Star Trek online vs TOR (READ)

[Blumonk]

I want to see more playable races like that cat like race.

[worgr]

I played STO for about half a year 2011, and quit it just after season 4 was released. I just got bored. I went back to WoW again played it for a while, and got bored.. again.

Got SWTOR, got bored after a month, and now back in STO, and having tons of fun.

 

STO feels very odd compared to the traditional style of mmos like WoW and SWOR. Another gamestyle and pace. Another kind of animal. I absolutly love the space combat. Ground combat has improved too since last i played and is much faster and actionpacked.

I prefer the FED side myself, and have 3 max level FED and 2 max KDF. I leveled my third FED character now after F2P went live and i had a real pleasant experience doing that.

 

There is just that dilithium change i dont like. Sure, i think i can understand why that is.

 

To me, this is the most enjoyable F2P game i know of, and its beautiful, sounds & runs great.

 

I think SWTOR is fine, dont get me wrong. Im just tired of this type at the moment.

I'll be back.

[ROSS-]

I wasn't going to read this thread, based on the subject, but when I saw "READ" in capital letters, I immediately realized that it must be something really important and that I'd better read it. Thank you for putting that in there, OP. I wish more posters would do the same when they have something really important to share!

 

I lol'd irl...

[Iron_Lord]

I left STO when it went F2P. The endgame became a grindfest instead of fun. The LFG tool killed it completely for me. The PUGs never talked to each other, everyone did their own thing, and exploring was no longer fun, as the LFG transferred you instantly to the mission. There is no reason to leave ESD any more.

 

SWTOR is sooo much better, STO got too cartoony.

[Valketh]

honestly i think this will be my last "mmorpg" game.

 

logging on to play bores me to tears with such basic game mechanics and it feels like a job instead of a game im playing for funs.

 

 

in general MMO style games are more expensive to buy and play than console games, and honestly they are always more boring to play.

 

the only incentive to play them is the online community and interaction with other people, but since the 13 million sub mmo took over the online community has degraded into a pile of garbage for these types of games... so that is not really an incentive anymore.

 

they are just a waste of time and money now.

 

Thanks for your opinion. Mine is different.

[Tastetest]

Hold on, fanboys. This isn't a thread about how much better star trek online is than starwars. It is just a simple comparasion. This thread isn't meant to make you go out and download trek, it's just meant for us to realize that TOR needs some major improvements.

 

 

Now, about Star Trek online. As many of you know, Star Trek Online (Which I will abbreviate into STO from now on) Has gone free to play. I downloaded it, and was immediately blown away. The character customization is immense. You are even given the option to craft your own alien species. You pick your class (Which, to be honest, are more or less the same) and go on to name your ship. As the game continues, you gather more ensigns (companions) and even have the ability to customize your companions. The big sell point was space battles. They are hetic, fun, and beautifully rendered. You really do feel like your actions have an impact in the galaxy, you are given missions that arent all the same and are against many different enemies.

 

 

Now, on to TOR...

 

Let me say that this game is good. But taking into thought that it took 5+ years to develop and over 100 MILLION dollars to make, it's not THAT good. For me, this is the second dissapointing bioware game after DRAGON AGE II. That being said, it's not as BAD as dragon age II, infact, it's not bad at all. But it needs to make some major enhancements if it's going to survive.

 

1. Customize companions. weapons and armour are fine, but if we were able to customize the cosmetic features of our companions, they become OUR creation, and make them all that more fun to manage and tweak. There is really no reason why this shouldn't be an option.

 

2. Dyes. Seriously?? Dyes are a simple item that ALL MMOS have. The ability ( or lack, thereof) of being able to dye your clothing is unforgiveable

 

3. PVP. Pvp is fun, again, I don't HATE this game. (I still pay for it) but to launch a game with THREE maps (Huttball, Alderann, Space battle) is disgusting. non-instanced pvp is fun, but there are usually not alot of people to find if you travel to the marked zones. More maps need to be added. No MMO would even think about launching with this paltry amount.

