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A Civil Discussion on STO
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
So, I see that somebody from Cryptic has once again lamented the fact that World of Warcraft exists, and that STO (and presumably every other MMO) has been judged unfairly because of the mere existence of WoW. I'm getting pretty tired of this complaint honestly. STO got lampooned and got bad reviews because it was released far too early with far too little content and too many bugs and broken or unfinished systems.
And really, I'm not in the least bit upset that STO doesn't have as much content and variety as World of Warcraft does today. It is; however, a huge problem that it really only has about 10-25% of the depth and content that WoW had at release.
I'd be satisfied with the HALF the amount of content and variety as WoW at release.
Remember, at release World of Warcraft had just over 1500 quests. It had something on the order of 30 zones, each unique and different in mood and feel than the othersm, and you only had a loading screen if you changed continents or entered a dungeon instance. There were more than a dozen dungeon instances tuned for 5-man groups, as well as full functioning 40-man raids. All of the systems that were in game at launch worked and were fully featured. Both factions were fully featured. There were no placeholder art, sounds or game spaces. There was a wide variety of quest types, and each quest had a story, and a very large portion of the quests advanced major storylines.
Let's contrast this to Star Trek Online, shall we?
I don't know the precise number of quests in STO at release, but I've seen staggeringly low numbers. Like ... 100-150 total quests. That's 10% of what World of Warcraft launched with.
STO has a handful of "zones" at best, with almost no variety between them. Sector Space is either a placeholder or a complete joke. You face a loading screen basically any time you want to go someplace new or do something. Many times, it's several loading screens to get to what you actually want to do, coupled with long travel time in the very ugly and boring sector space.
There are only a handful of "Dungeons" (Fleet actions), so few in fact that RA5's can be found at all times in the low level ones, out of sheer boredom. I suppose you could consider fleet actions to be raids, but then there would be no small group dungeon content to speak of, since everything is soloable. Not only that, there's no support to actually, you know, get 19 other people from your fleet in the same group with yourself to go do one.
There are tons of broken systems. All ship interiors are so large they break any immersion you might have had with the game. It looks nothing like the TV Series' and movies. Crafting is a complete joke. It is like something that somebody's kid came up with and they ran with it because they could dump it into the game for release. PVP is broken and poorly balanced, and furthermore has no actual effect on anything, and therefore is pointless. What "story" there is in the game stagnates. The exchange is quite possibly the worst implementation of a brokerage in a game that I've ever seen, and I've played a LOT of games. Even DDO's awful auctioneer system is better.
STO launched with at least one faction barely functional at all. Some would argue that both factions launched unfinished.
STO appears to be made up more of placeholder art, sounds, game spaces, and systems than things that are actually considered "complete" by the developers. Make a complaint about something, and they respond that it's just a "placeholder" or a "simple version" until they "fix/complete the real thing".
And finally, most of the quests have absolutely no impact on the story whatsoever. Hey, go get into three random fights in this sector with the "enemy" and then report back to me. Hey, go explore these unknown systems, where the people mysteriously know all about who StarFleet is and want you to fly back to civilization and bring them back some stuffs. Hey, go kill some "klingons". Hey, go patrol some systems, where you will get one of three mission types either alone or incombination:
1.) Fly around and destroy X groups of enemy ships.
2.) Fly around and scan some stuff.
3.) Beam down and do 1 and/or 2 on the ground instead.
I'm glad to see that the devs are playing the "Woe is me" card here. That tells me an awful lot about what the future of this game is going to be like. We'll be lucky if this game has the content WoW had at release ... two years from now.
Devs ... here's reality.
World of Warcraft is a fantastic game enjoyed by multiple millions of people around the world. Star Trek, as an IP, has fans in amounts that dwarf the number of people who have ever played a Warcraft game. World of Warcraft was made by Blizzard, a company that has become legendary for their dedication to taking as much time as it takes to get a game ready to release, and therefore legendary for the quality of their products. STO was made by you guys, a company who seems to think that two years is enough time to make a game ... except you've already earned a reputation the world around for releasing buggy, unfinished games, with barely any content, and then taking months/years to put in even a reasonable amount of content that one would expect with a game's release.
