Really cool game for fans who like having scifi genre.
As stellar as land battles are breathtaking.
Okay game to escape from real life.


I love this game

By all means play this game so long as you don't spend money on it.

For those that don't know, Star Trek Online (STO) is an MMORPG loosely based in the Star Trek universe. Canon is not followed that heavily however there are facilities to create your own story, involving roleplay communities and the foundry which is a tool to design your own missions. If you are a Trek fan I would personally leave your Trek canon feelings at the door as you might find they get challenged at regular intervals.

That said it is a personal thing, and so work through the story because that is one thing that STO has done reasonably well for. The art in STO has always been very good and so that combined with the story missions has always made good time spent.

Now pre-Delta Rising this game was pretty unique in that people who were casual, hardcore, in-between or even super-casual could play the game and be able to enjoy it. You could be competitve on less than an hour a day, and while some things required more commitment, it was something that would get you competitive with others without too much grief.

However those positives mentioned I would be negligent to not go over in detail the severe issues in the game, and therefore why I cannot in good faith recommend this game to anyone who wants an enjoyable, sensibly progressive experience or doesn't want a second job.

I am now talking post-Delta Rising for the most part, which is where most of the issues that now permeate the game originate from. I'll be talking about the bugs, which has been an ongoing issue anyway, the difficulty settings, the ongoing issue of the degraded state of testing and bad customer relations.

STO is riddled with so many bugs it makes an ant colony look small. Two of the top developers have openly admitted to not listening to player feedback any more, which is very apparent. The beta test server is now mockingly called the 'exclusive preview server' as what you see is what you get, broken mechanics, bugs and game-breaking exploits with it.

Part of the reason for this is that their QA team for STO is a measely 5 people strong (http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=20853101#post20853101). This has shown through the years as bugs have built up due to there never being enough bugs fixed before a lot more come in to replace them like a hydra's head.

Some proof of the developers lack of regard for the player opinion:
1) http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=13321451#post13321451
This link is to the Star Trek Online forums. It has a message from Tacofangs that tells us that by the time they are putting out content it is basically set in stone apart from the odd tweaks here and there, and usually they are just tweaks.

2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYsw_GYP8Ok
An interview which enraged players when Geko says that there is no actionable feedback on the Duty Officer UI. Suffice to say there was plenty of it and they did back track in a small manner after the uproar the interview caused and did give an option to minimise the UI.

3) http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1224081&page=79
Because a practical case in point is always good, this is the link to the Tribble Feedback post for the Upgrade System. This is by far and away the most recent poignant example of the effort Tribble Testers such as myself put in to be simply ignored. I challenge anyone to go through that thread and find a dev response that addresses the core concerns of that well tested feedback.

As far as Cryptic are concerned, money comes first and retaining players second. Feedback is ignored unless something crops up that damages their profits, which is why the game is so badly riddled with bugs.

A very recent example is the recent release (Delta Rising) had such a huge content gap that many of us had to run patrol missions to fill the levelling gap, Cryptic even recommend this as the way to do it. However a bug that was flagged up during testing was the patrols weren't all scaling. Of course because this wasn't fixed it made it the easiest patrol and so people used it to get past the absurd gaps.

So what do Cryptic do? They roll back a decent sized number of the players, cut experience gains by 70% and call everyone who took part exploiters. As you can imagine, although some would obviously exploit, the vast majority weren't and Delta Rising is becoming a PR nightmare.

The reason this turned into a PR nightmare is two fold, firstly and as I have said, they ignored tribble testers. Yet the big issue that started up was that many folks who got hit by the roll-back were innocent of any wrongdoing. Anyone who has had any serious experience with Cryptic's customer services knows their ability to read data is severely lacking. I have personally been quoted inaccurate purchase history, incorrect data on missing items and even had the representative show a critical lack of company knowledge about current events, even about new development blogs that I was asked to send a screenshot of to prove existed.

Next thing I want to talk about is the state of the game in terms of how one participates in the end game content and how easy that is to do. As it stands now Ground Combat allows for a lot more build flexibility than Space Combat does. The closer you get to end game Elite level (the top grade) the more you have to build a ship that is focused on damage dealing and little else.

