Hi all,
We would really like to know what you think of Star Trek Online so please post here and let us know! The best comments will be put in to a new "user reviews" article on our front page.
If you haven't seen it we have also posted a Interview Q&A session with the Star Trek Online development team so you can see how they answered our questions here: http://www.loadscreen.net/2010/01/26/star-trek-online-developer-interview/
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I would buy the game--if I didn't get instantly addicted too it. It just makes me want to take away too much time out of my life. If I didn't have the constant need to play--or had some motivation to log off and do other things, then I would've bought it and the lifetime subscription.
The exploration aspect of the game is great. I especially like how they had "alien artifacts" and "unusual energy readings" yield starship improvments. It is in harmony with the star trek ideal of exploration and improvement of the human race. Personally, think those rewards should be much bigger, and possibly yield equipment with slightly randomized stats.
I love that you command your own starship, and away teams. While captains aren't supposed to go on away missions, I'm glad that STO ignored that and made you lead away missions. The auto-grouping system in this game is revolutionary (if still a little unpolished). It helps the typically socially awkward gamer just get into a group without having to say anything. Also, as soon as you're put in a group and have had an encounter or two, you make instant friends with the people on your team.
I could stand a few more trans-warp locations. Maybe having starfleet develop a transwarp gate or something later on could improve the lengthy travel times (they're not bad, but you always want to minimize the the time you spend moving to a new location).
I'm not going to pull any punches with this review, so here goes:
Space combat is currently way too easy. If you have even the slightest idea of how to use tactics, you will not find a challenge here.
No death penalty, there is nothing that keeps you from charging mindlessly into a fight. You can simply respawn and charge the enemy again and again.
The missions are repetitive: blow up ships, kill things on the ground, scan this object, or some mixture of the three, usually involving blowing something up.
Ground combat is downright awful and needs to be totally redone. It is entirely possible to clear the mobs by yourself and let your bridge officers restore your shields and health.
Exploration is pointless and extremely boring (ie. go here and scan this object).
Role playing is totally non existent. Combat is the main focus of the game, and as far as I know, Star Trek captains did a lot more then just fighting.
With a skill cap now in place and being forced to use skill points (experience points) to gain higher ranks, you waste them on skills you don't want or need. This limits your ability to create your character as you see fit.
You end up having to do missions at higher levels then your current level for any sort of challenge. Once those missions are gone, you are left with repeating the patrol missions. This makes the game tedious.
Grouping is neither required or encouraged. While that's fine if you intend to play solo, this is supposed to be an MMO.
Here's the kicker: I really liked this game prior to the combat patch. I could have lived with everything else and waited until it got sorted out. Now the only thing that was fun for me has been taken away. I still play because I want to like the game, find bugs, and make it better. I know this is still a beta and don't know what's planned for launch, but the devs have not addressed any of the issues many players have or hinted as to what's going to be added/changed come launch.
As it stands now, 4/10
Overall though, I think this game does have potential to reach a 7 if the dev's take a look at the main criticisms on the forums. If you're going to enjoy it or not depends on what kind of gamer you are. If you've never played RPG's or MMO's before and enjoy a casual atmosphere then I think you'll enjoy the game. If you like a challenge and have played RPG's or MMO's for a long time (RPG's in my case), I think you'll find the game the same as I did and end up wanting more of a challenge.
To sum up, the game's preface should go something like this: These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Her five year mission: to destroy strange new worlds.To eradicate life and destroy civilizations. To blow up what no man has blown up before.
A few final thoughts:
For those of you that say it's still beta, take a look here:
http://www.massively.com/2010/01/22/the-failure-of-the-beta-defense/
and by Jack Emmert himself here:
Jack Emmert: First, the question needs to be defined – open beta or closed beta?
In a closed beta, the goal is to get everything fixed. Broken missions. Malfunctioning servers. Bandwidth issues. Anything that prevents a player from, well, playing. That's the first step.
