Pumping Irony

Cryptic recently pumped out their latest content — Borg Red Alerts — onto Star Trek Online‘s live server, Holodeck last week.

The official page I linked lists enough information to give the gist of how they can work, but I’ll go into a bit more detail here.

These Red Alerts are very similar to the Deep Space Encounters already in Star Trek Online but unlike a DSE, the Borg incursions are not stationary. Once per hour, the Borg send invasion forces into random sector blocks, and random instances of that sector block. For example, if there are enough players in the Regulus sector block to create three instances, the Borg might invade instance #2 but not #1 or #3. So in a sense, I could probably compare the Borg incursions to the random rift events in Rift, I think.

If you are in a sector block (and correct instance) that is being invaded, in the “low priority interaction” box on your UI (where the astrometrics toggle and other switches are found) a big flashing ALERT! Distress Call! button appears. If you click the button, your senior tactical officer will inform you of the situation and ask if you want to assist. An affirmative response will load you into the encounter instance, which has a maximum of five players.

First, and perhaps most importantly, any post-tutorial rank captain of either faction is eligible to participate in the Red Alerts! The battles themselves take place in instanced space, and the players and Borg NPCs are scaled — to an extent — to that encounter, so it makes for fantastic content for low-level players to rub elbows with the admiralty and still contribute. Not only do these battles scale to accommodate the full range of players, they are also cross-faction, as the Borg are a threat to both the Federation and the Klingon Defense Force so these Borg incursions are one of the few times Starfleet and KDF players can team up to fight a common enemy. Having said that, while I’ve been having a blast taking my Commander grade 4 tactical officer into these red alerts, it can get a little frustrating when you have captains joining who are still Ensigns flying their Miranda light frigates. Scaling or not, a Miranda simply doesn’t have enough weapons and console slots, and the other players have to make up for it or fail the encounter.

There are no incursions into the Eta Eridani, Gamma Orionis, or Pelia sector blocks. Every other sector block is fair game. Incursions are typically level 45. Players will be scaled up or down accordingly. However, there are two exceptions: encounters in the Zeta Andromeda sector block are level 51, but players less than level 45 will only be scaled up to 45. (I’ve heard joining a team with a Vice Admiral will scale you all the way to 51, though but have not tested to confirm this.) Players higher than 45 will maintain their level (unless they join a team and scale down to a lower level teammate). Encounters in the Orellius sector block are level 53 and again, lower level players will only be scaled up to level 45. So these two sector blocks will provide the highest level of challenge out of all the red alerts.

Once in the encounter, you’re in a wise space with a lot of Borg ships that are thankfully spaced apart enough to separate the battles. The first challenge is to defeat four Borg squadrons within 15 minutes. Succeeding at that will trigger the next phase: a huge Borg unimatrix command ship warps in, accompanied by various probes. The command ship itself is inspired by V’ger from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and apparently Gene Roddenberry hinted that the Borg created V’ger. Regardless, it’s becoming common to hear the command ship referred to in-game as “B’ger.” At the start of the battle with the Borg capital ship, it is imperative to eliminate its regeneration probes first, otherwise you can blast away ’til the cows come home, but those things will keep the command ship healed. The other probe types can safely be ignored. The command ship can also fire huge plasma energy blasts which need to be taken out before they hit another player (or a player runs into them) as one hit can destroy a player’s ship.

There are eleven sector blocks which get incursions, and each has its own accolade and daily mission, so chasing incursions nets you eleven dailies. The reward is either a level appropriate (random) item, or a level-appropriate badge. I choose the badge every time because I know those can be used to get new gear, whereas there’s a high chance I won’t be able (or won’t want) to use the random item awarded. In addition to the eleven sector accolades, there is a meta-accolade for defeating all the command ships, ten in all. The command ship in any given red alert is randomly chosen so you never know which one will show up. There’s also an accolade for destroying 2,000 (yes, you read that correctly, two thousand) Borg vessels plus the accolades that were already in the game for destroying Borg ships, taking plasma damage, and so on, so these Red Alerts certainly give the Accolade Hunters out there some goals to strive for.

The space incursions are Phase 1 of the Borg system update. Phase 2 will be ground incursions, which will be interesting since the Borg are tougher on the ground now and their shields adapt like we saw on the tv series. Phase 3 will be revamped versions of the Borg Special Task Force (STF) missions, which are end-game missions for only players, no bridge officer companions. Then Phase 4 which is the Into the Hive STF where players finally fight the Borg Queen. Phase 4 is hopefully scheduled by the end of the year, or at least prior to Season 5 launching, so take your best guess then work backwards from there to guesstimate when the other phases might arrive, at least until Cryptic makes the official announcements.

Final thoughts:

One one hand it’s almost difficult to say these Borg incursions are “new content” per se, since the basic tech for them has been in the game all along. They could be looked at as “merely” randomly placed cross-faction Deep Space Encounters (DSEs). Like anything else in an MMO, including STO, concentrating too much on a single activity gets old. Grinding exploration missions, or patrol missions, or chasing Borg Red Alerts all day can get old real fast. But for someone like myself who likes to switch up between various activities, a sudden Red Alert in my sector block is a welcome change of events. The randomness and overall presentation of the Red Alerts can make them feel like “new content,” though and I suppose perception matters a great deal in that context.