So to clarify, Space Combat at end game has become a DPS Race (DPS = Damage Per Second), where having DPS more in the 20-30k range or higher is essentially required to complete the missions, simply because the devs decided ramping up the hitpoints, shields and resistances on enemies exponentially was the way to improve difficulty which has only led to a system where creativity is punished in favour of linear builds.

On the other hand we have Ground Combat that is still accessible to build variety so long as the build is sensible and is well fought out, and in fact each profession can run at least 4-5 different base builds and all of them can be effective. However that being said Cryptics idea of making this harder was to increases the numbers of tough enemies in missions and make them hit harder, something that doesn't make the experience reinvigorating or challenging on ground maps.

One thing that links both though are the awkward optionals. Advanced queues have timers or objectives that instantly fail the mission if they fail, which is bad from a player progression standpoint as a fresh 50 is going to struggle to get gear they need, as the gear materials come from those missions which has led to a sort of necessity of either having a very competant team or the chance to be carried through, both options of which are poor game design. However the sad part is anyone who has the gear already has a leg up and can finish the missions with relative ease still, however at this point in time Elite Borg queues are missing so using the old favourites as a comparison is not easy, however I will post videos of before and after in case anyone wants to look them over.

A comparison:
Old Elite Khitomer Ground: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWNFn7JdbXA Only 4 Elite Tactical Drones when this was filmed.
New Advanced Khitomer Ground (Technically supposed to be old Elite): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhaqdIHtIEo This has 17 Elite Tactical Drones in, slightly weaker but still time eaters for less geared or experienced teams.

I will post Elite Comparisons when they become available.

Want to play? Go right ahead, but when you start hitting the pay walls, don't ignore the fact you'll be paying literally hundreds of whatever currency you use to get competitive, it's not like before when newer folks had every chance to be as good as the older players.

So would I recommend this to anyone? Of course not, play for free but don't be surprised when Cryptic ruins it, again.

When I first started this game I'd recomend it to anyone interested in space RPGs, now: never.
Why? Simple really, in the beginning this game was almost perfectly balanced, with ~30% content grind, but these things where optional and could be found as loot with % drop chance, bought from other players or simply a direct reward while you where exploring new areas etc.
As it is now, there are HUGE power creeps, making almost all viable options of ships and skills bad-really bad, and a handfull few stupidly overpowered and all new updates and new ships they pour in makes the ship you grind for obsoleate before you even get it.
There are 5 (main) types of credits. Three which you need to specificly grind for.
And don't get me started on those damn Locked Boxes, you need a key to open, keys can be bought for ~1-2 000 000 credits (or just pay up real money). Each boxs has ~1-2% chance (stays at that % even if you pay) of holding ANYTHING you would like, most is just useless crap.

And forgett the exploration they're boasting about, it's just the same thing over and over, go to place a and defeat three waves of really easy enemies, then defeat the really easy flagship, repeat. (Yes, I played on Elite setting.)


Now let me explain where the grind element comes in, a base ship has ~20 slots for equipment.
You will grind for:
Space:
- The ship itself. (Price for good ships ~1 000 000 ( very low end) - 100 000 000 (high end) ingame credits. One Elite mission will give you avarage ~100 000)
- Weaponsx6-8. (It'll take you ~3 weeks to get ONE high level ship equipment from a Fleet merchant.)
- Shield.
- Engine.
- Deflector.
- Consolesx6-8.
- Space crew skills.

Personal: (You + crew.)
- Weaponx6.
- Shieldx5.
- Armourx5.
- Skill Kit.
- Land crew skills.
- Crafting. (Gods only know how long THAT will take.)
- Passive skills.
- Sub missions. (Duty missions.)
- Events. (These will pile up quick and if you don't do enough to turn it in (100%), you walk away with nothing.)
- Reputationx6-7.
- Crafting XP.
- Crafting material. (More kinds than you have slots in your Bank btw, and you don't find the ones related to each other in the same place, forcing you to scan every single quadrant to find those you need and end up with a ton of those you don't anyway.)

Fleet: (Community effort.)
- 5 buildings to simultaniously upgrade, with 6 subcategories each, all 6 can (and need to) be upgraded atleast 5 times. (All demands HUGE quantities the same resources as your ships and eqpts cost.)
Don't think that's the end of the list, I just can't remember what more there where.

