Star Trek Online is on Server Overload
After one day, Star Trek Online servers are already overloaded.
Tuesday marked the official launch of Cryptic Studio's MMORPG, Star Trek Online. Proving that Trek isn't just for geeks, fans flocked to the just-launched PC game and have now overloaded the servers, catching Cryptic by surprise. Unlike other MMORPG launches, Star Trek Online came packed with a pre-installed fan base stretching back to the 1960's, making this overload unsurprising.
The Star Trek Online beta, launched last month, suffered the same fate, enduring a flood of players that locked up the log-in system and thus prevented this annoyed gamer from checking out Roddenberry's virtual world. Cryptic eventually alleviated the burden by optimizing and expanding the MMORPG's server-base, however now it seems that those efforts weren't enough for the full-fledged launch.
"Throughout Head Start we noticed the overwhelming response to the game and we are working on changes to further increase the number of people who can play Star Trek Online at any given time," the company said. "Our current plan is to have these changes in place sometime this coming weekend. We will, of course, keep you updated on progress as it happens."
Atari recently announced that Star Trek Online already has over one million registered users. This probably includes the players of the now-closed beta program. Still, recent troubles sounds like something needs a nice, warm warp core injection, eh Scotty?
Kirk was good, but Picard was better!
Screw Chuck Norris, Kirk and Picard would double team his ass.
SCOTTY WE NEED MORE POWER!
(SCOTT)
I'm Giving her ALL WE GOT CAPTAIN!
(KIRK)
Thats not good enough Scotty WE NEED TO TO BETTER!
(SCOTT)
Aye Captain.....Scott out
(SCOTT) talking to him self
"I hate this effing Job"
Kirk was good, but Picard was better!
Screw Chuck Norris, Kirk and Picard would double team his ass.
Thankfully, I don't have to suffer with it, as the Beta period was enough for me to know this is a game I have no further interest in.
Gripes:
1) flying a starship in combat is about as exciting as watching 2 aircraft carriers do a circle. It's excruciatingly slow. These ships are not fighter planes.
2) These are not fighter planes! WTF do they fly as if there's an atmosphere in space? No momentum, can't rotate on all 3 axis, it only moves in the direction the nose of the craft is pointing, shutting down engines does not allow the craft to continue course.
3) Cooperative FPS mode ("beamed down"), is another god awful engine. Slow, dated by modern standards, limited controls. ANY current MMO that uses minions/henchmen has a far superior engine. After a few hours bored in space combat, I was hoping for a more exciting ground scenario, but no, it's also painfully slow.
4) The interface. It;s horrible. It has a vaguely Trek-like feel, but it's all pastels. i expected sharp colors and clear, readible displays, similar to what's on TV, but the UI feels almost childish this way. It;s also difficult to read many screens, and some real-time indicators, even on a 1900x1200 resolution which most people won't have.
5) The camera engine and flight controls. Ships perform best in combat when you have multiple firing arcs overlaping between you and the target (aka, usually the target was to be to your port or starboard), yet the flight controls work best when the camera is directly behind the ship (as turning is accomplished by clicking both mouse buttons in the direction you want to turn). This means, most commonly, your target is very difficult to keep ON SCREEN while fighting. One of the most common combat scenarios in Star Trak had someone at the chair scream out "Attack pattern Delta!" yet there are no automated controls for ship movement while you control the camera. The game SERIOUSLY needs function to say "circle target" "maintain x distance from target" "roll to present strongest shield to target" etc.
6) Another common statement "take out their engines" or "take out their shield generator" Once their shields are weak, all you do is beat on the hull. You can't target specific subsystems, there's no strategy in combat outside of focussing on bringing 1 shield quadrant down by simply being in the right place while firing.
This game SUCKS. It needs a complete UI overhaul; a major upgrade to space combat including ship controlls, targeting, and more; and a completely seperate ground combat engine and UI from the ship (they tried, and failed, to use the same 3D engine in both areas, often when beaming down I'd find myself in a room with lots of people, but I was still a ship, and moved like a ship, for 30 seconds or so.) It's 2 completely different game play experiences, they should look and work different.
I play games to get away from my real world troubles but gees this is just like work where I cant get a tape despensor for crying out loud, let alone a Mark IV terminal so I don't have to keep rebooting my computer
You're an idiot. He may play a French person but Patrick Stewart is an Englishman. Plus everyone knows that Pike was the best Captain.
L2Play noob
SCOTTY WE NEED MORE POWER!
(SCOTT)
I'm Giving her ALL WE GOT CAPTAIN!
(KIRK)
Thats not good enough Scotty WE NEED TO TO BETTER!
(SCOTT)
Aye Captain.....Scott out
(SCOTT) talking to him self
"I hate this effing Job"
if you wanted more firing arcs, go cruiser like the sovvie, where they have better arc placements (equal amount of slots front and back), and don't place things with a 45 degree arc on them rather put some larger arc weapons or hell turrets (360 degree firing weapon) on it and you can and will hit things no matter where they are
if you want firepower and good turn rates, go tatical, ala defiant and put some 45 degree weapons on them and you can literally run circles around cruisers
if you want to target subsystems like engines and what nots, roll a sci and fly in a sci ship like the intrepid, and they seems to be able to do a lot more in team assists as well.
camera controls work fine if you use both the mouse and your wasd keys to manually turn the thing, mouse is fine for the general direction, wasd is better for fine tuning your ship's arcs
I do say that the lack of automated firing and lack of automated ship following and etc from SFC series is a pain, but hey it's trying to be an action game lol, and imo that is just a fail for star trek, it ain't star wars eh
I do hate the nickle and dimeing of content, granted you may never see them other wise (Klingon feds for example), it just feels bad for the c-store to have things you can buy on day one when the game launched and is not bug free.....
Things they ned to work on:
1. Content.. Not just more missions to do , but something to actually draw the player into the game besides running through level as fast as you can. Need more involvement.
2. The way that the instances are set up are pretty much crap. If there is a team of people playing to gether then there should be no reason why when you change to a different map that the team gets split up and into different istances. This is a huge problem with the group play aspect which I am sure they will address.
3. alot of little things which would make the game so much more enjoyable... IE... DPS meters, allowing tags for fleets, improve trading radious for space flight, etc...
4. There is one mission that is far superior to most others in the game and more should be patterned after this one. The Ultimate Kligion.... This is an involved mission and interesting which has throwbacks to old school star trek. This is what makes it fun. Improve on the rest.
How is that proven? Wouldn't being a fan make you a geek on some level by default?
1 to beam away.
I've only got two real gripes. Firstly, I don't like the fact that this is not the same Star Trek as is described in the post Nemesis novels. It makes sense because otherwise it wouldn't be nearly volatile enough to be fun. I'm thinking of it as being a kind of parallel universe. My second gripe is that while the mission scaling due to who's in your group if you're in one is a good idea, it does mean that you can't use groups as a social element. You can't have a few mates grouped together doing different missions at the same time so that you can chat easily otherwise the missions for the lower level people will end up being much harder. A chat group function would be good although it looks like we'll just have to set up a mini Fleet.
On the whole, not bad so far. It's got a long way to go though but then even WoW was meant to be a bit limited when it first came out - no raids etc.