 

Star wars needs to update. REALLY needs to update, because with huge mmos coming out this year (Guild wars 2, for example) I sense it will loose alot of subs to these heavy hitters. I think they released an unfinished game, and depended on the star wars name to sell (A la Kotor 2, anyone?) That being said, I do enjoy this game. I realize that yes, it is a launch title, and its early in its lifespan, but if you compete with a game that has been on the market for over 5 years, and has mountains of content, why wouldn't you develop and expand on those features for your game at launch? it's like releasing a car without an airbag, but then telling the customer (Oh, yes, well, the other car has airbags now, but we will have airbags in a year. don't worry). All in all, TOR has hope. But that hope is dwindling. Compared to Star Trek, it has a long way to go.

 

 

You don’t know what you’re talking about, i have played sto on and off since launch what it is now is now and what it was at the start are two very different beasts, while its true sto has a lot to admire it also has its problems which would make the standard gamer quit their sub to the game in disgust, such as do more damage and ninja people loot or the isolation of the whole game because its instance based, if you think tor is empty try never seeing another player except in subspace, so forget random pvp encounters. There are other things as well but i don’t see the point, let’s just say to compare the two is pointless and in fact the only thing that the game does that tor could use is the crew quest stuff and that would not work very well given the low crew count in tor

[Sabarok]

I was there for the STO Launch, and here are things I remember from the early days of STO:

 

1) Their launch was very smooth & successful. The login queue was smaller than SWTOR's, and the servers were fairly stable. I don't recall any major bugs, aside from some PvE balance issues.

 

2) I found the space combat in STO incredibly fun. It played like Bridge Commander, which I loved. That style of space combat was perfectly suited for a Star Trek environment and wouldn't feel right with Star Wars.

 

3) Microtransactions. The online store was built for a F2P game, but charged a subscription. You paid monthly, and then you had to pay extra to get playable races & ships. According to post-Atari interviews, this was because Cryptic intended STO to be F2P at launch and designed it as such, but Atari veto'd it and put the subscription on.

 

4) There were NO raids at the launch. Not a single one. There was also nothing that required forming a team before entering at any point in the game. The only areas that required multiple people were open zones where people would just enter and participate.

 

5) Single server w/ instancing made STO look very busy compared to SWTOR. Approaching Earth Spacedock in space, and you would be surrounded by the ships of other players. SWTOR lacks this feel.

 

6) As fast as SWTOR leveling is, STO's was much faster. Average time to hit level cap at launch was about 80-100 hours.

 

7) All classes had access to all ships. With only 3 classes to begin with, replayability was dismal. Once players hit the level cap on their first char, there was little point in rolling an alt and even less to do than SWTOR has.

 

8) My guild spans many MMOs. In STO, about 6-8 of us joined. By the end of the 1st month, every single one of them left and didn't resubscribe. The population drop was dramatic. In SWTOR, dozens of us joined, and not only do we still have active members, we have new recruits and raids being organized. Some leave, but not anything like STO's numbers.

 

9) Ground combat was horrible. Auto-fire was removed at launch, so most of combat was just hitting the same button every second to spam a small damage auto-attack.

 

10) The UI for managing 3 companions was excellent. You had more control over STO's 3 companions than SWTOR's single companion

 

11) As many posters have said, customization is superb. Not only can you customize multiple outfits for social, but you also have almost full control over your personal appearance with each outfit, so you can change your physical dimensions & skin colour between the saved outfits for example.

 

12) STO only launched with 1 complete faction. Klingon faction was incomplete and primarily PvP only.

 

All of this is mainly looking at what STO had at the launch. Like all other MMOs, things improve with time after launching. STO did have one major post-launch setback. When Atari went to sell off Cryptic, it froze all spending. This lasted about 8 months where there was very little developed. With the new owner, STO development has kicked off at a frantic pace.

 

There are a few things that STO did better than SWTOR, but there are many many things that SWTOR did better than STO.

