Hmm.. Mmorpg.com hosts contests for STO and now magically they re-review the game and it gets a 7.4?

Its nice that it may finally start getting the developer attention it needs but I'm afraid it will be a case of too little too late. They may be able to keep the game afloat for a while but it will never be the game that they hoped it would be. Maybe they should take over SWG.. not like they could make THAT game worse... right...?

Pat has done an outstanding job in this re-look of STO.

Early on in the review, he makes it clear, again, reiterating that Cryptic can only do so much witn the vast Star Trek Universe and that, sadly, will perpetually leave us always wanting more -- especially if we want to playing anything but from the Federation side.

It will be interesting to see if STO can actually move beyond it's self-inflicted limits (or the actual limits that can be ever surpassed) to deliver more of what we were hoping for in an MMO featuring the Star Trek universe.

I have friends that play. They say that The more money you pay them the better your character! So have your Credit Card Ready!

Originally posted by Shukano

Hmm.. Mmorpg.com hosts contests for STO and now magically they re-review the game and it gets a 7.4?

Its nice that it may finally start getting the developer attention it needs but I'm afraid it will be a case of too little too late. They may be able to keep the game afloat for a while but it will never be the game that they hoped it would be. Maybe they should take over SWG.. not like they could make THAT game worse... right...?

 Take over swg. LMAO

Originally posted by kennethk

Originally posted by depain

I don't care how the game has changed...

Their constant use of MicroTransactions, especially in a collector world like Star Trek, has dubbed them as heartless blackness.

I'll never play a cryptic game again...

 

Might as well never play another MMo again, as MicroTransactions are being used by nearly every major title now in some manner and it is the wave of the future sadly enough.

 I have to say yes to this. BUT! wow you can buy mounts and aion its pets FE it's pets and a pice on non combat gear,

sto you can buy races that are better then the standard, buy ships that are better then the standard.

It like I said have your credit card handy! for the umber ship and captian!

Originally posted by Kellic

 

Good rereview.  I disagree with ground combat though.  While its gotten better the damn camera is still driving me fracking nuts.  To the point that I actively try and avoid ground combat if possible.  I'm sick of coming over a rise on a planet and having the damn camera stay behind it while I'm getting pounded by enemy fire.  Speaking of which it would be nice if the damn targets I select prior to getting into the fray on the ground would stick, instead of switching to whatever is the closest threat.  Sorry but I'm going to take out the Targ Handler before I go after a plain average warrior.

Then there is space combat.  I don't know who designs the random encounters, but I want to punt them in their nads.  I'm so damn sick of jumping into an encounter only to have a half dozen ships or more right on top of you immediately.  It would be one thing if I was ready to go, but when you jump in all your systems take a few seconds to stabilize, which includes weapons and shields.  Take this evening.  Jump in.  2 D'deridex class ships, 3 birds of prey, and at least 2 other light cruisers.   Jump in and BAM.  7 ships firing all at once with plasma shots coming in.  Now ignoring the fact that in real life you are damn well going to know what you are jumping into when you come out of warp.  Its simply a freaking matter of simply having a balanced game.  It doesn’t help matters when you die, you respawn right in the middle of this damn **** storm.  Its been enough to make me drop off the game for weeks, in a couple cases months.  Cryptic still has a **** load of work to do to get this thing to a level that doesn’t feel less then polished. 

Oh man, don't get me started about those Space Encounters, but the thing that sucks the worst is that Cryptic knows about it and continues to do nothing while building the items in the C-store and for the dude that said might as well as never play another MMO because microtransactions are the norm,, well only the the norm for games that used to be the shit and now aren't or games that never had it..

Good to see things are improving.

Actually, I think if they did make Klingons more lie Monster Play I think it would be awesome! 

If we consider that "Star trek" as a complete product then I suppose Star-trek IS the federation, It wasnt really until Deep-space nine and later series of TNG that Trek even got other factions involved.  So its no wonder they could never completly and properly fill even the Klingons faction.

I used to be a massive star-trek fan, we loved star-trek because of the un-expected, the new races, the bizzare sitautions, but when I now compare Star-trek to Sci-series like Babylon 5, Stargate even Far-scape that had proper, continuous, integrated and epic storys that spans every series then Star-trek, actually, is pretty poor!  And I find myself getting less and less excited about it anymore.

I dont just think that cryptics recent developments with "STO" are too late, I think its too late for a Star-trek MMO all together!

