Star Trek Online: Re-Review (PC)
We first reviewed Cryptic’s Star Trek Online back in Feb last year a few weeks after launch, and whilst (like every other MMO player) i’m waiting for SWTOR to be released, I’ve decided to revisit a few old MMO’s to see how they’ve changed.
Is It more Star Trekky?
Story driven episodes
One of the key issues I had with STO during the first review was it’s over reliance on combat for missions. If there’s one thing Star Trek was never about, it was killing everything you came across. And, whilst there is still a lot of combat in STO (there is a war on after all), Cryptic have also added a lot more non-combat/puzzle related sections to it’s missions, along with dedicated ‘diplomatic missions’ which have no combat at all.
It seems in the 16 months since the game launched, someone over at Cryptic suggested the wacky idea of actually watching some episodes of the various Star Trek tv shows, and the penny finally dropped on how they should be writing missions. The Romulan based ‘Cloaked Intentions’ and the new ‘The Devidians’ series of episodes, are a huge leap forward in storytelling from the early ‘go here > kill that in space > kill this on a planet > kill that in space again’ mission structure. The new improved STO has some great, well written stories, that really pull you into the game and actual feel like Star Trek.
So there’s more content?
Star Trek Online
In addition to Cryptic adding more stories, there’s also a slew of new content added by players themselves through the new Foundry mission builder. The quality does vary somewhat between episodes, but some of them are really well constructed, and vastly entertaining. There’s a simple, player reviewed, 5 star rating system which helps you to filter things down and find the better missions. Some are somewhat like the filler episodes of the show (entertaining, but you could live without them), but as players have got more competent with the Foundry system, they are now producing epic, linked episode arks, that almost match the new stuff Cryptic are writing.
Interface immersion
No more astrometrics
One tiny change which made a huge difference to me, is the ability to switch off the ‘astrometrics’ layer on the space maps. Previously, when you warped from system to system, you got thrown onto a stylised tactical map interface, which jarred horribly with the beautifully crafted spacescapes you get inside a system. Now, you can turn off all the extraneous stylised graphics, leaving you to warp about a far more pleasant environment. It’s still not the vast and open space that you’d get in a game like EVE, but that minor change does really help with the games immersion.
Another addition, is the ability to wander around your ship, rather than just your bridge. You still can’t access every area, but you can visit the crew deck – which has sickbay, crew quarters and a lounge – and you can also get to the engineering level. It’s a small thing, but it all helps sit you in the Star Trek world.
The rest of the interface is as generic and functional as it was previously (i still think they missed a trick not using a LCARS interface). However they have tweaked some things by adding some some long overdue filters onto the HUGE list of items in the shops/skills windows. I’d still like some decent filters on the Exchange (aka auction house), that allow you to look for things by function rather than just by name, but it’s a start.
What about the combat?
My 'helpful' crew
Space combat is pretty much as it ever was, and that’s fine by me. It might not be perfect, but it’s entertaining, and there’s enough skills and variety in the ships and officer choices for players to find a fit they’re comfortable with.
The ground combat sucks a bit less… That’s not to say it’s good… it just not as bad as it was. Your away team seem a little less stupid than they were. They still get stuck on things – although not as much as they did. They still run around and jump about like they’re being controlled by an 10yr old child who’s just downed 3 bags of Haribo and a litre of Coke. They still don’t care if your stood next to the enemy when they decide to throw a plasma grenade at them setting you on fire as well. Honestly, if Starfleet saw some of the antics your away team got up to, i’m pretty sure every one of them would have been court martialed a long time ago!
And how are the Graphics?
Star Trek Online
Due to the fact that STO is built on Cryptic’s MMO engine, it’s still got that horrible floaty feel to it, same issue they had with City of Heroes and Champions Online. Until they decide the build a system that doesn’t feel like everything is held together by elastic bands, i guess that’s always going to be the case.
There’s also issues with the graphics themselves. I have a relatively new PC and reasonable graphics card running up-to-date drivers, which should be able to cope with STO without any issues at all. However i’m still really struggling if the shadows are turned onto high, or if there are a lot of lighting effects on screen. I’m beginning to suspect it’s just that STO is not that well coded, and that’s causing issues on certain graphic cards. I can’t see how a rig that runs newer games like Dragon Age 2, or other MMOs like the visually stunning Conan, without so much as a glitch, still struggles with STO’s graphics.
Conclusion
Danube-class Runabout
Despite Cryptic’s engine, and some graphical issues, Star Trek Online is a really fun game. Over the last 16 months Cryptic have worked hard to make STO feel far more like Star Trek than it ever did before. The addition of the Foundry means their is always some new story to play through. And if you want a take a break from playing, you can always create your own episode. It’s not perfect, and i’m still not a fan of the ground combat, but the new ‘out of combat’ stuff is wonderfully written and engaging, and far more like what i wanted it to be in the first place.