[Valethar]

 

2. Dyes are actually pretty rare. I can only think of a handful of MMos that have dies. I would rather have an appearance window then dies. But it doesn't matter because they said match color is coming back in 1.2

 

Color match is ok, but the ability to customize armor color to suit our preferences will always be superior to a ghetto color change mechanic. In this, STO and Rift were far more advanced at launch.

[Alancal]

As a trekkie I tried STO and couldn't get into it.. I don't know why. I'm enjoying SWTOR more, maybe I'll give STO another try some day.

[Valethar]

 

4) There were NO raids at the launch. Not a single one. There was also nothing that required forming a team before entering at any point in the game. The only areas that required multiple people were open zones where people would just enter and participate.

 

You clearly didn't explore much of the game then. There were several areas that required groups in order to complete the mission at launch.

[Ituhata]

I gave STO another shot since its F2P now. I never subscribed before because the trial demonstrated to me it wasn't worth paying for.

 

After three hours of giving it the benefit of the doubt it's clear to me that it's still not worth paying for.

[iheartnyc]

I'm a huge Star Trek fan and even I lol'ed at this. The only decent Star Trek games ever made were Judgment Rites, a Final Unity and Elite Force. Heck, I even bought the collector's edition sountrack music CD just to play the mini-Borg game included on disc. And Star Trek Online...man. No way.

[Sabarok]

You clearly didn't explore much of the game then. There were several areas that required groups in order to complete the mission at launch.

 

All the missions scaled to the team size. The only content requiring multiple players were the fleet actions, and those didn't require groups. These are multiplayer missions, but not group ones. You could have a bunch of players soloing them. No cooperation required. The player who did the most damage got the best rewards. Very unique concept.

[Tamanous]

Didn't read because OP put redundant (READ) in title.

 

Just like posters putting "here's why" in their title. We freaking know the body of the thread will tell "why".

 

Both are license for ignoring.

[Koynov]

Did you play it? The combat was horrendous and so was the ship battles. The graphics were awful too, completely could not even get into it.

 

Lol about ground combat i agree but ship battle is fantastic Give me another space game with better combat.

About graphic i think it's better then SWTOR, actually Cryptic engine is a lot better then Hero but this is my opinion.Maybe you've never play STO on high to see how beautiful is everything in the space. Art team is fantastic. You will see this with upcoming Neverwinter game where they are using new version of the engine.

Swtor is a lot better in gameplay term and of course story, but to say STO is horrendous is just silly and stupid. STO was made by 30-40 devs and around 15 mln budget, SWTOR is made by 300 devs and 180 mln. When you compare them don't forget about this.

Edited February 22, 2012 by Koynov

[Rophez]

I just wanted to post and say that, out of principle, I refused to read your post, because you put that (READ) in the title.

[Stelakh]

I was there for the STO Launch, and here are things I remember from the early days of STO:

 

1) Their launch was very smooth & successful. The login queue was smaller than SWTOR's, and the servers were fairly stable. I don't recall any major bugs, aside from some PvE balance issues.

 

What Star Trek game were you playing? It couldn't possibly have been STO. The servers were down more than they were up. It took forever for people to get in if they hit a queue, and then the server would crash. The first week of STO (head start) saw less playtime than downtime.

 

2) I found the space combat in STO incredibly fun. It played like Bridge Commander, which I loved. That style of space combat was perfectly suited for a Star Trek environment and wouldn't feel right with Star Wars.

 

Space combat in STO is, was, and always will be made up of two things: Holding down your A or D key to spin so you keep your strong shields facing your enemy and hitting your spacebar. That's it. There is absolutely no strategy or intelligence needed in space STO's combat system. It's inane, empty and totally devoid of any need to think, plan or strategize (just like ground combat). It's terrible.

 

3) Microtransactions. The online store was built for a F2P game, but charged a subscription. You paid monthly, and then you had to pay extra to get playable races & ships. According to post-Atari interviews, this was because Cryptic intended STO to be F2P at launch and designed it as such, but Atari veto'd it and put the subscription on.

