Deno
15-01-10, 02:03
I thought I'd write this review for the Neocron community. I hope it's of use to someone.
Star Trek Online Review
Cryptic’s latest MMO release has been feverishly anticipated for many months now –
especially among the Star Trek fan base, a notoriously critical and hard to please
group of people. I decided I would give the open beta a blast, as I was experiencing a
‘lull’ between games, and am one of many waiting for ‘the next big hit’.
I’m not a diehard Star Trek fan, and can only claim to have seen a few of the movies
and newer episodes. So all in all I felt I could approach the game with an open mind,
free from any over-optimistic/pessimistic expectations.
The first facet of the game you encounter is character creation. I was left very
impressed by the sheer range of options (many subtle) you could employ to create
your desired avatar. I could easily have spent three hours tweaking countless
superficial details like tattoos, scars and head equipment. Eager to get into the game I
settled for a rather generic looking human (exactly 183 cm tall, with grey/blue eyes,
and an odd scar above his left eye!).
The first hour of play follows the traditional spoon-fed tutorial style, and involves
phasering a few Borgs, and sabotaging their equipment. I wasn’t going to expect
anything too revolutionary in this department, so it’s safe to say, the tutorial is fairly
straightforward and gently eases you into the game mechanics.
I’ll get down to specific areas now;
Combat takes place in two arenas. Space and ‘ground’. The latter was what I
experienced most, and is modelled on the typical ‘point and click’ mechanic.
Although it is very slick and works just as you would expect it if you’re a veteran of
WoW or similar – it is very shallow. I found myself just firing, waiting for refresh,
then firing again – with special attacks thrown in for good measure.
The three classes in the game contrast most strikingly on the ground.
Engineers are the archetypal ‘tanks’ and have access to shield recharge
deployment, and static turrets. Tacticians have access to debuff attacks and
are the general high damage, low defence, glass canons. Scientists are (yep
you guessed it) the healers, and provide general support, but also can hold
their own in a fight and deal not insignificant damage.
In Space, the classes are less strikingly different. Special combat powers are
granted by having BOs (bridge officers). These NPCs fall into the three class
types, and offer related powers. For example an engineer BO would have a
power that would bolster shield defences, and a tactical BO would offer the
shield drain ability.
The problem with this is, due to every ship having space for at least one of
each class (with the caveat that a tactician player must have predominantly
tactical BOs) is that at least at the early levels, every player is basically the
same. In fact, in combat, I never found myself noticing ‘‘Oh John has just
saved our asses with his special ‘engineer only’ ability’’. Thus space combat
turns out to be simply a matter of constantly firing your phasers, and waiting
on the (horrendous) cool downs for your special abilities.
Unfortunately (and this is one of my biggest gripes), there is essentially no ‘crafting’
in STO. Supposedly the traditional MMO crafting system (think Neocron) wouldn’t
fit in with the IP of Star Trek. The closest there is, is a system whereby players collect
various resources from around the galaxy, take these to an NPC, and they are
converted into a weapon/armour piece etc. There is absolutely no tradeskill system.
Server stability would be expected to be a serious issue, especially in beta. Cryptic
opted to make heavy use of instancing, and EVERY zone is instanced. For me, this
really detached me from the feeling of playing an ‘MMORPG’. Obviously if they
wanted to accommodate every player in one instance of the Sol Spacedock (main base
of operations) then the lag would be of biblical proportions, but nonetheless, I think if
they had put more thought into spreading the players around a bit more effectively,
then the lag issues wouldn’t present themselves. I also found that even on my slightly
aged, though quality rig, the game ran reasonably well – and if you have a
Beast which is capable of turning the graphics settings up to full, you won’t be
disappointed.
Having covered the main points of the game, I’ll try to give you a ‘gist’ of the game,
and try to suss out the vibe. All in all, I was disappointed. For such a polished and
quality game, I just found myself wondering ‘what is there actually to do?’.
Once I got past the initial awe of the game – mainly the graphics, and the ‘coolness’
of flying your own spaceship, I realised that at it’s core, this game isn’t very deep.
Apart from doing mission after mission – which once you’ve played a few, you’ve
played them all – there isn’t really much to do. I found that there was minimal player
to player interaction, and due to the simplicity (I would say shallowness) of the
combat system, you rarely had to resort to actually ‘communicating’ with your team. I
constantly felt like I was playing a single player game interspersed with short periods
of multiplayer annihilation of Borgs.
My opinion – I don’t think this game will last long. If you are a below average
intelligence gamer, who just wants to ‘blow shit up’ this game will cater
plenty for you. But if you seek something which offers depth and challenge,
then stay away. Although some diehard fans (go to the STO forums to find
this breed) would argue that ‘its only in beta’ and ‘you’ve only experienced a
portion of the game’ I would say that, it’s not the content, or the technical
realisation that is the problem, it’s the core game itself. And no amount of post
release patches will change the core mechanics of what is essentially a
shallow, uninteresting game.
