I bought STO and lasted about 1 month.  What killed it for me was the closed in feeling in space. I was hoping for a more Jumpgate or EvE like feel, even if its closed in there was a feeling of exploration.

I know its free now and I am just looking for a side game to have fun in and not treat it as my main. 

Is it dead with no players or does it have anything going for it? Well worth enough to play casually?

Been curious about this myself.  I played for about 3 weeks or so when it launched but was hugely disappointed.  I loved the look of everything, but it never felt implemented right.  Ships were great, but I couldn't move in them, the bridge did nothing.  Combat in space was repetitious and on the ground was a clunky disaster.

Has this changed or bettered at all?  I'd like to see some insights into this as well before deciding wether or not to dip my toe in for another attempt.

I have always considered the STO good for a month played casually for a PVE oriented Trek theme park but that’s it. There is some fun to be had leveling but no real end game. They have improved content since launch but it’s still the same game at heart and very PVE oriented. PVP is pretty much dead now (I actually miss Gozer.) Play Federation and worry about the Klingons later if at all. Many of the launch bugs in exploration missions are still present. There isn’t a huge player base but they upped the numbers in each shard to make it feel like several people are online around you. It’s not EVE and it will always feel small due to the design choices. Remember, the Cryptic engine and toolkit were originally developed with the idea of making a console MMO (Marvel Comics) for the Xbox before it all fell through.

At last play through they had upped the drop rate on lock boxes to a point that the adventure maps were littered with them but the odds of any worthy reward were so low that people just left them. Clutter everywhere. Your most fun high end ships are strictly buy to play now but you can grind dilithium to get around that.

STFs are not well designed and can be very frustrating to grind in a PUG. I don’t say that lightly. I actually feel design issues make them un-fun in a bad way and lead to a lot of community fights that can sour your game. There are jerks that will intentionally ruin a PUG run. I advise you to find a fleet to run them with first thing to keep playing worthwhile and not a hair pulling experience. STFs do favor escorts over other ships as its all about DPS to beat a time limit and escorts are tough enough to survive without cruisers or science ships on the field.

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Originally posted by chryses
I bought STO and lasted about 1 month.  What killed it for me was the closed in feeling in space. I was hoping for a more Jumpgate or EvE like feel, even if its closed in there was a feeling of exploration.

I know its free now and I am just looking for a side game to have fun in and not treat it as my main. 

Is it dead with no players or does it have anything going for it? Well worth enough to play casually?

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I don't think the game is dead, as you will see plenty of players in sector space and on Starbases. You may not want to PUG the STF's though, try to find a fleet for doing those. I have heard nothing but horror stories or complaints about pug groups on the STO forums regarding pug stf groups.

The closed off feeling of space is still there, in that the current sectors in the game are still gated and not seamless. You have to click a "warp to this sector" button, even though my cruiser was traveling at warp 10 anyway.

If you had any story missions left, you can still play those. There used to be a good amount of time gated content, in that you could only play specific missions at certain times of the day, or week. I am not sure if they fixed or changed that now. You can play any number of foundry created missions, authored by some really talented people. It's just a shame that a lot of these foundry missions surpass the quality of Cryptic missions, and are made in a fraction of the time it takes Cryptic to release a mission. Not a shame for the foundry authors, but a shame for Cryptic. The professionals with the more advanced mission creation dev tools create inferior experiences to the ones created by the amateurs with less advanced tools.

As a side game, STO would be decent. Just don't expect to much from it, and you should have some fun for a little bit.

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Originally posted by afhn2110
Basically all instanced, pvp sucks....sad to see a world like Star Trek so limitied....

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I thought pvp was on the chopping block after gozer left.

Originally posted by chryses

I bought STO and lasted about 1 month.  What killed it for me was the closed in feeling in space. I was hoping for a more Jumpgate or EvE like feel, even if its closed in there was a feeling of exploration.

I know its free now and I am just looking for a side game to have fun in and not treat it as my main. 

