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Originally posted by Dicehunter
Played when it was pay to play and havent touched it since, i have a rule about not touching F2P :P , whats the population like, content ?

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STO is a fairly "meh" experience once you get into the meat of the game play. Nothing significant has really changed since your last play session. Oh, there are fleet starbases now that require ludicrous amounts of Dilithium to upgrade. The F2P model has made it even more of a "milk-the-player base model" in that anything useful is placed in the c store.

C-store items seems to be what Cryptic considers content these days, as most of the additions to the game end up in the C-store or in a lock-box. I don't necessarily like how much they put into the C store in relation to what goes into the game for free. And tell me how trading Dilithium makes sense in the Star Trek world? You want actual story content with a point to doing it? Your best bet is foundry missions, which Cryptic seems to rely on more and more.

The population would seem to be high as the sharded structure of the game presents the illusion of a high population by limiting the player cap in any one area. Sure, it looks like there are a lot of people playing because cryptic crams them all together in low population shard.

If you have an itch for space combat then this game is pretty good in that regard. If you want a genuine Star Trek experience, then look elsewhere. Cryptic has effectively ignored the point of Star Trek and what made it so appealing and important to the Sci-fi genre and has taken the IP to be used as an online store with a Star Trek skin attached.

They published a rather lengthy State of the Game today, which gives a good idea of the recent changes and additions to the game, as well as the future direction they are taking.

http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=689581

In addition to the hiring they've been doing over the last year, they've recently picked up some people from both 38 Studios and Paragon.

Regarding the population, the single-server architecture they've always had makes the game always feel well populated.  There does seem to be plenty of people still playing.

Overall, the game has improved a lot since launch, in my opinion, and is headed in the right direction for the future.

I got into it completely out of the blue, mainly because it was F2P.

To be honest, it was fun for a while, but then I switched to GW2.

Now I don't know what it used to be before, so can't really compare but I had a few nice runs here and there.

Lots of people all over, but I don't really think it's anything special.

The ground missions are particularly repetitive and tiresome.

Well, at least it's free - download and see what you think :P

You know, I had a blast playing through it a few times on each side to cap.  I'm not really an endgame kind of guy, so I was definitely put off by what is the fastest leveling that I can remember.  So either doing STFs or doing the same (quite literally repeating almost any mission in the game over and over and over to gear up myself and my crew) missions was not really my thing - it burned me out fast.  I was enjoying PvP until they did the P2W console thing.  I haven't PvP'd in forever though, so I have no idea what's going on with that currently.  If not for the Foundry, I'm not sure that I would play it every now and again like I do...

...then again, it could be the music.  I like the music.  Hrmmm...

Having PvP'd again over the weekends, I find myself wanting to make the argument that it's been swallowed in the P2W quagmire.  While I was on an alt in a lowbie Kerrat, some folks were trolling a guy in one of the 50's to get his heap out of there and go buy a real ship.  It's kind of sad how it's about the various c-store ships and the consoles...

...still though, it's hard to really make the P2W argument when winning really doesn't matter.

Folks are still doing their pseudo AFK who cares type of play in Arenas, C&H, and Kerrat.  They're there for their 3 fights and the Dil.  They don't care if they win or lose.  They just need to be there...

Originally posted by Dicehunter
Played when it was pay to play and havent touched it since, i have a rule about not touching F2P :P , whats the population like, content ?

I picked this up when it went F2P on Steam and i will say that i enjoyed the run through to L50 but the game does lack a certain something in direction so when i hit cap i had a sort of lost feeling and as has already been touched on in this thread, if you want any of the 'cool' stuff you will have to pay for it.

The one thing i did find really annoying (and the reason i haven't been back in a while) was the constant not so subtle prodding to spend money. Details are a bit hazy as it was a while back, but basically there was an event where boxes dropped that could have special items in, but of course you had to spend money to open them. It wouldn't have been so bad if just one or two of these boxes dropped every now and then but the things were dropping like rain and for some reason it just really niggled me so i put it away for a bit and haven't been back since.

On topic though i found that the population was pretty healthy and for the most part helpful so i would say that if you enjoyed it before it can't do any harm to have it on your PC as a 'go to when bored' alternative to whatever else you are playing.

I enjoy logging in every now and again to run up some Doff missions. Is a pretty fun diversion actually. Been level capped for a loooooooong time and I don't raid so.................

Try it. You might like it.

Originally posted by Zekiah
Do you mean Lockbox Online?

lol

+1

Originally posted by Fendel84M
How is the space stuff? I'm looking for something more than swtor but a bit less than Eve I just don't have the dedication for a game like that right now.

I used to love earth and beyond for reference.

Space stuff? It's the final frontier I guess :)

I'm not familiar with E&B, so I can't make a compraison, but in STO space is a huge part of gameplay. Since you play a captain, you can command any kind of ships, and can switch betwen them (basically switching roles for space combat). Builds are the same, it's somewhat matters how you train your captain, but it has bigger importance how you equip your actual ship and how you train your bridge officers to the ship.

Or if you mean "space stuff" as control and handling... you can warp into sector space, travel to every quadrant of the galaxy, exploring clusters, you can transwarp, etc. It's not 'true' 3D, you can't do a full loop for example, but it handles pretty well. Sometimes in a bigger fight it's even better to have a fixed up-n-down, easier to navigate :)

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Originally posted by niceguy3978

I have a question, and I don't really think it is important enough for its own topic.  Do you have to do the land missions?  Is it possible to go through the game only in space?  Aside from story would one be missing anything by doing this?  I was in beta waaay back and really despised the land/planet based missions.

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Definitely you can. You can either lvl up through encounters or do fleet ops.

I am not a big fan of ground combat as well but it got definitely improved since release.

IMO the bottom line is that STO is fine for a one month adventure through the old content played casually and without spending a dime. It is not a long term MMO to invest yourself in and to be frank outside of costuming it doesn’t represent Trek as an IP well anymore. The game has changed a lot since launch. I would say that it was at its most fun to play point just prior to the take over by PWE. It’s becoming more and more like PWE’s other games if you understand.

PVE has taken a turn purely toward grinds and the Trek story experience has been dropped outside of the old content. New content is either Zen Shop or about grinding various token currencies and dilithium for gear or fleet projects. The problem here is that there is nothing challenging enough or fun enough to warrant the sort of grind they are requiring of players for the rewards on tap.

Everything you do in the game boils down to a DPS race and the tactical class is survivable and versatile enough not to need support classes like engineers or sci officers in PVE activities. It doesn’t matter what ship you want to fly as you can have a pal train BOFFs where needed. Playing anything else (aside from an alt for kicks) will handicap you or your team in the time it takes to grind levels, tokens, or in meeting the optional objectives for top end missions. Understand that the Klingon faction is now unsupported and only retained as an option for play.

PVP is a pay to win activity dominated by pre-made teams with Zen Shop consoles or ships. 95% of the current player base does not bother with it per DEV quotes. However, it also dictates game re-balancing in patches.

Crafting is worthless as you can buy the same consoles you could craft on the exchange cheaper than what it would cost you to craft them by hand with zero time or grind investment. The high end crafted Aegis set has fallen behind the times and isn’t worth it at all now outside of cosmetic appearances.

It should be noted that in game currency costs (dilithium) are being raised to prevent you from saving them to buy Zen (shop credit.) The goal is to get you to spend real money for Zen to buy those in game currency within the game’s internal exchange to make it possible to do things in a reasonable time frame.

I used to want to love this game for blending space and ground action but it has become a shallow and hollow thing relying on image to hook you into spending cash for no real return on the dollar. I really hate writing that too man.