Yes ... Blizzard set a high standard with the release and subsequent support and expansion of World of Warcraft. That doesn't give you license to be a failure. The last I checked, each and every one of you chose your line of work. If you are unwilling to do what it takes to match that high standard, it's a little disingenuous to cry after the fact that your game is seen poorly in light of World of Warcraft.
You're adults, start acting like it. Every time I see you cry and complain about how unfair it is that your game got lampooned, the less seriously I can take you guys. You made a game with almost no content. You have tons of broken placeholder systems in the game. What made you think people would accept something that's barely a late alpha stage product, and compare it favorably to WoW?
Here's what you need to do. Stop crying to the press about how unfair people are being when they talk about your game. Make a list, and it's going to be a long one, of all the broken or unfinished stuff in your game. Fix and finish those things as fast as possible. And seriously, think up a variety of quest types so that your "missions" aren't all made from the same three pieces. Try to make them have some kind of story so that we have some interest in doing them. Then, give it to your players for FREE ... because we already paid for it. If I purchased a car and it didn't have seats, doors, a windshield, or headlights ... the car manufacturer isn't going to make me pay for those things. Similarly, you shouldn't charge us for the things that SHOULD have come with the game in the first place. And when you do finally get to this point, send out a free 30 days to everyone who purchased your game in the first months and stopped playing because of how bad it was.
Then, you need to look at putting extras into the game. I'm working on a long post with a listing of everything that's currently considered "broken" by players, with suggestions on how you can fix the issues, as well as a very long listing of suggestions that could be added to the game to give it some more depth and variety.
But seriously, stop crying about World of Warcraft. Your game didn't get lampooned because of how good WoW is today, five years after release. Your game, as I outlined above, isn't even 10% as complete as World of Warcraft was when it released 5+ years ago. Your game got lampooned because you rushed it and released it with very little content, tons of bugs, tons of problems, an unfinished faction, and tons of missing or broken systems.
In short, you brought this on yourself. Even so, as you said, more than 100k of us are sticking around so far. Rather than alienate us by claiming we have no right to lampoon your game, I suggest that you face reality and start turning this disaster around. It's not to late ... but keep blaming us and pretending that your game is anything more than it is, and we'll stop paying you too.
And to the fanboy flamers who are inevitably going to show up and call me a troll or a hater, or whatever other thing... put the kool aid down, take the rose tinted lenses off, and be realistic. I know you like the game. I actually like the game too. That doesn't mean I'm going to ignore reality. You shouldn't either.
If I didn't care about the game and like it, I certainly wouldn't have taken the time to make this post ... I wouldn't even be around anymore.
And really, I'm not in the least bit upset that STO doesn't have as much content and variety as World of Warcraft does today. It is; however, a huge problem that it really only has about 10-25% of the depth and content that WoW had at release.
I'd be satisfied with the HALF the amount of content and variety as WoW at release.
Remember, at release World of Warcraft had just over 1500 quests. It had something on the order of 30 zones, each unique and different in mood and feel than the othersm, and you only had a loading screen if you changed continents or entered a dungeon instance. There were more than a dozen dungeon instances tuned for 5-man groups, as well as full functioning 40-man raids. All of the systems that were in game at launch worked and were fully featured. Both factions were fully featured. There were no placeholder art, sounds or game spaces. There was a wide variety of quest types, and each quest had a story, and a very large portion of the quests advanced major storylines.
Let's contrast this to Star Trek Online, shall we?
I don't know the precise number of quests in STO at release, but I've seen staggeringly low numbers. Like ... 100-150 total quests. That's 10% of what World of Warcraft launched with.
STO has a handful of "zones" at best, with almost no variety between them. Sector Space is either a placeholder or a complete joke. You face a loading screen basically any time you want to go someplace new or do something. Many times, it's several loading screens to get to what you actually want to do, coupled with long travel time in the very ugly and boring sector space.
