Unread postby Phht » January 20th, 2010, 9:20 pm
Just a note: I do not recommend STO as an MMO.
One very good reason is that a dev for it says (in an interview) that the average player would take only 80 hours to get to endgame. Endgame consists of team-required Borg missions/fights (basically, 5-man raids) and PvP. Once you hit skill cap, you can't improve any more skills (so you have to really plan what you want to learn so you don't waste any points on your way to cap), so after that you can only improve your Bridge Officer NPCs, get more ships, and get better gear. And you only get two character slots (three once you hit level 6 and unlock Klingons as playable race/faction) so you can't even have one of each profession plus a Klingon. And they'll be adding two more playable races/factions some time after launch. The missions are fairly repetitive - go to this system or planet and scan this many places, and/or destroy this many enemy squadrons, etc - the deep space encounters (small group PvE battle areas) and Fleet Actions (large group PvE missions) are prime grounds for someone to afk level. Getting points in Fleet Actions currently seems overly tilted towards doing damage and not properly rewarding support players.
Klingons apparently also have less content and is PvP-centric. This might be fine, if Klingon ships had better gear and were comparable to Federation ships. But Klingon ships' best punch possible is limited to a 45-180 degree firing arc (more likely 45/90 degree), weaker shields, and weaker hull. Federation ships can equip phaser arrays and the like and enjoy 270 degree firing arcs, and by putting arrays fore and aft, have good DPS in 360 degrees. Starfleet ships also tend to have (outside the escorts) better shields and hull than Klingons.
Oh, and currently auto-fire on ships takes only one forward arc weapon and one aft weapon. So all those higher tier ships that'll have 4-5 (8 on top end crusiers) forward arc weapons that people might pile energy weapons to auto-fire? Get used to hitting the space bar every few seconds or use a third party macro program to automate the space bar press.
Yes, it is still Open Beta, but there was a level cap put in place until some time this week (might still be in place) that capped everyone at Lv16 (out of 45). Open Beta ends early next week IIRC. So there's little or no chance that Tier 4-5 stuff will be Beta'd, and endgame will not be released until after launch. And just how well can you fix repetitive mission issues or the problems with an entire faction when you're having to deal with debugging stuff revealed in Beta? So it doesn't look good for STO overall.
"BTW, Phht your ability to think of a plot bunny about any situation impresses me, amuses me and horrifies me. All at the same time. Good for you!" - doc.exe
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