Star trek feeling is gone ok.. Alien ships.. Powercreep.. Always the same mission copy/pasted into another area.. close rifts, kill someone.. always the same.. and ye its only pew pew.. thats why i count that game as a hacknslay game instead a mmo. But of course, its still a mmo cause hacknslay doesnt require "grind grind grind".. I just think that developing with more heart, listening to players, balancing and offering a nice pvp content would give the game more attraction.. it has by far more potential
for me its this continual time travel theme that is getting me down, don't get me wrong I really used to enjoy the odd time travel mission but that's all we seem to be getting lately and its getting boring.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
for me its this continual time travel theme that is getting me down, don't get me wrong I really used to enjoy the odd time travel mission but that's all we seem to be getting lately and its getting boring.
Time Travel is an excuse to bring content into the game from all over the franchise, STO especially with this being the 50th anniversary and all.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
Star trek feeling is gone ok..
Alien ships..
Powercreep..
Always the same mission copy/pasted into another area.. close rifts, kill someone.. always the same.. and ye its only pew pew.. thats why i count that game as a hacknslay game instead a mmo. But of course, its still a mmo cause hacknslay doesnt require "grind grind grind"..
I just think that developing with more heart, listening to players, balancing and offering a nice pvp content would give the game more attraction.. it has by far more potential
I don't think it's possible to make any kind of coherent argument that STO has lost that Star Trek feel (and that the devs are doing nothing to change this) shortly after an expansion whose number one objective was pretty much to emulate the feel of a 1970's TV show. It's a dicey topic anyway but now more than ever it's not supportable.
You may not like STO gameplay but it has been like this from the very beginning. You use abilities to buff, debuff, control, and heal and the winner (in any context) is the one with the biggest numbers. It's just not been a static game so those numbers have grown quite big over the years.
But that's just evolution. Yes, certain things should probably be tweaked (ex. Kemocite) but coating that perfectly reasonable discussion with the independent theater of "THIS GAME ISN'T STAR TREK ENOUGH" (with the story driven AOY being the very latest thing added to the game, in addition to all other arguments) is almost certain to undermine those important topics.
Time Travel is an excuse to bring content into the game from all over the franchise, STO especially with this being the 50th anniversary and all.
*Sigh*
Time travel is also a core story element of the Star Trek franchise. See. the numerous time travel episodes from every series and three time travel movies (Voyage Home, First Contact, ST2009, and possibly TMP as well for V'ger to have made the journey it was implied to.)
If the question is there being a problem with rampant and arbitrary time travel (just to do fan service outside of an established plot line, ex. the DS9 tribble episode) well, there's still not much to complain about because the current arc has been carefully developed as an integral part of the STO story over the course of two seasons. And because its the current arc, we're probably going to be moving off to something else (as the main focus) in not too long (ex. the Delphic Expanse).
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
im just wondering if its only me but for me and a couple of friends is it really hard to believe that we are playing a star trek game here..
There are so many "spam abilities" currently ingame and the visual effects are really hard to look at.. for example multiple use of kemocite, neutro spread explosions, resonance beams and so on..
Not sure what abilities have to do with feeling like star trek. You cite torpedo spreads and kemocite and the resonance beam, but star trek combat did repeatedly fire phasers and torpedoes (a lot of times in spreads) at enemies in the brief moments of combat that happened in episodes.
To become more like Star Trek, they'd certainly have to cut down on the spam abilities, as well as ALL of combat. So that it took up climactic moments (sometimes under a minute of screen time in an entire episode) of individual episodes. And that's it.
So I'm not sure what you want them to do would feel any more like Star Trek than what is currently in the game. Just trading your preference for what's already there as neither are particularly Star Trek and are far more Video Game elements.
Next thing is this insane exotic dmg and now phys. Dmg stuff which forces a lot of sci players imo to play with that.
This is similar to your previous complaint in that damage type isn't relevant to "feeling" like Star Trek. However, in this instance, you're also missing the context that exotic damage is tied into abilities that ARE very much Star Trek feeling abilities. When a player creates a Gravity Well or a Tyken's Rift, they are doing something that feels a lot like Star Trek as those things are taken from specific episodes.
Id like to have more balancing in this game that it needs more than just stacking dmg buffs and spacebar spamming..
Science players who support with crowd control.. tactical players who are focused on dealing damage and engineers who focus to keep everyone alive..
This is misplaced. The game is balanced around more than stacking damage buffs and spacebar spamming. In fact, the latest two queues, Days of Doom and the Battle of Procyon V require neither stacking damage buffs or spacebar spamming to be successful. And instead require teamwork and coordination, utilizing science support and engineering capabilities to make them complete quicker.
I cant imagine that balancing pve is so much work..
PVE balance is out of whack in Ultima Online, Everquest, Everquest 2, World of Warcraft ...
See that's the thing. You don't have to imagine this balancing is a lot of work. You just have to look at all other MMOs who suffer from and have suffered from the same imbalance. Yes, it is hard and a lot of work and isn't easy, as NO MMO has ever achieved balance that makes the players happy. STO is no exception.
I want a bit more mmo/star trek feeling.. currently its only dps chasing which is really sad in my opinion..
Again, this is misplaced. You don't really define star trek feeling as anything related to star trek. You haven't really considered that a lot of the things you are criticizing ARE mmo-staples. And you're not seeing that the latest mission content released has shifted away from the DPS chase you are complaining about. The time travel story missions don't require a DPS chase. The time travel alert hinges or tanking and crowd control. And the two new space queues require teamwork and coordination and not a lot of DPS firepower at all.