Graphics – 9/10
Sound – 7/10
Gameplay – 5.5/10
Lag/performance – 7/10 (and will only get better with release)
Longevity – 2/10
Depth – 2/10
End-game content – 3/10 (this will be fleet wars, but due to reasons of the inherent game mechanics covered above, many level-headed people believe this won’t be very dynamic and won’t offer much entertainment value)
Overall: 3/10
Star Trek Online Review
Cryptic’s latest MMO release has been feverishly anticipated for many months now –
especially among the Star Trek fan base, a notoriously critical and hard to please
group of people. I decided I would give the open beta a blast, as I was experiencing a
‘lull’ between games, and am one of many waiting for ‘the next big hit’.
I’m not a diehard Star Trek fan, and can only claim to have seen a few of the movies
and newer episodes. So all in all I felt I could approach the game with an open mind,
free from any over-optimistic/pessimistic expectations.
The first facet of the game you encounter is character creation. I was left very
impressed by the sheer range of options (many subtle) you could employ to create
your desired avatar. I could easily have spent three hours tweaking countless
superficial details like tattoos, scars and head equipment. Eager to get into the game I
settled for a rather generic looking human (exactly 183 cm tall, with grey/blue eyes,
and an odd scar above his left eye!).
The first hour of play follows the traditional spoon-fed tutorial style, and involves
phasering a few Borgs, and sabotaging their equipment. I wasn’t going to expect
anything too revolutionary in this department, so it’s safe to say, the tutorial is fairly
straightforward and gently eases you into the game mechanics.
I’ll get down to specific areas now;
Combat takes place in two arenas. Space and ‘ground’. The latter was what I
experienced most, and is modelled on the typical ‘point and click’ mechanic.
Although it is very slick and works just as you would expect it if you’re a veteran of
WoW or similar – it is very shallow. I found myself just firing, waiting for refresh,
then firing again – with special attacks thrown in for good measure.
The three classes in the game contrast most strikingly on the ground.
Engineers are the archetypal ‘tanks’ and have access to shield recharge
deployment, and static turrets. Tacticians have access to debuff attacks and
are the general high damage, low defence, glass canons. Scientists are (yep
you guessed it) the healers, and provide general support, but also can hold
their own in a fight and deal not insignificant damage.
In Space, the classes are less strikingly different. Special combat powers are
granted by having BOs (bridge officers). These NPCs fall into the three class
types, and offer related powers. For example an engineer BO would have a
power that would bolster shield defences, and a tactical BO would offer the
shield drain ability.
The problem with this is, due to every ship having space for at least one of
each class (with the caveat that a tactician player must have predominantly
tactical BOs) is that at least at the early levels, every player is basically the
same. In fact, in combat, I never found myself noticing ‘‘Oh John has just
saved our asses with his special ‘engineer only’ ability’’. Thus space combat
turns out to be simply a matter of constantly firing your phasers, and waiting
on the (horrendous) cool downs for your special abilities.
Unfortunately (and this is one of my biggest gripes), there is essentially no ‘crafting’
in STO. Supposedly the traditional MMO crafting system (think Neocron) wouldn’t
fit in with the IP of Star Trek. The closest there is, is a system whereby players collect
various resources from around the galaxy, take these to an NPC, and they are
converted into a weapon/armour piece etc. There is absolutely no tradeskill system.
Server stability would be expected to be a serious issue, especially in beta. Cryptic
opted to make heavy use of instancing, and EVERY zone is instanced. For me, this
really detached me from the feeling of playing an ‘MMORPG’. Obviously if they
wanted to accommodate every player in one instance of the Sol Spacedock (main base
of operations) then the lag would be of biblical proportions, but nonetheless, I think if
they had put more thought into spreading the players around a bit more effectively,
then the lag issues wouldn’t present themselves. I also found that even on my slightly
aged, though quality rig, the game ran reasonably well – and if you have a
Beast which is capable of turning the graphics settings up to full, you won’t be
disappointed.
Having covered the main points of the game, I’ll try to give you a ‘gist’ of the game,
and try to suss out the vibe. All in all, I was disappointed. For such a polished and
quality game, I just found myself wondering ‘what is there actually to do?’.
Once I got past the initial awe of the game – mainly the graphics, and the ‘coolness’
of flying your own spaceship, I realised that at it’s core, this game isn’t very deep.
Apart from doing mission after mission – which once you’ve played a few, you’ve
played them all – there isn’t really much to do. I found that there was minimal player
to player interaction, and due to the simplicity (I would say shallowness) of the
combat system, you rarely had to resort to actually ‘communicating’ with your team. I
constantly felt like I was playing a single player game interspersed with short periods
of multiplayer annihilation of Borgs.
My opinion – I don’t think this game will last long. If you are a below average
intelligence gamer, who just wants to ‘blow shit up’ this game will cater
plenty for you. But if you seek something which offers depth and challenge,
then stay away. Although some diehard fans (go to the STO forums to find
this breed) would argue that ‘its only in beta’ and ‘you’ve only experienced a
portion of the game’ I would say that, it’s not the content, or the technical
realisation that is the problem, it’s the core game itself. And no amount of post
release patches will change the core mechanics of what is essentially a
shallow, uninteresting game.
Graphics – 9/10
Sound – 7/10
Gameplay – 5.5/10
Lag/performance – 7/10 (and will only get better with release)
Longevity – 2/10
Depth – 2/10
End-game content – 3/10 (this will be fleet wars, but due to reasons of the inherent game mechanics covered above, many level-headed people believe this won’t be very dynamic and won’t offer much entertainment value)
Overall: 3/10