It’s a shame there is no global notification system for these incursions. One would think that if these were that big a deal and the Borg were that big a threat, that Starfleet and the Klingon High Command would be sending out fleet-wide alerts to all captains. Instead, we only see the alert if we are in the sector block (and correct instance of that sector block) being invaded. To alleviate that, two players created and run a custom global chat named REDALERT that is strictly for reporting incursions, so if you’re into chasing after them, for now that is the best way to find out where the Borg are invading at any given moment.

My only real negative point to Red Alerts is that, unlike DSEs, players are not auto-teamed. When it’s only a 5-player battle it would certainly be helpful to not only have everyone scaled to the same point (especially on the two higher-level incursions) but speaking as a science captain who flies a science vessel for buffs and heals and working on an assault cruiser for higher spot healing on shields, I have one helluva time targeting ships I’m not teamed with, or even having a clue what their ship status is unless that ship happens to have my target’s aggro. I, for one, enjoy being auto-teamed in DSEs and I think it would certainly be helpful in these Borg incursions.

Finally, these Borg Red Alerts have one goal above all else: to be FUN.

Mission Accomplished!

I am still on yet another of my MMO Malaise breaks, which tend to be rather lengthy, but I did login to Star Trek Online last night and got a couple very nice surprises!

First, as soon as Arwellyn loaded in, the following Accolade popped up:

That’s the 400 Day Accolade! A few other things scrolled by onscreen very quickly so I checked the Accolade tab in the Journal to see what exactly it is.

Free respec token? Nice! I don’t think I’ve used any yet (probably need to once I come back and attempt some of the Fleet Actions and Special Task Forces) so one more added to my stack is appreciated.

Captain’s Table? No clue what that is. Should I care?

Captain’s Yacht! Now we’re talkin’ baby! Arwellyn was already in Earth Spacedock so she strolled over to the shipyard and turned in her token to get the sleek new personal yacht shuttle.

Sweet, eh? As Arwellyn was flying around ESD and I was trying to line up camera angles for screen shots, I swung around and saw she had the Arkenstone flying towards Earth. I was about to suggest she alter course then remembered Cryptic was supposed to be working on Starfleet Academy. I haven’t been paying attention to MMO news, even for the ones I play, so I wasn’t sure if it was in-game yet or not. Sure enough, the control to beam down to the Academy appeared on the UI! Off to the transporter room we went, and…

Starfleet Academy is truly a gorgeous zone! Check the scenery! Shuttles zip by overhead and of course the ubiquitous San Francisco bridge in the backdrop. No, you can’t jump the fences and explore. That would be cool someday, though.

Arwellyn ran around the entire zone checking out the sights. There are several memorial plaques placed all over the Academy zone that give historical information about the Academy. Reading them all rewards another Accolade!

Finally, after exploring the outside zone, time to enter the Academy building itself. The interior reminds me of an airport almost. There are NPCs waiting in turnstiles as if to buy tickets, though the vendor NPC is the tailor variety to change up one’s costume. At the far end is a bar, the 602 Club with two bartender NPC vendors.

Arwellyn did some exploring and Starfleet Academy even has three Holodecks! Want one!

Mechanic-wise, the Holodeck simply lets players select previous missions to replay, the same as the terminal in the captain’s ready room on a starship does. But it’s a friggin’ Holodeck! What might be neat,though at the risk of being considered a mandatory content gate, would be to say, have players craft a Holodeck (whether that makes sense or not is immaterial, bear with me) in order to play specific Holodeck content such as the TNG episodes where Picard played 1940′s-era detective Dixon Hill, and other episodes on the series that took place in Holodeck environments. Sort of alternate adventures that don’t have anything to do with the overarching storylines occurring in STO’s space sectors. Of course, that could also allow for more environments, etc. available for Foundry authors to create their own content as well.

The 602 Club is apparently going to be another of STO’s role-player’s hangouts, just like Quark’s bar on Deep Space 9. Indeed, for the time being, the entirety of the Starfleet Academy is what Cryptic calls a “social gameplay” environment. I don’t think (could be mistaken; again, I haven’t kept up on MMO news) the new Federation tutorial that starts in the Academy is in-game yet, so there’s no actual content to play here yet. Just run around, enjoy the view, read the plaques for the accolade and perhaps role-play at the 602 Club. In the photo above, you can clearly make out two vendor NPCs who sell drinks. There are a couple other NPCs there too, the others were players role-playing. Even the bartender on the left facing the wall was a player! He was playing the chatty bartender role and even went through the motions of going to the wall there to mix the drinks while talking it up then walking back to the customer with their drink and a smile. Funny stuff.

