From the day I first heard they were going to do a Star Trek-based MMO, I knew two things: firstly, that whoever dared attempt such a thing was extremely brave; and secondly, that I would almost certainly be plunking down my cash to see how it came out. Because, let’s face it: while I’ve gone through periods of denial, debunking, and disenchantment, I am, at heart, still a Trekkie¹.

What I did not know was whether it would actually be good, meaning both a fun MMO to play, and decent Star Trek lore.

And now? I’m afraid I still don’t know. Not for sure. There’s a lot of potential here. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and I’m definitely  still rooting for it. I’m subscribing when the release comes up in a couple of weeks.

But the game shows signs of not having quite enough resources spent on its development, which means that I don’t think it will truly be release-quality on release day. Of course, these days, nothing is. It doesn’t bother me, personally, but I know it will turn off a lot of people, which could affect the long-term viability of the game.

Before I get into the nitty and the gritty — which has gotten rather lengthy, let me summarize my feelings about the game so far:

The Good

• Strong Star Trek feel. Granted, this is essentially the “future” of Star Trek, so much is different, but the evolution from TNG, DS9, and VOY is pretty clear.
• Interesting and somewhat complicated character class system. There are three broad classes–Engineering, Tactical, Science–for your character, each with three specialties to choose from. But then you also select Bridge Officers–NPC “pets”–from each of those classes, with their own separately trainable skills that add to your own. And then, once you’ve promoted past Lieutenant, you can choose between three starship classes–Cruiser, Escort or Science–each with three variants per class, to either enhance or compliment your skills and those of your bridge crew. You can also switch out bridge crew assignments and ship types on a per mission basis (assuming you can afford multiple ships), providing great tactical flexibility without having to run many alts.
• Quests chains are structured like episodes, with each one designed to be able to be completed in about an episode’s worth of time.
• Dual-mode play, with space missions and ground missions. Quest chains often include both.
• Not a lot of running around to get between points in a quest chain. Easy to get from action to action.
• Automatic teaming in instances. If you enter a mission area without a team, and others have entered at around the same time, by default you’ll be automatically grouped together, allowing for casual “pick-up” groups. This feature is entirely optional, however, and can be turned off if you always fly solo or always with a particular team.
• Endless potential for stories and new quests based on the richness of the Star Trek intellectual property. Whole areas of Trek lore are not yet touched, e.g. The Dominion/Gamma Quadrant; the Mirror Universe; etc.
• Extremely flexible character creation (a Cryptic Studios hallmark). Several classic Federation races available as templates, plus make-your-own-alien ability.
• Attractive user interface (with improvements on the way before release).
• Reasonably straightforward, easy to learn controls.
• Leveling system meshes neatly with a rank structure. Start at Ensign for tutorial; then 10 grades each of Lieutenant, Lt. Commander, Commander, Captain and Admiral, for 51 levels, total. Bridge officers promote separately based on how you distribute their skill points.
• Skill point/tech tree system replaces traditional fantasy-game stats. Unlike EVE online, training is instantaneous if you have the points. You accrue points for every mission, but only spend them when you get promoted. Separate bridge officer points also accrue for events such as successful kills in a battle, and can be spent training and leveling up bridge officers.
• Sound and music are awesome.
• Massive space battles possible!
• Starships handle much like you’d expect for Trek ships. Turns are relatively slow.
• Starship can be customized within reason. Example: there are three different Light Cruiser classes available at the outset. You can use one of them, or mix and match parts, and tweak stylistic elements.
• Ship equipment is also customizable. Example: at one point, I picked up a disruptor emplacement as loot, and was able to replace my standard forward phasers with it, boosting my damage-dealing capability.
• Space sequences allow movement in all three dimensions (but see The Bad below).
• Klingon faction skills and ship classes vary appropriately from Federation classes (but see below for many deficiencies in the Klingon faction right now).

