The Worst MMO Ever...

[twozerofoxtrot]

Heh..

 

https://youtu.be/3kmQzYCAh9o

[TheOtherTed]

He almost lost me when he said the music was good.  That music, and the music in STO, gave me headaches.  Somebody somewhere on the Cryptic team was way too in love with synth brass and drums.  Or whatever it was supposed to be.

 

Interesting to see that they still offer lifetime subs, though, and for only about $50 more than the original cost.

[ZeroSaint]

I played for a bit during beta and at launch.   Game wasn't for me ultimately, but I do have to say I loved the team based PVP.  The Zombie Nightmare in particular was super fun.

 

(Still have this old vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57knvXLCe08)

 

[Techwright]

I played the game for a while, but it felt off.  Like making Mom's legendary coffee cake using a synthetic sweetener instead of sugar.

 

I was also not a fan of the "spam a minor power to eventually charge greater powers".  I much prefer our delivery system. Oh, and as much as our "mitts" get derided, they appear far better than those ugly claws that game calls "hands".  YMMV.

 

I did look at the opening several minutes of the video, but at over 40 minutes, I'll need to see the rest later.  It does look interesting however.

[OldManMercy]

I tried CO after the sunset. Even gave it a shot at subscribing, just to give it an even break, but it still felt like a temper tantrum made by Jack Emmert for his "dismissal" from this game's dev team. Plus, outside of the Borderlands franchise, I really don't like the cell shading type graphics. All in all, I'd give the game a "one of" worst MMO ever rating.

 

Craptic...I mean Cryptic games completely screwed up Star Trek imo, and don't get me started on Neverwinter.

[Techwright]

1 hour ago, OldManMercy said:

Craptic...I mean Cryptic games completely screwed up Star Trek imo,

 

Might I ask what is off-putting?  I've not played STO in years, and I did leave due to some frustrations with the game, but largely I enjoyed it.  I'm curious to know if the problems were similar to what I saw.

[El D]

Can't really find much to argue with in that video. I tried Champions Online for a bit after sunset, as many other CoH alumni did. It was interesting enough at the time but the overly cartoony cel-shaded graphics and the extremely stylized settings never really hooked me. Champions always seemed like a Saturday morning cartoon writ large and I just found myself missing CoH's more realistic take in style and presentation. It was akin to going from the original Teen Titans cartoon to Teen Titans Go (and seeing how one was cancelled while the other continues to astonishingly live on and on, is more than an apt comparison...).

 

Champions always felt like a missed opportunity to actually grow from CoH. Its costume creator and powerset concepts did things we, as players, would have paid through the nose to have while the game was live (and in some cases, are only getting now due to concentrated dev efforts). Except Cryptic never really seemed to capitalize on any of that and now they just slap more and more stuff into the Zen Market and lootboxes. Neverwinter was a number of steps up for a long while and filled that MMO void, but they also sent it tumbling down that same lootbox hill years ago.

Edited July 28, 2023 by El D

[OldManMercy]

7 hours ago, Techwright said:

 

Might I ask what is off-putting?  I've not played STO in years, and I did leave due to some frustrations with the game, but largely I enjoyed it.  I'm curious to know if the problems were similar to what I saw.

 

I grew up watching TOS, and wasn't immediately fond of Next Generation, but grew to like it. DS9 and Voyager.......I just couldn't get into at all, but the lore was still interesting and viable to me personally. When Romulans were made into STO's "gold side" equivalents, I was....not pleased. I saw it as plagiarism and still do. 
Additionally, the game started taking too much of a pay to win turn. (at least to me, it did. Side note: all this is just my opinion, and what I took away from my in game experiences)

Ground mission gameplay was atrocious and balance in PvP was nonexistent.

 

When Cryptic put out Neverwinter.....I tried it. Even max leveled a character. Then they introduced their equivalent of a mission architect and as I recall, claimed they pioneered the concept of players building their own missions. I was vehement. Emmert was again plagiarizing CoH and their innovations as his own.  Each one of Cryptic's games left a sour taste in my mouth and I stopped playing them altogether.

 

Again, all this is based upon my in game experiences, and only my opinions. I hope this answers your question. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Techwright]

9 hours ago, OldManMercy said:

 

I grew up watching TOS, and wasn't immediately fond of Next Generation, but grew to like it. DS9 and Voyager.......I just couldn't get into at all, but the lore was still interesting and viable to me personally. When Romulans were made into STO's "gold side" equivalents, I was....not pleased. I saw it as plagiarism and still do. 
Additionally, the game started taking too much of a pay to win turn. (at least to me, it did. Side note: all this is just my opinion, and what I took away from my in game experiences)

Ground mission gameplay was atrocious and balance in PvP was nonexistent.