The July 2011 edition of Ask Cryptic for Star Trek Online is up and once again, Executive Producer Dan Stahl does an excellent job of fielding player questions (50 this month) regarding the game. Considering how busy the team is on finishing up Season 4 for its launch in a couple days, I’m impressed Dan took the time out beforehand to do this.

Bits of revealed information that appeal to me include:

• The next Feature Episode will take place around Deep Space 9, and the team hopes to get the Federation DS9 Fleet Action fixed up and back on the queue as well. The FE will also open up some missions in the Gamma Quadrant!
• Season 4 adds a new starbase for both Federation and KDF!
• The team is definitely looking at adding more sector blocks but Stahl has his R&D team looking at whether or not they can remove all the sector block instances in favor of a single, massive open space. If the tech works, he hopes they can include that change for Season 5! How freakin’ cool would that be?
• Season 4 did a complete overhaul to Kits and ranged combat on the ground, but didn’t touch melee. Prior to Season 5, the team hopes to overhaul melee to finish out ground combat.
• End Game. Not that there is currently much of an end-game to STO but that is becoming a priority now that Season 4 is about ready. They’re working on rebalancing and overhauling the existing STF’s first, adding hourly Borg Incursions, four new Fleet Actions coming in Season 4, then hopefully continuing with more end-game content. Sweet! I hope to do some of these someday, though I’ll either have to PUG or join a fleet that’s more active than our little blogger fleet, I fear.
• The new Qo’nos should go live with Season 4, and Starfleet Academy is planned for the end of this month as well. Each will be used for new tutorials for Federation or Klingon characters, and each new area will ship with Foundry hooks so that UGC authors can build missions in those new settings. Sounds like they’re also working on a Kobiyashi Maru scenario for the Academy tutorial also.

Plenty more good questions and answers from Dan Stahl. Go read the whole thing! As always, he is a shining beacon of a good role model for communicating with players.

I had planned on asking a question too since Vivox just launched in Champions Online and should go live with Season 4 in a couple days so I wondered whether Cryptic would allow players to create custom Vivox channels that could be used out-of-game. They allow players to participate on custom chat channels with any XMPP chat client such as Pidgin, and Vivox had their standalone client, Voon. The operative word there is “had,” unfortunately. Before asking my question, I thought it would be wise to check if Voon was still around (I still have it installed on my system) but apparently Vivox stopped development. Oh well.

Two weeks after Infogrames Atari announced it was divesting itself of Cryptic Studios, this morning’s Big Announcement was that Perfect World Co. Ltd. would be acquiring 100% equity in Cryptic for a cool $50 million USD. After their breakup with NCsoft, Cryptic was acquired by Infogrames Atari in 2008 for $28 million.

Naturally, MMO gamers immediately organized their Short Bus Army, driving by forums everywhere screaming the Chinese were taking over, all Cryptic games would be converted to a “pay to win” item shop and Star Trek Online would be converted to Free To Play (“F2P”).

Perfect World Entertainment developed and operates several Eastern-style MMOs, starting with Perfect World International, Jade Dynasty, Ether Saga Odyssey, and others, including their latest entry, Forsaken World.

The majority of the titles PWE developed have indeed been unapologetically Eastern in style, game play, and business model; a very particular style which does not go over nearly as well for Western audiences. PWE has been trying to expand its reach into global markets. Forsaken World is its first in-house title that PWE did research and made design decisions specifically to target Western consumers. I haven’t played myself (just finished installing FW but it’s updating while I write this) to have any personal opinion how well that turned out for them.

However, as part of their global expansion, PWE is not only developing and publishing their own in-house games, but are looking at publishing other studios’ work. PWE published Runic Games’ popular Torchlight last year, then ended up acquiring Runic Games. PWE has maintained a “hands off” approach for Runic, who continues to support Torchlight and are busy at work finishing up Torchlight 2 with a Torchlight MMO also on the back burner. This is an important consideration! To date, PWE hasn’t declared themselves automatic experts on Western gaming success (only 10% of sales of PWE’s games are from non-Eastern consumers) and so has left its first Western studio to their own devices. So much so that there is no mention of Perfect World on the Torchlight website and only a single text-only mention in the “About” section of Runic Games website. Compare that to pretty much any other video game — MMO or otherwise — where you’d see the publisher’s name and logo in several spots. I don’t recall Torchlight fans whining for the past year, do you? But no one whines and cries like the oh-so-self-important MMO Gamer.

More factoids to throw into the puzzle:

The original May 17 announcement from Infogrames Atari stated that Cryptic Studios was considered a “discontinued operation” as of March 31. That announcement wasn’t any sort of “up to the minute” news at all; it had been effective with full knowledge of all parties for over six weeks.

In the May 16 — the day before the Infogrames Atari divestiture announcement! — edition of Star Trek Online‘s Engineering Report, Executive Producer Dan Stahl made the following note which, at the time, no one picked up on: (emphasis mine)

STO continues to get great support at Cryptic and the strategic partnerships they are working on for our near future will be a huge benefit for our game. Together we are working on ways to ensure STO has many season to come.

