Star Trek Online: Here We Go Again!

[Kageh]

Played some finally over the weekend, and I actually liked space combat.

I notice the alpha strike problem (am only level 5 and it is readily obvious already) too, and I also saw the AI ripping through my "random open group" of 3 because, in a scenario that was slightly reminescent of the good old "Lemmings" game, each of us managed to arrive to the fight at their own pace and get singled out and destroyed by focused AI fire in about 3-4 salvos. So far it is kind of fun to try and make it through the combat alive, and I like all the "Star Trek-y" stuff like juggling power distribution, evasive maneuvers, all boards fire and what not.

Ground combat is kind of 'meh' to me because, while trying to play like a tactical shooter, I feel the controls are unresponsive and the characters/mobs keep jerking around and reacting to stuff I do about half a second later, which takes away too much from the immersion.

My biggest complaint so far is that the scope and mechanics feel very complicated, with nearly zero information to guide you on the way. I'm an MMO veteran of lots of games since UO, EQ, SWG and so on, and I feel totally intimidated by the wealth of stuff that I have to decide or learn there. Tooltips are full of percentages and fractions and what not, Skill Tree for my guy contains about 100 (felt) choices out of which only about 10 are open (with no indication about how to open the other ones - is it tiered and unlocked by char level? Unlocked by amount spent in previous tiers?). Bridge officer tooltips when offered as quest rewards are so large that they display partially outside my viewable screen, and half the stuff written there doesn't make sense yet.

I somehow like the forced grouping thing, makes life easier without having to socialize too much other than killing stuff. Reminds me a lot of Warhammer/CO public questing.

I agree with the bug complaints so far. I too ended up stuck in human form among planets when first flying out (and was a starship when I first beamed down!), scared the crap out of me! When going to customize my ship, my first attempt regularly lacks the mouse pointer, at first I thought the game crashed. I need to ESC out of that screen and re-start customization to get the mouse pointer back.

The game was unplayable for me at first due to heavy stuttering and freezes every few seconds. Turns out this is somewhat of a known issue with NVIDIA cards and the fix is to downgrade the NVIDIA drivers to 190.62.

So far, I like this better than CO and it looks like it has more potential, but it is definitely not release quality yet, and I don't think it will be any better in a couple weeks.

[tmp]

Ground combat is almost there.

Between horrible animation system and mechanics which are "Tabula Rasa minus mouse aim" i feel this is only true if "there" means "trashbin".

Srsly, the guy who made it so your character freezes in running stance whenever they colide with anything and just hovers there... i wonder how he can sleep at night.

[Malakili]

Ground combat is almost there.

Between horrible animation system and mechanics which are "Tabula Rasa minus mouse aim" i feel this is only true if "there" means "trashbin".

Srsly, the guy who made it so your character freezes in running stance whenever they colide with anything and just hovers there... i wonder how he can sleep at night.

Thats something this engine seems to do, as it happens in Champions Online also, I seem to remember people on this forum pointing that out when it game out as well.  Frankly, its annoying and looks like crap, but thats the kind of thing I can put up with if the meat of the game is solid...but it isn't.

[tmp]

Thats something this engine seems to do, as it happens in Champions Online also, I seem to remember people on this forum pointing that out when it game out as well.

Yup and that makes it even more mind-boggling because it means they left it sitting there through development of two games by now. It's like they think it looks ok or something.

[Surlyboi]

A word of warning: Watch your CPU/graphic card temps while playing the beta. I noticed my comp blowing out very hot air before the power supply burned up. It was a crappy Dell PSU that already had issues so this wasn't entirely unexpected but there are some threads in the STO tech support forums about getting high temps while playing.

That's a weird one. My one showstopping bug so far has been similar. It forced my machine to go to sleep. I'm playing, hit a weird texture in space and boom. Machine sleeps. Wake it up, I have to log back in and there's a message box telling me that it couldn't process the video. Awe. Some.

I of course, bugged the shit out of it.

[HaemishM]

So I got in and played about an hour or so over the weekend. Just long enough to get through the achingly long tutorial and get desposited on the earth space station.

