Otterscrubber
First Post
I love this franchise and that it was very cool that they were making a MMORPG about it. However most Star Trek games have sucked in my opinion. Wondering if anyone out there has played it and what their feedback is.
What do you think of Star Trek Online?
- Thread starter Otterscrubber
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IronWolf
blank
I haven't played - but this echos what friends of mine said about the game.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
I am still subscribed to it and play it daily. It has its flaws, but I enjoy it and I can see myself playing for some time.
The game gets easily repetitive once you are a Rear Admiral 5 or Brigade General 5, which does not take that long. Depending on how much you play, of course. I think it took a few weeks, with a few hours playing each day. Still I have trouble believing that can be different for other games, since new missions/quests don't write themselves.
Missions
Story MissionsAs long as you can do story missions, you will stay entertained, I think. Some missions are weak, but some are really good. Not surprising, probably.
It explores a lot of the Startrek mythos and how things are going 40 years after the last TNG movie.
Other Mission Types
Exploration Mission is short content following mostly basic formulaic patterns, like "fight these 5 ships" or "scan 5 anomalies" or "deliver supplies to this planet". It gets repetitive after a while (but it is content that you can reliably repeat), but it is a good way to gather badges that allow you to buy equipment.
There is talk about expanding and improving the system generating exploration missions, but no real specifics yet.
Sector Defense / Enemy Sensor Contact is simply - enter this area, and fight lots of NPC enemies.
Patrol Missions have the same complexity of exploration missions, but come with a few more variations actually, but cannot be repeated.
A kind of extension of the storyline missions are the "Raids" or Special Task Force (STF) available at Rear Admiral level. The require a 5 man team and are very challenging (a lot more than the normal game) and require teamwork. They are not necissarily intended for "normal" player or at least not casual players. I haven't actually done any of them, since they need more time then I am willing to spend.
Fleet Actions are special space or ground only missions that require multiple players. You fight off a Klingon assault, or defend Deep Space Nine from an attack.
Player vs Player
And then of course you have Player vs Player content. There are four match types (plus space and ground variation) - Capture and Hold (control certain locations), Arena (just 2 sides, whoever gets 15 kills first wins), Assault (unfortunately a less played variant) and Warzone (both sides have to achieve a certain mission objective, involving NPC enemies and scanning or destroying stuff. The opposing players can be attacked or can attack you, but this won't give you any points, but might help avoiding the other side getting points.)
Some will say, Klingons rule, or Escorts rule, or Cruisers rule, but I think the most important thing to remember is: teamwork rules. Since most of the other content in this game can be played alone or is not that difficult, many players are lacking in that aspect.
Since the Klingons do not have any storyline missions (until very soon) and only got exploration content later in the game, every Klingon player does a lot of PvP, and so they have a lot of experience with it.
Combat
I definitely prefer its space combat part, which is kinda sad - a unique aspect of the game could or should be that you have two combat modes. But realistically speaking, Startrek is not exactly known for its exciting and unique ground battles. Startrek doesn't have light sabers.
In space, I absolutely love it. It's a little more "flashy" then Startrek in some ways, since of course, being an MMO, it features lots of special abilities, but it's fun. The different ship types play very different.
Other
A weakness of the game is the heavy instancing in everything. You will never see 500 players in one spot, since they will be distrubited among multiple instances of the same map. So it will never really feel "massive". Though in fleet actions or PvP areas it is possible to find 20 or more ships working together (or at least half of them working together against the other half
).
Outlook
End of this month, season 2 is to be launched. It will bring a new type of mission to the Federation side - diplomatic content. This will theoretically allow levelling without ever firing a shot (might get boring, though, but we don't know the specifics yet.)
It will also bring 8 storyline episodes to the Klingon faction only, and 5 missions to any faction. Plus - they plan weekly episodes. Not sure for how long those will run, but that's certainly cool.
New ships are supposed to come out, too, and the level cap will be increased by 5 grades to Vice Admiral 1.
Beyond that... There are two major things that can make STO truely great for many players:
- User Generated Content. They are working on it. There is no official release data announced yet, and there is not even a guarantee that it will definitely come out. But if it comes out, reasonably speculation is towards the end of this year.
- Open PvP Zones, Persistant PvP. Currently, there aren't many PvP maps, and it's all just fight a match and all is reset. Such a zone could change things, and create more motivations to fight beyond merely getting some skill points, energy credits and badges.
