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Star Trek Online: Important Aspects of the Franchise
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood takes a look at the Star Trek franchise and identifies a number of elements that he would like to see replicated in Cryptic's Star Trek Online to help recapture the tone and feel of the IP.
;)
Developing an MMORPG based on a popular, pre-existing intellectual property is a tricky business. There are many expectations that need to be met, and every fan of whatever franchise it is that you're basing your game on has a different opinion of what elements from the original need to be there.
Star Trek Online is certainly no exception to this rule. Star Trek fans, after all, have a reputation for being not only, well, fanatical about their franchise, but also extraordinarily picky about how their universe is presented. With that in mind, it's safe to say that there is absolutely no way that every single fan of Star Trek, let alone fans of the MMORPG genre as a whole, will be satisfied with whatever final product Cryptic Studios presents to its audience.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
They definately have some big shoes to fill here.
Say hello, To the things you've left behind. They are more a part of your life now that you can't touch them.
The last two, no. At least not at launch. To difficult to pull off w/ an emerging community, and may just be taken as out-of-context by everyone. Those are more personal to the writer, then to the IP as a whole.
The rest though, dead on. It's a shamne that a developer hasn't created a game w/ the care and depth that Star Trek deserves. B/c lets be honest here: w/ less then 3 months to launch, we're pretty much getting what's in beta. And at 3 months to launch w/ CO, it was still regarded as it was launched: clunky, unfinished and shallow. History tends to repeat itself.
Well said, Jon...well said.
Good thinking. I agree with the article.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
There have been so many blaaaa Star Trek games over the years that have made most of us shake our heads I am hoping that they do it good.
So far they are already off on the wrong foot buy only allowing those who bought life time membership to chapions online to do the beta.
I still have some hope but not much.
Nailed it. (Except the last 2 should be rare; maybe even once per character.)
I have very little confidence in Cryptic to deliver more than Champions Online.
I lost hope when I saw the PC Gamer cover with a cleavage showing Vulcan seductress. I see now that Amazon pre-orders get a borg bridge officer. What? and What? Sure, you had Seven, but she should be rare in canon.
Although the recent news of walking on bridges is promising, as far as I understand, it is an instanced social hub. You can't control your ship. Additionally, I would think it would be easy enough to build turbolifts to other parts of your ship.
It sounds like this writer is not fond of the concept of players writing their own backstories. Just as sure as you can make your own race, you can make up your own backstory to go along with it. The funny part about that is that you don't even 'need' anything in game to do that, you just do it yourself. Now, they could add in a little backstory space like with what Champions Online and CoX do with their character biography, but they don't have to. The NPC Bridge officers that you create? Make up their backstories. There's a chance that the NPC bridge officers that you can pick up along the way may have their own backstories already, but if they don't? Make it up yourself.
As for Alternate Realities and Time Travel, it was good in TOS when those concepts were relatively fresh and new in the 1960s, but TNG and beyond seem to have beaten the concept to death. Now it's just cliched, overused, and cheap.
I, for one, can do without time travel. Very over used plot device in the Trek universe. Agreed with everything else.
Time travel doesn't make or break Star Trek for me. It was rarely done well: Voyager just blew up! Oops, guess not, it was all a time travelling plot, nothing really mattered. Oh well, join us next week!
But when done well, such as it was in ST:TNG "Cause and Effect", then you have a story that captures the essence of the Star Trek paradigm: a story about ideas framed in science, and solved through human ingenuity.
But I agree with the rest of Jon's article.
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Things I expect.
1. I want to be able to log on every night i play the game and experience something new. I want the missions to suprise me. Exploration is what it is all about for me. If star trek online at all begins to feel like a grind, i will have to give it up. It needs to not feel like a mmo, it needs to feel like star trek.
2.Ship interiors. They just recently announced that at launch you will be able to walk around on your bridge. This is promising. One third of star trek takes place on the ship, one third on the planets and the other third in space. They need to expand ship interiors to all parts of the ship. I appreciate that cryptic realized that ship interiors had to be in the game. That was the biggest worry for me.
