Star Trek Online Review

May 13th, 2010 admin Reviews

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.