There are only a handful of "Dungeons" (Fleet actions), so few in fact that RA5's can be found at all times in the low level ones, out of sheer boredom. I suppose you could consider fleet actions to be raids, but then there would be no small group dungeon content to speak of, since everything is soloable. Not only that, there's no support to actually, you know, get 19 other people from your fleet in the same group with yourself to go do one.
There are tons of broken systems. All ship interiors are so large they break any immersion you might have had with the game. It looks nothing like the TV Series' and movies. Crafting is a complete joke. It is like something that somebody's kid came up with and they ran with it because they could dump it into the game for release. PVP is broken and poorly balanced, and furthermore has no actual effect on anything, and therefore is pointless. What "story" there is in the game stagnates. The exchange is quite possibly the worst implementation of a brokerage in a game that I've ever seen, and I've played a LOT of games. Even DDO's awful auctioneer system is better.
STO launched with at least one faction barely functional at all. Some would argue that both factions launched unfinished.
STO appears to be made up more of placeholder art, sounds, game spaces, and systems than things that are actually considered "complete" by the developers. Make a complaint about something, and they respond that it's just a "placeholder" or a "simple version" until they "fix/complete the real thing".
And finally, most of the quests have absolutely no impact on the story whatsoever. Hey, go get into three random fights in this sector with the "enemy" and then report back to me. Hey, go explore these unknown systems, where the people mysteriously know all about who StarFleet is and want you to fly back to civilization and bring them back some stuffs. Hey, go kill some "klingons". Hey, go patrol some systems, where you will get one of three mission types either alone or incombination:
1.) Fly around and destroy X groups of enemy ships.
2.) Fly around and scan some stuff.
3.) Beam down and do 1 and/or 2 on the ground instead.
I'm glad to see that the devs are playing the "Woe is me" card here. That tells me an awful lot about what the future of this game is going to be like. We'll be lucky if this game has the content WoW had at release ... two years from now.
Devs ... here's reality.
World of Warcraft is a fantastic game enjoyed by multiple millions of people around the world. Star Trek, as an IP, has fans in amounts that dwarf the number of people who have ever played a Warcraft game. World of Warcraft was made by Blizzard, a company that has become legendary for their dedication to taking as much time as it takes to get a game ready to release, and therefore legendary for the quality of their products. STO was made by you guys, a company who seems to think that two years is enough time to make a game ... except you've already earned a reputation the world around for releasing buggy, unfinished games, with barely any content, and then taking months/years to put in even a reasonable amount of content that one would expect with a game's release.
Yes ... Blizzard set a high standard with the release and subsequent support and expansion of World of Warcraft. That doesn't give you license to be a failure. The last I checked, each and every one of you chose your line of work. If you are unwilling to do what it takes to match that high standard, it's a little disingenuous to cry after the fact that your game is seen poorly in light of World of Warcraft.
You're adults, start acting like it. Every time I see you cry and complain about how unfair it is that your game got lampooned, the less seriously I can take you guys. You made a game with almost no content. You have tons of broken placeholder systems in the game. What made you think people would accept something that's barely a late alpha stage product, and compare it favorably to WoW?
Here's what you need to do. Stop crying to the press about how unfair people are being when they talk about your game. Make a list, and it's going to be a long one, of all the broken or unfinished stuff in your game. Fix and finish those things as fast as possible. And seriously, think up a variety of quest types so that your "missions" aren't all made from the same three pieces. Try to make them have some kind of story so that we have some interest in doing them. Then, give it to your players for FREE ... because we already paid for it. If I purchased a car and it didn't have seats, doors, a windshield, or headlights ... the car manufacturer isn't going to make me pay for those things. Similarly, you shouldn't charge us for the things that SHOULD have come with the game in the first place. And when you do finally get to this point, send out a free 30 days to everyone who purchased your game in the first months and stopped playing because of how bad it was.
Then, you need to look at putting extras into the game. I'm working on a long post with a listing of everything that's currently considered "broken" by players, with suggestions on how you can fix the issues, as well as a very long listing of suggestions that could be added to the game to give it some more depth and variety.