It's not terrible. The space combat has the barest kernels of a really cool single-player/multiplayer w/ lobbies and deathmatch/CTF/Assault game. If the space game were a little more fleshed out with a Battlefield 2 type of unlock system, it would kick major ass. The juggling of power distribution, speed, shields and special abilities is decent fun.

Holy fuck, the ground game is a facefucking disaster, though. What talentless shitbag creative director signed off on animation this bad? The character looks and feels like he is ice-skating at all times. Even with a Nvidia 9800, I get shittastic frame rates, worse than I got on Champions Online. Hell, it's worse than I get on Empire: Total War and that game makes my video card cry. I could turn all the options down, but I really shouldn't have to in this case, because it's not throwing anything up worth tuning the graphics for. The models are decent to shitty. The terrain isn't anything to write home about. But most importantly, EVERYTHING IS INSTANCED - which means you shouldn't be throwing more PC's at my computer than it can handle.

And worst of all, Cryptic needs to immediately guillotine every slapdick working in their UI department. Between this and Champions Online, they've single-handedly set back user interface design to pre-punch-card levels of bad. Maneuvering the metric fuckton of menu screens, chat boxes, dialog boxes and hotbars takes more effort than flipping beads on a goddamn abacus. They've also made the common mistake of thinking more options = depth, when it's really just a matter of information overload. Assuming they are as big a set of assholes about respecs in STO as they were in Champions Online, I'm thinking this is a bad thing that's going to start biting them in the ass in the form of user complaints in about 3 weeks - right before the free month is up.

But with all that said, it's still not nearly as terrible as some have said. It's buggy as shit, horribly optimized and contains an excruciatingly slow, ugly and unplayable ground game. The only redeeming facet is the space combat, and it's certainly not enough to justify a subscription. It's a year from being ready for prime time as it should be, and it's an eternity from being the total Star Trek package the license could be.

[jakonovski]

Fuck, I finally got some new quests involving mostly ground combat and the game is just crashing and crashing and crashing and crashing. I think it's because the engine can't handle aoe effects affecting 5 guys at once. That's how it seems to go at least, I scan with my tricorder and the game chugs like I just blew up the world in Crysis and hello desktop (I have Phenom II x4 955BE and HD4890).

[Ghambit]

Tbh, the game was a lot more stable and playable during CB.  This current crop of complaints stems from some thing(s) just getting frakked up to all hell due to bad patching;  to the point that I wouldnt be surprised if they delayed release or had to shove out a miracle patch.  They just seem to be breaking things every day.

Also, they desperately need new loading screens.  Too many complaints about how loading times are too long.  The reason this happens is partly because of the matchmaking/autogrouping system.  BUT, there's nothing in the loading screens to inform you of this - so most people just restart the program or get frustrated thinking their game froze.  The other solution is improving the manual instance selection and making it more informative.  (sigh)

And, as bad as the aesthetics of combat are I still found it more entertaining than ChampO.  You can easily patch in better textures and animations, but the core system needs to be solid...  and this I believe they achieved - largely due to the efforts of Perpetual though.

[Montague]

So I got in and played about an hour or so over the weekend. Just long enough to get through the achingly long tutorial and get desposited on the earth space station.

It's not terrible. The space combat has the barest kernels of a really cool single-player/multiplayer w/ lobbies and deathmatch/CTF/Assault game. If the space game were a little more fleshed out with a Battlefield 2 type of unlock system, it would kick major ass. The juggling of power distribution, speed, shields and special abilities is decent fun.

Holy fuck, the ground game is a facefucking disaster, though. What talentless shitbag creative director signed off on animation this bad? The character looks and feels like he is ice-skating at all times. Even with a Nvidia 9800, I get shittastic frame rates, worse than I got on Champions Online. Hell, it's worse than I get on Empire: Total War and that game makes my video card cry. I could turn all the options down, but I really shouldn't have to in this case, because it's not throwing anything up worth tuning the graphics for. The models are decent to shitty. The terrain isn't anything to write home about. But most importantly, EVERYTHING IS INSTANCED - which means you shouldn't be throwing more PC's at my computer than it can handle.

