f13.net

The last STO thread was long dead, so...

Star Trek Online Gamescom Off Screen Footage (http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/26006)

All I have to say is... :uhrr:  :ye_gods:

Well uh... the space stuff looks great at least?

The away team stuff is pretty bad. I am pretty sure I hate their animations. Maybe not quite PotBS off-boat bad, but there seems to be a similar split.

Jesus. Set Phasers to Reanimate.

Space stuff definitely has enough pew pew and shiny to it. The off ship stuff, though, wow... They really touched on a serious pet peeve of a buddy of mine. 2 guys standing three feet from each other exchanging gun fire.  :uhrr: And even worse, a Klingon with a melee weapon swinging it at a guy who's standing still while shooting back. Its just so fucking retarded looking.

Space combat looks slow and static.  If you're going to have ship-to-ship combat you had better make it interesting. 

That is not what I thought. I thought the space stuff looked like Jumpgate.

As in, one guy in a ship. Not startrek. Its still funny you need 4 ships to have a group of 4 away members. I foresee parking issues at major hubs.

I think its fantastic you can sit there and take 9 hits from a klingon with a batleth too.

I'm guessing you enjoyed the Munsters-fast-motion away-team combat then?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEh2N8sV7cE

Eh, we'll see.  Star Trek games don't usually end up being well...good, so I don't have a ton of hope for this.  However, I'm willing to wait and see.

Its Star Trek, its supposed to look like that!

That looked like Darkfall in space.  :uhrr:

So glad I didnt six month sub to ChampO just to test that crap out.

Er... these are ships hundreds of meters long with crews in the hundreds. Think "tall ships" - heck watch Wrath of Khan ffs, and there are apparently several ships systems to control and power distribution decisions to be made so while your swinging about for that broadside you have things to think about. Space looks cool, planet stuff looks shite.

Hahaha!

Pirates of the Burning Seas...   in SPAAAAAAACE!!

How did that, in any way, resemble Darkfall?  Really.

Do I have to do 50 levels of combat to be a trader?

awful that

Funny, my impression of the space combat was these ships were twitching like hell implying barely any mass, and pulling off some really tight loops which seemed very odd for huge cruisers and whatnot. I'm not sure how they could make it look any faster or less static without making them just bunny hop around and teabag one another.

On the surface best part was some guy repeatedly headbutting another from like, 3 meters away.

I got half way through and then I got bored. That looks awful.

Did Xhibit pimp out those starcruisers? Cause they got a lotta bling on 'em.

This is my impression too.  Those are supposed to be pretty darn big ships and they are flying around like its nothing.

Why, WHY make foot combat in ship games. Yeah, sure, it's in the TV show and the movies, but it's just not going to work right in your engine, and it'll look funky with your art team trying to do too much shit. Give us a ship game or a land game. But pick, damnit.

Soooo terrible looking.

Why would tight loops seem odd?  Are you concerned about aerodynamics in space?  Objects should maneuver quickly in any direction that a force is applied.  It's space.  Little to no gravity.  Low particle density.  Unless I learned my physics wrong.  Statics shouldn't be an issue in outer space.  

As bad as the space combat looked, the foot animations looked worse.  I normally don't even care about graphics in games but this title looks terrible.  Like EQ2-looked-better-at-release brand of terrible. 

I'm more concerned about the hull integrity -- would expect fast changes of direction for such massive object to require application of huge forces, and having such forces applied in wildly differing directions feels like a very nasty strain for the object (as well as its content who doesn't seem to believe in seatbelts) On the other hand physics was my least favourite subject so i can be totally off here... plus, it's Star Trek so maybe these hulls are made from unobtainium or something.

I would think the concern would be less about aerodynamics and more about inertia.

Inertial Dampeners! The Chromie of Star Trek.

Best post I've seen all day.

A Star Trek MMO was a long shot even beyond just being an MMO and that's before the eccentric Cryptic was on the case.  I think we are looking at a AA level failure here. A Total Disconnect.