But seriously, stop crying about World of Warcraft. Your game didn't get lampooned because of how good WoW is today, five years after release. Your game, as I outlined above, isn't even 10% as complete as World of Warcraft was when it released 5+ years ago. Your game got lampooned because you rushed it and released it with very little content, tons of bugs, tons of problems, an unfinished faction, and tons of missing or broken systems.
In short, you brought this on yourself. Even so, as you said, more than 100k of us are sticking around so far. Rather than alienate us by claiming we have no right to lampoon your game, I suggest that you face reality and start turning this disaster around. It's not to late ... but keep blaming us and pretending that your game is anything more than it is, and we'll stop paying you too.
And to the fanboy flamers who are inevitably going to show up and call me a troll or a hater, or whatever other thing... put the kool aid down, take the rose tinted lenses off, and be realistic. I know you like the game. I actually like the game too. That doesn't mean I'm going to ignore reality. You shouldn't either.
If I didn't care about the game and like it, I certainly wouldn't have taken the time to make this post ... I wouldn't even be around anymore.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
G E T
T H I S
F I N I S H E D!!!!
LOL
Part of me wishes WoW would have failed and Blizzard would have folded. We'd likely have a much more varied and interesting MMO market than we do.
WoW, at launch, did not have as few bugs and as much content as your rosey glasses seem to remember it having.
Also, I'm just quoting your entire dissertation to make the html longer and cost Cryptic money for the extra bytes.
So... Blizzard succeeded, therefore everybody else has license to fail?
Its all documented actually if you really REALLY want to get into it. But I leave you with 3 questions to prove my point.
1. In Vanilla, Paladins could tank as well as warriors. Y/N
2. Hunters top talent ability in Survival was a MELEE attack. Y/N
3. Only recently, after 2 expansions, did they actually make Rogue Vanish work correctly. Y/N
1. No
2. Dunno
3. LOL still NO (hence why i quit)
Whatever your opinions on the quality of WoW, the game has done what every business wants to, whether they'll admit it or not. They have captured a massive audience, many of which had never even looked at the genre before. WoW has made MMOs mainstream business. If your company can't deal with that, go home and find another genre to work in.
See my sig.
I am rather interested in your opinion on this statement then. Feel free to PM me or respond in this thread.
Is it fair to newer MMO developers, to have the game that they created be compared to WoW as it is (That is, after 2 expansions and over 5 years in the market)?
Or is it more acurrate, for those people who are doing the comparing, to compare the new game, to WoW as it was back when WoW was as old in the market as the new game (That is, if a game is 1 year old, you compare it to WoW when WoW was only 1 year old)?
What is your opinion on this?
wow was **** and still is...
There is far more variety and depth in World of Warcraft that nearly every other MMO. The only one that really tops it is EvE Online. WoW has something for everybody.
Thank you for making my point succinctly. I thought I should back up the question/point with some actual argument though.
I don't need to go to documentation. I got into the WoW closed beta early on and have played it pretty much continuously since then. To humour you though:
1.) Nope. Paladins were seen as glorified buff bots in vanilla. It wasn't until "late" BC that Blizzard really put the Paladin where it is today.
2.) I've never seriously played a hunter. Given the structure of the question, I'm going to go with Yes. Of course, hunters at that time were envisioned differently by Blizzard.
3.) Depends on what you mean by "Work correctly" ... the way they designed it was correct as far as they were concerned for a long time. Rogues cried many tears over it before Blizzard finally gave them what they wanted. "Correct" is a difficult term. Generally, in MMO's, something works "Correctly" if it works the way the developer intended. There's quite a bit in STO right now where that's not the case.
Also, look at my post history. I've talked about the problems WoW had at launch before. Those problems didn't include a massive lack of content though. They didn't include huge chunks of the game being mere placeholders. *Cough* every corridor and ship interior in the game right now *Cough*.
WoW had conservatively 5x the content, 3x the classes, and far far far more systems and things that could go wrong, than STO does. Viewed as a percentage of what worked good and what didn't ... well, the numbers tell the story, don't they? Blizzard had to STOP selling their game temporarily because they used every piece of hardware they had pre-purchased to meet their conservative estimates of first year population growth ... in the first week. To date, no information has come to light that shows anything other than a constant growth in population for more than five years in WoW.