And worst of all, Cryptic needs to immediately guillotine every slapdick working in their UI department. Between this and Champions Online, they've single-handedly set back user interface design to pre-punch-card levels of bad. Maneuvering the metric fuckton of menu screens, chat boxes, dialog boxes and hotbars takes more effort than flipping beads on a goddamn abacus. They've also made the common mistake of thinking more options = depth, when it's really just a matter of information overload. Assuming they are as big a set of assholes about respecs in STO as they were in Champions Online, I'm thinking this is a bad thing that's going to start biting them in the ass in the form of user complaints in about 3 weeks - right before the free month is up.

But with all that said, it's still not nearly as terrible as some have said. It's buggy as shit, horribly optimized and contains an excruciatingly slow, ugly and unplayable ground game. The only redeeming facet is the space combat, and it's certainly not enough to justify a subscription. It's a year from being ready for prime time as it should be, and it's an eternity from being the total Star Trek package the license could be.

According to one of the devs on the "State Of The Game" thing the UI will get revamped before release.

I gotta admit even with all the problems I had in OB, I had loads of fun doing the patrol missions with open groups. The space battles are what's going to get my preorder. I even like the ground game mechanics, but yeah the animations are pure ass.

[jakonovski]

To add to the list, I haven't been getting any autogroups for two days now. It seems to be broken. I want to like this game so badly, but nothing works.

[ghost]

I think I will not be pulling my last Cryptic studios stunt and will wait before I impulse buy this at Target 2 days after it is out.

[Furiously]

Yea - I'm trying to resist.

[Modern Angel]

PvP is fun. No persistence or meaning, whatever. I'm 32. I can't catass to take over space anymore. Shit is fun.

[jakonovski]

Gahhhhh, now the scaling is also fucked. Autogroup doesn't work and I face ships I cannot destroy alone.

[Ratman_tf]

Gahhhhh, now the scaling is also fucked. Autogroup doesn't work and I face ships I cannot destroy alone.

I was in an autogroup last night. I don't remember the quest, it involved the Undine and Klingons  , we did the space battle, took out the transport scramblers and then beamed to the outpost. Shot up a bunch of Klingons, and when that was done, we all clicked "Beam out" and the game made us wait through the whole timer. When we finally did beam out, it skipped to the last step of the quest, and wouldn't register as mission complete when we blew up the Undine ship. I had to drop group and continue alone.

Luckily there were Klingon NPCs to help blow up the Undine ship, again, but it didn't inspire hope in the autogroup feature.

[UnSub]

Ultimately I think STO is just Trek enough and just fun enough to keep up a decent player base (let's say: sell 1m boxes and retain about 300k after six months). It certainly doesn't have the same kind of issues ChampO had at launch and the random mission generator exploration system at least adds to replayability.

However, I think the critical issue facing STO is going to be completely outside of Cryptic's control: the community. I can see the STO community becoming incredibly toxic and unfriendly to newb players within a very short space of time. The open mission / open team system is something I like, but it has the same issue that WAR's open team system had - no-one talks and everyone races towards the open loot (i.e. anomaly items). It's not a community building experience.

Unless US$300 in free money falls in my lap before launch, I'm not going to be picking this up at launch. The big gap for me is the lack of a diplomacy option.

[Tannhauser]

This game is buggy as fuck, but I just had a great time with two others on a mission involving both space and ground combat.  I was using my science officer skill to immobilize while my allies zapped them. 

I really really hope Cryptic gets their act together and puts out a miracle patch.  But this is Cryptic.

[Modern Angel]

Well, let's take as a given the premise (a well-reasoned one, I think) that CO ended up so content light because Cryptic got the Trek license deep in its development while also losing the Marvel license. They funneled all the money and dev time to STO rather than pouring it into an obvious stinker like CO. If that's true why should STO be as bad as CO? I should note here that my problem with CO was never really mechanics and was all about the lack of content.

