e-Commerce may be that way... but gaming companies hardly ever use web apps for mobile devices, from what Ive seen.

EA could have said: "Just use the Battlelog website on you mobile device." but instead they developed a better app.

343 Industries could have said: "Hey, Halo Waypoint is a website, just use that." but instead the developed an app for Waypoint instead. (And they're a Microsoft company that built an iOS app for crying out loud.)

Bungie could have said the same thing when they ran the Halo series... but they built an app to access all your stats and such.

Native apps work better on mobile devices than websites or web apps do. For one thing a native app isnt constrained by the browsers own features. For example, Safari on iOS uses the Nitro JavaScript engine. Browsers like Chrome for iOS or iCab or any of a number of other browsers arent even allowed to have access to it. And it makes a big difference.(Chrome is in green, Safari in blue. Run with the SunSpider benchmark tool.) They also arent constrained by being contained with in a browser, what has its own memory needs, in addition to having to render a website.

And native applications will likely have a bigger set of APIs to pull from because they arent limited be being a web app.

Web apps are a cop out for companies that dont want to do the work to have to develop natively for Android, and iOS and WP7.

9 times out of 10 a proper native application will work better than a web app.

EDIT: Whats worse is the people said "We want an iOS app." or "We want an Android app." and Cryptic is saying: "Here have a junky web app."

Are we going to have to pay for this particualar service, or will it be free? Are there plans to expand this into more practical applications (DOff Management being probably the most requested)?

Having a site available to look at your STO character(s) is cool and all, especially if there's API stuff going on, I'm just not seeing the draw for it right now. Why do I need to check on the status of my captain, BOffs, or starship? If I'm not at my computer, none of those entities are doing anything that needs me to check on their status. Their status will be exactly as I left them last time I played STO.

I hope this gets expanded upon to include some more functional stuff. A full blown Foundry Authoring tool, while highly unlikely, would be awesome to have access to from a tablet. Dilithium Mining mini-game that contributes to your selected character's dilithium total would be an excellent thing to implement as an app. Or that Starbase Construction mini-game that was being discussed not so long ago regarding speeding along the construction of your Fleet Starbase.

Check it when it's available before you call it "junky", please.

It's free and the access is the same for all players, whether Gold or Silver. For the rest of the points you bring up, check out my posts on page 2.

Cheers,

Brandon =/\=

Oh... I'll check it out once to see if its actually good. But its a web app... and they are junky. So I will call this one junky.

EDIT: Also... I dont know how you guys are still making money when you keep giving players the opposite of what we want...

Players: "No more lockboxes!", Cryptic: "Here have more lockboxes!"

Players: "No more grinding!", Cryptic: "MORE GRINDING!"

Players: "Android/iOS app!", Cryptic: "Web app!"

Im seriously considering not spending any more money on a company that keeps doing the opposite of what players want.

This new "STO Gateway" sounds neat. Glad you guys are working on it. I hope you'll share this info/tech with your other Cryptic Games (I'd love to have a comic book-styilzed "app" to list my Champions for instance).

/signed +1

I'd like this version if it could access our inventory and we could switch out our character's and BOFFs' equipment.

As it stands, I take it as the first step toward a much more robust "on-the-go" character management browser tool that we can use on computers that don't have STO installed or when we're short on time and don't want to log in just to do small tasks (like setting up DOFF missions).

I think it's a great first step, and I look forward to seeing what all it can eventually do.

STO-DN Interface?

I prefer the blue interface. I like the coloured one too, so a choice would be even better.

If I had to vote, I would always choose blue.

This looks awesome!

Excellent!