Ranges being doubled to 20km would help, too. This would open the game up to different play styles at different ranges, with fast ships wanting to close the distance to effective cannon ranges and slower, bulkier ships having to try and keep them at range with tractor beam repulsars, targeting engines (because, as it is, who targets engines?), warp plasma trails, mines, etc. Smaller ships would want to counter these with cloak, tractor beams, maximum impulse power (and evasion stacking,) so on and so forth.
Torpedoes being based on ammunition, being more powerful, and with no global cooldowns would give the game's economy a valid credit sink while opening the game up to more builds.
Something I have never understood since I started playing this game. In the 25th century, in space, you must close to within 10km of a target to attack......, and at that range, in space, your weapon damage is severely degraded, in the 25th century ! ! !
So, in the intervening centuries between present day and STO time frame, our weapons tech has degraded severly. In the present day, we have airborne lasers that can attack targets at ranges well in excess of 10km, actually in excess of 10 miles,by a factor of ...... more than 10 (exact effective range is still highly classified)...and that is through atmosphere which degrades weapon effectiveness with range severely
And yet 400 plus yearss later we can not even engage a target more than 10km away ? And our weapon effectiveness at 10km is severely degraded even though we are in the vacuum of space ?
Even in the oldest of episodes, of TOS we have examples of the Enterprise firing phasers at a target on the ground, from orbit, through atmosphere, with pinpoint accuracy. Planetary orbit is most definitively not less than 10km, multiply that by a factor of at least 10 for any Earth like planet.
Of course the shows (pretty much ALL space based shows) had the action at in your face ranges. It wouldn't be very exciting if the space combat was all of a ship firing into the apparent emptiness of space due to the target being so far away it's not even a viable speck to the naked eye.......okay I'll give STO the nod on that one, space combat wouldn't be near as interesting or exciting if we firing at targets the size of a single pixel on the screen, which is what realistic ranges would be.
Torpedoes.....shared/global cooldowns. What ??? Torpedo launcher 1, of type A, will take N amount of time to reload and fire, period. Doesn't matter if it is the only torp launcher on the ship, or only one of eight launchers, that launcher will take N amount of time to reeload. Launcher 2, firing type B torpedoes, takes a bit longer to reload due to being a larrger/more cumbersome torpedo, that launcher will take the exact same amount of time to load, every time, whether it is the only launcher, or one of several.
Star trek feeling is gone ok..
Alien ships..
Powercreep..
Always the same mission copy/pasted into another area.. close rifts, kill someone.. always the same.. and ye its only pew pew.. thats why i count that game as a hacknslay game instead a mmo. But of course, its still a mmo cause hacknslay doesnt require "grind grind grind"..
I just think that developing with more heart, listening to players, balancing and offering a nice pvp content would give the game more attraction.. it has by far more potential
I am not really trying to be overly pedantic here, but it is hard to get your points when you mix up terminology this much (also in reading, cf. you comment on snoggy's post). MMO, Hack'n'Slay and "Grind, grind, grind" are three completely different categories of looking at a game and can happen all three at once or in any combination. And neither of them has to do with "Star Trek Feeling", which is a fourth. I think your beef lies in the "grind" part, but it's hard to tell when you keep bringing unrelated stuff into the discussion. (For starters, "MMO" is the easiest one, and STO easily fits the bill, because all it says it that a lot of players are playing the same game online. You seem to be thinking about "MMORPG" when you say it, but then you would mean the RPG part - and that doesn't need to go with or against HnS or Grind again.)
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
The ones chasing DPS, IMO, are not a majority. I know plenty of players who do <10k, including myself, and we still get the mission done. Do I play on Elite? No. Do I play on Advanced? No. I come here to have fun, not make things harder than they need to be. I play the story, the combat is secondary. Or I simply go to the mines, or craft. No, the game is not completely ST anymore. But it's fun. It's a lot of fun. Whether I'm playing content or doing my own thing, STO allows that and it's fun.
I wouldn't have thirteen characters if it wasn't. I know, thirteen is a drop in the bucket compared to some other players, but I like each and every one of them for different reasons. They're not carbon copies of each other, each has their own personalities and goals.
If you've lost whatever feeling you had when you started, that's on you. Sure, I get tired of the game and go off and play something else, but STO is the only MMO I play. Mostly because I can't afford to pay the fees most of them charge. Still, it's a heckuva lot of fun when I am playing it because I don't have to play it any certain way except the way i want to.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
I'm just a tad confused about what PvP has to do with "Star Trek feeling". I only recall one TOS episode where Kirk went into combat against other Starfleet ships ("The Ultimate Computer"), and in that one he wasn't even in command until Spock found a way to pull the plug on the M-5.
PvP is never a factor for me in any game I'm contemplating. In fact, if PvP is the only thing the game is based on, I will give it a pass. I have no interest in battling other players just so I can wag my nonexistent epeen.
I like a RP aspect to a game and choose accordingly. TES series, Dragon Age series, Fallout series. You get the picture.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
I'm here because I like Star Trek. I still get that Star Trek feeling every time I log in. I have said before and will say this time as well: We are currently spoiled rotten by the abundance of Star Trek available.
OP, Cryptic has not yet finished making Star Trek Online.
Like all MMOs it is a work in progress. People post in here and they act like Cryptic, along with the rest of us, is sitting on tenterhooks waiting for their next utterance. Whereupon Cryptic, along with the rest of us, are supposed to agree and immediately get right to work on whatever thing it is these people desire. No matter the cost or difficulties. Further, whenever someone disagrees in public with one of these people, they then act like the person disagreeing with them is not as much of a Star Trek fan as they are.