8/10 – More Star Trekky than has gone before.
Cryptic Studios Enters a Perfect World
Star Trek Online
I’ve not been paying a huge amount of attention to the MMO world recently, as there have been a number of decent games out there that needed playing (Dragon Age 2, Portal 2, and a number of other stuff i’m playing on my new rig that my old one couldn’t cope with at the time). However, I’ve just started to take a ‘one year (and a bit) on’ look at Star Trek Online, and the news hits that Cryptic Studios has been sold by Atari to Chinese game company Perfect World for a cool $50+ million.
Perfect World has mainly been operating it’s own titles in primarily Chinese markets, so this is an attempt to push into western markets. Perfect World’s founder & chairman Michael Chi commented “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.”
That does sound like they are happy to let Cryptic keep doing what they’re doing, which is good news for fans of Champions Online and Star Trek Online. Cryptic were also developing Neverwinter, their first non-MMO game (it’s a ‘story-based, co-op multiplayer experience’ apparently… so a bit MMO still…), based in D&D’s popular Forgotten Realms. I guess what happens to Neverwinter will depend on the deal, and who owns the license.
Review: Star Trek Online (PC)
Review: Star Trek Online (PC)
As I mentioned in the Star Trek Online History post, i’ve been playing around in Star Trek Online since Closed Beta. I wanted to point out, this is very much a review of the live game experience. You may see a number of reviews out there that are based on the reviewers beta experiences, but that’s extremely unfair on the work Cryptic put into STO before launch. The difference between the live game and the awful ‘car crash’ of a beta test in terms of stability and playability are light years apart… Not that there aren’t still issues…
U.S.S. Geektown
These are the voyages of the Starship, Geektown…
At least they would be if you could log into the server…We’re a few weeks past live release and as far as I can work out, Cryptic seem to running STO on some old networked Spectrum ZX81s powered by hamsters in running wheels. I’m sure they’ll upgrade them soon… maybe get in some Commodore 64s powered by badgers on treadmills. However, this minor annoyance (which is slowly turning into mild irritation after the 3rd server crash today), does give me a break from playing to write this review.
Character Creation
You can pick to play as a Tactical (damage/tank), Engineer (support/survivability), or Science (healing/support) Officer. You’re limited to Federation (Fed) until level 6, where you unlock the Klingon Empire, in a similar way to how Lord of the Ring Online runs it’s ‘Monster Play’. Like ‘Monster Play’, the Klingon side is very much a PvP focused, cut down version of the main game. Choices for Fed races include Human (obviously), Andorian, Bajoran, Betazoid, Bolian, Saurian, Trill, Vulcan, and ‘Alien’. The character customisation is tempered depending on your race, however if you do want to go nuts, you can always pick the alien option, which basically unlocks all the sliders and lets you create your own wacky species. Your race determines your basic look and some of your starting abilities. Betazoids for example are empathic (reducing threat generation), where as Bajorans are creative (increasing skills with ‘kits’ – items that give you extra abilities). You then can pick your costume, which come in a variety of Starfleety type options.
Boldly Going…
Star Trek Online
Being a traditionalist, I picked a human tactical officer as my first character. After a intro voiced by Leonard Nimoy, I pop up in the mess hall on the U.S.S. GeekTown (a Miranda Class Light Cruiser) with red alerts blaring all around. It seems the Borg are trying to assimilate a nearby ship, so I’m instructed to beam over to their medical bay to see if I can give some help to the emergency medical hologram (who sounds suspiciously like Syler from Heroes…) Once a few crewmen are patched up, I’m sent to engineering to blow some Borg out of an airlock, and then fight my way to a transporter, where I get to pick a my first bridge crew.
Bridge Crew serve 2 main purposes. Firstly, they man stations on your ship. As you up level up and get bigger and better ships, you gain more crew, and more advanced station configurations. For example, the Enterprise like Cruiser Class has 2 engineering stations, 1 science, and 1 tactical, where as the Defiant style Escort class has 2 tactical, 1 science and 1 engineering station. Each bridge crew member has their own set of space skills, such as my new vulcan science officer, has a tachyon beam skill that lowers the shields on an enemy ship.
Your Bridge Crew’s second purpose is to serve as party members for the ground missions when your not grouped with friends - side note: when you are grouped with friends, it means the Captains from each ship all form the away team… which I’m sure must breach some Starfleet rule on officer safety… – Again each crew member has a variety of skills, such as the science officer’s medical tricorder, or the engineers turrets and mines.