It's not the physics (pshaw!) as much as resembling the TV shows and movies, where starships tended to swoop in lazy arcs while firing weapons. They really need to model kind of combat in order to have it not look like EQ in space. (Or worse, Team Fortress)

Give starships shield arcs and a hefty penalty for standing still, that goes away if the ships is moving at all. Give lots of preprogrammed manuvers so you can hit a button and your ship does a lazy curve to the right or left, and/or have the ships move more like the starships in Eve.

Me dev. Giv mi monee.

If only it was that simple...

He's listing lazily to the left! Man, he's got some moves!

I want a Picard Maneuver button.

Full contingent of betazoids would be great for the lulz. I am wondering if you can play Q.

p.s. I blame my mother who used to drag me to those conventions.

I like the slow tactical ship combat of both EVE and PoBS. Pew-pew starfighter combat doesn't appeal to me as an MMO mechanic.

Also, I agree on no avatar control. I thought I wanted it in EVE, then PoBS gave it to us and it diluted the experience. Maybe fun for social spaces, but that's it. Pick one or the other and do it well. By NO MEANS force players to partake in it. If avatar control is required to play the ship game, I'm not interested.

Yeah, that's about how far I made it too.  Pretty ship battles just don't cut it for me.

Also, the ability to create your own race and add it to the ST universe?  Did they learn anything from the galaxy of Spore penis monsters that were created within 24 hours of it launching?

Good God that's awful.

Fear not the penis monster. Basically they are using a lot of the same engine Champions online has so no reason for them to not add in a very robust alien generator but like champions online you are not going to see the pallus people wandering around

That is how Star Trek ships are supposed to be flying. In fact they can even do even more ridiculous stunts than what was shown on screen but that requires the crews to use their computers to handle the flying.

 The more common depiction in movies and literature of space combat acting like WW2 dogfighting with small as jetfighter craft and naval warfare with destroyers acting as the screeners for the massively slow battleships is highly misleading.

I liked the ship combat but I don't see any reason why I should be excited about this game's arrival to the market. Eve has managed to sink their hooks into me again because of DUST. What does STO offer that makes playing an MMO feel fresh?

Grim. Not that I'm expecting much, but.

I am sad.
Bloodworth, Draegan, hold me tight...   :uhrr:

All they had to fuckin do was take Elite Force (fps), Bridge Commander (strat), and Armada (micro-rts) and put it into an MMO.  But noooooo, Cryptic/Perpetual had to reinvent the wheel and produce a steaming pile. 
This game just might drive me to become a go'ram Star Wars fan!   :heartbreak:

A day later and it's still awful.


Is there any chance this is not the real engine at work?  Textures and stuff aside, could it not be possible that the animation will be supplemented/replaced?  The physics of the ships is a perfect case in point.  Otherwise it's not competitive at all.

Yo dawg, I heard you liked...

That game looks pretty awkward...

The ship combat looked like it could be ok. Depends on what you're actually doing. Do you have to line your ship up to fire your forward torpedoes, are you managing your shields, etc. I don't really care enough to go back and check, but did anyone ever miss? I just don't recall a ship attack ever missing.

Ground combat looked awful. Just auto attack blandness.

Quite sure space combat is also, auto-attack skill bar action. This isn't a trek game, after all.


So, this is the third time. Can we get a "Star trek Simulator" now? You know, where people work together on one ship and mess with consoles and what not, beam down and don't instantly (Well as instant as you can TAKING NINE HITS FROM A KLINGON WITH A BAT'LETH  :facepalm:)  shoot up the place?

Because uh, this game looks like it will turn away trek fans, while at the same time, being trek, turn away MMO fans that have no interest in EnB 2.0 with Tribbles. Also, cryptic.

All ye who think the ship combat was acceptible are smoking pipeweed... y'know, the shwaggy river hobbit kind that tastes slightly like fish.
It was horrid on every level.  Granted, they didnt show the UI, but unless it's some kind of Jesus LCARS it wont make up for it.  I mean, the weapons were lame looking, there were no shields, the ships were completely static (they didnt themselves move in any way), and the maneuvers they were pulling were in no way, shape, or form reminiscent of Trek (which would be fine if it was compelling in its own right, but it wasnt.)