The result is threads such as this one is. Quite frankly, I really wish the people who start threads such as this would be run off from both the game and these forums. The negativity they post is not helpful in any manner. A thread such as this one serves the sole purpose of drawing entirely too much attention to a person who has done nothing at all to deserve it.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
As of now, "class" isn't healer/tanker/damager, it's fast becoming "do I use cannons, beams, or space magic to reach my kills"...
I've argued many times that is how it should be! There is no "MMO Trinity" in the source material, and that entire concept has its roots in fantasy games that have entirely different concepts at their core. They do not and have never had any place in a Star Trek game. Hell, captains don't even have the kind of career paths we have in this game, Command IS their career path and their training is to be a generalist with executive decision making and creative problem solving skills. The specialties are the realm of the department heads and bridge officers.
Ships shouldn't be classed according to some nonsense "tank / healer / space magician" arrangement because Star Trek never once had that. They should be based on naval concepts translated into space and the IP itself. Whatever remains of the "MMO Trinity" in this game should be rooted out with extreme prejudice and cut out as the mistake it always was and always will be. This isn't World of Warcrap, it's STAR TREK.
I agree with this. The Trinity isn't hard-coded into the game and I like that it isn't. In fact, Cryptic has stated that they have no intentions of introducing the Trinity in this game. They want all captain classes to be able to do whatever role they want. Nothing is stopping players from playing in a Trinity role either. IMO this is a strength of this game.
Science players who support with crowd control.. tactical players who are focused on dealing damage and engineers who focus to keep everyone alive..
Errrm... The trinity NEVER worked in this game like this - and, thus, it is unrealistic to expect that it suddenly will.
Moreover, some part of the playerbase will be explicitly opposed to being forced in fulfilling certain role based on the chosen carrier path.
for me its this continual time travel theme that is getting me down, don't get me wrong I really used to enjoy the odd time travel mission but that's all we seem to be getting lately and its getting boring.
This is mostly how I feel. I think time travel is a useful story element, and it has been used as a fantastic narrative for a number of works, but it works best if it's in a self-contained story (Star Trek), and if it isn't, the entire franchise should revolve around it (Dr. Who, Terminator).
Since Star Trek does not revolve around time travel, this Agents of Yesterday expansion has left me feeling a bit meh over the whole thing, and if it weren't for the addition of the Kelvin Timeline content, I'd likely still be pretty ambivalent to the expansion.
In all honesty, I hope Agents of Yesterday scratches Cryptic's itch for a temporal narrative soon, and we can go back to focusing on the 2410 era with a coherent storyline.
Nothing would make me more enthusiastic for STO than to hear the producers at Cryptic say, "I think we did all we could with the temporal narrative in Agents of Yesterday, and I don't think we'll ever revisit that particular plot device for a good long while."
I got the Ranger and the Paladin just now and set it all up with Ranger skin. Absolutely gorgeous. Got the TOS bridge officers (thanks humbly once again Trendy). I could not have more of a Trek feeling. I'm downright giddy.
Allowing the Ranger skin was one of the kindest things they have done. It's very close to T6 Enterprise.
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."
You don't really define star trek feeling as anything related to star trek. You haven't really considered that a lot of the things you are criticizing ARE mmo-staples. And you're not seeing that the latest mission content released has shifted away from the DPS chase you are complaining about. The time travel story missions don't require a DPS chase. The time travel alert hinges or tanking and crowd control. And the two new space queues require teamwork and coordination and not a lot of DPS firepower at all.
It's always nice to come to the forums and see an intelligent calm post.
I don't min-max for DPS, so I feel no pressure to outfit my Federation ships with antiproton beams and Romulan bridge officers. Someone else using KLW, SRO, whatever does not matter to me.
I'd be fine with an option to tone down the visual effects from other players (except status effects), that has been asked for a few times here.
Yeah there's one effect that makes my ship look like a giant green box in space...
Time travel is overused in story context with STO. It's really "time" to really establish some more interwoven/inter-meshed factional universe relative content and truly develop the rest of the universe.
Underneath the skin, STO is a really basic game about starship and some ground-based battles, but mainly starships and pew-pew. It used to have a lot more exploration content, but that was before they stripped it all out and focused primarily on individual storylines of sector-based locales. This doesn't really replace the original exploration content, although I'm pretty certain they probably thought people would just forget that it existed.
I'm not really sure what the "road map" is for the future of STO's content- but as far as "power creep", as long as people feel that their characters need to move forward/upward there's going to be something they have to move forward to. So if they don't keep raising the bar, then how are they supposed to accomplish this? So far it's been increasing the ship tier/mark system so that ships and gear scale onward and upward- and people who complain about "power creep" really haven't suggested an alternative system that would counter this. (They're certainly not going to just nerf everything into oblivion at this stage of the game to satisfy the few worried about "power creep".)
Also a consideration here- the "I already got mine" mentality- which I see prevalent in games these days. You may be one of those people who does not care until it specifically affects you- but you'll have a lot harder time rallying others to your cause when you disregard their concerns or lack sympathy/empathy for others. This isn't just a good lesson for gaming- it's a good life lesson.