 

I'd never considered Romulans as "gold side", but with Cryptic involved, I see your point, especially since they're not a true side, and you join one or the other main sides part way up the ladder.  That was one of my issues with the game.  Romulans were not fully developed in the game.  I enjoyed the ships, I liked what was there, but I wasn't enthusiastic with "We're a dying species.  Divide up and fight one another."  The costuming section was also atrocious. Different pallets for different costume pieces, even among pieces that clearly should have the same color pallet.  And the costume parts were terribly buggy.  I could not get my team's uniforms to match the way I wanted them to look, because some characters lacked components that other characters had.  That played heavily against the game for me, as Romulans are some of my favorite characters in Star Trek, and I preferred playing them. 

 

I didn't have a problem with ground combat, per se, but I grew annoyed over time at space combat which always in a dragged out fight amounted to the NPC ship moving up next to me and forcing us both into a spiral shooting at each other.    No real tactics involved.

 

The lootbox mentality also ruined it for me.  I was forever frustrated getting more lootboxes than my inventory could handle, and often replacing real drops.

 

Otherwise, I did enjoy the game, and it had some great looking shots for it's time.

[SuperPlyx]

On 7/27/2023 at 5:34 PM, OldManMercy said:

Craptic...I mean Cryptic games completely screwed up Star Trek imo, and don't get me started on Neverwinter.

 

Neverwinter is another game that has become all about a certain number you get with a magical math equation that only the devs know exactly. This number is known by many names in many games, for here I shall call it the Battle Power number....you add your levels, your skills but most importantly your gear...add it all up, divide or multple and boom your BP number.

Now you can only play certain parts of the game only if your BP is high enough.  To get to the better parts you must get better gear,...grind, grind, grind.....or take this cash shop shortcut.

[WanderingAries]

Hahahaha, didn't even need to click it. And that's coming from someone who basically self-banned from things like Destiny because of the BS grind and all but forced PvP.

[Mopery]

When I played STO I was Captain Kork of the USS Intercourse. It was worth it. Just for that.

[LegionAlpha]

When I player STO, I really wanted or was looking for an open world game at the time.  Got to Admiral and hated that stupid shuttle mission inside that Reman base that blew me up as I was trying to escape. Cursed so much I felt like Tyrannicon on his retro sessions he does. And many missions had me asking if this was Star Trek,(?) at the time. 

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

10 hours ago, LegionAlpha said:

When I player STO, I really wanted or was looking for an open world game at the time. 

I liked STO... until it exploded my old NVIDIA card, but even with all the new content, much deeper involvement from Paramount, and a huge number of guest shot voices (Wheaaaattooooooonnnn....), the very P2W structure would not please me.

 

Also: no Apple client. Which is odd, because everyone knows all spacecraft are Mac-compatible, even alien ones.

Edited September 25, 2023 by ThaOGDreamWeaver

[MonteCarla]

I had a great time in Champions Online - some of my best MMO fun ever.

 

CoH narrowly beats it due to:

  1) better support powersets and

  2) better teaming experience

  3) more content to play through.

 

But Champions was a great attempt at updating the CoH formula

[Techwright]

On 9/29/2023 at 8:21 AM, MonteCarla said:

I had a great time in Champions Online - some of my best MMO fun ever.

 

CoH narrowly beats it due to:

  1) better support powersets and

  2) better teaming experience

  3) more content to play through.

 

But Champions was a great attempt at updating the CoH formula

Mittens > Claw hands  😉

I think I mentioned it before, but the whole, use this weakest power repeatedly to charge all other powers was quite off-putting for me.

 

For STO, one of the things leading to my departure (and until the end of ST: Enterprise, I was a huge Star Trek fan) was how every space battle devolved into both ships tightly circling each other.  I tried several ways to prevent this and establish a better capital ships match-up, but the game's A.I., such as it was, was not having it, and always drove its ships into a tight spiral around mine.  No skill or tactics, just brawler slugfest.

[biostem]

On 10/1/2023 at 6:58 PM, Techwright said:

I think I mentioned it before, but the whole, use this weakest power repeatedly to charge all other powers was quite off-putting for me.

There are other ways to generate or maintain energy in CO, (called "secondary energy unlocks"), but the game does woefully little to inform you of that fact, and if you are freeform, they open up even more possibilities.  While there are some very good powers and a lot more flexibility in builds, (if you have access to the aforementioned freeform slots), by using those powers, it basically becomes a waiting game until you can access those heavy-hitting powers, since many many powers have no cooldowns at all - if you have sufficient energy, you can just keep spamming them.  The biggest turnoffs about CO for me are the plasticky look to all the character models, the goofier hyper-exaggerated animations, having to worry about gear, and a dearth of content to get to max level, (40), unless you grind alerts or go to the Apocalypse zone, which hasn't received any meaningful updates since it was added.

