Star Trek Online Impressions

I’d add something about the game play…but i am stuck at ANOTHER 16 hours to download as the original disconnected me in the middle of the night. It doesn’t even pick back up where the download stopped…it just starts all over again….not making me happy.

My computer and science skills have gone up just trying to get the client to work.

Pretty disappointed. Nice space combat? It felt like I was playing stuck in molasses. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game paced so slowly.

Yeah this review is pretty spot on and I’ve been playing in CB for a few weeks. It really is this feeling of how the hell this game is going to develop? It’s almost like you are watching them build the game, hard to explain really.

So far, for me at least, I’m still having a blast…despite it’s flaws that Keen has pointed out. Really going to depend how the game develops…has a lot of potential imo.

I’ve been in closed beta for a long time, and frankly, the game just isn’t very good. For a Star Trek fan like you Keen, (I am only a little bit of a fan myself, don’t dislike it by any means, but I haven’t seen anywhere closed to all the episodes, or anything like that), I am sure there is definitely quite a bit of that inital awesome I am finally IN Star Trek feeling. I just caution you that when it wears off, you’ve got a mediocre, highly instanced, space-in-a-box MMO waiting for you on the other end that you should chuck out the nearest window if it had any other intellectual property behind it.

To me this game falls far short of the potential the Star Trek IP has. The majority of the blame for me rests with Cryptics reliance on instancing. I am a huge fan of Eves open singular universe and there is no reason STO couldn’t have done the same. Hell they could have built it using Stackless Python. The instancing coupled with the linearity of the missions are another huge problem as this really is not an open world MMO.

Even the space combat is losing its shine as it is becoming repetitive. While I do like the open mission system you can get nubs that enter a system and then sit there leaving you to deal with harder enemies.

I think they made a mistake allowing Cryptic to use the ST IP. They needed someone with more experience and a better vision to be able to produce a game that would live up to expectations.

In the end I get the feeling this is like Star Wars Galaxies in that at some point in the future we will have to hope someone does it better the second time around.

got to say i like all the options and ship options. you can take pieces of all the ships and make any ship type you like or your own (as you unlock teh base ones) so you dont have to really be stuck with just “there” ships. Witch can be a good or bad thing but its nice to have options atleast. Custmizing your crew and outfits is fun to but is another “questinable” feature in my opnion but really. with all the things i cant say I dislike having the ability.

But when it comes down to it the only thing that makes me like the game is ship combat and flight. Everything else really sucks. They compleatly messed up on ground combat. its to bad

This review actually has me hesitantly optimistic. I was a HUGE fan of POTBS, and I’m a major Star Trek Fanboy. Problem is, from what I’ve read of PVP, which is what made POTBS so much fun for me, has me a little worried. Thanks for another useful review!

Im the sort of person that played bridge commander for several years, adding in modded ships then just playing quick battle over and over. A lot of people would get bored quickly of that, because ultimately it was the same thing over and over but i enjoyed it. I love the look of the star trek weapons and sounds, and i enjoy watching and seeing these ships we have grown up with doing battle. STO is much the same for me. The ground combat is tacked on and shallow, and it doesn’t feel like your a ship in space. But when you get in to the space combat encounters, i really enjoy them.

I hear there are some nice story missions later, ive seen beta posters talking about *** SPOILER *** genesis ark related missions, and fighting along side kirk in the 1701, and the doorway to tomorrow.. stuff like that but i haven’t seen them yet. Closed beta up until now has been very difficult because they have been trying to get the leveling curve right and there were points where it was taking 12-15 hours plus to get to level 10 (new ship). The beta’s in typical cryptic style as well have been very limited, lasting for a few hours at a time and in the middle of the night if your from Europe.

So i haven’t seen that far in to the game. I can tell you that ****spoiler!**** DS9’s in game, and you can visit it at level 1 and walk around it, but you wont be seeing anyone familiar like quark or sisco etc. Just bland npcs. The wormhole is there for show as well, but doesn’t do anything.

I think they have a nice starting platform, i really do. If only they would spend another YEAR doing closed beta tests and adding and building up content the game we would get at launch would feel so much more rounded and structured. Instead your going to get something in Feb most people are going to get fed up with and slag Crytic off and leave.. and that will damage the game as well.

OstateJay, if you really loved PoTBS, i do think you will love STO, especially if you also loved the gameplay of City of Heros (minus the superhero powers). STO when you get down to it is those games which the Star Trek theme applied.

I tried giving it a shot last night. I got through the first part of the tutorial that rewarded me with 300 skill points but I was rubber-banding like crazy. I was just learning how to pilot my ship when the game booted me, hehe.

Open betas ftw!

I haven’t really played enough to share impressions. I should be good by the weekend.

I think instancing can be used in a positive way. I didn’t mind it in CoH or EQ2 (yes people SOE did it too). In EQ2 the xp zones had different versions but the cities only had 1 version.

I think the problem is developers are just instancing everything, or nothing. They aren’t picking and choosing where to instance and where not to.

