have played. My youngest brother got into the whole mmo thing when I introduced him to The Matrix Online and ever since then from City of Heroes to APB Reloaded, he has been one of the funniest guys I have been ever had the fortune to being related to. But the point is he and friends like him have made my in game experience better (it sucks though my wife turns her nose up at this game and anything Star Trek, Oh but Vampire Diaries is so freaking great! Vampires that walk around in the daytime no less! Oh yeah that's canon! Where the hell is Blade anyway?!?!? Damn vampires! Missus back in the room).
I hope this in some way helps and it hopefully you got a chuckle from it!
Best MMO of All Time:
Best MMO I play:
The large passive skill tree that you are talking about is not difficult even if you dont use the million guides available. The color code representing each class in the skill tree makes it that anyone who puts at least a bit of brain into the game to have a decent build, and for any fine tuning there are respec points and items which you can get from missions...for free.
"If you want to adjust your passive build during game play, there are Passive Skill Refund points available from quests or relatively rare items in the game that can be found or traded for. Fixing mistakes with a character build or improving small-medium sized aspects is relatively easy, but our intention is that players who want to try substantially divergent character builds are encouraged to play a new character through the game, organically leveling it up rather than just respeccing into it."
From PoE website.
But if that tiny thing challenges you to much and you want a game where you press 1 button and that does everything for you, like STO sadly does in a lot of things then do follow your advice and uninstall PoE if you didn't already, because about 11 milion registered users arent bothered to much by it.
Elite is supposed to be insane (however, it depends on mission, some are not very challenging), it was at least intended for only the best. "Advanced" is certainly "normal" and "Normal" is "cook your dinner, call your parents, do the laundry while playing the game" mode. And once more, you don't have to upgrade anything if you don't want to, at least when you are not planning to join Elites. Just because you can't grasp the game mechanics doesn't matter everyone can't.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
At my age (31 y old on 13 dec.) i have no time to spend on this kind of games. So the best mmo for me is Star Trek ... the ships and other stuff in C-store are cheap because is game lifetime unlock. Is really easy to level , the STFs are easy , you dont need alot of grinding for your gear , and at some point you can get really good stuff by not spending real money(i got more than 20 lockbox ships including the Vonph w/o any euro spent) . People are saying that this game is a „grind fest” well they probably didn't play other mmos . If STO had a ballanced pvp , and the need of some kind of classes , like the „trinity” mmos (not just tactical dps focus) , it would be THE best mmo.