Startrek Online retail/headstart thread

I really wish the game had stayed the way it was under Perpetual Entertainment.

The Cryptic game feels so cheesy and shallow even though it can be fun. There's almost no MMO in it. It's like a single player game you have to login to play.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Star_Trek_Online_(Perpetual_Entertainment)
Read about the Perpetual Version here. In that game, large ships like Galaxy class are not player owned ships, they are rendered out and you explore the interior and they are basically large towns in space. Players can fly shuttles and other smaller craft.
 
Spare-Flair said:
With champions online, they offered lifetime subscriptions as well...

And then promised lots of new content was coming

It never came for years. When it did finally come out, guess what? You had to pay extra for it.
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Champions Online was released September 1, 2009. It hasn't even been out a year.

And I don't believe City of Heroes had lifetime subscriptions.


But yeah, two MMO releases less than 6 months apart does not make me very confident. Especially with both being kinda ho-hum as far as MMOs go. Once the 30 days for Star Trek is up we'll see how it stands, some of the shiny newness will be gone.
 
Picked up the game today and played for about an hour and a half.

Seems like fun. Went with a Vulcan Science Officer.
 
I bought this game on Steam last night with the hopes that I could play for an hour or two before bed. Wow, was I wrong. It downloaded but steam never actually gave me my key so I could activate my Cryptic account.

Hopefully it'll get sorted out so I can play tonight.
 
imExcitebike said:
I bought this game on Steam last night with the hopes that I could play for an hour or two before bed. Wow, was I wrong. It downloaded but steam never actually gave me my key so I could activate my Cryptic account.

Hopefully it'll get sorted out so I can play tonight.
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I got the game via steam and it worked fine. just right click on the game and go "view cd key"
 
Sikkyu said:
I got the game via steam and it worked fine. just right click on the game and go "view cd key"
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There isn't any option for "View CD Key" when I right click. I've checked the Steam forums and it looks to be like a problem for multiple people. I opened a support ticket with Steam but have not gotten a response.
 
How does space combat compare to say... Bridge Commander? Can you target sub-systems or only the hulls? Can your crew be injured a la Starfleet Command? Can you send/beam boarding parties to take over other ships?
 
SPARTAN VI said:
How does space combat compare to say... Bridge Commander? Can you target sub-systems or only the hulls? Can your crew be injured a la Starfleet Command? Can you send/beam boarding parties to take over other ships?
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yes yes and don't think you can board other ships in pvp.

science officers let you target specific sub systems or shield areas and yes your crew can be injured.
 
Climber said:
yes yes and don't think you can board other ships in pvp.

science officers let you target specific sub systems or shield areas and yes your crew can be injured.
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Interesting.. thanks. I'll give it shot once they open up trials. Unless someone here has a guest pass they're willing to part with.
 
Climber said:
yes yes and don't think you can board other ships in pvp.

science officers let you target specific sub systems or shield areas and yes your crew can be injured.
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There is the Boarding Party Engineering skill that lets you send troops over to other ships. I haven't actually used the skill, but I hear that it sends shuttles over to the other ship, the party damages/disables some subsystems, then beam back to your ship. You can't actually take over another ship AFAIK.
 
Some interesting bugs too, I had a friend stuck in an enemy encounter for 3 or so days until they finally fixed it. The game logs your location where you traveled from so it can return you, the server some how lost that information so it wouldn't show him on the galaxy map and he couldn't leave the instance. Also some enemy encounters have some serious bugs like not counting towards secure missions and having you fight the wrong enemy. In Psi Velorum instead of fighting the Hirogen you have a good chance ending up fighting the Terran Federation instead with are Captain lvl ships, a spread of torpedoes and there is a good chance your full health ship will be one shoot, plus they don't count towards Defend the Psi Velorum Sector Block mission with is one of the best farm/grind at 403 xp at my rank per 3 encounters.
 
imExcitebike said:
I finally got it working tonight. Is there a [H]ard Fleet or anything?
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Not that I'm aware of although I would join it if there was one since I haven't bothered to join one yet.

