2010 January

Star Trek Online Will Be A Flop

The game hasn’t even officially launched yet. As of this writing its in “head start” phase for people that pre-ordered. However the game has been down more than its been up. Overall STO performed better when it was in Open Beta than it does right now. Not to mention the login que. That’s right. The game is only available for people that pre-order it, and there is already a huge login que. Some people have been in que for 2 hours with only slight movement.

Below are a few posts from the STO General Gameplay Feedback Forum:

“Every MMO has extensive downtime”?, no **** sherlock, its part of the MMO parody that the servers go down alot in the first few days/weeks, we get that so dont use it as a arguement. What we dont get is a veteran MMO company like Crypic screwing the pooch on a liscence that they KNEW was going to generate alot of players.

If they had even considered for one micron of a second of the number of players, fans or not, who would scramble to this game for whatever reason, they’d be ready for it.

And before you open your mouth about me being some kid, or someone with no experience off MMO’s out, or the lovely insults you’ve thrown at people who dont agree with you, here is some reading for you..

I am a veteran of Dark Ages, Star Wars Galaxies, City Of Heros, World of Warcraft and Age of Conan, i took part in the Closed Beta and Open Beta on Galaxies AND Age of Conan and the early start on Star Wars Galaxies (given to Closed Beta testers for the hell we went through) and Age of Conan.

NONE of these games had the lackluster start that Star Trek Online has had, in Beta for Galaxies we went down for 2 months!, when it came back it was running smoother, still had its issues. Conan was the same, come early start for Galaxies, servers were up 20 hours a day with 4 hours of downtime, Conan was the same after a single day of stop-starts.

Come release for Conan there were issues with server loads, these were fixed in EARLY ACCESS within a day. World of Warcraft had a week of issues due to it being the first MMO title for that developer.

In Star Trek Online, we’ve had server issues, crashes and downtime during the open beta (and i am sure during the closed beta), but the big difference is that the other titles didnt have as many massive issues as this game has got, so close to store release…This is unacceptable for a veteran MMO developer like Cryptic.

We’re officially (by date) only 3 days into the early start program, and already things have gone from bad to worse when it comes to the servers stability.

Are people angry about that? You bet your backside they are.

Are people angry at the lack of communication from the Developers/Mods? You bet your backside they are!

And are people sick and tired of folks like you putting them down for sharing they’re opinions and feeling?

You bet your backside they are!

Alot of folks here have pre-paid for a product that isnt ready for launch, no matter which way you slice it people have the right to be angry. Those who’ve paid for lifetime subscriptions to this game want to to work, those who’ve paid for twelve month subscriptions want it to work, and those who have paid just for the game itself want it to work…

The only things we dont want are to be left in the dark about the current state of the game….and to be told by people that “all MMO’s are like this” when clearly, many have not been.

Thats all from this tired old man, sick of little kids telling others what to think and do….

And another…

Where do you see STO in one month ?

I see me at position 600 in the queue from 1000 if I am being optimistic.

I see crashes daily with nothing but streams of complaints in the forums.

I see a steady decline of players over the next 30 days and then a sudden drop

I see the servers eventually finding a balance point where enough people have left that it remains stable

I see the server and game shutting because Cryptic pull the plug due to lack of subscribers

Finally, I see the death of any chance of an STO MMO being made for several years.

And another…

I have tried to be optimistic about everything. Now I am just ****ED.
If any other business was run the way Cryptic is running this games launch, heads would roll, and roll fast.

I mean the most basic of failures, both in open beta and headstart. Its not bugs we are dealing with, its not enough server capacity. I mean come the FRAK on.

Here I am hoping to spend all weekend trying to make Lt. Cmdr. before everyone logs in on Tuesday, and I have gotten to play all of 8 hours since Friday.

And now this Queue horse$***. WTFrak. Moved ten spots in 20 mintues. After I had gotten in when servers went back up, just to be booted again 20 minutes later, then in and out 20 minutes later again.

