f13.net

On Cryptic Studios' website (http://www.crypticstudios.com) there is a counter going backwards.

The artwork behind it is taken directly from materials developed for Perpetual Entertainment for Star Trek Online (http://gaming.trekcore.com/startrekonline/conceptart.html).

Cryptic will announce STO on / around July 28, it seems.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9c/V'ger.JPG)

What? I thought it was Turbine's job to be given incredibly valuable IP to make mediocre games from.

Did you ever actually say why it was such a "piece of shit IP" that nobody could possibly ever make a decent game from or is this just a pronouncement from on high?

There has been quite a bit of discussion over the years but mostly it boils down to that the IP is so overly constraining that it has to be nearly impossible to develop a working, 'fun' MMO style game from it.

Let me try:

1) How can combat be fun? Point and shoot your phaser?
2) Does someone have to be Wesley Crusher or do we all get to be captains? The problems with either are legion.
3) Loot?
4) How do you make travel interesting and immersive without Eve's "pick a destination and read a book"?
5) Why would anyone be a human?

To boldly go where what, four or five studios have gone before?

Maybe if they reversed polarity's!

I still think that the best way to make an MMO for Star Trek would be to give everyone a Captain Kirk mask, a webcam, and some video interfacing software and let them scream engage at each other.  Voila!  Star Trek MMO.

Entire game takes place on the holodeck allowing them to just reskin The Sims.  They could have also purchased the Gods and Heroes assets and have the whole game take place during one of those unfortunate back in time mishaps.

You can't do that when there is a fluctuation in the antimatter containment field

Ah ok. It seems like a great big, fully realized universe with legions of fans who would be anxious to play the game if it were approached with a little originality and imagination. Then again, you can't go too far wrong underestimating MMOG developers. They'll probably give it to Koster to build or something.

Simple.  Auto Assault.  The Call of WoW will be too great for Cryptic to be able to resit trying to force Star Trek into a Diku box.  Auto Assult screwed up the classic Auto Deul/Car Wars idea in the same way.  It may have the dressings of Star Trek, but running around in your little ship, killing space rats, turning space quests, grinding your rank levels is never going to be even a little bit like Star Trek.  

CoH2^H^H^H^H Champions Online interests me more, and Champions just looks like another mmog, only dumbed down for consoles.

But as for Star Trek...


It'll either be 'everyones a space ship' or everyone's a marine running about shooting each other a TV remote. It will play at least as much like Star Trek as SWG is like Star Wars.

tbh, you wouldn't want it to be like Star Trek, because then every second mission would have to involve nothing but navel gazing space-angst over how some pissant android or science officer has been infected by a space-virus in order to keep the episode budget down and save up for the end-of-season pew pew episode.


4) No different to any other mmog. There will be quick/easy travel because CCP are the only dev team with balls, and even they added jump clones.
5) What? Same reason as always, because some people always pick humans.

Never mind the fact Startrek PEW PEW makes *NO* sense what so ever.


"We have to break through the Cardassian line!" What line asshole, you are in space, pick a direction that isn't straight into them!

I disagree.

There've been five long running TV series about it, over a dozen movies, and countless books. There's all the background information any nerd could ever possibly want. More than enough to make a MMOG out of.

You don't *KNOW* anything. It's just your opinion and nothing more.

Totally agree, I wouldn't make a diku out of it. I could see something like EVE online working with a star trek skin but again that would be a waste of a license.

What I'd really like to see is a star trek MMO focused upon episodic highly scripted stories. Pricing would be identical to Guild Wars' original model; you buy the box and get free online play, then quarterly they release new content packs containing 40+ hours of high quality content for an additional charge. It wouldn't be a traditional MMO with mechanics geared around retention making players login for hours each day. As each episode is released you would play through it once or twice at your own pace, then stop until the next one comes around. Traditional character advancement would be entirely complete by the time you finish roughly 3/4 of the retail box game and become a captain of your own starship. The character advancement mechanic isn't core to the game; it's used to introduce abilities gradually so new players aren't overwhelmed and then discarded. The gameplay would be its own reward, as each quarter you get 40 hours of AAA quality content to enjoy with your friends.

The world would be heavily instanced with hubs like guildwars. Each player would gain flags based upon how they handled previous episodes which would lead to branching gameplay. Say in episode 4 "The guns of cardassia" you chose to uphold the prime directive and let the blue-skin natives of Generico IV discover a virus that killed all their tomatoes; in future episodes they would break out from their world and develop into shrewd traders, trying to capture the tomato market for themselves. Or if you helped them out and destroyed the virus, they would remain on their planet, enjoying their bountiful tomato crop, and never enter the galaxy at large. And so on. I like the idea of instances changing, like that starter town in LOTRO after the attack but based upon the player's choices. This would also greatly aid in replayability.

But really, this is my ideal model for all new MMOs and nobody seems interested in doing it. Content creation is just too expensive, I guess.

That's what I meant by using some imagination and originality. Star Trek as a standard diku would bore me to tears even if it were well done.

You should probably now follow up with a post with the words "think out of the box"  and "it's easy".

I dare you.

Until they are capable of delivering a system that will procedurally generate thousands of huge worlds, and develop the AI for all the races and creatures to poulate those worlds, I see any MMO deriving from the Star trek license as an abortion.  The television series was a fun watch, but it was driven by the acting of a few which would continuously run across new challenges.  Sometimes those challenges would be a revisitation from the familiar, but with a new twist.  This won't happen in an MMO.  They will deliver a static world, or universe, rather.  In a very short time the new will be gone, and we are left without the only thing which made star trek great.

The only games that were anyway decent in star trek were Trekmuse, a text only MUSE that was around when I was in college (and was bloody fantastic) and star fleet command which was based on a board game. And even treckmuse added the Gorn as a playable race. A good decision and gave some variety. Neither followed the conventions of the standard IP. Aside from Star Fleet command III... which was shit.

Shcild is right. The IP is garbage. You might as well pulp your money and save yoruself the pain.

Ps And eve only works becasue the people playing it are addicts. I was one of them and I was too. Paying for that amount of pain is ludicrious.

The TrekMUSE I knew was full of mouthbreathers who learned how to speak fluent Klingon then yelled at you when you asked questions in English.

You don't think my post qualified as introducing a small degree of innovation into the genre? It wasn't thinking out of the box? Or were you replying to Schild?

Make it a cross between Gaia and Puzzle Pirates, but with bettar 3-D graphics. You can do your ship combat and away missions, but the focus of the gameplay is on earning badges for your Trek trivia knowledge integrated into the mini-games. And lots of cybering.

Fucking money hats.

I predict these guys will try to do some kind of DIKU clone and wind up with SWG all over again, though. Or maybe LOTRO if they're lucky.

There are two IPs on my personal nightmare list of Properties I've Enjoyed A Lot That Would Be Difficult As Hell To Make A Good MMO For:

1) Star Trek
2) Dune


Not saying it's impossible, but more that the obvious, broad-stroke appeal doesn't jive well with anyone's ability to make something sufficiently aligned with expectation. 

Especially in properties like ST, which has such a fragmented audience, each with a potentially conflicting vision of What It's All About.

I do wish 'em luck, though.

I was replying to the post right before mine.

Ah, I can just see the forums now...

WHY ARE STONE BURNERS NOT AVAILABLE ON FFA PVP SERVERS AT LAUNCH????!! 

DUNE DEVS NEED TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX, IT'S EASY!!!

And a stupid reply it was too.

I heard social dynamics when combined with cutting edge AAA gameplay will elevate simple play to a level never reached in game development.

Just sayin.

If the game was supposed to mimic the TV series, that part would be actually pretty easy. You'd only need small patch of terrain per planet, populated with few humanoids, all characterized by single (and the same) trait.

Ya, it could be more like Myst.

You joined the Klingons? No wonder. I started as a Klingon myself, but swapped pretty quickly.

The trekmuse pop spread

Feds who all thought they were Kirk
Kilingons who all thought they were Worf.. only really baddass versions of Worf. You know. Quapla.
Cardiassians who were all assholes.
Much smaller numbers of Romulans and Gorns who were Roleplayers and generally laughed at the rest of them and kicked the crap out of them.
Oh and the ferangi that were all prostitutes and into tinysex. No wonder I forgot about them...

I was a Romulan. :)

I remember one time I logged into to simpsace in a Romulan destroyer and there was a Cardassian Heavy and light cruiser sitting on the standard entry point, ganking every ship that logged in. and yelling "Hahahahahahaaaa Cardassians rule the Muse" every time they blew up some guy. Unfortunately for them, rollowing rommie standard procedure I logged in outside sensor range of the standard entry point, set myself up and cloaked.

And sneaked up on them.

And decloaked at full speed, rammed 4 photon torps up the pipe of the CL at point blank with all my phasers. The CL  blew up instantly and I recloaked. "Heh" was all I said and the CA pilot screamed obscenities at me.

Sadly I was a fraction of a second too slow on my run on the CA and it got me. Ahh well.

Yeah the idiot quotient on that game was fairly high, but there was good fun to be had occasionally.

If you thought SWG was a clusterfuck that pissed off SW fanbois.. zomg I can't imagine any game EVER making ST fanbois happy.  Anyone who tries to make a game with this IP has to ignore those fans. It killed SWG and it WILL kill any ST mmo.

See, the problem is like SW, ST is too broad.  At its core it means too many different things to too many different people.

1) Races:  You have to include a deep political structure for each race/ faction.  Starfleet, Romulans, Klingon Empire, Cardassians, that DS9 group whose name escapes me, Ferengi, and others.

2) Exploration:  For all the "Fleshed out" stuff you have to include an whole lot of exploration.  As someone else mentioned, that was the primary idea behind the original series.  For all the fans of "Political Trek" (which is what you can call anything after season 2 1/2 of TNG) there are an equal number who want that wonder of the original series (and that Voyager and Enterprise tried to recapture.. badly.) 

3) Engineering.  Fuck, who doesn't want to be Scotty or Geordi.  Grinding out some miracle fix at the last minute that saves the ship.  Instead I guarantee we'll get health bars and patch-kits. Fuuuuuck that.

4) Morality:  One of the things I love about ST was it's political and moral plays.  The aspects that let Roddenberry step back and examine things and pick at them with a "why is it this way" mentality.  Anything lacking that is NOT ST to me.

5) The universe is TOO broad.  For every item you include, every planet, every race, every reference there will be at least 3 people saying "Why include that and not this?!"    You got this with SWG and they were only focused on a very specific time frame between two movies.  They'd said they were going to ignore large parts of the EU, and they STILL got tons of bitching, even for shit that wasn't part of that time frame! (Include the VONG or this game sux!!)

How's that for a list of "why this IP sucks as an MMO property".

Dominion.

And then you'd have to include all the sub-factions that were largely the focus of the politics. Vulcans, Andorians and Bajorans, to name the big small players.

To paraphrase: the game would be easy and obvious, and wrong.

The likely candidate design would be five or so Races with their own origin story arcs and levels until some point when they meet up in some adjacency-based frontier space for resource gathering and pew pew. Then there's the truly centralized gathering point where all races choose to fight eachother in some part while banding together against things like Borg and 8479 NPC forces. Meanwhile characters are levels based careers that can be changed based on "forgetting" one career while learning another. Everyone gets a personal runabout until they eventually evolve to the highest level ship in their career. Maybe some ships allow SWG-like multiplay on board.

This is all TNG 24th century timeline. Its the most fully realized unless they want to tie into the JJ abrams reinvention.

I just don't trust anyone to do it right, because the whole IP is cursed.

Worse than that, Star Trek is an even harder IP to replicate faithfully.  There were some consistencies around the SW universe that even with all those races and some variations on technology and locales, the universe is surprisingly homogenous.  In Star Trek, everything is different, even the little cultural bits.

I was thinking the same thing.

Too broad a universe, too much deux ex machine stuff in the lore.

Most of all, success is evading conflict and adding to understanding. That doesn't make for compelling gameplay.

It might make a compelling table top/GMd game. But not an MMO one.

This is the one thing that games based on the Star Fleet Battles and Federation and Empire 'setting' have going for it, a fully fleshed out background that at least nominally makes sense. As opposed to the TV material which hurts if you really try to think about it.

Same problem SW has. All of the good lore is relegated to the EU material way less read than the TV show watched. And the EU material for Trek is even more inconsistent and retcon'd than the SW stuff. By a lot.

The "Star Fleet Battles" races and lore:

Federation at the center
To the right you have the Gorn, Romulans and (later) The ISC
Below the Federation you have the Tholians, who's main function on the map is to keep the Klingons and Romulans from joining up.
To the left, you have the Kitzinti, the Lyrans, the Hydrans and the Klingons.
All over the place you have the Orion Pirates.

Power blocks :
(1)Federation with the Kitzinti and the Gorns. During the general war the Hydrans were co-belligerents but not allies as they wewre stuck on the other side of the opposition.
(2) Klingons, with the Romulans and Lyrans as allies.

Relations: The Klingons hate the Tholians and Hydrans. The Feds are strong allies with the Gorn. The Kitzinti and Lyrans hate one another's guts. The Romulans while nominal allies with the Klingons don't like them much since they got shafted in a deal where the Klingons sold them some out of date ships, and pretty much left them to fight the Gorns and Febs alone.
The ISC wanted to stop the war and nearly succeeded by seeding their fleet into everyones neutral zone. They were halted by an out of galaxy invasion.
The Tholians are refugees of an empire that fell in another galaxy and want to be left strictly alone. The took over some Klingon space when they arrived. The Klingons could never get it back due the Tholians excellent defensive web technology.
Some other minor powers around as well.

That's largely it.

Dune would be considerably easier than Star Trek.  The problem with Star Trek is that the canonical work almost entirely character driven, very little of it is about the overall universe of Star Trek, and that little is not easily adapted to a game.  Dune was more about the world than the characters, who were mostly vehicles for exposition about the world.  A Dune MMO would be about the same level of difficulty as LotR.

Star Trek would just be hell.  A death march.

--Dave

Once you've made a game that's received by a near-universal "too brown," you start finding reasons to add Dune to the list. :)

Dune could be a good MMO in 10-15 years. Worry not about the brown, we got many scales :

(http://trustygamer.com/tg/home/files/media/image/modernGamingPalette.jpg)

Star Trek is an awful, AWFUL game license. The series is not about binary decisions, it's not about pew pew (not enough anyway) and it's fans are pedantic cumguzzlers who all think learning a made-up language and flashing interstellar future gang signs is the height of cool. Star Trek fans are another group I'd like to fire into the sun, so they can burn up along with the Great Phoenix or whatever shitbird slack-jawed nickname they came up with for Gene Rodenberry. Majel Barrett should be bitchslapping anyone who signed the papers to allow such an abomination to be made.

Women who speak Klingon will take it in the butt, though!

No?
(http://thecia.com.au/star-trek/next-generation/1/08a3.jpg)

You could cheat a bit, though.  There were other planets in Dune, they just didn't get much of a focus.  You could extend the canon there, get away from the brown, and still be reasonably true to the license.  Not easy, but comparatively doable.  In Star Trek, you'd have to set it in some distant part of the universe (the Beta quadrant?) just to get enough room to work in.  You could make a good game, but the fanbois wouldn't just trash you, they'd burn you in effigy and challenge you to a Mok'bara duel.

--Dave

You are all missing the opportunity this IP offer :

The entire game world is an instanced Enterprise ship.
You are a Klingon Grunt.
You grind your way trough red shirts until you reach the epic raid : the command room (were Kirks and the gang are and they speak to enemy on giant TV).
Once you decapitate Kirk, your Klingon Emperor appear on the giant TV to congratulate you. He also promise an undisclosed number of Klingon's finnest pleasure girls.
Every expansion is a new Enterprise/season.


There's a secret level were you can kill the last whales on earth.

After the first few novels, those other planets did get a lot of focus though. The Ixian planet was highly technological and subterranean (to keep away from prying eyes, since there were bans on computers); Harkonnen planet was heavily industrialized, polluted, dark; Imperial planet was earthlike; the older Imperial planet (Selusa Secundus) was fucked by nuclear fallout and kept around as a prison of sorts (and a training ground for the Sardaurkar); Wallach IX (Bene Gesserit homeworld) was earthlike; the original homeworld of the Bene Gesserit was all jungle; the Atreides planet was oceanic; Ginaz (Duncan's swordmaster planet) was also oceanic, and marshy; there's a planet that's almost entirely made up of jewels; Tleilaxu were xenophobes and the planet was off limits (perhaps conjuring up a picture of the Kremlin is fitting enough); Guild planets are, more than likely, full of shipyards at the very least.

/dune geek off  :grin:

omfg someone give this man $50mil and a team of 60 professionals.

You know, bioware were really really clever to take the licence, make up their own universe and just say "its got lightsabers and magic spells. Now eff off"

And only the hard-core trufans even remember those books existed, never mind the Kevin Anderson add-ons.  The rest of us quit at "Children of Dune".

--Dave

I wonder why anyone would quit at the third book. Leaving there would make you utterly fail at grasping even a single point of the story, and what Paul's son set out to prove.

Seriously.  :-)

That, and you don't get to see how badass a character Duncan is.

I got half way through the 3rd book.  I couldn't take it anymore.

gimme double that and i'll make it a Guild v Guild ship boarding war  :grin:
"Shield's down CAPTAIN!  THEY'RE IN THE TELEPORTER ROOM!"
"This is your captain speaking, WE ARE BEING BOARDED, EVERYONE grab a phaser AND FLAG PVP! For the FEDS!"
"Teleporter room, how big is the boarding party?"
"*static, klingon speak over comms*"
"Fuck"

Oh, I thought people were refusing to read more out..I don't know...laziness. That they liked the series, but lost track of it.

If you simply didn't like it though, fair enough. I've done that with every other sci-fi series attempt myself. Dune's the only exception.

The first Dune was good. The place we are up to now in the Dune saga counts only as necrophila.

It's like Magician by Raymond E. Fiest. Fantastic book, great world, I wish to god he'd stopped writing in that world about 3 mini-series in.

... but it's the nature of sci-fi / fantasy authors to want to release book after book after book of a successful title in order to keep the money rolling in (and probably because they also enjoy what they've created :-).

He wasn't doing that though. He had a lot of this stuff charted out from the beginning. People were too dense to realize what he was trying to communicate with the first trilogy (that messiahs sucked), and instead, made it out to be some typical Campbellian hero story. So he kept on writing and spelled it out. They were also too dense to realize that he was saying it was a BAD thing if "He who controls the spice, controls the universe" became a reality. It was never Herbert's intent to make Paul out to be some kickass good guy, who takes away the spice from the baddies, and we all live happily ever after, with a good guy controlling the universe.