This game requires suspension of disbelief at many levels- time travel, technological advances, and many other aspects of physical reality. Before any one of us get pedantic, we must remember overall it's a video game. Not everything is going to be possible, and not everyone is going to be satisfied- add to the top of this, PWE/C being a business and money being the driving factor for creating any additional content whatsoever, and you've got a nice complicated mess.
As a side note- I hope the new temporal ship styles aren't representative of future art direction for all ships (they all look like someone had an obsession with teardrop earrings and used that for their inspiration) and we actually see more non-specialization focused ship choices in the future, since they have a tendency to "lock" them into situational roles.
It's not you- it's me. I just need my space.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
To my knowledge there are no top selling MMO that don't do the trinity. There are niche games but they don't live long or do anything to influence game design in general (A Tale in the Desert came close). I've been watching this argument since multiplayer games were three or four people on dialup 1200 baud modems. Gemstone tried a few approaches and failed - they were one of the earliest and most innovative for their time.
The alternative is every player is every player. An FPS with different skins. And there are plenty of games out there that pretend to be nothing more than a simple free for all.
If anything PvP should be most friendly to the trinity. It's supposed to be about individual skill and teamwork right? Except it never is. PvP always comes down to fragging, while pretending there is any sort of real accomplishment going except except who has the faster reflexes and can stay calm under pressure. Not really a skill. There are plenty of 40 something Navy SEALs that would whip any teenage Marine in a heartbeat.
Don't play online games to pretend to real life accomplishment. Play to have fun and spend time socializing with other people. That's a genuine reward.
I don't think it's possible to make any kind of coherent argument that STO has lost that Star Trek feel (and that the devs are doing nothing to change this) shortly after an expansion whose number one objective was pretty much to emulate the feel of a 1970's TV show. It's a dicey topic anyway but now more than ever it's not supportable.
The federation currently has, not counting the 25th century tutorial, 109 episodes. Of these episodes, some eight missions involve TOS. That's a whopping 7.3% of the game's content. Six of those missions are non-repeatable, and only two will be left when the event is over. This leaves 1.9% of missions that involve that particular era.
Of course, the upshot to this is that it isn't even the whole of the discussion; the themes of Star Trek aren't present. Even ignoring the diplomacy and exploration arguments (which I think are very valid,) the combat itself doesn't behave in any way like what one would expect after watching even the most combat-heavy episodes/segments of the show/movies. There have been other Star Trek games, quite successful ones, that have portrayed ship-to-ship combat. Why not this one?
Even in games where the action is is truncated for the sake of brevity, such as the Armada games*, the battles don't look anything like the absolute holocausts of spectacle and nonsensical light that we have. The fact that a single federation ship is gunning down entire naval battle groups by itself with complete impunity is a shame.
Disregarding anyone who comments about the game lacking a 'feel' by saying that any argument is 'incomprehensible' is dishonest.
*I am well aware that this is a different genre. I am referring only to the visuals, not the game-play.
Something I have never understood since I started playing this game. In the 25th century, in space, you must close to within 10km of a target to attack......, and at that range, in space, your weapon damage is severely degraded, in the 25th century ! ! !
So, in the intervening centuries between present day and STO time frame, our weapons tech has degraded severly. In the present day, we have airborne lasers that can attack targets at ranges well in excess of 10km, actually in excess of 10 miles,by a factor of ...... more than 10 (exact effective range is still highly classified)...and that is through atmosphere which degrades weapon effectiveness with range severely
And yet 400 plus yearss later we can not even engage a target more than 10km away ? And our weapon effectiveness at 10km is severely degraded even though we are in the vacuum of space ?
Even in the oldest of episodes, of TOS we have examples of the Enterprise firing phasers at a target on the ground, from orbit, through atmosphere, with pinpoint accuracy. Planetary orbit is most definitively not less than 10km, multiply that by a factor of at least 10 for any Earth like planet.
Of course the shows (pretty much ALL space based shows) had the action at in your face ranges. It wouldn't be very exciting if the space combat was all of a ship firing into the apparent emptiness of space due to the target being so far away it's not even a viable speck to the naked eye.......okay I'll give STO the nod on that one, space combat wouldn't be near as interesting or exciting if we firing at targets the size of a single pixel on the screen, which is what realistic ranges would be.
Torpedoes.....shared/global cooldowns. What ??? Torpedo launcher 1, of type A, will take N amount of time to reload and fire, period. Doesn't matter if it is the only torp launcher on the ship, or only one of eight launchers, that launcher will take N amount of time to reeload. Launcher 2, firing type B torpedoes, takes a bit longer to reload due to being a larrger/more cumbersome torpedo, that launcher will take the exact same amount of time to load, every time, whether it is the only launcher, or one of several.
No one is asking for the 90,000 kilometer engagement ranges cited in TOS. Only for the combat to be a little more intricate than the hull-scraping knife fights we have currently. As it is, so many of the game's skills and weapons go borderline unused because of the arena that they are forced to compete in; and presenting players with a scale large enough to facilitate different strategies and tactics would bring a lot of those skills, weapons, ships, and play styles into relevance. It would bring more types of players into relevance. It also has the potential to bring with it more money.