3.quests should not be go to a kill b c and d, and return to a. Just tell me where to go and a little information about why i am going there. Once i get there, throw me a curve. Missions should not be repeditive at all in this game. They should make me want to go on them just to see what happens.
4. I picked up CO a few months ago simply to see what kind of game cryptic could make. Honestly I dont like champions, but here is my hypothesis. When I learned this company was going forward with STO. I knew they would quickly dump champions to the side of the road to focus on this project. Champions became this companies second favorite child instantly. I am suprised they even finished the game. Star trek has been around for fourty years. Cryptic was given the keys to daddys ferrari. I am not suprised champions feels like a neglected game. I am pretty sure cryptic will be more focused on the star trek game.
5. I want missions that revolve around my crew, like the author of this post, the crew should be focused on during missions. They should be part of the mission plots. The crew must have some personality.
6. Lots of updates after the game comes out. Players of this game will be very thirsty for content. When you except the challenge of creating a game that has no boundaries. You have commited yourself to expand the game continuously. Space has no edge. Player will want to explore. You have to make this game so that player can do that. If the trekies start to feel boxed in, cryptic will have a problem on thier hands.
"To boldly go where everyone has gone before" better never be an issue
That was the exact episode I was thinking of in relation to time travel. That is probably in the top 5 or 10 of my favorites from TNG. The others I can think of where time travel was done very well was the final TNG episode "All Good Things....", and even Star Trek IV. I just thought it was a little clever the way the whales were worked into the storyline.
I swear, if the first quest is "Go kill 10 tribbles", I'm going to put a disruptor to my head...that is after I shoot a photon torpedo at Cryptic's headquarters.
1)Characters on the crew: I agree with this point I would certainly prefer that the crew comes off as more than just "stats" and have some type of mechanics that allow for "personality" to be shown and I do recall reading somewhere that some of the bridge officers and such you will be able to upgrade to will come from some of your missions so that I see is being taken care of in some way but again I would hope it does not end once you get them into your crew and then they just become relegated to stats again. But as one player mentioned and as I often do you can actually make your own backstories and hopefully they include a mechanic to show that.
2)Exploration:I'm not overly concerned about this because I think the system generator tends to take care of this and of everything I've read it seems that the devs have mentioned more about that system and how it will work much like the show than they mention combat (As I've heard many others complain).
3)Culture:I don't consider myself a Trekkie or even a Trek fan, I'm much more of a sci fi fan with a strong like of space based ip's and Star Trek is certainly the second most well known and in my eyes the second best, having said that I don't kow a whole lot about the races cultures but I do look forward to learning more from playing the game.
4)A sense of Humor: Again I am not a Trekkie so maybe this is one of the reasons I wasn't *shrugs* I don't know but again since I am not immersed in the world I can only assume that's why I could care less if the game has a sense of humor. As a matter of fact I think I would prefer to avoid anything that was trying to come off as funny because it was for me one of the turn offs of ST, while many people loved the tribbles episode it to me was one of the reasons the series continually failed to bring in bigger audiences.
5)Alternate Realities/Time Travel: To me these two are kind of hand in hand and I again didn't particularly care for this aspect of the show either. For one when you are constantly shifting around these alternate realities and times you make it that much more difficult for new people to actually catch on to what you are doing and it becomes an easy cop out to try crappy ideas and just dismiss them with an alternate time line. I'd prefer they stuck mostly to dealing with the one universe we are in and keep it mostly a constant. Given though that Star Trek does in fact use these conditions so often it would be nice if they had some type of special mission arc come up once or twice maybe dealing with alternate realities and time lines but nothing that just randomly pops up all over the game.
In all I am for addition to any game but I don't see most of this list as a game breaker because as I've stated many times before the amount of true Trekkies who were totally endeared to all that was ST have never been enough people to keep many of the series relevant the only one truly succesful being TNG so I don't think that appeasing "Trekkies" is as important as many Trekkies do. Star Trek is pop culture lore and it will stand on that fact as long as they make a good engaging game.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
[quote]Time travel doesn't make or break Star Trek for me. It was rarely done well: Voyager just blew up! Oops, guess not, it was all a time travelling plot, nothing really mattered. Oh well, join us next week!