[Malakili]

Well, let's take as a given the premise (a well-reasoned one, I think) that CO ended up so content light because Cryptic got the Trek license deep in its development while also losing the Marvel license. They funneled all the money and dev time to STO rather than pouring it into an obvious stinker like CO. If that's true why should STO be as bad as CO? I should note here that my problem with CO was never really mechanics and was all about the lack of content.

Because the Cryptic mode of development appears to be at this point to use their engine to put out shoddy MMOs that are full of shiny so they market well, sell tons of boxes to fund a new game to develop, and then any subs that stay with the old stuff is hopefully enough to make them a bit more profit on the side.

[Riggswolfe]

Holy fuck, the ground game is a facefucking disaster, though. What talentless shitbag creative director signed off on animation this bad? The character looks and feels like he is ice-skating at all times. Even with a Nvidia 9800, I get shittastic frame rates, worse than I got on Champions Online. Hell, it's worse than I get on Empire: Total War and that game makes my video card cry. I could turn all the options down, but I really shouldn't have to in this case, because it's not throwing anything up worth tuning the graphics for. The models are decent to shitty. The terrain isn't anything to write home about. But most importantly, EVERYTHING IS INSTANCED - which means you shouldn't be throwing more PC's at my computer than it can handle.

Unless something changed since Saturday that's not the game, that's the servers crying out for mercy. I have my settings maxed and the only time I've had issues is when the server is on the verge of a meltdown and my card is an Nvidia 8800

[Ghambit]

Looks like they finally realized it's time to buy more servers.  As shoddy as we may think the game is, damned thing is certainly blowing up.  They're gonna murder box sales regardless.

[Ratman_tf]

Guh. I'm level 6 and I can't find missions that are completable. They're all bugged.

[tmp]

Guh. I'm level 6 and I can't find missions that are completable. They're all bugged.

I just got into a cruiser after playing for couple of days and they seemed all work for me, really. A couple of them have a messed up design where if you don't click "Warp" button in mission progress dialogue you have no way anymore to warp to destination spot to proceed until you leave the system and then pick "continue mission" button once on the system map screen. Anything else seemed to work ok though, would occasionally just need a minute of patience for the server to catch up and switch between ship and humanoid form as needed.

[Modern Angel]

Because the Cryptic mode of development appears to be at this point to use their engine to put out shoddy MMOs that are full of shiny so they market well, sell tons of boxes to fund a new game to develop, and then any subs that stay with the old stuff is hopefully enough to make them a bit more profit on the side.

We have data point, not data pointS. Maybe they are. Maybe CO was a one-off. All I know is that they've already announced more stuff for the first couple months than CO's entirety. Again, I'm mostly neutral on this... I sort of like the game but I'm not seeing a year's worth of material here. I'm just saying that CO may be the outlier when we look back on it rather than representative of what they intend to do with all their games.

[Shatter]

Because the Cryptic mode of development appears to be at this point to use their engine to put out shoddy MMOs that are full of shiny so they market well, sell tons of boxes to fund a new game to develop, and then any subs that stay with the old stuff is hopefully enough to make them a bit more profit on the side.

All I know is that they've already announced more stuff for the first couple months than CO's entirety. Again, I'm mostly neutral on this...

Look...here's a yummy carrot....bad boy you have to wait for the carrot....just stare at the carrot...

[01101010]

Don't have any clue why, but I am actually enjoying the beta aside from the bugs - kinda like camping. The "everything is instanced" somehow works here and doesn't chew up my evening like other stuff. Perhaps its because the holy trilogy of MMORPG-dom doesn't exist at the moment (if it ever does).

I was hard pressed to grab a science vessel after being tempted to take a cruiser... I just couldn't see myself enjoying the piggish nature of the handling on the cruiser, though I have nothing to reference it.

Now about the tool tips from arbitrary land...

[Shatter]

Don't have any clue why, but I am actually enjoying the beta aside from the bugs - kinda like camping. The "everything is instanced" somehow works here and doesn't chew up my evening like other stuff. Perhaps its because the holy trilogy of MMORPG-dom doesn't exist at the moment (if it ever does).