So no, no no no no no no no NO, do not start this game, because it'll eat up all your time and give you nothing in return.

Having thousands of hours played into this game, STO has been a bitter sweet experience. STO was a great game back when it was a subscription model, though it was still generic on all aspect of gameplay. The ship models are very nicely designed, ground game however; Very shallow, while the highlight of the game are the space battles, you cannot help but think it is a mere space bar spammer or clicker. Through the years the storyline has improved and the addition of voice acting has helped enhance the experience, however; that cannot save it from the harsh Development team strategy, which are time gates, lock boxes, extreme cost for upgrades, and lack of customer support. This is truly one for the most diehard Star Trek fans like me, but for serious gamers, avoid this one unless you love all PWE games & their business model.

This MMO is nothing more then a F2P (Forced 2 Pay... Well okay rather a F2PFP2P, which is short for Free 2 Play Forced Pay To Progress) money pit which you will find out when you get towards L50. I have tried coming back to this twice now and both times it was much the same. Pay to Play model forced down peoples throats without mercy. With this new "Delta Rising" expansion however it becomes absurdely prevelent to the lengths of corporate greed this company will go just to try to "milk" potential new cash cow customers/players just for L60 gear.

Now while yes you technically can get end-game stuff for "free 2 play" expect to take this on as a full time job if you do and give up whatever you currently call a life because in the end this is what this one realistically boils down to. Which is unless you feel like blowing money which is better spent towards other games or essentially a new PC, Rent, Bills, ect...

Bottom Line, Essentially this is put out by a company that tried to force steam users along with non-steam users to use a data mining launcher which gathers ALL of your information to sell to 3rd partys, Ultimately early on it's a good way to pass the time and invest in if your a die-hard trekkie (which be forewarned prior to delta rising they gutted the core essence of the exploration aspect of what made star trek what it is by removing it all together!) otherwise your better off passing this one up as it will suck you in and suck your wallet bone dry with it's addiction forming factor. Essentially the norm for this is you'll get hooked, play it for about a few months, get sick/bored of it, and ditch it for about 6 months to a year or longer and just rinse, and repeat.

This game was good at first but now they do not care about the customer or their products they just want money. There are problems they don't seem to fix they just prefer to ignore them and add more stuff to the game. There are bugs that make the game hard to play like the power tray and the loadout don't work. I really can't tell you how much I hate this game and Cryptic Studio or Perfect World Entertainment.

I have no idea how this game has so many positive reviews, Im a fanboy for sure, but I still cant bring myself to like this game since the company was sold, and I have played and do play mmo's Still. Im a lifetime sub and I am telling you this game stinks. The business model seems to be sell lockbox keys, Honestly haven’t touched it in 6 months at least but it can’t have changed that much. Flying between Sectors is the least immersive experience in gaming I think I’ve ever had, feels like I’m swimming in a kiddie pool... with 100 other ships in these tiny space sectors. Another disappointing entry into the Star Trek Video game franchise.

The story line is VERY good, very trek and as you can see I've spent SOME hours in the game.
It used to be very fun but lately the devs arrogance is increasing and theay are NOT listening to the playerbase.

A great amount of players are unsatisfied at the moment and instead of communicating with the community all they do is deleting threadsthey don't like on the forums

update 5.3.15:
they are releasing new not canon high end tier ships now which are improved versions of the
canonships already ingame for more $$ - €€. Also you get the option to let them look like those old canonships most of the players already have (payed for).

And for saying this I got:
You have been banned from Star Trek Online Discussions by a Star Trek Online developer for your post in "Star Trek Online General Discussions"

I think some Ferengi runs the company
-greed is eternal


*This review is subject to change if the dev team changes its strategy

What once was awesome became a bad joke. Cryptic turned this game into a p2w asia grinder...

- Since Delta Rising, there's ONLY grind left to do
- No balance anymore
- PvP is dead (there has been no update to pvp for many years anyway)
- Queues are empty
- Devs are lying, making jokes about players and even insult players

Last but not least: Newbies won't have any chance at all to keep up with long time players as long as they don't drop several thousand dollars.
We've all seen it coming for a very long time, but it finally got worse than we expected!