Really, like someone said prior.  It looks like Jumpgate with Trek skins, only worse... because it's completely nonsensical whilst using a capital ship.

ps.
If I was doing marketing over there I'd get something out that explains how awesome my UI is and make it happen...  'cause that's the only meta I see that'd save the combat system I saw.

Hand to hand phaser combat is certainly an interesting design decision.  But it wasn't as bad as I expected.  Star Trek is such a horrible license for a mmo that everything they do will be about minimizing one mistake after another all from that one disastrous decision.

It's not a horrible license for an MMO, it's just most devs want to put way too much Trek-stuff into their game rather than just focusing on a few things and doing them well.  And part of it is misplaced ego, in that designers want to try and do their own thing, rather than just sticking with what works. 

I dont wholly blame Cryptic though, because really what we're seeing is Perpetual's game design.  Their mistake was designing a generic space shooter with trek skins and slapping in a poor 3rd-person shooter to go with it.  The fact that it's Trek doesnt make it worse, rather it sucks by design.

It is a horrible license for an MMO.  In the current market,  MMO are about personal achievement and combat. These are completely antithetical to Star Trek.  Ya, someone could make a radical different kind MMO, but that risk isn't going to be taken in a AAA game.  And it sure isn't going to done by "grind till the cows come home" Cryptic.

Unless we played to live by the Rules of Acquisition  :awesome_for_real:

But your point still stands.

Fantastic idea. Nobody likes to lose in MMOs, and even the death penalty as a Ferengi is profit.


Wow, I'm a nerd.

There's a sarcastic joke in here about the noble humans, the wise and aloof elves Vulcans, their cousins the sinister dark elves Romulans, the savage and warlike orcs Klingons, the short and greedy gnomes Ferengi, and the shuffling mindless undead Borg, and how this would totally all NEVER POSSIBLY work for an MMO. But I'm off to bed and too tired to think of it.

But no, it's a horrible license.
Looks like it's going to get a horrible MMO.

Really smacked of PotBS... IN SPAAAACCEEE. I never played EnB though, so as some have said, that could be the more apropos comparison.

On some podcast (either 1up or Giant Bomb), they talked to Cryptic about space combat and I got a definite PotBS vibe out of it. Which makes sense. Jumpgate this shouldn't be, that retarded Insurrection moment aside.

You've all covered this already but here's my 2 pence anyway.

The ground stuff though, ugh. Worse than early EQ1. But vintage Cryptic, so at least it's not a surprise.

Trek is not bad for MMOs in theory, it's really just that everyone whose ever made a Trek game of any type has always tried to take one or two parts of the IP and bolt it onto whatever in-house engine they decided to use or had. In this case, they don't have a run and gun engine, and can hide behind the fact that the TV shows and movies almost never show running-and-gunning action (which is only slightly less retarded than the footage we're seeing). And space combat has never been the first-person in-your-face Freespace 2/Star Wars style either. Actually, it's usually more like Eve.

Nobody who follows the genre is expecting much from them, nor from this IP. And I'm really not sure who else there is. Whose this for beside the diehard buy-anything-Trek crowd? And it's not like the last TNG movie did any good, so much so the most recent flick ensured everyone knew that whatever came before it is now locked away.

But at least there's a real game this time. Not like the last two rounds.


Wuh? That's no joke. It's Trek lore.

Well great, that will pop into my head every time Trek is on.

They seem to be going with the "every PC is a captain" thing, and the crew of the ship is fleshed out with NPCs.  i think you unlock better crew members through leveling and achieving stuff, or something  :oh_i_see:

Which is a retarded way of handling the IP.

It would be much better to have every ship be 5-6 people and just deal with the logistics of working that out. [which would not be too hard if you were not married to the concept of people being married to a particular ship]

That's what Perpetual was (theoretically) working towards. Unfortunately, it flies in the face of one of the success elements in this genre: heroics.

Nobody wants to wait 50 levels to captain a starship. Because most of the time they'll be relegated to some role below decks. Now that's all fine and on brand, but it's boring as heck to be running around corridors all day when you're mere meters away from why you wanted to be in space in the first place. For the, ya know, space.