Space… The Final Frontier…
Beautiful spacescapes
Moving on a bit through the starter mission, I find myself battling a Borg Cube. Thankfully, I’m not on my own. This fight takes the form of a fleet mission, where as you enter the zone, your automatically grouped with other players to take on larger objectives (if you’ve familiar with Champions Online or Warhammer, you’ll be aware of this form of open mission).
I’ve see a number of reviews where people describe STO space combat as fairly slow, but it’s really more depends on the class of ship. Cryptic do need to try and keep the ‘Trekness’ in the game, and to see the Enterprise suddenly pull a ‘handbrake turn’, spin 180, and launch a barrage of cannon fire straight at a Klingon really wouldn’t seem very ‘Trek’. However, if you do want more maneuverability, once you reach level 11 you can choose to take an Escort class ship (e.g. DS9′s Defiant), which gives you a much nimbler ride, with a whole array of forward facing turrets, but does sacrifice survivability.
Overall I find the space combat mechanics good fun, even if the missions themselves can be rather repetitive – Go here, kill 5 Klingon ships… then kill 5 more Klingon ships… then 5 more etc… There are some variations, but that usually just involves flying to something and hitting the ‘F’ key to scan/repair/interact with it in some way.
Ahead, Warp Factor 5
Warp travel interface
Travelling through space is a different matter. One of the most disappointing things for me was mechanism to warp from planetary system to planetary system. Whilst inside a system, you get to see your ship in these stunningly beautiful spacescapes, scattered with asteroids, nebulas and planets. However, during warp travel, your ship model is thrown onto stylised tactical map interface, which totally pulls you out of any immersion. What would have been great during the warp travel would have been the ability to wander around my ship, or some interaction on the bridge (you can visit your bridge in STO, but it’s basically an instanced room, so you can’t travel in warp and be on the bridge at the same time). The system map interface just instantly made the STO universe seem small and ‘game like’, rather than the vast openness of space it really should be.
Ground Combat
Ground Combat
I beam down to a planet, my newly acquired science officer with me for backup, to show some Borg the business end of a phaser rifle. I have an issue with the ground combat in STO as I’ve had with other Cryptic’s games. I’m sure Cryptic’s proprietary MMO engine makes it easier and quicker for them to develop, but it has this horrible ‘elasticy’ feel to it. Their always seems to be a delay between action and consequence. Throw a grenade, it lands and explodes. Count 1… 2… 3… and then people fall down from the blast. I’m positive it’s not a lag issue, as there was a similar issue with Champions Online, and even City of Heroes. The engine just has this ‘floaty’ feel to it which makes the ground combat feel less solid than most of its counterpart MMOs.
Another issue is the away team AI, which seems to stands for Artificial Idiocy. It is vastly improved from beta, but you do still find yourself occasionally tracking back across a map because you’ve just noticed your tactical officer is stuck trying to walk through a wall somewhere. They also have a tendency to think running through the fire created by the plasma grenade they’ve just thrown is a genius idea. All in all, not Starfleet’s best and brightest.
The Interface
Whilst STOs main player interface is perfectly adequate overall, there are a few basic things that really bug me. Why is it Cryptic still can’t make an auction interface that actually has a decent number of search filters on it? Same goes for any of their NPC shopping interfaces. I can only imagine the conversation went something like “Shall we put some filters on this?”… “Nah, just whack everything into one MASSIVE list, and jumble it all together so it takes them forever to find anything, it’ll be fine!”
Also, given your dealing with Star Trek, surely the obvious thing to do would would be to base it round a LCARS interface? Michael Okuda went to a massive amount of trouble designing LCARS for the Trek universe, and it’s just disappointing there isn’t even a vague nod to it in STO, rather than some generic MMO graphics.
Boldly Going...
But is it Star Trek?
The ship designs and uniforms are very Trek. The history/lore of the universe is tied in nicely to the Trek timeline. They even have Nimoy (and Quinto) doing voice work. But I can’t help thinking, what would Gene Roddenberry say if he saw it? I rather suspect he’d be extremely disappointed in the over reliance on space battles to entertain, rather than exploring and plot. Star Trek was never about combat. It was about exploring new world. Boldly going where no one had gone before. If any game needed an EVE-like vast openness of space, it was Star Trek Online. Instead you get a bunch of instances held together by a map.
Conclusion
Although there are a number of negatives in this review, I am enjoying my time in Star Trek Online. I’ve made lieutenant commander, and am heading toward my next level of ship. It’s just overall, i see it as a missed opportunity to do something great with such a rich and textured license. I would have loved STO to have been more of a Star Trek universe, rather than just a Cyptic game with a Star Trek license slapped over the top. It’s more an MMOG than MMORPG. The role playing bit has got lost somewhere along the way. As someone mentioned in ‘system chat’ last week – “We all know we’re just treading water till Star Wars: The Old Republic comes out”… And unfortunately for Cryptic, i think that’s probably true.
