I have played on and off since 2005.  I always love jumping in the first few months but then it feels like a second job.  PI was what killed me off this last time.  Logging in every 5 hours and setting extractors was just silly and doing it for any lomger time periods didnt seem to be worth it in materials produced.

You also can not seem to just jump in and have fun.  You jump in, find a roaming gang, grab a ship and outfit it, fly all over and hope to find some PVP.  0.0 blob warfare is no fun and the lag introduced in dominion kills off what little fun it had.  Then there is the part where you can work hard for three years and have some scumbag rip apart everything you did simply because he is a teabagger.  BOB, GOON's and UK all found out how one simple a$$hat can ruin years of hard work.  You can not even mine in empire anymore safely.  It is almost like a galactic crime simulator. 

The C-Store!  That is scary.

It seemed fun for the time I played it but I purchased STO and know that most of Cryptics games are fun at first but short on content later.  At one time I was actually thinking of buying this and playing for a few months and then I remembered how much I hate the C-Store and paying a little more each time something was released in the game.  If it had not been for STO, I probably would have purchased this game based on the three days I played it.

Originally posted by Sevenwind

 You said, "If you continue to support Cryptics business model you will eventually see it grow and the good games you play like City of Heroes will all be gone in favor of crap like STO." This is why I argued NCSOFT was doing it to CoH/X long before the cstore came along. With that statement are you not arguing that if you support games with a cstore style model more games will come out like that? If it's not then I misread it.

As for the second part, while I do not agree with it I do think that if future games that are trying to stay P2P and will be a niche game they will need a store like the cstore because the population will not be enough to sustain it or just barely able to sustain it. There is just to many MMOs out there and with the pace going F2P, I think that is the route most will have to take if they want to remain P2P. Plus those items in the cstore is not "content in the sense I'm aruging you NEED to pay for. There is nothing in that cstore you HAVE to have to enjoy STO or CO. If they offer an expansion on the cstore later on then it better live up to the term expansion in MMO terms. That's my opinion.

 Just to clear this up.  I dont play CoH and I am not very familiar with it.  I mentioned it as a good game because the original post I was responding to stated they play CoH as their serious game and STO just casually.  Poor choice on my part since I was not familiar with the game.  There are a lot of similarities between CoH and the new Cryptic games but with the history Cryptic shares with them, it is to be expected. 

I think you are stretching things by implying STO was ever designed to be a "niche" game.  Even Dan Stahl has called it a AAA title several times.  I do see your point and I agree that having some niche games using this model would be ok.  I would like to see Neocron adapt somehting like this and use the money to keep improving it or to help them create a new Neocron.  Neocron is a niche but Star Trek is one of the greatest IP's available.  I agree with you that CoH and CO are niche games and I dont have an issue with them using this model.

There will be people that like STO, there are people into everything but statistically speaking, the chances are the average person will not like this game.  I base that on the low sub numbers (in the bottom 10% according to MMOdata.com) and the universally poor reviews. 

Maybe it would be a better approach if you guys listed the things you like about the game and put a disclaimer in to warn people of portions you feel are not up to par?  Something like, if you like PvE ship combat its very fun for me but dont expect much from the crafting or Klingon faction.  I think a lot of the trolling/attacking is based on both sides only focusing on their view and not being honest about the entire content.  If the fans conceeded that the game has some serious issues and the haters conceeded that some parts were ok, the world of forums would be a more useful place.

The game does have some fun content, I really enjoyed some of the episodes but it didnt have anything else to hold me.

Zap,

In an earlier post you said that people should come up with their own conclusions and thats right to an extent but...  Informed consumers read reviews of products and factor that in before making a purchase.  The reviews of STO average a 6 out of 10 and thats not from haters, thats from magazine and gaming sites, NOT people who hate Cryptic.  There is a reason the game has earned the 60% score and it is NOT because everyone hates Cryptic.

The game has issues, real issues.  Cryptics business model has issues and so does their level of game development.  These guys have put out two MMO's and one was based on a top 5 IP and both the games have less than 100k in subs according to MMOdata.com.  Sub-100k in subs is NOT a successful game.  I dont understand how you can ask people to purchase the game to make an opinion when the reviews and most of the players have already made it clear the game is not that good.  Do you honestly feel people should ignore the large amount of data that indicates the game is not very good?

I feel you homie, I'm a lifer too.  I was very busy at work and did not have time to play more than a few hours of beta so I took the chance.  I rolled the dice and I lost.  Some days you eat the bear and some days the bear eats you.  The day I purchased my lifetime sub, the bear ate me. 

