It was a pretty slow weekend, considering. I meant to do a first look at Pi Story to complement the one I did for Florensia, but I didn’t get to it. Nor did I play Florensia any. I did play some EverQuest; Saturday I did all sorts of running around with my ranger, soloed Hate and Sky with my cleric, and Sunday morning met up with a guildie to do The Hole more or less legit, in that I actually played Tipa the entire time 🙂 But I’ve talked about that in a previous post.
Since last week’s patch, some of the tougher fights in Wizard 101 have been eased up. I did a lot more of the Krok fights, cleared out the Djesserit tombs and working on the Anjit ones. The Emperor’s Retreat is still a little tough; I’m going to have to find some friends to help on that one. I have been exploring Marleybone, the next world, by looking up friends who are there and teleporting to them. I’ll have a post about Wizard 101 tonight, I didn’t have time this morning. With any luck, I’ll be able to piggyback to the fourth world, Mooshoo, soon.
I logged on to Dina in EQ2 for awhile; couldn’t find a group, but I chatted with a guy who wanted me to move to Butcherblock and return to raiding. Even if all my nights were free — which they aren’t — I will NEVER sign up for a six or seven day a week raiding commitment, unless I am being paid for my time. There are no rewards for raiding that are worth giving up half my life to obtain. None. Not even one. The fact that WoW, EQ, EQ2 and their clones encourage and require this to raid is proof enough as to how out of step these games are with the time most people have to spend on something like that.
How to bring the casual player into raiding? Guaranteed reward. Every time I complete a raid, I get a master spell or another piece to my set gear. I get it, it goes right into my inventory, same for everyone else. Having to raid something dozens of times for a chance to get something you need is the way things used to be.
Honestly, the only rewards worth working for are the ones that will remain even after I hit the UNSUBSCRIBE button. Friendships, or real-world loot.
I logged into my EQ2.Najena assassin, Brightknife, and headed over to Timorous Deep to work on some more gray quests that nonetheless would improve my armor while looking for a group, but lost interest quickly and logged off.
I see Cryptic has finally officially announced they are working on Star Trek Online, which probably comes close to being just as much a surprise as the fact that Bioware is working on a Knights of the Old Republic MMO. Which is to say, no surprise at all. Cryptic has not yet proven to me that they can make an MMO worth playing. City of Heroes/Villains comes close, but its grindy, repetitive gameplay is only worth doing if you are doing it with friends. Since nearly ANY MMO is worth playing if it’s with friends, this isn’t any sort of recommendation.
Looking at the screenshots, it looks like they didn’t use any of Perpetual’s code not because Perpetual didn’t want them to have it, but because they refused to buy it. The screenshots look entirely different from that of Perpetual’s game. There’s just one thing I want out of a STO game. And that is, my character, sitting in the captain’s seat, ordering the bridge crew around and talking with aliens on the viewscreen as we jockey for the best firing position. A tactical game that requires teamwork. And I’ll stand at the science station or whatever I have to do to earn those captain’s stripes.
If it’s friggin’ WoW-in-space like Perpetual’s seemed to be — forget it. No more WoW-likes, PLEASE. We have WoW already. Even though there were battles and stuff in Star Trek, that was NOT the point of the show. Most of the time the point was to AVOID killing. If Cryptic says I have to kill a thousand Gorn soldiers to LEVEL, they will have TRAMPLED the whole meaning of Star Trek. To seek out new life and new civilizations — and BRUTALLY MURDER THEM? NO. Star Trek Online had better be a game where you AVOID killing for the best score.
Somehow I have the feeling that the people at Cryptic, as able as they are, will not be able to make a Star Trek game that isn’t loaded with senseless killing. Maybe it will be a mirror universe Star Trek game, that universe where people delighted in senseless killing, and a universe far better suited to a WoW-like.
Ya know what? Star Trek Online shouldn’t be like an MMO at all. It should be more like — some sort of social web thing, where you could work on science projects or try to heal alien creatures, or experiment, or play on the holo-deck, or attend command school, or try to tune engines up to a better efficiency, or figure out a new way to use the deflector dish, or explore the ruins of ancient civilizations, or attend a peace conference as part of an ambassador’s retinue, or… see what I’m getting at? Having to assassinate just ten more Romulan Centurions to ding before you get your next Phaser upgrade goes against EVERYTHING ST STANDS FOR. You should be able to experience the breadth and depth of the Star Trek/Starfleet universe, which CAN INCLUDE space battles and dangerous away missions, but those would be a small part of everything you can do. And not necessary to level. Why even have levels?