On a side note I got admiral last night and picked the teir 5 assault cruiser. Ships definetly fun and powerull in every way. Only problem now is, we have to wait on cryptic to add some end game content. Supposedly they have what they call a rolling release which means content rolls out in the coming weeks with a supposedly large content patch 45 days after retail launch. We'll see.

Meanwhile here's my new ship. She's a nice one. :p

screenshot2010021001104.jpg
[/URL][/img]
 
Del Taco has a trial invite code. Guess I can swing buy and buy a bunch of macho drinks if people want codes. That is what I did to check the game out.

It is fun, as are most MMO's in the early levels, but I really do enjoy the mix of ground and space combat. Graphics are nice, but character animations suck ass and there is literally no documentation for the game or what skills do which is good or bad. I hear you can't really ruin your toon picking skills as you'll eventually have so many points you can get most of them.

Everyone and their mom appear to play a tactical officer but you can switch up ships so you can hybrid if you want. I'm thinking about switching to a science class, but as it stands the game is pretty much a single player game as I haven't had any reason to group so dps seems to be the best way to solo atm.
 
silpheed.jpg


This is all that I have left from my ship from the beta. I realized the game was shutting down and I just grabbed my digicam.

I really miss her, my ship, the U.S.S. Silpheed. It has that funny bug where the registry number would keep on going and going. I miss my crew as well. The game auto created my first officer, Female Vulcan Science Officer T'Rika. Guess what happened next? My first tactical officer was an Unknown Alien named... T'Rix!

20r66b4.jpg


I do miss my ship and crew and the beta a bit, but only a bit. The gameplay was too frustrating and narrow and repetitious. Everything was the same mission, just a variation on looking for crap floating in space, fighting enemy ships, and then pressing F to scan an asteroid or planet, beam down to shoot enemies and then press F to scan a crate. Wash, rinse, repeat ad infinitum.
 
No, somone has to goto earth spacedock and go speak to the fleet officer and make an offical fleet.
 
I would be most interested in this. the problem is that you need at least 5 people online at the same time in a group to start a fleet. its very stupid.
 
I want to love this game. But it's just so horrible. From the very minute you get in the game. The ship interiors are bad, the hallways are like warehouses. The bridge of the tutorial ship is like a huge empty warehouse. Transporter room, another warehouse. Doesn't look like star trek at all.
Ground combat was click one button repeatedly. I didn't even have to target anybody, just click the button. They should have gone with a straight up FPS for the ground game.
Space combat, from what I played, was way too repetative as well. I loved playing bridge commander and this doesn't play like the bridge commander that I love at all. Just fly in circles and click the fire all weapons button. Perhaps it gets better in later levels. Perhaps it gets more strategic?
I hate sector space. What a pain in the ass. I just want to select a location on the main map and warp there. Instead I end up in some goofy sector space. It's just bizarre.

Maybe some of it gets better in the later levels. I certainly hope so. I really do want to love this game.
 
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Archer75 said:
I want to love this game. But it's just so horrible. From the very minute you get in the game. The ship interiors are bad, the hallways are like warehouses. The bridge of the tutorial ship is like a huge empty warehouse. Transporter room, another warehouse. Doesn't look like star trek at all.
Ground combat was click one button repeatedly. I didn't even have to target anybody, just click the button. They should have gone with a straight up FPS for the ground game.
Space combat, from what I played, was way too repetative as well. I loved playing bridge commander and this doesn't play like the bridge commander that I love at all. Just fly in circles and click the fire all weapons button. Perhaps it gets better in later levels. Perhaps it gets more strategic?
I hate sector space. What a pain in the ass. I just want to select a location on the main map and warp there. Instead I end up in some goofy sector space. It's just bizarre.