But when done well, such as it was in ST:TNG "Cause and Effect", then you have a story that captures the essence of the Star Trek paradigm: a story about ideas framed in science, and solved through human ingenuity.
But I agree with the rest of Jon's article.[/quote]
I was thinking the exact same thing. Honestly, I would like the "storytelling" to be more on par with Star Trek: TNG's and Deep Space Nine's writing than Voyager or Enterprise. I guess we'll have to wait and see how truly "espisodic" the missions are. Cryptic claimed that they were writing missions as if they were writing a storyline for a show. So, like another poster, I will also take a photon torpedo to Cryptic HQ if they hand out "kill 10 tribble" quests. However, I am keeping hope alive here.
(It's not as if they don't have reams and reams "intel" to use as fodder for mission ideas. Between the TV shows/books/movies..heck even Fanfiction on the Internets...there is absolutely no reason why this game should have simple, boring kill X missions.)
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Played: Age of Conan, DDO, Saga of Ryzom, SWG, DaOC, MxO, EQ2, and so on...
Wish List: Jumpgate Evolution, Star Wars: TOR, Star Trek
This will be a run of the mill mmo with trek elements and objects, a skin. I'm sure you'll have some story arcs revolving around some of the more infamous events of the show but that will be it. If you're expecting an all singing, all dancing quest system with rich full objectives and story I think people are going to be thoroughly disappointed. Too much effort and money required.
To the fans (myself included) this is one of the most important ip's that exists, to cryptic this is a revenue source. Nothing more, nothing less.
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Unfortunately, mrw0lf is almost certainly correct. What you'll get from Cryptic is a very basic, very generic MMO. Expecting more is just setting yourself up for disappointment.
I hope they use as much of the Trek universe as they can, time travel, has it's place and could be fun, as a way to visit, the iconic characters and encounters of the past..
Largely the more I have heard (and perhaps more tellingly the more Cryptic has not talked about certain important elements) the more I agree with your sentiments. A proper Star Trek game would be exceedingly hard to do. I agree with Cryptic in giving everyone their own ship (can't depend on people logging in to have a crew), but then you run into the very difficult barrier of properly representing all the sorts of characters you could have on the crew. Given what one of the writers said a couple months back, they plan on "solving" this problem by having the writing be generic enough for anyone to say it, which means we aren't going to see strong and iconic characters as far as I can tell.
They don't seem to want to talk about the random quest system much either, which makes me think it isn't going to be very good. Sure, maybe all the worlds look different, but they've implied the random quest stuff is going to be pretty basic -- just look at the comparisons when they talk about episodes. A go fetch mission on random world 1234123 is not going to feel much different from one on world 235232 in all likelihood; scenery changes won't mask the repetition.
Honestly, I am not sure the technology and processing power is really there yet for a proper Star Trek MMO (since you need tons of computer generated personalities for all the various crews people could get). You'd pretty much need a homemade "translator" to handle the crew dialogue. For instance, if the science officer is supposed to say he the enemy ship is giving off strange gravity waves, then you'd need the basic form of that statement run through a program to get what you'd want for a Vulcan, Klingon, Betazed, Bajoran, etc science officer (to say nothing of how the personality might further differ). It's insane to write the dialogue for each possible member individually and it is flat to make it generic (like I said, Cryptic is going for the latter, from what they've said), so you need a program to modify what is said for the given personality/species of the crew member. Similarly, for random quests you'd need random NPCs generated with random personalities, wants, desires, etc, as well as objectives that are randomized, all this put together so that the actually behavior of the quest is emergent and is a result of those randomized elements (say you need to help a member of the Federation with a pirate attack as a random quest, well some sets of random parameters might mean you CAN negotiate with both sides and get a peaceful resolution, but if things are generated differently then perhaps one or both sides won't cooperate or perhaps it will just be a lot more difficult to find a compromise or maybe a happy solution just isn't possible AT ALL -- that does happen sometimes, even in Star Trek). That's a TON of work, but it would be awesome (and reusable in later MMOs certainly). We definitely aren't getting any of this though.