Again, all this was in-the-know at Cryptic for some time. Buying a corporation isn’t quite the same as simply placing an order at a drive-through, paying at the window then driving off with your prize. It takes time, during which meetings take place. If Cryptic is happy with the solution that PWE presents — as Runic Games has been — I see no reason to immediately join the Short Bus Army and proclaim “d00m!” as if the sky were falling.

Cryptic has hired developers after March 31, apparently already knowing more money was heading to the studio:

We also have new blood starting in June as the team adds a new character artist, a new software engineer, and a new content designer. We’re still looking to hire an additional systems and content designer as well. I don’t know about you – but that has me really excited. Anytime our team grows like this is means more awesome is on the way.

Perfect World CEO Michael Chi made the following statements:

“This strategic acquisition will add attractive game titles to our portfolio, which will help us further penetrate into the U.S. and global online game markets.  More importantly, Cryptic Studios’ highly reputable development team and its technology platform will further strengthen our well-established R&D capabilities.  We deem this as another noteworthy achievement of our global expansion efforts.”

Again reinforcing their strong desire to break into Western markets. PWE’s in-house titles might be big in the Eastern market (I seem to recall Perfect World International having something like 22 million players?) they just don’t cross the gap to Western sensibilities, so it makes zero sense to think PWE will force Cryptic to adopt an Eastern style of microtransactions. Additionally, Mr. Chi makes it very clear that PWE is happy to have Cryptic’s technology in their fold. The Perfect World Engine isn’t a slouch but it’s certainly got its glitchy spots and rough edges but also caters to a different type of game environment than what we’ve seen the Cryptic Engine used for. It is possible PWE could wish to use the Cryptic Engine for their own in-house games? It’s also possible PWE could want to translate Cryptic’s games and bring them to the Eastern market, and that is where it’s not only possible, but very likely, that an Eastern business model could come into play.

Simply going off the satisfaction that Torchlight players have had over the past year of being published then acquired by Perfect World, I see no indication that any harm would come to Cryptic and their existing games. If anything, PWE has the funding to ensure continued development — and therefore continued market expansion– which Infogrames Atari did not, considering they’ve spent the past decade in a perpetual state of financial woe.

The Champions Online team still needs to work on their communication (compared to the Star Trek Online team, nearly every MMO’s Live Team pales, however) but the (new?) Producer is working on it. The May 2011 edition of Ask Cryptic came out a couple days ago (20 days after the STO version…) and answered, to various degrees, thirty-four question presented by the Champions Online players.

Some nice tidbits?

• Vivox integrated VOIP will be going onto both CO and STO test servers in June.
• As rumored, Champions Online will be starting story-based content updates called “Comic Series” similar in nature to Star Trek Online‘s “Feature Episodes.”

Our first Comic Series is called Aftershock. I am not going to give the story away but I can give you some ideas about the size and rollout of the series. Aftershock has a total of 6 issues. The first issue is scheduled to release Wednesday June 1, 2011 and each subsequent issue in the series will be released each Wednesday of the following weeks. Each issue will be available to play following its debut along with any previous issues. You will need to complete any previous issue in the series before you can play the latest in the series. Aftershock will wrap up the first week of July and once the entire series is out it will be playable as a complete adventure. Each issue targets about 30 minutes of gameplay, however, that time can be affected by a number of factors.

• The Comic Series will be free for Silver (ie. F2P) players also!
• The Foundry will be coming to Champions Online at some point but not in the next update.

At this time there are no solid dates for The Foundry for Champions Online. There are a few Foundry features I would like to see get wrapped up before we start porting The Foundry to Champs. Getting The Foundry working in Champs is actually easier than getting Champs ready for The Foundry. When we have a solid plan or an update we will be sure to let you know.

Both teams have their animators working on new run animations, though it sounds like STO’s may arrive before CO’s do. Hideouts are still coming along with shared storage. I’m not in a SuperGroup yet so I don’t know if there’s already the equivalent of STO’s “Fleet Bank” or if they just mean that currently in CO your characters have independent banks whereas in STO your bank is automatically shared between characters?

No news whatsoever from the Neverwinter team itself, just the occasional blurbs from the CO or STO team about importing (and exporting) tech to and from Neverwinter and some of the Foundry stuff they’ve added there. With Atari owning the license to D&D products, Neverwinter may be in a bit of a pinch. Atari claims they want out of the development side, so I’m not sure they would essentially “buy off” the Neverwinter team and spin it into its own mini-studio or not, especially since it’s using Cryptic’s tech (unless Atari by default owns all Cryptic assets?). I have high hopes for Neverwinter; an online co-op RPG is right up my alley after years of same ol’ same ol’ MMOs, especially if it uses a decent F2P model.

I also say it would be a good candidate for Cryptic to finally get a product onto the consoles as well, if it’s not an “MMO” and if it uses microtransactions, well, that’s what we’re accustomed to anyway over in console land. Buy the game, it connects to Cryptic’s dedicated servers, play for free and purchase content updates, fluff items, and they could have Avatar costumes and props as well. Think outside the box!

