f13.net

http://www.startrek.perpetual.com/

I am more a reader than a poster, but I started this thread because I wanted to get some opinions. My experience indicates you all are not very shy when it comes to opinions, so what better place?

Anyway, another franchise has decided it would be a good idea to enter the world of online games. Probably old news, but this generated a little bit of a buzz on one of my discussion groups. I will post part of one of the messages below and let you all have at it...

Sounds way too much like "We're going to do a Space Sandbox, but we'll do it RIGHT (unlike SWG)!" to my inner ear.   That way only lies pain, suffering, and failure.

Also, I recall that previously ST:O was going to be some kind of forced-grouping adventure game.  The catasses get to be captains, joe casual the 'red shirts' and everyone else falling in between.  IF this is a shift in ideaology already, well,  DOOOM.

The discussion occurred in a completely unrelated forum and is not affiliated with ST:O at all, so this does not indicate any change of direction on their end. Purely an acedemic discussion between observers.

Isn't this how Tabula Rasa started out? Considering they completely scrapped the idea to start over and make something fun... I suspect that idea isn't as rosy as it seems.

I think at this point, MMOs have picked up the "license-curse" that console games had during the 80s and 90s. If it's based on a licensed property (ESPECIALLY movies or shows) then it's going to suck. Star Wars, Matrix, and now Star Trek. It's going to be weird seeing avatars sprinting through the hallways of the ship.

Here's a little diddy on Gamasutra about the pre-production to get their "look and feel" down: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060221/pieragostini_01.shtml

So, what was the problem with Tabula Rasa that caused it to be scrapped? Are there design reasons? Implementation issues? What made it "not fun"?

On the surface it seems that each of these are successful in their own right, why would they not be successful encapsulated in another?

Elves in Battlefield 2.

On the surface that sounds horrifying, but on 2nd thought, shooting a fucking elf in the face with a sniper rifle would be damned good fun. Maybe have a "Reservoir Dogs" mini-game where I can remove their ears to Stealer's Wheel.

And what's not fun about that?

Doesn't SirBruce work for Perpetual? Just sayin.'

The only problem is "Legolas" would be spawn camping you when you pop in so you would never get to experience it, because his dark elf friend Drizzit and himself would be pwnering you.

Nah, L3g0la5 and Drizzt865 would be too busy making slash pr0n off in the corner to pwn anybody.

Connecting several different games within a framework like this does not seem like a good avenue for development.  You'd want a dev team for each individual game and an art team for each environment, otherwise you'll get game-heat-death as resources are spread too thin and everything ends up sucking midget clown cock.

I'm with Yeg.  You'd end up with a shitty western game, a shitty caveman game, a shitty fantasy game, a shitty space combat game, etc all connected together.  In a world of infinite resources, it could be cool. 

Keep in mind that once upon a time a group of non-idiots with some decent funding got together, tried to focus 100% of their energies on just making a good fantasy game, and came out with Asheron's Call II. 

OH SNAP!

Anyway, it's fine to plan for that sort of thing and the license would allow it, but it's better to start small. It's actually a bit hard to imagine a Star Trek MMORPG that played like a typical levelling game. I suppose you could have each person pilot a ship and fight space squids all day like in E&B but it would probably be better as a more social/sandbox game where you hang out in 10-forward and craft synthahol or something like that.

Enter Stargate Online. That would be the perfect example of such a scenario. SG-1 sees a pretty wide variety of environments and technology week to week. If it ever sees the light of day, I think that at least multiple environments would be one of the features. I sort've doubt that varied tech would go into the game as you'd probably only be facing off against the known factions in the game and not the indiginous population of each planet.

Star Trek Online seems like a pretty bland idea at this point. I think everybody is sick to death of that IP by now.

Sounds a bit like Westworld the movie and tv-show.

Sounds like the mole to me.

Star Trek online eh?  I can't think of a more boring bland unentertaining worthless peice of crap license opportunity to make a boring bland unentertaining worthless peice of crap virtual world out of.

I say go for it.. it's pretty clear to me that from it's very inception, Star Trek was destined to be a Virtual Word.. I can't imagine better bedfellows..

