This morning I, and likely every other Star Trek Online subscriber, received a survey from Cryptic asking how we liked the game so far, if we were likely to subscribe past the first month, what other games we played, what our favorite parts of the game were (Character/Ship customization), what parts we thought were really ill-thought and crappy (Memory Alpha) and so on.
There were no long form questions where we could explain to Cryptic just what I really want from their game. So here’s what I’d say to them — and based on my comments, I think a lot of Star Trek players are thinking the same things.
Cryptic, you’ve made a really fun and enjoyable game, but you shipped with only two or three month’s worth of content. Once you reach max level, there is no reason to ever play that character again, and it’s unclear how “raidisodes” will change this much, unless you take the WoW route and make raid progression its own sort of leveling game. But that would kill the casual nature of the game so far.
So here’s what I’m thinking, and some of these are things you have either announced or hinted at.
Ships
At the Battle of Wolf 359, remembered in one of the very first systems you see after leaving Sol, Starfleet didn’t just send admirals commanding large, lumbering ships. They sent every ship they could find. There should be a use and purpose for every ship you can command, from the DS9 runabouts to the Miranda-class light cruiser you start with to the battlefield dominating Sovereign-class star cruisers. The runabout could perhaps move directly from one starbase to another. The Defiant-class escorts could move too fast to be targeted by battleship and dreadnought weapons — things like that.
Make ship upgrades an option, but not something you are compelled to do when you are promoted. Captain Janeway commanded the Voyager all the way back from the Delta Quadrant. Tell me that an admiral would be ashamed to command it.
Don’t admirals have more than one ship under their command, anyway?
Territory
We’re shown all the time just how bitter the war is. Federation vs Klingon vs Romulan vs Reman vs Cardassian vs Undine vs Hirogen vs Jem’Hadar vs Borg. We’re in a war with many fronts, but no battle is ever won or lost. Make things matter.
The Klingons can have the Qo’noS sector, Feds can have the Sirius sector, everyplace else is contested. Even if all you do is warn players they are entering space controlled by the Klingons, and color the map red and nothing else, at least there’d be a reason to do the PvP scenarios or fleet actions in those places. Maybe the Borg are encroaching on Klingon space. Does the Federation join with their enemies for the common purpose of driving away the Borg, or do they stall for a bit in order to gain some advantage over their foes?
The state of the war should be up to the players. This keeps players invested in the game and makes memorable battles — the outcome of which can change the state of the game. As it stands, nothing you do has any consequence. Make it matter.
“Crafting”
Memory Alpha is a poor joke. Turning in stuff you happen to find laying around to upgrade useless things in enough quantities so that you can do it all over again with another NPC until, eventually, somewhere down the line, you finally get to something you might use?
The whole thing is pointless. I don’t know anyone who does more than the very first turn-in upgrades.
Players need to be able to build consoles, weapons, kits, equipment, even ships. Tom Paris built the Delta Flyer. Why can’t we? Every engineer in Starfleet has their own secret way of modifying the deflector dish to do something special. Why can’t we?
Feds can breed tribbles. Klingons should be able to breed targs! Cooks should be able to make truly incredible meals that will grant their crews some bonuses. Memory Alpha needs to become a research center for players, a whole planet just for crafting. That would be nice.
Seasons
You call your story missions “episodes”. I love the story missions! My favorite part of the game. Why not expand that a little, and every couple of months, come out with a “season finale” or something that will take into account what the players have done since the end of the last “season” and advances the plot. If the Federation has been vigilant in keeping the Borg at bay, have them up their attacks on the Klingons. If the Klingons have been ignoring Romulan arenas, have Romulans step up their attacks in Klingon space. Etc.
Other races
First, give the Klingons their own PvE arc. The Klingon House vs House PvP arenas means nothing when you don’t even know which House you’re in, or which you are fighting. Flesh that out. Give Klingons a heritage and have their PvE storylines revolve around honor and House politics.
I want to play the Romulan storyline. Their struggle to keep their race and empire alive after their home world was destroyed is epic. Let us see that first hand.
The Cardassians have been decimated by the Dominion. It’s incredible that they still have such hatred for the Federation — they should be gathering strength and allies to at the very least shut the wormhole down.
Why not have Vorta and Jem’Hadar storylines? If I remember correctly, at the end of Deep Space 9, the Founders were dead because of Section 31’s evil plots. Their subject races clearly are trying to keep the Dominion together. Let’s get into their skins and live those stories.
