Mass Effect 2 is a pretty serious game. I was playing ME2 while Cryptic were having problems with the servers and when I finally got in and started the tutorial, STO's ground combat seemed s bland and uninspiring that I barely made it through.

If STO's combat was a bit more like ME2's combat, this would be one of the best MMOs out there. I'm not even talking about making it be a 3rd person shooter, I'm talking about taking cover, shooting from behind cover, etc.

Its amusing how you dont even mention the combat aspects of ME2... and thats the first thing you get critiqued on. Reading comprehension ftl.

Anyway i totally agree with your sentiments. Infact those thoughts stayed with me in the back of my mind all throughout my time playing ME2. Cryptic should really add something to give a sense of exploration and not just be about pew pew.

Exploring is for girls!

one word- AMEN!

The "scanning" system in ME2 is one of the aspects of the game that is eating a lot of criticism. It improves on the boring copy/paste uncharted worlds of ME1, but not enough. The fact that the exploration UI is much cleaner and effective than STO's cluster navigation is about the only area I would say ME2 has got STO beat on in an exploration sense. That, and the fact that when you actually do find a mission on a world (there are less of them than in ME1), they are more unique and handcrafted.

Also, the very Star Trek "happy heroic" bit in ME only applies to pure Paragon characters. My ME2 (imported from ME1) Shepard at one point took the very un-Starfleet approach of shooting a guy in the middle of his speech about how I was surrounded, then using that distraction to take out half of his other guys...

Picard probably wouldn't have approved...

Way to miss the point. I'm talking about the mining mechanic that you do by scanning the ground from the ship. I'm not trying to convince anyone that this should be a FPS (by the way, ME2 is THIRD person shooter). There is also the hacking and code breaking components that we could learn from.

Wow! You have nothing to add. But thank you for saving the thread from disappearing into the abyss.

Well not quite. you have to aim in ME2

I hated it until I used all the stuf to upgrade my weapons and armor. And I think it get's easier if you follow a scanning pattern and don't hold the scan button down the whole time. Still took a long time.

But Kirk might. Are you talking about in the plague area?

Once you have the scanning upgrade that moves the thing faster, it is not too hard to get a thorough scan of a whole planet. It still is slow and annoying, however. The system should have highlighted areas on the planet to start with, and then have you zero in on them. Or they could have included something like the arrow that shows you the direction to anomalies, only it points to the nearest deposit. It still keeps some player effort involved, but dramatically cuts down on the tedium.

Quite frankly, I would rip Cryptic a new one if I had to go through that minigame for the years of an MMOs lifespan, versus the couple of months I will be playing ME2.

No, this is a ways later in the game (I'm on disk 2). Chris Pine's Kirk might approve, but I don't think TOS Kirk ever just blew a hole in somebody mid-sentence.