By the way if you have not visited Wolf 359 in game yet, you should check it out...

I just read a posted review on another board. I am linking to the post and then copying and pasting it. This is just one persons opinion, but I figured some of you would like to read it and refute or agree with his points.

http://www.graffe.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1577084&postcount=69

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This game is so bad, it's an utter catastrophe unlike any I have seen. I have been playing the Open Beta for a couple of days now, and I can't stand this torture any more. So, I am going to share my "initial impressions" of this fantastic piece of #%&*$# in an homage to Star Trek movie titles.

1. The Unfinished Country.

Not everyone can compete with Blizzard's level of polish, of course, and so I tend to approach middling MMO's with a bit of open-mindedness as to how unpolished they may be (such as Age of Conan, which despite its lack of polish had a solid premise and strong mechanics). Unfortunately, this is not even the case with Star Trek Online. The game is not only unpolished -- it's basically unfinished. And it's so unfinished, some people might say it hasn't even gotten off on the right foot to being started. Right from the moment when you log-in to create your character and -- in a process that is supposed to mimic Cryptic Studios' first MMO, City of Heroes -- you find that you have shockingly few options at customization, you are basically shocked into recognizing you are playing a one-size-fits-all MMO. While you are presented with a number of sliders and some trivial texture options, all characters look the same: they are all humanoids with some minor decorations, wearing Starfleet uniforms. Klingons are supposed to be available at launch (in two weeks, if you can believe that), but right now, they're not even accessible for Open Beta testing. This is pretty shocking, one has to almost believe it's a bad joke that Cryptic is actually springing this level of unfinished work on us.

All of the content in the game, from the tutorial to the Earth Spacedock (ostensibly, the Federation "capital", since you cannot access Earth proper -- what? no Starfleet Academy? That's right!), all of it feels essentially "half-made". They seemed to get the basic models and textures in place, but then they populated it with stock NPCs and very little in the way of immersiveness. The game feels grossly shallow, the dialogue text all reads the same, and every character looks like a cloned copy just randomly generated in the Character Generator. There are large empty spaces that look like they were hoping to fill with some content - like vacant alcoves in the Space Station - but for some reason (maybe pressure from Atari to go to press and beat WoW: Cataclysm?), ended up remaining bare. Combined with the fact that there only appear to be two or three "types" of quests that repeat themselves endlessly, the game feels like it can be played and beat in around five hours. The rest is a repetitive grind with no substance, no story, and no real purpose aside from a silly flight sim done better by other Trek games (such as Bridge Commander).

Going back to the question of factions -- the game appears to be built around the Federation, and judging from the Pre-Order bonuses and the Collector Edition benefits, I'd wager that they actually only finished sketching out the Federation and then decided to add the Klingons as a playable faction purely as an afterthought. Not only does the official STO website have no information at all about Klingon vessels, characters, or technology, but there are no bonuses, no tutorials, no characters, and no 'sign' of the Klingons short of some dialogue text and minor quest references that suggest that they are up to no good. It really does feel like they chewed off way too much than they could handle here, and the game ends up feeling grossly unfinished and empty in just about every aspect.


2. The Search for Story.

The Tutorial presents you with a completely ridiculous assertion: the Borg are back, they have invaded Federation space, but for some reason, are not assimilating anyone. That's right, they're just taking prisoners and being menacing guys for no apparent reason, and, you and a bunch of other Ensigns have taken control of the remnants of Starfleet to oust them from the Vega sector. And so throughout the Tutorial, you are presented with ridiculous scenarios of you single handedly slaughtering hundreds of Borg (they are evidently the new "rats" of this MMO), and then assaulting on foot a Borg shield (which never tells you what it does, short of 'teleporting' people about), and then engaging in a space-fight with damaged spheres and broken cubes. Exhilirating!

Let's pause here with the sarcasm and examine the Story (or lack thereof) more closely. Star Trek Online espouses to be a continuation of the "Prime" timeline following the destruction of Romulus as depicted in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek. Your characters continue to exist in the futuristic universe (the main reality that we all knew and loved growing up) rather than neophytes in the new "reboot universe" alternative timeline that Abrams set up. In theory, this should be good -- except the History that they have proposed doesn't make much sense. The Tutorial only reasserts this: Starfleet has gone from being about exploration and discovery, to purely a military organization fighting off bad guys and combating the Borg and the Klingons.

It's not surprising, given the unfinished state of the game and the lack of any real story that there are only Two Zones available for exploration upon launch: Sol (the Earth system), and the Alpha Quadrant (which is just open space where you can spawn instances of star systems to do terribly boring repetitive missions). Reportedly, the same is true on the Klingon side - Q'onos and Beta Quadrant, with much of the same. But given that Klingons are not yet in game with less than two weeks to go for launch... there is just no way to tell.