Another thing about Cryptic that makes them and their business model greedy is that the original plans for all three of their MMO's was designed around selling new content.  When they tried this with the first game CO, the response was so negative that they had to scrap it and they fired the community manager and made him the scapegoat.  That was the plan all along, in addition to the box sales, the sub and the micros. 

Originally posted by Sevenwind

 

 So when NCSOFT added packs to their CoH/X way before Cryptic did it with CO/STO it's ok?

http://www.cityofheroes.com/buy_now/products/buy_city_of_heroes.html

Kinda sounds like a double standard. I bought the good vs evil item pack in 2007 long before c-store controversy. No one threw a whine fest as big as they do with the current c-store. So if the cstore now sold crap in packs it would be ok?

You have one poster in this thread who "said" they quit COH because it was turning into Cryptic cstore. Well from my experience it was that LONG before cstore ever came around. They even admitted they bought a few packs because they liked it. It wasn't a NEED in the packs to play COH, no it was pure WANT. Sounds kinda hypocritical to me.

 I dont understand what you are trying to say.  Are you saying I implied it was ok for CoH to do it?  I dont see that in my post anywhere.  In my opinion some of the stuff on the CoH store is just as bad as what is on the STO store, however...  If I want to play my favorite superhero (lets say superman) I dont have to buy anything from the CoH store.  Are there some pieces I could buy to HELP make my char look more like superman?  Yep.  If I want to play Worf as a captain in the Fed I have to pay an additional $3 to Cryptic. 

I dont have a double standard, I agree that some of the items in CoH are wrong to have.  What you did was relate the number of shark attacks to ice cream sales.  My post was about supporting bad practices and instead of defending why paying a sub, a box fee and an additional fee for game changing content was right, you picked a small part of the supporting material and compared it to something unrelated.  You need to be honest with yourself and ask - if all future games where released like STO was, would the gaming industry be better?  If you can answer that question with a yes then we really have nothing more to say unless you can validate why you feel it is better for companies to release unpolished, low quality games and have customers pay more for content later on. 

(for those of you wondering about ice cream and shark attacks - 10 years ago, some idiot actually wrote a paper about the correlation between the sales of ice cream on the beach and the number of shark attacks.  When more ice cream sold on the beach, there was an increased chance of shark attacks.  These two things happen due to a third factor he overlooked, the heat.  If it is hotter outside then more people go to the beach and more people are in the water and more people buy ice cream.  The two events are totally unrelated to each other and are products of a third event, nothing more.  Eating ice cream on the beach does not increase the chance of a shark attack.) 

Zap,

1. The crafting system - STO does not have a crafting system.  I can not create anything, I can only modify existing items.  In UO I could chop down a tree and make a chair but in STO I can only take an existing, plain, low value torpedo launcher and add a slight bonus to it.  The end result is the items that drop from mobs are way better than anything you can craft.  I also hate the way you gather crafting material in STO.  I made it to the second level of crafting but could not find any anti-matter samples.  I went through the entire LtCmd rank and only found 8 samples.  I spent all my money I had earned by Cmd on 14 more samples because they are going for a premium on the exchange.  I was only able to make three items and earn 120 points of the 500 points I need to get to the third tier.  Its ridiculous and if you hang around memory alpha you will see very few people participate in the crafting. 

2. Rushed Content - The new captains rooms on the ships are simply a joke.  This was a big feature of season 2 and listed near the top.  "You can now walk around your ship!"  but they didnt tell you you can not sit down in any chair and all you could interact with is two shelves in the captains room.  The whole thing is just to look at!  This should not have been added until it was ready but Cryptic is in a hurry to add features to the game to show all those who left that it is improving but it's NOT, it is only getting worse.

3. Poor Coding - If you go to your bridge and look at the LCARS display on the walls and look real close at the actual words, you will find they took textures and pasted them backwards or upside down.  One bridge pack has a hole in the floor that you can fall in and get stuck.  This is simply poor coding and terrible QA at its finest.

4. Multiple Currency - Why do I have to manage over 12 different forms of currency in the game.  You have badges, marks energy and latinum.  Some can be used here and some used only at special places.  If you want an item, you have to figure out where it is sold, then figure out the currency to use to buy it and then figure out where to go and what to do to earn that currency.  It is NOT fun and was a poor design decision.

5. Poorly Documented Skills - What is the difference between a deflector and a deflector dish?  How does it impact my ship and my skills?  I dont know and I doubt I ever will based on the information on Cryptics website.