After Almost 500 Hours, and the same amount of cash, this is a Star Trek fanboy dream, almost, after this amount of time in game, conclusion, needs to go the way of WoW in a big way, lot of hidden fees, and vague, unclear things, to make you spend even more money, some shady stuff going on here....if you are a Star Trek Fan be careful, you could buy quite a few games, with the amount of money you end up possibly spending, and you will want to spend money, cause the game is geared that way, would prefer a monthly fee for sure over the paygate to happiness here, free to play is a really bad thing, unfortunately if it wasn't for that we would not still have this game.....good and bad.....

good
Star Trek
space combat is ok, but you do not have full 360 which doesn't make any sense, with dx11, and physics,
No Reward for Content, very limited Items, and rewards,
pay to win
yes you can get everything in game
but they limit you to how much you can make in one day
so you will want to spend more
which shouldn't be
once you spend 150 bucks lol you should have all you need for a year
but doesn't work out that way
if you are easy to spend money they will get rich off you

after the release of Delta Rising i dont recommend this game to anyone. The fun is gone.

After an obsessive Deep Space 9 marathon that left me yearning for more but unwilling to subject myself to Voyager/Enterprise, I decided to give this game a try to ween me off the resurgence of my inner Trekie. I don't regret trying it, and put a lot of time into it/might not be finished with it, but I also can't recommend it as a good game. While not exactly a 'pay to win' production, there does come a point in the higher levels where upgrading your ships to the current maximum level takes more 'Zen', the purchasable currency of the game, than a person could reasonably be expected to gather themselves in-game.

Pros:
- The game has great character customization. Few are willing to admit that most MMO's are basically complex dress-up games, but this game embraces that element. Not only are you afforded extensive personal customization, but all your bridge officers can be fully customized as well, ony their sex and their race being pre-determined. While there are many alien races to choose from, you can also select 'Alien', which allows you to create your own species, and gives you wildly versatile customization. Want to play as a bald, pot-bellied toddler running around with a Bat-leth? Go for it. Want your captain to look exactly like a Vault-Boy Bobble-head? No problem. Want your first officer to look exactly like one of those giant blue chicks from Avatar? Jake Sulley it up all you want.

- Ship combat is fun, versatile, and very nostalgic. The mechanics mirror the way combat is portrayed in the show very well, with all the special abilities available being the go-to phrases of Captains throughout the Star Trek franchise. Emergency power to weapons, reverse sheild polarity, fire a full spread of torpedoes, activate the tacheon beam... all the technobabble of Star-Trek returns, all with unique functions in combat. My personal favorites? Ramming Speed and Self Destruct.

- Uncannily challenging for an MMO. The game has the rare MMO feature of a difficulty setting, and the max difficulty is really quite challenging after the tutorial levels, and really quite crushingly difficult after around the lvl 40 mark. The ships you confront will be exceptionally more powerful than yours, often able to obliterate you in a single torpedo spread, making quick reaction time and well-thought-out tactics essential.

Cons:
- Ground combat is weak, and ground missions are often exceedingly annoying puzzles that don't so much challenge you to think as force you to do a lot of tedious reading while running back and forth between consoles. Many of the ground missions were a major chore to complete.

-The crafting system is dreadful. Essential resources are incredibly scant, about 2 harvesting nodes present on about 2/3s of the missions you run, and 90% of those nodes being the basic common-grade materials, meaning you'll have huge stacks of those and next to none of anything else. The only decent way to gain experience in crafting is to engage in these 20-hour research projects that prevent you from building anything while they're active, and actually building things gives you minimal experience by comparison, and wastes your over-rare resources. The only way to really succeed in crafting is to buy crates of resources using Zen, I.E real world money. Otherwise, your crafting will never in a million years keep up with your leveling, or ever be of any real value to you except perhaps in the distant future of play.

- It doesn't really feel like an MMO. Besides the occassional 'Borg attack' event to which everyone in a system is invited, playing with other people is a rarity in this game. You see other folks flying through space at warp, you run into other folks at the docks/space stations, but the vast majority of missions are all solo experiences. There are ques for PVE and PVP events, but they are so long that I've never successfully joined whatever it is they're queing for.