The Bad

• Betas are inherently not finished yet, but with only two weeks to go, this beta feels like it has three months worth of work left on it.
• Instancing system is great for distributing load, but provides less immersive experience than WoW’s more seamless environment.
• Some features conceptually fine but terminology takes you out of the “Trek” experience. Example, “Sector Space” for traveling between star systems at warp.
• Auto-teaming feature can be abused. You could warp into a system, “join” a team, and then sit back and let them do all the work while you rack up skill points.
• Only two playable factions: Federation (but many races) and Klingon. However, this is not structural and could be expanded.
• Klingon faction has to be unlocked by playing at least six levels as a Fed. No seperate Klingon tutorial.
• Klingon faction focused almost entirely on PvP. There is little-to-no Klingon-side storyline yet.
• Graphics, especially groundside, feel dated.
• Space-based maneuvering unnecessarily limited. Example: you can adjust your attitude and fly upward or downward, but you can only adjust it +/-80 degrees or so. You should be able to turn cartwheels with your ship, if you wanted. Similarly no way to simply change “elevation” without changing attitude, like in The Wrath of Khan.
• Early missions lack depth. Some fear that later missions might as well. This, however, could be easily corrected; that is, it’s not a deep structural problem, just a creative one that could be solved if the demand is there and Cryptic is willing.
• It is possible to succeed in space battles using fairly redundant tactics. You’ll succeed better and faster if you’re smarter about it, but the game allows you to be lazy, leading to criticism that the battles are “boring” by design. They’re not if you pay attention to all the skills afforded you by your bridge officers, but nothing about the game forces you to do so.
• Incredibly poor server resource planning. Either Cryptic honestly didn’t know how popular their game would be in Open Beta, or Atari refused to spend the money. Result: it’s hard to get in to play the beta right now! If this short-sightedness extends to launch, game could be killed by its own early popularity.

Plot Summary

The year is 2409CE, roughly 30 years since Star Trek: Nemesis. In 2387, the Hobus Star exploded violently, and the resulting shockwave wiped out the Romulan homeworlds. Ambassador Spock successfully neutralized the explosion, but not in time to save Romulus and Remus, and has since disappeared, presumed dead²

Since then, the Klingons have gotten more aggressive, horning in on Romulan territory and generally taking advantage of the chaos. Eventually, the Klingons went to war with the Gorn. In attempting to mediate, the Federation found themselves increasingly opposing Klingon aggression, until finally, the Klingons broke the Khitomer Accords, leading to a long period of conflict.

So now, much like during the Dominion War era, everything is in turmoil. The Federation and the Klingons are essentially at war, with the conquered Gorn and the mercenary Naausicans on their side; Cardassia is trying to make itself a real power again; the surviving Romulans are splintered into factions; Orions are having fun taking advantage of the turmoil; and to top it all off, the Borg have made a fresh appearance after some time of silence.

Cry, “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war!

There are a lot of implications to this state of affairs. One, of course, is that this is not the peaceful universe Gene Roddenberry really hoped for. It’s the more warlike universe that tends to fire up a certain subset of Trekkies’ imagination³. It’s the same sort of take on Trek that fueled FASA’s old RPG, and Starfleet Battles and its computerized successor, Starfleet Command.

It also provides a decent in-story excuse for the somewhat odd decision to put a junior officer–that would be you, the player–in command of a starship early in their career. Starfleet needs people who can command starships, period. While greater experience will lead you to opportunities to command more capable ships, you’ll be in command pretty much as soon as you complete the early tutotiral mission (your personal pilot episode, if you will).

Lastly, it means that there’s no shortage of action to be had, and a wide variety of enemies to fight. I think it remains to be seen whether the AIs for NPC ships vary in their weapons and tactics enough for that variety to really be more than cosmetic, but I have some hopes.

My main point of comparison is World of Warcraft. There are a lot of different creatures to fight in that game, and they don’t all fight the same way. Murlocs, for example, tend to be very hardy and very nasty to fight at a given level, and are slightly more likely to gang up on you, while most animals at the same level or lower as yourself are easy pickings and often can even be taken two at a time. It’s not yet clear whether a similar variety will obtain in STO, or if all NPC cruisers, for example, will be more or less the same in their tactics.

