1. #1
    Drakor Trent Deno's Avatar
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    Default Star Trek Online: Review

    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

  2. #2
    Sailor Moon > You Lexxuk's Avatar
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    On the bright side, FFXIV is due out this year and looks alone mark it as the most gorgeous MMORPG on the market... ever (it uses the full power of the PS3 and will struggle on highest settings on even the highest spec PC for the PC version).

    You can sort of see the direction SE are taking 14 with the things they implement into 11, solo play in 11 is a major factor now and it's possible for almost any job to solo from 1-75 with ease (except Summoner, they can "cheat" and get 10 levels in 5 minutes >.>)

    STO? I've blown up my ship countless times and have had no ill effects from it, not even a message from star fleet saying "yo dawg, quit blowing your shit up else we gunna bust your arse down to ensign biatch".

    So far the content is just missions, go to A do stuff, go to B do more stuff, get XP, level up, go to C and do stuff again. There is no exploration value, you can't just head out to planet Sexy Nymps IV and shoot up some perverts for 2 days to get a few levels, it's too much like WoW, and no auto-attack is a bit of a bitch, if I turn my front phaser on and it's pointed at a ship, I really want that phaser to fire when it's ready, not wait for me to push 1.

    I do like the tactical side of space flight though, fight them side on to fire front/rear phasers to take their shields down, then turn frontal to fire a torpedo at them, though you could just as easy keep front facing and fire phaser/torpedo until the other ship goes boom (especially with Engineer and emergency shields and stuff) - evasive action... run away.

    Anna - lexx if you dont get that out of your sig im never talking to you again, and you know i mean that

  3. #3
    Loving Titan L0KI's Avatar
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    I really appreciate the review... I was thinking of giving this a try!

    Not so much now though... will await the free trial.

  4. #4
    Sailor Moon > You Lexxuk's Avatar
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    I'd say give it a try, you may be able to teach your bridge staff the command "Fire at will" and stuff, I've not really gone in depth with that side of it, but it's possible for 2 ships exactly the same to be totally different, it's worth playing with, if you can get a key.

    Anna - lexx if you dont get that out of your sig im never talking to you again, and you know i mean that

  5. #5
    Registered User Setlec's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by L0KI
    I really appreciate the review... I was thinking of giving this a try!

    Not so much now though... will await the free trial.
    +1 really good review, i was thinking that the tradeskilling would be like in SWG... But now i'll wait for free trial aswell.

  6. #6

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    i read there isnt even money? just basic barter?
    ingame names: Biglines (dissy spy), Mr Tool (low tech tank), Engineer Tool (constructor), Medical Tool (ppu/hacker/poker), Father Tool (apu)

  7. #7
    Drakor Trent Deno's Avatar
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    There is money, but there are multipile different currencies. For example energy credits are used for buying typical off the shelf crap. For stuff like high end weapons and ships you need these 'badges of exploration'. I'm not entirely sure how you get these credits. The worst thing is really the lack of tradeskilling. There is literally nothing to do except run missions.

    I'm going to stick it out a few more days and see how it goes. I'm hoping that the promised server merge in Vanguard will take place this month, as it is a truly awesome game, and I really wanna play it again! Feel free to join me if you've always wanted to play it but have overlooked it due to bad release press. (I believe they've a 15 day free trial now)

  8. #8
    Sailor Moon > You Lexxuk's Avatar
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    I played vanguard for a bit, the crafting in that is the best of any game, ever, it's in depth and your actions provide the final quality of the item your producing, which is nice.

    FFXI got a new thing though, sorta shared crafting. Say you are high level leather craft and need a bit of gear that is high leather AND bone, grab a bone crafter, find a machine and you both make the gear, it's pretty sweet and if that do that with 14, sweetness.

    STO, I dislike dc'ing, and when it gets busy I dc, gunna have to download NC2 again

    Anna - lexx if you dont get that out of your sig im never talking to you again, and you know i mean that

  9. #9
    NC For Free!
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    Played STO and boy was I disappointed. This aint Star Trek and it's got like no end game and gets boring fast even more if you were in closed beta like me lol.

    I will not be giving STO another try onto Darkfall I go.
    Let's Play Series Coming Soon:
    https://www.youtube.com/user/StoneLegionVideos

  10. #10
    Drakor Trent Deno's Avatar
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    I got Vanguard working last night, didn't take long to patch. Halgar seemed a bit quieter than what I remembered, but I managed to pretty quickly find a group for Trengal Keep. It was excellent fun and reminded me why I missed VG so much

    Would advise any people looking for a deep, challenging game to head over to Vanguard. Trust me, it's up there with the likes of Neocron.

  11. #11
    NC For Free!
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    Boo Deno Darkfall all the way here. I like Hardcore games not wings :P
    Let's Play Series Coming Soon:
    https://www.youtube.com/user/StoneLegionVideos

  12. #12
    Drakor Trent Deno's Avatar
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    Yeh I was looking at Darkfall, but I got the impression it was a bit too buggy and had really bad translations. It also looks far too hardcore. I don't want to spend 400 hours to reach cap lol.

  13. #13

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    STO turned out the way I expected.. though more dumbed down than I thought.

  14. #14
    Registered User stebedford's Avatar
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    Me and a couple more former NC players (if anyone remembers Rangers) are moving over to STO tomorrow. If anyone else is gonna play it and wants to join our fleet give me a shout

  15. #15

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    lol the whole thread kinda discusses how bad sto is, and you're asking people to join u? :P
    ingame names: Biglines (dissy spy), Mr Tool (low tech tank), Engineer Tool (constructor), Medical Tool (ppu/hacker/poker), Father Tool (apu)

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