Is it dead with no players or does it have anything going for it? Well worth enough to play casually?

    As a side game it's perfect imo i play from time to time and it fun and yes there players plenty for it to be fun .

Originally posted by chryses

I bought STO and lasted about 1 month.  What killed it for me was the closed in feeling in space. I was hoping for a more Jumpgate or EvE like feel, even if its closed in there was a feeling of exploration.

I know its free now and I am just looking for a side game to have fun in and not treat it as my main. 

Is it dead with no players or does it have anything going for it? Well worth enough to play casually?

Nothing has changed in terms of your first experience. If you doubt it, download it. It's still as deep as a puddle.

Thanks all, I will download it, I keep looking at it on my STEAM game list.  I just wanted to check that its not a complete ghost town.  Just looking for laser action when I get bored with fantasy.  Playing Skyrim and bought GW2, just feel a bit 'shield and sword' overload!

Still think its up there with SWTOR as one of my biggest dissappointments though.  I am from the age group where games like Elite and Privateer were being hammered. 

I just want a sci-fi MMO with a big universe feel (EvE and Jumpgate are highly instanced but it still feels open).

Really wanted STO to be a game where you could go off into deep deep space. 

Oh well, I will log in and check it out.

Thanks

Sector space no longer that closed-in feel it had at launch because they... uh... added a toggle to allow you to remove the astrometrics gridlines while traveling.  So now it's wide open!  

Except it's, well, not.

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Originally posted by ThreeSixty
Sector space no longer that closed-in feel it had at launch because they... uh... added a toggle to allow you to remove the astrometrics gridlines while traveling.  So now it's wide open!  

Except it's, well, not.

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I liked that addition, but I knew sector space was still the same-old same-old. I wouldnt mind sector space the way it is so much if they would just get their sense of scale right. Star ships should not be the size of planets. I don't want to feel like I am flying across an astrometrics map.

Originally posted by Mondo80
I like the space combat, it is a good mix of twitch and tactical, good bridge officer abilities and a well setup ship are manditory.

 The combat is something I actually did like.  As one poster has stated, I thought the scale of ships were wrong. I would have preferred a large expanse so people seem very distant and just speed up the ships so it doesn't get boring.

I always feel a good space game needs exploration 100%. I mean the type that makes you really search.  I still remember flying for ages into the middle of space and finding good roids in Jumpgate. I also stuck at EVE for another year when they launched the exploration patch.  Star Trek should be exploration mostly and I still find it weird how they boxed it up. 

No matter, I am looking forward to checking it out again.  At least I can do something in 1-2 hours...unlike EvE

Originally posted by chryses

I always feel a good space game needs exploration 100%. [snip]  At least I can do something in 1-2 hours...unlike EvE

I guess it depends on what you expect from STO.  Not sure if anyone actually answered your original question point-blank, which was 'is it worth downloading' to which I'd say, yes, absolutely it is, because it costs you nothing but time and a little hard drive space.  So I'd say why not?  Uninstalling is free too!

A space game with exploration is almost certainly going to be a 'sandbox' (and I don't want to veer off into that topic here too far), where you can find or create something new, perhaps claim it or even just name it, and it's now maybe even part of the persistent gameworld/lore.  STO was never remotely designed that way.  The gameplay itself, especially the space game, is not strictly "WoW in space" - but the core gear-based concept behind the game certainly is.  It's a Themepark through and through.  As my fellow lifetime sub buddy says "we didn't get the Star Trek game we wanted, but we got the one we deserved."  He's somewhat bitter over what his lifetime sub bought him.

You're right about the time investment though.  You don't have to mortgage your soul to make a little progress in STO in short play windows.  It means the game is far more shallow but far more accessible.  All depends on what people want out of their time, I suppose.

tl;dr  STO may not be a good space game, but it is a free space game, and free is a hard price to beat.

This game has potential.. but some places it feels a bit like a beta unfortunately. I´m keeping it, it might get really good in a year or two, the basics are there and it is worth the try.