Anyway, I’ve ranted about STO plenty in its last incarnation. Perpetual was going to cheapen it. Cryptic might not. I hope they don’t. But I don’t think they are daring enough to make a game that isn’t a grindy murderfest. It’s what’s easiest.
28 thoughts on “Weekend Gaming and a rant about Star Trek Online”
Comments are closed.
Hmmms must have just missed the assassin in Eq2, Mayadhros, Said, Kasul, a friend + myself were all doing quests in TD as well, and spent most of Saturday / Sunday in game, but I didn’t see you. Dang. Kasul managed to almost reach 67, so we’re starting in on the RoK content and higher end T7 instances for fun.
I wasn’t on for that long, there was nothing to do that was interesting so after I got to TD and started on the quests, I logged off.
The issue with this is content would be consumed at an even faster rate than it is now. Guilds in WoW already clear raid zones faster than the devs probably intended, but they continue playing to obtain the items they want. If everyone got a piece of loot every raid, it would be only a few weeks before they were completely finished with the zone. This would certainly harm the longevity of the game, especially given how long it can take to design, test, and implement a raid instance.
Is loot handled perfectly in raids? Certainly not. It’s terribly annoying to see a bunch of drops disenchanted because no one wants them, and it’s sad to see some guilds go months or longer without seeing a particular drop. Still, I think guaranteeing drops for everyone would be just as big of a problem, just on the other end of the spectrum.
As for raid schedules, I think MMOs only encourage raiding every night if you already have the mindset that you need the items you want as fast as possible. Obviously, being largely item driven games, many players do feel this way which perpetuates that mentality raiders often have. There are, however, players who can simply raid for the enjoyment of the game and doing things with their friends. There are plenty of guilds on WoW that raid only two nights of week and have decent enough success. The only issue is that the better players are often hardcore players who WANT to raid 5 nights a week, and thus the more casual guilds have trouble progressing because they have to recruit poor players. If you could somehow get a core group of 25 casuals that also happened to be great players, there’s nothing stopping you from seeing endgame without devoting your life to it. It would just take longer to do so than those that play more. Players being unable to accept that is not the fault of the game.
In regards to your comments about Star Trek it really depends on what version of the show you are watching. I believe in the original, Captain Kirk went out of his way to fight any new alien races he found and to always capture the heart of their ruler’s daughter. There’s a reason Futurama has the exaggerated Zap Brannigan character. To some fans it would be perfectly fine to visit multiple worlds and get xp points for killing aliens. The Next Generation show was more the hippy, hand-holding version that would be suited for a social based game. You can also go in the opposite direction and use the newer Enterprise show which was more brutal and had elements of a cold war era with lots of spying.
Star Trek has been reinvented so many times that its going to be hard to make a game which pleases everyone. If Cryptic is smart they will allow people to play the game and advanced by playing either a killing machine like Kirk or a intelligent diplomat like Picard.
@Myrix — re: Raiding guilds. I don’t know anyone in any raiding guilds. They are all strangers to me. Mostly what they want me in a raid for is to help them with their goals and to help them get stuff. As a new recruit, it’s expected that I will rarely get any loot at all unless I have been there for a very long time. In fact, to even suggest I would be interested in some loot would be a mark against me. In fact the expectation is that I have joined the guild just for the thrill and joy of raiding. But what it really is, is being thrust into the midst of a bunch of foul-mouthed pigs against whom I can say nothing. If there’s no expectation of loot, if I only vaguely know the people I am with, and yet they claim the vast majority of my free time, then really, I am giving my valuable time away to people who will squander it.
I know that EQ and WoW have trained people to think that repeating raids dozens of times is the norm, but let’s face it. It doesn’t even make any sense within the game. I kill Onyxia and yet she is back again? I kill her and kill her and kill her and still she is there? In that warrior sword quest where you have to stab her dead body with a blade, where her power is running into that blade, where’s the sense in having to ever face her again?
That’s one thing I did like about FFXI Online. After you finished a chapter of the storyline and moved on, the world would be different for you. You could help someone else do it, but in your version of game reality, the dead monster would be dead. LotRO had this, too, IIRC.
If WoW-likes are ever to take the next step to greater popularity, they HAVE to get past the obsessive-compulsive attributes they currently have. People can take mindless leveling only so long. Eventually they move past it in their lives, and how are WoW-likes going to keep the people who realize how much of their lives have been wasted doing things written purely and solely to waste their time for no good purpose? What good is having hundreds of hours of play in your game if 90% of those hours is spent doing the same thing, again and again?
