Comments on: STO: The real SWG2

By: bonedead

bonedead — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:52:28 +0000

I can’t view anything as “kinda like SWG” if it doesn’t have an uber resource system and that crafting. That is what made the game for me.

By: Things to do While Waiting for Star Trek Online « The Ancient Gaming Noob

Things to do While Waiting for Star Trek Online « The Ancient Gaming Noob — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:28:17 +0000

[...] about what could go wrong with the [...]

By: Bri

Bri — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:13:53 +0000

I keep seeing the comment that people want to have a team of players crew a starship. That sounds really cool, but then the developer circuits in my head whirr to life and ask how much fun micro-managing the engines or diagnosing NPC injuries in Sickbay would be? It’s a concept that would be a lot of fun, as long as it’s equal fun for everyone on board, and not just the Captain and the guy targetting the phasers.

Following on the original comparison, SWG had/has multiplayer ships. You needed other players on board to man the laser turrets and repair battle damage in real time. There was/is even a multi-player mining ship.

Funny how I instinctively refer to SWG in the past tense…

By: Bri

Bri — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:03:35 +0000

From what I’ve read, there is crafting. You collect items in your travels which, when carried back to Memory Alpha can be used to create new items.
As for replicators, I understand you earn “replicator energy credit” as a currency of sorts, otherwise every new ensign’s first impulse would be to replicate a full set of Tier 10, er, kits, and an iLvl 245 phaser.

By: axhed

axhed — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 04:45:34 +0000

‘next generation expansion’ i lol’d

By: Suzina

Suzina — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:59:40 +0000

Sandbox MMOs started with Ultima Online, and include EVE, Darkfall, and probably SWG and Asheron’s Call. In a sandbox, you are expected to create your own content by interacting with other players. If you are lucky, you get some tools like a mission-creator or a decorating system to help you create content for your friends.

ThemePark MMOs started with Everquest and now includes as WOW, Lotro, and FFXI. In themeparks, there is lots of content, but to see all that content you have to play the way the developers intend. In WOW that would mean farming raid X so you can be ready to farm raid Y. In FFXI it means killing the designated worms area X until you are strong enough to kill worms in area Y. In Lotro it’s questing in X until you are ready to quest in Y. It sounds pretty lame, but because all those Xs and Ys are hand-crafted by developers, they might be pretty interesting.

By: NBarnes

NBarnes — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:22:17 +0000

I still say that STO really is SWG come again. Which is to say, a terrible marriage of license and game design. Star Trek is not about tooling around the galaxy in your pimped out ship, flying solo, and pwning NPC ships. Lots of Star Trek fans are going to try the game and wonder where the Star Trek part of it went. As it stands, it’s Earth and Beyond with a Star Trek skin. Much like SWG wasn’t really Star Wars in any meaningful sense, it was just a crafting-heavy sandbox MMOG with a Star Wars skin. And how much time did you see Luke and Han spend checking their robot miners to ensure that they were working properly, vs how much time they spend getting into and out of scrapes that they’d have largely preferred to have avoided in the first place?

Someone needed to tell the people that paid Cryptic to make a Star Trek MMOG that very few people want to play a Star Trek MMOG that’s really faithful to the source material. And that a Star Trek MMOG who’s game design attempts to be a ‘mainstream success’ will inevitably jettison what people actually find interesting about Star Trek.

Though, it’s not as if Paramount really understands Star Trek in any important way, anyway. So there’s not really a lot of new news here.

By: Suzina

Suzina — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:29:31 +0000

Don’t expect much in the way of crafting from STO. They say things like “In a sense ship customization is like crafting”.

So, no crafting at launch. But they have space at least.

By: Sente

Sente — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:17:28 +0000

The answer is “maybe”, Ysh.

By: Bhagpuss

Bhagpuss — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:35:29 +0000

I was under the impression that in 2003 virtually all MMOs were “sandboxes”, at least by the definitions generally applied today.