3. The Wrath of Con.

I feel duped by marketing for having pre-ordered this game, though admittedly, as a life-time Trekkie, I was going to get this game and try it out anyways. Well, the joke is on me. The differentiation, the perks, the privileges of commanding your own Starship -- they sound great, and certain perks like 'exclusive starship classes' and 'Tribbles' may be appealing on paper, but in reality, you can get all of these objects and privileges in game eventually anyways, and best of all, no one will even see them or take note of them. Everyone can acquire fairly customizable ship appearances (from changing the models to altering color schemes), but very few people can really note much of a difference given that ships render poorly, even on the highest graphical settings, and seem far away. When you "socialize" on Earth Spacedock, you only see characters - not their ships.

The Con continues with what, on paper, looks like a visually stunning game. I am a fan of stylized graphics and much of the artwork, screenshots, and movies behind Star Trek Online made me excited about what this game might be. Again, I was duped. In actual performance, the game is grossly sub-par. Ostensibly, STO was designed to be a re-working of the Champions Online engine (in fact, if you're played Champions Online -- or City of Heroes, the predecessor -- the entire user interface, the graphics style and artwork will look pretty much the same). Unfortunately, they butchered the engine to try and accommodate some behavior that clearly was not native -- such as spaceflight and futuristic ground combat.

Ships move with lag, turn awkwardly, and space combat is generally slow. Ground combat is even worse, with the same approach to taking out enemies rehashed over and over and over again. At least with Spaceflight, you have some options on maneuverability and around a dozen or so backdrops to where you can fight on your randomly instanced space areas that are mission-specific. Combine this with visual assets that are poor imitations of movie and tv sound effects and graphics, to a soundtrack that is sparse and sometimes grossly alien and un-Trek whenever it deviates away from familiar Jerry Goldsmith touchstones, and you feel almost like you are playing a second-rate flight-sim, not an immersive MMO by any stretch of the imagination.


4. The Final Frontier.

There are some tell-tale signs that this MMO is going to flop horribly, and not just from the early "horror stories" that are being posted, like mine. Cryptic has announced (weeks before launch) a "lifetime subscription" program, at an inflated $240, and an annual subscription rate for $120. A number of execs at Atari have begun to disavow any responsibility for the finished state that Star Trek Online might be in (see: GameSpot for some interesting rumors on that front), leaving Cryptic to essentially scramble with a terribly buggy, sluggish game built on an updated version of an antiquated game engine dating back to 2003.

My first two days of playing this game have been patient attempts at trying to find some sort of silver lining, some gleam of hope in the $60 that I put down for this thing. Nothing. I am getting a refund and not looking back.

Save yourself the nightmare, and don't touch this game with a phaser beam. Arm photon torpedoes instead, and shoot to kill.

I think the fact that this is not only a beta but basically a drawn out training area excuses some of what you've got there (IMO). The story here is certainly less than engaging, but it's a lot better than most RPG's and MMO's I've tried where you're stuck killing crabs, rats or mining asteroids or killing the same space pirates a hundred times over. That's usually where I stop playing an MMO out of boredom. At least here there's SOME variety in going from ground to ship to ground and at least scratching the surface of abilities/weapons/ships that will come later on.

What has surprised me is how the ground combat seems so much more well done than the ship combat. The opposite of what I expected. If you've played Star Trek Legacy, then you know pretty much how the ship handling goes, but you have less management ability and no other ships to command and switch to. It will be interesting to see how large scale ship battles shape up, but it's probably going to be just a tank battle.

The ground levels also have better graphics. The ships just seem a little cartoonish compared to EVE, but that's just Star Trek I guess. I think it looks pretty similar to STL when in motion, but it's not bad for an MMO.



Got a video of the intro ship level I can upload to youtube for example. I guess since it's an *open* beta that's no big deal. The combat having just one ship is a little dry, making STL more fun in that area. Ground levels are fun if you keep moving, but if you're cautiously making your way, the enemy is just going to respawn again, probably right on top of you as you've been slowly moving up. Standard MMO I guess.

I agree that I want more out of it, but I'm making allowances for the fact that this is beta and training. I think it has potential, I just hope it doesn't take a long time to get into the meat of it. Gotta be better than EVE in that respect.

Yeah...this guy's a jackass.

If you haven't played it, don't listen to this moron. The game looks good sometimes breathtaking, particularly in space.

There are certainly bugs, uh, because that's what betas are for, to get rid of them. If they continued through release some would be annoying, but I'll wait to make judgements.

True the beta is limited, which IIRC was stated EXPLICITLY when it was released. This was never intended to be the full game and more was stated to be released with the full game. Same, same with character choices, models, etc.

The missions are no more limited than any other MMO I've played. There's lobbys, a "travelling map" to move around space, and instanced areas. There's raids (fleets), coop, and PvP. Not necessarily anything cosmic (no pun intended), but almost everything that you would see in EVERY STAR TREK EPISODE!