Wow. Reading this thread has made me feel real bad about being LTS (I got it in a sale during Season 9.5)
Personally, even though Cryptic/PWE try to grab my money (and they don't even do it very well, compared to other game companies), I still play STO because I find it fun. Like a lot of people I have never reached any of the top-tier DPS levels- I'm content with the tiny amounts I make since even now I still find it hard to understand :P. And yea, STO could use more exploration and stuff (I was planning on grinding to get enough dil or EC for a Vengeance for my AoY character, but then I got bored real quick of it and just consented to doing Admiralty missions and letting them run for the day while I go do other stuff) but I think Cryptic may put it in soon. Or at least I hope they do- otherwise I'm going to feel really bad about myself for wasting $200 on getting LTS and maybe the 100 or so dollars I spent over time on ships and stuff
I don't think it's possible to make any kind of coherent argument that STO has lost that Star Trek feel (and that the devs are doing nothing to change this) shortly after an expansion whose number one objective was pretty much to emulate the feel of a 1970's TV show. It's a dicey topic anyway but now more than ever it's not supportable.
The federation currently has, not counting the 25th century tutorial, 109 episodes. Of these episodes, some eight missions involve TOS. That's a whopping 7.3% of the game's content. Six of those missions are non-repeatable, and only two will be left when the event is over. This leaves 1.9% of missions that involve that particular era.
Of course, the upshot to this is that it isn't even the whole of the discussion; the themes of Star Trek aren't present. Even ignoring the diplomacy and exploration arguments (which I think are very valid,) the combat itself doesn't behave in any way like what one would expect after watching even the most combat-heavy episodes/segments of the show/movies. There have been other Star Trek games, quite successful ones, that have portrayed ship-to-ship combat. Why not this one?
Even in games where the action is is truncated for the sake of brevity, such as the Armada games*, the battles don't look anything like the absolute holocausts of spectacle and nonsensical light that we have. The fact that a single federation ship is gunning down entire naval battle groups by itself with complete impunity is a shame.
Disregarding anyone who comments about the game lacking a 'feel' by saying that any argument is 'incomprehensible' is dishonest..
Nice math but it misses the point. These TOS-era missions (only one of which is non-replayable: the tutorial. The others should be available to replay from their 25c sector block locations. And, FYI, the event only involves the reward scheme currently attached to TOS characters. They can still be made after it is over,) specifically emulate the feel of the TV show. A very definite point has been made in the latest content added to the game to make STO feel like a particular segment of the franchise. This is just one, very potent example that directly contradicts the argument that we are going in the opposite direction. Besides that, we can also look at how the franchise has been use for core settings, plots, and characters in previous seasons which also specifically ties into factions, events, and elements of the setting seen on TV and in the movies (and expanded to do more than simply pay off fan service.) Take, for example, the other episodes added in AOY, the Temporal Cold War, developing the Iconians, Delta Rising, ect., ect.
And keep in mind that it's doing this integration to a much greater degree than just about any other recent Star Trek game (I would say any Star Trek game but I missed out on most of the older ones so I can't speak for them). Armada for example was a huge departure from the visual and story telling format of the franchise by the very fact that it was an RTS. That's a hugely different narrative perspective and one that involved lots of activities and types of engagements that you wouldn't have seen on screen (see. how a fleet is built). And to boot it had a very high frequency of special abilities which often dominated the view of combat (unlike what was literally shown on the show). And yet one can still accept it as Star Trek because its Star Trek told through the lens of that particular format. Ditto Elite Force, Legacy, and Starfleet Command. You accept how a video game isn't the same as a syndicated TV show and focus on the broader elements and artistic application instead.
Cryptic is, without doubt, using the franchise adequately. STO has sufficient Star Trek elements (and an IP appropriate approach to them as well) to say that it feels like a part of the franchise (as opposed to say, Farscape or Battlestar Galactica, and as much as the format of an MMORPG with this style of gameplay can allow). Furthermore, there is no demonstrable trend that it's losing that aspect. The OP's main complaint has a lot more to do with recent gameplay balance, not thematic style, which is a separate discussion and one that I specifically said is important to have. I did not completely disregard their frustration with the game, only the chosen vehicle through which it's been presented here (ie. the headlining statement).
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Yeah, if anything, Sci powers should be even STRONGER for "that Star Trek feeling" - I mean, how many times did they treknobabble their way out of disaster, especially on TNG?
Nice math but it misses the point. These TOS-era missions (only one of which is non-replayable: the tutorial. The others should be available to replay from their 25c sector block locations. And, FYI, the event only involves the reward scheme currently attached to TOS characters. They can still be made after it is over,) specifically emulate the feel of the TV show.
What a courtesy that a Star Trek game, after six years, should make a token attempt to pay homage to the source material. The game-play still doesn't reflect what is to be expected of Star Trek.
This is just one, very potent example that directly contradicts the argument that we are going in the opposite direction.
You're not going to get around the fact that single ships are blasting down entire armadas with impunity. The gameplay offered by the game does not, at all, feel like anything to be expected from Star Trek. Even by way of the combat being portrayed.
Armada for example was a huge departure from the visual and story telling format of the franchise by the very fact that it was an RTS.
No, it wasn't. The ships were recognizable, the general way in which the vessels fought was recognizable. Everything was recognizable.
Cryptic is, without doubt, using the franchise adequately. STO has sufficient Star Trek elements (and an IP appropriate approach to them as well) to say that it feels like a part of the franchise (as opposed to say, Farscape or Battlestar Galactica, and as much as the format of an MMORPG with this style of gameplay can allow).
Not really. Nothing that appears in the game-play mechanics remotely approximates anything that can be observed even in the most combat-centric segments of any given film/movie from the franchise. While having the Enterprise modeled is all well and good, it doesn't mean much if it behaves like a Star Destroyer that's been reskinned.
Comments
Alien ships..
Powercreep..
