How's it doing: Star Trek Online - Part 1

Along with Champions Online, I've also been playing Star Trek Online a lot recently. I mainly picked it back up because it was the closest I could get to Star Wars: The Old Republic at the time (I fail to acknowledge the existence of that "other" Star Wars MMO), but I also really wanted to see how far it had come from it's launch back in February.

I'm going to get the bad out of the way first, and this may be a bit of a rant. Cryptic doesn't know how MMO business models work. Actually, no, they do. They're just incredibly greedy. If you followed STO (Star Trek Online) at launch, you know that the game was basically released unfinished. It had no PvE content for the Klingon faction, none at all. Every single mission on Republic was the same thing over and over. Yes, you could say every MMO does this, but in other MMO's you're actually using different spells/abilities for different situations, getting new ones every 2 or so levels, things like that. In STO you're just spinning your ship in a circle with all your weapons on auto-cast not doing anything, which makes every mission feel the same, even if you're doing different things every time.

Now, here's where it really gets to me. Micro transactions. STO has been out for about 5 or 6 months now and already has more Paid DLC than any other subscription based MMO on the market. They've released more content that you have to pay for (not talking about a monthly fee here) than content that comes free with your $15 a month subscription. Why should I pay you on a monthly bases, and pay you another $10 a month because I don't want to have all of the crappy stuff? Cryptic is using the stupidest model I've ever seen. Most games are either a monthly subscription and little to no micro transactions, or free to play with the option to buy things. Cryptic has taken both of those things, and combined them, which is a step backward in terms of MMO's.

They were hanging by a thread with me until just this week when they released all the limited edition/pre-order/lifetime subscription items on the C-Store. The thread broke. Actually, Cryptic walked up and cut the thread into a million pieces. At no point can you tell me that Cryptic cares about anything but their money, they've resorted to completely screwing people over now. Because pre-order items were different depending on where you bought them, tons of people bought multiple copies of the game to get these items, and Cryptic new they would, they supported it. They knew Star Trek was such a huge IP that any items from the original series or things of that nature would just get people to go crazy. That means that what people payed $120+ for (Not to mention the $200 lifetime subscription) you can now buy on the C-Store for $10. There is nothing Cryptic can do to redeem themselves at this point.

I'm honestly upset that Cryptic was the first ones to get their hands on the Star Trek IP, and bring it to the MMO market.

More about the actual game tomorrow..

How's it doing: Champions Online

Champions one month anniversary is just a few months away, so I thought I'd take some time to talk about how the game is in it's current state, and how far it's come from release.

I think I can wholeheartedly say that Champions has come a long way since release, however that isn't as good as you'd think. Champions was released far too early (which seems to be a thing Cryptic just loves to do), with many bugs, content gaps, and no end-game. I'm going to focus on each of these points separately below.

BUGS 

I have to say, there are still a lot of bugs in this game. Many of those from release are still there, and new ones arise each patch. New bugs with patches is common though, but it's the amount of time they take to get fixed. So many times would I have to restart missions, reactivate my travel powers, or log in and out to fix something. 

CONTENT GAPS

This is an issue that in my eyes has been fixed. At launch, there were levels at which you just could not get any missions, and therefor had to grind. Since then they've released new missions throughout all the leveling zones, and I've found myself having plenty of missions each level, sometimes having to drop some because I had too many, The main problem is that many times you just won't know where to go if it's your first time leveling a character in Champions. The crime computer in your mission log actually tells you every person that has available missions and shows you where they are, but this is never really introduced to you.

END GAME

I've always been a very hardcore player, thus my favorite parts of most MMO's would be the end-game. I love to raid, get nice gear, and have that epic feeling of killing the huge boss. One of the biggest complaints with Champions was that there was nothing to do once you hit 40 other than role a new character. I'm sad to say that this is still true, even with all the content updates. I finished all the end game content 2 days after hitting 40, and no. That's not because I have too much time, I actually did most of the instances multiple times.

There are multiple reasons why I didn't think the end game stuff worked.

