The Daily Grind: What do you think of Cryptic?

Considering that every article about any element of a Cryptic game usually engenders the same response as this article is asking for I wonder why massivly is even posting this article? Are you trying to clear the air? Help all the disgruntled players get it out of their system? Or seeking feedback by proxy on behalf of Cryptic, or just hoping Cryptic will read this and gain some insight into their strengths and weaknesses?

There is some very good feedback here, some well thought out responses. One theme rings true through nearly all of the feedback though and that s that Cryptic mmo's are released incomplete and lacking content.

This is very true, i have played CoX, CO and STO and the comments are true, cryptic release pretty games, often interesting games with interesting concepts behind them, but always they lack DEPTH and CONTENT. I enjoyed CoX but in the end it's lack of depth made it grow boring, CO was the same. STO i have enjoyed much more, perhaps because i like star trek, but even then I have already maxed out one toon, am working on a second and waiting for more playable factions.

With any other MMO i would still be struggling to get one character to the level cap. I love STO but there is clearly a lack of PvE content. One playable faction is not sufficient, three sub classes and several races but still only one PvE story arc. The evidence speaks for itself.

Cryptic is attempting to lower the bar in the MMO industry. They charge a premium and deliver products that barely qualify as a finished MMO. Their biggest innovation so far is to detach the monthly subscription fee from the expectation of additional free content on pay for play games.

Their marketing campaigns and lifetime sub models are the most duplicitous I have ever encountered. And that's saying a lot for an industry that chucks around hype like monkeys fling poo.

The most recent "come back" campaign had the nerve to pimp the CO Revelation xpac by indicating everything it contains.....and that it's FREE!!!!!!

Cryptic fails to acknowledge that Revelation is free because the subs revolted at the blatant greed. Merging Cash Shops and Subs is not making MMOs better. It's a money grubbing dollar grab that I believe Dollah Bill Roper is responsible for infecting Cryptic with.

They used to be a developer I respected. Something significant and very meaningful changed over there......for the worse.

After playing both of Cryptics games I'm convinced that they just don't make good games. they don't seem to put all the heart in it at the start and want to make you pay for or wait for the bulk of the content. they release the bare bones game and addon the rest later when people are already mad so it may be too late. I think in the next oh six months maybe that both CO and STO will be good but for now they aren't...

Cryptic is a company that's only good at producing mediocre games and I hope no other major license is given to them to produce an online game. I really want to play a Star Trek MMO, but I'm not playing theirs. I did play Champions Online for a while and learned my lesson. There are things about Cryptic's games that are really great, but those things are always surrounding by so much disappointment and mediocrity.

I don't think Cryptic deserves all the vitriol that they are getting in this thread.

They created one of the best and most customisable MMORPGs, they actually created a standard by which other MMORPGs were judged - Character Customisation. Before CoH you had four heads and if you were lucky a Big and Small option for a body.

And thus far they have held onto that crown of Customisation through City of Heroes/Villains and Champions Online. They have no competition in that arena currently.

They do not have hundreds of millions lying around, so their development times are tight and budgets leave little room for error. This shows in their games. You see the tradeoffs between developer salaries and Beta timeframes.

Anyone that thinks Cryptic would not have LOVED to have Beta times 24/7 is an idiot. The guys that think Cryptic wouldn't have wanted a Stand Alone Public Test Server from day one is an idiot.

The fact is they could not afford to do that. They could not afford the server time, they could not afford the developer salaries. Things were tough even to hire enough Moderators for the message boards and discussion forums to communicate with players.

All those so called Enlightened Players that know what it takes to develop and run an MMO, and can make statements that a company is 'money grabbing' etc. should recognise and understand that.

That is why there is an Item Shop.

Our Measly 45USD purchase of their box and 15 USD subscription does NOT repay the cost of making the game.AND fund additional content out the gate.

Cryptic is not a company that is flush with cash, so everything they make from here on out is NOT Gravy. They haven't started seeing profit yet.I'm sure they are still paying off debt.

So when you need an infusion of Cash to keep things going....you offer a 200USD lifetime subscription. Or you f****** fold.

