Cryptic: Star Trek Online's PVP Sucks

[The Wooster]

Cryptic: Star Trek Online's PVP Sucks

A developer admits that Star Trek Online's PVP adds so little to the game, it wouldn't be missed if it was removed.

It's rare in this age of perpetual PR, where creators are constantly plugged into the marketing machine via Twitter, Facebook and forums, to see any developer admit that the game they're working on is anything less than brilliant, even when they're presented with evidence to the contrary. [http://www.destructoid.com/the-jimquisition-you-re-playing-the-game-wrong--185340.phtml ] It's refreshing to see at least one developer who'll sit back and say, "yeah, okay. This is a bit crap."

So my hat goes off to Cryptic's Dan Griffis, who is currently the only developer working on Star Trek Online's apparently less-than-spectacular PVP content.

"The first question we (the developers) had to ask ourselves is can PVP be "saved?"" he wrote on the game's official forums. [http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?p=4210954#post4210954] "I don't use the word "saved" lightly. I don't mean fixed, updated, or fun. I literally mean saved."

"Something has to be done, PVP cannot stay the way that it is now. We either have to try to save it, or take it out of the game completely," he continued. "Right now because PVP is in such bad shape we (the developers) have to decide if we think we can turn this problem around. Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way."

Griffis goes on to outline his plan for the PVP, adding that some of his changes "are not going to make a whole lot of sense at the time because you won't be seeing the whole long term plan I have in store for PVP over the course of the next year or so."

Star Trek Online was released back in February 2010, it garnered mix reviews and failed to make much of an impact. The game was switched over to a free-to-play model earlier this year.

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[Rigs83]

I pretty much quit after The Old republic came out so I can't really say what they can do to fix anything.

 

[MailOrderClone]

Honestly, I never really cared to try the PVP features out in Star Trek Online during my time playing it. Me and Captain Freddie Mercury of the starship Killer Queen found more time doing regular missions, and occasionally helping other players out with theirs. Oddly, the ship combat was the best part, as the ground combat felt more than a little boring.

While they're in the mood to tweak their games, Cryptic should dial back Champions Online too and make that game a bit more co-op focused. That's why their first game was such a big hit, after all. City of Heroes was game where team play and cooperation where the letter of the law and attempting to solo wouldn't get you anywhere quickly. Really, that's kind of the point of an MMO in my eyes. Work with other players to complete tasks that you otherwise wouldn't be able to, even if sometimes those tasks are in contrast with the goals of other groups of players. The moment that an MMO stops being about multiplayer play is the moment when it loses sight of it's defining feature, and once that happens even the greatest MMO is only as good as the most middling of single player action games.

 

[ThePS1Fan]

I kinda want to play this just because the developer told me I could do better things with my time. When you're that classy you deserve my money for your crap.

 

[Dire Phoenix]

They didn't say anything was wrong with the game as a whole. More people are logging in to the game now than ever before.

However, what they ARE saying is, that the number of people participating in PvP is so insignificant, that they could remove the PvP element entirely and it wouldn't affect the rest of the game.

This isn't the first time they've said something like this, either. At last year's "Dine with the Devs" event at San Diego Comic Con, they acknowledged that "only 18% of players have even made a Klingon character" at that point, and they could have removed that entire faction and it wouldn't have had an effect on the game's overall numbers. To this day, STO still has a KDF faction.

 

[Setch Dreskar]

They didn't say anything was wrong with the game as a whole. More people are logging in to the game now than ever before.

However, what they ARE saying is, that the number of people participating in PvP is so insignificant, that they could remove the PvP element entirely and it wouldn't affect the rest of the game.

This isn't the first time they've said something like this, either. At last year's "Dine with the Devs" event at San Diego Comic Con, they acknowledged that "only 18% of players have even made a Klingon character" at that point, and they could have removed that entire faction and it wouldn't have had an effect on the game's overall numbers. To this day, STO still has a KDF faction.

To be fair, the KDF have actually had a massive boost in numbers, ya the Fed still are by and far much larger, but you can find alot more people making KDF characters to try new strategies and new loadouts with ships that maneuver faster and have unique abilities.

Honestly though the whole 2 faction system never made much sense to me, especially with how much the Klingons and Federation have been through together, to an extreme if you count the Dominion War, it just seems odd that one Klingon led invasion would lead to full on war. Not to mention the reasoning for the war and invasion was because of shape shifters, the same crisis both sides went through and came out of as stronger allies in the Dominion war.

