With Season 2 out, STO is finally getting closer to the game it should have been at launch. It has always been a decent game, but when it launched so many things where left feeling only half-finished, or just plain not there at all, that it really failed to impress a lot of people.
I have to make this clear up front. I have a lifetime sub to STO, and to Champions Online, and before that I played CoX from just before Issue 2 until just after Issue 9 (and was one of the leaders of the largest group of RPers and RP SGs on the Champion server). I was a beta tester for STO in the closed beta (one of the Red Squad), and was invited to the alpha for CO (I still have the email reply telling me that my computer specs were too low to run the alpha client) and later was in the beta as well.
So to make it clear, I really like Cryptic as a studio and enjoy their games.
With that in mind, STO has had issues.
Crafting was poorly implemented at launch, and has only gotten somewhat better (I pursue it half-heartedly and never feel like I am missing anything by doing so).
There is a lack of content that isn’t as bad as COs, but still leaves you feeling like you have to either play every single episode with every character you play through the game or spend hours on repetitive PvP or rather bland Exploration missions (admittedly, I’ve played tons of exploration content and tend to enjoy it if for no reason other than never knowing entirely what to expect when a mission starts).
Diplomacy gameplay that has been added in also feels lackluster. It is clear they have some idea of what they want to do with it, but there is so little there right now and what their is end up being a grind of explore missions in the hope of getting Diplo EXP ones.
Klingons just finally with Season 2 got some PvE gameplay that isn’t just exploration / random encounter grinding. It’s a step forward for them, and the bits of it that I’ve played through so far have been well done, but it should have been there at launch.
The character creator, which is one of the best aspects of the game and something Cryptic always does very well, still lacks simple things like color-blindness mouseovers so you can tell what color you have selected and there still exists problems with some of the options where you get additional drop-downs showing the name of the mesh/texture that shouldn’t be visible to the players.
And the thing is, at the heart of it all, there is a good game here. A good game, some good ideas, I absolutely love space combat (ground combat still needs work but can be fun), a lot of the Federation episodes have great stories in them, but it just needed probably another six months in development and a lot more time and attention spent on it.
The good news is, the game is getting better. Season 1 and 2 had a lot of good improvements and moved the game forward. I look forward to the UGC and being able to create stories within STO of my own. They’ve talked about working on ground combat and I look forward to the changes they will make.
If you had a sub, and unsubscribed, it might be worth coming back to STO to see if the changes make you stick around a bit more. If you haven’t bought a copy yet, keep an eye on the game and look for a free trial to give it a go. I’d have a hard time recommending the game without reservations right now (it has gotten better, but it isn’t ‘great’ yet) but Season 3 will arrive sooner or later and maybe I’ll change my mind on recommending it then.
And now, I have to work for a living. Thank god it’s Thursday and the end of my work week…