The next Star Trek MMORPG: Another Epic Fail?

[katmai]

Is there any way that I can get the borg and trill in one package?  Those are the only two that I'm really trying to get. 

Sadly nope, Trill is only by buying the Online Deluxe versions (Gamestop, Steam, D2D and Atari)
Borg as you know is from Amazon which only sells the vanilla and the Collectors.

[Berkut]

I watched that combat clip again, and on second time through, I am a lot less impressed.

Grpahically it does look pretty good but....it seems like you just fly around in a circle wailing away. I noticed that the ship weapon arcs are very wide - basically seems to be "everything but directly behind" and "everything but directly ahead", which is rather unfortuante, since it means there isn't much point to maneuver except to bring differing shields to bear.

And that seems a bit to easy to do as well. Since your weapons ahve such wide arcs, there is no real need to keep a desired facing towards your target, so it seems like you are just going to circle each other switching out your shields.

[Grey Fox]

Torpedoes are either front only or aft only

[Tamas]

OMFG I dared to venture into the ST Online forum on mmorpg.com.

OMFG the very new topics to QQ about an MMO, like "WHY KLINGONS TRANSLATE TO PVP GAMEPLAY AUTOMATICALLY THEY HAVE PEOPLE PILOTING TRANSPORTS, BUILDING BUILDINGS AND MAKING BLOODWINE FFS!"

Altough there was one long post which did raise some good points:

Ive been looking at this game, trying to decide for myself whether its worth looking into and if it has the legs to last. But Im not getting it. Ive read every part of the facts explaining what will be in the game, and it really seems to me like they have struck well short and wide of what this game should have been. My views are as someone who is not a die hard fan, quit likes the genre and the movies. So please no flaming from Trekky fan bois who would defend a paper bag if it had Star Trek written on the front of it.

The videos of the ships flying and in combat look more akin to arial dog fights in planes. Hard to explain as Im sure people will reply with "well what do you expect?", but it just doesnt look real. Ships will tend to fly at a level horizon and just do circles around each other.. Cryptic even said thats what they want to happen. Source: "You can move around and fight in three dimensions, but often players will just naturally choose to keep fairly "level" during combat.  [CCMG]

The economy looks sketchy at best with the line of "well they didnt have money sooooo".

You can name your ship anything you want. Oh my god what a bad idea. In SWG you had naming policies, everyone had a sensible name that fit the genre. No one complained about it, it worked great. People will have stupid names like the USS KillZ0r! and PWNmobile etc etc. Immersion? None.

You loose nothing if you die. Okay, so people dont like losing things. But really, whats the point. End result will be everybody in pretty much the same or similar ships with the same or similar fittings. i.e. "This fit wins all, therefore if you don't use it you won win".

Ship interiors are not visible other than possibly in missions. So the immersion goes as far as a permanent external view of your ship..

I could go on with bits and bats, but generally speaking I really am struggling to latch onto something that makes me think "wow, cant wait to get stuck into that!". Seems the only people that will enjoy it regardless are the die hard fans who would play it even if it was made with black and white line drawings.

My personal predictions for how I see this game unfolding; Its going to be Pirates of the Burning Sea in space. That game had similar ideas. People in highest tear ships flying around for top spot. Fun for a month, boring for anything longer than that. Outside of PvP you'll have the Trekkies who will be writing down their own personal star logs in a diary, pretending something interesting is happening and that they are living the dream...

So please, someone who is more in the know, explain to me what on earth is happening in the game that will keep people interested long term.

[Grey Fox]

Every bad points he raises, is actually a plus for me.

[grumbler]

Every bad points he raises, is actually a plus for me.

There are advantages to games without legs, fer sher.

It has no appeal to me as a ST fan because it just seems to be the ST vversion of "all hat, no cattle," but I wouldn't be buying it if it didn't have the ST name, either! 

[Grey Fox]

Maybe that's the difference, I'd be buying it no matter the IP it was designed around. If it can be just anything like Earth and Beyond was, then it's a success in my book.