Other Factions
Starfleet is a great organization and all, but once you’re admiral, where do you go from there? You resign your commission and join the Maquis, or Section 31, or you make contact with the Time Patrol and help keep the timeline clear. Or maybe you just take an exploration ship and specialize in exploration and first contacts. Other paths of advancement. Becoming an admiral in Starfleet (or a brigadier general in the Klingon Empire) should only be the START of your career.
I REALLY LIKE STAR TREK ONLINE!
I end this by pointing out that I really like STO! I love the bridge officer advancement; I have really grown attached to my crew. The story missions are great, and certain of the fleet battles are pretty amazing. But right now, all I can tell people who ask about STO is that it is a great game for a month or two. For STO to thrive, I should be able to tell people what they’ll be working on a year after they subscribe, what kind of advancement will be open to them in four years. I can’t do that right now.
STO had a good start, but content needs to be coming fast and furious, much faster than was done for Champions Online. You have one of the two best SF licenses in the world. Don’t let it go to waste.
32 thoughts on “Star Trek Online: What would you say to Cryptic?”
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Damn! You should post this to the forums, print it out and mail it, and start a petition. This is by far the most excellent post I Have seen on STO suggestions, and if Cryptic even scratched the surface of these suggestions, it would get me to consider continuing my subscription.
Well done!
Tribble Fleet Action, Tribbles vs Targs, hehe… I think Alexa said it in the previous blog entry already, they could do so many things with this franchise. If they manage to screw up like with Champions Online, they will turn me as STO fan into a pure Cryptic Hater.
You should seriously post this on suggestion forum. Great Ideas, all that is what i felt was missing when i played Open Beta.
Agreed on all fronts.
Great post. I didn’t get the survey so I’ll piggyback my thoughts here.
One big opportunity that seems to be missed in STO is combining forces between levels. You more or less touched on this in your post in terms of keeping all ships useful. It seems to me like a low level player with his low level ship should be able to join a fleet and help out in high level conflicts.
Thinking in naval terms, you’ve got aircraft carriers and battleships, but you also have destroyers and PT boats and whatever else. Give the smaller ships a role in fleet actions and you give advanced players an opportunity to bring friends into the game in a meaningful way.
And yeah, how about “pets” in the form of smaller ships, too. If I’m an admiral, or a flag captain, let me command more than one ship. And those other ships can be NPC operated.
That’s a great idea! Or promote your bridge officers to command a ship of their own, under your command!
Wait, advance the story? Have you been reading my stuff again? I called for just that in an “episodic MMO” design proposal. So… yeah, Trek would be a perfect place to do that, what with the “seasons” structure. 🙂
It’s like they are already set up for it. And I DO read your stuff 😉 I steal good ideas wherever I find them. But is Cryptic listening?
Turbine managed monthly plot episodes in Asheron’s Call, at least some of which were based on player actions.
I couldn’t agree more, Tipa! I’m still using the Defiant-class escort, because I find the ones at Admiral level way too ugly for me. But it is true, there’s no incentive to use the lower tier ships at this moment. And you can’t ‘sell’ them back either. They just take up dust, unless you decide to get silly and pick a runabout or a Miranda-class and try to fly through a Borg fleet, screaming “Aiiiee!” (kinda fun :)) I simply _love_ the ‘conquest mode’ idea. We’re at war, yet I feel like I can go anywhere without a sense of wariness.
I haven’t touched the crafting outside that mandatory mission to Memory Alpha. I feel like the Marks you get for exploration are enough to get a ship fully ready.
Cryptic already said that the Romulans will be the next playable faction to be implemented. No idea when that will be, though.
Anyway, I have written too much 😉 I love the game and I want it to succeed, so I hope they reach out to the players for their ideas. if you look hard enough in the forums, you can find really great ones!
Great write up. Lets just hope Cryptic acts quickly.
I agree with everything said in the post. Lets work to not just make it a good game but a great and memorable one.
Hi I love this. All very astute indeed! I would add that the “diplomacy” missions are a bit of a joke too.. I would love to see captains gaining faction recognition (and notierity!) much like (and hopefully less grindy than) Lord of the Rings Online.
Once a faction recognised you, diplomacy would become easier to perform – perhaps like adding extra options to conversations (much like Paragon/Renegade options from ME2). Wouldn’t it be nice to invite two warring factions leaders to the bridge (and hopefully briefing room one day) and hack out some negotiation terms?
You would have to use your influence and guile to come to a good settlement. And I also think there is no shame in FAILING a mission such as this. If you screw up, you lose faction points from one side, or even both sides as they lose respect for you. This could perhaps affect how Starfleet itself sees you – a diplomat like Picard or a bit of a loose cannon who gets the job done like Kirk…
There shouldn’t be this “Oh let’s have another go!” mentality that is so common in casual MMO’s
Just my 2 Energy Credits..