Next, developers need to analyze what players enjoy and what they don't. In a successful closed beta, the developer responds to community concerns to everyone's satisfaction. By the time open beta rolls around, everyone is loving the game. By the way, the surest way of noting this is the CCU: if the CCU is stable, then you know people are enjoying themselves (they keep coming back). But if the CCU falls by 10%+ each session – there's a big problem.
Open beta is for shaking out bugs, to a very small degree, but this is really when the game is public for the first time. And a developer needs the game essentially to be finished. Most likely, the game has already gone gold. A successful open beta means that the internet is buzzing and pre-orders are jumping significantly (in the tens of thousands, at least).
Read it for yourself here: http://www.massively.com/2009/11/30/developer-round-table-mmo-betas-page-2/
As for this being an MMO, again Jack Emmert can be quoted here:
Jack Emmert: We set out to make the best Star Trek game we could, NOT the best MMORPG we could. We just happen to be online, I think.
Read it here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13118246
Also, read the question and answer with him, located here: http://forums.bestbuy.com/t5/Gaming/Star-Trek-Online-Live-Chat-Transcript/td-p/91426
My favorite two quotes out of this are:
Guest-1179: Was it ever Gene Roddenbury's wish to present a video game on such a large scale? Was there any influence from him or inspiration that pushed the production of this game?
Jack-Cryptic: CBS was nothing but terrific. They really pushed for our vision and provided guidance, but never anything like a commandment.
and
Guest-1290: What can players expect as an end game in STO when we've hit max rank?
Jack-Cryptic: yep.
Must admit I'm fairly negative of STO too. I think I expected too much from the game as it carries the Star Trek name and I automatically associate that with a quality Sci-fi experience, sadly STO isn't - yet.
I am yet to try the latest patch. But bugs, bugs and more bugs ruined the last gaming session I had. There were way to many to convince me the game was going to be ready anytime soon. A shame as I can definitely see STO's potential. Right now it looks like another MMO rushed out to early almost certainly dooming it to failure as the game population will drop rapidly as people lose patience waiting for fixes.
Sector space was the other thing that annoyed me. The weird Virtual Reality feel to space didn't really convince me I was travelling through space.
The actual combat just doesn't work for me. Ship to ship combat feels slow and not very exciting. Trying to stay together was hard as it was difficult to properly maintain distance with ships pitching and rolling in every direction. I was meant to be in a Starship that has conquered space flight. Which is another point. I am a Starship Captain yet I only ever visited my bridge twice. I 100% expected to be fighting the enemy from the bridge of my massive Starship not hovering above a weak speck floating around space.
There were good points. Really liked some of the group missions that had multiple parts in Space then on the Ground and then in Space again.
The idea of being able to drop in and out of nearby battles was fun too. Really liked this idea of quests anyone can hop in and out of anytime they liked. Just like the Public Quests in Warhammer Online.
Being able to improve your character with Bridge Officers is great. Much more interesting then just collecting new armour and weapons to make your character more powerful.
I might drop by and check out STO in six months. For now the Global Agenda beta has completely pulled me away from STO. A.P.B, Jumpgate Evolution and WoW Cataclysm will all probably have a say in whether I choose to give STO another try.
I was impressed by the beta and plan on purchasing the game. The combination of space and ground missions, the seamless open grouping, and pvp made the game fun for me. The ships, the uniforms, weapons, and setting all contributed to making me feel like I was in the Star Trek Universe. The degree of avatar and ship customization is very welcome. The only thing I would have liked more of are the diplomatic and science type missions and I would like to be able to beam down to Earth. I also think that limiting each instance to 50 players may be good for controlling lag but bad for immersion. Imagine a ship battle with 100 or more participants.
I will write a more thorough review once I've played the retail version of the game and experienced the high level content. It's too early to pass judgment at this point in time. I will say, if your a Star Trek fan and casual gamer you will probably love it, if your just looking for an MMO to fill the void between WoW expansions, try LOTR or something else instead. I'm always amused at the amount of criticism leveled at any new MMO and the idea that it has to prove itself in some fashion against the Blizzard behemoth. Then I look at the WoW forums and see the attitude they have about their own game and it's really no surprise. Some people won't be happy until an MMO comes along that does their dishes and takes out the garbage while simultaneously providing a never-ending source of entertainment.