 

Nowhere was there ever mention of the game being F2P in the beginning. In fact, Jack Emmert and Craig Zincovich specifically stated that they had no plans to make STO F2P. When people on the forums started talking about the possibility of F2P, Stormshade (one of the forum moderators, for those that don't know) went to the forums and posted (more than once) that they had absolutely no plans to make STO F2P. And that's regardless of what post-Atari interviews have said.

 

Cryptic always said that STO would not be F2P - until it had to go F2P or die when PWE bought them.

 

The C-Store is, was, and always will be a cash-grab scenario that was planned from the beginning to milk the players for every penny Cryptic could get - while still charging a monthly subscription.

 

I find my opinion doesn't differ at all with the rest of your statements regarding STO.

 

There are a few things that STO did better than SWTOR, but there are many many things that SWTOR did better than STO.

 

But look at the big picture. The pattern established by STO could be quite easily laid on top of ToR with infinitessimal alteration.

 

BioWare should probably look at STO's history if they don't want to be the next victim of PWE.

[Sabarok]

Nowhere was there ever mention of the game being F2P in the beginning. In fact, Jack Emmert and Craig Zincovich specifically stated that they had no plans to make STO F2P. When people on the forums started talking about the possibility of F2P, Stormshade (one of the forum moderators, for those that don't know) went to the forums and posted (more than once) that they had absolutely no plans to make STO F2P. And that's regardless of what post-Atari interviews have said.

 

That's why I included "according to post-Atari interviews". I always felt like Cryptic was trying to have their cake & eat it too with the sub & micro transactions. The thing about how corporations work, because Atari is their owner, they would require Cryptic to put on a united front with Atari, or risk losing their job, so anything they said before can be suspect. Now that Cryptic is out of Atari's grip, anything they do to point the finger at Atari only serves to try and make themselves look better is also suspect.

 

With everything being in doubt, what I can do is look at decide for myself what is most likely. Based on the design of the game, I feel it is very believable that Cryptic designed a F2P game. It is also believable that a decision was made late that they would keep the F2P parts but also charge a subscription based on what they believed was high popularity. As to whether or not that decision came from Atari or from Cyptic seniors, unless confidential documents get leaked, I doubt we'll ever know for sure, but I can see the publisher being the one to force the decision on the developer on issues such as this.

[lineschmidt]

STO?

 

lol that barely qualified as a game at launch. Why on earth would you try and compare it to TOR?

[PeacefulViolence]

1. Meh

 

2. WoW doesnt have dyes....

 

3. 3 Warzones is fine currently, Rift was the same when it launched, wow had none when launched.

 

WoW came out in 2004... Who cares about what that game does and doesn't have, take a look at what recent MMO's have and you will see that TOR is outdated in many ways.

Edited February 22, 2012 by PeacefulViolence

[lineschmidt]

WoW came out in 2004... Who cares about what that game does and doesn't have, take a look at what recent MMO's have and you will see that TOR is outdated in many ways.

So what mmos have launched in recent years with lots of battlegrounds, armor dyes and all that?

[CecilTellyn]

I guess I'm the minority, but I really enjoyed STO. I played it from launch, took a break for a little while (during the year long content drought, basically) and came back for F2P.

 

SWTOR is similar to STO in the fact that they both seem geared toward casual gamers like myself. That said, there is one thing I wish/hope TOR will take from STO...

 

Add weekly series.

 

The weekly series in STO are amazingly fun and having a new episode per week is a lot of fun to play. I don't particularly like how LONG it takes them to get a new series going (that year long drought was absolutely ridiculous) but the series themselves are a blast. It's a better alternative to end game for someone like me rather than the typical raid style that WoW uses (and even STO has those with their STFs).

[Peregrine_Falcon]

I'm a life-long Trekkie and a pre-launch lifetime subscriber to Star Trek Online. At launch, STO was a buggy and broken mess. Like most MMOs, only worse.

