Impressions of the Star Trek Online Open Beta
Guest post by Matt Perrin
For years now, I have been eagerly following the development of Star Trek Online and gleaning whatever news I could gather. From its awkward, failed start at P2 Entertainment to the license’s transition to Cryptic Studios in early 2008 I have been hoping not for a “Warcraft-Killer”, but for something new and exciting in the MMO genre. Could Cryptic actually deliver a compelling Star Trek game where players take part in galaxy sized events? Could Cryptic get past the grind heavy mechanics of its previous games like City of Heroes? Would Cryptic’s obligations to deliver Champions Online in 2009 hinder Star Trek Online’s development?
What Cryptic finally delivered with Star Trek Online is essentially two games in one heavily stylized package. Star Trek Online gives the player a very authentic Star Trek setting with all the special effects, computer displays and sounds that bring you into the experience. If the thought of LCARS displays or Okudagrams gets you fired up then you will feel right at home in the User Interface. The game itself is primarily divided between a planetary Ground component lifted from Cryptic’s Champions Online engine and a Space component that evokes memories of the venerable Starfleet Command series of games. But that duality between a player’s avatar and ship causes the game to feel disjointed and I found the Space-based game play to be significantly more polished than the Ground-based missions.
Damage control is easy. Reading Klingon, that’s hard.
I just want to take a moment to comment on the overall state of the Open Beta. I am here writing this the morning of January 23, 2010, during the last weekend of the Open Beta, and I still have random disconnects during zoning. For days now, when I attempt to zone between sectors, beam between my ship and a planet or starbase or even take a turbolift to new zone there’s a chance you will be disconnected. I have seen the screen below way more than I should at this late stage of Beta.
It seems to be rather late in the development cycle to be dealing with what I consider to be a critical issue for players. By Cryptic’s own admission, they got slammed unexpectedly by the number of players participating in the Open Beta and did not plan their server infrastructure accordingly. What makes me raise a skeptical eyebrow at this is that Cryptic are the ones controlling the number of Beta keys in circulation as well as having all the metrics on the keys being activated or requested through Beta Applications. And even with crushing server problems and players unable to login or maintain a connection, Cryptic is still handing out Beta Keys on their Twitter feed this morning!
I am sure that Cryptic is sitting on a super-server cluster for Star Trek Online’s launch day but promises of ordering additional hardware for the Open Beta appear to have never been fulfilled. And even with a limit on the number of active players and instanced zones, lag and dropped connections is still a very serious problem in the game, especially during ground missions.
Five to Beam Up
I am going to jump right in and discuss the Ground missions within Star Trek Online as I feel this is the weakest point of the gameplay experience. Star Trek Online’s Ground missions are typical MMO fare and if you have played Champions Online you will notice the similarities immediately. Other than the Star Trek reskinning of the User Interface, every other facet is essentially the Champions Online engine and game play mechanics being reused. Some of the new additions are the ability to flank enemies, deliver extra damage or even the ability to incapacitate or expose enemies to a coup de grace attack which can immediately vaporize them. Players may also include their bridge officers in the away team and allow them to use their special Ground classified attacks and abilities during the missions. For example, bringing a Science class bridge officer on an away team may offer an ability to recharge shields faster or heal physical damage.
All players and NPCs on the mission have the typical MMO slots for armor, weapons and personal shields but one interesting option is to equip the player with special Kits. Essentially, Kits are super-abilities on a lengthy timer. For engineer Players, Kits include the ability to beam down phaser turrets or shield generators. For Tactical player Kits include area of effect weapons like photon grenades and devastating charged shots. For Science players, Kits include buff and debuff abilities that can strip away enemy shields & resistances. As your character advances in rank, Kits will include more than one ability, but with a limitation that only one can be activate at any given time.
All of this sounds pretty good, and as a player beaming down with yourself and a small contingent of officers on a mission to wipe out a Klingon listening post can be fun but whether you are solo or in a team with other players, there is crippling lag constantly affecting the gameplay. I would not expect this at all given the fact that only a handful of players (5 at the most) are in an instance at any given time and that walking through the corridors of a space station versus a large expansive outdoor setting should barely tax the engine. But time and time again, I found myself at the mercy of lag and sudden bursts of activity from the game where I would be near death or running into a wall or mob of enemies that appeared from nowhere. I recently played Champions Online and even in an instance with 20 players running around simultaneously, beating up thugs in the distance, I never saw performance this poor. And given that its essentially the same engine, I expected a far better experience than I had. This is almost a complete polar opposite to what I have found in the Fleet Action space battles, where I’ve flown with 20 allies against swarms of Klingon ships or engaged Naussican raiders in a dense asteroid field and had a rock solid frame rate and experience.
All Hands, battle stations!
In comparison to the Ground campaign, I found the Space campaign to be an absolute thrill to play. Players start off with a fairly basic ship and can choose from three styles of hull; the Miranda-class vessel that was introduced in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, as well as the Centaur and ShiKahr hulls. As your first ship, all three hulls are the same and give the player the ability to customize 2 fore weapon hard points, 1 aft weapon hard point, and a selection of ship components including shields, engines and consoles. As part of the load out, players are also allowed to assign 3 bridge officers, one of each class (Engineering, Tactical and Science) to their bridge crew and use their special abilities during combat. This ability to swap out bridge officers is a critical component to the space combat and I found myself keeping several officers on standby when I would change tactics or weapons and need specific abilities to knock out enemy shields or overload my torpedoes.