The motto for MMO developers should be...
"If you build it, they will come... and complain."
Firejack: The idea of being able to drop in and out of nearby battles was fun too. Really liked this idea of quests anyone can hop in and out of anytime they liked. Just like the Public Quests in Warhammer Online.
Yes that was fun. I think I got too caught up posting the negative aspects. Thanks for pointing that out.
I'll wont make a full review, but I'd like to thank you guys for the beta keys. I now have pre-ordered a lifetime license! Wouldn't have done it without loadscreen.
@Arie - Our pleasure =D
Let me start by saying that I am quite thankful for the betakey that you sent my way Phonicx.
Now I was quite happy to have participated in the beta for STO. It was nice to fly a ship through the universe and finally fight the Klingons and Romulans, besides blowing up plenty of Orions.
With any genre that I've taken a liking to, I love having a storyline that is immense and encompassing with proper continuity. I feel that STO has done a decent job with this. The characters that we have all known so well and watch grow and develop, we don't see much of in STO ( well at least we read about enough of them, ie. Janeway and O'Brian. among the many.). But since many years have gone by since the shows have gone off the air and the very young have grown and become a part of Starfleet. I encountered a much older Miral Paris and Niomi Wildman, and the O'Brian's son. It was nice to see the detail in the storylines and how they played out. How they were integral to the genre as a whole.
I spent the first few days getting use to the ship and the mechanics of how to use the ship properly. Especially in relation to the buffing and/or debuffing powers. But with a tier1 ship, there aren't many options as to what is available. With a tier2 ship the options opened up a little more. It was at this point I decided to pay more attention to the storyline. I tried to do so from the beginning, but many of the quest I tried were still bugged badly and didn't allow for any progression. having to kill 5 groups of invaders but only having 3 total to fight, was a little disparaging. It took more than a few days for this part of the game to get patched, and even after some of the quest were fixed, some were still borked. So I went flying about killing as much as I could as fast as I could. But the general blow em up and clear the system mission became played out rather quickly. So I went back to planetside missions. I found some of the earlier missions were still borked so I dumped them and went about finding new ones.
After hunting down some new missions I find that the storylines really pick up and have damn decent continuity that spans many many years worth of Star Trek. Encountering Klingons still trying to work with Augments and dealing with the Guardian of Forever was nice. Even if the voice used for the Guardian made me cringe and laugh at the same time. They truly could have found a better voice actor for that part. From there I moved to the Romulan sector and try to prevent them from taking advantage of the Federations Subspace Corridors. It was while progressing through this storyarc that the open beta came to an end. Wish I would have headed back to Sol and taken part in the Borg Attack. But alas I didn't even know that it was happening until it was too late.
Now I find that the game has much potential and would truly love to continue playing the game, let alone have the ability to get a lifetime subscription, But alas, being poor and out of work I am unable to enjoy the game any further. Since I am a rabid SciFi Junkie and have always had an affinity for the Star Trek Universe, I know that if I had the ability for the lifetime subscription I would definitely be playing the game for ages and would experience each and every corner of the universe as it is laid out. When I played CoH/V from the beginning for at least 3 years, I would explore every nook & cranny. I also did the same when I played WoW as my guild had moved from CoH to WoW. I would annoy a many players while playing cause I actually took the time to read all the quest & mission text as I was experiencing them, instead of going click, click, click, lets go. I always felt that the game was more than just gathering exp as fast as possible and getting to the next level. I would take the time to actually look around and enjoy the scenery. Someone took the time to make the environment and write the storyline and I've always felt that the best way to show appreciation was to take it all in. ( Then again when there is a mistake found, how would anyone know & correct it if no one took the time and found it.)
Suffice it to say that I am quite thankful for the betakey you provided me and would like to say thank you very much PhonicX. Even though I didn't interact with many people in the game, knowing that the beta wouldn't last long. I tried to experience as much as possible while I had the opportunity, and am thankful for the chance. For all the other players I am envious and glad to see the Star Trek Universe continue to grow.
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