 

The UI was so horribad that unmovable pop-ups in mid-combat would get you killed. The maps are tiny, full of holes that you and your bridge officers (think companion characters only far stupider) can fall through. By the STO Dev's own admission most of their maps are barely finished, most of the buildings, mountains and other large objects not having rooftops and often no backsides either.

 

Many powers were either buggy and/or overpowered. At launch, Viral Matrix (a space power) could render a character completely unplayable for minutes or even hours if stacked correctly by PvPers.

 

STO, like TOR, has two factions. Starfleet and the Klingon Defense Force. At launch Starfleet had less than 60 story arc missions. The KDF had none.

 

Since launch the STO devs have changed their statements and exaggerated others and even out right lied to the community repeatedly. And while gameplay has been much improved over the last 2 years, the game itself is still a buggy and broken mess.

 

Starfleet now has a whole 70 some missions, and the KDF has 24. That's it.

 

Think about that for a second. In TOR the maximum number of missions that you can have in your mission journal is 25, and I've hit that cap a time or two. In STO the Empire doesn't even have that many missions in the whole game.

 

So yeah, go download STO and give it a shot. And in a week, two at the most, when you've played every mission in the game at least twice then come on back and let us know how you liked it.

 

Some more reading if anyone's interested:

 

The History Of The Klingon Empire With Cryptic Studios

[Kubernetic]

Now, about Star Trek online. As many of you know, Star Trek Online (Which I will abbreviate into STO from now on) Has gone free to play. I downloaded it, and was immediately blown away. The character customization is immense. You are even given the option to craft your own alien species. You pick your class (Which, to be honest, are more or less the same) and go on to name your ship. As the game continues, you gather more ensigns (companions) and even have the ability to customize your companions. The big sell point was space battles. They are hetic, fun, and beautifully rendered. You really do feel like your actions have an impact in the galaxy, you are given missions that arent all the same and are against many different enemies.

 

 

Now, on to TOR...

 

Let me say that this game is good. But taking into thought that it took 5+ years to develop and over 100 MILLION dollars to make, it's not THAT good. For me, this is the second dissapointing bioware game after DRAGON AGE II. That being said, it's not as BAD as dragon age II, infact, it's not bad at all. But it needs to make some major enhancements if it's going to survive.

 

1. Customize companions. weapons and armour are fine, but if we were able to customize the cosmetic features of our companions, they become OUR creation, and make them all that more fun to manage and tweak. There is really no reason why this shouldn't be an option.

 

2. Dyes. Seriously?? Dyes are a simple item that ALL MMOS have. The ability ( or lack, thereof) of being able to dye your clothing is unforgiveable

 

3. PVP. Pvp is fun, again, I don't HATE this game. (I still pay for it) but to launch a game with THREE maps (Huttball, Alderann, Space battle) is disgusting. non-instanced pvp is fun, but there are usually not alot of people to find if you travel to the marked zones. More maps need to be added. No MMO would even think about launching with this paltry amount.

 

Star wars needs to update. REALLY needs to update, because with huge mmos coming out this year (Guild wars 2, for example) I sense it will loose alot of subs to these heavy hitters. I think they released an unfinished game, and depended on the star wars name to sell (A la Kotor 2, anyone?) That being said, I do enjoy this game. I realize that yes, it is a launch title, and its early in its lifespan, but if you compete with a game that has been on the market for over 5 years, and has mountains of content, why wouldn't you develop and expand on those features for your game at launch? it's like releasing a car without an airbag, but then telling the customer (Oh, yes, well, the other car has airbags now, but we will have airbags in a year. don't worry). All in all, TOR has hope. But that hope is dwindling. Compared to Star Trek, it has a long way to go.

 

Vice Admiral Level 50 here.

 

First off, STO is a great game in its own right, but I don't think it compares to TOR in any meaningful way.

 

To start with, both games tried to mix space with ground combat.