I’d like to join the Q continuum. 🙂
I just wanted to say that if Cryptic added HALF of what you posted above that I would re-sub in a heartbeat! I think you have some amazing ideas, and I hope Cryptic takes five minutes to read and think about what you mentioned.
Nice Write up!
Admiral’s don’t command ships, they command bases, fleets, and sectors, but STO wanted the Admiral rank so we slum.
You do realize that you don’t HAVE to take the newer ship, yes? You’re offered the ship, but you can just as easily put higher lvl consoles/weaps/gear on your lower lvl ship. I hated the Capt cruiser so I did Capt in my Cmdr cruiser with Capt weapons, until I got to Admiral. I’m likely going to stay in my Defiant when I get to Admiral. I’ll buy the higher level ship of course, because it’s Free. I’ll likely buy both, just like I did my Eng Adm, but I’m way too attached to the Defiant to give it up 🙂
Things I’d like to see in STO, in no particular order:
– There is no feeling of Exploration. In Eve (a game I no longer play and don’t enjoy due to the PvP, but have to acknowledge how well they did things), it’s possible to get the feeling of exploring something new and undiscovered. Yes, I know the wormholes are all explored, yes I know they arrive on a schedule, but if I don’t avail myself of the schedule and scan it down myself, it really feels like I’m doing something new and different. I want that feeling in STO. I don’t want to go into a giant pink cotton candy nebula and randomly get CoH radio/newspaper missions that are all essentially the same. I want my science ship, with it’s expanded sensor array (that I researched) to find a weakness in subspace that, when bombarded with tachyon particles, opens a rift to another tachyon conduit that takes me somewhere cool and unusual and LEAVES me there, with no way home until I figure it out. I want to find new races, REAL new races, not randomly named races with no relevance like the current MadLib exploration does.
– I want my ship and capt branch choice to matter in my gameplay outside of combat. Because I’m in a science ship, I can scan things down no one else can. Because I’m in an escort, I get military missions other capts don’t. Because I’m in a cruiser, I get bigger jobs no one else gets. Because I’m a science officer, I get missions that involve research. You get the idea. Who I am and what I fly needs to be something more than the tactics I fight with.
– I want my branch officers to matter. I want my vulcan tactical officer to give me a mission to take her to Vulcan for pon far, and I want things to get really difficult on my ship until I take her there. I want my Andorian science officer to “Throw down” on my Saurian Engineer and call for Ushaani to pay for the insult. I want my Bajoran tactical officer to come to me with a mission about her (uknown to starfleet) Maqis background and she needs my help. I want 2 of my bridge officers to fall in love with each other and have it create drama on the crew. And all of this needs to have a “toggle” that will turn it on and off for those players who despise it and don’t want to deal with it. In the series and the movies, the crew was an endless source of content. The game should be no different.
– I want crafting to be expanded to include skill research and ship improvements. I want my Geordi Laforge to do the work on my ship. My Belanna Torres modifies my vessel with these enhancements, tweaking the warp drives, the phaer yields, such that it’s an improvement to my ship based upon my crew and their skills. I want my bridge officers to have crafting skills that we can enhance. Give me a reason to stay in my ship beyond “the next tier sucks ass”. I’ve invested so much in my current ship I’ll just stay here when I’m promoted. I want crafting to allow me to modify ANYthing, not just the handful of things Memory Alpha allows. What if I want to be all phasers and photons? I don’t want Tetryon, why is Tetryon the only thing I can craft? And I want discoveries. I want to find something new and different. A new way to do things. I want my engineer to invent Transwarp, or Transphasic. Discover something cool. We’re all on the same server so these types of things are possible.
– The galaxy needs to change, due to our efforts. Right now I’ve not logged into my Admiral in days. Why? Because there’s no point. Badge gear sucks and the Borg will be right there, doing the same thing, every day, whether I’m there or not. The game needs to live and breath with us in it. Again, we’re all in the same server, here and now is the chance to make a difference. If I don’t log in and help, another planet falls to the Borg. If you don’t log in and PvP, the Klingons move an inch closer in their territory. If we push hard enough, the Klingons have to expand outwards. What if, in a few months, we negotiate peace with the Klingons so we can all gang up on the Romulans? The game has to change or there’s no point in playing. If I log off right now and don’t log in for 6 months, the galaxy I return to needs to be different, or there was no point in coming back. That’s what persistent means, not “stays the same” but “changes consistently”. When I do something, that something changes the galaxy and that change remains. What we have is static, not persistent.