Even if you were called up for the occasional away mission, here again, why would you want to run around some passable ground game when so many other MMOs already do that really well and with budgets Cryptic can't focus on just the ground game? This would serve to remind people of how polished established titles were, because at this stage of the genre, even neophytes have seen a fair share of "alien" races, whether they're Wookiee or Tauren.

It's inevitable that we'd all start as captains. Anything else is even more niche than this will turn out to be.

Usually Bat Country makes it at least two weeks into a MMO launch.  If we all had to share a ship, we'd make it about 20 minutes before schild would have banned half of us. 

None of that is necessary. You just run profession based skills and have a good matchmaking service.

Banned would be easy... I say make everyone wear red uniforms. That'll teach 'em!

So you instantiate missions for ad-hoc balanced groups ala L4D Campaign?

Maybe, but that's not an MMO. If you want a better Star Trek game, this isn't the sub-forum for it :-)

No, why would you need to do that?

Dunno, it can be made quite fun. At least Puzzle Pirates managed it, these games they attached to ship maintenance tasks were really entertaining.

I'm not seeing the same video that you folks are.

How can you tell anything about the ship combat? It has no UI, it's not clear how it is controlled and it is probably shot from a camera view that you never get in the actual game.

The videos seemed to verify what I had heard on a podcast (PotBS ship), but yea, that's all I've got to go by.

Spaceship combat is allegedly more tactical and slower, crew combat is allegedly faster-paced and more FPS-ish.

My question about the video is: where is the hot diplomacy action? It was all lasers and under-whelming explosions.

Did you ever watch Star Trek? The whole show was not very subtle racism and diplomacy that consisted of poorly scripted jabber interspersed with FINE, WE'LL FIGHT IF WE MUST. Truly, a terrible MMOG license, unless you want diku IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE.

There were also episodes set on the Holodeck so the cast could dress in period costume, mixed in with episodes of someone trying to understand human emotions. Plus technobabble.

I'm not saying the diplomacy has to be good, but everything can't be pewpew all the time. That's Star Wars territory.

Regardless, I'm not that interested in STO. It looks like Cryptic is actually going to try and create a lot of the content for STO manually and that way is never going to work. STO needs procedurally produced content that is then 'locked in' as the official lay-out of the area.

That's not "real Star Trek".  That's watered-down, Next Generation Star Trek.  Kirk hitting on green women and a bridge made of Christmas tree lights... that's Star Trek!

Seriously, what did everyone expect from a Star Trek MMO?  

Flying a ship?  Check.  
Phasers and shit?  Check.  

This is 100% what I expected and I absolutely, positively despise Star Trek.  

Space hippies and tribbles. That's real Star Trek!

You guys are insane :wink:

This is post-TNG Trek, so leave your hopes for racist/sexist/masculine Trek at the door.

Everybody knows that "Angry Black Man + B5 ripoff" is the best Star Trek!

:heart:



(though he usually wasn't angry)

1966 was a banner year for multiculturalism on TV  :google:  Star Trek came along and set us back decades.  Decades!

Holy fuck that video in the original post was shitty. The space stuff looked decent, but the avatars were awful. They reminded me of all the worst elements of EQ2 - shiny plastic people shooting each other in the open at a distance of 3 feet while people slashed them with great big melee weapons. It was all the worst looking aspects of MMOG combat writ large.

I cant believe people in here are using the ST IP as an excuse for Cryptic.  The implementation would suck no matter what IP it was, so get over the IP arguments.  Fact is, most (not all) Trek games sucked because of bad game design and have NOTHING to do with the IP in any way, shape, or form.  STO is no exception.

To put it succinctly, instead of taking the best of Trek games in the past and making an MMO with it, they quite literally just took the worst it seems (something MMOs seem to be good at doing).  You cant blame Trek for that and claim anything better than a 3rd grade intelligence level.  I might forgive you if you rode the short-bus to school, but that's pushing it.

Except the Trek IP doesn't add much either.  The single largest factor in me liking Armada was the mod that patched in Rebels and Imperials which allowed me to fucking steamroll Federation bases with Super Star Destroyers and Death Star laser arrays and watch the Federation ships lose control and spin out into space aimlessly as they lost life support.

It's a short list.

...because people keep relying on the IP to sell instead of the game.