Maybe some of it gets better in the later levels. I certainly hope so. I really do want to love this game.
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Some of what you said is definetly true, there's no doubt about it. I like the game but I already know in my heart this wont be a long term sub for me which is sad. I want to give them my money month after month but this game won't cut it long term. I really wish cbs/paramount would have done their homework and went with a real developer like lucas arts did with bioware for the old republic. I would have gladly waited another 2 years for the proper dev time/commitment. Fucking sad, I love star trek as much as star wars and this game, this IP deserves more ALOT more, than shitty cryptic. They are such a disposable game developer it's so obvious now. They make disposable games, period the end and they don't give a shit. Churn and burn make some money and move on to the next piece of shit game. They are already (and have been) working on another d&d mmo supposedly. That makes Cahmpions STO and now another mmo all needing dev time and support? LOL what a joke.
 
Savoy said:
I really wish cbs/paramount would have done their homework and went with a real developer like lucas arts did with bioware for the old republic. I would have gladly waited another 2 years for the proper dev time/commitment. Fucking sad, I love star trek as much as star wars and this game, this IP deserves more ALOT more, than shitty cryptic.
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This sums up Star Trek Online very nicely, but I have to say my peace! I played during open beta and head start, there couldn't be a worse star trek game. The design and feel of the game was done so wrong I can't put it into words. The space combat is bearable at best and the ground combat is something you want to miss like sunday morning church. That's not the worst part yet.

There are bugs in the game that have existed since closed beta, these include not getting your mission completed, or not being able to complete a mission. One that really got me was when I made Lt. Cmdr and I could not select my new ship in the shipyard. This made the rest of the game unplayable. I made a ticket out for GM help and they said they couldn't help me cause I would be given an unfair advantage. I explained in the ticket that I had the ship in my character screen but couldn't select it when I went to the shipyard. A few others had this problem too. Needless to say I couldn't continue in the game! That's not the worst yet.

The worst? The Star Trek fanboys who think the game is better then all the other MMO's out there. You will see them on the forums defending the game and its bugs to the death. They want a game with "Star Trek" on it and that's the end of the story. They don't care what they get.

I like Star Trek and wanted this game to salvage the terrible reputation star trek games have of being crap, rushed out the door releases. Star Trek Online continues the lineage of disappointment. That's why I canceled my preorder a day before the release and got my money back.
 
Sadly I have to agree that the game is shallow so much I stop playing it early just because I couldn't enjoy it much after getting a character level up to admiral 5 in less then two week with nothing to do.

Now it's just collecting dust as we speak but oh well that cryptic for you /sigh off to another f2p or trial game til something more lasting and enjoyable comes out like Final fantasy 14 I hope.
 
finally got my t5 recon science ship


awestruck.jpg




Is that not the prettiest thing, you ever did see? As the sun shines off my hull, I chose a finish that always reflects an azure light, it can be blinding with the bloom set high enough, but I have it up just enough to give a bit of extra flash.


Thing turns like a dime compared to the deep space science vessel. And I am getting stronger.


My state of the state of the game so far is OK. I don't think it is a disaster by any stretch. Some missions, especially some of the ground ones are beyond painful, but this game has the best space combat ever constructed in any star trek game. Period.

If you can't get into the space combat, you are a lost cause for any type of trek space combat as it means you would have had NO love for either starfleet command style gameplay or bridge commander. This games space combat is a blend of the two, and far more in depth and superior.

Mission design is bland, so not sure where it will all go. But I'll still around at least another month to see where things go as I am not as fickle as many others are with games. But coming off the gameplay experience of a game like mass effect 2 it really does show the difference in narrative and depth of story telling. Now to day that is pretty much all mmos, including wow. But you CAN craft a game that draws you into a world, I hope TOR captures some of that when it comes out, I think the universal voice acting will go a long way to getting this across. Even ancient games like stargate and baldurs gate II had SOME mix of real voice acting (and damn good voice acting too - I love bioware)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdy-k_qLdQg
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3srmh_ominous_videogames
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhesEO-MmEs

Was not even all voice acted, but it was enough to get you into things.


