Star Trek Online
- Thread starter CaptainRAVE
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lol, true, but they always seem to highlight something that I missed. Seasons 4 and 5 sound like they could bring a lot of changes to PvP, I just hope we don't have to wait for them. It has to be said, it is quite smart of them to bring in The Foundry (which they can add to in future) to let us design the missions while they work on the mechanics. I can see this game being very, very good in a years time. It is a shame everyone expect all of this at release in MMOs these days - sadly why many fail.
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Yup
- I certainly wasn't expecting them to do so much. Impatiently waiting for season 3 on Thursday - the game will probably be down for a good few hours while they patch it. Should all be ready by mid afternoon hopefully.
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I have a new alt and enterprise NX ship all ready for the new sector space
- assuming I have time to play!
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I just saw the pics of the Borg ship enhancements 
Will definitely need to get doing some raids!
http://twitpic.com/3c0pwx
Will definitely need to get doing some raids!
http://twitpic.com/3c0pwx
I just saw the pics of the Borg ship enhancements
Will definitely need to get doing some raids!
http://twitpic.com/3c0pwx
Ill be up for some as all ways. And those borg ship enhancements look great hopefully they area as good as they look.
To be fair though, people are right to expect the content and features at release. Damn right imo. We sit here as gamers and we repeatedly moan about the state of gaming and the way in which companies of all genres keep releasing games which are buggy, incomplete , lacking features and/or a mess. Yet we still buy them time and time again and we just wave our hands and simply accept that it is how it is. As long as we do that , nothing will change.
If we want games to release in a better state and more feature complete then we need to demand that and back our demands up by not paying out for semi featured games. If a game is delayed for that then so be it, frankly most gamers have several decades of their life left and its really hardly an issue if they get a title next week or next year. I'd rather have 4 decent feature packed titles a year than 40 feature light titles which may, or may not, be good in 4 years time. Release the games with more features at release and it might even make people no longer think of mmos as a waste of time and money
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Expecting working features and a good amount of bug free content yes but expecting an MMO to have huge amount of content/features (much more than any sp game) is silly. People cant seem to understand that comparing a new MMO to one that's been out for years in unfair on the new game when it comes to the level of content.
I agree on volume of content , however you would expect, would you not, an mmo with 4 races to have content for 4 races and not content for only 2 of the races? So there is a certain degree of content you would expect at release, and should an mmo release with such content missing then it should quite rightly be condemned for that imo.
In much the way that daoc took so much heat for the content of hibernia when it launched, and indeed the slating of the post 20 content at launch of AoC
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If they said all 4 races would have full content then yes i would. But if they said only 2 then no. ( I cant remember if they mentioned anything). But i would expect that the other 2 would be added in due course (maybe even more as it is st).
I would agree that ST might not of had enough content for the later levels which could have been solved at least temporarily with better repeatable content.
I would agree that ST might not of had enough content for the later levels which could have been solved at least temporarily with better repeatable content.
Well the 4 races thing was a generic example rather than anything aimed at ST. Don't think ST launched with 4 races anyway, I was merely giving an example if an mmo released with 4 playable races you would expect there to be content for the 4 playable races, and would rightly condemn them if such content was missing (a la hibernia) . If a game doesn't have the content for a playable race then it should delay release until there is content sufficient for a playable race.
In the case of AoC the lack of higher end content at launch was disgraceful and quite rightly warranted the negativity they received for it.
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Nothing will change though. Many games where they have tried to get them completely finished for release have gone under either before the game has been finished (e.g. the original Star Trek Online concept by Perpetual) or shortly after release (APB). The fact is, many of the game developers and publishers these days are struggling to make money, unless you have a very popular game like WoW, COD, HL etc.
The great thing here, is that the core game is strong now and the content can be filled by players (and we know how much can be achieved by a fanbase as hardcore as this one).
Certainly nothing will change if people do nothing about it. Change doesnt happen by itself after all.