 

[octafish]

Indeed the pvp does suck. The pve is a lot of fun though. The ship based stuff anyway, very MMO based but it works for starships.

 

[viranimus]

Well I bought the thing 3 days after launch. I know then I wasnt happy with the game, but it wasnt really the games fault as much as it was the fact it was an MMO that lacked content.

However, I did try some pvp out. It was ok. Wasnt the worst thing ive ever PvPd *huttbalcoughcoughhackhack

Problem is.. Cryptic cant do it. They lack the resources for the development. They lack the knowhow, and honestly they lack the innovation and foresight.

I think there needs to be more factions, instead of trying to force a multi faction universe into what is essentially a two faction game is highly illogical. If you want to salvage pvp, I think you need to do a massive overhaul in the entire game. Go with a faction system more akin to what we saw in Everquest than in WoW for both pvp AND in game. Seriously this is messed up to have the Klingon empire vs the Starfleet and leaving most of the major players in the universe as not playable.

Romulans, Cardasians, Borg,Dominion, Ferengi Alliance, Breen, ect. Basically anyone most people would want to play and for some reason your stuck with races that are focused more on TOS than the rest of the series.

Heres how I would do it.

First and foremost make all those factions playable.

Remove all the old type pvp zones, and make 1 massive pvp zone with loadable sectors.

Dump the idea of squad pvp all together as the melee system seems much weaker and leave the pvp as space combat (because it makes more sense that way anyway)

And make the space combat zone MUCH larger and allow instances to be both persistent and drop in/out.

Center the gameplay around strategic territories and holding those territories while expanding influence

Again allow all the major factions to become playable. When a player drops in they are auto chat grouped with other players of their faction. That way you could see the rise and fall of various factions in power based upon player ability and strength as more players of a faction enter into a sector.

Sure its salvagable, but not with cryptic or NCsoft for that matter behind it.

Honestly there is so much awesome that could be done with this game and the property. It could have been big. But honestly it might be better off to do what lucasarts did by doing a mediocre MMO first and then shift to a different company to allow them to do a much bigger "better" one and start the franchise over anew with a completely different developer.

 

[tehweave]

Cryptic: Star Trek Online Sucks

Fixed.

I played STO for about a month. It was fun, but was a very short-lived fun. I didn't find myself going back just so I could get "one more level" like WoW. Or Skyrim. Or Minecraft (just another level on my massive brick house) no, STO just wasn't the game it was supposed to be.

 

[Abedeus]

Should've listened to people who said "Champions Online isn't worth the money!". Cryptic simply can't make good MMOs...

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

Hardly anything to tip your hat to. "The product I worked on is shit." What a hero.

 

[The Pinray]

A for effort but I doubt this will be able to really energize the game.

In the end, when it comes to removing the PvP they'll probably make it so.

That is, if they want to reach number one.

I can agree with that.Every MMO want's to be the top dog so i can bet They are giving us all she's got.

Its like they are the Crusher of dreams though.

you never know how many players will Klingon to PvP.


.....oh god damn it, this pundemic is spreading.

It's really a shame the PvP isn't so good. It had the potential to be quite the successful Enterprise.

 

[ASnogarD]

I am glad to say this was one of the few MMO's I played the beta... and DIDNT buy the full game.

On top of the usual MMO startup bugs the game suffered from :

- Load screen madness : Couldnt move a muscle without a loadscreen
- Instanced to hell , this was suppose to be a MMO right ?
- Getting spawn killed in ship combat, yeah thats fun the enemy AI spawn camping.
- No penalty at all for getting your ship destroyed.
- Ground missions... I aint even going to bother here.

Biggest issue for me though was... a damned shop in a sub based MMO, they were selling races and ships. The only thing missing was a chance to buy the Enterprise and Picard bundle, I couldnt play the game without hearing a damn advert in my head as it seems Cryptic cant make games because they are too focused on trying to sell you parts of the game...

... Cryptic make empty virtual shop floors where the players can then buy parts of the game.

( NOTE: This was BEFORE they went F2P... I shudder to imagine how bad it is now )

 

[Ralen-Sharr]

for every positive thing I've heard about STO, I've heard about a half dozen negatives
The game's a failure, they're cutting back on dev crew, which means the game's going nowhere and never really will. IMO using the Star Trek franchise was a bad move to begin with. Tends to make devs lazy and rely on the IP to carry a crap game.

 

[Something Amyss]

Me and Captain Freddie Mercury of the starship Killer Queen

Okay, I just wanted to say I love you for that. XD