7/10 – Fun in places but a missed opportunity.
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Star Trek Online: A History
Star Trek Online - A History
To be honest with you, a few weeks ago I was all set to rip into Star Trek Online. I’ve been in game since closed beta, and I thought the chances of Cryptic ever managing to get STO into a decent playable state in time for launch were slimmer than convincing a Klingon to take up vegetarianism. However I’m happy to report, thanks to some around the clock work by the development teams, they really managed to pull it out of the bag.
We’ll have a full review up soon, but in preparation for that, I wanted to post a bit about the extensive work Cyrptic have done weaving STO into the Star Trek canon.
When is Star Trek Online Set?
Star Trek Online in the original Shatner/Kirk timeline (as opposed to the new JJ Abrams Pine/Kirk alternative movie timeline). Events take place in 2409, about 30 years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis (putting it about 145 years after Star Trek: The Original Series). Cryptic have neatly timelined the history of the Star Trek universe from Nemesis, through the events of Abrams movie which lead to the current state of the galaxy.
Star Trek Online: A Brief History
In 2379 following the death of Praetor Shinzon (during the events of ST:Nemesis), Romulus and Remus are plunged into an all out civil war. Never ones to stay out of a good rumble, the Klingon Empire decides take advantage of the chaos and wade into Romulan territory, much to the disapproval of the Federation. On an opposing front, old Klingon rivalries with the Gorn Hegemony (later backed by the Norsicans) flair up into full blow war.
Ambassador Spock
In 2387 the galaxy is threatened by the Hobus star going supernova. Federation ambassador to the Romulans, Spock, proposes that the Romulans transport the precious mineral Decalithium to Vulcan, where they can convert it into ‘red matter’ capable of turning the star into a black hole, negating its threat. The Romulan senate refuse, however Spock finds an ally in Nero, the leader of the Romulan miners who agrees to secretly transport the Decalithium. On Vulcan, things don’t quite go as planned when the Vulcan Council vote against Romulan’s having access to red matter, infuriating Nero.
Returning to Romulus, Nero discovers Hobus has gone supernova (far faster than anyone thought possible) destroying Romulus, killing his wife and child. Driven mad with grief, he has his ship (the Narada) refitted with Borg technology, and goes to take revenge on the Vulcans, who he blames for failing to stop the supernova.
Spock takes a ship (known as the Jellyfish) which has now been fitted with the red matter weapon and destroys the supernova, only to be chased down by Nero. The Narada appears to attack Spock just as the black hole resulting from the supernova’s destruction appears to swallow both the Jellyfish, and the Narada… (see the 2009 Star Trek movie to see what happened to them!)
In 2391 what remains of the Romulan Empire finally manage to halt the invading Klingon forces at Zeta Pectoris.
In 2395, Ja’rod, lead of the Klingon house of Duras, is attacked by the 3 shapeshifting Undine (ST: Voyager’s Species 8472). Capturing and torturing one of his attackers, Ja’rod discovers the Undine’s planned to replace him on the Klingon High Command. This leads the Klingon’s to become even more aggressive and mistrusting of other races.
Orion
In 2402 the Klingon (now teamed up with the Orions) win a decisive victory over the Gorns/Norsicans, taking control of the Gorn homeworld. It’s only then do they discover that the Gorn Council had fallen foul of the Undine, who had been manipulating the Gorn’s into conflict with the Klingons. This results into the Klingon, Gorn, Norsicans and Orions all joining forces under the Klingon banner.
In 2404, the Klingons finding themselves emboldened by this new alliance decide to turn their attention to the Federation, invading the Hiromi Cluster, followed by invading the Archanis Sector in 2406… The Federation have no choice but to retaliate plunging the Klingons and Federation into a full blow war once again…
2409 – What happens next? You decide!
Star Trek Online : Where is Sulu? T-Shirts!
Calling Star Trek Online players…
It’s the t-shirt you know you’ve always wanted (well, since Beta anyway!)
Now you can ask the question that’s on every Star Trek Online player’s lips by wearing your…
‘Where is Sulu?’ T-Shirt!
100% cotton t-shirts available in a various sizes, and a wide variety of colours (or just stick with traditional Star Trek graphics style ‘black and yellow’.)
Where Is Sulu? T-Shirt (Male)
Where Is Sulu? T-Shirt (Female)
Star Trek Online Character Creation Trailer
As we mentioned in the Top 6 Most Anticipated MMORPGs List, Cryptic are bringing their trademark character creation to Star Trek Online. They’ve recently released a trailer showing just how crazy you can go with your toon styling, creating one of the classic Trek races, or even designing your own! Looks awesome!