STO had to discount their product within the first month after release.
'nuf said?
Sorry mate. Go look again, there were just a tick over 1500 quests in the game on the two original continents, as well as the following dungeons and raids:
Ragefire Chasm
The Deadmines
Wailing Caverns
Shadowfang Keep
Blackfathom Deeps
The Stockades
Gnomeragon
Scarlet Monastery (Actually four separate dungeons, but we'll count as one)
Razorfen Kraul
Razorfen Downs
Uldaman
Maraudon
Zul'farrak
The Temple of Atal'hakkar (sunken temple)
Blackrock Depths
Lower/Upper Blackrock Spire (again, two dungeons, we'll count as one)
Stratholme
Scholomance
Total : 18 dungeons (really could say 22)
Onyxia
Molten Core
Total : 2 forty man raids
Within the first few months, there was tons of additional content added as well.
STO just flat out doesn't compare favorably to any other game launch state vs. launch state. More than any other MMO, and I've played nearly all of the "A list" ones, STO lacks content and has more placeholders or just flat out missing or incomplete systems.
If you had bothered to read my post, you would realize that I debunked this argument already. I compared STO to WoW at release. It still matches up terribly. I don't think anyone realistically expects a brand new game to match WoW as it is today. I do think people expect companies to actually TRY and match what WoW was at release.
World of Warcraft released in November of 2004. That's less than six years, compared to your statement of "7 years"
While your grammar leaves much to be desired, I believe I was able to discern from your post that you didn't actually read my post, since you don't seem to realize that I compared STO to WoW as it was at release.
Yea well, you can saw WoW is **** but with their subscriber numbers and the fact that its been ultra successful beyond reasonable measure sort of proves you wrong right there.
I dont like it myself, but no....its not ****. If **** makes THAT much money and is that successful whats that make games like STO???
And the devs and Jack talking about how WoW has ruined the industry? Nah. It just makes it harder for TRIBBLE half put together mmorpgs to be as successful. Which is a GOOD thing.
Bar has been raised. Its been that way for years. Its about time companies got it through their heads.
Seriously, devs, time to face reality! Don't release a game unless you can develop it for five years first!
I'd be interested to hear your position too, as it seems like it may be better grounded than most of the ridiculous fanboism that normally permeates these threads.
[Edit: Beat me to the post anyway, the reply was a couple up]
FWIW, my take is that those are both misleading comparisons. A game being released in 2010 must meet 2010 expectations. WoW has been instrumental in setting those expectations, but neither is it the be-all, end-all of the genre. Developers would be equally remiss if they were to ignore it as to worship it, but in both cases the real mistake is to get hung up on it.
The proper metric for determining success is whether a game meets the expectations of its customer base. To that end, questions like "Did STO fans get enough content to meet their expectations?" are not a prompt to compare the game to WoW, but rather to answer the freaking question. It is IRRELEVANT whether those expectations were set by WoW or any other game. They exist, and that is the market into which Cryptic/Atari/CBS/Paramount chose to enter.
Therefore, these "STO vs. WoW" threads can never be more than a trite exercise in speculation and nostalgia, and I tend to agree with the OP that Cryptic staff have little to gain by making serious statements on the matter. In fairness, the original comment seems to have been blown out of proportion, and probably WASN'T meant as much as an excuse, as minor PR spin.
Even with the bugs at WoW's launch (I was there.. oh boy was I there.. in queue.. for 3 hours..) it was still a more polished and finsihed game than any MMO that has come since. Yes there were balance issues, yes there were log in issues, yes there were bugs. But.. when you stepped into the game, you were immersed in the setting within minutes. Quests flowed together, and the world was alive enough that you really wanted to know what was over the next hill. The polish and detail of the world they crafted made people stay, and tell their friends "Hey.. you've got to check this out!"