Based on the number of comments, STO can still generate a lot of buzz both positive and negative.  That is bound to translate into sales and revenue.  So not to shabby for a half baked game.

Originally posted by boincman

Based on the number of comments, STO can still generate a lot of buzz both positive and negative.  That is bound to translate into sales and revenue.  So not to shabby for a half baked game.

 Hate to dissappoint but any buzz generated by this game is due to the Star Trek not the Online or the Cryptic that appears in the corner.

It's interesting how many uninformed comments followed this article. Pat did a great job with his review. I really did not know what to think about this game until I downloaded the demo. The level of customization of race, costume, and ship is awesome. And the integration of space and ground combat is really good for immersion into the mission and storyline. Unfortunately the demo only gives a small sampling from what the whole game is all about. In my opinion they should let this game go free-to-play like Champion's Online is doing. I also play LoTRO and the ability to earn additional content in-game or pay for it is really awesome. It sounds as if Stahl is leaning that way anyway and if it works for Turbine then it can work for Cryptic.

I realy do not think that anyone has said that the character customization or the graphics were bad.  Now as a player who has been playing since open (paid) Beta and also a lifer I would think that I am well informed.  The space and ground combat is great for the first month, but after that you realize that they are the same exact missions for every level and after you have done the same exact mission 40 or 50 times you do not even have to think to do them.  I can not tell you how many times I had to just log off right in the middle of a daily mission just because I did not want to waste my time doing it since after VA the only thing left is the repeat daily missions to get emblems.  When Cryptic said that they were going to add their version of the Peace Corp missions everyone thought wow! finaly something that might actually be inline with what Star Trek actualy was, only to find out that the majority of the peace missions were Aid the Planet missions.  The heavily instanced aspect of the game makes it more of a single player game than anything else.  With no ingame voice chat available for when you do team up everyone still does their own thing unless everyone is on Vent, then you have say hold on and let me get the info I nedd so we can talk..  The lack of content for the Klingon's is unacceptable, no wonder they talk so much smack during PvP because that is the only thing they have to do besides a few recycled Fed missions.  Now if you want a pro-biased opinion of the game you can go to their official forums where you will get, we are looking into it, we are working on it, it is in the works etc. because you will not find too many negative posts on their forums because the CDF and the devs will see that they are taken down/spamed or goad you into posting something that violated their policy so you can get banned.  However, if you want or are happy with a game that a 5 year old can make VA all by himself (and he can't even read yet), well he did just turn 6 on the 3rd and it did take him 9 months to do it, then more power to you.  I too, even as a lifer wishes that this game goes F2P sooner than later, that way I won't feel so bad when they add more items to the C-store and no or little content.

Don't forget the horrible quest tracking. I was one of the frist to get the game when it came out and I had the collectors edition. (sigh) I gave the game a month worth of my life, but the fact that trying to go back into your captian's log to look at quests, or even track them, was just about impossible. If they fixed this then great, but that was one of my biggest issues.

Originally posted by PatrickG01

I'm going to refrain from any detailed discussions about my article. It generated a range of opinions. I knew it would. If Cryptic can make good on Klingons, I'll happily reverse my assessment. They've previewed some nice content in the past few days.

This review is a six month re-review. All games are eligible for one if someone is interested in re-reviewing one.

I based my score on the numeric breakdown for MMOs this site has reviewed in the past. Here's my score breakdown, for those interested:

 

Graphics: 9

Sound: 7

Role-Playing: 9

Value: 9

Fun: 7

Community: 2

Performance/Lag: 8

Customer Service: 8

Overall: 7.4

 

That's how I arrive at a 7.4 overall.

 

I'd rather you draw your own conclusions about me or my article. You're absolutely welcome to disagree. I'm here because I wanted to illuminate where the score came from... and elaborate that much of the article was written awhile back, before the recent wave of Klingon related statements and feedback. At that point, especially, I felt Cryptic had made a design choice to have two factions and had failed to justify it, leading to a pretty cataclysmic rift in the community that would not have occurred had they focused on one faction at a time. I remain somewhat skeptical about whether it was a wise decision for them to do it... But we'll see how that pans out in six months.

 

Thanks... and carry on!

 WOW how did I miss this story back when it was published?  Anyway...

Roleplay 9?  LOL.  How can a highly instanced game where you don't even share the same zone with everyone else and that actually has the stones to charge extra for some emotes rate a 9 here?