Something similar could have happened with this game too. Imagine if part of the monthly money was spent on voice actors and dedicated writers tasked to come up with frequent episodes just like a tv show, but interactive and immersive. It could be done, but for the moment, that is simply beyond the scope of this game. But the best writing in the world is not going to fly with bland text and no voice, people will just skip to the objectives. I did not do that in mass effect 2, or dragon age the first play through. And it need not happen in an mmo if done in the right way. To date it NEVER has based off what I have played.


But dedicated actors with extensive voice acting and dedicated writers churning out missions and episodes and new stories and villains fleshing out the universe is what would have made this a stand out.


As a last showcase of what could have been and still could be in terms of crafting some greater depth and substance into a game. Take at look at these ending scenes from Dragon Age

(WARNING -- If you are a TERRIBLE human being and have not played and beaten dragon age, you will be spoiled, so do your duty and go play the game)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50V1wQeCRMs&feature=related
 
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The ground combat is absolutely retarded sometimes. But the space combat makes up for it.

I'm an Lt 8 right now, can't wait to make Lt Cdr and get my new ship.
 
mashie said:
No I posted in the correct one. :p

STO is tbh nothing but a single player game with co-op mode and some limited multiplayer PVP. It has nothing MMO about it other than that you have to log in to play and that it is a monthly fee. :D
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If this game actually played like a good single player game I'd be all over it but sadly it doesn't. Not even close IMO.
 
I already, sadly cancelled my account, even before the first 30 days is upon us. It really pisses me off to be completely honest. I had high hopes for this game and was always apprehensive regarding Cryptic's ability to deliver a rea Star Trek MMO experience and now I can safely say my fears were spot on. The game's one redeeming quality space combat isn't enough to carry it nor to justify a monthly fee, sorry but it doesn't. I have been admiral 5 (max level) for almost 2 weeks now and am bored to tears.

they added 1 daily to the borg area of the game to grind out badges to get the only epic (purplez) in the game and beyond that thats all there is to do. You can do the deep space borg encounters for the 1,000th time sure, but how many times can you do that? Or you can que for the very lackluster zerg fest that is called PvP where the que times increase every day as the Kilingon players quit in droves. Gee what fun. They have turned this game into a piece of shit, A game with such massive potential, fucking wonderfull job Cryptic, you suck. :(
 
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Kind of a bummer this turned out so bad. I am a huuuuuuuge trek whore and it took everything for me not to buy it at release. I almost even bit this wknd at the 10$ off and having a 25$ Gamestop GC. Woulda cost 15 bucks, but even then re-reading all the reviews and player impressions i just couldnt bring myself to do it, and it seems to have been the right decisions.
 
4saken said:
Kind of a bummer this turned out so bad. I am a huuuuuuuge trek whore and it took everything for me not to buy it at release. I almost even bit this wknd at the 10$ off and having a 25$ Gamestop GC. Woulda cost 15 bucks, but even then re-reading all the reviews and player impressions i just couldnt bring myself to do it, and it seems to have been the right decisions.
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The thing is, it could have been alot better. It is not terrible, and some people were down on the game at the start before they actually went through any real length of it, but it does seem like the prodigal child who was malnourished and never reached his potential.


It comes through in space combat, which I still think is pretty top notch, at least as a science captain in a science ship. Nice abilities and gameplay there. Ground is rough in large part by comparison to space, and on an absolute scale. There was only one ground mission that had any kind of depth so far and actually felt like an episode with a genuine twist at the end. And combat on the ground just takes too long.

The narrative is what is still broken non the game. That by the way is no different than with wow or aion or any other mmo I have played. It just does not even attempt to model or aspire to be anything more in terms of development and story crafting. My only hope there is not with bioware.

But honestly, they should just hire a set of main actors for voice work, and writers, and get stuff out there. I see no reason they could not make something more fleshed out like that work. It could be broken into sort of Campaigns with different large goals and mysteries to unlock that would take time and work but not be completely disjointed with he universe.