I know this i one of a hundred such posts but the people at cryptic really need to be replaced. Sorry, but its true.

Star Trek Online Review

Before I get started let me say that I do like this game. The space combat is really fun. I pre-ordered from Amazon, and do not plan to cancel it.

Now for the meat:

A lot of people are saying this is a re-skin of Champions Online. Honestly I never played Champions Oline, but after so many references to it, I decided to look it up on YouTube. I was totally appalled. All Cryptic did was re-skin the CO UI with Star Treky colors and slap an STO label on it. They could have at least made it look different… Now granted I am playing in the open beta so they may have UI changes in store for the official release. Look at the videos below for a comparison of the Champions Online UI and the Star Trek Online UI.

Champions Online UI:

Star Trek Online UI

As far as the MMO “feel” of the game…Other than seeing other people in sector space, talking in zone chat, and doing fleet actions this game feels like a single player game. The constant load screens are ridiculous, tiring, and irritating. If anything Cryptic has shown others how to totally NOT make an “MMO”.

I do really enjoy the space combat. With that stated it is an awful lot like Starfleet Command. Since SFC source code was released to the player base when the company that made it (Taldren) went under, I am forced to wonder if maybe Cryptic got a hold of it and used it as the base of the space aspects of this game.

Starfleet Command Gameplay

Star Trek Online Space Gameplay

With all that stated…I am willing to dismiss all those gripes with the exception of only one. I am greatly disappointed with this developer for a total lack of vision and creativity with the community aspects of the game. The horrendous over use of instancing in this game is going to kill it. I highly recommend they find a way to make it a more open world, and find a way to facilitate the community feeling of the game.

Recommendations:

Instances: The only thing instanced should be starbase and starship interiors and planet surfaces.

Starbases: Everyone can be at the same starbase AND see AND interact with one another. None of this multiple instancing crap.

Sector Space: Remove instance loading when going from one sector to another. Open it up so that its all seamless. If there is a starbase…be able to orbit and board it from sector space (What is the point of an instance in an instance like at K7 and Earth Spacedock? It just makes for load screen after load screen. Seriously who the hell thought that was a good idea?) While I don’t mind sector space, I recommend it be redesigned to make it feel galactic. The premise is nice, but it makes the entire world feel too small. Perhaps expand the size of sector space, remove the “map” theme you have, and add in actual star systems with planets (all explorable) and stars so that people can actually transit trough a system while you are doing a mission (Think Eve Online for star system scale, but maybe not that big.).

Star Trek Online Sector Space:

Planets: Make planets explorable. I mean you can fly up to a planet and you can beam down to any point on the planet. Imagine a UI where you can use your mouse to pick an exact point on a map to beam down to. Each planet should be the size of a planet from Star Wars Galaxies (I am talking old days before it was screwed up. I haven’t played it in years though). On these planet you should be able to explore and even find missions from NPC’s on the Planet. There should be HUB worlds that each have large capital cities that you can visit (Note that these planets should be large explorable worlds outside of the city) To further flesh this planet use out, a player should be able to completely level from exploring planets and doing ground based missions. Likewise the leveling should be the same for space based missions. To even spice this up a bit…make some planets with hostile environments that require your crew to wear environmental (EVA) suits. To add to this even further, if sector space was huge and each star system has multiple planets (1 -10 planets per system) you could even allow player structures on the planets. Furthermore by expanding sector space to scale like it should be, you would even have room in space to allow fleets to construct their own starbases.

Starships: They should be fully explorable. Hell it doesn’t have to be elaborate. Its a starship so all you have to do is create faction oriented interior sections and repeat them as needed. Also key areas such as the bridge, ready room, captiain’s quarters, etc. should be open to decorating by the ship captain. This would facilitate a fleet meeting on their admiral’s ship, for example a fleet briefing room or a ship’s bar.