Star Trek Online Poll

[Amaris]

I give it a "B". I love the space combat, but the ground game is, to use Ward's word, atrocious. I don't know who designed that part of the game, but they need to understand what "point of view" means, and how it relates to your character constantly changing enemies in different directions while you're under heavy fire and unable to focus back in the direction of the biggest enemy fire because your character is too busy focusing on the one little guy with the peashooter instead of the damned powerful Romulan with the plasma grenades!

 

[Rincewiend]

I give it a "B". I love the space combat, but the ground game is, to use Ward's word, atrocious. I don't know who designed that part of the game, but they need to understand what "point of view" means, and how it relates to your character constantly changing enemies in different directions while you're under heavy fire and unable to focus back in the direction of the biggest enemy fire because your character is too busy focusing on the one little guy with the peashooter instead of the damned powerful Romulan with the plasma grenades!

Ah yes, attack the one warrior when there are 2 swordmasters hitting your character...

 

[darthraidr]

How long do you get online when you first buy the game, i was reading that it was 30 days but some have been saying recently that its been increased to 60 days.

I certainly would not mind buying the game for £30 and getting two months of play out of it for free just to get it out of my system.

http://atari.com/games/startrek_online/

Looks like you have to buy directly from Atari and before March 3rd to get the deal. Incidentally, people have been raising hell on the official forums over this. It doesn't bother me much if it gets more people in the game but a lot of folks feel cheated.

now that is tempting... so you'd get two months of free time instead of just the 1 month. or is it two months on top of the one month?

hmm... time to think it over now.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

I have been trying to find this deal on that site but all i can see is everything with 30 days

 

[Noname Given]

heres a question: say you stop paying 6 months from now. Do you loose your history?

No (as long as you reactivate the same account you had). To date no MMO has erased unsubbed characters, since they always hold out hope you'll return.

Not only that, but character data probably is only a few megabytes in size, if that. Deleting characters probably wouldn't save that much space.

Actually a single Player Character database entry in STO is WAY Larger than amy other MMO out on the market today. (A Dev post explained that they wanted to give players more character slots, but a base 3 was finally what was agreed on.

Why? Think about it. In most MMOs your character record is just the one character, his abilities and equipment.

In STO one character record can be:

- The actual player character his skills and equipment

- All the data for each Bridge officer, and each Bridge Officer's skills and equipment (I think the top limit on BOs per player character is 10 or 12). Each BO is effectively another character in itself.

- All the data for EACH one of the Player Characters ships (including the ship's design, Bridge, and all equipment); and I believe the max number of ships you can have per character is 6.

So, again, in comparison to most other MMOs, one player character record has quite a lot. Again, they probably will never do a character purge of inactive characters, but a single player character record fopr STO is probably quit large.

 

[Amaris]

That shouldn't be too large, unless they keep all the image data in there as well.

 

[Blamo]

Honestly I'm surprised. Maybe's it's because I had low expetctations to begin with, given all the reviews, but to be frank it's a good game. Sure it's not excellent, nor is it everything you'd want a Star Trek online game to be, but it is a good game.

There are a few strange bugs I've found, like when I've changed the appearance of a crew member, their appearance on the bridge remains the same (okay on away missions though)

Ground combat could be improved, but to be frank it's not all that bad.

Space combat is very good, seemingly heavily influenced by Star Fleet Command. Could be better of course, but I suppose the dumbed down gameplay is to make it less of a grind for more casual players (like no range difference for weapons). I even found that some ancient SFC tactics work.

Missions could be made varied, but I suspect they're already working on this. Space wise though, even STC wasn't all that varied.

Also, if you buy the game over steam, it'd be nice to have some sort of pdf manual.

So in the end it's *currently* not bad, nor is it great, but it is a good game.

Rating: B

 

[Psi'a Meese]

I give it a B. Only because the Caitian template was not yet available to choose from. Though it's coming.

I'm enjoying myself. It's getting its first Game Update by the end of March. And am looking forward to the growth of the game.