Rewards - I don't feel like I'm getting anything of use when running these instances. The items that drop have slightly better stats, and I can do all the current content with level 38 greens, so why would I even want better stats? A few bosses drop costume pieces, but it's so rare that it's not worth it. Not to mention you also have to roll against 4 other people, and you may not even ever use that costume piece. 

Seriousness - These instances are a joke. The very first time I did Therakiels Temple one of our group members literally solo'd three bosses. Not using any fancy tricks or bugs or exploits, nope. Just regular powers. It's hard to take any of the content seriously while what you would need 25 people to kill in other games, can be done with 1 person here. The thing is, I don't think it's meant that way. They don't advertise these instances as solo'able.

PvP - Another joke. Again, the rewards are basically useless, and it's so imbalanced it's not even funny. 

Costume pieces - One part of Champions that I thought I'd really like, a lot of unlockable costume pieces. There sure are a lot, too bad every single one of them takes a ridiculous amount of effort to get. The costume pieces you get from Accolades (the "achievement system") are just unimaginable. Every costume piece, every single one, requires you to kill 5000 mobs, yes you read that right. Three zeros. There are a few pieces that drop off mobs in a certain zone, but the drop rate on those are something like 1%. For a single costume piece. 

CRYPTIC

I'm not a fan of Cryptic, though I'll save most of my words for when I talk about Star Trek Online. All I'll give you is this: You remember a paragraph ago when I said you had to kill 5000 mobs for a single costume piece? Well, Cryptic found a way to get your money for those already in-game items. Make you do an unimaginable amount of work for them, or just pay $5 is the C-Store. I think the choice is obvious. I'll have much more to say about Cryptic tomorrow. 

A look at Star Wars: The Old Republic

There has been a lot of news coming out of E3 this year in terms of MMO's, and some of the most exciting comes from Biowares new creation, Star Wars: The Old Republic(Or TOR for short). Now, I'm incredibly psyched for TOR. In my opinion there hasn't been a really great MMO release in a long time. The last huge release I can think of was Warhammer Online, and that ended up being a bit of a let down. I really think that this one has the potential to be huge.

The first reason for my excitement is the company behind it, Bioware. Some of their more recent projects include Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2, the ladder being my favorite non-MMO game. No, they haven't done an MMO before, but I actually think their current experience is better. They know how to get an RPG right, and while a lot of an MMO is interaction and socializing, that's usually not the aspect I'm worried about. If you watch some of the E3 coverage from G4 you can really see that Bioware knows what they're doing.

What I love about Bioware is that they aren't trying to make some whole new crazy game with this really insane niche, because that never works out. Instead they're taking some of the core mechanics that do work in other MMO's, namely WoW, and applying them to TOR, and adding some of their own unique things on the side. From the way they speak about the game, you can tell that they're really looking to WoW for a lot of their ideas, which I think is great. They have no MMO experience, and WoW is so incredibly successful. Why not, right? However, there are many naysayers yelling "Oh great, a WoW clone. Hurp Durp." Which I really don't understand. First of all, none of us have played the game, we've simply seen some of the coverage of others playing it at E3, so you can't really judge it from the very little we've seen. Second, I really think it's time for an MMO that takes more ideas from WoW.

I think WoW is/has been the best MMO on the market. Plenty of games I've seen people yell "WoW Clone!" at, like Warhammer for instance. However, Warhammer was trying not to be a WoW Clone. It tried to do it's own thing, have it's own uniqueness, and it focused too much on that, and not enough on what actually would make it a good MMO. I would love a company to take a page from Blizzards book, and I think Bioware is doing that. No, it won't be exactly like WoW, but they're taking all the things that work in WoW, using them, and adding the Bioware flavor.

Spring 2011 can't come sooner.

APB First Impressions - Key to the City event

The past few days I've been drowning myself in APB goodness. Before this week, I've had no interest in APB, that is until I got my hands on a Key to the City. Realtime Worlds released tens of thousands of keys to various sites that allowed you 5 hours access to the Action Districts of APB. I was a bit bored the day all these came pouring over the internet, so I had plenty of time to nab one and download the game.