- space combat, while entertaining, follows 2-dimensional rules. While I undserstand the need for set 'up' and a set 'down' while in space combat simply to keep directions and mapping viable, ships are far too bound too and bogged down by the imposition of 'up' and 'down' in space combat. You cannot dive, nor fly straight up, nor do a flip, nor fly upside-down. You essentially move like a sub-marine and not a space-ship. This puts annoyingly restrictive limits on manuevering and heavily detracts from a players capacity to use superior piloting skills to any sort of advantage. It's also highly annoying when travling to positions/enemies above or below you, as you have to slowly spiral down or spiral up in order to change your height position. This has got to be the single greatest turn-off for me.

STO at first had the potential to be one of the most in depth sci fi games in the MMO universe, sadly this cannot be said today. The disconnection between the playerbase and the developers is as wide as the East is to the West, and the game seems like it will suffer the same fate as Champion Online did, mostly going into maintenance mode soon, that is if the developers do not wake up to what is going on around them. Plagued with BUGS, power creeps, balance issues, an expensive upgrade system, lock boxes, dead queues, very slow leveling up process, and very expensive Tier 6 starships; has pretty much stalled STO on its track. To be fair though, anything in game can be obtained for FREE with extensive daily commitment and grinding.

Here is an article with helpful insight on the new problem that the STO community is facing, I hope you find it helpful.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/11/30/captains-log-why-star-trek-online-is-kind-of-a-mess-right-now/

Truth is, there are better MMO's out there that rewards players for their dedication, with developers not as hostile towards the playerbase. I cannot fully recommend the game as it has changed into something entirely else, it's only saving grace is the game's ip, other than that, it is a mediocre experience with pretty ships. Play at your own risk.

Game is a sham now. Devs have openly admitted that they have no interest in PVP balance and are only interested in devising ways to extract more money out of players.

If you are looking for a fun, zany, free-to-play game that involves spaceships blowing each other out of the sky then you can't really go wrong with this one.

A lot of people complain about 'paywalls' or the game being 'pay-to-win'. Yeh, it is, I can't argue with this as I've spent quite a lot over my 400+ hour gametime. HOWEVER, if you only take part in PvE, the story and the endgame reputation system then you have no reason to buy anything. You can earn everything in game. Once I realised this I stopped throwing money into it and I've since had a blast not paying for anything. Granted it all takes a lot longer and some things, like saving for the late game ships and equipment, can take hundreds of hours as well as careful resource managment.

I should say at this point this is also not Star Trek, at least not for me. If you liked the TV series for the tense diplomacy and starship standoffs, you probably won't like the 'story' aspect of this game (which involves throwing your starship at wave after wave of opponents in never-ending explosive battles - which tbh is awesome :p). If you liked the films, epic, all guns blazing space battles, (see above) then go for it, you will love this game.

The community is pretty good, all fairly laid back and the fleet actions and STF's are a fun.

One final point about the 'pay-to-win'. The ships you can buy with real money are hit and miss, some are worth it, some aren't and they are all upwards of £15, the really good tier5+6 ships are around £25-£30. So... if you are thinking of buying a ship, my advice is to only buy the endgame ships (tier5+6) as these are the ships you'll spend the most time in, I wasted money on a middle tier ship and now it just sits doing nothing and didn't really get me anywhere I couldn't have gotten by just playing the game. If you are wanting to buy a ship do some research, ask around and ask yourself 'Do I really, REALLY need this to enjoy the game?' - Most of the time the answer will be no.

Despite the paywall, I would recommend this game. It is cheesy, spacey, laser-battlin' good.

First of all: If you like Star Trek and think flying your own starship would be awesome, this is a good game for you.

Personally, I like this game. I know plenty of people who will say it's crap, the devs are awful, the game's engine is bad, and so on and so forth. The graphics are good enough, there's not much lag, and it's generally fun to blow up Borg. Coming from a few other F2P games (*cough* WAR THUNDER *cough*), I feel as though the developers of STO do somewhat care about their playerbase.

Game progression is easy enough, until you hit level 50. Leveling up to 60 gets a bit tedious, but you can access the whole game (minus a few not-really-important story missions) from 50. The learning curve is fairly steep - I'd recommend looking at a few tutorials before trying to work in the community exchange. There is, as always, premium currency, but you can change one of the other types of currency into it (for a large ingame expense). There are multiplayer missions with other players, and the harder the difficulty the better the rewards are upon completion. There are eight or so "campaigns" that give out some good gear. The ships are accurate, as far as I can tell. I hate long reviews, so this is gonna be pretty short.