I spent some time last night catching up on some older missions that I didn’t take the chance to play while leveling, and one of the developers was chatting and answering a few questions about the upcoming Season 4, specifically the overhaul to the ground combat system.

I wish I could have stayed on to get more than just these few bullet points, but just from reading the dev talk about the changes and what the team is play-testing on their internal test server, I’m even more excited!

• The pace of ground combat is sped up dramatically. All weapons and ground devices have been re-tooled. I didn’t catch if ground abilities have been tweaked for the new system as well, unfortunately. Positioning and line of sight is important but there is no cover system. Also no advantage to aiming for a headshot in the current code, but they are not ruling out building that in sometime in the future.
• Pulse rifles have been outright re-designed and will now become (in the developer’s words) short- to medium-range “energy shotguns” that do a lot of blast (conical?) damage and a chance to knock your target down.
• The update is slated to hit the Tribble public test server on June 7 and go to the Holodeck live server on July 7, per Dan Stahl.
• While in “shooter mode” you can hotkey which enemy you want your away team to attack. I don’t know if this is a new function or just re-working the way the current “attack my target” function works, which is currently on the Away Team UI or by pressing the ‘Y’ key (default). The current default for toggling “shooter mode” and “RPG mode” is the ‘X’ key.
• In “shooter mode” you can also strafe-fire to hit multiple targets.
• Science officers running the Medic kit will want to be in “RPG mode” to heal. Probably due to difficult targeting teammates? I think this runs contrary to what was said in a recent Ask Cryptic though, where I thought they said we could easily aim at a teammate and click a heal ability?

Can’t wait to hear more about how the system will work, along with the Duty Officer system and more things coming in Season 4!

Oh, and despite the Atari vs. Cryptic financial situation, Dan Stahl also announced that Cryptic hired a few more developers onto the STO Team, and they will be reporting for duty in June!

Everyone has their personal “wishlist” for any game which reflects their current playstyle. Mine in Star Trek Online is very casual. I just recently got my Science Officer to Vice Admiral (ie. level cap) and running a handful of daily missions for Emblems (the Vice Admiral-level barter currency) and also working up my Tactical Officer, who is up to Lt. Commander 7 now. I still feel I’m behind the power curve when it comes to learning the real ins and outs of the game, and have not used any Respec Tokens to optimize my Science Officer to best use her abilities yet. I very much want to get into end-game Special Task Force (STF) missions, but since there are only a handful currently in-game, no sense rushing things. So my current STO Wishlist is reflective of what I’ve been doing and what I’d like to see assuming I do not alter from my current playstyle.

As expected in anyone’s MMO wishlist, the overall theme is “MORE!”

More Diplomacy

It’s great that STO has a diplomacy mechanic, but its current implementation is poor. Vanguard is the only other MMO that comes to mind with a diplomacy system, and it was neat in its own right as a mini-game but I’ll admit I’m not interested in a card game to influence conversations. There are only five dedicated Diplomacy mission series, some of which are quite good, while the rest are doled out from the Federation Diplomacy Corp contact NPC as either Diplomatic Investigations or First Contact Missions. There are set templates for each mission type and they seem to be crunched into the “Genesis System” (ie. random content generator) that STO uses quite a bit. Diplomacy and exploration are both core values for the Federation, even in times of war such as STO’s timeline has us in. The problem is most video games are about combat and solving problems through killing and destruction of one’s opponents. Combat is fun, combat sells video games, combat is what we spend the majority of our time in MMOs actively doing. I don’t see an MMO doing very well where the majority of the playtime is spent role-playing with the AI or occasionally *gasp* with other players to progress character and story development, which is where most time was spent in every Star Trek episode ever.

Currently, there are four ranks in the FDC: Attache, Consul, Envoy and Ambassador. The only real benefits are a title we can display over our character’s head and the ability to transwarp to other Federation starbases. Envoy unlocks the First Contact missions and Ambassador gives a diplomacy uniform, otherwise the system isn’t utilized to its potential. The previous Feature Episode had a few instances where diplomacy could be used to alter the flow of conversation, but only for Ambassadors, as it turned out. Why not beef up the dialogue system so that each rank could affect the conversation’s direction to some degree? Ambassadors should be able to get the most information or perhaps resolve situations with no combat whatsoever, but let the lower ranks at least get in there and have some say. Leveling is supposed to be fun, and part of that fun is seeing an increase in “power” accompany the increase in “level” yet with STO’s diplomacy there is effectively no difference at all for the first three ranks because they cannot have an input to the conversation.

More Exploration

I’ve mentioned a few times that I did the majority of my leveling doing the repeatable Exploration Missions. Probably because they usually go fast and give a ridiculous amount of Skill Points and I geared up my crew and ship with the Badges of Exploration. There are a total of six templates the Genesis System uses to generate missions. Four are for space, two for ground, and two in each category may include combat, depending on whether that variable is parsed by Genesis or not.