With WoWs new dungeon finder I think that is a step in the direction of 1 big server everyone plays on. I think this is a good idea, but very hard to pull off while keeping the community in tack.

Most MMOs are massive anymore. We may as well just drop the acroynm because it causes more confusion than anything. They are persistent worlds.

I posted my thoughts on Syncaine’s blog as well. My thoughts are VERY similar to yours, Keen.

I don’t see myself buying Star Trek Online either. It doesn’t seem like a bad game. Rather the opposite. It seems well-made and of sufficient quality, but the whole experience so far rings hollow. It doesn’t FEEL like Star Trek to me at all. What is this shit with “sector space”? Why do planets bump me off and look like large balloons floating in a dark room? Why can’t I get close to them? As Tobold mentioned, I feel like I’m on rails, being directed, scripted events being thrown at me in this ingratiating, pandering way. I strongly dislike the heavily instanced nature of Cryptic’s MMOG engine. I abhorred it in CO, and I abhor it in STO.

I can get on board (hah) with the unreality of every player getting their own ship, given the infeasibility of the alternative, but to me a Star Trek game needs to be more than “good.” It needs to be great. It needs to be revolutionary and ground-breaking. I wanted Cryptic to approach this as sacred ground, and create a game that would suck you into its world on the merits of the experience you could have. Honestly, Star Trek needs to be a sandbox game. It needs elements of EVE mixed with elements of Love, WURM, Darkfall and Infinity (http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=33). I recognize that would require more time, more money, more work. So be it. This is Star Trek. We want to explore an effectively infinite, procedural galaxy, land on planets, contact new species. We want to be able to fly into space for literal days and go places WHERE NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE. For shit’s sake, it’s at the beginning of every episode of TOS and TNG. Star Trek Online is not that, no, so far, STO is very much more Warcraft or LOTRO than EVE or Darkfall.

It’s a shame, too. If there’s one IP that lends itself to “sandbox,” it’s Star Trek. It’s amazing that Cryptic went in exactly the opposite direction. I think giving Cryptic the rights to Trek was the first mistake.

Typical Cryptic, downhill after the character creator. Does anyone think instancing every area is a GOOD idea? Even without the bugs/lags Cryptic just has an overall MMO design theory that dopesn’t appeal to me in the slightest. pass. . .

Ok , I’ll give my first impressions. Well , Keen has alot of things right. However , as far as instancing gos , In a game like this , I think its well needed. However , I do think its way over done. Half as many instances and doubling the ship count per instance would be better. I mean , seriously , how many ST episodes did you see 20 plus ships flying around randomly. Most episodes it was maybe 3 or 4 ships through a whole hour. Having larger scale battles that are in the books that refer or are designed around battles in the books would be great. Having the ability to group with your friends and always be put into the same instance would be as well.

Ground combat is tolerable but simple and its very hard to actually push yourself to die. The away missions should be very hard to accomplish and so should ship combat. The last 6 years has produced the easiest MMO’s in history of the genre , it is a shame that the masses would rather have easier gameplay than harder. Nothing I can do about that , masses rule us out , and profits come from the masses , us hard core people are just screwed for like eternity.

Far as the slow pace of the game , I’m actually enjoying the slow paced combat , I would rather it be slow and more strategic than fast and more ( see how fast I can press my buttons ) type game. I feel all recent MMO’s suffer from the ADD developers and player base. Space combat is fine at the pace that it is.

STO is the first MMO in a while that I’ve played and thought to myself , even if its unpolished , there is a lot that can be accomplished to make it better and the player base seems to want the same things so maybe it has a better chance of developing into something fantastic instead of garbage like the rest of cryptics game. After all perpetual entertainment’s coding work laid the ground work for this game , so its not ALL 100 percent cryptic. Lets hope there are limitations to how much Cryptic can royally screw it over.

“Does anyone think instancing every area is a GOOD idea? Even without the bugs/lags Cryptic just has an overall MMO design theory that dopesn’t appeal to me in the slightest.”

No, it’s awful. It’s the reason I couldn’t play Guild Wars more than a few days. It’s why I quit CO after a month. It obliterates all sense of world, immersion and atmosphere. It’s like trying to watch a stage version of a movie like Avatar. It makes it fake. Graev’s Disneyland ride analogy was perfect. WAR’s channeled, funneled zones are the same way. It may have to do with having been weaned on UO and AC and having hit WoW in its prime.

“However , as far as instancing gos , In a game like this , I think its well needed. However , I do think its way over done. Half as many instances and doubling the ship count per instance would be better. I mean , seriously , how many ST episodes did you see 20 plus ships flying around randomly. Most episodes it was maybe 3 or 4 ships through a whole hour.”

Here’s how you address this: make the galaxy larger and open. That’s why you don’t see 20 ships flying around together in Star Trek. Because you’re in friggin space. You’re not in a bunch of little identical rooms on a list.