"SPACE THE FINAL FRONTIER. THESE ARE THE VOYAGES OF THE STARSHIP KN08J0CK3Y, HER FOUR MONTH MISSION TO EXPLORE STRANGE NEW WORLDS, TO SEEK OUT NEW LIFE AND NEW CIVILIZATION, TO BOLDLY GO WHERE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS HAVE GONE BEFORE."

got another

gotta catch em all

(http://mednews.wustl.edu/pub/libs/images/usr/2473.jpg)

My problem with Star Trek in general is all scenarios invariably translate to:

Endgame 1: I time travel before the villains were born and kill their parents.
Endgame 2: I trick the Q into killing their entire species.
Endgame 3: I hire some Klingons from the H3YWUJABLOM3 clan and shit stomp the enemy, no matter what level of technology they possess.

Inherent problems arise when the only thing you can do to keep a franchise afloat is turn your characters into gods.  SG-1 seems much more appealing than Star Trek scenarios, but we shall see.

You know, I wondered about that. If anyone has studied globalization (with respect to business), one approach to entering a new market is to create an alliance with an in-country company. In this way you mitigate your risk, as well as enable you to leverage their knowledge, expertise and distribution. Now if I were a company interested in doing what was suggested, why could I not use the same strategy? Have my own development for the "hub" so to speak, and ally with other dev teams, perhaps even other companies for the other "spokes"? One issue could be continuity and similar look & feel...

If I were a big enough company, with many multiple projects going on at the same time (e.g., SONY), could this be a way to integrate my offerings into one package?

Let's not be naive.

The Star Trek Online game will be a bland, formulaic MMOG clone of something, probably EQ/Diku/WoW in the end. The Star Trek world is a restrictive license in terms of creative freedom, and since TNG, has been one of the most bland, uninteresting worlds ever created (though DS9 was fun). There isn't much you can do with the license without completely breaking the cardinal rules of their world. I don't think anyone could make a fun, innovative game with that license, no matter what era they set it in.

Virtual sandbox? Not a chance in hell of that ever happening. The very idea that someone could make a Federation starship captain named Ilovehotdogs would make the Paramount folks shit themselves.

Not sure they would care - They would be getting money, keeping the license alive, and such things wouldn't be in cannon or anything.

They wouldn't be in canon either.

You don't think they will blow up?

I mostly just study my navel, but here's a couple problems in my opinion.

First, having contractors do the various games will make things worse simply due to the logistics involved in herding them toward a common framework or release date.  If your company is poor then you might have no choice, unless you realize that one choice is to make just one game.  As someone in a movie once said: "A man's got to know his limitations."

Second, if it was a truly big and global company, like mine, you don't associate with other people unless you have to when it comes to your core business.  Partnering is one thing but having your main revenue thingy controlled by someone else is less appealing than simply elbowing your way in with fat stacks of cash.  Get the checkbook out and do it right from the start, using well-controlled assets.  This notion also should insinuate that licensing IP is a bad idea, and we have a pretty good example of how that can fail.

They would care, because legions of frothing retard Star Trek fans would be all over the Internet screeching "KHHHHAAAAAAAAAAANNNNN!" like Kirk in Star Trek 2 and threatening to go on some kind of mongoloid Klingon killing spree as their Pon'far's all intersected at the same time in a whiny orgy of nerd fury.

And Rick Berman would listen because he is a fucking idiot.

I think it could be done if it was set in a time line around but not AT the same as any of the series. Of course that won't happen since everyone will want to be sharing the same space as Kirk/Seven-of-Nine/Janeway/Picard or whomever their captain/nerd fantasy of their choice is.

Oh by the way - our space station just got warped out to the delta quadrant. We have no large ships and will be sending you in a shuttlecraft to gather resources. Maybe if you kill some spacerats you can upgrade your shuttle to the healing or tanking shuttle.

Winnar!

My favorite is Captain Pike.  BEEEP  BEEEP!

We need Ronald Moore to take control (and maybe beat berman down with a crowbar).

New Battlestar Galactica MMO... mmmmmm

I think this is my new favorite Haemish quote.

Not sure that's such a great idea.  Sounds like it would be Vampire: The Masquerade ... IN SPAAAAAACE!

I like the show, but it's not especially well suited for an MMG. Unless you like political PVP with occasional space combat.

So you wanna go do a Baltar run?

Misposted something to the wrong thread.  Er, I mean, RESERVED!

