Players Views of STO

[Mangala]

First I have seen from another forum I use. The guy doesnt do MMO's much mainly, POTBS/Co all the "very niche" mmo's, but gave it a go nevertheless.

Would love some of the guys who are in it here to offer up their full on opinions if possible!

After playing the beta for a few hours (first time I logged into STO so Im a totaly newb):

First I want to say that I have been looking forward to this game. Im a bit tired of Sword and Sorcery for now, so when I won a beta key I jumped at the chance! 8 gig download, 2.3 gig patching, then 600 meg of new patches later....

Intro: Apparently the borg hit da fleet, and its up to me, the highest ranking survivor to sort things out. Im an ensign on a mission! Oh and because I handle this so well, Starfleet were kind enough to let me keep the ship. Personaly I would have made the intro somewhat logical with a quick tour of a Starfleet officers graduation course at the Accademy (Prove you can steer a ship, handle a sidearm, pass a physical test, here are the keys to USS Augusta, enjoy!), but whatever.

Ship/space system: Think Pirates of the burning sea in what feels like a 2d space enviroment despite that you in theory can go up and down. You set your speed, then try to keep your ship having its target within the fire-arch of the weapon system you want to use. Steering the ship is done by turning left right (A/D) and up and down (W/S) and you set your speed by moving a slider with Q/E, you can also "click" the speed throttle to the speed you want and hold down right and left mouse button to move the view and "aim" where you are heading by "looking" at it.It actually feels like your trying to turn around a sail ship, not like a space ship with engines and thrusters. You fire by pressing the number key for the weapon you want to use (i.e. main phaser banks = hotkey 1, torpedoes = hotkey 2) but to my dismay you seemed to be unable to right click them or something to have them keep up fire on the target so instead you now sit spamming the hotkeys after each cooldown. The whole system feels heavy, clunky, and to me its annoying as fuck. If they made it x3 speed and cut the turning radius to 20% of the current one, it might be intresting, but as it is now... dear god.

Planet/ground system: Take Champions Online, reduce your powers to a weapon + weak melee attack, and remove travel powers.. and you get STO ground combat. (If you dodged Champions Online, think GTA IV with tab target). It does its job I guess, but its hardly anything that feels relevant. To be honest, at all times I was "forced" to be on the ground I wanted to return to my ship.

Missions/quests: Go to system A, get bunched up with people in that system (instance) kill X as a public quest, go to system B, solo-kill C and then beam aboard ship Y to kill 10 orions and beam back. Next Mission. Oh and to get to A and B you have to navigate a map system that is the most clunky p.o.s system I have ever been forced to use. Sure it looks 3D and shiny, but to find anything or get an informative overlook feels impossible for me as a newb. In something that feels like a desperate attempt to make the "world" feel alive, your map is cluttered with ships going here and there and blocking your view of the area while doing it. I just dont get it. Somehow I expect the fucking MAP to be a simple tool for information and overview of your area, not an animated painting.

After playing through a few missions that took 3 hours or so (and I swear 2 hours of this was looking for the fucking system I was supposed to go to, why the hell cant I right click in the mission log and set up a waypoint? Federation ships dont come with a navigation system?) I wanted to try the Klingons.. and was told to level up to lvl 6 then I "should" be able to make a new klingon char. Im sure I read somewhere that you could make your Klingon after the intro, but apparently not. Why in a BETA test you cant insta-roll a char of the second faction is beyond me but... well I can honestly say that I doubt I will bother to log in to get to lvl 6 just to roll a klingon. If what I read about their ships (almost all weapons pointing forward, so need to face the enemy, something that makes me sigh just thinking about turning around my Man of War.. sorry, space ship...) is true , NO THANKS.

(disclaimer: As I said, I just logged in for the first time, Im SURE there are tricks to make shit like waypoints and such once you know the game better. Unfortunatly a lot of people who will log into this will have zero-little experience of MMOs and will be facing these annoying issues so I thought Id write what I experienced in-game without google searches for info about "how to..")

Sorry for spelling and such, its past midnight here and Im just tired and disappointed.

[Mangala]

Same guy now he has played a touch more:

After playing some more:

Thanks for the map tip, helped cut down the time to get anywhere a lot. The tip for putting a weapon on auto-fire was less useful since it seems rather bugged atm (works for me about 50% of the time).

It goes a bit smoother today, but still feel its more of "Pirates of the burning sea" in space then a new MMO. I loved POTBS, especially the combat, but it seems very VERY clunky for StarTrek in my opinion. Ground combat feels totally pointless tho the environments are nice, missions vary between over-worked to way to generic.

It lacks something new to make me interested, they have not innovated anything for this game, just bunched together 2-3 different games, slapped on a ST skin and called it a day. And no, Im not surprised at this since its coming from Cryptic, but Im a bit surprised that they get away with it for a major IP.

[Taith]

It actually feels like your trying to turn around a sail ship, not like a space ship with engines and thrusters.

I played a single-player Star Trek ship game many moons ago, and one of the criticisms of it was that your ship handled like a starfighter, not a Constellation-class battlecruiser. The sequel addressed this: ships took time to turn, and they felt like big things with inertia. I never played it myself, but that was what was in the review.

Not having played a space MMO, I don't really know the conventions. How well does a starship handle?

[Warcold]

Planet/ground system: Take Champions Online, reduce your powers to a weapon + weak melee attack, and remove travel powers.. and you get STO ground combat. (If you dodged Champions Online, think GTA IV with tab target). It does its job I guess, but its hardly anything that feels relevant. To be honest, at all times I was "forced" to be on the ground I wanted to return to my ship.

I didnt play either game, but lolled at this. What did the guy expect?

[Taith]

The ability to nuke from orbit, I'm thinking.

[Mangala]

The ability to nuke from orbit, I'm thinking.

Its the only way to be sure.