Graphic update?

[Reddy]

Does this game plan to ever do some graphic update? I remember before many years, when I used WinXP the game looked amazing, but now, on my Win10 it's glitchy, blooms are not working properly and the resolutions are messing up horribly... does the creators cares?

[Sandormen]

Have You tried to reduce bloom in the game options ingame, and adjust otrher settings accordingly? There is a myriad of sliders and knobs to twist and turn.
-and yes, there was a graphic update not too long ago, which can easily be seen on the old textures of many uniforms, bits and pieces.

[Teaspoon]

If you mean a graphics update like World of Warcraft did where they created new art assets, character models, etc, then no.

Whenever other MMOs do a "big" visual update it's typically only in terms of lighting. Off the top of my head I can't think of any other MMO that's replaced a lot of art assets the way WoW did/has. Other MMOs like this one simply aren't big/profitable enough to justify doing it.

I would love to see it. The space stuff (ships, etc) I think all look fine, but it's the character models that are really rough looking. Cryptic went from City of Heroes, to Champions Online, STO, then Neverwinter, & of all of those I feel like STO has aged the worse in terms of it's character models.

Note I'm talking about the player characters, not the NPCs that are modeled after actors.

[Reddy]

Umm no.. the game looks like ♥♥♥♥ to be honest.. They just don't care anymore, propably want to milk the last few remaining people of their money and then close it..

[Teaspoon]

Originally posted by Roxík:

Umm no.. the game looks like ♥♥♥♥ to be honest.. They just don't care anymore, propably want to milk the last few remaining people of their money and then close it..

The game has always looked bad, at least in terms of the ground stuff, but as I said above, other MMOs (aside from WoW) don't really do complete graphical overhauls. There's simply not enough people playing MMOs like STO, SWTOR, Age of Conan, etc, to justify spending the resources on a graphical overhaul.

The problem from a business perspective is that you can't charge people money for a graphical overhaul to an already existing Free To Play game thus no company wants to spend the resources to do it because they don't see how they could gain from it.

[Sandormen]

...and the game engine was not good from the start, so the devs have really have had a uphill challenge. I assume Roxik, You weren't here when the game launched. THAT was freaking bad.
So if You think this is a soreeye, I guess You should consider a different game.
Yes it is aged, I'll give You that. For some odd reason, I kinda like it. Propably because I come from an age where pixels were big and square coming in only e very few colours.

[Teaspoon]

Originally posted by Sandormen:

...and the game engine was not good from the start, so the devs have really have had a uphill challenge. I assume Roxik, You weren't here when the game launched. THAT was freaking bad.
So if You think this is a soreeye, I guess You should consider a different game.
Yes it is aged, I'll give You that. For some odd reason, I kinda like it. Propably because I come from an age where pixels were big and square coming in only e very few colours.

Thing is though it's the same engine that powered Champions Online. Champions by no means looks great however it looks & has aged better than STO despite it being the game Cryptic made before STO. The engine was tech/hardware that Cryptic was already familiar with before starting on STO.

The biggest problem that STO faced from a development standpoint was that Cryptic picked up the game from Perpetual Entertainment who had been working on STO for like 2 years already before Pepetual shut down. Cryptic wasn't able to use Perpetual's engine or any of the code they created for STO however they were allowed to use any art assets (ships, character models, environments, etc) Perpetual had created.

STO also had a fast/rushed development cycle for an MMO. Cryptic began working on it in 2008 & it came out in 2010 meaning it was only in development for 2 years. Now contrast that with MMOs like WoW, SWTOR, ESO, GW2, & Wildstar which had 5 year dev cycles. Note that 2 years is about the average dev cycle of a typical console game while 5 years is about the average for MMOs.

When the STO licenese went up for bid after Perpetual closed Cryptic most likely put up the lowest bid for it within the shortest time frame. In game development when a studio bids on a license the license holder is typically looking for whoever can do it for the least amount of money in the shortest amount of time. This is big part of why licensed games tend to be so poor.

Also the game really doesn't look much different from when it launched. The character models, ships, environments, etc, that were there during launch all still look exactly the same today. They added a new lighting system & made UI improvements over time but the actual player character models haven't changed any.

[Ighten]

plonking lighting 2,0 ontop of an existing engine was the worst decision they ever made. We now have areas that work (look good) in one but dont work (look terrible) in another and vice versa.

The only good things they have done is add material 8 and 8b to some of the ships - but guess what - in L2.0 the reflection is borked for that material

[Teaspoon]

Originally posted by Ighten:

plonking lighting 2,0 ontop of an existing engine was the worst decision they ever made. We now have areas that work (look good) in one but dont work (look terrible) in another and vice versa.

The only good things they have done is add material 8 and 8b to some of the ships - but guess what - in L2.0 the reflection is borked for that material

Yeah I noticed that a few months ago when I got back into playing the game. It became even more noticable while using ReShade because the settings I used would look great in certain areas & terrible in others. Even when disabling ReShade I still noticed the problem(s)

There are a few times where I've gotten the game to look nice

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1194024802
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1186247587
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1186247684
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1186247654
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1194023440
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1194023664

[Reddy]

The ships looks bad

[Teaspoon]

Originally posted by Roxík:

The ships looks bad

The character models look bad, the ships look fine. A lot of the ships from the launch era of the game have some rough/sharp edges but the ones released in the last year or so look noticably better.

In terms of graphics/visuals the ships wouldn't even ranks in the top 5 worst looking parts of this game.

[Reddy]

Umm no, on my computer its definitely the ships that looks awfuly, the game is very poorly optimized for new computers

[Teaspoon]

Originally posted by Roxík:

Umm no, on my computer its definitely the ships that looks awfuly, the game is very poorly optimized for new computers

No, again, it's the character models that are by far the worst looking part of the game. The ships at least have benefit that you're viewing them from a distance 90% of the time.

Looks completely fine...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1467948784

The game isn't poorly optimized for new computers, the game engine itself is poorly optimized. It doesn't matter what OS you run it on.

Also if you have a decent enough PC you can force settings outside of the game to make it look better

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1467959191

[Reddy]

Dude you look for some artworks but the reality is different.. No one plays this game anyway, the Fed Spacedock is totally dead, I didn't even rather tried klingons cause they were dead few years back

[Teaspoon]

Originally posted by Roxík:

Dude you look for some artworks

For some artworks? That's literally the Klingon ship model from the Age of Discovery update...

https://twitter.com/trekonlinegame/status/1026166403559129088

So wtf are you talking about artwork?

but the reality is different..

Except that picture is the in game model. Don't know why you're lying and saying it's artwork.

No one plays this game anyway

Says the guy that's literally in game playing the game as I post this...

the Fed Spacedock is totally dead, I didn't even rather tried klingons cause they were dead few years back

So if the game is dead why would they do a graphical update to it? Why would they spend money, time, & resources to do that if nobody is playing it? How many MMOs other than WoW have actually done a graphics update/overhaul?

[Reddy]

You're a total smeghead, aren't you? Just look at the describtion of the photos you sent..