Maybe I hope for too much for an mmo. No. What I hope for is what games will eventually be and provide. Alternatives to television and production coupled with interactivity, superior to both current tv and current games. But we are not there yet.
 
mashie said:
I'm not convinced it is an MMO. ;)
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Oh if it's an MMO it's riding on the edge of becoming a multiplayer game with built in graphical representation of server select (deep space).

But I see voice acting mentioned a lot. Everquest 2 had voice acting, made a big deal of it in fact. I listened to it a couple times, in a trial period, to see if I could spot the professional actors and actresses voices without looking it up. After a few times, I stopped bothering, I either played with the sound off or read so much faster than the voice actor that I was constantly having to interrupt the speech.

It's OK for cutscenes......game intros.......maybe even a primary story line or three. And in terms of bosses making them says things like on the old Scooby Doo cartoons as you defeat them. But having the missions text all narrated becomes a lot of cost for something people listen to once and ignore from then on.

SW:TOR might handle it properly, but I suspect that unless it's a very character choice driven voice sequence people will get tired of listening to them too. It's like dragon age and when the characters in your party selection at camp would keep saying the same stuff every time you tried to advance the friendship/hatred through chat....or when you hit the dwarves up to sell something and heard the same damn thing every time. It's OK once in awhile, but when you're sorting through your junk and constantly talking to him to sell stuff you don't need for 10-15 minutes......annoying, annoying, annoying.

And I like audio books, but a little bit of voice acting in an audio book, I could go to the text, read it myself and hear the voice from the audio book in my head. I get as irritated though from audio books when they repeat past story lines, or understood things about characters from previous novels...but they explain them again in the new book so the author can meet their word count.


My point is, audio is fine, but for me I can only stand to repeated audio once, maybe twice. Then Im done listening and will skip. The only times I would listen more than that are for taunts that fit in or really interesting cut scenes, and MMOs don't handle cut scenes well at all. So I think it would be a completely wasted effort for them to do audio in an MMO that as already stated needs core content and end game content, and can barely get those handled. Cryptic is a low budget developer.
 
veterator said:
Oh if it's an MMO it's riding on the edge of becoming a multiplayer game with built in graphical representation of server select (deep space).

But I see voice acting mentioned a lot. Everquest 2 had voice acting, made a big deal of it in fact. I listened to it a couple times, in a trial period, to see if I could spot the professional actors and actresses voices without looking it up. After a few times, I stopped bothering, I either played with the sound off or read so much faster than the voice actor that I was constantly having to interrupt the speech.

It's OK for cutscenes......game intros.......maybe even a primary story line or three. And in terms of bosses making them says things like on the old Scooby Doo cartoons as you defeat them. But having the missions text all narrated becomes a lot of cost for something people listen to once and ignore from then on.

SW:TOR might handle it properly, but I suspect that unless it's a very character choice driven voice sequence people will get tired of listening to them too. It's like dragon age and when the characters in your party selection at camp would keep saying the same stuff every time you tried to advance the friendship/hatred through chat....or when you hit the dwarves up to sell something and heard the same damn thing every time. It's OK once in awhile, but when you're sorting through your junk and constantly talking to him to sell stuff you don't need for 10-15 minutes......annoying, annoying, annoying.

And I like audio books, but a little bit of voice acting in an audio book, I could go to the text, read it myself and hear the voice from the audio book in my head. I get as irritated though from audio books when they repeat past story lines, or understood things about characters from previous novels...but they explain them again in the new book so the author can meet their word count.


My point is, audio is fine, but for me I can only stand to repeated audio once, maybe twice. Then Im done listening and will skip. The only times I would listen more than that are for taunts that fit in or really interesting cut scenes, and MMOs don't handle cut scenes well at all. So I think it would be a completely wasted effort for them to do audio in an MMO that as already stated needs core content and end game content, and can barely get those handled. Cryptic is a low budget developer.
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I agree that no one has gotten voice acting and cut scenes right in an mmo. I also agree that after going through it a couple times you would want to skip through it, so just let people skip through it if wished.

