01.17.10
Posted in Online gaming, Reviews at 5:54 pm by yuka
I realise the launcher says they’re working on increasing server capacity. But I can well empathise with people complaining loudly on Twitter the last day or so, saying they can’t log in at all.
Never have I been more satisfied I’m in a different time zone to the majority of players. It means I get to play some of the game and have no problem logging in.
Considering my last night’s review was based on a ‘first impression’ of sorts, I decided I’ll try the game again. Only got to try for less than a half hour actually, since it decided to boot me off the ‘busy server’ in mid-loading screen and I haven’t been able to get back in since.
I’ve also looked in on the forums and what other players are saying. Aside from a lot of angst about the servers or fanboys being optimistic, there are a few good points raised by non-fanatic players.
1) Auto-grouping for group instances. Great feature or no? Great that you can go straight into it without waiting around for an age. But wait… the server’s booted half the team off mid-battle and we’re doing the ‘dead, respawn, pummelled’ routine again. And no more players coming into battle because apparently we’ve got a full group.
2) The game is unfinished! Well of course it is. It’s a beta. But this guy’s got a point: ["to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before."
To be fair, there’s an ‘exploration area’ called Delta Voranis. Shame some of those quests are bugged beyond the telling of it. And the map… jeez, the map! It does not function as a map at all.
3) The quests are strangely boring. Go near a quest giver, press F, click, click, accept. Go to flashing console/door/item, press F (to interact), click, and you’re done.
WoW-haters/rejects will always tell people that the quests are “collect this, kill this, how many of each, etc.” True. But at least they make them interesting with variety. Variety is what is sadly lacking to Star Trek Online quests.
Even Torchlight, with its strangely addictive “click, click, click, loot” pattern was more interesting. Because of the different types of things you could loot!
Oh, and apparently, variety does come into play when you’re above Lieutenant to Lt. Commander rank. If you’re lucky enough to stay logged in to level that much, that is…
4) Copy and pasted off a thread about busy servers:
“Seriously, you’ve offered the keys, now, have the servers. Period.
Otherwise, limit the number of purchases on the client side. But, don’t have a bunch of people buying software and no way to play the game.
That’s just dumb.” [according to a guy called Traim]
That’s it in a nutshell.
Sorry, my second impression of the game may have got slightly worse than my first impression. I think the game has potential, because it’s part of a huge franchise with a huge fanbase. But it needs to work on its debilitating flaws straight away or the same thing that happened to Vanguard (incidentally, a game that did have diplomacy – ST is supposed to have it, but don’t) is going to happen to this one too.
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01.16.10
Posted in Online gaming, Reviews at 11:16 pm by yuka
Downloaded the beta, and played it this afternoon. It’s had a lot of hype, plus it’s Star Trek. Sorry to be negative, but my gamer instinct tells me this won’t be around for long. Why? Here’s the list:
Bug1: I’m a tiny spaceship at Starfleet docking station (you’re supposed to see your character, not your ship), then I’m my own tiny character out in airless space (supposed to be ship, not character). Oh, and I can’t move.
Actually, this one was amusing. According to general chat, quite a few people found it funny.
Bug2: I want to move forward dammit, not jog on the spot! Oops, just moved several yards apparently and now I’m dead.
Sadly very inconvenient. Getting stuck in scenery was the reason we stopped playing Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes in its early days (and a host of other MMOs that have come and gone in the last 5 years). When getting stuck means you get killed, it’s not fair the first time. Second time and thereafter, you start thinking this game’s got a lot to sort out before beta finishes.
Major Problem: Scaling of diffculty is practically non-existent. No way to tell (like in so many other MMOs) whether the quest is too hard for you to solo at your level. So you blithely go in and get pummelled, death, respawn, pummelled… etc. It’s just not fun! To add insult to injury, you have a team of other players in your instance who also get pwned by these all-invincible npc mobs.
Another Problem: Respawn point. Respawning away from combat area is good. But does it have to be so damn far from where you were? After running through the same ol’ passages time and again to get back into combat (see Bug2 and above paragraph) I got bored and abandoned the quest.
The manoeuvrability of your ship… now that sucks. Maybe I’m not used to it, sure. But half the time, response is so damn slow you may as well not have pressed anything. It’s the frantic button-mashing that’s getting quests done. And why oh why is it so boring to do quests? It’s not as if there’s an interesting backstory here and I’ve completed less than 10 quest chains, but I can safely let you all know if you’ve done 5, you’ve done all the variety there seems to be!
Yeah, it’s in beta stage. I get that. But they’ve got a long way to go. It needs to be a bit more bug-free to be enjoyable.
Oh and Cryptic, you guys need to check out those ’supply aid’ quests. They’re seriously bugged – undoable. In fact, all of the chat in the area was about how bugged it was, never mind quest help. (I was on there for about 4.5hours straight, and most of chat was of rumours about how Cryptic’s not going to iron out the problems before releasing it proper.)
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01.12.10
Posted in Reviews at 12:15 am by yuka
I first came across Amanita Design back when I checked out the Polyphonic Spree site in 2005. I remembered their design and played Samorost when it came out too. They’ve now come out with another brilliant game called Machinarium.
It’s the familiar point and click with an intriguing plot. The main character you get to play with, is cautious, yet admirably daring at times… which kind of makes you fall in love with him. Most of the puzzles are great. There were only two with which I had major problems with: 1)infinite possibilities moving boxes = too many minutes spent trying to figure it…to no avail; 2)pressed the green button way too early and somehow can’t seem to reset the puzzle… so start right from beginning, again.
Actually, only two problems out of a good few hours worth of gameplay is excellent. I got into it last night and now that I’m at the tail end of my adventure with my robot, I feel kind of sad.
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