@Relmstein — I don’t remember the episode where Kirk ever fired first. He would try diplomacy and sneakiness before considering fighting, and only would fight when being attacked. And even then, usually only to disable. Star Trek isn’t about killing. It’s about solving puzzles in technology or diplomacy, usually. It’s a show very well suited to an MMORPG, but not and SPECIFICALLY not suited for a WoW-like.
A valid complaint, but one that has been largely addressed with 10-man raiding in WoW. With only 10 people, while it can feel less epic, you do find a more personal connection with each player and it would be unlikely that you would be denied loot in a smaller group like that. Also, getting back to the issue of devoting time to raiding, it’s pretty much required that at least some effort be put forth to obtain the better items in an MMO. If anyone can get the best gear in the game without spending much time on it, the value and prestige of having those items becomes much lower. It would end up effecting the overall enjoyment of the game because people wouldn’t feel like they had achieved something great. It sounds like you had some bad experiences with raiding and assume it’s always like that, but with the right people in a smaller group I think you might find you enjoy it.
In this case, you just have to accept that you’re playing a video game and not D&D. In the overall timeline, you can easily decide that your character has killed Onyxia and Nefarian, stopped the Qiraji invasion and so on, but to actually deny players the fun of redoing that content wouldn’t make any sense at all. Again, looking at what is good for the longevity of the game, I see no alternative that could provide plenty of things to do at the endgame without repeating content. As long as the content is fun, I don’t mind it personally.
At this point, you just sound jaded. Why is it a waste? Why is it for no purpose? How are WoW-likes any different from any other type of game in this case? If it was fun, you weren’t wasting your time. It’s like saying watching an hour of your favorite television show was a waste. No, you don’t gain anything substantial from it, but it’s enjoyable. As long as you enjoyed your time in a game it can’t be considered a waste any more than any other form of entertainment could.
What would you recommend these types of games do to get away from what you call the obsessive-compulsive attributes, without sacrificing the longevity of the game?
Well of course I’m jaded. I am in my late forties (no saying how late), busier than ever, love the MMO genre but hate the demands it puts on my time. Time spent with friends is not wasted, but time spent with random people who only care about what my character can or cannot do, is. I did all the T8 RoK raids bunches of times with almost nothing to show from it; if I want to actually see some of the loot from there I have to sign up to another guild and try to pretend I care about their opinion of my character and run through the same raids dozens of more times, and still likely won’t be eligible to even bid on upgrades.
It’s no way to run a game. And games lose me when they require an extensive commitment for no reward. When you say ten person raids, I think, ah, there’s a raid I would never see because I would not be hardcore enough to run it. EverQuest’s old huge raids were something special. You wouldn’t think that. But those old Plane of Time raids where we had the full 72 people on, all in our teams, chatting — it was like a huge party. You’d have fantastically skilled people and others who weren’t that great but were fun to be around; everyone who wanted to go could go, no problem. With a ten person raid, there’s no room for any but the best. And is it sacrilege to say that I don’t care if I’m the best? I don’t! And I’m not!
“With a ten person raid, there’s no room for any but the best”
That’s the part that bugs me most about these new limited sized raids. In EQ2 especially I see it (since I do raid and I have not raided in WoW). I dislike HAVING to take along ONLY certain classes because then you run out of space and the raid simply can’t be accomplished without these specific people on board. At least in EQ1 you can take everyone. There’s always room. Sure, make a full 72-man raid with nothing but monks and you may find it a little harsh, but you can still take 10 monks and be fine. In EQ2 if you have any more then 2-3 of any given class, you’re wasting a spot that could be better suited to another, in the best interest of the raid. There are of course exceptions to this rule. You could take 4 templars, or 4 illusionists, and I doubt anyone would complain too much. Try taking along 4 shadowknights though, or even more then 3 fighter classes total on a raid to begin with (In T8 end game raids we’re talking here) and see how you fare.
I do miss the larger raids because they allowed everyone to participate and you didn’t need to swap spots which is common in WoW, and probably EQ2 as well, though I don’t play it so I’m not sure. It’s always disappointing to be the one sitting on the sidelines, or even see your friends benched, because there simply isn’t enough room. That’s just the way it goes though.