Herbert thought it was bad that any one interest could have that kind of grip on humanity, and that it was bad if there was a possibility that someone could control that single interest. At the end of book 3, he starts getting into that with Paul's son (actually, when Paul became the wandering hermit). Paul had the ability to see into the future, and saw the futility of being ruler and hero, saw what needed to be done to rectify it -- but didn't have the balls to do so. His son Leto later saw the same thing, and did have the balls. Book ends without you ever realizing what exactly it was he had to do.

For some reason I could never make it through Children, but read God-Emporer just fine. I found his writing style in Children really awkward compared to Dune itself though.

If you're a fucking idiot, maybe.

Dune and Dune Messiah are all you need (There's nothing subtle about Messiah). While the rest of the series is interesting in parts they're also obvious, laboured, and rather boring at points. This comming from someone who has read the series at least 5 times (And Dune itself about 20). Dune was my favourite novel for about 10 years and I still enjoy it, but to talk it, let alone the series, up with such self importance really misses much of what is actually in the books.

Children and God Emperor are assuredly the worst of the lot.

As for making a MMO out of it. On the back of what Frank wrote you dont really have a lot to work with. A prequal series would make the most use of the IP, but wouldn't really work well for a game, and everything after God Emperor is so generic that you would basicly be making it from scratch without much relationship beyond the name.

Fiest got shit because he "learned how to write". Pretty sad when your supposed mastrey of your occupational craft results in you work being worse.

While we are throwing broad ideas around that could possibly give this game any hope in hell, I personally would (try to)make a fun pew pew space game where you are the captain of your own ship, with some space colony development game for the builders and as a base for some pvp.  Then I would have a holodeck option where, under the guise of 'training under the oldmasters', you can enter popular episodes from all the series and live out all your Spock/Kirk yaoi fantasies or kick arse alongside Worf, or disintegrate every ferengi that ever existed in any episode, ever.

Give the gamers a decent game, and give the cosplaying diehards a skin for their second life desires.

Self importance? Man, some shit must be in the air here lately. I keep on getting this. I assure you though, I'm quite aware than I'm just fucking around pointlessly on a message board, and trying to be informative about a sci-fi novel. It's not really on my list of things to be self-important about.

Besides, you're the one saying that you could understand the entire plot just by Dune and Dune Messiah. No way could I do that. I recall being utterly clueless at why Paul decided to become a self-hating hermit when I read Messiah, and needed more. I was basically saying "wtf?" the whole time he did that. That's how self important I am. I'd need at least Children of Dune to even be aware of what the Golden Path was. Then I needed the rest just to see what an complete cunt Leto was.

I'd agree that it isn't exactly ideal for an MMO though. I was just chiming in to Dave that there was more of a fleshed out universe there than just the desert planet.

[edit] Just to rerail..

Uber loot: TOS boots. Really, I need a pair of those.

That the thread has degenerated into a discussion of Dune after less than 2 pages is ALSO an indicator of how badly a ST MMO does NOT need to be made.

I always like the Feist books.  I never read anything past Battle for Krondor but I always thought the series was good.  Not a masterpiece, but a nice quick read and a good story.  I liked the characters.

I always thought Feist's best was the Empire Trilogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Trilogy)  personally.

Yeah, that was an excellent trilogy.  Almost as good as Apprentice/Master, or perhaps just as good.  Hrmmm.

Set your players against the federation. Really piss off the people that love star trek. Make em pirates.

The whole point of trek was to put the most powerful, richest most technologically advanced bunch with the best weapons into moral dilemmas. Which was what what DS9 was going to be till someone watched a few episodes of Babylon 5 and went GAAAAA!!! Must have big military threat like Shadows!! *unleash really powerful race* *Spend 2 years (where nothing happens) panicking and trying to figure out what to do with them other than "Dominion invades -> Feds lose, huge"* while watching B5 get better and better and even more extreme.

And I would not even call B5 a great setting for an MM0 either.

DS9 was my favorite of the bunch, but I never cared for the big Dominion war stuff. I liked it mostly for the comedy and spacestation/civilian life. And most of all, a kickass recurring villain. Also, the kickass tailor helped.

There was some really great characters and acting on the show, I will give it that. But the dominion crap was totally contrived and there was a lot of subtle militirism and racism (classed as "genetics" ) in the show that put me right off it.

I thought the whole war thread is what made the show better.  It was boring after the shiny wore off.

The war was what really made DS9 interesting, but at its best, it was still no B5.

And none of the Star Trek stuff deserves a fucking MMO.

I should watch B5 again.  I never did get to finish that series.  Missed the last year or so.  Stupid college.

The last season was not great. It had some good moments, and the final episode brought tears to my eyes. But it was no season 4 or even 2.

Co-written doesn't really count as his.

(Also, the Empire trilogy is a bit shit eh. Fantasy writers should stick to their shtick and try not to get too clever: they generally aren't capable of pulling it off. Racist stereotyping as an original world and high politics! Art!)


What we need is a series of shit fantasy novels to explain stuff like the bible, Joyce, Homer, Plato, et cetera. Then people who don't get it the first time can sortofbutnotreally get it without having to re-read the applicable material and think about things and work it out; learning is always better when it is didactic...

That's nice and all, but the Golden Path had nothing to do with any of that.

Bwuh? Dune was about smoking the cosmic doobie and becoming a godhead with trippy powers. I'd say it was more character driven than Star Trek. By far.

IMHO?

I'm gonna have to agree with Dave about that. Not that the characters were bland, but the stories span a period of thousands of years, with a theme about how only chaos can further human evolution -- and how centralization of power and domestication will stagnate it. Everyone's a tool to keep driving that down your throat, instead of chronicling anyone's particular little adventure.

What does that have to do with making a game out of it? Dave's point extends only to the original planet...

 :ye_gods:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/Dune_2000_Boxart.jpg)

?

House Ordos for the win.

We've got 40 days to kill before something happens, so I'm not surprised we've derailed.

Plus there are only so many times we can say that STO is a license of / for the damned.

hahah phaser combat anyone? Set laser to stun , point , szweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzz, beam hits guy, stun.
I saw that on TV when I was a kid and didn't feel a single ounce of awesome from that scene.

":ye_gods:"

Really? "Ye gods". This is on that level to you?

I thought Dave's point extends to the trilogy. Besides that, I'm just replying to Ratman's general point about Dune, and making a general point of my own.

You should find other things about me to get disgusted about. I feel cheapened if I'm just getting shit about "Dune". That sucks.  :oh_i_see:

I kinda like the old David Lynch Dune movie.  There, I said it.  I mean it doesn't make any god damned sense, I don't enjoy it in the way I do most movies, it's just so bizzare and baroque that I can't help watching it.  I would totally be interested in a game with that same strange atmosphere.

I understand there was a 9-hour cut that actually made sense.  However, nobody scanned it into digital, and both the negatives and the prints have been lost.

--Dave

I thought it was closer to 6 hours. Could be wrong though!

The styling of the Lynch film kicked ass. Loved the stillsuits, the Guild, the Harkonnens, the weirding way.. And a lot of the actors were excellent.

The writing wasn't great though -- I mean, for one, there were tons of scenes with characters' thoughts dubbed over. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is a no-no with film. Great with novels, but film needs to communicate, for the most part, through action.

There's a new film being developed now, I hear. I think if they could just find a middle ground between Lynch and the (underbudgeted) Sci-Fi channel version, we'd finally get a great Dune flick.

Children of Dune (the miniseries) was pretty sweet. IMHO. The first Dune miniseries was kinda flat.

I have great fondness for the Lynch version of Dune, even if it (again IMO) strayed too far from it's source.

Hm. I better put something in here to stay on topic...

(http://www.geocities.com/dos11basic/Images/AppleTrek.jpg)

I saw one version that was much extended, don't know if it was 6 hours though.  The thing about it was that there really wasn't that much more live acting, there were a lot of painted/static images with voice overs doing back ground material.  Talked a lot about the Butlerian Jihad, did a lot more background on the planets, Orange Catholicism and etc...  Nothing that wasn't in the books though.

FYI, that was because his orginal plans were messed up:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5

#1. TNT wouldn't "Know Drama" if it bit them in the dick.

#2. JMS spent too much time on the Teep rebellion in season 5. It was boring and lame. (And gothy  :uhrr:) More stuff about Centauri, Narn and the cleaning up of the Shadow War pls!

The Teep Rebellion could have been good, but it just wasn't. It felt a lot like the BSG stuff that's going on now, a lot of padding padding padding then OMGZSHITRESOLVEITNOW! And then it was left alone. We didn't really get any of the Telepath War.

Also, I knew the bit about the Sleeping in Light being filmed at the end of season 4. It still doesn't explain why given a full season, JMS made season 5 so uneven.

A lot of the familiar actors weren't around for season 5. That had to have made it harder for the writers who had developed the characters for the last four years.

I'll only play a Star Trek MMO if I can be Melee DPS who fights using on Kirksian Martial Arts.

Come on...double neck chop? shirt tearing? thigh grab? What's not to love?

Skill Tree: Trek Fu

Or Vulcan Judo: Numb your opponent into a dazed state by droning on about the logical and philosophical implications of the B Plot, then pinch them on the neck.

--Dave

Only if you get the soundtrack (http://startrekfightmusicposter.ytmnd.com/).

The Lynch film version of Dune was wonderful and frustrating all at once.   Every single actor seemed to be cast perfectly with the possible exception of Paul himself.  Although whatsisname did a brilliant performance, it just wasn't the Paul I'd imaged from the books.

But there is one thing I've never forgiven that film for. 

Ornithopters. 

Or the total lack thereof. 

On the "real" Arrakis, flying machines were ornithopters - with flapping wings dammit!  Not anti-gravity based flying Toblerone bars!

The Minbari civil war was far more interesting and only lasted about 2 and a half fucking episodes.

Every time someone went to the toilet in the earth civil massacre had to be filmed though. I actually stopped watching about 4 episodes to the end of season 4.

Oh and to keep it on topic

(http://www.coolscifi.com/gallery/files/1/spock_heineken.jpg)

Any effort to adapt existing IP, especially IP that comes from such a prolific source is both a blessing and a curse.  Blessing in that you have, potentially, a treasure trove of already thought up concepts that you need merely to adapt.  Curse in that you have, guaranteed, a horrific time trying to not only translate an abstract concept into a strict gaming system but also the challenge of being complete and appropriately respectful to the game so that you dont piss off the fanbois.

I think I'd want to start from scratch with brand new IP just for the flexibility to create whatever makes the best game without crippling the effort.

As far as Star Trek goes : There's no way to do it justice because so much of everyone's expectation centers around the ship.   At best you would have a CoH superbase sytem that was instead a ship that you piloted around the universe and went on missions, but that requires that you have a semi-static group of people you are working with.   At worst you end up remaking privateer but with Orion Slave Girls... while compelling we've already seen that game and it was Galaxies

The Cryptic counter (http://www.crypticstudios.com/) is down to 3.5 hours before it's showtime.

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, place your bets...

It's STO:

http://www.startrekonline.com

It's an interesting set of ideas they've put forward - customisable avatars and ships, crew training, Klingon Empire and Federation...

The screenshots look good, but I'm half-convinced they are concept art. They look too good, in a way.

Ah well, early days. Plenty of time to screw it up yet.

So many broken dreams lie shattered on the backs of nifty screenshots released years early...  or something like that.

And will be much more interesting and telling than a few screenshots of spacescapes and landscapes, and a couple paragraphs telling us how cool Star Trek Online is going to be.

humm....

I am very interested in how they are approaching this. I, hope its not like eve, or other games where you crew is really just a collection of stats. I want interiors, and bridge stations with multi player interiors.

Oh, and things like the delta flyer should be twitch, while the larger ships are more eve like in use.

How... underwhelming. Anti-climactic even. What's the point of releasing screenshots that show nothing but terrain? It's pretty, but tells me fuckall about the gameplay, which is all I really care about.

yeah *sniff* i know.  :cry:

Well, for a game call Star Trek, it's at least a good sign that they have space, ground and space ships.  This, by default, makes it closer to the source material than Star Wars Galaxies or Dungeon and Dragons Online.

Do you REALLY want to know what the STO gameplay is going to be like?  Really?

All I know is it won't be Star Trek unless half your technology is completely useless/broken every time you encounter something.

You should get an army of redshirts that act as a HP buffer, though.

Yes. Disappointment tastes like apple jolly ranchers at this point. Sour apple jolly ranchers.

But those are good!  Watermelon is best though!

That's brilliant.  No more HP meters.. instead you get a "Redshirt meter."  Instead of healers/ clerics you have engineers who beam-in more troops.   :drill:

Everything is fixable by a tachyon pulse, inverting polarity, applying anti-matter or reconfiguring the deflector shield.  Or some combination of the three.*

*I've been watching Classic Trek in the mornings on TVLand.  I recently noticed it falls into the same problem as TNG but everything was anti-matter instead of tachyons.

I too also thought it was concept art at first. They're real. My favorite is this one: http://www.startrekonline.com/gallery/screenshots/?img=12764

Are you Diamonds of Cryptic Studios? If so: 1) get a red shirt name from one of the kindly mods, and 2) fix that website error I pm'd you about!

If not... well, here's what is on STO's 404 page:

(http://www.startrekonline.com/img/easteregg/CGSTO_comic_final_03-Vert.jpg)

EDIT: oh, and I'm impressed by the screenshots in that case. I look forward to seeing the footage to see how it looks in action.

1) Thnx for redname whoever.
2) Replied

404 page is an easter egg :drill:

Fresh meat :vv:

Fuck yea.

So, Diamond. Welcome to hell. Can you spill any beans or just lurking for now?  :grin:

The feeling I get when looking at those screenshots is a 'meh'.

postcount++    :grin:++

won't be so hard. 

Observe:

hearthstones == deh teleport
firebal == lazurs
mounts == pew pew ships

all has been revealed.  DDO (I know not of Cryptic) in Space. 

Oh good. Someone from Cryptic is here. Now's my chance to work off that grudge I've been nursing about that scrapper nerf from a few years ago!  :grin:

We've had at least one other person from Cryptic here in the past.  They don't seem to last on this site long.  :heartbreak:

A Cryptic person. YAY. We eat our own young here.  :drill:

Let's just get the stupid shit out of the way.

The grind in COH sucks and is the reason I stopped playing it. Stop it right now. I know you can do it.

Star Trek Online? Really? You really think this game won't suck copious amounts of Dikugrindy ass and bring about much Trekkie fanbois wailing and gnashing of the teeth? Because you know it will, and I will enjoy every delicious minute.

Also, seriously. That gring thing? Stop it.

Cryptic sold CoH to NCsoft.  The best you can do is tell them not to put grind in any of their new games.

Is this not just going to be the continuation of Perpetual's project?  It's fuzzy but I recall Cryptic scored all the code in the deal... not sure about the art assets (the screenies look creepily familiar to Perp's newer design though, same art style).

As for the Cryptic newbie that's just arrived:
1)  Photorealism
2)  Sandbox

[both are moot since the console bandwagon is jumped.. but I can dream the impossible dream]

-end of line

Cryptic scored everything but the code from P2.

According to my short stay on the STO boards - it's Trekkies, it's ugly and scary there - there have been some big changes compared to P2's plans. Such as everyone being a captain of a ship and the fact you can play as either Federation or Klingon Empire. P2 lore had the Klingons wound into the Federation, not as a separate entity, while I don't think it was confirmed the player would start as a Captain.

Random thoughts...

Let me solo in my own ship OR get others to join me in mine which makes my ship much more effective.  If I have a ship crew of 4 my ship should be an even challenge for 4 ships of the same class flying solo.

Please cook in a lot of lore, ST has it like crazy. 

Space AND Planets, great looking avatars for both ships and humanoids.

Lots and lots to explore.  I mean lots.  I should be able to hit max level and there is still content I haven't seen yet.  That is for my alts. 

Interesting space debris, planetary ruins, easter eggs, just little stuff hidden away that always gives my explorer heart a thrill to find.

Has there been anything said about when in the ST timeline this will be set? What I'm getting at is are the humans and klingons tolerating each other or will there be pvp?  :drill:

Thanks for the clarification.  I knew they scored SOMETHING big out of the deal - I just got it backwards.  So they got all the art assets but NOT the code (which explains the similar art style).  That's actually a promising thing IMO, because I didnt like the new direction Perp was taking the game (and neither does anyone else for that matter).  I'll nerf the photorealism if fps and game design are improved.

Really, all they have to do with this game is take elements from EnB and Starflight and they're done.  EnB had exploration and easter eggs galore - I used to spend hours freewarping all over the place.  And Starflight?  nuff said there...  with today's real-time rendering tech. you could easily create the largest virtual universe ever envisioned.

While I'd love to see the STO Sandbox a reality, they'd really have to push the envelope to pull it off.  MMO devs arent known for their envelope-pushing, unless it's got an invoice in it.  However, employing the K.I.S.S. method, I'd just leave the Sandbox to the crewed ships only and make them floating player cities, allowing everyone to be their own Captain on Defiant-class ships or smalller, but for the greater good of the Federation (guild, clan, etc.) apply their goods/services towards a Galaxy class starship everyone can crew or just simply live on.

Use Metagames (already out there) for repairing plasma conduits, aligning the Heisenberg compensators, manually firing photon torps, shield modulation, etc. etc.  You can temper the player-skill metagames with systems that take character skill and "effort-management" (i.e. stamina, focus, etc.) into account; they're are already out there - ala the "Battlestations" boardgame, or just about any PnP game there is.  I could go on and on with this crap.

This is just so full of win I had to quote it again. I actually did choke on my beverage when I read it.

Is it too late to make advancement something other than levels? PLEASE????

Why not just have Scarlett shit the $100 bills directly and skip the Leprechauns entirely?  That way, in the back of your mind you're not confronted with the realization you're wanting to phuck a Leprechaun... just a Hollywood Hottie that shyts c-notes.

Thankfully, all money is washable - but I'm sure Scarlett's poo does smell of roses anyways.  Leprechaun poo probably just smells like ass.

WAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

...






AAAAHAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

No seriously, this is bringing tears to my eyes it's so funny.

Go on. Say it again. Say it.


AAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Erm...uhahuhhuhhaha...wait.  I don't get it.

Crazy idea for all current and future MMOs based on a major IP (Trek, SW, whatever):  Make it an alternate reality.  Make it clear to your fanbois that none of the old canon necessarily applies.  Star Trek Bizarro world.  Star Wars Eternities.  Kirk is a virgin, and Luke turns to the Dark Side.  No expectations and no promises.