Literally, that’s what Star Trek Online is. You’re in a space room by earth, then you go to another room where all the smaller space rooms are given to you on a list, and so you pick one off the list and you go there, and once there you sometimes go into another room where instead of a ship you’re a person, then you go back to the space room, and then to the list room and do it all over again. There’s no exploration. There’s no sense of mystery and wonder. It’s a bunch of space chatrooms on a menu with graphics and mildly entertaining combat. This would be fine for an MMOG with a 1 year gestation and an unknown IP. This is not fine for Star Trek. Underwhelming is a severe understatement.

Maybe it opens up at later levels. I don’t know. So far, not good.

@Chris

Yeah, STO has “Fleets” not guilds.

That being said, that is a type of gameplay that many people asked for but Cryptic said that it is too hard to make “fun” for all people involved. Frankly, I’d love to see someone make that game anyway, and it wouldn’t even really need to be an MMO hypothetically, it could just be a co-op multiplayer game.

As it stands, the “everyone is a captain” idea shafts anyone who ever wanted to play a role in the Star Trek universe that ISN’T captain, but I do suppose that most people enjoy being the hero. I prefer smaller roles.

@Mahlah: I’m with you, and was one of the people pushing for player-manned crews instead of this “everyone is a Captain” bullshit they made. However, one thing to point out is that you don’t have to be the Captain to be the hero. Plenty of crew members (helmsman, engineers, doctors, security) have been “heroes.” So, I don’t buy the “you have to be the Captain to be the hero,” concept.

In the end, the only thing STO has going for it is the space combat, which we can’t even really credit to Cryptic since they just stole what had been designed by Taldren when they made the Starfleet Command series.

I’m amused when ppl complain about the ‘everyone is a captain’ stuff. Please explain to me how you think the ‘play as crew’ game is going to work. Does the guild/clan own the ship and you can only play on the ship when the entire guild is online? Or one player owns a ship and his 4 friends can only play when he’s playing. What are you going to do when your friends aren’t online? drive around a little shuttle? And what role do you expect to play on this ship? Engineer – spending 2 hours adjusting the warp core power output?. If this was a Starwars MMO or similar environment, where most of the space combat consisted of individual fighters, then I could see guilds owning Star Destroyers and using them like a mobile guild halls (I would kill to see that MMO). But in the the StarTrek world, I think Cryptic have done the right thing. You’d have to be a pretty hardcore Roleplayer if you wanted to play generic red coat No.6 whose only role on the ship is to headbutt the photon torpedo button when the caption says ‘fire’.

I can’t honestly have played 30 hours already and just got my cruiser some hours ago. You get a new ship at level 11 at rank Lt Commander, and probably at level 21 the next one.

My impressions so far:

1. Ground Combat is a somewhat fun in a group, but the interface, movement, animations feels very clunky. The areas are small and rather boring. The worst part of the game.

2. Too many loading screens. Seriously, why must I load a starbase only to load the office of the admiral right after that?

3. Space combat and the open group feature make this game shine. It is like Star Fleet Command III online. It was also the reason that made me renew my preorder after I cancelled it already. It reminds me more of SFC3 than of PotBS.

4. There is some player skill involved in combat. Player experience pays off, some basic maneuvers and mechanics must be learnt. I.e. how to deal with the fact that the first to warp into a group of Klingons gets all the “love”. Hint: turn around and put all energy into the engines. And turn early, not inside a cloud of Klingons.

5. Still quite buggy and like in CO they start out with fishy lifetime offers and itemshop double dipping on top of the subscription. That there are only 2 char slots is a huge disappointment!

“I’m amused when ppl complain about the ‘everyone is a captain’ stuff. Please explain to me how you think the ‘play as crew’ game is going to work.”

Read up on how Allods Online will work with regards to Astral Ship combat and how multiple players will be able to man the ship. That’s how I assumed STO would work. This isn’t so much a question of trying to do something impossible, it’s a question of the developers choosing a design approach that made things easier for them and enjoyable for a certain target market.

That said there are other games from the past that have already utilize such techniques. For example, a lot of WWII MMO games allow for multiple positions within a single aircraft. So you can have someone flying the bomber, someone manning the bomb sites, and various positions manning the three or four gunnery positions on the bomber. Most of the flight going to your target (5 to 10 min) is fairly calm and uneventful but once engaged in combat, the experience is purely orgasmic and can’t be beat due to the high level of teamwork and collaboration involved (not too mention the adrenaline rush).

Leaving your mission area in a ship leads to a big blank nothing. Totally lame.

After two days in the beta, I can’t say I did like it very much. For ground combat, I plead guilty: I spent too much time on Mass Effect last month…

For space, the first five battles were quite fun but after that I found the missions repetitive. I have been told that in a ground MMO they are not very imaginative either, but at least there is a change in scenery.

In space nobody hears you yawn…

Sector space is not a bad way for long distance travel, it’s a change compared with all those stargates.

I’m playing in French, so the mix of languages in the same dialog can be fun at time.