Space combat itself is fairly straightforward. Move into 10 kilometers of range, target the enemy and press the Spacebar to fire all energy based weapons that can hit the target or press Ctrl and Spacebar together to fire torpedoes or mines. The UI also features buttons for Fire All or firing weapons individually but going to keyboard route or assigning the firing buttons to extra buttons on your mouse is the best way to go. Sounds simple enough but where the game goes from boring to tactical splendor is that the player must keep the enemy within the firing arc of their weapons, watch their energy usage and perform maneuvers in space that keep their damaged shields away from enemy fire so that the stronger ones can absorb their hits. Pulling off this “dance” takes a fair bit of practice but Star Trek Online doesn’t shy away from giving you opportunities to destroy pesky Borg or Klingon foes. The game features a random mission generator and players are able to quickly find quests and wandering enemies to keep themselves busy without the need to visit a quest giver on some far flung starbase.
As players level up through the ranks, they will unlock new tiers of starship hulls (including the Defiant, the Galaxy, the Sovereign and the Constellation hulls) that allow them to specialize into damage dealing roles (tactical escorts), tank roles (engineering cruisers) or status affecting buff/debuff roles (science vessels). Players aren’t pigeon holed into one branch though, and I’ve seen my fair share of science vessels cutting apart enemy ships with disruptor cannons and quantum torpedoes. As well as new ships, players also have the ability to improve their Ground- and Space-based abilities by assigning skill points to improving their stats and promoting and assigning skill points to their bridge officers as well. This becomes extremely interesting as bridge officers unlock new abilities as they increase in rank as well.
All of this customization means that no ship, no crew and no captain will ever be exactly the same and that there is literally a universe of options to consider in both the Ground and Space portions of the game. All of this uniqueness, though, carries a cost…
Please state the nature of the medical emergency.
There is, unfortunately, a big problem understanding exactly how all the little customization pieces in Star Trek Online actually work together. As you progress through the game, especially during the space missions, you’ll be rewarded with new items and weapons that have stats with no explanations as to what they do. It’s the Techno-babble problem that made some of the newer Star Trek series a mess to watch and now Cryptic has created a game where bonuses and attributes have no explanation.
For example, here’s two items I found during combat. The item on the left is what I have currently equipped on my starship but I recently found this “better” version on the right. The item on the right is worth more, is a “Mark 2” but there is no in game documentation about what effect “Starship Emitters” are or what the difference is between “Starship Sensors” or the “Starship Sensor Array”. And since I have no bridge officer abilities that use the Tractor Beam option, the item on the right appears to actually weaken my ship’s abilities overall.
Here’s another example. Again, the item on the left is the one I have equipped. Both weapons are “Energy” based but is there a difference between the Phaser and Disruptor weapon types? I assumed the firing arc and damage rate were the only differences but there are undocumented bonuses for all of the energy based weapons. Some inflict extra damage to shields, some penetrate shields better, some disable subsystems better and some have damage over time capability.
While the tutorial mission performs admirably in getting players up to speed on the basics, there is a strata of intermediate game play and techniques that are never taught to players. Simple tricks like right-clicking to set one fore and one aft weapon hard point to auto-fire are found by digging through the message board forums. Learning how to drop missions (Press J, then click Drop) or even assign bridge officers is never covered and can be found by asking for help in the chat room. A popular meme throughout the Beta has been “Where’s Sulu?” in reference to Akira Sulu, a patrol quest giver located in the Admiral’s office in the Sol starbase that new players have been consistently unable to find due to poor or inadequate text descriptions. Perhaps it’s a by-product of Star Trek Online’s rapid development cycle but it appears that a lot of corners were cut on the end product to get it shipped out in early 2010 ahead of the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, and Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO in 2011.
Resistance is futile.
And for all of its problems, the bugs, the crashes, the broken quests… I can’t stop playing STO. I am absolutely hooked on the space combat and how solo friendly Cryptic has made the game. It seems sort of strange to be playing an MMO and staying isolated but Star Trek Online’s automatic instance grouping means that you rally into a mission with a few other humans and without the endless “LFG” text messages. Just play the game and as you go you’ll find yourself working with other to take down Klingon battleships or pursuing Undine infiltrators. It’s a social abstraction that lets Star Trek Online almost become a casual game and lets people not interested in huge guilds or party planning participate in those galactic events I was hoping Cryptic could handle.
So, it’s not a perfect game and it’s not going to scratch every itch but I have confidence in Cryptic to make this something special. The ground missions might be rather pedestrian but if you’ve ever wanted to take command of the Defiant and blast quantum torpedoes into the side of a Borg cube or remember the Starfleet Command series then this might just be the game for you. But for $15 a month on top of the $50 – $60 initial purchase, there could be a point where a player becomes bored with what the game can offer in its current state if Cryptic flounders on the promised episodic style content.
Episode 0048: The Great Old Pumpkin