6. Lack of social interaction - I went to the Sol Starbase last night and there were 4 instances, each with 7 to 9 players.  With only 9 players running around on a starbase, it sure looks empty.  Surely their server can handle 50 players in a starbase?  Speaking of socializing, why is it needed in this game?  Other than a few task force missions, there is no need to group.  I dont see the basis for STO to be labeled an MMO since there is no MM.

7. No strategy in the ground combat - All I do in ground combat is kneel and shoot.  There is no need to do anything else.  It is boring and other than look at the large chests I gave my crew, I dont enjoy the ground game.   The PVP ground game is even worse, everyone spams holds, people die quick and you can not even apply a heal in time.  I have sat near the cargo container on PVP missions and watched as the mission went on and NO ONE opened the container for the hypos.  There is simply no need for them since you die way faster than you could ever apply the hypo.  It is poor design.

8. The C-Store - I dont need to comment on how greedy I think it is to charge $3 to play as Worf.

9. No fast transport system - Sure I can warp once every 30 minutes to the Sol system but if i am 3 sectors away doing missions and I need to clear out my inventory I have to fly all the way back and I get sucked into the enemy contact missions which makes the trip even longer.

10. Klingon content - Even 6 months after launch, it isnt even close to half of what the Fed faction has and to make matters worse, Cryptic is working on a third faction.  Can you imagine the hate that will be on the boards when they launch a third faction with little content?

11. The way Cryptic treats the loyal customers - SOE made this same mistake and they will pay for it for years.  Less than a month after launch the game goes on sale and gives 60 days of game time?  How is that for a slap in the face to all the people who supported Cryptic at launch?  How about all the people who purchased multiple versions of the game to get the exclusive items only to see those items pop up on the C-Store a few months later? 

12. The lack of development in the last 6 months - Cryptic has been getting a ton of free ideas from the users and very little of it is being used.  You look at some of the biggest defenders of the game and see their signatures pointing to some great ideas and yet Cryptic fails to implement them.  All we have been getting is half-developed content in order for Cryptic to defend its position of continually improving the game.  The difficulty slider is weak at best and there is no real increase in rewards that I have noticed for making the mobs tougher.  The ship interiors are useless and are only there to look at with nothing to interact with.  Episodes are released that are buggy and some were even unplayable for weeks after they were released. 

I could go on a lot more and discuss fleet actions, the lack of fleet support and how you cant mission with your fleet but I think i made enough points to show this game is lacking and should NOT be charging a premium sub.

Zap,

For alot of us,its the direction the MMO developers are moving that is making us take a stand.  If games like STO gain subs and are successful it shows the other developers that low content, unpolished games can charge a premium sub AND charge for game altering items with Micros.  Until now, nobody had the nerve to do something this greedy.  Guild Wars was originally designed around a sub but dropped that idea when the feedback during development was against it with the heavy instancing.  Global Agenda was designed around a sub but dropped it due to player feedback.  Cryptic on the other hand actually feels they are making AAA titles worth a premium sub AND micros but the truth is, they should not even be charging a sub fee for the single player game that STO is and next year it WILL go free to play, mark my words.

If we as consumers let developers give us less and less in our games while charging more and more the MMO market will change dramatically and not for the better.  Think back to UO and EQ and even SWG, we got great crafting systems, we could sit down in a chair and we got player housing and could really decorate them.  We dont get that stuff anymore.  Publishers want money and they want it fast.  If you continue to support Cryptics business model you will eventually see it grow and the good games you play like City of Heroes will all be gone in favor of crap like STO.

People argue and say WOW has a sub and micros but WOW didnt start out with micros.  After WOW was a success and clearly beat every other developer out there they added micros. The micros they did add at first were pets to look at and different mounts to ride, nothing game altering like the ships and playable races of STO.  I dont play WOW but I can not argue that it is not a good game.  11 million people play WOW, thats 10.9 million more than STO.  In my opinion Blizzard capitalized on WOW's success by adding some micros while Cryptic was just plain greedy.  Cryptic didnt wait for STO to be successful, they charged on day one to play a char like Worf who was probably the most liked char on TNG.  They charge for ships that have advantages over the ships you can get ingame.  They made HUGE marketing mistakes and alienated the player base in the first month the game launched. 

If you have a good imagination and you love Star Trek, the game can be fun for a while.  Some of the episodes are actually very good and I do like the ship combat.  I'm a lifer and I play for a few days a month.  The trouble with STO is, some systems are really bad like crafting, Klingons and PVP and once you hit the level cap, which doesnt take very long, you run out of content.  The only thing left for you to do is repeat everything all over again.