One problem that all explorations are Genesis-created instances which disappear once we leave the instance. If our crew actually discovered something of importance for the Federation, we can’t come back to that system for future storylines and content, so the Exploration Mission treadmill is definitely a shallow system. On the other hand, this is an MMO we’re talking about, and a single player “exploring and discovering” new areas just doesn’t happen. Ever.

I know the new STO team is planning to expand or revamp the exploration system in the future but they don’t have concrete plans on how to do so yet. A start would be to simply add more templates (mission types) and dialogue options (which alien race left artifacts for us to scan, etc.) for Genesis to chew on. With only six mission templates and limited dialogue options currently, it doesn’t take long before you start repeating the same missions in the same bases or same planets. More templates. More options. And more maps!

I’ve heard there’s a great exploration mission in the Foundry called “Conjoined” but I’ve not played it yet to comment myself. It sounds like it’s longer and devoted to story, though, so in addition to simply adding “more” templates how about some templates with “more” to them, allowing Genesis to create branching mini-stories with (hopefully) less repetition?

Edit: I played Conjoined after posting this, and it was a very well-written exploration/diplomacy mission! It played out very similar to your typical TNG episode, traveling to a distant Federation world to assist with technical problems and a looming mystery which your crew discovers. The majority of the time you’re learning about the culture and history of the Gameptians, then assisting them with a test of the transwarp aperture being built near Deep Space 14. There is some brief space combat then as you unravel the mystery you learn the battle was an unfortunate misunderstanding as two civilizations who had been living side by side but out of phase from each other suddenly learn of the others’ existence.

How about rare random content? Ground missions in particular are very limited in that other than completing the mission parameters, there’s nothing whatsoever to do. In some of the Deferi daily missions, there is a rare chance for a Breen capital ship to spawn and patrol outside the normal mission area. There are three named Breen capital ships and destroying all three awards an Accolade. What about taking that idea and giving a rare chance for some additional content or mission to spawn on the ground map if we find it? It could be something as simple as a named “elite” mob that we’re used to from our fantasy MMOs (or I suppose the aforementioned capital ships would be essentially the same thing) to doing something similar to exploration deeds from Lord of the Rings Online where finding a certain number of special locations awards a new title.

More “Immersion”

In every non-Cryptic MMO if you run up against an object or terrain that is impassable, your character stops running. In Cryptic’s game’s he stops moving but remains stationary, stuck in whatever part of the running animation loop he was in. Really, is it that difficult to place the character in its standing pose if it can’t move? Along that same train of thought, I usually complain in MMOs that overly restrict character movement over certain terrain. LOTRO comes to mind for not letting me walk up what appears to be shallow incline, for example. For a change, I actually complain about the opposite in STO: terrain has to be darn near vertical before the game decides it’s too steep to run up or down. Perhaps a little more restriction, or better yet take a page from Age of Conan where running uphill slows you down a bit. Running through shallow ponds of water gives neither splashy sounds nor water ripple effects. Objects are motionless. Trees don’t sway in the breeze, yet they do in Champions Online. Some exploration missions have us scanning carnivorous plants but once we find them they’re simple 3D models with no animation. I got the same feeling playing Dungeons & Dragons Online as well where all the trees, etc. in Stormreach and surrounding areas were still and motionless, adding to the overall “dead” or static feel. The Class M planets we transport our away teams to rarely, if ever, have any indigenous life nor ambient sound to suggest any life. The ground maps are very small while Champions‘ zones shows the Cryptic Engine can indeed handle larger and more populated areas. Not only do STO’s ground maps need more to do there, they need more “there” there.

In space, sometimes I wonder if the sector’s couldn’t be larger. The “problem” is perhaps one of perspective, though. When Turbine describes a new zone they’re adding to Lord of the Rings Online they often compare the new zone’s size to the North Downs, one of the largest original zones the game shipped with. The thing with zone size on a ground-based game is terrain. You’re traveling up and down and side to side to traverse the terrain in that zone. In space, however, you fly more or less a straight path to your destination waypoint so it’s a much faster journey. Every time I think I want larger space sectors I log into my much lower-level alt with a much slower starship and change my mind. However, I do think some things could be improved to enhance our sense of “immersion.” Our ship’s bridge for starters. How many episodes of Trek have key scenes on the bridge of the starship? Responding to distress calls, engaging in diplomacy or hostilities with alien factions, or receiving assignments from Starfleet Command. All these are currently handled in the Mission Log, but could be just as easily transferred to the forward viewscreen while on our ship’s bridge. How about missions with classified instructions where Starfleet Command asks us to accept their transmission privately in our ready rooms on a secure channel? That was done countless times on television, and would make for an entertaining addition to the standard mission delivery system in STO. Then there’s the viewscreen itself. If we step into our ready room and look out the window, the stars are not moving but at least it’s a 3D environment. The bridge viewscreen is a simple 2D texture that is not only not animated, it screams “cheesy” more than anything this side of The Original Series ever could. It would be nice if there were more reasons to visit our bridge other than to display trophies or access the mission replay feature. Plenty of “content” occurred on the decks of the starships while traveling on television; it’s a shame there’s no content there in the game. Activities to keep us occupied while warping from place to place or additional means of storytelling and mission-giving would be welcome.