[Berkut]

I am thinking I will play in the beta, and if the game seems like it is going to EPICFAIL at launch, I simply won't pick up my pre-order.

[Barrister]

I watched that combat clip again, and on second time through, I am a lot less impressed.

Grpahically it does look pretty good but....it seems like you just fly around in a circle wailing away. I noticed that the ship weapon arcs are very wide - basically seems to be "everything but directly behind" and "everything but directly ahead", which is rather unfortuante, since it means there isn't much point to maneuver except to bring differing shields to bear.

And that seems a bit to easy to do as well. Since your weapons ahve such wide arcs, there is no real need to keep a desired facing towards your target, so it seems like you are just going to circle each other switching out your shields.

I dunno.  I think all we can draw from those videos is "it looks pretty".

The combat all seems to be drawn from the first few hours of gameplay.  It's the equivalent of watching a video of someone slaying wolves in Elwynn Forest.  So whether it is good or it is bad  it isn't going to be what combat is like later on in the game when you have more skills and talents.

I do remember reading for example that every ship is heavily customizable.  So you can choose weapons with very wide firing arcs (but of course much weaker), or you can have weapons with narrow firing arcs that are very strong.  Of course I also remember reading a review of Klingon PvP a9also from very early in the game) that said the tighter turning radius of the Bird of Prey made for what seemed a very large advantage in PvP.

Of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with not picking up your pre-order if the game sucks.



My big worry about the game is that it just gets monotonous.  Whatever you can say about WoW it's combat is pretty fast (too fast when it comes to PvP).  If each ship to ship battle takes 60 seconds or more that could get really boring...

[starbright]

(Gamestop, Steam, D2D and Atari)

Which one has the least intrusive copyprotection and allows multiples downloads?

[Barrister]

Every bad points he raises, is actually a plus for me.

I pretty much agree.  HIs complaints are either fairly meaningless because we don't have any information, or are actually plusses.

Lets see...

'Ship combat doesn't look real'.  Okayyyyyyy... how should it look?

'the economy looks sketchy' we don't know anything about the game economy

'You can name your ship anything you want.'  While I absolutely agree I'll hate it when I see the USS Pewpewpew, I don't see how you'll really be able to enforce naming restrictions.

'You loose nothing if you die.'  While I'm sure there's some modest death penalty, I play to have fun, and serious death penalties aren't fun.

'End result will be everybody in pretty much the same or similar ships'  Meh - the minmaxers will do this I'm sure.  There's always some combination that makes 2% more damage than anything else.  Me, I'll do what seems right.

'Ship interiors are not visible other than possibly in missions.'  A: it's not true (you can view your bridge).  B: they've said they'd like to introduce more interiors.  C: Exactly what are you going to do wandering around your ship?  It's like player housing - sounds great, but who wants to stand in Engineering when you could be out adventuring.


Finally, it could be like Pirates of the Burning Seas.  In the end that game had mediocre land combat, and ship combat was too long and drawn out (IMHO).  But that guys complaints are very poorly thought out.

[Barrister]

(Gamestop, Steam, D2D and Atari)

Which one has the least intrusive copyprotection and allows multiples downloads?

Only ever used Steam and D2D before.   Steam has its own copy protection on top of whatever else the game comes with, while D2D only has whatever the game has.

I've ordered from Atari, which charges you something like $3 to be able to do multiple downloads over a 2 year period (otherwise it's 30 days).  I think Steam allows multiple downloads, not too sure about D2D.

[Grey Fox]

(Gamestop, Steam, D2D and Atari)

Which one has the least intrusive copyprotection and allows multiples downloads?

D2D.

Steam is cool but you probably need to run steam in the background.
Gamestop, don't shop there.
Atari, don't know really.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

well, for Trek ship-to-ship combat we actually have a fairly realistic simulator and that's Bridge Commander. When it comes to that BC should be the benchmark.

I'll be doing like Berkut though: try to play the beta, and then decide. Same as I did with POTBS, and as I should have done with fallen earth

[katmai]

I got into the last two night of closed beta (tomorrow and sat) so i'll give some feedback to you guys.