This game is definitely worth a try for those who haven't tried it. It plays alot like Starfleet Command (good), with a greater feel of cohesiveness (better), vastly better graphics (best) and you can play with friends much more easily than the old Dynaverse system in SFC (bestest).

Provided the things above have been addressed in the final version, I would certainly consider getting the lifetime membership. I will definitely be playing this one for as long as their servers are up.

Now, back to my Light Cruiser!

Deacon

The game releases in two weeks. Saying it's a beta doesn't mean that it's ok to have those problems. There is no magic patch that is going to fix everything. I learned that in a lot of MMO's. I was in the Vanguard alpha through beta and release. I heard promises of a magic patch and it never happened. With two weeks until release, basically what you see is what you get.

I was also in the Hellgate London alpha through beta and release. Same stuff.

What you see is what you are going to get. The question you need to answer for yourself is if you are willing to take the chance to fund them so they can finish the game over time.

I haven't played the game, but I do have a ton of experience with these situations. They always turn out the same. You are hoping for better at final release, but need to resign yourself to the fact that it won't be much more than it is right now. At least for a while.

True. With a few mission bugfixes and the like I'd be more than happy to play this game. Although I do hope they fix a few things over time.

Deacon

I wasn't trying to rain on anyone's parade. I just figure that if you like the game, then great. If you were buying the game thinking it's going to better or changed at release, that you need to go into it with your eyes open. I have done the blinders thing before and it bit me in the ass.

I have never played the game. I can't say what is good or what is bad, but experience has taught me that I should never expect something to be different just because I want it to happen.

I still plan to wait a month and see what people have to say then before I make my decision.

It shows you how little this guy has played the game, when he whines about Klingons not being available, and they unlock at level 6, which doesn't take too long to get to.

I realize that Deceptis, but there are similar posts on the main STO forum too. Some people just expect too much from an MMO and get very bitter when they realize it is not a holodeck and they are not really Picard. If you go into a game like this with a reasonable expectation you won't be disappointed. In my case I want an MMO space game in the trek universe with some space battles and ground battles as well as some non-combat missions for good measure. So far I have not been disappointed, though there are surely places for improvement.

Well I finally got a chance to jump into the game for a while (about 8 hrs )yesterday. First impressions follow.

Character creation/customization:
Only 3 classes available. This being Star Trek they're called "Tactical, Engineering or Science Officer", but they seem to be essentially your standard MMO fare of warrior, buffer/support and healer/debuffer. I'm not really sure what the guy in Deceptis' post was talking about, STO pretty easily has the most detailed customization options of any MMO I've tried. You can tweak pretty much everything about your character's appearance with detailed controls like you get in a game like Oblivion, except that you have them for every part of the body instead of just the face. Not to mention that you can even create your own alien race. Ship customization is pretty similar. You can mix & match parts from various ships to create your own design, change paint schemes, etc.

Ground combat:
Overall it's not bad. Controls feel somewhat clumsy and take some getting used to. Most of the maps I've seen so far have decent variety, with some nice alien planet environments. Your AI shipmates are surprisingly useful, using their heals and so on automatically. There isn't a ton to say here, basically each weapon has 2 attacks plus a melee attack, and you have a special skill determined by the "kit" you wear. You have the standard fare of items to restore health, regenerate your personal shield, etc.

Space combat:
If you ever tried Pirates of the Burning Sea, combat here is very similar. Ships have weapon mounts fore and aft, different weapons have different arcs that they can fire in (the more powerful the weapon, the smaller the arc). Besides maneuvering your ship, you're spending most of the time managing your shields and how much of your ship's power is going to which systems of the ship. Your bridge officers provide you with different "powers" to use based on their skills. My main complaint is that combat is very close range - various weapons are most effective at different ranges, but there's a hard cap of 10km range on space combat; can't even shoot at anyone beyond that. Other than that, there are some bugs that need to be worked out (eg the AI fleets will dogpile the first person who ventures into their range and kill them in 2 seconds) and the game tutorials need to teach you much more about how to use things like power and shields, but overall the space combat is very fun.

Missions/Story:
Honestly I haven't been paying a ton of attention to the mission storylines so far. Missions are again pretty standard MMO fare. Kill X number of enemy Y. Escort this ally to where they need to go. Pick up that item, etc. It is nice though having the mix of space and ground combat to keep things interesting. The absolute best thing STO has done is to use 25th century technology to dump the normal "return to town" runs that most MMO's have. You can contact Starfleet from pretty much anywhere to turn in missions and get new ones, and also use your ship's replicator to "sell" things in your inventory for "energy credits" (the game's $$).

Overall:
I've very much enjoyed the game so far, and I've decided to preorder. I'm also flirting with getting a lifetime subscription but I'm going to hold off a bit on that. The game definetly needs polish right now, but for better or worse that seems to be par for the course for MMOs at launch. I could see myself spending a lot of time with this one.