Star Trek Online Review

Name: Star Trek Online Review
Item: Star Trek Online
Author: admin

by admin 13 May 2010

Review

Star Trek Online

	Cryptic Studios
	Atari
Genre:	Sci-Fi/MMORG
	February 2010
Platform:	PC

Review by Al Giovetti May 13, 2010

Captain’s Log, Stardate January 2010. It seems that the alternate reality Earth inhabitants feel that we are fictional characters living only on their viewscreen equivalent of a holodeck. We have dematerialized to beam down to the planet only to have our bodies transferred to a new three-dimensional computer game which these Earth inhabitants call Star Trek Online (STO). The first challenge we encountered was character creation.

First, the crew of our federation cruiser was forced to pick either tactical, engineering, or science officer status. We were then subjected to a choice of race – either that true race of our own or another race from the list of human, Vulcan, Andorian, Klingon, Trill, and other alien races, some of which were unfamiliar. When selecting gender, some of our crew chose to cross over to the other side, to experience the other sex up close and personal. After all these twists and turns, we were asked if we wanted to be dressed in a variety of different colors and styles of federation uniforms.

A rather welcome option was the opportunity to change our appearance and eliminate those life-long annoyances we all have. Those with too large a nose found they could reduce the size. Those with brown eyes who wanted blue eyes were accommodated. Body size and shape could be modified to our satisfaction. Male and female crew members were permitted to enhance certain body features to shapes and sizes they felt would be more attractive.

Second, even seasoned officers of our crew were reduced to the rank of lieutenant and provided a ship of garbage scow quality, with the promise of better ships should we succeed in our missions. The missions involved entering a star system from warp, and either being met by a fleet of enemies or entering into orbit around one of the system planets to carry out survey, rescue, delivery of needed supplies, or many other routine federation duties.

Different from the normal games that these Earthers play, in what they call the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) genre, the missions often involve ship exploration and combat, followed by a surface away team of as many as four artificial intelligence bridge officers and your self-controlled alter ego. Often, after succeeding with the away team and beaming back to your ship, the federation officer in command will be greeted by a party of hostile alien ships who are angered by what you did while away.

As the members of my crew progressed to the next promotion, we were presented with a choice of ships that were also limited to tactical, science, and engineering functions. Made for escort and ship to ship combat, tactical ships, such as Voyager, captained by Janeway, turn more quickly and have more tactical workstations for bridge officers. Science ships have more science workstations, and engineering ships have more engineering workstations. Engineering ships have larger crews, and resemble the ships captained by Kirk and Picard.

The helm console is piloted easily, using the AWSD keys to control right and left turns and climbing and diving in the three dimensions of space. We found interactive on-board displays, such as cargo bay and ship inventory. The pointing device, first thought to be a microphone, was used to select weapons and tactical choices, such as “divert power to shields.”

A full complement of federation equipment was available to away team members, including personal shields, power armor, pistols, rifles, and unequipped inventory items such as shield and power enhancers. We enjoyed the familiar food and drink: blue Andorian ale and Klingon gagh, a live serpent worm dish.

Advancement is skill-based, and is controlled by points gathered in successful missions and by destroying enemy ships in ship-to-ship combat. Skills are divided into those which are useful in ship-to-ship missions and those which are useful to the away teams. Trading in points for the many tiered skills you wish to enhance in virtual training simulations was gratifying.

Our officers were frustrated to discover that ship-to-ship skills were not useful on away missions, and vice versa. Disappointment over the inability to advance both away mission skills and shipboard skills with the same points resulted in dangerous and unfulfilling choices to enhance one over the other to the maximum, or to advance both and, as a result, be relatively unskilled at both. Our officers could not contain their anger over the dilution of their efforts.

Another thing the captains in our crew found gratifying was the way group battles are handled. Upon entering a quest area, every captain and crew member is automatically added to the large group, thus eliminating the time often wasted in MMOs looking for groups, and the personality conflicts that often occur, where only certain guild-members or friends are invited into group battles or quests. The achievements of the group as a whole are credited to each and every captain and crew member.

Initially we found the missions that Star Fleet presented satisfying. After a while, however, the variety and the imagination exhibited by Star Fleet in providing useful and interesting missions became disappointing. We feel that missions should reflect the vastness and infinite diversity of space. We are hoping that our debriefings will find their way to the mission development team; more diverse missions will result in a more effective federation.

From the historical records accessed by the present day “Internet” linking all computers, we found that the missions were unnecessarily violent. Captains of Federation ships achieved non-violent solutions to problems on planets much more frequently than what we found available to us within the holodeck-like world of STO. We were able to find older historical records – referred to as graphic animated adventures (GAA), published by Interplay – that had much more imaginative and fulfilling alternatives to away missions than the limited options presented to our crews. We were amazed that the STO “simulation” designers did not heed the sage advice of prior designers who urged them to provide more choices to the solution of problems, including non-violent ones. The lack of variety led to boredom for our crews and captains.

Initially we found the galactic currency not terribly difficult to obtain. We could exchange it for ship and away-team equipment upgrades. As we rose in rank, we were required to find articles such as radiation artifacts and dozens of others to exchange for faction on the base on Memory Alpha. First you had to win the favor of Commander Jenna Romaine by bringing her anomalous data. You could not trade with the scientists on Memory Alpha without winning their favor.

The whole process of using these artifacts and scientists to manufacture ship upgrades beyond a certain rank was confusing, tedious, and boring. The items produced were absolutely essential for a ship captain above the rank of lieutenant commander. We initially found the process a barrier to entry, since the universe did not have an adequate variety of artifacts.

We mostly found the radiation samples and other mundane items while the scientists on Memory Alpha wanted the full gamut of items. Efforts by the designers to provide a greater variety of artifacts initially proved futile, until one day more variety appeared. The greater variety made the process easier with the greater volume of items needed but the process seemed artificial and illogical at best to most of us who had come through the wormhole from our own reality. We found ourselves more bored and less likely to use the holodeck over other activities, such as sleep.

We strove for an answer to the boredom and illogic of the world, where only die hard fans plied the spacelanes. Many of the crew that came through the portal simply disappeared from the world, for no apparent reason. We concluded that, without sufficient motivation to continue missions and upgrade ships, these captains had lost the will to live and simply winked out of existence. The solution to this problem might be corrected by better choices, including more Star Trek-like non-violent solutions and away mission problems, and a less obnoxiously difficult equipment upgrade system, which might give captains the will to live in this world.