 

On 10/1/2023 at 6:58 PM, Techwright said:

For STO, one of the things leading to my departure (and until the end of ST: Enterprise, I was a huge Star Trek fan) was how every space battle devolved into both ships tightly circling each other.  I tried several ways to prevent this and establish a better capital ships match-up, but the game's A.I., such as it was, was not having it, and always drove its ships into a tight spiral around mine.  No skill or tactics, just brawler slugfest.

Trying to make Star Trek ship combat more dogfight-like was a big mistake, and I have almost no interest in leading squad-battles on the ground.  I, admittedly, never played STO for very long, but it just felt like everything was clunky and un-fun.

Edited October 2, 2023 by biostem

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

If we're talking about Cryptic / NCSoft's mistakes through history...

 

...did anyone else ever play Auto Assault or Wildstar?

 

AA was clearly a SJ Games Car Wars "homage" with quite a lot of Carmageddon thrown in, but the controls were appalling and the GFX needed serious work.

 

Wildstar was gorgeous, lovely toony style, but needed quite a lot of time, involvement and practice to get anywhere serious with the content. 

[TheOtherTed]

1 hour ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

...did anyone else ever play Auto Assault or Wildstar?

Never played Auto Assault.  By the time it came out, my Car Wars / Autoduel days were long over.

 

Tried Wildstar, appreciated its artistic direction, had some fun, but then abruptly stopped playing it after a week.  At the time I didn't really know why - I just "stalled out" whenever I opened the log-in screen.  Now, though, I realized that it didn't offer anything more than an Animaniacs take (not even a proper Looney Tunes take) on World of Warcraft, and I'd simply hit neural MMO fatigue.

[Techwright]

On 10/10/2023 at 10:41 AM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

Wildstar was gorgeous, lovely toony style, but needed quite a lot of time, involvement and practice to get anywhere serious with the content. 

WildSTAR I did play quite a bit back around 2016.  I liked the goofball nature of it.  I don't recall why I left the game, probably burnout. I do know every time afterwards that I thought to go back, I kind of shrugged and headed in a different direction.  I've retained pics of the game, though, and I still have hopes of one day reusing my little russet-tailed Aurin's name:  Sinamon Gingerthorne.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Techwright

[Angel Pheonix77]

The worst mmo, that is an interesting question. For me, without a shadow of doubt is Champions Online. I was in Beta phase 2. I loved what I saw and bought a lifetime subscription. Then over the years it became a game with great promise that in some ways could have beaten City of. To a game that lingered in obscurity. The devs listens to the wrong people on the forums that gave them bad advice. Where Neverwinter and Star Trek Online got player made missions for awhile, champions didn't get anything. If I had it to do again, I would, have put that money into City of. 

[Techwright]

The challenge in declaring an MMO the "worst ever" is that MMOs by nature, are not static.  At some point in their existence, they might be an incredible MMO and then at another point, an absolutely horrid one.

 

I was in the exceptionally long beta for Firefall, and around 2011 the game was showing serious promise to be the best MMO ever.  Then a string of really bad decision making, including poor funding choices, a gutting sale of the company, and swaps of whole design teams, gradually robbed the game of its potential and turned it into an unplayable quagmire by 2014.  There's still a residual of players who remember the 2011 era and long for the game to be resurrected to that standard.

 

The same was true with Tabula Rasa: a very promising game at start, critically undercut by company politics in the background, resulting in half-baked released content, and a dramatic upheaval of pretty much every archetype's design, again turning it into something less than desired.

 

Though I never played it, I hear Star Wars Galaxy was also deeply loved by players, and might have been in the running for "best MMO of all time" until one massive rollout broke it for all time instead.

[pawstruck]

Champions is infuriatingly-just-barely-the-worst-thing-ever. You play as Tantalus, starving for a good costume and thirsting for combat that makes sense, and it's just barely not even close. adsfjlasdfjiawejfiaw

 

The cleverest thing that game did was the archnemesis system. That was cool as hell and I wish it would come to CoX. I'd be designing my nemeses forever and writing little stories in my head until A Beautiful Mind seemed lonely by comparison.

 

Wildstar pissed me off, too. Like CO, the combat looked good but *felt* horrible. Wildstar was even worse because my hopes were really high for that game.

 

Might I add to this discussion: Guild Wars 2

[Without_Pause]

On 11/3/2023 at 7:39 AM, pawstruck said:

Might I add to this discussion: Guild Wars 2

While I accept a number of issues with the game, it is the one MMO I played more than any other outside of CoH. KotOR would almost be there is I hadn't kept bumping up against paid content and me just not wanting to fully sub.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Without_Pause

[retiarius]

The problem with CO for me is that I'd already played the tabletop version for over a decade, having created dozens of characters, and the character creation between tabletop and crpg versions was about as different as it could possibly be - almost nothing in CO felt anything like Champions™ to me, and ultimately it didn't feel as satisfying as CoH.