Star Trek Online: Here We Go Again!

[Ratman_tf]

That trailer was a mess. A. Mess.

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?

[Trippy]

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. 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.

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

[mutantmagnet]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

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. 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.

Id be one of those people. I think.

[Cyrrex]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

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.

[Draegan]

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.

[Musashi]

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.

[kildorn]

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

[Ratman_tf]

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

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.

[jason]

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

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

[Ingmar]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

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

[Simond]

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. 

[Draegan]

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

Is this a catass forced grouping MMO request?

[Mrbloodworth]

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

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..

[Ingmar]

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

Is this a catass forced grouping MMO request?

Star trek is about GROUPS.

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.

[kildorn]

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.

[Draegan]

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

[Ghambit]

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.

[kildorn]

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.

[Evildrider]

I just want to be a Ferrengi damn it!   

[Ghambit]

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

[mutantmagnet]

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

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*

[Slyfeind]

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.

[Ghambit]

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

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*

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

[mutantmagnet]

Picard was practically supporting cast.

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?

Just turn on the holographic Engineer.

You got me there.

[ahoythematey]

Picard was supporting cast?  There are four lights!

[MahrinSkel]

 

[Venkman]

Great trailer - Cryptic is a solid studio

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.

[ahoythematey]

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.

[UnSub]

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

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.

[Venkman]

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...

[Ratman_tf]

Edit for redundancy. Move along.

[Ratman_tf]

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

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!