Star Trek, Star Gate, I'm starting to get everything confused.  Someone needs to change the name of something!

... and a million slash fic writers cry out, and are then silenced.

No problem.  Now you advance by ranks!

:inserts smiley with gun in its mouth:

How could you NOT have levels in a game representing the ST IP?  Everything about the Star Trek verse revolves around "levels."  Whether it's the political ranks of the Klingon High Council, the Federation rank system, Dominion, Obsidian Order, even the gadgetry (there are different levels/classes of torps, engines, phasors, etc.)... ALL of this stuff has inherent leveling.  In a universe where money largely means nothing, you'd HAVE to have levels to actually have the need to strive towards anything.  Hell, even the "Q" have levels.

:smiley hanging self while guzzling poison:


Maybe I have outgrown MMOGs. If all they are going to be is a bunch of 'Must be this tall to ride' signs, I will pass.

They will be.  We were saying as much in 2004 before WoW's amazing results cemented it in place. :wave:

Your best bet for "worlds" will be myspace and social site apps like Raph's since those are based around social systems instead of traditional game play features like combat.

Funny thing is, those social sites are some of the worst/best around at pandering their Rank structures to their users.  Every little thing has a damned ranking; from how many friends you have to how "cool" your space is.  If you want to be social, you first have to be "popular" to be successful at most of those sites... otherwise people will never find you.

So, "must be this tall to be popular" is the new norm. I guess.

Size matters.

Win a lifetime sub to STO. (http://www.startrekonline.com/node/69) Valued at $550. Only if you live in the NA region, though.

Seems a little bush league to me - "win a sub to a game that hasn't been released yet!" - but it raises the idea that Cryptic might offer lifetime subs on STO. About 4.5 days left until the webcast of in-game footage.

I thought 18 months was the standard. How did 36 months suddenly become the norm?

That, or maybe Cryptic has already realized the game is going to suck, so they're planning on charging a 30 a month sub to milk the early multi-month subscribers for all they're worth.

For a game like STO, where the fans are rabid, charging a premium for a lifetime sub could work out very well. Throw in an exclusive bonus pet - Ensign Crusher with a cowering emote or something - and that group would lap it up.

(http://www.rental-world.com/images/PA_Costume_Rental/Star_Trek_Dress_costume_rentals.jpg)

We now see where the development budget is going:

Leonard Nimoy to appear with Cryptic at Star Trek Convention (http://www.startrekonline.com/node/70)

What's the going rate for a Spock with a walker and a nasal cannula?

~550

Tree-fitty.

nuh uh.  tree-fitty strips of gold-press latinum...

Some early press about STO. (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ikj6V-CYYWISldz8cmkiJ9avC11QD92E92UG0)

Of note:

So they didn't knick any assets from Perpetual... but have something to show after... 7 months maximum development time. That's some snappy work there.

I call bullshit.  It will be 5 classes, 5 races, 5 skill trees, whatever.   Everything will be tied down.   If anything there'll be a barber chair for horn styles etc.  But there will be no sand box at all.

It doesn't. The only thing that piqued my interest in this latest iteration of the cursed IP was this line from yesterday's press release:

"Because the game will be set a few generations following the last "Trek" film"

Two things:

1) Boldly going to the future is something we've wanted from the IP since they, well, stopped at the Janeway/Picard/DS9 stage.
2) For even the uncreative, there's just so many possibilities with better everything (transporters, holodeck, etc).

All of this requires the project not be doomed in the same way all predecessors have. And the jury's out until late Alpha. But at the very least, they're starting right.

I thought he's done with Star Trek? Guess he needs money.

He has some sort of cameo in the upcoming Star Trek movie so no he's not done with it yet.

He should release another album.   :ye_gods:

As William Shatner learned, you may be done with Star Trek, but is Star Trek done with you?

(http://homepage.mac.com/happywaffle/enterprise/images/wannabe.jpg)

This doesn't hearten me at all. Regardless of timeframe or setting, later day Star Trek was telling stories in circles. (With a few notable exceptions, mostly coming from DS9 and the later seasons of Ent, and Voyager being the dead fish of the franchise) Going boldly into the future with boring stories (and a boring setting for a MMOG)  is hardly something I'd look forward to.

You're right as it pertains to the TV series.  But the movies (and the impending movie) always hearkened to a future not portrayed on the TV shows.  You also forget the endless torrent of novels and short stories written by ST writers, both licensed and unlicensed.  There's oodles of literature that goes way beyond Voyager.  So Cryptic may think they're in the clear setting it a few generations in the future, but fact is they aint... they still have some homework to do.

Just say it's an alternate timeline, Trek has those in spades.

Cryptic did take the artwork, given that the picture behind the counter was from Perpetual.

However, yeah, 7 months is a pretty short time.

Is it just me or does Zangarmarsh look weird in this screenshot?


ZangarTrek (http://www.startrekonline.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=12773&g2_serialNumber=4)

If I recall from my days as an even bigger nerd, Paramount has no particular "canon policy" regarding the Trek novels.  They're not obligated to stick with an overall continuity, and in fact contradict one another in various places.  This was often compared with Star Wars, where they tried (with varying degrees of success) to keep all the books and comics and cartoons part of one self-consistent timeline.

STO trying to keep continuity with much of anything outside of the movies and TV would be a mistake.  For one, the continuity is bound to be muddled as all hell.  For another, fuck being bound by continuity.  See SWG.

Feh, I've read most of that stuff. Some of it is pretty good. I particularly like the near future of Imzadi II and the far future as portrayed in the epilogue of Federation. However, Paramount is no more likely to force Cryptic to any novelized definition of a future than LA would for the SW stuff. Novels and graphic novels are a good way to present alternate future histories or provide detail to an established line. But major IP does not define themselves by what was written in mere one-off or trilogy series.

There's no telling what they'll follow though, not at this stage. I am curious to see how this lines up with the next movie though. Unless there's some tie-in?

And yea, as Tannhauser wrote, ST is nothing if it doesn't abuse temporal displacement as a lazy-man's plot device.


Agreed. It's getting harder these days for me to even sit through even the better ones. But I'm not concerned by this because it's an MMO first. There will be no ongoing story arc. There'll be a bunch of quests in whichever environment gets released for launch* from a bunch of NPCs and no real PvP. Just the usual MMO stuff either with their insane adherance to grind-for-revenue from CoX, or them changing that tune, wrapped in somewhat familiar Trek theming. So there won't be much example of the clean episodic recursion that has been the series... outside of the quest text we're all going to skip anyway  :grin:

We're not talking Bioware here.

* I really doubt both ground and space will be there at launch, not when either is a compelling expansion.

Great trailer - Cryptic is a solid studio (http://startrekonline.com/videos)

I tell ya, I like the ideas lined out in the Vegas Webcast.
1)  You have a ship w/crew ala Starflight
2)  There are redshirts
3)  Space Combat is more slow and strategic, ala Bridge Commander (resource management is important as well)
4)  CREATE YOUR OWN RACE
5)  Design your own SHIP
6)  Infinite real-time exploration (that actually matters)
7)  Eve-like economy and guild advancement
8)  ST Novels are used in lore (no need to make up some crap from scratch)
9)  There's Klingon-style melee combat (batt'leth anyone?)
10)  JUST enough Sandbox to keep the trekkie grognards happy; maybe

I.. like it.  Can they pull it off?  Probably.  But will they hit each of these points with quality?  Doubtful.  It'd be a wonderful achievement if they did though.  I think their design is a good one though; maybe trying to do a little too much, but since they've got the art assets and engine in place already, they're in pretty good shape.

As a Trek fan, I will remain very cautious about this game.  The franchise always has potential to be some of the best sci-fi out there, but there is just so much that can, and often does, go wrong.  I like what they are trying to do, but I liked what Shadowbane was trying to do, and Darkfall talks a big talk too.  The best thing cryptic has going for them in my eyes is that they seem to be capable at building solid game engines.

Like City of Heroes I'm sure they can capture the "essence" of trek, the style of it, but my real concern is can they make it fun?  It was a hoot being able to build heroes and villains in CoX, but playing them?  Not so much.

In some thread I read here recently, the comment was made that "no-one likes to be a minion".

Apparently the STO forums are filled with people who don't want to be Captain either (http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=5692). The people who want a ship to function with a fully player controlled crew has obviously never played with a PUG in a MMO before.

How so?

My thought was "Oh, a game where you have a ship and fight people, and then you board the other guy's ship and fight him! Where have I seen that before? (http://www.burningsea.com/page/home)

It's deja vu all over again. We used to debate this endlessly on the MUD newsgroups.

Well it's not surprising there is debate. The shows did have a lot of storylines revolve around more than just the bridge officiers. Requests to have ships be filled 40-100 players to be realistic are rediculous because that type of game won't be as fun as they imagine but a game where the crew was limited to 6-12 officiers would be alright.

Infact it could offer some interesting employment dynamics as ships of the smallest sizes can only have 6 officers but they could hold officirs of any type. It would be pretty cool that among the same ship classes they play radically diferently because of the skil sets available among its crew members.

Id be one of those people. I think.

I think you have to make Ship = Guild on some level.  That's the only chance you have of avoiding the same pitfalls of the PUG (and even that is doubtful).  And if Captain = Guild Leader, then yeah, fuck that noise.  I'll be on the holodeck banging Troi.

I have always thought it could be accomplished using NPC's. We see all the time in shows where no names are tapped on the shoulder, and the "Hero" now operates the console. Just make the NPC's operate at some basic level of proficiency, and follow captains orders. But they can be relieved by a real player, who has what ever proficiency they have. ETC... Oh, and VOIP (ship wide com system).

There was a very old PS one game, that was a station simulator/mystery game that did this, the overall game sucked, but this feature was rater awesome.

So how do you make a game work if you're not the captain?  You want to play minigames to get your reactor core to stabilize?

I think to make the game work you can run around a ship and make sure everything is working, like resource management in RTSs.  The crew are your minions so to speak and they "level" up in experience as you gain rank and play.  So your crew gets better and better the longer you play and not get them killed.

Thats the only way for it to work.  Then if you want, you can let someone play your tactical guy to let him pew pew for you, but he doesn't gain experience or anything for his ship.

And please, none of this I want an actual crew of people on my ship!  Yes I want to play a "raid" type environment every second I'm playing the game.  No thanks.

With what you know today, what do you think the chances you'll play this game are? 

I haven't seen the trailer.  But the idea of running around with the kind of 'folk' who like Star Trek...  I know you're the exception to the rule, person reading this, but you know what I mean.  Yea, I give myself maybe a 2% chance to actually pay for this game in any way.  But I want to keep an open mind, so I'll double it +1.

5% chance I'll play this game at all.

Crap, our engineer logged out for dinner, we're sitting ducks!

Pretty slim. If it turns out to be Eve Lite I may be inclined to give it a try.

Totally not interested in MMOGing the Star Trek IP, and I say that as a Star Trek fan.

Have there been enough MMOs to offer a lifetime subscription that a standard has been set?

That would be fine if you want to turn it into a DDO-sized niche game. Forced grouping would kill the market size severely for this game in NA at least.


I would have said zero before today probably as I really am not excited about ST, but I kinda liked the trailer and I think Cryptic does good work. I'm willing to give them a chance and see what they've learned from CoH.

I dont think you can use that term in this setting. Star trek is about grouping.

Let me pilot a Klingon Bird-of-Prey and gank newbies in Nova-class science vessels and you'll have at least a month's subscription out of me.  :grin:

Is this a catass forced grouping MMO request?

What? Star trek is about GROUPS. What hard to understand? And you using a term for a game that may not even resemble what you are referring to as a group, or why that term is considered dirty..

Star Trek is a TV show. Nothing about that or the lore or whatever forces the MMO to do any particular thing. Their goal is to make money; thus the design they seem to have come up with that doesn't involve making someone sit in the engineering room all day.

Plus you always see the enterprise out in the middle of nowhere with no friends in site. I don't recall a season where kirk wouldn't leave the starbase without a healer.

Oh wait, how about the Borg where you have to form a raid a fleet to get the epic lewts upgrades.

ST is rife with lore involving everyday folk being Captains.  If you're the alpha dog on whatever ship you're piloting, you're the captain... no matter what your offilcial delineation.  Therefore, it wouldnt be hard to in some way "force" STO players to be the captain.  How far they take it is to their own devices; they can be simple traders, fleet commanders, explorers/scientists, mercenaries, etc.  Even a lowly bridge officer many times gets to run his own ship in ST, so it's not that far-fetched. (phuckin Gorn has a ship for god's sake)

The true "Captains" in the game will be those in large ships running fleet-type maneuvers raid-style.  They're a piece of a much larger puzzle, either to repel a borg attack, gaurd a trade fleet, or attack the Federation/Klingons.  If that's their playstyle so be it.  But you'll of course have the Enterprise-ish types that run solo at the edges of the known galaxy, the Voyager types that are totally cut off  (purposely), and those that just like to mine or make trade runs.

This is a reason why I kinda like Cryptic's design, it has enough "layers" to potentially not force players into something they might not necessarily agree with.

Now, another note, the CCO in the webcast did say that there will be missions on-board ships and ships will be rendered internally; similar to an STO design I had that basically used all the players' ships as streamed levels that multiple players could interact with.  The level changed based on whatever was going on inside and out.  So, basically you'd have missions where someone would need to be in sick bay, someone in engineering, someone at the helm, and someone shifting energy resources, etc.  in order to effectively manage the level without getting pwned.  Kinda like playing Unreal with one man at the elevator switch, another at the choke point, and one flicking light switches in a custom level.

It's not hard to envision a smart designer getting creative with mission/level desing in STO and requiring your more traditional Star Trek style "team" oriented ship crew at certain points in the game (perhaps an "endgame raid").  All they'd have to do is have a group mission aboard a ship.  To take it further would be to make each player's internal ship renderings its own dynamically streamed level (like in my design)... but I dont see Cryptic taking this approach.  Just give players a taste of it every once and a while and I think it works out fine.

Players can repeat shipboard group missions given out by Command to their hearts content if they want.  Since each "Captain" has unique skills ala Picard or Janeway (archaeology, diplomacy, science), they'll bring different skills to a shipboard raid that raid-organizer will probably look for to succeed.   Obviously, if I'm in a firefight aboard a Klingon BoP that I'm storming I'd rather have a Benjamin Sisco than a Catherine Janeway - so I'm gonna look for Captains with physical skills rather than science.

It's a potentially interesting dynamic that I think can work.  They just gotta do it right.

You've just described what keeps us all trying out Horrible, Horrible MMOs. Because that second bit is apparently HARD.

I just want to be a Ferrengi damn it!   :drill:

I just want a holodeck.  But doesnt look like it's happening in this version of STO.   :oh_i_see:
They'd be smart to put it in though - just basically Ryzom Ring for Star Trek.  Instant success.

For once a comment like this is actually silly. This is Star Trek! You can beam up a new engineer. If that engineer is too far away then divert power from the warp core so you can apply enough thalarons to adjust the frequency range of the Heisenberg compensators.



Duh. *Smacks kildorn on the forehead*

This seems to work great for Puzzle Pirates. Honestly, I don't want to be the captain either. Warf, Data, and Geordi had all the cool adventures. Picard was practically supporting cast.

There are holographic generators in Cryptic's design.  No need to even beam anyone up.  Just turn on the holographic Engineer.

That essentially highlights why the movement to not be captain is so strong. I rarely watched TOS so I can't comment on that but for the rest, TNG: Ensemble piece, DS9: Ensemble piece distracted by the Bashir/Odo-Naris spinoffs, Janeway Show: Ensemble piece until they upgraded Janeway's tits for 7of9s, Ent: There was a cast?



You got me there.

Picard was supporting cast?  There are four lights!

 :popcorn:

That's a pretty good amount of work for eight months. I wonder what engine they're using. I could potentially see CoX if you assume a good amount of limitations and space split into zones. Ground combat as shown could be anything from target lock to pseudo Mass Effect type. And the space combat being slower actually helps them a lot. No Freespace 2 here, but I don't think anyone would expect that from a Trek game anyway.

But someone earlier mentioned something about this launching in seven months? Was that made up or has that been stated? I hope for the general sake of seeing an MMO launch as a not-trainwreck that it's the former.

The only request I am going to make, and I have this request for pretty much every MMO ever, is that either include a built-in media player so I can listen and browse whatever music I like while playing, or make damn sure the game can work windowed.  I love game music more than most, but any music gets tiring after hearing it for hundreds of hours.  Sometimes when whacking foozles I have the itch for NWA, so let me scratch it without hassle, please.

Fixed it for you.

Although Puzzle Pirates points out a potential way of having a player-crewed ship, that MMO makes it very easy to hop from ship to ship and it is very easy to flip between stations / mini-games. I'm not sure it would be good for STO to follow this path, where Chief Engineers jump ships in the Alpha Quadrant to join another in the Delta Quadrant, meaning the Security Officer now has to take over Engineering to keep things moving.

STO is a poisoned chalice of a license. Regardless of what Cryptic put out there are going to be some very unhappy people.

Darniaq - Cryptic is using an updated in-house engine first built for CoH/V on STO (and ChampO). I don't think they are launching in seven months though... that's when ChampO is due. Launching two MMOs at once would be insane. Well, more insane than I think Cryptic is capable of, anyway.

Ah thanks UnSub. That's probably the context in which I heard "7 months". And using something evolutionary off of CoX is a good thing in my opinion. Space scenes are pretty easy to make look hot on non-uber computers anyway, and you want a ground game that won't require super modern PCs in this genre. If you want a lot of subscribers that is...

Edit for redundancy. Move along.

The Holodeck was the equivalent of everybody in the crew playing World of Warcraft instead of going out and exploring and shooting each other.

Even in the future there are catasses!  :ye_gods:

I would totally sit in the engineering room if I had a puzzle to do like in Puzzle Pirates. I didn't mind sitting in the bottom of the ship building or doing carpentry, after all. <3

All they'd have to do is a system similar to Bioshock's "hacking" console and they're done.  You can modify the speed of the hack based on the skill of the player character.  A simple interactive puzzle Console like in Tabula Rasa is also an option.  It's REALLY not that hard to implement.  But, like we've said... will/can they do it?  doubtful.  And this is a system someone could code and design in a day. (assuming it's even from scratch)

Aside from that, a simple crew quarter to play poker in would be awesome.