I can tell you one thing for certain. I have read almost none of the background of text about missions, I just read enough to get the job done. Go scan this? k. Since the scan missions are almost all the same I don't even read that much anymore. What WOULD get me doing that again is non repetitive content and tasks. And to date no game other than single player rpgs have even attempted such a thing.



On the cost of all the voice acting, I honestly don't see where the massive cost is. How much does it cost to hire a set of voice actors? You don't need DeNiro for this work. And how many programmers are working on any mmo? How many customer support people?

I am sure wow employs hundreds upon hundreds of people across the globe, and in all that a handful of main cast type voice actors could not be fielded full time?

I get the argument for a start up non established mmo like sto, but where is a game like wows excuse?

To do this there would need to be a paradigm shift in game design though, it would require much more written content, much faster content creation so tools would be needed to streamline things like Missions and sequences. But if that was in place as a solid framework, i do not see where the problem comes in by trying to make something more immersive that EVERYONE does not just skip through, even the FIRST time whether just text or voice.


And we have examples of games where we don't do that, at least most people don't do that save the most crippled minds out there with all the patience of a fruit fly (who cares about them, go play a shooter).
 
I don't read too many missions either. Voice acting wouldn't help either, because most times the mission text is just plain boring. I argue that there might be a secondary reason for this. And that is comic sales, book sales, etc. Stuff you can read that's actually written by some sort of author with some story telling talent, versus a mission creator. And knowing how Cryptic has designed their games for DLC, I'd think that it was done that way by design.

In a time when most development studios are cutting down to bare minimum staff...I mean we literally hear about new layoffs every week from various studios. I think hiring on voice actors to do every single quest would be a cost no one would want. Plus it would be a monumental task just making sure the right voices are associated with the right characters.... That would be making sure if this person sounds a specific way early in missions, they should have the voice done by the same actor/actress later in the missions. Add this being done across expansion packs, they have to make sure they can get the same actors back or keep they on payroll when they might not have content to be voiced. That is just a layer of complication that would have to be perfected to keep it from being a disaster.......having men's voices show up for women...etc. Then, does the voice actor SOUND like the race being portrayed....from what TV series do we base it on?..etc etc.

WoW would be the game to push voice acting through, and they do have a few voiced things....not mission text but they definitely have voice actors working on the game. More atmosphere voice work, stuff that isn't too annoying. I think if people wanted it bad enough, Blizzard would do it. But they would only do it on new content more than likely, and if it were going to be done..it would be done for Cataclysm. And I doubt it will be done, because I don't think it's something people would like one specific reason.

The main reason I think voice work is considered not to be important in MMOs is that having every mission read, every cutscene voice. Beyond being very costly and a headache to keep track of and people on staff that need to be for main characters........is that the sheer size of this much voice work would be many gigabytes of sound after being compressed. One audio book at a decent compression that doesn't sound like they are reading through a tin can is 600 megs roughly. I can't even guess at the amount of text in that game. And a audio book takes about 8-10 hours to listen to ..usually around 8-9 CDs. Probably takes 4 hours for every one hour you listen to for recording, production, etc. James Marsters does the Harry Dresden series from Jim Butcher, I've caught some errors in the middle of his readings.......and they got a lot of outtakes of him screwing up or trying to figure out a voice to use for a new guy showing up in the story...

The bottom line is, don't expect any MMO to put in high cost new features unless Blizzard has done it and proven it to be successful. Because the small guys can't afford to do it, hell they can barely release a functioning finished MMO as it stands. And Blizzard won't implement anything unless there's a large number of people asking for it, or another game does it first and proves it successful. Everquest 2 did not prove voice acting in MMOs to be successful. It remains to be seen if SW:TOR will prove it to be successful either. It might be a great "Oh that's neat!" feature, but if people don't care if it's there 3 months later......then why bother? It's not keeping them subscribed or interested.

Personally I think they'd be better off to get some profession authors on staff early on as they build the game..and keep em around so there's some kind of continuity and story.