Edit--  Now that my mistake has pretty much forced me to post on the topic of Star Trek Online, all I can say is... sadf.  Cries of "lol holodeck" aside, who in their right mind thinks this property will make a worthwhile MMO?  They need to fill it with tribbles and green-skinned sluts and sell it on sixties camp value, because nobody is going to want to play a pajama-clad TNG-era redshirt.

For some reason I agree here.  My apologies to the original poster if I am wrong.

Very few TV shows or movies are. By very few I mean none, of course.

BSG would be ok if it had a timeline of sorts, maybe set during the Cylon wars.

ST:TNG? Meh. Five years too late, for both the license and the gameplay. If they made a world in which people could run around and choose their Popcap/MIni-clip casual game to play on a Holopad, and there was no fee, and it could be played in a browser, and it was free to download, maybe. Otherwise, life about a starship is boring, and the only fighter craft that exist are in the books.

Although all those Ready Room meetings with Picard would sit well with those long accustomed to waiting to raid.

Something sorta like Puzzle Pirates, with multiple players working together to crew a ship, could be cool.  Coming up with good "puzzles" would be tricky.

I worry for the future of this game

I know people will disgree with me but I liked SWG's openess at launch, I just cant see the same openess in STO (and if there is the game will likely fall foul of the same complaints that SWG did...)

I cant see them giving everyone a ship (like Eve) because you'd need an NPC or player crew (and what if you like to solo or none of your friends are onlne?). If everyone can be a captain, who wants to be a red shirt?

Erm, correct me if I am wrong, but the command officers Are the red shirts.

You're wrong. Red shirts are the folks who often didn't have a last name and died shortly after being introduced. Much like red names...

Oh, I guess you mean original Star Trek, and maybe TNG.

As opposed to what? That's where the term red shirt comes from. Nothing else is called a red shirt. You were simply wrong.

He's just confused on the history of the term. If you started watching ST post TOS calling the expendable crew members "red shirts" doesn't make sense since they were typically in gold shirts since TNG swapped red and gold from TOS.

A "redshirt" is that nondescript and never before seen ensign, who accompanies the main characters on an away mission, for no other purpose than to die and thus show how dangerous things are.  When Picard, Riker, and Ensign Smith beam down to the planet of flesh-eating wombats, you know that Ensign Smith is the redshirt regardless of the actual color of his uniform.

And you know that when the show comes back from it's next commercial break, it'll be to Riker solemnly intoning "He was a good man!" over Smith's wombat-chewed corpse.  Or in the case of STO, something like "Dammit Jim, I'm a catass, not a doctor!  Meaning I can't rez.  LOL."

Thank you.

The term comes from the popular American science fiction television series Star Trek. In this series, characters wear tunic colors defining their station and/or area of expertise. In the original 1966 series, a person wearing a red shirt was a member of the Engineering or Security department. Security officers had a habit of meeting tragic ends in many episodes.

Typically, an away team would consist of Kirk, Spock, McCoy (all main characters who stood zero chance of dying) and one never-before-seen red-shirted ensign, who would be dead by the end of the mission, usually within minutes.

The two exceptions to this rule were Mr. Scott, the famous Chief Engineer and Lt. Uhura. They almost always wore red uniforms in the original 1966 series, yet lived through the film era. In a few episodes, Scotty did indeed get killed, but was revived by the end of the episode.

In the Next Generation and later series, redshirts are known as yellowshirts, as that is the new color of the security department.
Redshirt/yellowshirt death occurred much more rarely in Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise, because of the limited crew sizes for those series. On Star Trek: Enterprise not a single crewman was lost until the second episode of the third season (even then, his section colour is unknown as he is only seen draped in a sheet).

:) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirt_(science_fiction)

I wish I'd never said 'red shirt' now.....

(reminds me of the Python sketch where you cant say 'matress' to the guy who sells beds otherwise he puts a bucket over his head and you have to get into the fishtank and sing Jerusalem)

oh I said it again!

(now having flashbacks from Holy Grail and the Knights who say 'Ni' but can't say the word 'it')

I'll get my coat.....

You know.. the entire thought process of "well, redshirt is too oldschool" went through my head when I read that.  However, I thought it would be entirely too picky and way too geeky to point it out.  Plus, since "Redshirt" was coined even before TNG was on the air,* I figured everyone knew what it meant.  Damn youngins.