That’s a few of my thoughts, for what they’re worth.
I completely agree with everything you’ve said. If they don’t start making big pushes now, people will be leaving soon. Not a threat to Cryptic or anything, but I am already beginning to get bored. I am almost at Admiral, and once I get that last ship, I am not sure what I’ll be doing, probably leaving.
For anyone who thinks it’s not possible to update the game monthly with the “Season Finale” type missions Tipa mentions. Look at Asheron’s Call. Yes the game is old, 10 years to be exact, and it’s graphics are beyond outdated. But they ran monthly patches for years, in addition to an expansion, and some major content updates once in a while. I think the past couple years they have slowed down with patches, but they still run them. For the 10th anniversary they did a major patch with new content. Every month there was some new content, small quests, new loot, new dungeons, everything. Sometimes the patch just progresses a running story arc, but even that keeps people playing. The game may be old and slowly dying, but a game that last for 10 years has some lesson that can be learned from it, and those monthly patches are key.
Here’s something really simple I’d say to Cryptic:
You need a 10 day trial to lure new players.
I’m not willing to shell out $50 just to see if I like it.
But a 10 day trial would allow me the time to determine if I want to own it and play it regularly.
–*Rob
The letter and the users comments almost cover everything. But there are a few things I would add that need to be included with these ideas, or the new stuff will get old real quick.
1) Realm vs Realm combat has been implemented in various games from the very beginning, most noteworthy of which for the purpose of my description is Planetside. If we go toe to toe with an enemy for control of a sector. Don’t just give us control. Give us representation of the task we accomplished. Planetside started to do this with battle honors that were displayable on your armor in the form of ribbons on one shoulder. Before that, you would fight and take a continent, only to loose it 30 minutes later after you logged off. All evidence of your task erased. Give us a way to represent what we accomplish online. And not just with an achievement list. Somethign that the other players can see without having to pull your dossier out of the Starfleet Registry.
2) STOP MAKING THE MISSION SO EASY TO FIGURE OUT! This would be harder to do nowadays due to forums, FAQ’s and stuch, but the mission presentation is a joke. I think an example would be best here.
Say we get a mission to find some lost wreckage on a lifeless planet. Now, all we do is click the glowies that we find. using the scanner (if we get that option) to find them. The only difficulty offered is in if there is opposition on the planet, or if we cant use the scanner. THESE are the precise missions that should make you think about which Boffs to use on the planet surface. When I was playing my heavy escort, i had 6 total officers. Give us a reason to use the extra 2 officers I had for ground missions and exploration. Add a puzzle, such as reconfiguring a tricorder (similar to the hacking used in Mass Effect 2, but a bit more canon for the die-hards out there), before I can use the anamoly scanner to find mission objectives. Even better, remove the green text telling me exactly what to do. Make me think about it. Star Trek is about cerebral answers as much as muscle. Sure, some players are going to whine about not being able to find out how to finish missions. Screw ’em! MMO’s are all about other players working with each other, that person will reach out to the community for help!
3) Ship combat has to be military. Friendly star ships can scan over 35k and find each other. Why do friendly ships dissapear after this distance. If there is jamming that would be fine. But there is none. Heck, modern day aircraft can detect each other over hundereds of miles. Come on. You can’t really use limitations of engine as an excuse. If we can chat in the chat window, we should be able to give location information to each other, even if its not realtime. For instance, if you go BVR (sorry, beyond visual range for you civilians) treat the ships like subs treat each other. Send a ping! Your buddies get a marker with your ships name showing your location at that moment. That way, they can find you and get within range again, and you can still get assistance if you need it.
Thats all ill chat about for now. But even this would give me reason to look at the game again. If not, enjoy the 59 bucks I ya. I’m taking my ball and playing MAG or Medieval-Total War or something.
Janeway wasn’t an Admiral until MUCH later 😉
Nice post, I too was frustrated that the Cryptic survey failed to allow any input other than preset responces. I really like STO as it stands but I am captain already, it’s taken very little time to get there, I can see that Admiral wont be that far away, just what I am supposed to do then has me a little worried.
Fantastic write up — just one correction: the Founders aren’t dead. Odo cured them in the end, as part of the deal he basically arranged to end the war and the Dominion threat.
I’d also like to add a few things I’d like to see in the game:
Make ships matter. I have this cool ship, but can’t see any of it. Don’t just add in engineering or sickbay, make things to do in these places. The best idea would be to add a sandbox-style Holodeck, so people could create their own missions and share them with friends, etc. That would add so many hours of fun for tens of thousands of players.