 

[Pauln6]

Is the character generator part of the game upload on your pc or only available online? I love the look of the game but I seriously doubt I'd have the time to get my money's worth for regular play on a tight budget. However, I'd use the character generator for producing character portraits for manual rpgs and would be happy to buy the game itself for that purpose. If I only have 30 days to generate an infinite number of character portraits before my account ran out, that is a far less attractive proposition.

Further, if I would have only a limited time and new race templates are still being uploaded, I'd be better off waiting for more of the work to be done for me.

 

[Trek]

I don't think the character generator is available seperately, but I know what you mean. Having the Argus crew in easily generated 3D is too good an opportunity to pass up. (Now I just need to finish writing stuff!)

 

[CaptJimboJones]

I haven't played it, so I won't vote. But based on the reviews and the feedback I've gotten from players, I'm going to give it a pass. Most people don't seem particularly impressed, and even those that do admit that the structure of it will likely get old after a while. I get the sense that if it wasn't a Star Trek(c) branded product it wouldn't have any player base at all.

Could get better if they fix it, but at this point I'll probably just wait for TOR.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Well i have been enjoying the game thoroughly, graphics are brilliant as is all the audio, just made LTC level 1 yesterday and got a new ship which was cool, space battles are great, ground battle are OK but i can see why they soon become a chore.....i have been enjoying the game solo at the moment because i am really enjoying discovering everything myself first.

Reliability wise its not been too bad at all, connectivity seems to be improving big time and I'm surprised to say lag has been to the minimum, random disconnections are still up there but it also seems to be getting better over time, longevity wise for me wont be a issue as i have limited time anyway to play it so it will be some time before i reach any of the higher levels.

So i give start Trek online a very respectable B for what i have seen and enjoyed so far, I'm impressed.

 

[STR]

I give it a "B". I love the space combat, but the ground game is, to use Ward's word, atrocious. I don't know who designed that part of the game, but they need to understand what "point of view" means, and how it relates to your character constantly changing enemies in different directions while you're under heavy fire and unable to focus back in the direction of the biggest enemy fire because your character is too busy focusing on the one little guy with the peashooter instead of the damned powerful Romulan with the plasma grenades!

There's a setting in options that will auto-prioritize based on threat.

The game gets a lot more interesting once you get passed the Lt grades, which serve only as an extended intro to game mechanics. There's several memorable LtC through captain missions. They aren't hard if you solo them, but bring a challenge if you have 3 or more people with you as the difficulty scales. Some of the Admiral stuff is damn tough no matter how many people you have with you.

So, it needs some polish, yes. It should be much more rounded out in a couple months, especially with all the klingon additions they're making. I've set up to buy 3 more months when my trial expires in 2 weeks, I figure that's enough to see whether the dev's are committed to making this shine or not. If they are, I have no problem dropping the money for a lifetime sub. If not, well, I don't renew in June.

 

[Amaris]

I give it a "B". I love the space combat, but the ground game is, to use Ward's word, atrocious. I don't know who designed that part of the game, but they need to understand what "point of view" means, and how it relates to your character constantly changing enemies in different directions while you're under heavy fire and unable to focus back in the direction of the biggest enemy fire because your character is too busy focusing on the one little guy with the peashooter instead of the damned powerful Romulan with the plasma grenades!

There's a setting in options that will auto-prioritize based on threat.

The game gets a lot more interesting once you get passed the Lt grades, which serve only as an extended intro to game mechanics. There's several memorable LtC through captain missions. They aren't hard if you solo them, but bring a challenge if you have 3 or more people with you as the difficulty scales. Some of the Admiral stuff is damn tough no matter how many people you have with you.

So, it needs some polish, yes. It should be much more rounded out in a couple months, especially with all the klingon additions they're making. I've set up to buy 3 more months when my trial expires in 2 weeks, I figure that's enough to see whether the dev's are committed to making this shine or not. If they are, I have no problem dropping the money for a lifetime sub. If not, well, I don't renew in June.

Ah, thank you! I apparently missed that option. This should make it much less frustrating when in a combat group.