However, you’re mistaken that a 10 person raid means only the best can do it. Karazhan, the premier 10-man raid in TBC, is very doable by even mediocre and poorly geared characters as long as they are willing to learn the encounters and are at least capable of playing their classes properly. You don’t have to be a theorycrafting genius or spend hours farming consumables to succeed in Karazhan, nearly anyone can do it. It’s actually very commonly done by random pick-up groups, so obviously a more coordinated group of friends could do even better.
The 10 person limit does mean certain classes (or more likely talent specs) will be less desired than others, but it doesn’t mean they are completely unwelcome. As long as you ensure you have the proper healing and tanking covered, as you would have to with any group content, you can bring along practically anything else and succeed.
Smaller raids also give you a chance to feel more important and crucial to the success of the raid. In larger raids, it’s much more likely that someones efforts might be lost in the chaos. I’ll never forget the time we lost nearly half our 10 person raid at the very beginning of the Nightbane encounter (one of the more difficult Karazhan bosses) including all but one healer. We were just going to wipe it, but we decided to see how long we could last. We ended up defeating Nightbane with our sole Paladin keeping us up and myself and one other as the only real DPS. It felt amazing to actually accomplish that and that particular Paladin still cites that night as his ultimate achievement in healing.
With many more 10-man raids coming with WotLK, I think we’ll start to see a new breed of raiders who play much more casually but still end up progressing through all of the content. I’m also too busy these days to devote my life to raiding, so I’m glad that the 10-mans will give me the opportunity to see the Lich King and all of the other interesting raids.
The issue with this is content would be consumed at an even faster rate than it is now.
How exactly? The content is being consumed at the exact same speed, regardless. The difference is maybe you’d at least get some reward for your time and effort.
I may be way off-base on this one, since I haven’t actually read up on it, but I’ll take a stab at what I think it means. LOTRO seems to use a barter system for their end-game equipment. If I’m correct in how this works, perhaps each player is guaranteed at least one single token per raid? At least that way you can pick and choose which specific piece of gear you want rather than relying on RNG for the loot table, then whichever looting system you’re using on top of that.
The RNG system in WoW, etc. doesn’t delay the consumption of the content but merely the discarding of the content. A token system could accomplish the delay by requiring multiple tokens, perhaps even tying it to a faction reputation system but the bottom line is: at the end of the raid, you have something to show for your time, something that will contribute to your character’s advancement. RNG systems inhibit, if not prohibit, that type of reward.
@Scott – It would actually likely be consumed faster because your raid would be gearing up much quicker than normal and thus have an easier time progressing further and downing the rest of the bosses. To give an example, if Brutallus dropped the T6 belt for everyone in the raid in addition to a few other items, that’s that much more raid DPS you gained for those who upgraded and thus you could theoretically progress through the content at a quicker rate. But yes, discarding the content is more what I was referring to originally. I guess that’s a better word for it.
Token systems are great and they are already incorporated somewhat in WoW, but if you literally put everything on a token system you dampen the achievement of obtaining certain items. I think it would be fine to create a raid-level token similar to the Badge of Justice that raiders could use to buy more powerful gear, but it would be rather lame to see things like the Warglaives of Azzinoth on a vendor somewhere. I’m not arguing that raiders shouldn’t all be rewarded for their participation, they should, but Tipa’s original example including getting a piece of her set gear and I think that would cheapen the excitement of earning it if all you had to do was show up.
You can look at raiding as a cost/benefit analysis. Let’s say I want item X.
Let’s call P the probability that item X drops during a raid. And let’s call N the number of people who will roll on that item (or are ahead of you in the DKP order or whatever, math works out the same, pretty much), then the average number of raids R to acquire item X is R = N/P. So let’s say there are six scouts — one of each type — in your guild, and you each need seven pieces of the latest armor, plus two weapons, and the probability of any specific boss dropping a scout item is 1/3, and further saying that every scout item that drops will always be an upgrade for someone, then the number of raids to complete everyone’s set would be (9 * 6)/(1/3) = 162 raids. The actual number would be somewhat higher because of unwanted dupes, I could do the math for that if anyone is interested.
This is the current math of raiding. But it’s worse, because loot is rarely given as a random roll in hardcore guilds. There usually is some sort of seniority basis going on which means that scout #1 will get all his stuff first, with dupes going to scouts #2 and #3, and then when #1 is all equipped, scout #4 starts getting some stuff, and by the time scout #6’s turn comes around, they don’t do those raids any more — they get a few leftover pieces and then new content comes around.
