Well, this is purely subjective, but based on the two pictures posted here I like the STO shot. 

The reason I like the STO shot is a wider color palette and stronger contrast.  The Eve shot looks flat and bland to me, by comparison.  I think a lot of times though when people are saying an image is more photorealistic, to me it looks bland and kind of boring.  Bland and boring does not necessarily equal photorealistic. 

I think maybe the EVE shot is a poor example though, as I have seen some truly breathtaking vistas possible in that game.  This screenshot from EVE really doesn't do that game justice.

If swg precu was available I'd still be playing.  I did take some time off precu SWG to try quest driven games and they were ok.  But it does get boring and I find myself soloing a lot more in quest type games than in the sandbox games. 

Sometimes it seems like quests separate people.  You could be the same level as someone, but they are on a different quest, and it's a quest chain.  In the sandbox game it seemed like we used to hang out more together, and the sense of community was infinitely greater.

So I'd have to say sandbox.  Although having some quests is great too.

I haven't been in beta, but the screenshots are pretty.  

MMO's are never finished by the way.  They are always a work in progress.  Hopefully I get a free trial at some point, but right now LOTRO has its claws in me.  That could change though. 

Why can't Star Wars and Star Trek fans catch a break in the mmo genre?

In my opinion, two of the absolute coolest sci fi properties are screwed.

And to the OP, awesome catch.  Gaming news at its finest. 

A nice piece.   You never know where inspiration can come from, and whether or not something that sounds good in principle will work in practice.

I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product once it is launched.  It's always nice to see a development team with creative ideas willing to take risks. 

Originally posted by megera

I don't raid - its boring.  I don't PVP - its frustrating since the same guy you popped 15 minutes ago will be back and in your face again with no real penalty for death.  Don't get me wrong.  I've played PVP - Planetside was a little bit of a thrill ride even though i sucked most heinously 90% of the time - the problem is many fold - preventing 'exploits' can also prevent strategy from being effective and it can come down to who has the best gear which can be ebayed by the impatient or camped for levels and gear by the jobless who actually have time to spend 80 hours a week *just* playing the game.

All i want to do is hang out, kill a few things with my buddies, maybe have a tavern to play cards in or dice or something while we socialize and wait for the rest of the party to show up, do some crafting that isn't as tedious as taking up the profession in real life, nor so easy that its a push the button get 200 bandages or whatever, do some funny stuff, and be able to smack mouthy 'tards up side the head. 

PVP *sounds* great, and in theory, i'd be all over it.  except it isn't great.  Its full of griefers who camp people 20 levels lower than they are because somehow it makes them feel good to kill things that are no challenge and prove their manhood.  Corpse camping, zoneline camping, and note above - exploit prevention actually favors the griefers because there is no acutal executable strategy available in most games to sneak past em/outsmart em etc etc.

The effort of learning to survive long enough in a pvp world to enjoy it isn't cost effective in time - i only have so much time to devote to the game per day and trust me, i have more than a lot of people.

I'd like to see a more realistic game world run by players, where animals behaved like animals and deer didnt' turn to attack when you shot them with a bow, bunnies didn't chew your peasant legs off, and a fox could not kill a level one ranger in 2 hits. Where if some player character named KILLYOUALLNOOBS! was being a pain, people could band together and kill him - permanantly.  

I just don't think its ever going to happen.  Too many people are more interested in exploiting the games than playing within the concept and rules to make that sort of environment work.

Actually SWG had an ability that allowed the town militia to make people in their town attackable if they didn't leave within a certain period of time.  Unfortunately do to an unfortunate incident involving kicking out a csr from a town and then ganking him, the ability was revoked.  Not sure if that was the sole reason the ability was removed, but I remember it made quite a stink at the time.  Made for a good screenshot too

Companies go where the money is.  In this case, the number of potential mmo players and money that would generate far exceeds the Kotor rpg player base. 