A shitty story, read to you or not, is still a shitty story. A good story read by shitty voice actors can become a shitty story. Either way, don't look to Cryptic to save gaming...I think they are just lowering the bar for what constitutes an MMO.
 
veterator said:
I don't read too many missions either. Voice acting wouldn't help either, because most times the mission text is just plain boring. I argue that there might be a secondary reason for this. And that is comic sales, book sales, etc. Stuff you can read that's actually written by some sort of author with some story telling talent, versus a mission creator. And knowing how Cryptic has designed their games for DLC, I'd think that it was done that way by design.

In a time when most development studios are cutting down to bare minimum staff...I mean we literally hear about new layoffs every week from various studios. I think hiring on voice actors to do every single quest would be a cost no one would want. Plus it would be a monumental task just making sure the right voices are associated with the right characters.... That would be making sure if this person sounds a specific way early in missions, they should have the voice done by the same actor/actress later in the missions. Add this being done across expansion packs, they have to make sure they can get the same actors back or keep they on payroll when they might not have content to be voiced. That is just a layer of complication that would have to be perfected to keep it from being a disaster.......having men's voices show up for women...etc. Then, does the voice actor SOUND like the race being portrayed....from what TV series do we base it on?..etc etc.

WoW would be the game to push voice acting through, and they do have a few voiced things....not mission text but they definitely have voice actors working on the game. More atmosphere voice work, stuff that isn't too annoying. I think if people wanted it bad enough, Blizzard would do it. But they would only do it on new content more than likely, and if it were going to be done..it would be done for Cataclysm. And I doubt it will be done, because I don't think it's something people would like one specific reason.

The main reason I think voice work is considered not to be important in MMOs is that having every mission read, every cutscene voice. Beyond being very costly and a headache to keep track of and people on staff that need to be for main characters........is that the sheer size of this much voice work would be many gigabytes of sound after being compressed. One audio book at a decent compression that doesn't sound like they are reading through a tin can is 600 megs roughly. I can't even guess at the amount of text in that game. And a audio book takes about 8-10 hours to listen to ..usually around 8-9 CDs. Probably takes 4 hours for every one hour you listen to for recording, production, etc. James Marsters does the Harry Dresden series from Jim Butcher, I've caught some errors in the middle of his readings.......and they got a lot of outtakes of him screwing up or trying to figure out a voice to use for a new guy showing up in the story...

The bottom line is, don't expect any MMO to put in high cost new features unless Blizzard has done it and proven it to be successful. Because the small guys can't afford to do it, hell they can barely release a functioning finished MMO as it stands. And Blizzard won't implement anything unless there's a large number of people asking for it, or another game does it first and proves it successful. Everquest 2 did not prove voice acting in MMOs to be successful. It remains to be seen if SW:TOR will prove it to be successful either. It might be a great "Oh that's neat!" feature, but if people don't care if it's there 3 months later......then why bother? It's not keeping them subscribed or interested.

Personally I think they'd be better off to get some profession authors on staff early on as they build the game..and keep em around so there's some kind of continuity and story.

A shitty story, read to you or not, is still a shitty story. A good story read by shitty voice actors can become a shitty story. Either way, don't look to Cryptic to save gaming...I think they are just lowering the bar for what constitutes an MMO.
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At least we can agree on better writers/authors. Last bit on voice acting, like in BGII, not everything need be voice acted. There was PLENTY of text to read, but when it was put in on a recurring basis it was usually fantastic and added to the game. The voice acting we see in games like wow are not in the same class.

THIS fit seamlessly into BGII

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk0sOGVSAP4

Listen to the passion oozing from Jon Irenicus, the anger, the arrogance, the dismissiveness, a god among insects who can only annoy him but not stop him. That game without David Warner adding his voice to a FRACTION of the text of Irenicus would have been a lesser game, and it helped that the writing was better than average.

Hell even starcraft had some decent voice work. It can be done and ought to be done more.


Less hollow worlds/texts/games please.
 
valve1138 said:
The ground combat is absolutely retarded sometimes. But the space combat makes up for it.