This makes a system where some people are perpetually ill-equipped, and yet show the same inhuman dedication to raiding as the higher-rank people. I’ve seen it in every hardcore guild I have been in. Sometimes I have been at the top of it, sometimes not. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just the math.
And it’s just human nature that as the top equipped people finish their sets, they will have less and less desire to rerun raids for which they derive no benefit.
Discarding DKP and other seniority schemes entirely and using a random Need Before Greed roll should equip everyone equally enough so that nearly everyone has a reason to rerun old content.
But anyway. If you could guarantee that with nine raids of a specific set of content, you would have your base gear, there still could be items of specific rarity that you might want, or you might want to run a raid to help out a friend or just for the fun of it, but you would be able to gauge your commitment. Yes, I have a couple of weeks where nothing is going on, I will raid every night and complete my set. After that I’ll just do it for a chance at can o’whoopass or to make sure the new recruits finish their set. And after we all have all our stuff, we can go wtfpwn the battlegrounds. Or whatever we want.
The thing is, companies should want to leave their customers with a good feeling. They will keep their subscriptions. They will get other people to play. If they leave you with a sense of frustration, you’ll move to something where you have fun when you play. Easy mode? No. Just a fixed reward for a fixed effort.
I’ll take the token system any day. I’ve done the hardcore-ish raiding in WoW with random loot and sorry, but it’s just crap. I’d rather collect tokens so at least I know I’m on my way towards getting a piece of armor I want. It sucks to have an RNG give everyone else something and I’m left out, or perhaps worse, give everyone what they already have. There can still be weapons or other gear/loot that is more random and gives a personal motivation to want to continue striving for even after you’ve completed your armor set, but some incentive needs to be given for that insane amount of repetition and incentive for the more casual base to enter that sphere of the game.
@Myrix: read what I said. Random or Token systems, either way the content itself is being consumed at the same speed. The RNG just delays the discardment (just made that word up, sue me) of the content after everyone is equipped and moves on to the next tier in the progression. Repeating for the RNG doesn’t mean you haven’t consumed that content. You have, you simply haven’t received your rewards yet, thus haven’t discarded that content.
I really should point out that SOE is bettering these odds in EQ2 by making it more likely that set pieces that drop are needed by someone that uses them. So many of the RoK raids don’t have the dupe problem at all — if it isn’t useful, it won’t drop. This is not the case for WoW or EQ, as far as I know.
If you build up your toons over on Najena, I belong to a guild that causally raids on Friday and Saturday nite’s 7:30 EST. We are generally short handed (by about 6 people) and are still working on learning the in’s and out’s plus gearing up to start moving up the progression.
Your always welcome to come hang out if you get bored or want to try it out. Send me a tell on Marant if you want to come along or need a group 🙂
My ideal raid loot system has always been something that I considered totally unrealistic, but it is an idea that I like. Of course, as these games progress, the idea seems less and less unlikely. It is actually very close to the token system mentioned by Scott but also sort of incorporates a distorted DKP system.
A boss mob has a game-assigned point value attached to it. It also has a fixed number of items that could possibly drop. Once the fight is over, the loot is displayed, bid on, rolled on, or otherwise distributed. Once the loot is divided up, the members of a raid force that DID NOT loot an item are awarded an equal share of tokens (total point value divided by the number of raiders who did not loot an item). Once the tokens are awarded, each person can click on the corpse of the boss mob. A vendor-like window appears showing all of the possible loot items that this particular mob COULD possibly drop. Each item costs a certain number of tokens. If you have enough stored up, you can buy items. If not, the tokens stay with your toon.
All boss mobs award the same type of tokens, so once your raid team moves to new targets, if you haven’t had the chance to spend your tokens yet, they transfer to the next mob.
In this way, everyone, no matter how casual, what their status is within the guild, or any other number of factors has the chance to eventually get their hands on some pieces of raid loot that they want even if they don’t have the DKP, seniority, or favoritism within the guild. It becomes a cumulative raid effort.
It also has the benefit of being retroactive. If I always wanted Stealthy Hood of Uberosity off of the Insane Dragon of Epic Asswhuptivity and I didn’t ever get it when my guild was raiding there, I could possibly attend to help another guild with the raid. They wouldn’t have to worry that I might want to loot something from the corpse because I would have my raid tokens. Once the mob dropped and loot is distributed, I can click on the corpse and “find” that one more piece of loot that no one knew was there by virtue of my stored raid bank.
Probably not an idea that we’ll ever see and I’m sure a bunch of people would hate it and/or will feel compelled to flame the idea and me simply for mentioning it. It is just something that I would like personally.