What STO is going to be is a pretty flat and boring game largely, with some decent episode questlines, but those questlines are going to be plagued with generic crew dialogue and generally not feel more than superficially like Star Trek, unless, perhaps, your crew happens to be composed of people who'd talk pretty generically anyway -- but who wants a crew like that?
Edit: Personally for fun story-based stuff I've been looking at DC Online, Star Trek Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Final Fantasy XIV. The latter two are looking the most promising to me (and they also look like they'll have the other elements I am looking for, such moving away from the Tank-Healer-DPS Trinity and more interesting and involved combat in general. To be fair, all four of those games look fairly good combat-wise, but I really want more than a fun combat system).
Good article. Though in a way (especially after whats gone on with the STO IP and after seeing other cryptic mmos) I feel sorry for them. They won't meet MMOers expectations, and if they do they will most likely focus to the casual - in doing so killing it for the hardcore and/or the pvp lovers. So its only a minor victory at best.
I love star trek, but seriously there is no chance they have of meeting all the wants of the OP or any true trek fan. Some of these responses make me wonder if people have ever played an mmo, let alone think about what they are asking cryptic to do - they are game devs, not magic content miracle workers (even if we really want or expect them to be, you can only hardcode so much randomness & functionality to appease everyone).
Basically, lower your expectations to a reasonable level - think of this game as "meh" to begin with, and hope they give the standard new mmo a decent star trek game feel (like some early / mid 90s star trek titles). And at the end of the day, if you want all the content you expect...grab a pen & some paper, a decipher hardback game manual or just your imagination & go buck wild.
In the end, I wish cryptic luck enough in competing against the upcoming mmo market (old republic, ffxiv - let alone expectations)...this might end up tabula rasa 2.0
"That's one of the things that makes me a little bit nervous about the character creation system, as dynamic as it is from an MMORPG standpoint, that allows players to make up their own races and looks for their characters."
This makes me somewhat nervous aswell, I mean like you say from a MMORPG standpoint and if this was some unknown new IP it would be awesome to be able to creat new races and have it blueprinted so that others can become that same race.
But then again they also said they are NOT making a game for Star Trek fans, but more making a game for MMORPG fans. So far it shows.....
For anyone intrested in what kind of races there are in the Star Trek Universe here is a list of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_races
Don't hold your breath. From all the publicly released information. They are slapping together the fastest cheapest game in every way and with release 80 days away with beta only recently started I'm not expecting any more than a WoW in space wanna be. SW-TOR is gonna be 10000 times better. Mark my words. The old republic may not come out until 2011. But it won't matter STO will be a blip on the MMO radar. The only reason STO is be released Feb 2nd is to beat SW-TOR to market to make a quick buck.
The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity. - Harlan Ellison
This will be another MMO made to a formula to suit all players. The article clearly shows this and it is a real shame as I am a ST fan myself, but I don’t have a uniform in the closet.
You may get crews at a later stage but you are talking one year plus, they will have more important issues to sort out.
It is going to be a Star Trek game Jon, but not as we know it.
Even the devs said this game was not designed for just the trek fans. This is another MMO targeted to the masses. Maybe some people are in denial but it is what it is. I am not expecting much of this MMO, just wait and see.
"If you want to populate my ship with NPCs, Cryptic, that's your call. But as a Trek fan, I'm putting the onus on you to make them an interesting and engaging part of my game experience."
I didnt know cryptic was making a game just for your taste.
As a ST fan myself I love the direction there going. *shrugs*
I swear, if the first quest is "Go kill 10 tribbles", I'm going to put a disruptor to my head...that is after I shoot a photon torpedo at Cryptic's headquarters.
Well there should be a quest to Kill Tribble's! Especialy if it's a Klingon Mission. After all they still sing about the Extermination of them, till DS9 brought them back. I also think they should handle any Time Travel mission's as they did on DS9, the mission in the background of the past event. Little interaction with the past to continue continuity but fun.
On a lighter note let's see a PvP Planet of attack and Defend the Tribble breeding grounds!