APB isn't your traditional MMO. It's broken up into districts, Action and Social. The Social Districts are where you customize your character, be it their clothes or their vehicle. It's also where you'll find the Auction House. The different between the Social and Action Districts is just what you would expect, there is no action in the Social District. You can see and speak with players of the opposite faction, but no gunfights will take place.

Which leads us to the Action Districts, there are currently 2 as of this writing. This is where you'll get your missions, earn money, and buy your weapons. As you may expect, there's plenty of action to be had in these districts. As you run about the map you'll receive mission offers and calls for backup. Accepting a call for backup will put you in a group with a player that was looking for well.. backup. You're able to call for backup when you're outnumbered by the players on the opposing team.

Let's talk a bit about how the action in APB really works. To start off, you can run around solo, but the game encourages you to group up. Honestly, I had a much better time grouping than running around on my own, solo missions lend themselves heavily to the "offensive team", which I'll touch on a bit later. Grouping, however, is just a blast. There's really no greater feeling than hopping in a van with your teammates and driving down the road with one sitting out the passenger window and with a machine gun in-hand and the other hanging out the side door. Yes, that's right, your passengers can shoot while you maneuver your vehicle, and it's a great feeling. Though at the same time it's a bit risky, if your vehicle is less armored than your opponents then you may be in some trouble, with multiple people shooting at a car it can blow up in no time. This is one of my gripes about the game, the cars don't last long enough. Customizing your own vehicle is a large part of the game, but I find myself using random cars on the street much more, because my car blows up so quickly, and it's such a pain to spawn it again that it isn't worth it unless you're between missions.

Back onto the topic of how missions work. When your team accepts a mission, another team (usually of the opposing faction) is accepting a mission to stop you. APB is basically a PvP third person shooter. One team has an objective (I.E: Steal a car, raid a warehouse, burn a building down, spray paint a wall) and the other team must stop them. The mission types are pretty varied, They range from holding an object until the time runs out to simple eliminations, and even car chases.

In essence, the action in APB is good fun that you can hop into for hours at a time, but it's not something you'd really want to spend all day doing.

The Social District is an entirely different world, and the customization in APB is phenomenal. You can make your own symbols out of the many given shapes and icons, and put them on your clothes. This may sound simple in text, but it's incredibly complex and it's just amazing to be able to put your own creations on your clothes. If you're particularly proud of a peace, you can manufacture it and sell it on the Auction House. You could sell the item of clothing itself, or you could simply sell a symbol you've created for other people to use on their clothing. It's very hard to put into words the insane level of customization you have here, I suggest you check out this video to see some of the amazing things you can do.

APB is quite different than your average MMO, and as such it requires a different payment method. You can either pay for hours at a time (20 hours) or unlimited time for 30 days. However, this is only the time you spend in the Action Districts. Once you buy the game, you can spend as much time in the Social District as you want, even if you run out of time in the Action Districts, so I highly recommend switching to the Social District before going to the bathroom, so you don't waste any of that precious Action District time.

A few final complaints: The time it takes to load up the districts is more than you would find in your average MMO, however the actually loading screen is so incredible you likely won't mind. Also, they place restraints on 32-bit users. It doesn't matter if you can run the game at max settings or not, if you run a 32-bit OS it will only let you turn the settings up to a certain extent. This wouldn't be that big of a deal, but they only allow the player textures to go up to about 50-75% on a 32-bit OS, meaning what looks amazing in the outfit designer looks very blurry on your actual character. Doing some some googling I was able to find an indirect way around these constraints, so do some research.

All in all, I had not even considered APB as something I'd like to play until I actually sat down with it this week, and I've now pre-ordered it. It's not your tradional MMO, but it's got it's own genre. Action MMO. I've personally had a lot of fun with it and I have no doubt I'll continue to do so.

Welcome!

Welcome to Massive Break, a place where I'll be sharing my thoughts and opinions on the many MMO's out there, as well as keeping you updated on the latest MMO news! I hope you enjoy your time here, and feel free to leave me any feedback!

~ Preston