Star Trek Online ?

[Kang]

I'm with Cookies on this one. I played Open Beta and it held my interest pretty well. My big complaint so far is the mission don't seem to tie together very well. Maybe they do as you progress through the game. I really didn't make it very far. I liked the space combat. Ground combat was OK. Movement was a little twitchy on the ground. I'm sure it'll be improved with patches and updates as the game ages.

Multiboxing it will be a challenge. There is a follow command, but on the ground it doesn't work very well. As someone else mentioned, it is very mouse driven.

All-in-all it's a nice break from wow.

[Crel]

Yeah well it just looks too close to Coh, which don't get me wrong I enjoyed for awhile. Of course the space battles seem to be the candy for me, haven't played a decent one since Freelancer doubt this one will shock me.

I may try it but seriously the option for a lifetime sub seems like a "we know this game is crap, lets grab the cash while the hype is hot" move. Insulting! They'll have to earn my lifetime sub the way wow does................................. one sec, this carrot is blocking my vision!

[voodoogriff]

Yeah I played the Open Beta for about a week before I uninstalled. The space missions are terribly repetitive. I realize that all MMOs will be repetitive but it was pretty excessive.

[RobinGBrown]

I really like the idea of a lifetime sub. I play very casually on and then off again so the chance for a Champions Online sub was, to me, a great offer.

Unfortunately I reckoned without Cryptic's brand of 'radically change the game on day 1' way of doing things.

Now I can't stand CO - really enjoyed the open beta, made the decision to get a lfietime sub, then the game turns out to be no fun at all.

Cryptic seem to employ a method of makingt he open beta 'easy' and then, once they've got some people hooked, turn up the difficulty knob to 11.

They're not going to fool me again. Bunch of wankers.

[Mokoi]

I'm not sure how I feel about the game, I found that even my "fast" ships had really clunky movement in space, and it felt liek I was always just trying to move my barge through the quicksand, instead of a nimble starship in a zero-friction environment.

/geekrant

I understand the Physics in space, and I understand that ships still have mass and so require energy to influence their movements just like in a gravity environment, but some of the things, like braking port and full speed starboard do not exist, and they should, this is how spacecraft move and maneuver, not like a powerboat or a ferry, which is what the spaceships feel like. Asteroids got it right with a simple uni-directional movement system in 1979. Why can't my star ship continue at full power forward (inertia) whiile I put full power in reverse on one side and full power forward on my opposite side, or a perpendicular vector to create some great spin-maneuvers while you are still heading in the direction you first were traveling, Cryptic? This is not new theory and no other form of mathematics has been so thoroughly explored as those involved with space-flight.

/geekrantoff

The combat was really fun, both on the ground and in space, and I really enjoy the controlling of an away team on the ground, even if it was glitchy and lag destroyed most of the movement. I like the idea of outfitting a ship with the components and crew to make an incredible amount of combinations, and perhaps they will not give such large benefits and differences as we would like, that's still not clear.

It seems a big departure from the "wow clones" which have tried to duplicate wow's success by following the formula with sub-par ingredients and craftsmanship (see LOTRO, AoC, etc etc) and really given something different.

Plus, I like Star Trek, and I will always be a little nostalgic about picard and riker at the helm of a fantastic journey. Perhaps nostalgia won't be enough to get my lifetime subscription, but for a lifetime sub, even if I play off and on for a few years, it would be worth it. Sometimes I wish I had access to old games, like FFXI and such, just to see how the game is going, and another game to go with WoW on the side is sometimes needed, for those moments when I just can't stand to play WoW.

Good times, great game so far, but not WoW. And certainly no WoW-killer either.

[Korruptor]

STO to me is the best alternative to boxing; for me it's the end of boxing.

Away teams:
You get four intelligent away team mates that automatically heal, buff, debuff , evade and follow your orders all with none of the complexities of actual multiboxing. It's even superior to EQ mercs since you don't even have to pay them.

Space combat:
The tactical nature of the game along with the unlimited combinations of gear and weaponry make for customizing your ship to fill a specific tactic or just your play style. Space combat requires such attention that it's very engrossing and rewarding. Nothings better then the satisfaction that you took out a larger but slower ship because you out maneuvered it and rotated your shields to soak up the damage while punching through theirs.

Klingon's:
The Bird -of-Prey you get is far more nimble then the starter Federation ships. They are all about PvP. I recall the missions I had: die to another (Klingon) player 25 times, kill other (Klingon) player ships 50 times, Ground PvP missions, space PvP missions etc. Very few PvE missions for this faction.

Summary:
I so love this game just from the flawed beta that not only did i preorder it, I bought the life time sub.

Here are some screen shots:
Right to left: One of my first major kills during the Starbase 24 raid encounter, me and my away team dealing with an Undine called the "War Master" and the crazy event marking the end of the open beta, the Borg invasion (Sol Starbase).

[Crel]

Star Trek Next Gen was on all day, I'm guessing to help the launch of STO as they are showing commercials alongside it.
Between Jean-Luc Picard outwiting smugglers and Data eating Deanna Troi cake, sold me. I really hope they understand ST was more about story and lore, than action. We'll see

Edit: SciFi channel

[BobGnarly]

I'm not sure how I feel about the game, I found that even my "fast" ships had really clunky movement in space, and it felt liek I was always just trying to move my barge through the quicksand, instead of a nimble starship in a zero-friction environment.

/geekrant

I understand the Physics in space, and I understand that ships still have mass and so require energy to influence their movements just like in a gravity environment, but some of the things, like braking port and full speed starboard do not exist, and they should, this is how spacecraft move and maneuver, not like a powerboat or a ferry, which is what the spaceships feel like. Asteroids got it right with a simple uni-directional movement system in 1979. Why can't my star ship continue at full power forward (inertia) whiile I put full power in reverse on one side and full power forward on my opposite side, or a perpendicular vector to create some great spin-maneuvers while you are still heading in the direction you first were traveling, Cryptic? This is not new theory and no other form of mathematics has been so thoroughly explored as those involved with space-flight.

/geekrantoff

I have a theory. I don't believe we are very good at piloting vessels that have truly arbitrary force vectors applied to arbitrary positions on the hull of the vehicle. Normally, even when such a thing tries to exist in the atmosphere, the intense amount of friction of the air (or water) will tend to right the vehicle to a certain orientation. Boats aren't the shape they are just for minimization of hull friction, it also help us "face forward" when we are driving them.

A vehicle in space has no such (or very little) "corrector", and what usually happens when a human tries to pilot such a vehicle is that some minor off-axis inertia confuses the hell out of us and we can't figure out how to correct. IOW, the spaceship start travelling off in weird directions with crazy spins.

Maybe someday, when space flight is a common reality, we'll all be accustomed to it, but for now, we aren't. And I'm guessing people don't want to play a video game where they can't figure out how to pilot the craft, so the creators put some grounding rules to make it more palatable to us.

That's just my theory from having play around with some inertial simulators in the past.

[Kang]

Star Trek Next Gen was on all day, I'm guessing to help the launch of STO as they are showing commercials alongside it.
Between Jean-Luc Picard outwiting smugglers and Data eating Deanna Troi cake, sold me. I really hope they understand ST was more about story and lore, than action. We'll see

Edit: SciFi channel

I totally agree Crel. My biggest problem with the game so far is that the story is not very cohesive. I really don't know what I'm working towards as a character. It's like I'm at a day job being given a bunch of tasks to do. No real story line to speak of so far. Hopefully it will emerge as the game progresses. If not, I will be very disappointed.

[Khatovar]

Edit: SciFi channel

Isn't it "SyFy" now? *sneer*