Those luminaries in the Community (and I'm being sarcastic) with all their insight should realise that. That isn't money grabbing...that's a move when money is tight.

If Cryptic got more support, they could bring more of their vision to light. The firm certainly does not lack Vision. And their tools are damned good to enable them to turn out Champions Online AND STO in the period that they did.

Their tools and their system are darn good to enable Paradox to develop the Mission Architect and add it to the game. That is an awesome tool. The only other company to be doing something similar is Simutronics with their Hero Engine, and that isn't exactly the same thing.

Cryptic's games are very playable, and they are enjoyable for a first run through.They also support their games with new content and updates on a regular basis.

If more so called Gamers supported the company, we'd get even better products. If more people purchased from the Item Shop instead of whining we'd get things that much quicker. There's a line between 'greed' and 'need' and I really do not think that Cryptic has crossed it.

As Gamers we claim to want unique fare from companies, we want them to break the mold and give us something different. We want choice, we want customisation we want we want we want.

Yet we fail to recognise when a company is trying to give just that, and we show that we have no clue about what it takes for a NON Bioware...and a NON Blizzard to deliver what we claim to want.

STO is a wonderful game. Champions Online is a solid experience. They both need more content, they both need balancing.

But hey...Smart Guy Who Knows It All...where is the money to pay the developers and run the servers to do all that coming from? Those that are complaining the company is money grabbing answer this:

1) What is the total Salary Cost to develop Champions ONline
2) How much does it cost to run the server Farms that drive the game.
3) How much did Cryptic have to raise to fund the game development?
4) How much does it cost after launch to create 5 additional hours of content?

Enjoy your 1001 WoW clones.
And then enjoy your 1001 TOR clones.

As the smaller developers fall by the wayside.
We'll end up with just two or three companies making the same game over and over.

Cryptic Rocks, and I wish them all success with these two titles. I think for accomplishing what they have at launch with these titles, they deserve success.

I've never played a Cryptic game before STO. I did beta test it, and I saw there were a lot of problems. I also saw a lot of potential. I strongly considered a lifetime subscripton, but ultimately didn't due to an ill-timed car repair. My two roommates *did* go the lifetime route. Not to support Cryptic, but to support Star trek games in general. Where once there was a glut of poorly executed Activision games, now tehre's nothing.

Anyway, back to the point at hand. Star Trek Online reminds me very much of the Matrix Online when it first launched, both in good ways and bad.

The Bad

1) It is very obviously incomplete. No one can argue that, imo.

2) The game operates off a limited budget, so major changes will be slow.

3) Ground combat has a high learning curve. I used to *hate* it, but since I figured out the tricks, it's no longer something i avoid at all costs.

4) Random Missions> i dont' get why half the MMOs in the market try to include this because in every one that I've played, its failed miserably. MxO, SWG's Mission Terminals (yes i know everyone tries to pretend the pre-NGE was some kind of glorified nirvana, but as a launch day subscriber, the ONLY content beyond grinding was rinse-repeat missions that everyone *hated* from day one). It works a bit better here, because its not JUST Repeat-O-Missions between "Episodes", but its still the weakest link the game, imo. WoW did do this right: every quest needs to be hand-crafted and placed at the proper points in the game to guide the players to where they need to go. Fortunatley, the Episodes do accomplish this somewhat.

The Good

1) Communicative dev team. STO's devs are keeping us up to date with planned changes, feedback, and even in-game chat. MxO had the same thing. major difference? Cryptic is giving semi-firm time tables, and not the nebulous "as soon as we can" that plagued Monolith and, after they bought it, SOE.

2) Lots of small updates. Small content is coming much faster than i expected, and moderate sized content updates are visible on the horizon. If the quality of said content is good, then I'm impressed.

3) Space Combat: Dear sweet Lord is this fun. If they just varied the random mission design a bit more, this would never get old for me.

4) Character Customization: nuff said. If/When the ship customization catches up, I'll be in heaven.