More Factions

If I recall, in addition to building more content for the existing Klingon Defense Force (KDF) faction, Cryptic is also working on a playable Romulan race which will likely be a third faction as well. The Federation has multiple playable races, reflective of the many civilizations who comprise the Federation. While we’re accustomed to simply thinking of Klingons alone in their own right, in the game the KDF faction is seven playable races. My personal preference is rather than just having Romulans alone as a third faction, introduce the Typhon Pact, which the Romulans are a key member of (and which they wish to dominate and rule over). This allows for not only extra playable races, including the Breen. Cryptic already mentioned they are working on the Breen costume system so we can roleplay certain missions as our Breen (and other) bridge officers rather than our normal characters. However, the Breen are a very xenophobic society comprised of many races and in public they all try to look and act alike, not showing any sense of individuality, which is why they’re totally covered up in their outfits and use the mechanical voice masking. That might clash with players’ natural desire to play “dress up” with our characters to avoid looking like a clone of every other character we see. Additionally, the Gorn are currently part of the playable KDF faction, though in Trek fiction the Gorn are another of the six races that formed the Typhon Pact. I’m no Trek expert by a longshot, but I thought the Klingons and Gorn were at war? Anyway, it might take a little playable race shuffling but having the Typhon Pact as a playable faction would not only give the game more variety and replayability but as any Dark Age of Camelot or Starcraft player will tell you, when it comes to PvP three factions can really make the game. If Cryptic ever gets their “PvP Conquest System” implemented in the game, having three factions vying for territorial expansion would make for a more interesting scenario than the generic Red vs. Blue we see too often. Throw in the additional NPC factions of the Borg and Undine to keep the PvP players off-balance and to provide additional content for the PvE-only players, and that all sounds like win-win to me.

More Music

Star Trek has been around for 45 years now and, while personally I could do without the psychadelic “bad acid trip” music from The Original Series, that still leaves music from all the films and television series from 1979 through the 2009 reboot movie. Yet it seems like there are only three or four tracks that repeat in the game. C’mon Cryptic, get CBS or Paramount to open up their soundtrack libraries for use in the game already. And while you’re at it, the deejays at the various starbases could use some variety to their playlists. Does one song in an infinite loop even equate to a playlist?

Arwellyn unexpectedly reached the “level cap” of Vice Admiral in Star Trek Online yesterday. While doing some missions, she achieved Rear Admiral, Upper Half, Rank 6 and I gave the appropriate “ding!” in the fleet chat, at which point Longasc said “wait, isn’t that the same as Vice Admiral?” Um, no? The message says Rank 6? First off, that was news to me; I was expecting to have to reach Rank 10 before Vice Admiral was available. The trick is spending the final skill points. I had 100 remaining so I put them into a skill she didn’t need and we immediately received a message to report to Admiral Quinn on Earth Spacedock.

Along with the promotion, Arwellyn received a ticket for a Tier 5 starship. I’ve stuck with the Intrepid-class Long Range Science Vessel she received upon being promoted to Captain, so it was a natural choice to accept the Intrepid refit, which is a beefed-up (and how!) version. After stripping the original of all its equipment, I had it decommissioned then replaced with the refit model, keeping the name U.S.S. Arkenstone. To satisfy my “inner role-play” storyline I could say the Arkenstone was due for a refit after sustaining heavy damage (and it has been, I’ve been using a Captain-level ship for Rear Admiral content, after all) or I could say it was destroyed (which it has been several times recently) and the new one is the “Arkenstone-B” which was done in both The Original Series films (The Wrath of Khan, if memory serves) and The Next Generation. I can go either way as an excuse for finally learning to use the Assault Cruiser I chose for Arwellyn’s Rear Admiral rank, which has sat in drydock the entire time.

After finishing the Vice Admiral promotion and equipping the new starship, I met up with Longasc and ran daily Exploration mission in the B’Tran Cluster, then he took me around to run the Deferi daily missions (showing me a “secret” one) then a few other hidden gems that do not appear on the Starfleet queue of available missions.

Witnessing the flat-out insane phaser fireworks display Longasc put on from his Excelsior refit made me jealous, hence my sudden desire to see what kind of trouble I can cause in the Assault Cruiser. I forget what the first space combat mission was but Longasc rushed in a few seconds ahead of me and started blasting away at multiple ships with a super-buffed Fire at Will 3 and other tactical skills. My jaw actually dropped just watching him rip a whole squadron of enemies apart. Granted, Longasc is a Tactical officer who specializes in heavy dps while Arwellyn is a Science officer but still… between the extra weapon slots plus learning to use more Engineering officers rather than Science officers on my bridge crew it should be a fun experience.

With the exception of my primary game, Lord of the Rings Online, I’ve pretty much been using my “No Alts!” rule in every MMO this past year. I do have a few low-level alts in Champions Online but I blame Oakstout for that — he’s extremely creative with his superheroes and every time he comes up with a cool idea and shows it off, I have to have one of my own!