Gameplay Mechanics

In a broad sense, this game owes a great deal to a much, much older Trek-themed game, often called simply “Star Trek” or, in one version, “Super Star Trek“, along with commercial games like “Star Raiders” based on similar ideas. The basic structure went something like this: the galaxy divided up into some number of quadrants or sectors or whathaveyou–Classic Trek and TNG were both maddeningly vague about such terminology, so games based on Classic Trek tended to make it up as they went a long, too. Viewed from a galaxy map, you could get some sense of the threat level–long range scan would reveal the threat for the immediately surrounding regions and the map would then retain that data until it changed. You warped from quadrant to quadrant, and when you entered a given quadrant you were presented a short range scan map that showed your position and that of your adversaries, if any, along with any stellar bodies you might have to avoid (some versions, you could navigate yourself into a star and burn up!) and starbases you could use for refueling.

The space-based missions in Star Trek Online work kind of the same way, although they’ve been wrapped in a more elaborate story, and there isn’t a fixed number of enemies to destroy across the whole galaxy, but a constantly regenerating threat. Space missions are also often chained together–so you’ll be moving around in a particular sequence to complete a quest chain–and also often linked with away-team quests.

And that, right there, is one of the things that could set STO apart from the other MMOs out there. There are lots of ground-based MMOs, where you and some number of friends and NPC pets run around from place to place doing stuff. There are a couple of MMOs (most notably EVE Online) where “you” are essentially a starship flying around with some number of friends doing stuff. There are none that I’m aware of that incorporate both sets of mechanics. In EVE, for example, you never really see…you. You see an icon of you, but most of the time, you see your ship, which is your real avatar in the game.

In STO, however, you’ll be asked periodically to beam down with an away team (or, if you prefer Classic terminology, landing party). You materialize on a planet, ship, or station with some number of either NPC “bridge officers” (essentially humanoid pets, not unlike hunters’ pets in WoW) or fellow player-characters, depending on whether you’re part of a team or not. At that point, it’s fairly straightforward, ground-based MMO mechanics.

There is one twist that I really like: your angle relative to your adversaries, both in space and on the ground, makes a huge difference. In space, you have to contend with shields. The mechanic here parallels the Starfleet Command very closely. You have four shields; as they get hit by energy weapons like phasers, they weaken. After they go down, you start to take hull damage. Shields regenerate, and hull can be repaired, so it’s all about taking less damage than you can regenerate/fix your way out of. Unlike Starfleet Command, there doesn’t seem to be a concept of subsystem damage that I’ve seen, yet.

On the ground, you have a personal shield (something we tend to only see on the Borg in the televised series, but it’s been 30 years in-continuity, and you’re at war, so things have changed), but you don’t have to worry about shield facings. Instead, you have to worry about flanking attacks. If you’re flanked, you take greater damage (implying that the shields protect your front more than anything else).

All of these mechanics work for NPC adversaries as well as yourself, however. So, in space, your tactics will be to use phasers or disruptors to thin out one or more shield facings and then deliver torpedoes through the gap. On the ground, you’ll want to flank your enemies as often as possible to get the best damage potential out of your weapons.

Another way this game will stand out amongst MMOs is the way it handles group action. By default, all players are set up to auto-join ad hoc teams. What this means is that, if you’re flying solo, and enter a system at roughly the same time as other players, you will be automatically teamed up with them.

As currently implemented, this leaves itself open to some abuse. As the latecomer to a party, you could choose to just sit back and let your “teammates” take all the punishment while you reap the benefits, since all quest goals are immediately shared⁴.

Leaving that aside, however, I find I like the idea quite a lot. I do tend to play these games alone. My schedule so rarely matches up with that of other friends playing the game (and I refuse to schedule my life around the game, for example, to fit a raiding schedule) that I find it easier to explore on my own, and occasionally team up on an ad hoc basis. STO makes this kind of exploration a first-class citizen of gameplay by making it automatic. So far, it’s worked out well for me, but I suspect that I’ve also been fortunate enough not to get teamed up with jerks!

There are also large-scale battles–Fleet Actions–that are basically standing raids you can fly into at any time and participate in. These are truly awesome in scope–think about the battle to retake Deep Space 9. Fleet Actions are sometimes part of a quest chain, as well, but because of the auto-teaming effect, you don’t have to fly into them with a raiding party already put together. Even flying solo, you can join the battle and be effective.