Additionally, if you add things to do in the ship, that could help make travel less annoying. Don’t make people stay in the grid while they’re traveling — let them goof around in their ships. Add fun little minigames that have some sort of meaning — even if they’re just server-wide rankings (or maybe temporary boosts to related ship systems). Things like dimensional chess, or some sort of games that have to do with science or tactical abilities.
I love your ideas for a new (real) crafting system… there’s so much potential for an awesome crafting system, from doing things within your own ship (ie shuttle design, etc.) to surveying planets and asteroids for minerals, etc. What if you could leave a runabout and shuttles in a system to collect some minerals, while the rest of the ship goes off to explore the sector, then you come back and… presto! your shuttles and runabout collected some minerals which could be used to power some new cool thing you’ll build in your ship, or improvements to the deflector dish, etc.
There’s just so much potential — and I’m sure they’ll add some of these things. But the problem is as you put it: there’s not much content in the game, even considering it’s casual appeal. If they don’t rush-order these depth-improving aspects for the game, they’re going to lose players. If they can do it, they could have an immense, long-term success on their hands. Let’s hope they get it right, because I’d love to have an awesome STO game in the years ahead.
Sounds great. I’ve always wondered if MMO devs are just lacking even the smallest shred of imagination or if the accounting departments in these companies have too strong a chokehold on the developer’s creative outputs.
I’d enjoy a Stark Trek MMO, but unlike you, couldn’t get myself to pay for this one. I won’t lie; doing a ground mission where I clicked on four objects in an area you could run across in 10 seconds surrounded by invisible walls and lacking any living creatures…well, I remember thinking to myself, “I hope CCP realizes this is a poster child example of how not to do ground missions, whether it is via Dust 514, or some specific EVE expansion”. It pretty much exemplified my thought on the current state of the game, which was that it was a re-skinned Champions Online game with even less content.
Maybe if they incorporated some of your ideas, I’d be willing to give it a chance some time down the road.
Fun? Well, I guess we all have our own, subjective opinion on what is “fun”. How anybody cannot fear for their investment in STO or CO with money grubbing Cryptic at the helm is beyond me. It is beyond naive. This survey is based on the massive customer dissatisfaction with the Vibora Bay – Revelation content update. The one they tried to charge for without out actually developing a full featured and robust MMO. Kind of like they have done with STO.
Understand something about Cryptic. Your monthly sub doesn’t cover the content development you think it does. Not that this can surprise any player after the fiasco of Klingon/Ferangi money grab on launch day.
IMO, STO was more linear, confusing, and shallow than Champions….which is stunning to even contemplate.
You havent stated anything new that thousands havent already submitted or suggested to cryptic. Your blog wont make a difference and peoples rants wont make a difference.
The only thing that will is loss of cash, but that would force them to shutdown for 3 years to finish the game and they wont do that.
Other than to make you feel good about yourself your blog doesnt do a whole lot but express your thoughts or opinions, entertaining chatter
Email cryptic corporate, get the ceo to address each of your suggestions and when they will or will not be implemented and why or why not. That will give us something to read about.
According to Massively’s interviews with community managers, blogs and blog commentators are very influential in getting the word to the devs — far more so than an email to a CEO would be.
Hi all
Just want to say that being a longtime Trekkie I had high hopes for this game. But being a long time MMO player as well, I’ve experienced first hand the trainwreck that is Cryptic. They try – God bless em they do – but in the end there’s something that’s always missing. They always seem to take the easy way out, and that has been evident in release after release. Something about their games that really get you pumped up at the beginning like all MMOs, but after a while you start noticing the cheap gimmicks, the hollow gameplay, the cliche story. Cryptic has always let the players down in the end, even their staunchest fans, game after game after game.
Guys, just to keep you from expecting, Cryptic really SUCKS. I can’t think of a better word. And for those who still blindly defend them, I’m sure in 1 year I’ll be back to say ‘I told you so’.
They have also been the source of a lot of needed innovation in the MMO genre. City of Heroes, for all its faults, introduced sidekicking/exemplaring, started the whole superhero MMO genre, random mission generation and so on. My concern is that they have the money to make STO into a great game.
Great post. But almost all of the things you pointed as to be improved have been in EVE Online for years. I know they’re completely different games, but if you like space combat, there’s really nothing better right now than EVE.
Cryptic shoots out MMOs like a vending machine with little to no thought how to give their games depth and long-term appeal…I mean, have you played Champions Online? Ugh.
It’s good that they’re trying but…it’s a little late.