 

While STO has dome pretty cool space combat, it's still primarily spacebar spacebar spacebar spacebar. The flight is pretty static (2D capital ship combat) and for the most part you're circling around other ships trying to tear down their shields and then pummel them with a torpedo or beam overload shot.

 

TOR space combat, by comparison, is a lot more fun if you ask me. I understand some people don't like it, but I love just running the gunner's seat with a minor amount of ship control. Instead of just spacebar spacebar spacebar to any nearby enemy, I'm actually having to move the mouse around and target ships, turrets, hangars, other capital ships that come in, special ships, etc. Because I'm not actually having to fly the ship (in terms of navigation), I can experience a cinematic flight path that does its own barrel rolls, close flybys of asteroids and enemy ships for strafing runs, and the like.

 

Ground combat is a completely separate issue. Yes there are some major fleet ops in STO but for the most part, ground combat is performed on tiny little maps with almost no wildlife to speak of. Most environments are very derivative, extremely repetitive, and involve clicking 5 goals in each map, while taking care of groups of mobs in the way. Or the infamous get all the way through the map while investigating, then the enemy team beams down.

 

TOR ground combat is just hands down awesome. Not only is it much more exciting but it's wrapped in story that is a lot more immersive than its competitor, if you ask me. The environments are huge, and you really feel like you're pressing into some enemy stronghold. Even though you're still battling small groups of mobs along the way, it still seems like you're going somewhere, rather than just running around a little square.

 

Missions and story are a totally different beast. I got all the way to VA with my Engineer in STO and I thought the entire way that I'd roll alternates and level up a Tactical officer and a Science officer as well. Not quite. The missions and story are ALL the same. There aren't even different class quests, apart from a gimme quest where you might repair a few computers if you're an engineer, or run an extra attack if you're a tactical, or fiddle with some thing if you're a science officer.

 

TOR leveling is a whole lot different. The stories for each character are ACTUALLY different stories. And not only are there genuinely unique story elements for each character, but even the repeatable quests feel different since you have a range of weapons classes, melee, ranged autocannon, ranged pistols, etc.

 

Content is a bit different as well although both have level caps. STO does have the foundry but frankly I haven't been interested in running those. STO new content from the actual content developers has amounted to a few more missions from 41-45 and then 46-50 and then featured episodes and that's it.

 

TOR on the other hand already has voiced over story content almost ready to go through 2013.

 

Customization is where Star Trek Online really shines. I think all I need to say here is that my STO Engineer is a Mon Calamari, with forward-looking eyes rather than side-mounted fish eyes, since they don't have those in the creator yet. I can't create or play a Mon Calamari in SWTOR. The STO Character Creator is almost a mini-game in itself. I've created Na'vi and various aliens, Changelings, Santa Claus and Pee-Wee Herman. SWTOR is lacking by any comparison except various facial appearances, which SWTOR has a greater variety of.

 

Starship customization as well is much better in STO than SWTOR, and I like being able to color the ships and mix and match different parts.

 

It did take STO a year or more to get starship interiors working, and even then they are empty shells. SWTOR launched with ship interiors from the get-go.

 

Ultimately, I find SWTOR to be a much more enthralling game. STO has been out for just over 2 years now, and my /played time in SWTOR is already greater than that of my /played time in STO.

 

And the only reason I go back to STO now is for the 5 featured episodes that seem to show up once per quarter, and I went and did the new featured ep last night while SWTOR was down for maintenance.

 

This morning I was back playing SWTOR again.

 

While the STO character creator is a lot of fun, and having a 5 man away team is fun in some instances, I have to give my vote to SWTOR. No question.

[Templeman]

I remember every space mission being just like the one before it, not to say it was bad but it sure was repetitive.

I remember having to hit the spacebar so much that I broke it just firing my guns.

 

I remember my crew falling into the world. I remember game breaking bugs

 

PvP hahaha Phaserball is not PvP

 

Me thinks you have rose glasses on.

 

Toon creation was 100x better however.