Every MMO since should have aspired to be that. And you want to know 2 MMOs that actually pulled it off, but you never hear about? FreeRealms and Wizard101. Yeah.. kids games.. but take a moment, load them up (for FREE!!!) and you'll see what I mean about polish and detail, and aspect that can hook even a hardcore gamer. Some companies are getting the message that to get players you don't need a WoW killer, but you do need to pay attention to detail and make it compelling for people to stay and look to the horizon of the game and go "Oooh.. what's over there!"
Cryptic failed MISERABLY in this regard. There is no polish at all. I've been to 100 star systems.. they all look the same. Rocks (occasionally skinned to look like trees.. or sometimes with lava coming out of them) sticking up from the ground in the crater that I always seem to land in. No bugs, no critters, no flora, no fauna.. but ooh look.. a box. I wonder what's over the horizon.. oh wait.. there isn't a horizon.. there is sheer cliff walls surrounding me. It really is the little things that kill this game.
I stuck around because it was Trek, but the more I do.. the less it feels like trek. My character is a wholesale murderer in this game. I have NEVER hailed an enemy or asked for surrender.. guns ablazin' is the only way to go.
We're playing a game that had the Star Trek IP and this is all they could come up with?? REALLY?? Shame on you cryptic.. shame.
What this person said... it has all the depth of a 3 Stooges episode.
Blameshifting is what my post was about. And the reality that STO doesn't even measure up to WoW at release, let alone today. No game could match a mature game at release. I remember thinking that WoW, at release, had very little raid content compared to something like ten EQ expansions worth of content at that time.
But the devs need to stop putting blame anywhere but on their own plates. They made all the decisions for this game. They are the only ones to blame that this game launched incomplete and nearly without content.
Ah yes, very intelligent. Yes, I agree, you need to not only keep in mind the length of time the games have been out, and normalize them. But you must also keep in mind that both technology and player visions changed in those years. In that, Cryptic failed. I just need to point out that CC in PvP in STO is just as long as CC in PvE to prove this. Cryptic...did you not learn that thats a bad idea? Honestly?
I won't get into what was wrong with the list of dungeons, it is wrong btw, but I will say that STO was meant to appeal to a different audience. Casual gamers don't want to have to wait for dungeon groups. Heck listen to all the people in STO saying that causing people to group up, ever, is a horrible idea.
Although i dont like it much, it isfact, and the stated problems needs to be solved before extra content gets released. Ive been patient since Beta, but im starting to lose said patience due to issues mentioned.
Cryptic, this is no bandwagon attitude surfacing. We are sceptical to a product which was hasty released cause someone wanted to make a quick buck. Now if you want to save this, you better go back to the drawing board and fix the current bugs and errors FIRST , then spend your time on new content in hopes that it will remedy the situation. Trust me, it will not. People KNOWS whats going on, and the 100k you have now will become a mass exodus back to former/newer games unless something is done.
So that means that STO has all the depth of ... a grain of sand?
There are just as many people saying to get more content NOW and fix bugs later. Who do they listen to? This is another problem that, well, is their fault. They didn't have enough to do, so now they are stuck having to choose. New stuff? Fix Stuff? Either way...they lose.
True dat.
WoW has done much more harm to the genre than good.
Genuinely curious. Especially given the economic differences between the launch of WoW and STO.
As long as "devs" in this case refers to the entire corporate structure including the people who signed off on the Jan/Feb 2010 release date, then I concur.
to paraphrase: "I can't really argue that STO has some content, so I'll nitpick your list of what WoW had at release so hide the fact that you're right."
If any of them weren't in game on release, it would be Maraudon ... but even accounting for that ... it's still a massive content differential. You can nitpick all you want, doesn't change the fact that Cryptic launched STO with nearly no content.
You obviously arent playing the same game I am.
Realistically, I'm pretty sure they could have drastically improved the game with another 6 months to a year. If they are not lying when they say they have content generation tools, they could have put the real things into the game in place of all the placeholders, and then spent some months just generating more and more content so that players would be struck by the sheer depth and variety of choices in what they could do in game, instead of being herded through exactly the same few quests as everybody else and then ending up at the end with nothing to do.
The developer is Cryptic. Collectively, the state the game released in is their fault.