Always the same mission copy/pasted into another area.. close rifts, kill someone.. always the same.. and ye its only pew pew.. thats why i count that game as a hacknslay game instead a mmo. But of course, its still a mmo cause hacknslay doesnt require "grind grind grind"..
I just think that developing with more heart, listening to players, balancing and offering a nice pvp content would give the game more attraction.. it has by far more potential
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Time Travel is an excuse to bring content into the game from all over the franchise, STO especially with this being the 50th anniversary and all.
I don't think it's possible to make any kind of coherent argument that STO has lost that Star Trek feel (and that the devs are doing nothing to change this) shortly after an expansion whose number one objective was pretty much to emulate the feel of a 1970's TV show. It's a dicey topic anyway but now more than ever it's not supportable.
You may not like STO gameplay but it has been like this from the very beginning. You use abilities to buff, debuff, control, and heal and the winner (in any context) is the one with the biggest numbers. It's just not been a static game so those numbers have grown quite big over the years.
But that's just evolution. Yes, certain things should probably be tweaked (ex. Kemocite) but coating that perfectly reasonable discussion with the independent theater of "THIS GAME ISN'T STAR TREK ENOUGH" (with the story driven AOY being the very latest thing added to the game, in addition to all other arguments) is almost certain to undermine those important topics.
*Sigh*
Time travel is also a core story element of the Star Trek franchise. See. the numerous time travel episodes from every series and three time travel movies (Voyage Home, First Contact, ST2009, and possibly TMP as well for V'ger to have made the journey it was implied to.)
If the question is there being a problem with rampant and arbitrary time travel (just to do fan service outside of an established plot line, ex. the DS9 tribble episode) well, there's still not much to complain about because the current arc has been carefully developed as an integral part of the STO story over the course of two seasons. And because its the current arc, we're probably going to be moving off to something else (as the main focus) in not too long (ex. the Delphic Expanse).
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Not sure what abilities have to do with feeling like star trek. You cite torpedo spreads and kemocite and the resonance beam, but star trek combat did repeatedly fire phasers and torpedoes (a lot of times in spreads) at enemies in the brief moments of combat that happened in episodes.
To become more like Star Trek, they'd certainly have to cut down on the spam abilities, as well as ALL of combat. So that it took up climactic moments (sometimes under a minute of screen time in an entire episode) of individual episodes. And that's it.
So I'm not sure what you want them to do would feel any more like Star Trek than what is currently in the game. Just trading your preference for what's already there as neither are particularly Star Trek and are far more Video Game elements.
This is similar to your previous complaint in that damage type isn't relevant to "feeling" like Star Trek. However, in this instance, you're also missing the context that exotic damage is tied into abilities that ARE very much Star Trek feeling abilities. When a player creates a Gravity Well or a Tyken's Rift, they are doing something that feels a lot like Star Trek as those things are taken from specific episodes.
This is misplaced. The game is balanced around more than stacking damage buffs and spacebar spamming. In fact, the latest two queues, Days of Doom and the Battle of Procyon V require neither stacking damage buffs or spacebar spamming to be successful. And instead require teamwork and coordination, utilizing science support and engineering capabilities to make them complete quicker.
PVE balance is out of whack in Ultima Online, Everquest, Everquest 2, World of Warcraft ...
See that's the thing. You don't have to imagine this balancing is a lot of work. You just have to look at all other MMOs who suffer from and have suffered from the same imbalance. Yes, it is hard and a lot of work and isn't easy, as NO MMO has ever achieved balance that makes the players happy. STO is no exception.
Again, this is misplaced. You don't really define star trek feeling as anything related to star trek. You haven't really considered that a lot of the things you are criticizing ARE mmo-staples. And you're not seeing that the latest mission content released has shifted away from the DPS chase you are complaining about. The time travel story missions don't require a DPS chase. The time travel alert hinges or tanking and crowd control. And the two new space queues require teamwork and coordination and not a lot of DPS firepower at all.
Something I have never understood since I started playing this game. In the 25th century, in space, you must close to within 10km of a target to attack......, and at that range, in space, your weapon damage is severely degraded, in the 25th century ! ! !
So, in the intervening centuries between present day and STO time frame, our weapons tech has degraded severly. In the present day, we have airborne lasers that can attack targets at ranges well in excess of 10km, actually in excess of 10 miles,by a factor of ...... more than 10 (exact effective range is still highly classified)...and that is through atmosphere which degrades weapon effectiveness with range severely
And yet 400 plus yearss later we can not even engage a target more than 10km away ? And our weapon effectiveness at 10km is severely degraded even though we are in the vacuum of space ?
Even in the oldest of episodes, of TOS we have examples of the Enterprise firing phasers at a target on the ground, from orbit, through atmosphere, with pinpoint accuracy. Planetary orbit is most definitively not less than 10km, multiply that by a factor of at least 10 for any Earth like planet.
Of course the shows (pretty much ALL space based shows) had the action at in your face ranges. It wouldn't be very exciting if the space combat was all of a ship firing into the apparent emptiness of space due to the target being so far away it's not even a viable speck to the naked eye.......okay I'll give STO the nod on that one, space combat wouldn't be near as interesting or exciting if we firing at targets the size of a single pixel on the screen, which is what realistic ranges would be.
Torpedoes.....shared/global cooldowns. What ??? Torpedo launcher 1, of type A, will take N amount of time to reload and fire, period. Doesn't matter if it is the only torp launcher on the ship, or only one of eight launchers, that launcher will take N amount of time to reeload. Launcher 2, firing type B torpedoes, takes a bit longer to reload due to being a larrger/more cumbersome torpedo, that launcher will take the exact same amount of time to load, every time, whether it is the only launcher, or one of several.