If developers are struggling to make money then they probably shouldnt embark on expensive projects in the first place. I would have a very hard time if the company I work for was struggling to make money , convincing my bosses that I need £20 million to fund a project. When someone is struggling for money, trying something which they a) dont have the money to do properly in the first place and b) has a high risk of failing , is suicidal anyway. Its kind of the reason why I dont try building a £500,000 house at the moment
Also more thought needs to go into the selection of the developers to create an MMO. Perpetual Entertainment were never the right company to handle a license like Star Trek. The Star Trek franchise is not exactly a cheap one, or one which is short of funds, something as big as the ST franchise needed to go to a company with a lot more experience and aptitude than Perpetual. Generally speaking if you have a big name franchise then you are better off going with a big name dev to increase your chances of getting things right. Its probably a factor in why Star Wars as an MMO isnt developed by Backdoor Entertainment productions.
I do belive its unfair to compare a game of a few months maturity against one of many years.
Need I not remind people, even super successful Games such as Mass effect1/2 still had additions, patches, updates and important storyline archs added after release date.
Their is also the need for MMO's to start getting money back while developing hence opening up a game before some form of "completition".
We must also look at the nature of MMO's; I don't think any sane company will A) Make a game full of content knowing it could never get the money back from R&D if people dont like it - Cryptic has been good at using user feedback and
B) No MMO company has or will produce a game never to add any additional content. I wonder if eve or wow would be as successful if it was left as it was at launch date no matter how good it was intially!
Need I not remind people, even super successful Games such as Mass effect1/2 still had additions, patches, updates and important storyline archs added after release date.
Their is also the need for MMO's to start getting money back while developing hence opening up a game before some form of "completition".
We must also look at the nature of MMO's; I don't think any sane company will A) Make a game full of content knowing it could never get the money back from R&D if people dont like it - Cryptic has been good at using user feedback and
B) No MMO company has or will produce a game never to add any additional content. I wonder if eve or wow would be as successful if it was left as it was at launch date no matter how good it was intially!
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- Joined
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Certainly nothing will change if people do nothing about it. Change doesnt happen by itself after all.
If developers are struggling to make money then they probably shouldnt embark on expensive projects in the first place. I would have a very hard time if the company I work for was struggling to make money , convincing my bosses that I need £20 million to fund a project. When someone is struggling for money, trying something which they a) dont have the money to do properly in the first place and b) has a high risk of failing , is suicidal anyway. Its kind of the reason why I dont try building a £500,000 house at the moment
Also more thought needs to go into the selection of the developers to create an MMO. Perpetual Entertainment were never the right company to handle a license like Star Trek. The Star Trek franchise is not exactly a cheap one, or one which is short of funds, something as big as the ST franchise needed to go to a company with a lot more experience and aptitude than Perpetual. Generally speaking if you have a big name franchise then you are better off going with a big name dev to increase your chances of getting things right. Its probably a factor in why Star Wars as an MMO isnt developed by Backdoor Entertainment productions.
The problem is that, certainly on the PC, we aren't getting many games as it is and to make it profitable most developers are now simply porting their console designed games over to the PC. I would rather have a few slightly buggy/broken games (which in most cases either won't affect me or will be fixed by the community) than no games at all.
The selection of developers certainly needs to be taken into consideration, but again, options are limited. Most of the top developers have their own games and won't take on another project e.g. Blizzard and WoW. It isn't all about experience or money either, Bioware will make a number of mistakes that all other MMO developers have made.
This highlights additional problems that need to be addressed then.
Firstly, if we are simply getting console games ported over and we as PC gamers arent happy with that, then we should stop buying them. You can bet they will stop porting over if we stop buying. We simply cant sit and complain about unwanted ports if we still throw money at the companies doing it.
Secondly, if a company like Bioware makes the same mistakes that other MMO companies have made for 15 years then again something needs to be done about that, be it better research or sacking those who are making the mistakes. If I kept repeating the mistakes that my colleagues were doing for 15 years you can damn well bet that my boss would kick me to the curb.
As you rightly said earlier, nothing will change, and one major reason why nothing will change is because nobody can be bothered to do anything about it. Its all just accepted and companies frankly have us over a barrel because generally speaking they know full well that they can pretty much churn out whatever they want and gamers will throw money at them for doing so, so why bother to change.