With Star Trek Online I’ve really never had any intention of making an alt until the Klingon faction gets its full intro and PvE experience, which is coming in a future update. However, with it’s super-casual nature and focus on using the customizable bridge officer AI companions, I find myself doing a whole new style of what I call my “inner role-playing.” While in sector space warping from system to system, it may only take minutes in-game but I might wonder how long it would have taken on a television episode. What was the crew doing during the travel time? During the “Investigate Anomalous Readings” category of Exploration Missions, while I may be steering the ship from anomaly to anomaly, is this mission that important that my captain would need to be on the bridge glued to the forward view-screen and giving orders, or could she delegate it to junior officers? What are the various relationships between the bridge crew members and what stories are happening during, and between, the in-game missions?

The only other game with this variety of AI companions is Guild Wars, but since everyone has the exact same heroes with the same name and same look, for some reason my mind never wandered into “story mode” of the merry band of adventurers. But since Star Trek Online lets us apply the full character creation treatment on our bridge officers, it gives me more of a sense that these particular AI companions are mine and when my “inner role-play” thoughts kick into gear, it becomes easy to start giving them personalities, back-story, and so forth.

It’s apparently been awhile since I snapped a screenshot of Arwellyn’s typical Away Team, but what I’ve begun is making alts which are recreations of her bridge crew. The first is the Klingon Tactical Officer, M’rilana. This not only lets me learn how to play the Tactical role but almost simultaneously use the in-game missions to give her a back-story, such as what she did early in her Starfleet career prior to being assigned to Arwellyn’s crew, but also current stories as well. Perhaps she has a mission where she is in command of the Away Team? That was done on the television shows, after all. She’ll also be in command of an escort once I get her to Lt. Commander so I’ll need to come up with a story excuse for that — I’m fairly certain an escort would not be assigned to Arwellyn’s science ship nor would it fit in the shuttle bay. But I’ll deal with that when the time comes.

What prompted this new (for me) outlook on alts is the upcoming Crew System which will be gradually added to the game. Eventually we’ll be able to assign positions to our primary bridge officers such as Chief Engineer and so forth, also assigning one to the role of First Officer. I’d decided long before the Crew System was ever announced that M’rilana was Arwellyn’s First Officer anyway. Cryptic has also mentioned eventually having some missions where you would play as your First Officer rather than your actual Captain character. I can imagine “rescue missions” where your Captain has been kidnapped and so is temporarily an NPC while your play as your FO commanding an away team to rescue the captain, for example. So, I figured if this is coming anyway, and my mind is already going into creative overdrive anyway imagining all these stories and relationships, why not make alts of some of my favorite bridge officers?

So here is M’rilana commanding her own away team! Turns out playing Tactical is pretty fun, though she doesn’t have an escort yet. I’d noticed with Arwellyn that escorts take an entirely different style of play than I was accustomed to, and one which did really suit science ships anyway. Her Defiant-class escort isn’t nearly “geared up” like it needs to be yet, but the thing is the literal definition of “glass cannon.” It can do some mean damage in a hurry, but so much as a paper cut and it’s running off with its tail between its legs. I’m hoping that playing M’rilana will teach me how to fly an escort to its full potential with full Tactical abilities that I can then learn to adapt with Arwellyn’s Science abilities.

Ideally, I’d love to even write some STO fanfic using these characters. My NaNoWriMo experience last year was clear proof that writing falls squarely into the “use it or lose it” category, and I simply can’t plop down twenty years later and expect myself to pick up where I left off. The catch, as always, is getting the motivation to actually sit down and write instead of engaging in some type of entertainment, such as a videogame… *cough*

Today was the big day! Arwellyn completed the final daily mission to gather R&D samples and shuttle schematics to research and develop her own Delta-class shuttle for her starship.

The U.S.S. Arkenstone was patrolling the B’Tran Cluster upon acquiring the final schematic and Arwellyn impatiently excitedly gave the order for First Officer M’rilana to set a transwarp course to Starbase 39 in the Alpha Centauri sector, then set course for the nearby Memory Alpha system to R&D the shuttle.

The Arkenstone had plenty of Tier 1 data samples stored so the R&D was quick and painless. After a quick preflight systems check, Arwellyn and M’rilana took the shiny new Delta-class shuttle for a spin around Earth Spacedock!

Not only is this the best-looking shuttle I’ve seen so far (the Runabout is cool but still too “blocky” for me) this little baby is ultra-maneuverable! Good thing it’s good some top-notch intertial dampeners because it can pull extraordinarily tight turns. Nimble and fun to fly – the Delta-class shuttle just earned a permanent assignment as part of the Arkenstone’s compliment. Now we just need a cool name for it…

As a little surprise bonus, the shuttle comes with a device console pre-loaded. Removing it and placing it in your inventory allows you to launch a Delta-class shuttle “mini-pet” in space from whatever ship you happen to by flying! Fluff! I love it!