And if Cryptic were REALLY smart, they'd steal a lot of ideas from Star Trek: Elite Force (which had minigames for tricorder, doors, jeffrey's tube, phasers, etc.).  That was arguably the most well-designed trek game ever done.  They still use it to this day to run trek orpg's.  Matter of fact, the combat system in Elite Force is nothing to sneeze at either.  Better than most every MMO out there... granted, it is an FPS.

They need to hire some phuckin Level Designers for STO, not a gaggle of nerdraged premadonna "Quest designers."  Make a sleak level designer GUI ala UT3 and put some gifted designers to work.  T'wer me I'd release my level designer well before my game even released and put the modding public to work; hire em if they're any good... use their stuff regardless.

Man, in what Star Trek episode does the transporter actually work when you need it for something more complicated than going on vacation to the surface.

I never got that Star Trek episode when they had Klingon loose on the Enterprise and they were causing mayhem.  Why didn't they just beam them into a holding cell?

Point to point internal transports are incredibly scary and difficult and dangerous except in those cases where they just get used with no comment to advance the plot.

I'm blanking on the episode. Was this TOS or TNG-era?

:P

Day of the Dove, TOS era.

Edit - To answer the question the alien whozeewhatzit that was making them fight had control of the ship. The humans and klingons had to act all nicey nice to get the thing to leave.

/nerdoff

TNG.  It was two Klingons.  They had hidden pieces of phasers in their armor that they could put together.  I can't remember much else from the episode off the top of my head.  But I remember thinking that the whole episode was stupid.

Edit:  Hah! Ok it looks like the recycled that one.

Separate player controlled stations are unlikely at this point: (http://au.pc.gamespy.com/pc/star-trek-online/897733p2.html)

We could take another cue from Puzzle Pirates, and instantly replace the PC engineer with an NPC engineer, as soon as the PC engineer left. Or just say "hell with it" and let every player perform every station. I'd prefer that, because if we want class interdependency, it's best to let any player emulate any class at any time. The most necessary classes are historically the most painful to play, so there's always a shortage of them.

For everyone who likes the idea of multi-PC controlled ships go play a month on any Star Trek MOO and if you think that's fun you can talk.

I don't know what this means.   :ye_gods:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOO

A MOO was basically a social/sandbox/RPing MUD.  All MUDs were basic DIKUs, where MOOs were mostly social sandbox adventure games, no levels and no equipment dependence, mostly.

Yup. Regardless of the technical or gameplay aspects of multi-character ships, I think a lot of you underestimate the sheer looniness of the fanbase this game is going to attract. Star Wars geeks have nothing on Trek lore-whores.

There is already a precedent for multi-Player ships. SWG:JTL.

I think the real problem is no one wants to think outside the DIKU box. As far as classes, we all know everyone on the bridge can do everyones else job, the key he is some have a higher proficiency than others, thats what makes warf a better tactical officer than say, Geordi.

Orient all crews as "Groups" if you will, 6 people for normal sized ships. NPC's will take over stations at a base line proficiency (Increased over time by missions ETC, Call this "basic crew level"). All consoles on the ship would be minigames of a sort.

The captain gets a mission, goes to a terminal and creates a "wanted crew" list, 3 slots are reserved for his guild mates (player chooses), the rest are completely open. Mission times like leaving, ETA and estimated completion time is listed to all who use this to find a mission/ship to transfer too.

Later that day....

So, say you are currently in a battle, you have your 6 mains on the bridge, manning this or that. Meanwhile, your taking hits, people are getting hurt...NPC's start to pile into the sick bay (Medical game play, successes count towards overall "mission" score) as well as the occasional Player. Geordi is on the bridge, diverting power, and changing power signatures of the phasers that Warf is firing (Boath playing mini games). Sadly, Geordi over powered on the the phaser tubes things, and that happens to be located on deck 3, forward.  Geordi leaves the console, and NPC steps in with orders from Geordi to use "conservative" adjustments (from like an order list of 5, that can always be overridden by the captain, in fact the captain is the only one that can override orders of ANY NPC that someone else has set, the rest if by rank structure and discipline). Geordi makes his way to the panel he needs to repair, if not stopping by a replicator for some tools/spare parts. During this time, panels are exploding, NPC's are trying to repair systems (BASIC Competency + basic crew level")<-- see the possible need for more engineers here? They make it get done faster)

Warf on the other hand is playing a mini game, trying to target the system the captain just asked him to shoot (Captain knows more info on mission than anyone, his choice to inform others or not) But hes having to compensate for the loss of that phaser relay thing (widget). The science officer is analyzing the foe, or perhaps trying to crack the shield code..... but he got hit in the head, and the console is getting fuzzy (more medical needed)....

Anyway, i could keep going with all the possible combinations, and perhaps diffrent scenarios... But the point is, none gets individually rewarded, its all bout total mission score... Each mission starts and stops at a space station... Awards and the like are then passed out , ranks, medals, commissions ETC...

Same can be applied to the other side as well, Creating at least two factions, each with a player created ranking structure (yes, player government, there is your "By committee"). No one plays a non-"hero" role, thats all NPC's.

This could all be expanded a lot if i had more time. Also, before it some up, IF for some reason, you have no friends...or, no time. Every single thing above is done by NPC's, so its also completely solo able... But it will be better, and result in better mission scores (maybe even secondary objectives) with a player crew.

Diffrent missions have diffrent goals... and possible solution, and definitely diffrent completing scores. Everyone also has a permanent record (automated BIO =)

/Of-the-top-of-head-ramblings

The worst possible thing that could happen to the ST/IP is Ding/gratz/loot....

I know what a MOO is, I just didn't understand your comment.  I do now, though.  I was reading it funny.  Sorry.

That sounds like Puzzle Pirates on steroids but with 3d graphics, a multi million dollar budget, and a whole lot of unfun.  This game would fail as a DIKU standard.  But your game doesn't seem fun in my opinion.  How are you coordinating all of that?  What are these mini games they are playing?  Are they fun enough for 1-2 hour play sessions 2-4 times a week for months on end to justify a subscription?

Its was a picture painted with words. I'm not going to do an entire design doc on it. I do have alot of other ideas, and possible "Fill in the gaps", but yeah... I don't see it as DIKU at all.

More like a virtual world, with guided experiences and sandboxy player government.

Yeah. The fact that none of the on-foot stuff was shown for more than 2 seconds and what was shown looked amazingly underwhelming made me think we're headed towards some serious fail. The ships looked pretty but the ship combat... I get no idea what the combat actually plays out like. Is it Earth & Beyond? Eve? Bad bad trailer.

Who were those mini death star looking ships in the trailer?

A Borg sphere-ship like the one in First Contact. They had them in Voyager too.

I'd play the shit out of something that wasa bit like Puzzle Pirates but didn't punish me for having to go to bed (some of those ship jobs would go on for hours and you were boned if you had to leave early) and had consistently fun minigames (god I got tired of sailing).

Man, that was my problem with Puzzle Pirates too. Especially when you'd get on a brig and it's been three hours and OH GOD WHY WON'T YOU PORT AUGH.

However, I played it again recently and it seems like no matter when you leave, you will get your share of the booty, so it's not nearly as bad now. It is still a bummer when you wind up doing the same job for an hour though (carpentry was what I would get stuck on, waaah).

New faq. (http://www.startrekonline.com/faq) I've tried to pull out the interesting bits.


The problem with team-based ships is that PUGs could become exercises in frustration as your Weapons Officer refuses to raise the shields or your Security Officer goes afk just before the ship gets boarded. Puzzle Pirates kind of solved this issue by having a lot of positions available for players of all levels. Star Trek generally doesn't have 8 Chief Security Officers, 5 Head Doctors, 8 Chief Engineers and then any more than 2 people standing around being useless (the Wesley and Troi positions), nor does it have its specialised officers generally flipping into other roles at the drop of a hat.

sigh well can i at least...'walk around in the entreprise'?

Ambulation is coming soo... wait, wrong game.

Geek-out moment... when did Beverly Crusher become a Captain?   Also, I thought Worf was still security, just called a Captain because he was in command of a ship...

In the last episode of TNG (All Good Things) when Picard jumped to the future we found that Beverly had become a Captain and was commanding a specialized medical vessel.

Yep yep.

OOh right.  I remember that now that you mention it. I've only ever seen that episode twice (first airing and about 5 years ago) so I'd forgotten. Thx.

Crap, ok now I'm excited.  :Love_Letters:

Why do I do this to myself?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/8/13/

How do I unlock the Borg class?


Where does the [giant blue hand] drop?   :drill:

(http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/thumb/5/56/EnterpriseApolloHand.jpg/400px-EnterpriseApolloHand.jpg)

Is this different than your healer going for a smoke and not telling anyone?  Or your Mage refusing not to draw aggro?  Just saw the trailer and was very impressed.  I like the idea of each person having their own ship but I hope they don't speed up the battle.  I would like Wrath of Khan type fighting but I think I will not get my way.

You must have been watching a different Star Trek.

This sounds exactly like the Star Trek I watched. Only half the 8 security officers would be infected by an alien disease/entity/android/god in any given week and actively working against you.

I think we all like the concept of a ship with multiple playable ports. But even in SWG:JTL, you basically had your pilot, various gunners, and then occasionally someone manning gear. Like the whole of Puzzle Pirates, not being part of the pew pew action turns off players much faster than being part of even a semi-crappy combat system. Minigames always sound better on paper until you realize the difference between someone who lives to play a casual online game in spurts and someone who plays an MMO for hours on end. Even if the aggregate investment is comparable, the momentary type of experience is different enough to have caused the very different market places that exist.

To make Engineering "fun" for an MMO player is to have the same challenge most developers gave up on long ago in making crafting fun. Some activities were destined to forever be background support roles in the big budget games, because they're fundamentally unappealing for the majority of players that have long proven a desire to be out there fighting things.


I'm sure they meant that in general internet parlance, there is nothing preventing two devices talking to a hub from talking to each other. But beyond that, the devil's in the details. I'd really love to see how a cross-device MMO could work without either requiring a keyboard for the console or voicechat for the PC user. That is the technical separation I'm more interested in.

FF XI.

Also

(http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2007/07/chatpad.jpg)

Heh, I assume you've played FFXI on a PC. I should have "a good cross-device MMO".

However, to your other point, does that chatpad actually exist? The only reason I lasted 45 minutes in FFXI was because of Logitech's own version of that (http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/238540/logitechs_netplay_controller_versus.html?cat=15) (image cropped odd, didn't want to embed).

Xbox 360 Text Messaging Kit (http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-Text-Messaging-Kit/dp/B000UN3UDQ/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1218850700&sr=1-8)

I have indeed played FF XI on the PC. If the death penalty and the grind wasn't so crushingly painful I might still be playing it today (well probably not), even with the console-style UI.

I thought it would make my life easier. It hasn't. Typing is a bitch on that thing.

How big is it? Like, is it a thumb typewriter like a Blackberry or something you'd put on your lap to hunt and peck at? They sell them at major retailers or is it online-only? I'm going to pick one up. Because.

Because the FFXI servers are both Japanese and English FFXI also has a ton of stock phrases you can bring up. Obviously that's not the same as just chatting freely but it's far and away the best implementation. It also has auto-complete so creating sentences doesn't take a lot of key presses.

Umm...it's the size of the controller. Look at the picture again.

In other words, race doesn't matter.  You just move some sliders around at character creation.


Ranks are levels! Ships are level restricted! Same shit as always!


We love Wow Skill trees


AWAY TEAM NEEDS HEALZ FOR INSTANCE!

SURE WHY NOT!! CONSOLES ARE JUST FANCY PCs! No difference at all!

Does it break Canon to have 65 warp gates, err wormholes around earth?  Maybe!

That was one of the things I did remember liking. Not only could you have menu-based chat like you see in something like Webkinz, your text would be converted to the other language, sorta text universal chat if I recall correct. A great idea I wish there was more of.

Hrm, so it is. I didn't see the slotting of the pad. At first pass it looks like a widened controller. So much for a product design background...

30+ years after Janeway shows back up from Delta Quadrant with detailed stats on Slipstream techology*? Sure, why the heck not? Starfleet would probably love to reduce the size, and therefore crew, and therefore risk on their aircraft carrier/battleships. Put the tech back on the origin and destination, and what remains is a ship that needs less of everything (within reason of course, ya still gotta plan for if the gates go down). Something's always going to go wrong with a Swiss Army knife.

* I deduct props from Cryptic for instead using the failed-tech that was Transwarp. Slipstream would have been geek cred++.

That thing in the picture above is missing about 12 Function keys, a whole numpad, ctrl, tab, tilde...  That's like not having bars for your abilities.  Ugh.

The create your own race thing is kinda interesting.  Probably going to play out something like MOO2's custom races, though.  And odds are good that race features are either going to be so meaningless as to be totally irrelevant (like in all other MMO's, with the exception of the occasional race-unique special ability) or a couple of those features are going to be so powerful EVERYONE will have them.

This could be a good game.  I don't know.  Not a good Star Trek game of course, since that's pretty much impossible for reasons already expounded upon in this thread.  But a good game?  Yeah, I dunno, maybe.  SWG might have been a good game (not a good Star Wars game, but a good game) if not for the technical issues, then the CU, NGE, etc.

'Creative' was just a little overpowered, wasn't it.  :grin:

The absolute best we can hope for is for STO to play "WoW" to EVE's "EQ" but I sincerely doubt that's going to happen, especially with the Ship combat!/Away missions! split.

Of course it is EQ in space. Cryptic have openly said they are building it off of their already working EQ-but-not-in-space game.

Cryptic's entire reason to exist is to iterate the EQ model and add more fun.

They did pretty well with CoX - which is easily has the most fun combat of any EQ genre product out there, and CO is quite evidently being built as CoX2. I'm interested to see what happens when they change the setting, but it isn't worth getting knickers in a twist about Cryptic being an outfit that simply attempts to add fun to the EQ model. That's just what they do.

STO will be CoX in space, in 2010.

The console thing is obviously a bit of a worry because of the limitations it puts on the PC version, but Cryptic have to work around that for CO anyway. /shrug

My guess is that create-your-own-monster will play out more like CoX's model.

The existing races will just have fewer customisation/colour options.

I suspect the amount of variation in stats/skills between races will be a lot less than in MOO2. I wouldn't be surprised if there are no character stats at all in the final version beyond level/rank, archetype/profession, and powers/skill-choices.

I think the Star Trek IP is fabulous for an MMO, one of the best. Just not a standard DIKU. Going on away-team missions to phaser-fight with oil slick monsters is not a good idea.

Make a game where you explore, terraform worlds, trade and negotiate while a giant war between the different factions looms. (Or is ongoing)

Instead of playing as a person you would play as an empire like in MOO2. These empires would be aligned with the different factions. Each player would have a feelt of ships, trade with friends, seek out new worlds and new civilizations, etc etc.

Basically a big MMO simulation game. You start with one planet, if you discover a new one you can terraform, colonize, etc. Other players can fight you for it or jointly settle or whatever...do battles like an RTS or some sort of Urban Dead mechanism.

Kind of like what Spore is doing where each planet has it's own population.

Think outside the Borg cube.

I seem to recall another Sci-Fi MMORPG game going the "Sim" route rather than the pure "pew pew pew" route.

The die was cast the moment PE got the license and then hired someone to go design it. It was reset when Cryptic took over. Whatever STO could be is unfortunately irrelevant to the EQ-in-space DIKU it was always going to be.

Star Trek for the Trek fans would be good as you described. Star Trek for the masses though, well, Paramount's idea of that we'll see in the next movie I suppose. I imagine there'll be a lot more action, a lot more grit, a lot less diplomacy and a lot less high-minded concepts. Trek needed to get away from that latter bit because it worked for the optimistic 80s but really felt tired and stale by the cynical 90s. And was way off in the 00s. Enterprise showed they at least got it mentally. They just couldn't deliver it.

This sounds absolutely dismal.

Doesn't the (oft-ignored) Prime Directive stop this kind of thing?

Not if you aren't Star Fleet. Anyhow, it's the future.

If you are terraforming and colonizing the planet then presumably there isn't a pre-exisiting civilization on it, which is what the Prime Directive applies to. If there is, well sucks to be them then :awesome_for_real:

This is true, but does the Captain look like they are having any fun during the proceedings?  :grin:


A bit, but in general the ability of one player to impede the rest of the group is limited in such things because the rest of the team can still act. However, if the Weapons Officer goes AWOL and combat starts, the rest of the team is screwed. It just depends on how many roles are required on the bridge, but the more Engineers you have, the less important each single Engineer is to the overall effort (as is the case for any role).

I still don't know about STO. It sounds like a lot of instancing (which I like) but how to make that meaningful to players who want the true exploration thing is a challenge. Unless STO randomly creates the universe as it goes, then remembers what it created. Which would be impressive, but I'm not sure how realistic it would be if 200 000 players all went exploring.

Provided we're all clear on this  :grin:

I've read the thread and stuff.  I'm finding it hard to imagine a game I'm less interested in playing than this one.   I wasn't the biggest fan of the show, either, though I don't think that has anything to do with it.  I liked CoH and never read comic books.

I'll believe it when I see it, but: (http://www.startrekonline.com/dev_blog/ask_cryptic_8-25-08)


Also, a video interview (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?PLAY=1267&GAME=352&VIEW=videos&bhcp=1) with Jack Emmert that 1) covers off the basic info surrounding STO and 2) is a case study for why the guy with the camera has to watch what is going on behind the person he's interviewing. The guy in the kilt becomes very hard to ignore.

Arise!

Nothing directly gameplay related, but there's been a series of short "what's been going on in the galaxy for the past 30 years" articles posted on the main site.  If you like Star Trek at all, they make for an interesting read.

http://www.startrekonline.com/fiction

Not if it's simply represented by the Nexus. DUN DUN DUN!

Prime Directive applies if it's a Non-Human (aka Alien) civ. Long lost human civs are still fair game. Where's the line between human and independently evolved near-human? who knows. Damn you Prime Directive!

NYCC sees the release of a character creation promo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw8mu7hmNQk&eurl=http://www.startrekonline.com/node/172). It's probably only exciting if you want to know all the ways in which you can customise the hairstyle and nose feature of your preferred race, but there does appear to be a lot of flexibility.

Quick question for ya all:

How many people truly give a crap about the color of their eyes and the shape of the eyebrows? I mean, outside the character creation event that is.

I have yet to play in a world where anything smaller than the costume itself is noticable in even roleplay activities. Hairstyles with multiple-colors is a valid stretch to the next level of depth, but having fluid control over the height of my cheekbones? Even with AoC at max settings, I'm never playing so zoomed in to see which scar my opponent(s) have on their face.

So is this really just a big old waste of effort?

Sample size of one:  It matters to me.