For me, the most important part of a game is whether or not I had fun playing it. Here, the answer to that is a definite "yes". If you don't believe me, try it out. It is, after all, free.

What once was an interesting and fun game that I played for a couple years, has been tarnished beyond redemption. I flew with one of the game's top pvp fleets (Sad Pandas) for a long time and now can't stand to even keep it installed because glitches, one-shot-kill weapons, pay-to-win powercreep and the developer's blatent disinterest in creating deep balanced gameplay in lieu of the latest cash shop money grab have sucked all fun from it.

Their customer service always has and always will be a disaster, never expect anything from them

I just started to play this and have been very surprised at how fun it is. Though at level 2 I found a bug that prevents me from playing any more. You beam down to the Academy after doing some space tutorial missions and my ability to beam back up to my ship was missing. I searched the hud for a good long while and found plenty of buttons to buy stuff at thier store, but no way to get unstuck. There's also a transwarp feature that was greyed out. Effectively imprisioning me at the academy.

I attempted to ask people how to get back but was all but ignored in local. I attempted to use the Zone chat and found that unless you give them money, you can't use this feature. I had to make a hot chick character in order to get the Star Trek community to even acknowledge me. I learned where the Beam Up button was supposed to be. Which it was not.

I went to the forums and found that I could not post because I was new. I looked to see if anyone else had this issue and sure enough I found posts that were from years ago that had this same issue. From what I can tell there has been loads of content created for you to buy, but bugs like being forever stuck somewhere have not been fixed in years.

I've submitted GM tickets in the game and on thier website but I am doubtful that it will be responded to since it has nothing to do with thier store.

It's too bad they don't support thier players. It was fun while it briefly lasted.

EDIT:
I was wrong, GM's did in fact send an email response. Here is the response to a 3 year old progression stopping bug.

===
"Hello,

Thank you for contacting us. We are sorry to hear that you are having issues with beaming out of Starfleet Academy.

Unfortunately, with being such a new Character, if you get stuck within these first few missions, you may need to re-create your Character. We also advise following the tutorial in the order it was presented and refrain from deviating from any of it until you have finished all the tutorial missions. In addition to that, please let the cinematics (if any) run to the end to ensure that the mission updates correctly.

Once you get to Earth Space Dock, please be careful not to beam back to the Academy avoid this issue again.

We truly apologize for the inconvenience this has caused."
===


It makes me wonder if a max level character that runs into a bug like this would have to delete his character and start over as well.

First of all: I love this game.

The story is superb and as a die-hard Trekkie, I can vouch that the developers' attention to detail when it comes to the Star Trek Universe is marvellous. It is the continuation of the Star Trek series and films that never was, filling up holes in the story, piecing at first glance totally unrelated episodes together and creating a story as original and Star Trek to the core as you can get. Even the "title theme" is instantly recognisable as Star Trek, while being something completely new at the same time.

The fact that a lot of known Star Trek actors (Leonard Nimoy - Spock, Tim Russ - Tuvok, Michael Dorn - Worf, etc.) lend their voices to their characters and you get to talk to them and fight alongside them makes my Trekkie heart beat a lot faster (one of the highlights for me was fighting alongside Voyager and traveling to the Mirror Universe).


I have concentrated on the story so far as that is the most important aspect of a game to me. I am no expert in different aspects of gameplay and controls and the like, so I leave that to others. But I do enjoy that you have both ground and space fights. not to mention the diplomacy missions, allowing me to engulf myself in RPGing in my favourite fictional universe.

So, if you are a Trekkie such as myself, this game is definitely for you. For everyone else, this is still a superb online game (stunning graphics for FTP) with an intriguing story (although you won't get all the in-jokes and references, don't worry, it's definitely not a game you can only understand after memorising each and every dialogue from all five shows and ten films - but maybe it will pieque your interest in Star Trek). I can definitely recommend it.



EDIT: Oh, if you're wondering why I have spend so little time on this game if I love it so much: I don't always play it through Steam (gaming on Linux can be a tricky thing sometimes). But believe me, I have clocked A LOT of hours on STO.