On the official forums, there are many fanbois.  You can check the captains database and see that even they take 30 day vacations from the game due to the lack of end-game content.  You can already find the game in the bargain bin and that should tell you something.

Final comment: If you find the game for $20 or less pick it up and play for the free 30 days.  Its worth a spin around the block to see it but I think once your 30 days is up you will be bored and want to move on.  Lots of good looking games coming out in 6 to 10 months.

Originally posted by Mopar63

 I am curious, can you please define blindly support? I mean saying a game is bad is subjective. I for example think that tomatoes are evil however I do not consider people that eat them blind. So you are basically saying that people are blind because they disagree with your opinion?

While you may not like STO, I do, that does not mean either of us are wrong, it fact it means we are both right since at the end of the day the person playing the game has the ONLY opinion that matters. If you do not enjoy the game then more power to you and I hope you find a game you like. However to refer to people that link a game you do not like as blind seems a bit egotisitcal to me.

As for the statement of developers, I am cruious how many games have you been part of the development of? Personally I have work with the development team directly of something like 10 titles and done beta for close to 100 I would say. So I am curious where your experience with what developers do comes from, please give us the grace of your vast experience has put together this definitvate knowledge that your opinion of gaming means poeople that disagree are blind?

 I would imagine that when he says "blindly support" he could be referring to the very vocal support of the game on this, and the official forum by people who are not actually playing the game.  If you go to the official website and make a list of the top 5 fanbois there and then look up their playtime in the captains database, you will find all of them quit playing the game a month before season 2 came out.  They didnt all take a month vacation together, they were all bored with the game and are only paying a sub in the hope that someday this POS can pull out of the nosedive it is in.  Posting about how much you love an MMO that you can not even play for 5 months straight witout getting bored is what I would refer to as "Blind Support".

Originally posted by Dinendae

 Remember though; Cryptic was selling 50,000 subscribers as a viable number to Atari. Everything I have seen so far indicates that they are still making that number.

 I'm guessing that 20k to 30k of that 50k are lifers.  What happens in 12 months when ToR and GW2 have been out for a bit and STO subs drop below the 50k mark with 20k+ of those remaining being lifers playing for free?

2011 will be an interesting year for Cryptic and Atari.  I dont think the third MMO they are doing is going to have any better numbers than CO and STO.  I have played most MMO's and even if it is a neverwinter nights based game, I have no desire to play it. 

This one scares me, something just doesnt feel right about the way they have handled 2010 and the marketing of the game.

I sure hope Bioware or other good developers dont pick this guy up

Sure wish MMORPG had teamed up with some other game to do this one.

I'll pass as well.

Originally posted by anjealous82

I look at this post and what do I see. Some of the most negative comment in history. It seems to me though that all of your standards are all too damn high.

 

 Just to get this straight, Cryptic has already stated they plan to use a single game engine and develope three MMO's around it.  The first two MMO's had less than 80k of subcscribers after 4 months of launch and one fo them had one fo the top 5 greatest IP's (Star Trek).  Based on Cryptics past performance you think the players standards are too high?

Please stop by MMOdata.com and take a good look at sub numbers for the MMO's out there and compare Cryptics numbers to them.  Cryptics numbers are lower because they make a game designed around milking customers for money and not about players having fun and it shows in the sub numbers.  Seriously, $50 for STO, $15 a month for a sub and then another $3 to play a Klingon Fed?  Thats just plain greed and people get tired of it.  The players standards have not gone up, Cryptics standards have gone down.

Most of us know this one IS being developed by Cryptic and will use the same engine as Champions Online and STO and that tells us the following:

1. There is no need to pay the full price for the game when it first comes out unless you just want to play in the first month.  The price of the game will come down $10 or more and extra game time may be offered if you simply wait a month or two from launch to buy it.
2. There is no need to buy extra copies to get exclusives because they will just be available in the C-Store in a few months.
3. The game will be heavily instanced and working with others will not really be required, at least not in the first 90% of levels.
4. The game will be easy and you can max level a char in 30 days with just normal gameplay, faster if you power game.
5. The game will be released with limited end-game content and will remain so for months until content is leaked in with a raid or two every month
6. If the game has a crafting system in it, it will be bad, not very complex and the things you can craft will be substandard to loot drops so there will not be much of a need to use it.

If DC and ToR are any good, its gonna be a tough 2011 for Cryptic. 

You know things are bad when they have their second welcome back weekend after only 6 months.