I like looking different to the characters around me.

Cheekbone sliders probably aren't important, but for STO where you might want to look more alien, it matters.

I've said this before in talking about the future of MMO design in that I believe designers will start getting away from 3D 1st-person perspectives and going back to a Diablo-style top-down view.  Reason being is also largely due to the fact that chargen is nearly useless unless you're the owner of the character.  If another player wishes to view your character they can simply click "inspect" and get a MUCH better rundown of who they're looking at, including a high-res 3d pictorial and extensive stats.  But in the gamesense I'm with Darniaq; it's useless in the gamespace.

Now, you STILL should have that customizability, but I dont agree that it should be visible (hence wasting bandwidth and pixels) on-the-fly in-game.  It's a wasted feature.

And just imagine how much quicker dev time will be if they stop catering to the 3d FPS crowd.  Shyt, there are pretty nice top-down game engines you can DL for free right now and make a decent RPG in pretty short order.  Layer some nice 3d cutscenes, charsheets, etc. and in many ways you can have a more visually appealing game than just a vanilla 3d-FP game.

Gauntlet ftw!

I hated SWG's character creation. You could change your nose and eye color and freckles... and then put a helmet on.  :oh_i_see: Characters, despite having all these feature variables, still wound up looking pretty much the same as each other. And it's development resources that could have been put towards... making bandoliers and belts actually fit on a character's body instead of floating about 4 inches around the character.  :uhrr:

More than WoW, but not more of this freckle slider bullshit plz.

P.S. Note to devs: A pet peeve of mine. Making a character bigger or smaller does not make them shorter or taller. There is a difference.

Even if you can't really notice it from an outwards view, it's nice to at least have some sort of validation internally that you look a little different than the rest. 

But if I had to chose between 30 slider points for cheekbones and more options for clothing/armor, I'd take clothing/armor every time.  That said, the number of slider points isn't really all that important, but I shapes could be expanded a bit. 

People fart around and make short, fat, balding characters to be funny, but I can't think of anyone I know that makes a fry cook to be 'serious' with it.

I should have framed it different. What I want to get at is whether this is something you'd rather have than other related things. That it matters within the context of the character customization event of course makes sense. By level 10 though, covered in gear (which most games are inclined to do), it matters much less.

I don't think you can customize WoW's characters nearly enough. Nice they added the hair option, but it might as well be UO for as far as you can adjust your look at creation. And yet, nobody seems to care.

Prior to that, CoH was the apex of customization. Yea, you could adjust the look of your EQ2 character more, but 90% of that was of the cheekbone and eye color variety. Not the overt outward appearance that people notice even when running by. And EQ2 has since added the customization where it actually matters... or, where CoH already had it.

For me, I want to look good. And I'll take advantage of the cheekbone sliders and armor dyes when they're around. But it's like weather effects and player housing to me: good to have but don't deliver at the expense of more important features.

So basically, case-by-case basis imho. CoH it was really important. I can only hope DCUO has that level of options. And now to bring it back on topic, I agree with UnSub: for a game like Trek where being an alien often meant just some nose ridges, it probably is as important.

I always try to make my characters as obese as possible. Unfortunately most MMO's wont allow me to do that. I had a very fat Herald of Xotli in Age of Conan that I was very fond of. However, they removed the option to change characters girths before launch for some reason.


(http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n85/Zzulu/Bonedaddy.jpg)
(http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n85/Zzulu/Bonedaddy2.jpg)


Don't ask me why he's wearing the belt like that. Just one of the many hundreds of bugs of beta. I never understood why they removed all the interesting character customization options for AoC though.

It's not a huge deal, but I'd rather not look like everyone else.

I'm partly drawn towards the gear aspect of doll dressup. I like my action figures to come with lots of accessories. Backpacks and guns and helmets. If I equip a pair of rangefinder goggles, I'd really like to see those goggles on my character.

And partly I want to look my role. I'd rather not be a Paladin in viking armor... I want to look like a Paladin. WoW is really bad in that case. Aside from a very few armor types, everyone winds up looking like a hobo clown. The tier armor is hit or miss. Sometimes it's really great and sometimes it's just awful.

Won't keyboard / mouse work with a 360?  If my 360 was plugged up to a TV and if my keyboard wasn't a bitch to get unplugged from my desktop, I'd plug it in one of the USB ports and see what happens.  For some reason, I think I asked that question here at F13...

I think the 360 will recognize it fine.  The game just has to be programmed to take advantage of it.  Which, should be possible, yeah?

I'd rather games canned all this eyebrow-slider shit and gave me fucking tons more clothing options. For all it's lack of at-creation customization, UO was the only game where I could recognize people without looking at their names.

The armour dyes in DAOC made it possible for some people too. Only some though.... the all-pink armsman stood out nicely in the crowd of black  :why_so_serious:

I used to make a point to dye every piece of armor a different colour in DAoC. My friends never had a hard time finding me in RvR groups.

STO + clothing options = does not compute. Apart from avoiding dying your shirts red, that is.

There are plenty of people who care.  I certainly do.  The trick is getting Blizzard to care.

Why the fuck would anyone do that? Might as well just paint a target on your chest and hold a sign saying "bit-part about to die horribly"!

Hey, that's their problem. I'm still never going to zoom in close enough to see everyone's eyebrows.

Their definition of "plenty" is at a different scale.

But it'll probably come eventually. No reason for them to NOT do clothing/appearance tab, and at the same time make Tailoring more relevant. Just not as high a priority as more loot tables.

Wat? All I remember is people in robes and bone masks. Everywhere.

The only game where I REALLY could tell who was who at a glance, was CoH. For obvious reasons. All the eye brow adjusting is 'useless' in terms of character identification for the most part.

With that said, I still want it. I've spent an embarrassingly large amount of time fooling around with character generators and model viewers for games. While no one might notice my eye color, it still matters to ME, which is all that really counts In the end.

I used to be all into character customization. Anymore, I just hit random till I hit something that looks good and then tweak it slightly. Gives me more of a "This is what this character was born with, let's see where it takes them". My own little weird personal RP thang. It also provides me with combos I might not have thought of using.

This sort of sums up a theme I think.

People will jerk around with the settings ad nauseum, when they're there. But the usefulness of such things after character creation is nil. As such, it's hard to justify time spent to develop it if that time could go elsewhere (not that it always can of course). The other angle here is emotes. There's always dozens upon dozens of facial expressions and character emotes developers put into these game. But outside of /dance and /hump, how many do people actually use? Again a development justification question.

What I'd really like to see isn't the demise of this type of development, but rather a reason for it to be there. I'd like to see NPC dialog matter. If they can't make branching story arcs with meaningful choice anymore because they're too scared of pissing players off, at least have some mood-qualifier to the NPC dialog, something where one race will give you greater quest reward if you're happy go lucky where another wants stern seriousness while a third rewards overt aggression.

That could theoretically make emotes and facial tics more relevant even between players, because they'll be accustomed to caring from their frequent NPC interaction.

Of course, nowhere near a priority  :grin:

I think a couple games have pulled character creation off so well that it actually makes the game better.  CoX is a pretty good example and people have told me that the Matrix Online was pretty good about it too, though I never tested it myself.  I can honestly say that creating a hero in City of Villians was more fun than actually playing the character for me.

One thing I have never understood is why some games pretend to offer so much customization by allowing you to change the look, and color of your newbie clothes while forcing you to get rid of them 30 minutes later when you hit lvl 3.  If games are going to let you spend time on creating looks, you should be able to keep them regardless of what magic "armor" you pick up a couple minutes later.

That's how I feel about Shadowbane.


Well I don't think they would go into that much customization in terms of rendering armor, but at the very least, allowing you to hide your helmet is good.  LotrO's concept of allowing you to wear a role-play suit over your regular armor is pretty nifty.

http://io9.com/5220291/phaser-all-the-new-friends-youll-meet-on-star-treks-mmo

dev interview and some in-game footage.

I'm I the only one who feels they are biting off more than they can chew here?

Of course they are.

It's an MMO. I thought "biting off more than you can chew" was part and parcel of building an MMO in the first place - or anything to do with Trek lore.

Also, the sun is big and hot.

And your wings are made of wax.

I'm so gonna play as Q.

If GW2 and SWTOR aren't close to release by the time this thing comes out (Jan 2010) then I may pick it up as filler game because I am sure I will be sick of Warhammer by then.

What a fun way to introduce Seers into the game. ><

Touche.  This one just really strikes me as having a reach that exceeds it's grasp, in a critical way.  I mean, both space ship combat and on planet adventures have to be functional, to say nothing of synching them together seemlessly.  I'm not going to lie, I may have missed it before when MMOs have in hindsight promised too much and delivered to little, but this game just seems beyond the pale. 

I'm gonna predict that it is going to be like PotBS and have fucking terrible avatar combat, and fun ship combat.

Ummm... it's not beyond the pale.  Really, all they have to do is port over Star Trek: Elite Force and they're done.  Maybe throw in a bit of Armada.  The only complication would've been if they'd given us all what we wanted, which was shared player-crewed ships.
The part where it becomes tricky is just how good and well-organized their programmers are.  Too often egos get in the way and they think they can just make everything from scratch.  If they were smart they'd pull as much as they can from prior titles...  get on the phone, hobnob with other programmers, etc.   These guys all know eachother, they're supposed to trade code even if it violates a few company clauses.

First public showing at PAX. It will be playable.

I'm watching a bunch of Federation Officers fighting Klingons that can take muliple phaser shots, combat that make no use of cover, and a pace that gives enough time to close to melée to do sweep kicks. This feels like some other game with a Star Trek skin.

And this is exactly why nobody has had any hope for this title. 1 shot kills at close range do not make for a good game, and with the exception of the occasional climactic ship to ship battle, or gladiator episode, Star Trek is not about combat. In brief, Star Trek is usually about exploration and discovery from a utopian perspective in a science fiction setting. That, and good story telling.

Even single player games have a problem representing these themes - has there ever been a good Star Trek video game? Ponder that one a moment.

An MMO Star Trek is doomed. Star Trek fans won't like it because of the MMO conventions the game is forced to adopt. MMO fans won't like it because of the concessions made to the IP.

ST IP mmo isn't doomed. They just refuse to do it right. This is the third time this same system has been tried.

And no one is going risk a big MMO budget on fundamentally restarting a MMO from scratch design-wise that would be required to do Star Trek.

Three times so far. Each, has failed (well, ill hold off on this one). Awesome risk management. "Lets try that again, it will work this time"

I'm thinking of a word that goes along with this theme....hmmmm.   :uhrr:

This statement tells me you havent played most of the Trek games (as we know, there ARE some good Trek games), nor do you have much experience with single-player games in the last 20 years.  There are games aplenty that represent (or have represented) the themes you're talking abouty.  Are they MMOs though?  not usually.

All you're doing is lining up more excuses for (cough) studios.  It can be done, has been done, just isnt being done right now.  Not real intelligent blaming an IP or "Gaming" for that matter.

Look, the core problem of all our MMO woes right now is that there really is only a small group of Developers with the money to produce a game.  And these developers generally suck ass; as has been discussed many times over.  I kind of look at it like the music industry in the 90's.  There really were only a few "bigwigs" with enough money/power to push out artists effectively... but it had to be done their way with only their bottom line being a topic of discussion - therefore, pop music in general got seriously watered down (as a function of Risk).  The same thing has been happening with gaming the past 10 years post-EQ/halo.

The only way Trek was going to get done right is with a singular private entity with a lot of disposable income wanting to make a game.  It had to be independent and lightweight with lots of vision and knowledge of what worked well in the past.  Since Paramount is a greedy Hollywood coorporation (very greedy mind you; always have been), there was no way they were going to hand the IP to a small house.  So in that way the Trek game was doomed from the get-go.

Basically what the game needed was a gaming version of Roddenberry.

Ghambit, I think we're arguing the same side of the issue. Unless YOU'S TROLLIN', in which case, proceed.

Nobody is going to take a major IP and the right to make an MMO and take a risk with it. (At least not anybody who gets the right to take a major IP and make it into an MMO.) And if it's still not implicit, I'm not making excuses for the industry - I'm blaming the industry for the inevitable failure of this game.

I'm curious though, what do you consider a good Star Trek game?

Nah, I'm not trollin - just want to get the facts straight and our heads in the right places.  Let's leave our flaming bags of poo at Cryptic's (and Perpetual's) doorstep, not the Trek IP.

Bioware.  Although it's not much of a risk given their pedigree, they're at their core a pretty risk-taking studio and were pretty small and avant-garde at inception, until getting eaten by Bono and EA.  In this way, really the risk was only lessened by ownership.  Yah, there are many that think SWTOR will crash and burn like Porkins in his x-wing but hey - they tried.


As I've said.   Both Eilte Forces (especially part 2) were very well received games.  People actually still play EF2 today either in a quakelike sense or as a Starship simulator.  And all these people (including myself) wonder why the tenets of that game werent ever ported into an MMO.

Starfleet Command (basically Starfleet Battles online) was also good.  Bridge Commander was pretty good also; picture Sub Command in space (with voice commands if you're slick).   If you wanna get your 4x strat. game on, go play Birth of the Federation... which is actually a pretty good game, albeit pretty simple.
Into RTS? try Armada 1 & 2; but these are basically your standard C&C in space with Trek Skins (both are heavily moddable also.)    I'd say Legacy was decent but its release was a nightmare and only after being heavily modded is it of any value.

My cocktail napkin designs basically incorporated the best of the above Trek titles into an MMO.  What's funny is that these games are like what... 6+ years old?  And scattered through the past 10 years are variations on a theme that were utter shite - largely a function of the openness of the Trek IP (where anybody could've made a Trek game).

So, like I've been saying.  The "failures" of Trek gaming are really no fault of the IP itself.  It's the fault of having such open IP-permissions (way more open than Star Wars) and the fault of misguided development coupled with lack of fundage.  Sure, there is no one game that can capture Trek in its entirety... but shit, there's no one TV SHOW (or movie) that can do it either.  You have to pick your poison and do it well, not just create watered-down generic everyman garbage.  Trek and "generic" dont play well together.

(dons asbestos suit and hunkers down)
(http://www.pramukhtrading.in/small-images/700489.jpg)

Bioware was smart and made their own Trek-like IP that was suited for games. No licensed crap for them.

Bolded the key point. You can't make a Star Trek game that will make everyone happy. The key strengths of the IP are also the source of its key weaknesses.

They just started taking beta apps, if people are interested.

You cant make any game (IP or not) that'll make everyone happy.  Has nothing inherently to do with some arbitrary show, book, or movie that it's based on.  Therefore, logic dictates "key strengths" of said IP cannot in this Universe also be a key weakness.  The weakness lies in improper design/implementation of said strengths.  Aside from all of this, I'd be happy just to have a quality game simply based in a Trek 'verse.  It doesnt have to have all the bells, and whistles and can even diverge from Canon similar to the latest film.  It's more important that it's just a good game.  Cryptic so far seems to be doing both in the comfort of mediocrity, yielding nothing.

And imo the whole "Trek IP are doomed" has become a canned response.  Reminds me of when everyone said everything George Lucas touches turns to gold.  Lesson is even good IPs can be turned to shit and bad ones turned to roses.  Take the Intellect out of the IP and the IP fails regardless.

Stuff's starting to come in from PAX:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6A089C01D0A32C19

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiABzxLfLvM

Well, this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCE8q6StGdQ from the playlist gives a very different impression of the space combat than the laserium pew pew in the Gamescom presentation (http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/26006).

I do like that they have the whole front and rear shields thing.

Haven't they for a while now? I thought I had already signed up...

Fake edit: Nope, guess I had just made an account on the site. Thanks.

So once more we see shades of PotBS rather than the pew pew from marketing spin. This is more "realistic", and more in line with the IP. No good close-up footage on the ground game yet, but it looks like what we've seen. So, meh.

I was interested in why they had a Miranda class ship still in commission after 150 years, but that's a minor quibble. And I take geekpride in the fact that this occurred to me before seeing the comments :grin:

So. Anyone trying for the beta?

If we're talking Trek gaming in general, I'd just like to say that I will totally fight anyone who says Birth of the Federation wasn't a good game. I loved playing as the Cardassians, forming an alliance with the Federation, being their best pals throughout the entire game, then Pearl Harboring the fucking shit out of the Sol system and rolling them up practically before they could finish going "WHAT THE FUUUUU--"

Signed up, but no invite yet, if that is what you are asking.

As far as I know, the beta hasn't started yet, so I don't think they've sent any invites out.  I could be wrong, of course.   Anyway, I am (very) cautiously optimistic about this game cause a lot of what I've heard sounds pretty cool.  Of course, whether or not it actually translates into gameplay is another thing entirely

I'm the opposite. This is an IP that calls for inventive development and some clear design choices very early on. This developer isn't capable of either.

Well, there are some neat things like, being able to find new star systems, skill based advancement system, Bridge Officer NPCs that you gain on your ship as you advance in rank, etc that are actually fairly decent looking.   I'm willing to give it a chance.  What I am majorly worried about, however, is the "ground" game.  The Champions engine works fine for champions, but I don't know feel like it would give the feeling I'd want for Star Trek...so they need to do something with it.

The thing that gets me thinking that STO is going to run into huge issues was the discussion about content generation and Cryptic's preference for doing hand-crafted locations, but also theoretically letting player exploration be 'meaningful' so that you can be the first to discover a location that is then 'unlocked' for the rest of the player base.

It can't happen. It just can't. I absolutely get that there needs to be hand-crafted content, but the bulk of STO needs to be procedurally generated - both the missions and the universe. For missions, you can easily start with "There is a distress signal" and then throw a flowing set of related missions that can suit the various ST situations, with a mix of space battles, away team battles and diplomacy (again, something else that hasn't been discussed / seen in STO yet).

For the universe, take the Star Control route of basing the layout on the galaxy on the very simple astrophysics principles that define the rl universe, with your hand crafted bits distributed as you want. That at least gives you the shape of the galaxy, which you can limit (should you need to) with some Q webbing to stop players going beyond a certain (particularly long, to maintain the illusion) distance.

Instead, what I think we'll see will be quite a bit of instancing, with warp drive serving as a convenient jumping mechanism to hide those mechanics. Actual exploration will be in the eyes of the character, not the player.

Making procedurally generated content that is balanced, challenging and meaningful is hard. And Cryptic don't seem to have any talents in designing novel game mechanics that actually work.

Expecting more than groups porting into instances and killing klingons while grinding towards the 5000 kills needed for their "Klingon killer" perk is probably over-optimistic.