I was hard pressed to grab a science vessel after being tempted to take a cruiser... I just couldn't see myself enjoying the piggish nature of the handling on the cruiser, though I have nothing to reference it.

Now about the tool tips from arbitrary land...

See I played beta for a while and I can see/understand the short term enjoyment, its the long term I have doubts of.  I went into STO like any other MMO, expecting an MMO but it plays out more like a single player game with a splash of multiplayer.  Do you think enough people will like it that they will stick with it long term...Im just not seeing it. 

[01101010]

See I played beta for a while and I can see/understand the short term enjoyment, its the long term I have doubts of.  I went into STO like any other MMO, expecting an MMO but it plays out more like a single player game with a splash of multiplayer.  Do you think enough people will like it that they will stick with it long term...Im just not seeing it. 

No clue. Its basically a lobby with a bunch of dungeons tacked on. Then again, its space and you get a space ship, that might be the new shiny I like.

[taolurker]

See I played beta for a while and I can see/understand the short term enjoyment, its the long term I have doubts of.  I went into STO like any other MMO, expecting an MMO but it plays out more like a single player game with a splash of multiplayer.  Do you think enough people will like it that they will stick with it long term...Im just not seeing it. 

No clue. Its basically a lobby with a bunch of dungeons tacked on. Then again, its space and you get a space ship, that might be the new shiny I like.

PVP?

[UnSub]

Yes.

Haven't tried it myself, but read some favourable reviews of both ship and ground PvP on the beta forums. Plus plenty who hated it.

I think the instancing works here because it cuts down the travel time and fits the Trek 'feel'. Christ, there are people complaining it takes too long to get around sector space, so I can only imagine if STO had longer travel times between missions.

[Lantyssa]

Sector space feels slow because there's nothing there.  You're moving in a void with the only points of reference being a couple of large systems which look tiny due to distance and a complete lack of perspective.

[01101010]

Sector space feels slow because there's nothing there.  You're moving in a void with the only points of reference being a couple of large systems which look tiny due to distance and a complete lack of perspective.

Indeed... nothing but a big shiny 3d map to move your piece so you can enter a dungeon. I never thought about the instancing being inherent in Trek itself, but come to realize that is exactly what the shows were.

I actually found myself grinding last night on those secure sector quests Sulu gives you. Only it didn't feel grindy until you cleared the zone "public" quest and had to wait for the 5 minute reset. As for the actual missions, there is an interesting value to not knowning what you are getting yourself into when you drop into a zone on those. I did one in which I had to kill some bird of prey patrols, beam down, run around defusing stuff, enter a building to free some dumb people, beam back up, and fight more klingon ships. Interesting chain of events. Some lead you on a long involved journey, others are go scan this, or beam down and find that. Interesting mix.

-and for the record, I am glossing over the wonky, buggy things that annoy the piss outta me... but choosing to highlight the things that caught my eye.

[Montague]

Noticed something very interesting last night:

I got the patrol Vulcan sector mission and the last waypoint was a system called Bentran (or something like that). Well as it turned out I went to the wrong system and finished a mission at one called Rentran instead. Annoyed, I went to the right system and then got another patrol mission. Turns out one of the mission goals was to go to Rentran, and since I was already there it's showing as complete in my mission log. FINALLY, somebody did something about the retarded "go kill Hogger for the third time" quest mechanic.

[Ghambit]

I really think once the social areas come online that a lot of what's "missing" in this game will be found.  Being able to beam down to Risa, DS9, and invite people onto your bridge are huge gamechangers imo.

Also, it's pretty hard to challenge yourself in the beta currently because deep space is locked out.  No more making a Fleet and charging at the dominion.
There's just a helluva lot missing in this OB.  It's really just an intro.

[Khaldun]

Expect much of that to stay missing. I don't believe they have a magic content patch in the wings any more than any other kind of magic patch. With CO, they really showed that they didn't even understand the need for a social area or place, except for one bar that was basically entirely for people with a superhero fetish to cyber in.