That being said, game design is not necessarily either / or.   Various play styles can and are incorporated into today's mmo's, and I see no reason why this would not be the case in a KOTOR  mmo. 

Originally posted by Keogh

 

Bren understands me. I'm just a grumpy old man. Picture me as Mr. Wilson of the "Dennis the Menace" comic.

My comment was not in any way meant as a personal attack and I'm sorry that it may have mistakenly been seen as one.

I was agreeing with the post and speaking in general terms.

Dennis the Menace hugs Mr. Wilson

 I heard all people who play Eve Online are geniuses...   Hahahaha.  Takes a genius to play a video game.  Anyway, back to Earth-

This was a huge screw up.  There's quite a few Eve Online players out there who are offline and I feel bad for them.  This should never have happened, and I hope somehow things are made right.

One possible solution might be if the company has their tech support call folks at home from the number they listed when they created their account.  They could alert them to the problem and give them a toll free number to call back and get free customer support to get up and running again. 

A company can post anything they want in terms of what's intended.  What actually makes it into the game, if the game makes it at all, is another matter.

That being said, sure I look forward to the game.  I love Star Trek and I love MMO's. 

I'm not attacking him, merely disagreeing whether posting this here on mmorpg.com or on sto.net has little relevance to the discussion at hand.  

 I may have  interpreted the tone of his 'move on' comment incorrectly as an attempt to shut down other opinions and additional discussion, neither of which are validated or invalidated by approval or disapproval by sto.net members of the screenshot posted by PE.  That was the gist of my disagreement.

But at any rate, is there anyone who loves the picture and could they tell us what it is they love about it.

Originally posted by Keogh

 

Originally posted by Horusek

Well they relase first shot ;P now when thet read how we dis-like it they will work on it I'm sure :P have a little faith!

They don't read this forum.

 

They (PE staff) read the STO.net forum, and the STO.net members absolutely love what they've seen in the screen shot.

So get use to the idea of STO being like the screen shot or move on.

 

As to members of sto.net, of which I am a member, being in love with the screenshot, I doubt you are qualified to speak for all of them.  Certainly you don't speak for me.  So you speak for yourself instead of others. 

But even if many at STO.net do love the screenshot, I fail to see the relevance of your assertion.  I am giving my opinion on the content of the screenshot and what it implies to me.  The fact that you do not agree is fine, but please don't try to qualify that by speaking for others which you do not represent. 

And finally, MMORPG.com has forum boards for the sake of discussion, giving opinions, disseminating information, etc.  I am merely givng an opinion for the sake of discussion, so no, I will not move on. 

So the very first screenshot they show us is one in which the player's avatar is a ship.  That is very disconcerting.  The first image of ingame we get, our avatar is not a person like Human, Klingon, Vulcan, etc., it is a thing...an object.  

And we see an alien who gives us a quest lead in perhaps, but an alien that is not recognizeable to Star Trek fans.  I've probably seen all the shows, but I've never seen this race.  My point is, why in the very first screenshot we get to hype your game do you show us an alien that lacks any previous reference to Star Trek as seen in the shows?

There is a personal disconnect in this screenshot.  A disconnect from Star Trek fans I think, but I can only speak for myself.  It depicts space, which is cold and lifeless, an avatar ship that is a thing and not a person, and an alien that I don't recognize.  Also, there is no life or movement apparent in the screenshot. 

Aside from the ship, which is recognizeable as a federation ship, nothing about this image says, Star Trek.  And as I experienced the shows, it was never about the ships, but rather the people. 

If Perpetual was on track they would have given us a bridge, academy or away mission screenshot featuring player controlled characters.  Humanoids in federation uniforms relating to one another somehow and therefore that we could relate to, and a nostalgic or familiar scene that we could reference from the shows. 

Instead...they give us this....this nothing.  Or maybe worse than nothing.  Because there is an inferance based on the screenshot that at least some of the time will be spent as a ship and not a person.  Which raises all sorts of unsettling questions.  For instance, if I am a ship, who and where is everyone else?   My crew, other players, are they just sitting passively at home staring at their monitors as I fly around and answer decision trees?  Or is this screenshot, as I interpret it, depicting solo play? 