(http://991.com/newGallery/Metallica-Sad-But-True-464063.jpg)

Back when I still expected MMO designers to move steadily towards innovation, I remember on the SWG beta boards talking about how you could implement a "Jedi system" that could try to connect Jedi unlocks with the actual behavior of players in game. I pointed out that you could create a pretty complete tracking system that would watch for players who gave away most of their money or kept very little money, who played a support role in groups, whatever you decided was "Jedi-like" behavior within the terms of the game system. Then you could build a weighting algorithm that would build variable tipping points for players according to a random seed and spawn some "pre-Jedi" quests or missions that had some kind of ethical branching point built into them. Obviously over time players would dope out how to beat this system and you'd either have to adjust it or settle for a lot of people being Jedi. I didn't seriously expect them to do anything this intricate, but then, I didn't expect them to do anything as horrifically dumb as what they ended up doing as far as Jedi go.

But this game. Among the many things that are going to fail about it is if they don't do something to build in the Federation's ethical strictures into the gameplay. That practically defines the Federation and the IP: a huge majority of its narratives are about coping with/living up to/subtly evading the ethical restrictions that Starfleet and the Federation impose on their crews. I can see a lot of ways to do this. I can't see Cryptic even understanding the idea of doing this, let alone pulling it off.

for the record, I remember those threads.  They led to some interesting theories and attempts to unlock Jedi in the game (e.g. by tipping creds, training other players).  Sadly, Jedi content wasn't even in the game at that point.  But yeah, mystery unlocking I think is pretty cool, if it's designed well and not just for powergamers/racers.

No need to worry about people violating Starfleet's rules, just don't give the players the ability to break them  :awesome_for_real:

Seriously though, thats my prediction of how they'll deal with it.

Single biggest beef I've had with most Sci Fi, not just Trek -- unless they've got their ships/fire/defenses covering every piece of a sphere, you can get through them. That, or go around them. Never understood why ships didn't just come at the Enterprise's "underside", since none of its weapons arrays seemed to be able to fire in that direction.

Yeah, Space is big.... you would think that people would have a pretty hard time finding each other, and having a REALLY easy time not being found if they weren't near a planet.  I can imagine controlling some critical areas around a planet that give you long/good lines of sight or something that let you control a lot of the planet, but of course its all part of a STORY.  A bunch of fleets of warships that just ignore each other makes for crappy TV/Movies/Video games.

I think you have to accept that Star Trek pew pew, to make any sense at all, involves the voluntary engagement of two groups of opposing vessels unless it involves defense/assault of a planet or fixed asset like a space station. E.g., you've agreed to have a fight, so fight. Now, on the other hand, that's pretty much counter to the vast majority of real military conflicts--the number of conflicts that involve two approximately equal forces agreeing to meet on a more or less neutral battlefield where neither has an advantage in terrain, supply or anything else is vanishingly small.

At least Star Wars' imaginary pew pew technobabble involves some sort of hyperspace or warp interdiction (in the EU at least).

Judging from the prequels, Jedi-like behaviour is acting like a smug prick to everyone who isn't a Jedi and generally emo-ing up the place. So SWG may have been successful in that regard.

And the pew pew battles in the SW movies all involved the defense/assault of a planet or fixed asset like a space station anyway.  :awesome_for_real:

Yeah, for sure. The prequels make the Jedi look like serious assholes. In some alternate universe, Lucas would have actually meant to do that, so as to show that their fall was at least partly their own fault. In this universe, I don't think Lucas has a clue that's how it ended up coming off. But the Jedi of the prequels could be really well represented in MMO terms--they're basically poopsock raider hardcores. "lolz jango fett u n00b..."

It's something probably more attributable to EU authors and a bit of retconning, but the Jedi causing their own downfall pretty much is the official canon.  If you piece the whole thing together, which is something only a massive dork like me can probably do, the Jedi fear of attachment and their general arrogance is what led to their demise.

/end derail

I'll quote this into the existing Star Wars thread (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=17228.210) to avoid furthering a derail, but come on, it didn't require much piecing together as long as you watched the movies with the sound on.

Star Trek Online to still launch in early 2010 (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/star-trek-online-interview_9?page=4) - Atari would like it before March 31 2010, please (http://www.joystiq.com/2009/05/29/atari-believes-star-trek-online-will-boldly-get-going-by-march-2/).

Even if closed beta launched tomorrow - and it would appear that STO is in alpha now - that still only gives 6 months of testing until launch.

Looks like they are also going with a procedural content system called the Genesis System, of which little is known but it could almost be procedurally generated based on player parameters. (http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?s=843ec6a1c0139e441edfd92744be0a00&p=795314&postcount=6)

This could end up being a teleporter accident of a MMO.

Six months is serious lol lol territory. Explains why Champions' patching is apparently being done by the folks who come in every night to clean up the wastepaper baskets, though: they must be pulling all hands on deck to try and at least approximate the deadline.

Sounds like SOMEONE's never read the mythical man month.

Nobody ever learns. I mean I can sorta understand something like NC pushing Tabula Rasa out the door because, fuck, it needed to come out eventually and Garriot had been flushing money down the toilet for eons. But this? March? Why not tack another six months on there and have it out for Q4 2010 in much more playable shape?

This was a game where a lot of the work had already been done by Perpetual and most of the tools are already in place (engine, etc).  It's not like they're devving totally from scratch.  Also, as we've seen, it's a pretty vanilla game design... nothing overtly complex and in this day and age I'd like to think they could chunk out a quality game in much less time than games 3 years ago.  That being said, the testing of said game is another matter and one that Cryptic doesnt seem too adept at doing.

Nah, they know they can't beat Blizzard so they're going the old school SOE route.  Ship it, make the idiot fanboys pay for the patches and build it up from there.  Hell, even SWG is still going with 7 servers, years after the "cataclysmic" changes that drove most of the player base away.   Mr. Barnum was entirely correct.

Err, you sure that anything PE did applies to the game Cryptic is shipping? Yes on the vanilla/non-innovative-low-risk decisions they've made. But from what I recall, about the only thing that could be inherited was the forum community. And that only because they'd freely register for any new forum that was linked to an eventual (read: maybe) game.

SWG has 13 active servers and the closure of the other 12 happens on Oct 15th.

13 from 25?  Crap there were moer than I thought.  Which sort of underscores that people will pay for "shit" with a license.

Although Cryptic bought the rights to STO off PE, it is open to debate exactly how much of the mechanics they retained and how many they added / changed. Away team combat wasn't in the PE version iirc.

They are also building it on an existing engine, which helps cut down on development time. What they can't cut down on is art and design time.

And testing. ChampO was in at least 10 months of player testing, through alpha / closed beta / open beta / launch. On one hand, they started testing too early, with only two zones and powers without full powers + stats + items implemented, but those early zones provided a lot of critical design feedback that was implemented into and improved later zones. On the other hand, the scheduling of testing - 2 - 3 days a week - might have helped them with load testing but is directly responsible for things like the launch day patch and the economy patch post-launch.

If STO starts its closed beta with 90% of all systems and content implemented and expanded testing times (they can always pull servers down for a week for a special load testing session if they need it) then maybe six months is enough. But I don't think that will be the case. I can already see at least one delay to mid-2010 or potentially one of the most reviled launches in MMO history.

The only reason I can see around the lack of testing is money. Public testing costs a lot and perhaps the idea of a 'paid beta' for the first six months of launch is perceived as an acceptable trade-off. Personally I'd disagree, but then I also don't have an entire company to run and people to keep employed.

Yup. Read the Champions online forums for a parade of the customers they're fishing for.

"Have you ever tried making an MMO? No? Then shut the fuck up, because it's completely normal to break the game with a patch. WoW had some bugs when it launched. This game is so innovative it doesn't need content." etc. If you run a tight enough ship on the cost side, I expect you can make it back on boxes plus a couple months of subscriptions, anything past that point is gravy. The break-even probably involves either spending too much pre-box ship or not quite getting enough people after launch to make it worth much after that. The only time you're really fucked is when you spend a lot of money because you honestly think you're competing with WoW, in all likelihood.

Not to forget the beta will be filled with armies of "This is beta, it's supposed to be not working. And out of content. And suck. But there's the miracle patch somewhere that will save us all. And I know that because I have huge and self-taught experience in software engineering and can spell out the word 'beta' so shut up." 'beta testers'. Other than that, spot-on synopsis, you really managed to sum up most MMO forums with those few sentences - and it really isn't Cryptic/CO forum specific. It's the same with AION, Warhammer and whatever else.

But isn't that today's average MMO customer?  Drones sucking up to some weird ideal of conformity and anticipatory obedience. Those are the guys that will give ST:O feedback. The "original series" ST fan crowd is in their sixties, the Next Generation or DS9 viewer is somewhere in his mid-thirties or -forties, most likely already having played an MMO or two, since we're talking SF interested people here with an above average affinity for computers. They're not target audience for ST:O.

Honestly, it depends on when the release is.  When I was in Fallen Earth Alpha, and early Beta, the game was nigh unplayable for me at points, but at that point it really WAS early.  The problem is, at some point that progress really does need to be made, and you often here the same thing by the time OPEN beta comes around.

I read this as crew = some form of power/health bar. Officers = sloted skills.

From what I've seen, this is a pretty accurate summary of this game.  There is a lot of smoke and mirrors to make normal run of the mill MMO mechanics seem more 'Star Treky" so some of the stuff looks innovative at first glance, but the more I see of the game, the more it makes me think they are going way out of their way just to hide the fact that they are actually doing nothing original.

Er, wrong game?

Find/replace function fail.  :awesome_for_real:

That just seems like plain acknowledgment Star Trek technology is advanced enough to be indistinguishable :why_so_serious:

http://www.startrekonline.com/node/458

As opposed to Far Beta?

As in "close to launch, god or anyone help us" beta.

 :ye_gods: You might be right!

Seriously though, there is talk about this game coming out in february, and I haven't seen shit that looks like a game yet besides some spaceships flying around shooting each other.

Ah, but what does God need with a starship?

He's getting up there in years and it's hard for him to get around now. It would be like one of those scootie chairs for senior citizens.

For Cryptic, that may be all they need.

Good to see they are solidifying their company tradition of half-assed beta's. I wonder if this game will also be offering free weekends for cancelled accounts a month after release.

Amusing nerd rage on the champions forums though where those who bought life time subscriptions on the promise of priority access to the STO closed beta are wondering how it started without them. With some nice fanning the flames from the STO developer.

[23:35] <~bizarro_rekhan> Daeke, at one point, said folks who bought the CO lifetime and six-month subs would get into closed beta first.
[23:35] <~bizarro_rekhan> This was before anyone actually made any decisions in that regard.
[23:35] <~bizarro_rekhan> He actually made this post on the Champs boards, but it got quoted on the STO boards.

Bwahahahaha.  This is going to be more delicious than Champions.

I'm beginning to think the word schadenfreude was invented specifically for you.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but still...

Man, this is starting to bum me out.  I was genuinely excited for this game for no other reason than I was thoroughly enjoying the "Path to 2409" updates.  They managed to create some very interesting lore development, enough that I was completely uninterested in actual game play information.  The more I hear about the game itself, the worse I feel.

This pretty much sums up how I feel about this game.

Heh.  It's very specific.  Watching people that should know better have their dreams crushed when things turn out pretty much as they were warned does give me a giggle.  At least when it comes to trivial things such as entertainment.  (And yes, I have laughed at my own stupidity when I fell prey to it.)

So uhh, since this game is destined for suckage... let's all get together and make our our Trek MUSH!  Who's with me!?   :why_so_serious:

 :cry:

a short hands-on (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/26/hands-on-star-trek-online/) at Rock Paper Shotgun. Doesn't say much but doesn't seem negative.

Star Trek Online is due for release in February 2010, reports Eurogamer, saying the Trekkie MMORPG is due in North America on February 2 and in Europe on February 5. They say they've confirmed these dates with Cryptic and Atari after they appeared in GameStop and Amazon listings.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/star-trek-online-out-in-february (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/star-trek-online-out-in-february)

So 3.5 months from CB(Oct 22) to Live(Feb 2)....

Maybe they've trimmed the game down to three zones: Quarterdeck, Medical, and Engine Room

I'm a huge Star Trek geek but after CO I have no desire to play this.

Didn't you hear, on-ship zones won't be included at all in release.  No, seriously.

Then again, we saw what kind content CO was released with, so I don't expect a ton in this either.

Without a mass beta prior to release, I doubt I'll even think about playing this game until its been out for release at least 3 months and I can read the player feedback. 

There will be a jungle planet, a city planet, a desert planet and a winter planet. And an ocean planet. I bet.

Player feedback  :why_so_serious:

That's a great one!

Watching people play this game at PAX pretty much guaranteed that I was going no where near this. The space combat was pretty, and kinda swoopy, uh yea.

The planet combat....  :uhrr:

Picture a Klingon and a Human standing three feet apart. The Human is in a rigid upright stance, shooting his phaser at the Klingon's chest (pew, pew, pew). The Klingon (three feet away) is making repeated big over hand chops with his Batlethfhft on to the Human's head (Hasan Chop!). Watch exitedly as we wait to see which combatant's personal forcefield fails first!

Fuck's sake. February? Really? I had no hope for this project before I heard that. Based on how shitty the CO beta was run, this means realistically the beta will have about 2.5 months because the gold will be about 2 weeks before that and I'm sure there'll be a 1-2 week pre-order head start window. If they run this beta on a limited schedule like they did CO - this game is so fucked.

Best. Present. Ever.

It turns out I was wrong about there being nothing in the pipeline after this: Cryptic may be doing the Neverwinter Nights MMO. So I think that pretty much confirms it: the Cryptic/Atari model is to shovel out a barely-working, content-light MMO off a licensed property made under tight production constraints. The plan: make its money back on box sales + two months subs, and then use microtransactions to try and fuel a few more months of profitable operations. Anything after that is gravy, in the meantime, it's on to the next subpar product.

So the next step in MMOland is to somehow come up  with a pyramid system of getting rich quick and getting out fast.

So anyone want to pony up some cash to by some popular IP make a shit game and profit?

I'm thinking we go after GIJoe MMOG.  Lets see if we can buy Planetside and reskin in. 

This idea is actually very good.

Which is exactly why it will never happen. 

Seriously... Battletech/Mechwarrior MMO.  That's money in the bank!

Made, cancelled close to release.  Still my favorite 'mech game to date. :cry:

At least Atari is getting back to its roots.

Confirmed (finally)... http://www.startrekonline.com/node/490

Feb 2 US and 5 EU. I'd like to optimistic about this, I really would. However...

:rimshot:

It's... ambitious timing.

Looks like total ass, and the whole "standing three feet from each other trading laser phaser blasts is beyond even SWG level stupid.

Also, what comes out on Feb 2nd/5th that would give the Star Trek wankers a run for the money?

That I don't know...but, it probably won't matter.  I expect the typical rush followed by mass exodus.

It's launching the week in between Mass Effect 2 (Jan 26) and Bioshock 2 (Feb 9) according to GameSpot (http://www.gamespot.com/newthisweek.html?date=20100131&type=new_this_week&mode=top&sort=views&dlx_type=all&sortdir=desc&official=all).

Welp, the lulz have started on the forums. 

With suitable goading this could provide entertainment for weeks - I may even subscribe.   :awesome_for_real:

For all my bitching, I might give it a shot for real.   I don't expect to stay very long, but to be honest, these episodic missions could provide me with a month worth of fun.  I guess it depends what I'm doing at the time though, if I'm perfectly happy with my gaming situation, I doubt I will add this.  Partly it depends on how the game plays.  One of the saving graces of Champions is that it plays quite well.  If they can make that happen again, then it might be legitimately worth checking out.   I guess thats the problem though, its just another one of those MMOs that you don't intend to stick around with for very long.  It used to be pick an MMO and stay with it for years, now they just whore themselves out, you use them for a month or two, then toss them back on the street. :|

Any futuristic MMO is doomed to these logic failures without addition of mech armor or powered armor.  You just can't have guns, lasers, light sabres in a game without also having the ability to 1-shot anything.  It's silly.  Even playing a fantasy MMO where it takes 1000 whacks of my sword to kill a pig makes me cringe.  Somehow, the idea that I'm using a pointy object makes it more palatable.

I imagine a part of finding it less offensive with swords is that martial combat in movies is usually depicted as these ten-minute long duels.

Mainly though it's the silliness of taking D&D's "hit points" as the literal ability to get hit by a ballista bolt and keep going.  That said, if people didn't find that enjoyable we wouldn't see the prevalence of "shields" in sci-fi games and we'd all be playing Bushido Blade 9.

Yeah. I think if you're relatively new to using a sword, it just might actually take ten whacks to kill an animal, etc.

There are other dodges in futuristic games besides armor or forcefields: healing nanobots or some such, for example. But I agree that there's just something kind of dumb about hitting something with a phaser to no visible effect unless it's some kind of exotic superbeing. I'd rather they visualize an encounter like that in a game as "dodge dodge dodge dodge HIT it's dead/stunned" than "hit hit hit hit hit it's dead/stunned".

didn't we have this exact discussion in the TOR thread?

We probably did.

February 2?  ANd its not even closed beta yet?  You have to  be fucking kidding me.  I'm subscribing just for the laughs.

Don't all signs (like development time, state of what we've already seen, etc) point to like an MMO 18 months away from release?

it is in closed beta, it has been for a whole 3 weeks!  :awesome_for_real: :uhrr: :ye_gods:

So if they follow the CO beta schedule, that means they've had 6 whole hours of testing time!  :why_so_serious:

wasn't it 2 sessions of 2 hours per week?  Maybe I'm remembering wrong.  Either way -  :ye_gods:  Worst beta I've been in in that respect.

According to STOked... you're right.

 :roflcopter:

12 whole hours? THEY'LL MAKE THAT DEADLINE FOR SURE!

They should at least have ME-type cover, seeing those toons standing 3' away from each other firing annoys me.

I haven't read the forums in awhile.  Apparently, the Klingons are not available at character creation- you unlock them "a short time after the tutorial."   :awesome_for_real:


I guess that will give them the time in the morning they budgeted to create the Klingons and reskin fed ships.  If they type REALLY fast, they can create Klingon missions minutes before an unlocked Klingon player would reach them!

Actually, the reason you can't see the Klingon ship internals and corridors, or even read the missions, is that they are cloaked.  :drill:

The logic in that is so there is only one tutorial. Once you finish the tut you can create a Klingon character.

I have to wonder what kind of disconnect or pathology results in game companies and their controlling interest/financiers making such terrible timeframes for the production of games. It's not like there's eight billion skillion examples about what happens when you do this. The entire industry is littered visibly with the dessicated corpses of scores of cautionary tales.