Of course, these mechanics are optional. If you prefer to experience the game truly 100% alone, or simply to choose your own company, you can turn auto-join off, or make it a prompted option. You can form more traditional teams at any time with a fairly typical /invite command. Social management is built into the game, as with most modern MMOs, but is also available via the STO website, which is a nice touch.

Leveling Up

Having Star Trek, and hence, Starfleet, as part of the story lends the leveling structure a nice easy metaphor: ranks in the fleet. Although you will often be addressed as “Captain”⁵ because you command a starship, you begin as an Ensign for the tutorial, then get promoted to Lieutenant 1. Each rank from that point forward has 10 grades, so you progress from Lieutenant 1 to Lieutenant 10, thence to Lieutenant Commander 1 and so on up through Admiral 10, providing a total of 51 levels. The downside is that it’s not at all clear how/if they’ll extend this in later expansions, the way that WoW has kept people who are already at endgame interested by extending the level cap with each expansion.

Since this is not a swords-and-sorcery style game, the usual INT/CON/DEX/STR/etc. attribute system is entirely absent here. Instead, everyone starts out with a certain baseline of skill, and with four bonus abilities or traits. If you choose a standard race, one or two of these will be racial traits and the other two will be free choice; if you make a custom race, you can choose all four.

As you advance, you gain skill points, which you can spend to improve your talents and those of your crew (as you acquire crew). This works a lot like a technology tree in a 4X-style game, except that you don’t have to explicitly research new skills. You can see the whole tree from the start, although of course, you do have to progress through the tree, and some skills will only be available once you reach a particular rank.

At some point (which I haven’t actually reached yet, myself), you’ll also begin acquiring Energy Points. These can be used as currency to improve, or replace, your starship. As you gain in rank, you also eventually unlock more powerful ships. The game is structured in such a way to make it somewhat optional whether you want to “purchase” these more powerful ships, or instead upgrade your existing one. You can actually have up to eight ships at your personal command, but only one at a time, so you can specialize if you like, and take different ships out for different kinds of mission.

Class Act

The STO approach to character classes, while somewhat analogous to other MMOs, is also unique in the way things can be combined.

You, yourself, can be one of three broad classes: Engineer (think Scotty, O’Brien, Janeway), Tactitcian (think Sisko, Worf, Chekhov), or Scientist (think Spock, Dax, Picard). Engineers are strong and smart, able to hold their own in a fight and also to improve the equipment of themselves and their team. Tacticians are the damage dealers, with bonuses for tactics and stealth. Scientists are support classes.

In addition, as the game progresses, you gain bridge officers — NPC pets. You can have up to five of them, and each one can also be selected from among the three classes. If you like a balanced crew, this means you can have two of each (counting yourself). Or, you could choose to emphasize one over the other.

How many of these officers you can actually have in play at any given time, however, varies. In space scenarios, you only have so many consoles, starting out with one of each type, so you can only have one of each type of officer active at a time. For ground missions, you have up to five slots in addition to yourself (corresponding to the six transporter pads). If you’re running solo and don’t have five bridge officers, the extra slots can be filled with Redshirts. If you’re teamed up, then some of the slots will be filled by your teammates and possibly some of THEIR bridge crew, so it becomes more complicated.

In both space and ground scenarios, each different NPC offers different advantages and abilities that you can deploy as needed. For example, you may have a science officer who knows how to program a torpedo spread. Activate that capability, and you have up to 30 seconds to fire the spread (basically, the next time you fire torpedoes, provided it’s within 30 seconds).

Your bridge officers as a whole earn their own pool of skill points, which you must decide how to distribute among them to improve their skills when you level your own skills up.

