Friday 26 February 2010

STO Suggestions

So STO launched about 2 weeks ago, I was going to write a review but I don't think it's really possible to fully review a game which is never meant to end, so instead of that, I'm going to give my suggestions to make the game better.

Ditch the Memory Alpha Crafting System
I hate to come off like I'm being mean for no reason, but whoever thought that Memory Alpha was a good idea needs a good kick up the arse. Cryptic have never been very good with crafting, Champions Online has suffered the same fate and City of Heroes/Villains is no better off either.

One thing that people have been begging for pretty much since Cryptic took over development was a full and interesting crafting system and while there is Tribble breeding for the Federation, what we really want is to craft consoles and weapons.

More Scripted Episodes
Right now I'm only a second grade Captain in-game and I've heard that content can get very thin towards the Admiral rank, my experiences as a Commander were pretty bad, I found myself with no missions other than the repeatable Cluster and Deep Space Encounter ones. While procedurally generated content is good for filling in gaps, it is in no way a replacement for scripted missions. Some of the "Episodes" have been amazing, it really did feel like being in an episode of Star Trek, while the procedural content is fairly boring. (Does anyone else notice that the Galaxy seems to be overrun by lava bleeding trees??)

Raid Groups and Missions!
I can only speak for myself, but I'm sure there are a lot of other people out there who hate the Crystalline Entity with a passion thanks to being grouped with morons who don't pay attention. Cryptic really need to implement raid grouping, so that Fleets can group together and take on Fleet Actions privately. So far, the only real benefit to joining a Fleet has been to use a Fleet Bank and have the use of a fleet channel. It seems that the new "Raidisodes" being released soon are still only 5-man instances which is very disappointing.

Speed Ground Combat up again!
During Beta, Ground Combat was fast and furious, until they decided to try and slow it down to keep with more traditional MMO pace. I personally prefer it faster, for a sci-fi MMO I think it needs to feel like everything is happening quickly, as it would in a real gun-fight, having to wait for a 1 second cooldown between shots just feels wrong.

Tweak Exchange
I'd like to see more options on the exchange. I think they need to add sub-sections to the weapons tab so that we can search for turrets, cannons, phasers, distrupters individually. As it stands now you need to know the name of an item to search for it. New players specifically aren't going to know whats going on (I know I didn't anyway)

Conclusion
I can't think of any MMO that hasn't suffered from problems during launch (Yes, even World of Warcraft!) so it would be unfair to say that STO isn't living up to my expectations. I plan on giving Cryptic another month or two before I make any final decisions on whether I'll renew my subscription, if they were to implement some of my suggestions above, I think it'd go a long way to making the game as popular as it deserves to be.

1 comment:

  1. Here Here...

    I agree with the ground combat comments. Not only did they severely slow it down, they also made the round up to 40 points. In the beta I had complained that the matches were too short. But now...they're just not worth it if you were to compile your "skillpoints per hour" and compare it with space pvp. Not only that, it's far less effective than pve. I enjoy ground combat more than anything else in the game right now. It's a shame that it's not more worth it...

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