Oh that one is easy.  It's because studio mouthpieces like Mark Jacobs and Brad McQuaid keep telling the gullible money people that "their" successes show they know how to beat the odds and deliver a winner on a ridiculously short timeframe with a shoestring budget when the reality is they have no clue why the games they were originally involved in succeeded (in spite of their involvement), and the people they hire as project managers are either in way over their head or just plain ass-kissing incompetents who couldn't manage a project to boil an egg much less an extremely challenging software project on a ridiculously fast-tracked development schedule.

So the project ends up over budget and in a total mess design-wise, the code is crunched meaning it's buggy as hell and completey un-maintainable, much less extensible, the money guys lose patience as the truth of the situation slowly sinks in past the sunshine-and-roses bullshit the project and studio management has been blowing them, and the line gets drawn, the deathmarch to live grinds away, good developers get ground up and spit out, the project ships and flops, management gets rewarded for shipping on time, the surviving devs get promoted/transferred or cash out, new hire entry-level folk get put in charge of live, and the gaming public gets stuck with another turd.

If you look at how Atari (as it is now) refers to Cryptic, you'll see multiple mentions of the Cryptic Engine and how it makes MMO development quicker. It does, but it also does not - it provides the underlying structure up front, but things like art and content development still take time.

I wonder also if it is linked to Cryptic's performance bonuses that were set at the time they were bought by Atari.

I'd be shocked if it wasn't involved in this decision.

They're launching a Sci Fi MMO the week after Mass Effect 2 hits?  Are they specifically trying to not make money?  :awesome_for_real:

i don't really see how they are in competition with each other.

This is perfect if you want to hide your flop from investors by giving yourself several excuses for why the sales numbers are so bad.

Bridges back in for launch (http://startrekonline.com/node/499). And apparently it was press release worthy (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h65h8ZE89edX2nR7xbu8oIEcyKewD9BUN3HO0) or something.

They really needed to do something like this.  I mean, it probably isn't a big deal for the "average" player, but I think the ST fans were up in arms about this, and lets face it.  ST fans are going to make or break the game.  If they do a good enough job with the game to keep Trek fans around, then they'll probably have a big enough playerbase to at least stay afloat, but if they drive away the Trek fans by making the game not trek-y enough, I don't think they'll have any core player base.

STO housing.

I can't wait for hearing people bitching about grinding for just the right throw for the tactical station.

I'm just glad I wasn't part of it this time.

Screenshot like the last friday's (Friday Screenshot http://www.startrekonline.com/node/502 (http://www.startrekonline.com/node/502)) pic really aren't selling the game to me. Especially the two different coloured beams really irk me for some reason.

Was this posted yet? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD_DOAWfzrk)

Or getting the seats reupholstered in fine corinthian leather.

I'll freely admit that the idea of hanging out on my bridge and filing a captains log SOUNDS cool, but in reality, I have seen nothing to indicate this isn't going to be a simply quest grinder MMO.  Exploring the cosmos and surviving out in the reaches of space is a really cool idea that seems like it would suit a star trek MMO, but in reality, I don't think that is the experience they are going for.

(reponse to the video)

That was the gayest looking "Engage" I've ever seen in that video. Like a pirate captain pointing to the horizon.

Klingons and Federation at war just for the sake of two factions is the most retarded shit ever. It would have been infinitely more entertaining to actually watch that happen in a television series with excellent scripting to set the new status quo rather than being some footnote in a third-rate MMO.

Hope for a brighter future, this new Star Trek status quo is not.

Yeah, suddenly having the Klingons at war with the Federation is quite a change from the last time we saw the Star Trek universe. I'd have thought they'd have had an easier time going with the Romulans as the enemy now lacking a homeworld and launching raids on other factions for profit and revenge type crap. That way they could have set up the Klingons as a third faction for an expansion (if they wanted to go that way) and do it through in game events and story rather than just going, "Hey the Klingons don't like the Federation any more. Worf is torn."

If ever there was a time for a procedural-content design, an exploration-themed ST would be it. Imagine if you had six servers or shards, and on each of them, the galaxy beyond Federation/Klingon space was generated procedurally as players explored outward--so you had six variant Milky Way galaxies developing over time. Lots of potential, good IP for something different.

No kidding, The idea of being a federation starship out exploring is an awesome premise for a game.  The idea of being a federation starship doing "quests" makes me throw up a little.

Where was this thinking a year ago!!?!!?

 :awesome_for_real:

Well, that's just how it is in the movie reboot, right? I assume that's not what was licensed for this game.

I maintain my stance that this is an IP where you aren't trying to make the most amount of people happy; you are trying to minimise the number of people nerdraging against you.

Either way, time left until release is working against Cryptic. It'll probably sell 800k boxes easily, but player retention is going to be interesting.

The little video someone linked mentioned the movie reboot.  Time-wise it's after Nemesis, but the destruction of Romulus has happened, too.  No idea how they'll run with that.

Agree on this one.  I know some people who are nerdraging hard already.

The new website is up, and they released a new video which shows more about combat, and ship and bridge officer customization.  Mixed bag.

www.startrekonline.com/videos

I'll go out on a limb and predict STO sets a new western MMO record for box sales at release, with well over a million people trying it out.  Provided, of course, that they don't totally shoot themselves in the foot with a botched beta.  Combine the 800k+ existing hardcore MMO players still looking for their next fix with all the Trekkies who might have just dabbled in MMOs up till now, and I think release day will be very crowded. 

Again though, that is dependent on there not being a groundswell of bad word-of-mouth prior to release.  Which leaves Cryptic with an interesting choice.  If they *really* intend to get this one right, then they have to go with a solid beta to work out the kinks.  But if they do so, word will get out about the true state of the game, and if it is bad that will hurt box sales.  On the other hand, they could maximize initial box sales by promising lots of good trekie-attracting features and showing pretty pictures and scripted play "samples" right up to release without ever actually letting the unwashed masses in to kick the tires on an open beta of any length.  This would minimize the window through which a bad buzz could escape, while also reducing their chances of actually getting any of the load-dependent functionality right.

Given the time limit they've publicly imposed on themselves, I might hope for the best, but I fear and expect something a lot closer to the worst.

Too bad too, because a space exploration-based PvE MMO would rock my world if done even halfway right.  OK, ANY exploration-based PvE MMO would do that, but especially space.  I mean, c'mon, there's what, 500 BILLION stars just in our galaxy?  You don't even need multiple servers to fit everyone in one universe even with each player having their own ship! LOL

Given that this was basically exactly how Champions Online Beta was run, I suspect we can expect more of the same.

To be fair, they did a little more than just add it in as a footnote.

http://www.startrekonline.com/fiction

It's a pretty good read, and goes into a lot of detail about a lot of things.  There's still about seventeen more entries before they're done, too.  The game itself is looking to be a turd, but it won't be because of shitty lore decisions.

That'd actually be pretty awesome.

Assuming the game didn't suck donkey balls, of course.

You could do a lot there -- random nasty civilizations, elder tech, civilizations you can try to bring "into the fold" of your faction (through economic, diplomatic, or military means), resource nodes and terraformable planets.

You could have a centralized data point for your faction, indicating newly discovered civiliations that need diplmatic and trade missions to try to convince to join up or ally with you -- other places where new resources or tech have been dsicovered, needing science vessels and resource extraction teams. Hostile locations and militant aliens that require your more militaristic captains to handle.

You could do a lot with that. Wars would occur naturally, from NPC aliens to struggles over vital resource areas or rich systems or just lack of room to expand.

That would be cool IF the planets generated were persistent.  If they are just private and instanced, you aren't really "exploring" anything.  But yeah, create hundreds of new worlds a year and then have the borg randomly explode various sectors so the size doesn't get too unmanageable. 

What's sad is that even though I know this will be unbelievably shitty, I am still playing at launch. 

Yes, I think you'd need procedurally-generated planets to be persistent and public. So you'd need a brake of some kind of just scrambling to open the galaxy up, but that's readily doable in an MMO format. (Say, very long 'crafting time' to reach beyond systems where Fed/Klingons had support base, and an absolute limit to exploration range until your command structure 'authorizes' further expeditions; big risks to going to the outer range of exploration vs. solid rewards for exploring the whole of a planetary system that's in closer to established space). If you had the game working around each faction needing to collaborate to build up bases and facilities on explored planets, you'd give everyone a reason to work together within a faction. Plus you could seed the procedural content with some bad as well as good surprises: plagues, dangerous NPC enemy races like Tholians or Borg, alien supercomputers, space hazards of various kinds, etc...if you lose an exploration-qualified ship, you get busted back to working a support-ship that has to stay closer to the core areas of your faction.

I can really see a design like this working. I can see that this was a good IP for it. I can see that Cryptic in its present state is the least likely house on Earth to handle anything even remotely off-formula. I can see that the dummies who sold them the license are probably going to regret it: whatever the box sales, it's going to implode spectacularly and whimper off into tiny sub-land when it's clearly an IP that could command fanatic loyalty if you bottled some aspect of what makes the IP attractive in the actual gameplay of a persistent MMO.

And so it goes in MMO-land, where money goes not to die, but to starve and whimper in the corner picking at leprous scabs.

The design promise has been persistent, procedurally generated locations using the Genesis System (http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs.cfm?bhcp=1&isapi_rewrite_remap=Awenyddion&062009=4006&bhjs=0); how it will work in reality is anyone's guess.

If they deliver on this, I WILL play this game, seriously.  But somehow I doubt it.  Its kind of like "The Omega System" in Champions.  It sonded really neat on paper, but in reality its 5 randomly generated daily quests based on templates that get repetitive in less than a week. (6 daily quests if you complete all 5 and then turn in your doodads for a key to a 5man randomly generated daily quest, that slightly increases your total rewards for the day).

This game is looking more and more like a polished version of Matrix Online.  If they even make it up to Tabula Rasa standards, I'll be surprised. 

First check for me on the new "Starship Tactics" video... wow! Tank! DPS! Debuffer!  :facepalm:

/cavernous yawn

I'll stick with EVE thanks... ok I'd stick with EVE even if Craptic did something interesting and innovative with ship-to-ship, but I was rather underwhelmed as much by the lackluster commentary as by the paucity of information imparted. It would be nice to have an ST universe where despite the pending Klingon/Federation war I'd have Roddenberry's optimistic take on the future of man to hide in when the grim "reality" of EVE's cut-throat (-and-disembowel-and-bugger-your-still-twitching-corpse) deliciously cynical game play makes me sick (but it's a good, clean sickness that just have to have more of).

So far all a bit "ho-hum" unfortunately.

Yeah, that part was by far the most disappointing part of that video.

truer words?

You guys must be masochists to continue to follow this failure parade.

They're just MMO rubbernecking. 

Oh God, the lore is actually quite interesting. I know the game is going to be awful and that any hope associated with this project is doomed but I'm going to pay enough attention to see whether there is any chance for it purely because I've found the lore entertaining. Sadly everything else about this game just screams run while you still can.

Sadists might be a closer term  :awesome_for_real:

You know whats going to kill this game for me, no matter what. Every time there I do anything I am going to think "I liked how EVE did this better." I  just KNOW this is how its going to go for me.

I know its not supposed to be remotely in competition with EVE, but my brain is going to do it anyway.

This game is going to be nothing like EVE save for space ships.

Seriously.

It's like comparing WoW and EVE.

I am WELL aware of this fact, and yet I know I am going to do it.

I think the biggest mistake is trying to fit this into the standard DIKU model. It's just not going to work, and Trekkies are probably a bad fit for it in the first place (they seem to be a mix between the Star Fleet Battles nerds and the 'I wanna live in the Federation/Klingon Empire" roleplaying types -- SimBeru crowd, so to speak).

You could probably do a pretty good combo of a fighting and crafting game. Let the fighter discover new systems, clean out pirates, contest the Neutral zones, and play in 'battle simulations'. Crafters then move into the new systems, using economics and diplomacy to move them towards their faction's side, culminating in guilds or even individual crafters creating bases, terraforming planets, creating research habitats, and basically boosting their faction while also forming as a base for new exploration.

Progress results in reputation points -- fighters get better ships, upgrades, better crews, even NPC fleets to head up for deep raids or war simulations or hostile NPC races. Crafters get terraforming equipment to create new resource areas (more scientists working under them, more manufacturing, whatever), better resources, cheaper parts, whatever to continue pushing their faction forward.

BRIDGES! (http://gamertube.com/video-1838667-Bridge Gameplay Trailer)   :oh_i_see:

That video looks absolutely terrible especially from an animation standpoint. The avatars on the bridge were idling in front of consoles in a stock standing animation. Most of the animations looked very robotic and unnatural anyway.

One thing I sort of admire about Age of Conan and I think LOTRO and Burning Sea is that the NPCs oftentimes looked like they were IN the environment they were in (working, playing, doing custom animations). Never would that be more important than on the bridge of a starship. It shouldn't be treated like a social common area for NPCs. That there was so much open space instead of being designed somewhat logically how a bridge would gave me a harsh reaction aesthetically.

I used to like the NPCs in CoH.  They were all walking around and waving as you flew by.  Then I happened to take a stroll along one wall of Independence Port where there were about a million NPCs all walking and waving with no reason to be there.  It really gets ruined quickly if they aren't maintained in a way that keeps with the atmosphere. 

That video needs to be removed.  It's not doing this title any good at all.  The animations are terrible.  The scenery looks flat.  It just makes an already laughable game look worse. 

The ship stuff still looks pretty, which makes the contrast with the terrible away team animations all the worse. I don't think the scenery looks bad, but I'm kind of tired of giant mushrooms.

I should have been more specific.  The bridge scenes look terrible.  I also don't like any of the away team combat.  The ship to ship stuff seems better.  It makes me wonder if we're just seeing another PotBS fiasco.  Good ship to ship combat ruined by the addition of avatars and ground combat. 

Auto Assault too.  :awesome_for_real:

But I think I'm the only person who actually liked that game. DIKU cars vroom vroom!

I like what it was trying to do (I always loved the game ReVolt).  I was just bummed out by the actual implementation. 

Apparently Klingon batleths got nerfed to the point it takes 5-20 direct hits with one to kill, while red shirts are now overpowered requiring more than one hit to kill despite only having a last name.

So the hugely customisable starship bridges look like they're going to be two or three stock bridges with the ability to pick different palettes going by that video (perhaps with the potential for swapping out tactical stations for science ones that looks subtly different!). I could be judging too harshly, maybe there's much more available but yeah... they looked poorly designed and seemed to only be two different designs with some colour differences. That was on top of the lack of animation and has been said they're just great big spaces. Even TNG didn't seem to have that much empty space on the bridge.

Hey, I liked it too. :(

Hated it. :heartbreak:  I was soooo looking to revist my Car Wars PnP days.  How do you make a care game that.... **Fake Edit** Yeah, I guess Auto Assault made that list  pretty long.  Still ;..;

Heh, I think the car combat in Borderlands turned out better than AA. But AA could have been a fun diversion if they didn't force you into the avatar game. That stills is the example of what not to do for every game that tries it.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/web_exclusive/star_trek_online_interview?page=0%2C2

Page 3 of that interview seems to indicate that "exploration" content is just instanced crap.  Count me out. 

It uses the same engine as Champions. EVERYTHING is going to be pretty much just instanced crap if that is any indication.

It's based on episodic TV shows. Each episode has one or two quest-chains and when the credits roll Picard gains a level. It's a perfect fit.

Sorry, this has nothing to do with anything, and it is base. But I thought it was funny, thought I would share.

(http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2009/11/sto-mixingupgames-epl-1122.jpg)

I can't think of anything more anti-Star Trek than internet gamers. I may sub just for this!

The avatar stuff looks really cheap and terrible, which I think reflects how reskinning of this kind makes something which sort of works visually (Champions) into something which is pretty much a visual failure.

Interesting that the Klingons have a base in Zangarmarsh. I never found that part of the zone, I guess.

If we're going to reskin a superhero game, let's reskin COX into some kind of dungeon thing where you fight massive hordes of orcs.

This is going to be an epic flop. Is there someone involved in the $$ that could pull the plug? Or is it all Cryptic?

Atari is publishing, I guess.  Seems like a waste to pull the plug now though, they are releasing in just over 2 months, might as well sell boxes and get some money back, at least from a business standpoint

Indeed, I think that's the business model here. Pulling the plug presupposes that they give a shit whether the game survives with any dignity intact whatsoever past the first two or three months. I really pity the community relations guy who gets saddled with babysitting the forums for this one, though.

You know whats awesome? Sending over shuttle pods to the target ship that beam onto the ship, then you blow the ship up. (http://www.warcry.com/videos/view/star-trek-online/1112-Ship-Tactics-Part-2)

Also, when you blow the ship up? POOF.

Yeah.

You know, I think Cryptic has forgotten that it takes more than combat to make an MMO.  I keep hearing their dev interviews like "Well, we didn't do this or that, or we did this or that, because we are really trying to create a fun experience for the player."  Ok, listen up Cryptic.  "Fun" doesn't cut it for an MMO.  You are making a game that people are, hypothetically, going to be playing day after day, month after month. "Fun" might get someone someone through a couple weeks, but in a game where you are paying a monthly fee, most players want something a little more than just a mindless bit of "fun."  Its actually ok to make players slightly frustrated or mad, as long as you are giving them avenues to work past it.  Shit, a lot of times crafting in games isn't "fun" but I get a nice feeling from collecting all the stuff I need, and making something.  I wouldn't describe the feeling as "fun" but rather "Satisfying."  Cryptic seems totally unable to grasp this concept.  Shit, Bejeweled is "fun" but i wouldn't pay a god damn monthly fee for it.

Yup. That's the thing. As a single-player experience, most subscription MMOs blow goat smegma. "Let's see, I feel like playing a superhero video game. Arkham Asylum or Champions Online?" Not a tough choice in those terms. If you're interested in an MMO, you're interested in a persistent world where you play at least in the presence of other people (leaving aside the whole solo play/raiding debate). That's not just the value-added of the subscription, it's a reason why the solo play component gets a license to be as weak in design terms as it usually is. Cryptic might get away with suckering people once, twice maybe even three times by implying that they're making a persistent environment, a virtual world, a long-term multiplayer experience, and doing it around an IP where their potential customers really want the experience of being in that world, a part of that setting. But you can't pull that off indefinitely: eventually you won't even get box sales that justify the bare-bones development costs.

I think they forgot that there was a bunch of Redshirts just beamed to that ship.

I don't think so, I think they just don't care.