*Holy fuck, I just realized that was almost 20 years ago. I don't look forward to having more of these 'holy fuck' moments than I'm already having as I continue to get older.

Eventually you'll be saying "Holy fuck, where am I?"

Why, is he going to develop a crazy Salvia Divinorum addiction too?

More like "How did I get here?"

And then you turn into David Byrne and are truly fucked.

FAQ has been updated (http://startrek.perpetual.com/2006/05/online_faq_updates_go_live.html).

It almost sounds like Eve, except with land missions. Which is cool (on paper).

They really shouldn't wait until "expansions" to put new factions in though.

1) They need to get their heads out of their asses and realize that people do like more than just duel/arena PvP (if done right)

2) Not everyone wants to be Starfleet.

Also, having Klingdon as a playable race, but not as a playable faction is stupid. I can imagine Worf eventually influencing Klingons to join the Federation, but not that soon in the timeline.

This whole game smacks of newbs designing an MMOG. I still don't think this has any more than a 50% shot at launching. The reasons would be many.

Not to say you aren't right in your pessimism, but honestly, I'd rather take newbs over the status quo. The people I want to see design future mmog's are the people who are removed from muds, removed from Everquest, and removed from the general rpg mindset as much as possible.

Star Trek online = players filling the role of the standard nameless, red-shirted cast member that was first to die in every episode rather than being Capt. Kirk or Mr. Spock. 

Wow... SWG flashbacks.

I disagree. There's a hell of a lot of more open endedness to Trek than there is to Star Wars. Kirk is not a Jedi, nor does the universe revolve around his life story. If that was the case, there never would have been 4 spinoffs after the original series.

Also, I think DS9 especially sets precedent for the idea that Trek is a world, and not merely a story for one captain, one crew, or even one faction like the Federation.

I bow to your superior Trekiness.  I watched the original and maybe a handful of TNG episodes.   

I have yet to find a game MMOG where I felt like a hero rather than a cog in the machine.  If "online world" is their goal and they manage to make a game with the trappings of Eve without the screensaver feel, then I'll give it a try. 

I'm actually just a recent Trek convert, but so be it.  :-P

But anyways...."Red shirts" actually have names these days! It's a slight step up at least. And umm, they don't wear red anymore. They wear yellow.

On one odd occassion, one of these "yellow shirts" (Transporter Chief O'Brien) actually survived long enough to become a main character on another show. And he's a damn good one too.

(http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:9diWGjyXQw0feM:panhistoria.com/Stacks/Novels/characterimages/S2527.jpeg)

Like this guy...

I meant newbs in terms of development. Design-wise I agree. I'm tired of status quo too, which is why I bother reading about STO at all. For it being a license, they're actually thinking outside of the diku box.

Further, like yourself, I feel the Star Trek universe is a great universe for an MMO. But then, I'm one of those wierdos who thought Star Wars could work. Mostly this is because what the TVs and movies have lacked in terms of world have more than adequately (and with a great deal more creativity) been described in books. I understand the constraints linear video has on storytelling of course. I'm just glad these two titles use(d) the rich worlds as described by authors.

But I wouldn't use DS9 as a frame of reference :) It and Voyager were results of corporatized group-think that resulted in Enterprise and the upcoming travesty that will be Kirk and Spock meeting in Starfleet Academy, simply because someone did some creative directing on Lost. Gods does Paramount just not get it.

Technically they aren't true MMO newbs since one of their co-founders was in charge of online development and operations at EA.

Just cause you had a red shirt didn't mean you were going to die -- otherwise Scotty would've been killed off a long time ago. The same thing applies to O'Brien, LaForge, Worf and others who wore the yellow jerseys in TNG. The risk of dying was a formula that took into account whether or not you were on the security team (red shirts in TOS, yellow shirts in TNG), whether or not you were a reoccurring character, and whether or not you had a name. Security team, non-reoccurring, no-name was obviously the highest risk.

Oh ok, knowing that one of them was around for Sims Online, Majestic, Earth and Beyond and the two abortive UO sequels makes me feel much more confident in this company. :)

Yes and the other co-founder is a lawyer and was at EA as well in various capacities. Gives you the warm fuzzies doesn't it?