I'm an Lt 8 right now, can't wait to make Lt Cdr and get my new ship.
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Lt. to Lt. Cdr is the most fun part of the game. After that, it's just a retarded boring grind of all the same things you have done before but repeated ad infinitum with increased enemy numbers where there is no content waiting for you at the end.

Regarding voice acting - it would not save the game. The problem is that there are no variations in missions. Everything is basically the same thing. Most of the time, players completely skip the mission briefing and don't even read the writing because it's already obvious what you need to do (find crap in space along a horizontal plane, press F. Fight off some enemy ships. Scan stuff (Press F). Beam down. Fight enemies. Scan people (Press F). Scan crate (Press F). Wander in madness trying to find last item that you need to press F on because there is no radar or direction finder and you spend 5 hours looking in the same 3 rooms of a base or tiles of a planet to find an obscure flashing rock or metal stick in a bad place where it's impossible to find. Press F. Beam Up. Fight more enemies. Report to starfleet. Wash, rinse, repeat.
 
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I'm amazed at how useless the tricorder is for finding the mission objectives.

I'm hoping they come up with more varied content as well, you're right, the missions are a bit repetitive. Thankfully space combat hasn't gotten boring yet, since I like to try out the new stuff I've acquired, weapons, skills, etc.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Lt. to Lt. Cdr is the most fun part of the game. After that, it's just a retarded boring grind of all the same things you have done before but repeated ad infinitum with increased enemy numbers where there is no content waiting for you at the end.

Regarding voice acting - it would not save the game. The problem is that there are no variations in missions. Everything is basically the same thing. Most of the time, players completely skip the mission briefing and don't even read the writing because it's already obvious what you need to do (find crap in space along a horizontal plane, press F. Fight off some enemy ships. Scan stuff (Press F). Beam down. Fight enemies. Scan people (Press F). Scan crate (Press F). Wander in madness trying to find last item that you need to press F on because there is no radar or direction finder and you spend 5 hours looking in the same 3 rooms of a base or tiles of a planet to find an obscure flashing rock or metal stick in a bad place where it's impossible to find. Press F. Beam Up. Fight more enemies. Report to starfleet. Wash, rinse, repeat.
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/Sigh
Sorry to say you got it 100% right. Couple that with getting to admiral and having nothing to do and you have cancelled subs.
 
think of firing to complete misssions.

I agree though it's a casual mmo. If you want another excel mmo like eve you will be disappointed. I finally don't have to wait few months to be able to leave the station. If you want FFA pvp so you can make gank squad and show carebears that they should cancel game as all the "leet" players can only
play mmo it's also not a game for you. But I really like this game
 
Eve at this point in it's life is way way too far gone for me. I will not play catch up for 6 months to a year just to TRY to get to where everyone else is. I played a 2 weeks trial of eve last year and honestly i was bored to tears. Games pretty and space felt vast which is awesome but thats about it. Minning asteroids all day sucked. Eve was a game I would have needed to get into years ago but at this point its too late for me. I know it would have been a good game if I had spent the time required and or started playing it 4 years ago.
 
mashie said:
Mining in EVE is mindnumbingly boring so stay away from that. What you need to do is run the starter missions as that will give you a decent amount of isk and a lot of skills for free.

After that, as in a few days later, you join either Red Federation or Blue Republic and enjoy some really fun low cost PVP. I'm having a blast flying around in T1 fitted Rifters and so do all the others. You have a ship that will cost you almost nothing to lose as the modules are dirt cheap and the insurance will cover it. I bet you stared yourself blind on "omg need to have every skill at level 5 to be competitive" routine but tbh, teamwork is all that is needed. Skillpoints are only needed to fit the modules. Skill is something you get by killing stuff and getting killed.

In R-vs-B the average skillpoints is a couple of millions at most but as soon as you can undock in a Rifter with guns and a scrambler you are ready for action.




Also EVE isn't going anywhere, I wouldn't be surprised if I still play it in 10 years time.
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Appreciate the insight dude, thank you.
 
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