Holy fuck, that video turned ship to ship combat from mildly interesting to ANOTHER FUCKING DIKU. Boarding parties are a special ability.

Holy God that looks bad.

Yeah, it pretty much looks that way.

My crystal ball shows the following future forum threads at STO's officials:


DEVS: WTF? Redshirt Nerf
I spent 30 points speccing the tank skill "Phaser Sacrifice" and now you've nerfed it down so that it's no better than the Helmsman ability "OMG THE PAIN OF A MYSTERIOUS PSYCHIC ATTACK THAT IGNORES DEFLECTORS". My entire guild plans to quit over this: overnight all of our redshirts respecced into Cone-Bra Yeomen.

DEVS: Please balance Engineers
It is just not fair that Engineers can skill into the Transporter Resurrection line, which is massively overpowered. My Medical Officer just has some measly buffs and the anti-Vulcan taunt ability, whereas Engineers can eliminate the Borg CC abilities and rez characters using upgraded Transporter III gear which is totally easy to get, because the Organians are bugged and exploitable.

and so on  :facepalm:

And that goes contrary to anything starfleet. I mean, yes, it is not uncommon for a Redshirt to die. But i am sure we have all seen many an episode where they ALWAYS try to save crew members, even if not on the bridge staff.

It just does not fit.

Gauntlet Online!  :drill:

Whoever made that video didn't care. From what I've read, boarding parties are more than buffs so there's benefits to bringing them back.

As to not being starfleet, this is likely just Auto Assault in space. There is as much "Trek" in this game as there is Asimov in that I, Robot movie.

I understand (and hate) the "release crap, sell lots of boxes, forget it exists" strategy they used for Champions to theoretically get the money for STO, but given how much this seems more of the same, what are they going to do after this sells lots of boxes and then people discover nothing's there?

Does it involve Emmert cackling and floating away on a raft made of money?

I have a feeling it involves assigning the game a skeleton crew, making vague promises of incoming features most of which will never come, or come in severely diminished states, and then beginning to work on their next game (NWN Online?).

If Champions is any indication, they actually are patching the game quite regularly, so I don't think it'll be a straight game of "see ya suckers" probably do just enough to keep a small playerbase around while working on their next project.  I seem to remember Champions aiming for 100,000 subs (no way they have that many), and I think STO is probably aiming for a similar number.  Regardless of the big name of this IP, they don't seem to be legitimately aiming for a blockbuster game.

I'm baffled by the idea they would think STO should be niche the same way CO is. Champions was at best, a minor RPG that had its heyday in the 80s. Star Trek is a core part of geek/nerd culture, and also happens to be riding high off an umpteen-millions making movie this year.

But I think the really big problem is that after you burn through CO and STO, what license are they going to grab to keep them alive? Twilight Online?

The advantage or that IP would be that siting around doing nothing and looking stupid would be part of the source material.

Zzzzzing. But what would all the people in trade chat, who normally bast twilight, bash in this case?

I think it seems to be an artifact of their design schedule, I just don't think there is a way they could make the game that ST deserves in the time they are alloted (by their publisher?).  

To answer your question though, the rumor is that they have the rights to a Neverwinter Nights MMO. I don't see that working out well either, if it is true.

Maybe this is a retarded question, but would Bioware ever even dream of giving their IP out to somebody like Cryptic?  That can't be right.

Neverwinter Nights isn't Bioware IP.

The question you should ask, is would Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro ever do something stupid with their IP?

Sadly the answer to that is "sometimes".

Huh. I'm wondering what's left to be done with a NWN MMO that hasn't already been done by DDO + possibly a module designer. Other than not be terrible at launch.

I still think a supernatural dating MMO is printing money.

Are you talking about Twilight or Star Trek?

From what I've seen in the Twilight movie thread, they'd bash the people who bash Twilight.  And James Bond.

Someone got the joke  :grin:

I think Cryptic's plan is to develop MMOs that are profitable on 100k players. This involves a cut down development schedules and sticking close to the strengths of the Cryptic Engine (which relies on instancing, among other things). Cryptic isn't attempting to grab a lot of cash at release then let the game die - if they were going to do that, they should release single player games - because they are trying to build up a stable of MMOs in a short period of time. Atari wants to be in the MMO business and a key part of that is getting Cryptic to release a MMO in 2009, 2010 and probably 2011. ChampO wasn't the launch they wanted, I'm sure, but it is stage 1 of a bigger plan.

We've lamented studios that have spent $50m+ on a MMO that needs to be the second biggest MMO in the Western market just to survive; Cryptic is the flipside of that. Three or four smaller MMOs that don't necessarily need incredible player numbers to survive could be a great way for a studio to sustain itself... or at least that is the plan imo.

As indicated earlier in this thread, Star Trek games don't necessarily sell well. I can see this selling 1m boxes easy, but player retention will be based on the gameplay. On top of this I think that Star Trek is the kind of IP where you could spend 20 years and $1b developing it only for a vocal group to indicate that "it just isn't Star Trek".

Rumors are swirling that Klingons won't make it in by launch, and even then will be a monster play LOTRO-style faction.  The devs have already said that Klingons advance "largely" through PvP.

I won't not try it until they announce the PvP "neutral zone" consists of instanced areas, and not a persistent area.   :oh_i_see:

EDIT:  I'm not basing the following on any secret closed beta information, but everything about this game is telling me that it is being released not 3 or 6 months early, but 18 months to two years early.  There must be some clause in the relevant contract giving Cryptic a bonus if they get it out by February.  

They are going to need it once they all lose their jobs < 1 year later

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/352/feature/3792/Star-Trek-Online-Bridges-Bridge-Officers-Preview.html

Bridges and Bridge officers like kinda meh.  Bridges seems like a stop gap for player housing or something.

As for the Bridge Officers, I dunno.  I kind of like the concept of being in control of extra NPCs in an MMO, but this seems like bridge officers = special abilities with their own avatar .

Kind of a neat idea that depends on the implementation. Despite my better judgment I'm leaning towards pre-ordering. I'm rationalizing it by telling myself even though its going to suck I'll get as many hours out of it as a single player game not named Dragon Age.

All of this. Most developers in any genre are smart enough to know their chances at a #1 slot in anything. They know what it takes, know what they've got, and only sometimes allow themselves to drink the same koolaid the PR types serve. But that's not as often as you think. The cult of personality days are receding in the wake of budgets too big to allow that much risk. They rightly figure they'll have a #1 company budget when they're employed at that company.

So the focus shifts not from hitting a big home run, but instead to a bunch of base hits. This has been SOE's model for years, and they're not the only one it can work for.

The first performance bonus pays out August 2010 iirc.

Also, I'm expecting at least one delay in releasing this title. Hopefully it gets bumped from Feb to Sept 2010, at least.

No, no, no.  It must launch on February 2.  My 'lulz' depend upon it.

I'm with Lantyssa. The buggier the better.

Maybe we should start a deadpool for what will be cut to make Feb 2nd.
* Klingons
* Any meaningful end game content
* Anything to do which isn't a) shoot things in space, b) shoot things on the ground?

I just want holodecks filled with Romulan ale and green slave girls. I'll give 'em the Prime Directive until my warp core breaches!

I'll add their "Genesis" system to this list, based on the state of the  "omega" system in Champions on released. (though this might fall under 2 or 3 above?)

They are going to have a lot of pissed fans of Klingons aren't in for release.

Mak'tah!!!! This MMO has no honor!!!!

Star Trek without Klingons.  Wouldn't that be like WoW without any fucking elves?  Holy shit, they better expect it to bomb if they put it out like that.

This whole scenario saddens me instead of entertaining me like WAR did.  

I was a fan of Cryptic's after CoH.  They released a wonderful game, lightweight but polished.  It was obviously a labor of love rather than a profit-driven marketing designed cynical money grab.  Admittedly they made some serious mistakes when altering the balance and direction of the game post-release, but I blindly (and wrongly) excused that as typical novice live-time mistakes.  Then along came CO, which was everything CoH wasn't at release.  Including unfinished, unpolished, unbalanced, unfun (ymmv), with all the worst post-launch CoH changes already implemented and most of the fun CoH ideas gouged out, scrubbed, sterilized,  incinerated and altogether expunged from the Vision.

All of which would make me cackle with glee at the prospect of watching the next karma-balancing slow-motion train wreck.

Except I have several Trekkie friends who are going to get burned by this because their only other MMOG experience so far has been WoW, and they and who knows how many thousands of others are going to reward Cryptic with money just because of the IP, even if Cryptic lays another buggy unfinished turd.

Yea, there's a bunch of people of late who consider consider themselves "MMO players" until they hit their second MMO after the first was WoW. They quickly learn they are not quite MMO players after all  :awesome_for_real:

This make me think Cryptic Staion Pass. 

..and given the state of the industry I think the only choice for your friends is to get burned now or get burned later.  Everybody does it once.

Which is of course why cryptic bought the IP and blizzard are just inventing one for their next MMO.

Agreed, this will be far more entertaining if they launch in February.  It wont be like watching a train wreck, more like a meteor pumels a plane which crashes into a train causing a train wreck where midget clown porn was being filmed

Collectors edition (http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=75981)

• Deluxe Packaging: Futuristic 3dX holography set in a high quality brushed aluminum finish. Heavy duty construction with magnetic closures and nested compartments for all components.
• Deluxe Manual: High end, hardbound, art book, manual, and disc case in a single, elegant package. “HD Printing” on over 40 glossy pages of exclusive art from the Star Trek Online Universe.
• Communicator Badge: High quality cast metal design based on the in-game badge model. Fully 3d Sculpted with recessed burst and curved contours.
• Guest Passes: Credit card style buddy passes to invite three of your friends for a three day trial of Star Trek Online.
• Red Matter Capacitor: A unique item that charges up and delivers extra energy to all of your ship’s equipment for a short time. A device that, when used, gives you a small bump in energy, has a long recharge.
• Next Generation Uniform: Uniform Options from and the Next Generation. The timeless look worn by Picard, Data and Riker.
• “Deep Space Nine” Uniform: Uniform Options from the “Deep Space Nine” Series. Grey shoulders, on a black uniform, just like Sisko, Worf and Dax.

Gamestop preorders get a unique ship(constitution class) all preorders seem to have headstart/beta access.

Dibs on first buddy pass of first sucker to pick this up

RED MATTER!


They are just giving that shit away now!

IF? You have doubts?

So wait, there's no standard uniform for Starfleet?  That's kind of stupid.

Although if I do plan on getting this, I'd get the collector's edition just for the Deep Space Nine uniforms.  I think those are pretty much the best of the bunch.

I'd have to imagine you'll be able to customize your look a little.  While standard issue uniforms might make sense, it'd be kind of lame to have the entire world of people running around in exactly the same uniform.

Troi was a trendsetter.

Ooh.  Maybe they'll sell different dyes that you can get by PvPing........

Original crew movie uniforms or GTFO.

(http://static.squidoo.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/draft_lens2354801module13232589photo_1230627627FilmCast.jpg)

Be careful with your use of the "original" or you could end up with  :ye_gods:

I'm quite fond of TOS/2009-style costumes.  Everything else with the over-the-top frills or jumpsuits (except in the case of hot aliens) just looked crazy for day-to-day use.

Well, the one advantage of the TNG-style jumpsuits is that they got rid of the apparent "no women in pants" rule.

Three whole days trial? wow

And I'm guessing the headstart/beta access will only get you in a couple days early at most?

Dang it.  As an explorer I'd love to boldly go where no man has gone before.  But I'm not sure if it will be any fun if no man (including myself) will ever be able to go there again.(instanced random content)

TNG had a few men in skirts. I guess that idea didn't fly after the first season.  :oh_i_see:

I've read a couple hands-on previews that seem to imply that ship combat is actual fun, even if ground combat seems- questionable.  If all it gives is is good "tall ship" combat, I'm willing to live with that as a diversion until SWTOR comes out. 

The following comments pointed out exactly why a range of Star Trek uniforms are on offer - plenty of players want to have TOS or NG or DS9 or whatever uniforms for their crew. Or combinations thereof.

Yes, it screws with how a 'real' pseudo-military organisation would work, but STO isn't setting out to be a simulation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8l0fDOx1GU

"Fleet Actions" Video.  Sounds like glorified public quests.

QFT

I'm almost certain this game is going to be buggy unfinished crap but damn that video looked like fun.

Some new screenshots http://kotaku.com/5420881/cryptic-gives-us-10-reasons-star-trek-fans-want-star-trek-online/gallery/4

What's wrong with those?

I don't think those pictures will have a positive effect.  I wasn't impressed.  Too generic.   

"Kill 10 tribbles."

Also, this is what combat should have been. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnWaF2jcuDo)

Every "engage" screenshot or video I've seen looks like total crap, specifically.

(http://cache-foo-02.gawkerassets.com/gawker/assets/images/9/2009/12/500x_7._adventures_in_time_travel.jpg)

Frankly, the scenery looks ok, but anything with a character in it makes it look vaguely  :uhrr:

So to play the Enterprise, you need to preorder at Gamestop? That sounds unwise.

I look at the pic that you posted and it doesn't even look like the guy is standing on the floor.  It also looks similar to EQ2 at release... which isn't saying much about a title that's 5 years newer. 

So much potential here.  I fear it will be wasted.

The ship will be available for 10 cryptic bucks a month after launch.  You forget, these are the people who STILL haven't let the 6 month and lifetime sub CO people into closed beta.  If their legal department allowed them to do that, they aren't going to be held to a fanboy's definition of "unique starship" as it says in the ad. 

I'm such a muppet, put down $5 on a CE preorder. I'll be there for the launch wreckage.

alleged list of preorder bonuses.


it's like they have a contest going to find new ways to shit on their own business, or something.

Haha, holy crap that whole thing is hilarious.

Best Buy:  We'll give you a pet!

Walmart:  We'll let you fucking power level!

Yeah, the pre-order bonuses trend lately is getting out of hand.  Cryptic did this with Champions Online as well, although the only one that seemed non-cosmetic was flight at level 1, which was basically pointless, because you can take a travel power at level 5.   So, either they are leaning more towards game-changing stuff through pre-orders, or they are overstating how useful this stuff will actually be playing the game.  I'll lean toward the later, just because I can't imagine they are actually THAT stupid. I could be wrong of course.

Then again, this seems to support the hypothesis that Cryptic is just magic low budget MMOs with the intent of selling as many boxes as possible to make their money back, and then the subscriptions are gravy.  I'm sure the goodies will entice a few extra folks into buying it that might have waited for reviews or something.

Yeah those sound both ridiculous from a power level standpoint, and also totally uneven between retailers. I'd hope they're not nearly as good as they sound.

Don't forget, they'll be selling all of those pre-order items on the Cryptic store to make additional money as well.

This doesn't actually bother me so much, microtransactions are going to become a norm, even Blizzard has been slowly introducing elements of it.  Trying to bribe people to buy the actual game box me strikes a more negative chord with me though.

That list is hilarious.  Also, with the pet (meaning Tribble or Targ, not the Borg bimbo) I thought I read something in this thread about Klingons not even being available at launch.  Or was that just speculation?  If I cared more about the game I might go back and look but since this game is a complete train wreck I just can't be arsed.

They've said that Klingons will be playable at launch.  I think the "not available at launch" rumors started when they said something like "You won't be able to play them right away."(paraphrased, it was even more ambiguous than that).  However, they've since clarified that Klingons will be unlocked after a short amount of time playing.  I think they  said in a recent IRC dev chat that they will definitely be in as a playable race, as well, as a way of avoiding more confusion. The article I linked is a couple months old, which is why I mention that.

Anyway based on that it looks like you can play them, but there is a certain amount of Starfleet play that needs to be done first.  However much is anyone's guess.

Source (http://www.massively.com/2009/10/10/star-trek-online-wouldnt-you-like-to-be-a-klingon-too)

Nope, box + subs + RMT is a no go.  Just pile that on the list reasons not.  Funny, but all the signs is not going to stop so many people.  "I want to believe!" is the only reason they need.

Blizzard is already starting to see whats possible , I'm telling you, I think the writing is on the wall for this to become a common practice.  If you don't like it, no problem.  Hell, I don't intend to play STO anyway, so I don't care, I'm just saying the combination of those isn't going to stop me from playing a good game.

I'd be *extremely* surprised if Blizzard ever makes the choice to step over the 'gameplay advantage' line for paid stuff as this does. Although I guess you could maybe argue race change does that, in practice its just a 'pay to avoid rerolling' thing.

Why not, it's not like these people who get offended at such concept have anywhere else to go. :why_so_serious:

I'm not saying you are going to be able to deck yourself out in the latest tier of gear or whatever, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the sale of vanity items, like the holiday items that require the achievements, but you can buy them after the fact if you didn't do them, or something.

Good thing it's not a PVP game.

I'm thinking a Borg bimbo equipped with a TR-116 and a Tribble companion would be great for Klingon hunting.

I can say with absolutely 100% confidence that none of those items will matter.  The Walmart "skill points" will turn out to be letting you spend talent points at 1 that you'd normally spend at 10 (but it won't increase the total number of skill points, its just accelerating availability).  The various armors and blasters, etc. will probably be outstripped by lvl 15 quest gear.  Isn't that always how it works with these sort of things?

On the other hand, the Gamestop hover boots in CO actually matter, because they enable someone to take teleportation and something like Super Jump or Burrow as their 2nd power- but the boots give them the ability to hover in midair when they wouldn't have had it otherwise, so that's big.  I don't play CO anymore- can hoverboots be crafted/looted, or are the preorder boots truly unique?


Either way, I love a train wreck so I'm pre-ordering.  Will probably just take the Borg bridge officer or the targ, as those would actually stay with you through the whole game (as opposed to junk gear).  But I'm getting my cloaked Klingon PvP ganker ship ASAP, so fuck the USS Enterprise. 

I think I'd get the armour, but I assume it's far more likely that someone is looking to punish everyone who watched Voyager than it is the armour would actually be as useful as you'd think it'd be.

That is to say that since it's 40 years into the future or whatever, I'm probably going to get Chromodynamic Armour Level 2 by the time I'm out of the starting area.

Hover Boots can not be crafted.   Its not really that big a deal though, ot be honest.  You get 2 travel powers anyway, though the second one isn't til level 30something.

Oooh.  You could get a hover disk and the underground mole travel dealie.  Sweet! 

If your character concept doesn't include any kind of flight, I'd argue its pretty damn nice- there are times you just want to hover in PvP or above the zone, and with the boots you can have teleport, burrow, AND be able to hover after a teleport.  If I had stayed with CO, I certainly would rank that preorder item about 1000x better than any other bonus.