And here I thought DS9 was the result of Paramount stealing the idea for Babylon 5.

/geekfight

Babylon 5 MMG. Hmm, dibs on the Narn Paladin.

Plucky comedy relief wasn't he?

I havent read the site recently (so I dont know if they've already cleared this up) but the whole thing either screams 'SWG repeat', 'Holodeck' or 'alternative universe' (ala the XBox game Shattered Universe where shuttles became fighters and Sulu was the bad guy (or was it Checkov<sp>?))

Basing a MMO on the original Star Trek would at least legitimate the use of traditional MMO female avatars.  If I learned one thing from that show, it's that in the 21st century, it will be all c-cups and up.

I wonder how high your skill in Kirk-Fu has to be for you to do the two-handed chop.

You ready your Dammit-Jim-I'm-A-Cleric spell!
Kirk has aggroed!
Kirk flings a meaningless speech at your direction!
You suffer 145 mental anguish points of damage!
Your boredom has increased!
You now have a headache!

You prepare to sacrifice an unknown enlisted person!
The unknown enlisted person dies a horrible death so that you can live!

A beautiful blonde has aggroed!
Kirk is distracted by the beautiful blonde.
You gain 5 Channel Changing experience points.
Kirk kisses the beautiful blonde, who swoons.
Kirk appears stronger.

Scotty appears, and declares that the engines 'dinna take much more' Captian!
Your boredom has increased!

You would like to continue the attack, however you must first gain additional Starfleet Approval points.
You disregard orders.
You have lost 50 Starfleet prestige points!
Your uniform has become torn!

KliNG0n's-R-1337 has arrived in his Bird of Prey!
KliNG0n's-R-1337 fires a +1034908245 Proton-Torpedo-of-ELEETness.
You suffer 1,234,435,029 points of damage to your Neilson Approval Rating.
Kirk has died!
McCoy has died!
Scotty has died!
The blonde has died!
You have died!
Your ship explodes!
KliNG0n's-R-1337 makes a rude gesture at the debris.
KliNG0n's-R-1337 says, 'kekekekekekekekekke'
KliNG0n's-R-1337 warps from the sector.

You have died.  Please visit our Account and Billing services page to purchase another ship.
/quit

No, there really isn't.

I don't think a big space alien making sweet love to your starship really fits into the Star Wars universe.

How about a big space alien swallowing your starship?

I dunno.  If it was mostly ground based, they could be pretty flexible.  I mean, they went to a different planet almost every week and (aside from h0t alien boobage) there wasn't much linking the places thematically.  They could've had different planets in SWG, but it seems to me that SW fans are more insistant on going to Tatooine or Naboo and having it just like the movie than ST fans would be in going to "the planet with the cave with the brunette with ginormous bozooms" or the "planet with the androids with ginormous bozooms" or the "planet with the green chick with ... well, you get the picture.

I guess the whole military thing limits flexibility in one sense, but also opens up the chance for the game to have a heavily scripted, quest-based experience that leads you around the gameworld by the nose.

If it's going to be more focused on ships then forget everything I said.

It's more like the Prime Directive than anything else.

But really, neither universe is very open-ended when it comes to gameplay possibilities. Somethings just have to be, like Jedi being l33t-r33t powaful, and the Federation not turning planets into cinders.

Both suck thematically for games.

I'll admit that the nature of the Federation doesn't encourage true open endedness (but that isn't much different than how a lot of "factions" in games are presented anyways). I'm just saying that it doesn't suffer from the linear, limited character focus of storylines like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. It may not be the most ideal theme for an mmo, but it certainly isn't as restrictive as those two are either.

Not Star Warsy enough.  Needs more iconic game play.  :evil:

Star Wars: Big = Technology. Star Trek: more open ended. This is the IP with the biotech hybrids like the ST5 Probe and the Planet Eater (with an awesome followup in Peter David's Vendetta) as well as the sentient being like Gomtu (sp?) and those jellyfish from the ghey first episode of TNG. The closest analog in Star Wars would be Zenoma Sekot, but that's a whole planet. Otherwise it's mostly bio/nano-tech like Yuuzhan Vong, sorta of nature's answer to the Borg.

Aside from flexing the inner geek though, both IPs would be fine for both Game and World.