I am not really trying to be overly pedantic here, but it is hard to get your points when you mix up terminology this much (also in reading, cf. you comment on snoggy's post). MMO, Hack'n'Slay and "Grind, grind, grind" are three completely different categories of looking at a game and can happen all three at once or in any combination. And neither of them has to do with "Star Trek Feeling", which is a fourth. I think your beef lies in the "grind" part, but it's hard to tell when you keep bringing unrelated stuff into the discussion. (For starters, "MMO" is the easiest one, and STO easily fits the bill, because all it says it that a lot of players are playing the same game online. You seem to be thinking about "MMORPG" when you say it, but then you would mean the RPG part - and that doesn't need to go with or against HnS or Grind again.)
I wouldn't have thirteen characters if it wasn't. I know, thirteen is a drop in the bucket compared to some other players, but I like each and every one of them for different reasons. They're not carbon copies of each other, each has their own personalities and goals.
If you've lost whatever feeling you had when you started, that's on you. Sure, I get tired of the game and go off and play something else, but STO is the only MMO I play. Mostly because I can't afford to pay the fees most of them charge. Still, it's a heckuva lot of fun when I am playing it because I don't have to play it any certain way except the way i want to.
I like a RP aspect to a game and choose accordingly. TES series, Dragon Age series, Fallout series. You get the picture.
OP, Cryptic has not yet finished making Star Trek Online.
Like all MMOs it is a work in progress. People post in here and they act like Cryptic, along with the rest of us, is sitting on tenterhooks waiting for their next utterance. Whereupon Cryptic, along with the rest of us, are supposed to agree and immediately get right to work on whatever thing it is these people desire. No matter the cost or difficulties. Further, whenever someone disagrees in public with one of these people, they then act like the person disagreeing with them is not as much of a Star Trek fan as they are.
The result is threads such as this one is. Quite frankly, I really wish the people who start threads such as this would be run off from both the game and these forums. The negativity they post is not helpful in any manner. A thread such as this one serves the sole purpose of drawing entirely too much attention to a person who has done nothing at all to deserve it.
Nothing. This thread is a PVP'ers rant on Science powers disguised as a thread about Star Trek immersion.
I agree with this. The Trinity isn't hard-coded into the game and I like that it isn't. In fact, Cryptic has stated that they have no intentions of introducing the Trinity in this game. They want all captain classes to be able to do whatever role they want. Nothing is stopping players from playing in a Trinity role either. IMO this is a strength of this game.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
^ This right here.
This is mostly how I feel. I think time travel is a useful story element, and it has been used as a fantastic narrative for a number of works, but it works best if it's in a self-contained story (Star Trek), and if it isn't, the entire franchise should revolve around it (Dr. Who, Terminator).
Since Star Trek does not revolve around time travel, this Agents of Yesterday expansion has left me feeling a bit meh over the whole thing, and if it weren't for the addition of the Kelvin Timeline content, I'd likely still be pretty ambivalent to the expansion.
In all honesty, I hope Agents of Yesterday scratches Cryptic's itch for a temporal narrative soon, and we can go back to focusing on the 2410 era with a coherent storyline.
Nothing would make me more enthusiastic for STO than to hear the producers at Cryptic say, "I think we did all we could with the temporal narrative in Agents of Yesterday, and I don't think we'll ever revisit that particular plot device for a good long while."
I got the Ranger and the Paladin just now and set it all up with Ranger skin. Absolutely gorgeous. Got the TOS bridge officers (thanks humbly once again Trendy). I could not have more of a Trek feeling. I'm downright giddy.
Allowing the Ranger skin was one of the kindest things they have done. It's very close to T6 Enterprise.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
My character Tsin'xing
Underneath the skin, STO is a really basic game about starship and some ground-based battles, but mainly starships and pew-pew. It used to have a lot more exploration content, but that was before they stripped it all out and focused primarily on individual storylines of sector-based locales. This doesn't really replace the original exploration content, although I'm pretty certain they probably thought people would just forget that it existed.
I'm not really sure what the "road map" is for the future of STO's content- but as far as "power creep", as long as people feel that their characters need to move forward/upward there's going to be something they have to move forward to. So if they don't keep raising the bar, then how are they supposed to accomplish this? So far it's been increasing the ship tier/mark system so that ships and gear scale onward and upward- and people who complain about "power creep" really haven't suggested an alternative system that would counter this. (They're certainly not going to just nerf everything into oblivion at this stage of the game to satisfy the few worried about "power creep".)
Also a consideration here- the "I already got mine" mentality- which I see prevalent in games these days. You may be one of those people who does not care until it specifically affects you- but you'll have a lot harder time rallying others to your cause when you disregard their concerns or lack sympathy/empathy for others. This isn't just a good lesson for gaming- it's a good life lesson.
This game requires suspension of disbelief at many levels- time travel, technological advances, and many other aspects of physical reality. Before any one of us get pedantic, we must remember overall it's a video game. Not everything is going to be possible, and not everyone is going to be satisfied- add to the top of this, PWE/C being a business and money being the driving factor for creating any additional content whatsoever, and you've got a nice complicated mess.
As a side note- I hope the new temporal ship styles aren't representative of future art direction for all ships (they all look like someone had an obsession with teardrop earrings and used that for their inspiration) and we actually see more non-specialization focused ship choices in the future, since they have a tendency to "lock" them into situational roles.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
The alternative is every player is every player. An FPS with different skins. And there are plenty of games out there that pretend to be nothing more than a simple free for all.
