Boldly Going Somewhere. But Is It Trek?

I decided a couple of weeks after the launch of Star Trek Online to give it a tryout. The game had a lot of positive buzz at the time which stimulated the impulse buying centre of my brain. But I had a plan.

The plan was to buy the game and just play the free 30 days and then let it lapse. Time being limited the way it is for me now, I can’t justify having another sub going, but I did want to see what everyone was going on about. I’m also enjoying other games in my limited play time and something would suffer with another game in the mix.

By the way, this isn’t a review, just my impressions of the game with limited exposure. I should also say that while I enjoy Star Trek as Science Fiction, I’m not a Trekkie and don’t spend hours (or even minutes really) in chat rooms discussing the relative merits of the starship classes, or if champaign would freeze or boil when the bottle breaks against a spaceship hull.

Overall, my STO experience was quite positive. The space combat was excellent and I really enjoyed that. But there were a few things.

• Ground combat sucked. I didn’t enjoy it at all. It was unimaginative and ultimately pointless. There was in fact one mission I beamed down to where I had to run around and question a bunch of colonists and then repeat their answers to the colony foreman. That was it. No defending the colony from unknown critters. No solving a problem. Just we’re upset, answer these questions, see you later. Pointless.

• Gold Spam. Or energy credits spam… whatever. Start the game up, or go into a new area and wham! Chat full of crap which then had to be /ignored. Very annoying. And ultimately it should not have been there. Star Trek has never been about economics, and The Next Generation put a lot of emphasis on that and how humanity had grown past the trappings of material gain, although later series hinted at an underlying economy. But still, the Star Trek gold trade could have been avoided if the economy was de-emphasised and the Star Trek values had been given more place.

• And I guess that’s the last thing that bothered me. Despite the ships and species, it didn’t have a particularly Star Trek feel for me. Replace the Star Trek elements and there wouldn’t really be any difference. Except Cryptic wouldn’t have players up in arms about the lack of Klingon content. Star Trek was always about exploration and boldly going. I know it’s wartime and all, but Star Trek was all about maintaining the values even when things are going awry. That Prime Directive was a harsh mistress.

However, as I said before. Space combat is where STO is at. It’s fun, and the battles aren’t always walkovers. It can take a little planning and getting the ship loadout right to blast through a mission, but it’s reasonable easy to figure out. I have to say I especially enjoyed piloting the Klingon ship. Nothing like bearing down on an enemy with that ST Klingon anthem running through your head. (I’m not the only one who hears that, right?)

One tip though. Get yourself a controller. I used my wired XBox 360 controller and plugged it into a spare USB port. It makes all the difference. I was finding the keyboard mappings were taking my fingers through a bit of a stretch and twist routine, and it was difficult to do everything I needed to keep up in a battle. After spending a bit of time mapping to the controller, and then getting used to piloting the ship with it, I found it was a joy to battle. And it was faster too.

So the upshot. Crappy ground combat. Doesn’t feel like Star Trek (to me.) But excellent ship to ship combat which makes up for the shortcoming.

Jean-Luc Picard Is A Big Wuss

I’ve been meaning to write this article for a while now, but life decided to come by and slap me silly. (More on that shortly.)

Anyhoo. Star Trek Online. Oh, and please note this is not a review, I have spent in no way enough time in the beta to work up a review. This is simply an impressions and thoughts piece.

It sounds like the dream IP for a MMORPG developer. A huge pre-existing and completely obsessed with anything Star Trek fan base. An IP that is all about exploration, seeking out new life, and boldly going where no one has gone before. The TV series, all of them, have drama, diplomacy, puzzle-solving, space combat, ground combat, humour, and a hopeful outlook on the future.

It should be a MMORPG goldmine.

But, from what I’ve seen so far, I doubt that it will be.

Now to be fair, I haven’t spent all that much time playing the beta. I was invited to the closed beta just before Christmas and spent a single session of a game that seemed woefully incomplete. Since then I’ve patched to the open beta client and have found a much more complete version of the game. Lots of missing text and graphics is now in the game. There’s certainly been a lot of work done over the last few weeks, and a lot of improvements made.

To a certain extent, I’ve had fun playing the open beta of STO. The space combat is much more tactical than most MMORPG combat systems, except perhaps Eve.

But ultimately, Star Trek Online offers nothing of what made the television series(s) special.

There is space and ground combat to be sure, but there is no diplomacy game, the missions are all canned in that there are no real choices or consequences for the decisions you make. I haven’t seen anything that I have to figure out — do I kill that silicon lifeform rock-creature, or get Bones down to heal it? Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor not a bricklayer. — And the exploration seems inconsequential. There’s no relationship with my bridge crew, they just add stats and beam down with me on away missions.

In a nutshell, the game lacks content.

It’s odd because it feels like STO has less going for it (gameplay wise) than Tabula Rasa did at the same stage of development, and look how badly TR got caned for lack of content.

What Cryptic have with Star Trek Online is a great foundation for a MMORPG based on the Star Trek franchise. What they need to do is to take another six months for development and add in those elements that made Star Trek special.

• Choices. Jim Kirk made his own decisions based on what he encountered. So did Picard and Sisko. (Janeway just parroted the company line.) He didn’t have a bunch of mission text leading him from one step to the next with no room to improvise. And maybe that’s what ST was all about. Improvisation. Can a Star Trek game, really be a Star Trek game without improvisation?
• Real Exploration. While I’m travelling shouldn’t I come across the unexpected. A new lifeform perhaps a space jellyfish or some such thing? And it should have an associated story. See next point.
• Solving Mysteries. If I’m sent to a star system to rescue a stranded freighter, don’t give me a damn slow escort mission that’s just a timesink, give me a mystery to solve. Or evolve the scenario into something interesting. Sure, Star Trek was in a “planet of the week” format, but each episode at least attempted to have an interesting story. So far the missions I’ve seen have been not much more that the kill ten rats or escort variety. It’s worse than that, it’s boring Jim.
• Missions need to be Episodes. Following on from the previous point. Each mission really ought to be the equivalent of a weekly TV episode of ST. How many stories started with, “Starfleet has sent us to… ?”
• Klingons. Don’t make them Monster Play only, unlockable at whatever level. The Klingon’s in the TV series, TNG onwards, were interesting. They had the best parties, and the Klingons seemed to laugh more than any other species. (Except for that stick-in-the-mud, Worf.) The Klingon’s also had the best ships in the first two series. TNG started developing a rich culture for the Klingon’s that was continued by DS9. There’s a wealth of content there for STO. Use it.
• Away Team/Ground Combat. This needs to be sorted. It’s not very good and needs improvement. For one thing I have an away team, yet I can’t figure out how to operate them like a squad. I always end up leading the team into a room and get shot first. I need to be able to send my red-shirt in to danger first!

I think the real clincher for me is that when I think I should login to Star Trek Online and spend some time with it, I don’t really have much of a desire to do so. I end up opening up Everquest 2, or just sit down and read a book. It doesn’t give me any inclination to buy and subscribe to STO (let alone buy a lifetime sub — what a ripoff that is!)

From what I’ve read, Champions Online has become a virtual ghost town only a few months after release, due at least in part (in my opinion) to being released too early without enough content. I fully expect Star Trek Online to suffer the same fate. The only thing that may help is that die hard Trek fans could hang in there for a while longer than most.

My overall impression is that STO will be on life support within a year of release.