And if it's solo play, well that's not what Star Trek is about.  It's about being a part of a crew, interacting with your teammates.  So again, Perpetual misses the mark. 

They also miss an excellent opportunity to add credibility to their project and allay a lot of fears that myself and other fans have that this game will amount to anything worth playing, if it's ever released at all.

If this really is a screenshot then I think it's adequate.  That is to say, it is not a deal breaker but does not make me fall in love with the idea of the game either.   To me it's not realistic, but then its not cartoony either; maybe it's something in between, which would be okay since I value performance above drop dead gorgeous graphics.  Games that chug along even with the best of hardware are not fun for me.

That being said...we have one image?  Is that it?  If so then my skepticism that this game will ever see the light of day remains.   But I guess in my previous post, the gauntlet was thrown down and Perpetual has responded, albeit weakly.    Seems like they submitted the bare minimum to qualify as an mmo in development here at mmorpg.com.

They could have wow'd us with a bridge shot with various player controlled characters, or something to that effect that would give us some hope or expectation that this game is actually in production and has some kind of potential. 

And instead they give us the bare minimum.  And that is about what I am coming to expect from them.

I had the opposite impression.  A lot of stupid questions and redundancy.  

I think the first question was from someone that doesn't even play the game.  He wanted to know if they added more armor types since beta.  Talk about lame...

We could have asked specifics on the changes coming to the three classes that are being revisited, namely guardian, burglar and champion.  We could have asked more about character customization, how will it be implemented, how will existing characters be affected or be able to change their appearances, what exactly will be added.  I think they said more hairstyles, but very nonspecific.   But how much of our appearance will we be able to change.

Anyway, a bit of a disappointment after getting off work at 12:15 am and reading this.  I expected better questions. 

It just occured to me.  Should this game's forum even be listed in the In Development forum section.  As far as I can tell this game isn't in development at all.  There's just a lot of talk and some pretty pictures that they paid an artist to make.

The sad reality is this game seems to be stalled out at the idea stage( and bad ideas at that), as opposed to actually developing into anything.

The current payment model is adequate.  No reason to dumb the game down so that people can afford it.  What is next, ingame advertising?  Are we gonna see pepsi commercials in the turbo lifts?  Or do I have to pay 5 bucks extra to get a phaser rifle upgrade? 

You say you are making a triple A title.  Well that is $15 bucks a month from my experience.  I have played SWG, WOW, EQ2, COH, MxO, DAOC and now LOTRO.  If you want to start using some gimmicky payment model to subsidize low income players then you are not making a triple a game. 

If you are making a game that you do not feel people are willing to pay $15 bucks a month for, then you are not making a triple A game.   And you may point to other payment models used by other games.  But americans are not the korean mmo market, and those are not triple A games.

Originally posted by phluux

As Trollstar said, I would be willing to pay it if it was worth that amount i.e. the quality was there.

I would too, but the reality of the marketplace today seems to be you pay more for less.  So that worries me.

 Competition should keep costs the same or drive them down in my opinion.  There are more games to choose from.

Also, with globalization and outsourcing of development costs, customer service etc.  prices should be kept under control I would hope.

Also their are more tools available to mmo developers, like graphics engines, etc. that have already been done thus decreasing costs of production.

Just my opinion.

I have to admit I have my ups and downs too.  My first mmo was SWG and although they didn't have a lot of quests precu, they did have a variety of things to do.  They also had many different classes to experiment with.  Another thing that comes to mind in that game was the roleplaying which I really enjoyed and my guild.

I've tried many mmo's since.  They all have their pluses and minuses, but nothing is addictive as SWG was for me.  Maybe WOW for awhile...hard to say now.  Currently I am in LOTRO and it's a nice game.  Gameplay in LOTRO is nowhere near as addictive as SWG or WOW was though.  Still, I like it.