Value 9?  Ok...are we being punked here?  A half finished MMO that charges full AAA sub rate and has an extensive cash shop gets a 9 for value?  REALLY ?!?

Customer service 8? They lose 5 points just for telling those of us that dared to call them out on this steaming pile that "we just don't get it".

Cryptic will never see another dime from me and I will pop a cork on a fine adult beverage the day they close up shop. 

Originally posted by Burntvet

New review, same game.

Still half an MMO. A terrible adaption of the ST universe to an MMO.

More disappointing is that much of the dev energy goes into more crap for the C-shop. As opposed to finishing the second faction promised at launch.

Even though you can buy this game for around $10 for the box, all the content can still be played through in a month, thus making a sub fee on top of a non-cosmetic cash shop a poor value. (And yes, Cryptic sells significantly game affecting items in the C-store, a big no-no for many.)

Many of the other weaknesses of this game were not addressed in the "re-review". The game is plagued (and will always be) by a lot of lazy design choices (small instances, shallow combat, no real Z axis - yeah yeah, sure it is "coming", pathetically weak exploration system) Cryptic made in order to get this game done in 24 months on a low budget.

I don't care what the rating is, re-review or not, the game is still not worth playing or paying for, on the back of Cryptics broken promises.

Better this game fall and another developer get the IP.

 

LOL! Wait what??  They still haven't finished the Klingon side??  LMAO.   I knew it. I knew it.

Originally posted by Darth_Osor

Originally posted by PatrickG01

I'm going to refrain from any detailed discussions about my article. It generated a range of opinions. I knew it would. If Cryptic can make good on Klingons, I'll happily reverse my assessment. They've previewed some nice content in the past few days.

This review is a six month re-review. All games are eligible for one if someone is interested in re-reviewing one.

I based my score on the numeric breakdown for MMOs this site has reviewed in the past. Here's my score breakdown, for those interested:

 

Graphics: 9

Sound: 7

Role-Playing: 9

Value: 9

Fun: 7

Community: 2

Performance/Lag: 8

Customer Service: 8

Overall: 7.4

 

That's how I arrive at a 7.4 overall.

 

I'd rather you draw your own conclusions about me or my article. You're absolutely welcome to disagree. I'm here because I wanted to illuminate where the score came from... and elaborate that much of the article was written awhile back, before the recent wave of Klingon related statements and feedback. At that point, especially, I felt Cryptic had made a design choice to have two factions and had failed to justify it, leading to a pretty cataclysmic rift in the community that would not have occurred had they focused on one faction at a time. I remain somewhat skeptical about whether it was a wise decision for them to do it... But we'll see how that pans out in six months.

 

Thanks... and carry on!

 WOW how did I miss this story back when it was published?  Anyway...

Roleplay 9?  LOL.  How can a highly instanced game where you don't even share the same zone with everyone else and that actually has the stones to charge extra for some emotes rate a 9 here?

Value 9?  Ok...are we being punked here?  A half finished MMO that charges full AAA sub rate and has an extensive cash shop gets a 9 for value?  REALLY ?!?

Customer service 8? They lose 5 points just for telling those of us that dared to call them out on this steaming pile that "we just don't get it".

Cryptic will never see another dime from me and I will pop a cork on a fine adult beverage the day they close up shop. 

 If it comes to people accusing mmorpg being in the pocket of any particular dev, if they said it was Cryptic I would be inclined to believe it.  They seem to always find a way to keep it splashed across the main page, this re-review which was done a few months ago with no really new content added and the fact that from what I see criticism of this game can tend to bring retribution sometimes.

And I agree that alot of those scores are so inflated it would take someone without hands on experience to believe what they say.  How do you rate a game a 9 on role play when you would have to spend (lot's) of money just to use most of the roleplay features by visiting the cash shop?

I'm enjoying it a lot right now.

I'm deliberately avoiding pew pew gameplay, running a science/exploration team with heavy doses of Diplomatic missions, so far it's pretty good and still fun, you can for the most part avoid pew pew grind and when going down the "seek out new life etc etc" path if and when you do get into a battle in space it feels like an event.

Anyway yeah, STO getting better all the time, once they get the user generated content running smoothly I could see this game blossoming, hardcore Trek fans writing missions for me?

Yes please. ^^

Update this review please. Season Two? lol Welcome to 3 months ago.