The game gets easily repetitive once you are a Rear Admiral 5 or Brigade General 5, which does not take that long. Depending on how much you play, of course. I think it took a few weeks, with a few hours playing each day. Still I have trouble believing that can be different for other games, since new missions/quests don't write themselves.
Missions
Story MissionsAs long as you can do story missions, you will stay entertained, I think. Some missions are weak, but some are really good. Not surprising, probably.
It explores a lot of the Startrek mythos and how things are going 40 years after the last TNG movie.
Q, Iconia, Romulas, Guardian of Eternity (or whats-his-name), Species 8472 (Undine), Borg, Thomas Riker and more.
Other Mission Types
Exploration Mission is short content following mostly basic formulaic patterns, like "fight these 5 ships" or "scan 5 anomalies" or "deliver supplies to this planet". It gets repetitive after a while (but it is content that you can reliably repeat), but it is a good way to gather badges that allow you to buy equipment.
There is talk about expanding and improving the system generating exploration missions, but no real specifics yet.
Sector Defense / Enemy Sensor Contact is simply - enter this area, and fight lots of NPC enemies.
Patrol Missions have the same complexity of exploration missions, but come with a few more variations actually, but cannot be repeated.
A kind of extension of the storyline missions are the "Raids" or Special Task Force (STF) available at Rear Admiral level. The require a 5 man team and are very challenging (a lot more than the normal game) and require teamwork. They are not necissarily intended for "normal" player or at least not casual players. I haven't actually done any of them, since they need more time then I am willing to spend.
Fleet Actions are special space or ground only missions that require multiple players. You fight off a Klingon assault, or defend Deep Space Nine from an attack.
Player vs Player
And then of course you have Player vs Player content. There are four match types (plus space and ground variation) - Capture and Hold (control certain locations), Arena (just 2 sides, whoever gets 15 kills first wins), Assault (unfortunately a less played variant) and Warzone (both sides have to achieve a certain mission objective, involving NPC enemies and scanning or destroying stuff. The opposing players can be attacked or can attack you, but this won't give you any points, but might help avoiding the other side getting points.)
Some will say, Klingons rule, or Escorts rule, or Cruisers rule, but I think the most important thing to remember is: teamwork rules. Since most of the other content in this game can be played alone or is not that difficult, many players are lacking in that aspect.
Since the Klingons do not have any storyline missions (until very soon) and only got exploration content later in the game, every Klingon player does a lot of PvP, and so they have a lot of experience with it.
Combat
I definitely prefer its space combat part, which is kinda sad - a unique aspect of the game could or should be that you have two combat modes. But realistically speaking, Startrek is not exactly known for its exciting and unique ground battles. Startrek doesn't have light sabers.
In space, I absolutely love it. It's a little more "flashy" then Startrek in some ways, since of course, being an MMO, it features lots of special abilities, but it's fun. The different ship types play very different.
Other
A weakness of the game is the heavy instancing in everything. You will never see 500 players in one spot, since they will be distrubited among multiple instances of the same map. So it will never really feel "massive". Though in fleet actions or PvP areas it is possible to find 20 or more ships working together (or at least half of them working together against the other half
).Outlook
End of this month, season 2 is to be launched. It will bring a new type of mission to the Federation side - diplomatic content. This will theoretically allow levelling without ever firing a shot (might get boring, though, but we don't know the specifics yet.)
It will also bring 8 storyline episodes to the Klingon faction only, and 5 missions to any faction. Plus - they plan weekly episodes. Not sure for how long those will run, but that's certainly cool.
New ships are supposed to come out, too, and the level cap will be increased by 5 grades to Vice Admiral 1.
Beyond that... There are two major things that can make STO truely great for many players:
- User Generated Content. They are working on it. There is no official release data announced yet, and there is not even a guarantee that it will definitely come out. But if it comes out, reasonably speculation is towards the end of this year.
- Open PvP Zones, Persistant PvP. Currently, there aren't many PvP maps, and it's all just fight a match and all is reset. Such a zone could change things, and create more motivations to fight beyond merely getting some skill points, energy credits and badges.
jonnjonnzz
First Post
I played for 3 months and got really bored. Landing party missions were very repetitive. Ship combat was OK, but not great.
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