Finally–and here’s the really neat twist–there are four broad classes of starship, all of them are available to all officers. You start out aboard a Light Cruiser–a Miranda Class (USS Reliant from The Wrath of Khan) or one of two similar classes of ship (and you get a chance to choose and to some degree customize exactly which, but they all work more or less the same). Once you progress to Lt. Commander (which I haven’t yet), you unlock the other three categories, which somewhat parallel the character classes. Cruisers (think Enterprise) are generalists and function somewhat as tanks, able to absorb a fair amount of damage but also deal it out. Escorts (think Defiant) are damage dealers with somewhat thin skins, but fast. Science vessels (think Grissom, but hopefully with a more competent captain) have strong defenses and support capabilities, but are comparatively weak on damage-dealing. As you level up, you gain access to more powerful ships in each category, but again, you can also choose to simply upgrade the one you have.

As I indicated earlier, you can have up to eight ships, assuming you’ve earned the energy points for them, so you don’t have to discard an older ship when you buy a newer one. This also means you can keep ships of the different types around and mix and match as missions demand it. Ultimately, you go into battle (in a space scenario) with a mixture of your talents, your crew’s talents, and your ship’s unique abilities and equipment.

And that is, at least potentially, very nifty!

Having an Episode

Another clever touch is the way the quest chains are structured. The basic structure of the quests pulls from features frequently found in actual Star Trek episodes, and pulls them together into sets of related missions that can be reasonably completed within the time it might take to watch an episode.

I like this structure on several levels. First of all, it gives a better sense of accomplishment. Quest chains in WoW can go on for several iterations, often widely enough spaced that it can take 10 minutes just to run between points. Quest chains in STO, at least so far, are only 3-6 missions long, and travel between missions tends to be quick (unless the servers are being laggy; then loading instances can be time consuming).

It also, of course, lends to the Star Trek feel of the environment. That’s obvious sort of important here. You want players to kind of feel like they’re in a Star Trek episode.

The downside, however, is that at the moment, there is not a lot of depth to these stories. Here’s an example of what I mean. In Classic Trek, it was not uncommon for Enterprise to be sent on a patrol mission and encounter something unexpected; or to be sent to perform some diplomacy only to find the Klingons got there first and are working to counter them; or some other such thing. That sort of mission is represented here. All well and good.

But usually what made those stories truly interesting as stories was the personal dimension. When Enterprise encounters the wreck of Constellation and the planet killer that mangled it, the story is made much more interesting by the tragedy of Kirk’s friend, Matt Decker. “Return of the Archons” is more interesting because both Sulu and McCoy become absorbed by Landru, and we see their shipmates’ reactions and efforts on their behalf.

So far, there is no effort to reflect that kind of personal depth in the storylines. Maybe it isn’t really feasible for an MMO, and maybe as I get more immersed in the game as it is, I won’t really miss it. Right now, however, I find myself wondering how much more awesome the game could be if they could somehow find a way to add that personal dimension to the stories. It would take this kind of game to an entirely new dimension.

In the meantime, things feel surprisingly similar to the old BASIC Trek games I mentioned above. — fly from sector to sector killing things and periodically checking in at a starbase to refuel. Which isn’t all bad, because I LOVED the old BASIC Trek game (and Star Raiders and other similar games) in their day. But I do think this game will need a little more depth to survive.

To Boldy Go…?

Star Trek Online is a very ambitious game at heart, being made on a shoestring. In that regard, it is very much like Classic Star Trek. That gives me a lot of hope, because Classic Trek managed to do some surprising things with its shoestring.

I’m concerned, however, that Cryptic’s backers and publishers, Atari, will not invest the resources necessary to truly make this title as great as it clearly could be. Most of the people making such decisions are not Trek fans or even necessarily gamers, themselves. They’re business people out to make a buck. I don’t deny anyone the right to make a buck, but I’d rather they did so making a truly kick-ass, long-term sustainable product of the same caliber of World of Warcraft than making something quick and dirty that trades entirely on a name and has no real long-term survival plan.

I’m not saying that’s what’s happening here. I have no special insider insight in that regard. And I will say that it is remarkable that STO is in as good shape as it’s in after only 18 months of development, when games like this often take 3 years or more to get to beta. Indeed, a previous attempt to create an online Star Trek game took 4 years and never made it out of the concept art stage!

There is tremendous potential here. I really hope they can fulfill it.

Tags:geeky goodness, mmorpg, Star Trek, startrekonline, sto