If anything PvP should be most friendly to the trinity. It's supposed to be about individual skill and teamwork right? Except it never is. PvP always comes down to fragging, while pretending there is any sort of real accomplishment going except except who has the faster reflexes and can stay calm under pressure. Not really a skill. There are plenty of 40 something Navy SEALs that would whip any teenage Marine in a heartbeat.
Don't play online games to pretend to real life accomplishment. Play to have fun and spend time socializing with other people. That's a genuine reward.
The federation currently has, not counting the 25th century tutorial, 109 episodes. Of these episodes, some eight missions involve TOS. That's a whopping 7.3% of the game's content. Six of those missions are non-repeatable, and only two will be left when the event is over. This leaves 1.9% of missions that involve that particular era.
Of course, the upshot to this is that it isn't even the whole of the discussion; the themes of Star Trek aren't present. Even ignoring the diplomacy and exploration arguments (which I think are very valid,) the combat itself doesn't behave in any way like what one would expect after watching even the most combat-heavy episodes/segments of the show/movies. There have been other Star Trek games, quite successful ones, that have portrayed ship-to-ship combat. Why not this one?
Even in games where the action is is truncated for the sake of brevity, such as the Armada games*, the battles don't look anything like the absolute holocausts of spectacle and nonsensical light that we have. The fact that a single federation ship is gunning down entire naval battle groups by itself with complete impunity is a shame.
Disregarding anyone who comments about the game lacking a 'feel' by saying that any argument is 'incomprehensible' is dishonest.
*I am well aware that this is a different genre. I am referring only to the visuals, not the game-play.
No one is asking for the 90,000 kilometer engagement ranges cited in TOS. Only for the combat to be a little more intricate than the hull-scraping knife fights we have currently. As it is, so many of the game's skills and weapons go borderline unused because of the arena that they are forced to compete in; and presenting players with a scale large enough to facilitate different strategies and tactics would bring a lot of those skills, weapons, ships, and play styles into relevance. It would bring more types of players into relevance. It also has the potential to bring with it more money.
Personally, even though Cryptic/PWE try to grab my money (and they don't even do it very well, compared to other game companies), I still play STO because I find it fun. Like a lot of people I have never reached any of the top-tier DPS levels- I'm content with the tiny amounts I make since even now I still find it hard to understand :P. And yea, STO could use more exploration and stuff (I was planning on grinding to get enough dil or EC for a Vengeance for my AoY character, but then I got bored real quick of it and just consented to doing Admiralty missions and letting them run for the day while I go do other stuff) but I think Cryptic may put it in soon. Or at least I hope they do- otherwise I'm going to feel really bad about myself for wasting $200 on getting LTS and maybe the 100 or so dollars I spent over time on ships and stuff
Nice math but it misses the point. These TOS-era missions (only one of which is non-replayable: the tutorial. The others should be available to replay from their 25c sector block locations. And, FYI, the event only involves the reward scheme currently attached to TOS characters. They can still be made after it is over,) specifically emulate the feel of the TV show. A very definite point has been made in the latest content added to the game to make STO feel like a particular segment of the franchise. This is just one, very potent example that directly contradicts the argument that we are going in the opposite direction. Besides that, we can also look at how the franchise has been use for core settings, plots, and characters in previous seasons which also specifically ties into factions, events, and elements of the setting seen on TV and in the movies (and expanded to do more than simply pay off fan service.) Take, for example, the other episodes added in AOY, the Temporal Cold War, developing the Iconians, Delta Rising, ect., ect.
And keep in mind that it's doing this integration to a much greater degree than just about any other recent Star Trek game (I would say any Star Trek game but I missed out on most of the older ones so I can't speak for them). Armada for example was a huge departure from the visual and story telling format of the franchise by the very fact that it was an RTS. That's a hugely different narrative perspective and one that involved lots of activities and types of engagements that you wouldn't have seen on screen (see. how a fleet is built). And to boot it had a very high frequency of special abilities which often dominated the view of combat (unlike what was literally shown on the show). And yet one can still accept it as Star Trek because its Star Trek told through the lens of that particular format. Ditto Elite Force, Legacy, and Starfleet Command. You accept how a video game isn't the same as a syndicated TV show and focus on the broader elements and artistic application instead.
Cryptic is, without doubt, using the franchise adequately. STO has sufficient Star Trek elements (and an IP appropriate approach to them as well) to say that it feels like a part of the franchise (as opposed to say, Farscape or Battlestar Galactica, and as much as the format of an MMORPG with this style of gameplay can allow). Furthermore, there is no demonstrable trend that it's losing that aspect. The OP's main complaint has a lot more to do with recent gameplay balance, not thematic style, which is a separate discussion and one that I specifically said is important to have. I did not completely disregard their frustration with the game, only the chosen vehicle through which it's been presented here (ie. the headlining statement).
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
You're not going to get around the fact that single ships are blasting down entire armadas with impunity. The gameplay offered by the game does not, at all, feel like anything to be expected from Star Trek. Even by way of the combat being portrayed.
No, it wasn't. The ships were recognizable, the general way in which the vessels fought was recognizable. Everything was recognizable.
Not really. Nothing that appears in the game-play mechanics remotely approximates anything that can be observed even in the most combat-centric segments of any given film/movie from the franchise. While having the Enterprise modeled is all well and good, it doesn't mean much if it behaves like a Star Destroyer that's been reskinned.