Hey Tipa…want me to destroy any hope you have of a Star Trek MMO not being a grind-fest with ONE WORD that will give Cryptic an unfailing excuse to include rampant grind-style slaughter?
One word: Borg.
HEE HEE HEE HEE HEEE!
@rao: That’s actually not a bad idea in the sense that you’re giving the players a choice: bid on the actual loot dropped, or bid on tokens to collect to get your loot later. Personally, once I have my tokens I’d rather find an external NPC (LOTRO is doing this) and turn them in there, rather than deciding at a later time which loot you want and having to re-run the whole raid (Guild Wars does this with their campaign finale missions) which can be a drag.
As for STO, bottom line: I just don’t see that the industry or its players is ready enough to move on from the Diku-based format. STO will, literally, be WoW in space. It’s going to have leveling, crafting (in a world with replicators there is no need for this but it will be there anyway), gear upgrades, and Kill Ten Tribbles quests. For all the lengths our AAA MMO’s go to disguise the grind and add new activities, video games in general haven’t evolved beyond the point of players being mass murderers. (By the time we’re level 2 or 3 in WoW we’ve killed more than most real-life serial killers.) Violence is the solution to nearly every problem in a video game.
Don’t believe me? How many times have we heard A Tale in the Desert mentioned as anything more than a novelty? How many ATID blogs have we heard of?
I love diku. I’ll be playing diku for years.
That said, it would be nice to see a few mainstream games pop out that shake up the mainstream conception of MMO a little bit more.
Maybe the industry isn’t ready to move on, but sooner or later it needs to or everyone is just going to get bored and leave.
It’s entirely possible we’re already reaching that stage, Cam. I can rattle off a few on my blogroll who’ve already put out which non-MMO’s (including consoles) they’re going to go out and get. I’m spending more time with my 360. Diku is Diku. You can re-skin it all you want, but after a while you get an x-ray vision that lets you see beneath the skin to what you’re truly playing over and over.
I don’t think the DIKU model will run any risk of making people bored of MMOs. I mean didn’t it dominate the early MUD era also? In my mind the DIKU model is the the action movie of the MMO world and just like in real life the “professional critics” are always going to profess that whatever’s popular is in poor taste.
I guess since Star Trek is a mixture of action, techno-bable, and diplomancy that it would need a lot of different game mechanics to represent the franchise. DIKU type gameplay and combat would fit for the action part, but it would only be a small portion of what makes up Star Trek. I think a complex crafting system like a combination of EVE Online and EQ2 might produce something on par with the techno-bable found in Star Trek. Diplomancy would be a lot harder since you would have to be careful not to make it a requirement that some players would find boring. I like the guild system from EVE Online but it doesn’t quite fit with Star Trek. Perhaps something that uses all the major empires in Star Trek as actual factions and requires players to negotiate to gain access to planets/missions not in their territory.
See, everyone looks at this IP and thinks WoW in Space.
Forget all that. Forget it to death. WoW and Star Trek have NOTHING to do with each other.
The IP itself is screaming the correct way to proceed.
You don’t have quests. You have EPISODES. Each episode has a wide variety of ways to approach it — via diplomacy, guns-a-blazing, sneakiness, a combination — everything you remember from the shows. How you do an episode — and they will be a combination of more difficult set pieces and randomly generated adventures — affects how the Federation and Starfleet see you and affect the missions you can command in the future — though you can be in someone else’s episode. When you are commanding an episode, you can fill out your crew with any combination of NPCs and PCs.
Not going to get into too much detail, I did in a previous post. People are so mired in WoW-think that every new game is seen through that murk. But Star Trek is ALL ABOUT the densely plotted episodes, the difficult decisions, the discussions on how to proceed.
If Cryptic is coming out with a WoW-like, the IP should be taken from them.
Reading at the STO web site, they seem to indicate that combat will be there but that it is just as much about exploration. What that means in practice remains to be seen. Last time checked there were 26 pages in the forum thread where they were asking people about questions.
While there were a lot of very detailed questions, there were also a number of them asking more or less what you are highlighting here.
I think we will not see a game with non-combat focus until someone takes the essence of the combat gameplay and applies that to some other activity.
Tipa, I agree, but I’m jaded enough to not actually believe Cryptic (or anyone else) would break the mold of what the suits say is “successful” and run with it. Hence, our “WoW In Space” conversation.
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/38183.html
Looks like they went with the combat route.