So for me, in the final analysis, Cryptic is doing the best they can with what they have, and as long as I continue to see them make forward progress on the game mechanics and its content, then I'll stay a loyal subscriber. That being said, if this turns into the horror stories I've heard about Champions Online, I am *gone.*

@Amana

First, let me get out the really bad stuff about STO ground combat.

1. Crew pathing issues - after 2 weeks (time when I played), my starship commander is a fumbling idiot who doesn't know how to walk through a door. Yes, they are that stupid, I agree whole heartedly.

2. Lack of in-game quest scenario. They all almost feel the same. A group of mobs in one location you need to pop.

The good stuff.

1. Crew skill customization. I can make my engineer spawn a turret, raise a perimeter sheild and create a drone while using a blaster to stun enemies. Or make another engineer that throws mines, health generator, and spray AOE blaster fire. Or I can make a stealth Klingon using a bathlet with leg sweep and charge. Or a medical officer that stuns AOE... I can go on and on. :)

2. Crew can be made into a dynamic force, like all stealth with sniper rifles and ambush skill. Or in my case, 4 Federation Klingon with bathlet. :)

3. The mission story lines are really good, if you take time to read them. DS9 engineering... Miral Paris story arc... the holodeck mission against the Undine... bliss. :)

4. You are not trapped in one environment for a week to grind stuff. No grind! You fly around and beam down to kick some serious alien buttocks.


In general, Champions Online and Star Trek Online delivers better in my opinion than LoTRO and WAR. With LOTRO, you feel like you are outside the war looking in. Compared to WAR, you are grinding endlessly for anything. CO and STO, you don't feel the grind, you do missions and have fun.

@gel
Yeah, you are right they are the Best F*** company in the world.
That is why they don't listen to the community.
What the hell do we know about game development, we are idiots.
We are just players that pay our hard earned money to get an
incomplete mmo. We loved being lied to, having the price cut after being out
for just a month. Playing in a bug filled environment, Playing repetitive quests.
We should just take up our A** and like, because they know what is good for us.

When NCSoft bought the rights to CoX
The employees did not even go back and work for Craptari.
WOW, I wonder why.
Maybe they were not good enough for such a marvelous company.

You sound like Robert Kotick who stated.
"We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video game."

~~
I've only played CO and I have 1 positive thing to say:

If I had to choose 1 company to design my character creation customization, it'd be Cryptic.

Yup that's all they got in my opinion.
~~

Ladies and gentleman, I give you, a dead horse. Eliot Lefebvre must have been completely out of ideas. Good job... ya... good job.

Being neither a STO or CO player but i followed both games closely . From my stand point i can honestly see how cryptic have handled the release of these games incredibly badly.

1. Over hype there on games
2. Subs + microtransaction ..... get a life that is just purely stupid i think everyone will agree that and it is greedy considering what i gather about content.
3. They thought that having your character look unique > gameplay.
4. Now they rearrange there staff in an attempt to sort things out.
5. They now make the somewhat desperate business decision of offering free weekends to strum up some numbers ... which ultimately undermines people who have already invested in the game, i can see where all the hate is comming from and tbh they deserve it.... maybe in a year or so this game will be what it shoulda been @ release. Rant over. Cant wait for TOR. The End.

dead horse and out of ideas for a report?

as most people have said cryptic produce mediocre games, im ok with that.

but there shady bait and switch money grabbing business model that treat customers like crap, is awful and thats why ild never go near a cryptic game.

I know Cryptic managed to leave me with a bad taste in my mouth after
1) The bait and switch in the ease of game play for COH (I understand they pulled this on Champions as well)
2) The nerf cycle starting within weeks of COHs release
3) The fact that the developers didn't understand enough about the game mechanics to understand when they had broken something.
4) The fact that when they were told that something was broken (as in, not behaving in the way that the patch notes described they chose to ignore it.

Promised myself I would never play another Cryptic game again and haven't.

Oh well, I could write a lengthy post to explain why I don't have an in-depth opinion about Cryptic and that waiting a few more months to see how they handle CO and STO would be necessary. Make it exhaustive and all...
But Revelation has just been releases for Champions and is almost fully downloaded, so I'm gonna play the game I've been enjoying for some odd 6 months now.