Star Trek Online Review

Before I get started let me say that I do like this game. The space combat is really fun. I pre-ordered from Amazon, and do not plan to cancel it.

Now for the meat:

A lot of people are saying this is a re-skin of Champions Online. Honestly I never played Champions Oline, but after so many references to it, I decided to look it up on YouTube. I was totally appalled. All Cryptic did was re-skin the CO UI with Star Treky colors and slap an STO label on it. They could have at least made it look different… Now granted I am playing in the open beta so they may have UI changes in store for the official release. Look at the videos below for a comparison of the Champions Online UI and the Star Trek Online UI.

Champions Online UI:

Star Trek Online UI

As far as the MMO “feel” of the game…Other than seeing other people in sector space, talking in zone chat, and doing fleet actions this game feels like a single player game. The constant load screens are ridiculous, tiring, and irritating. If anything Cryptic has shown others how to totally NOT make an “MMO”.

I do really enjoy the space combat. With that stated it is an awful lot like Starfleet Command. Since SFC source code was released to the player base when the company that made it (Taldren) went under, I am forced to wonder if maybe Cryptic got a hold of it and used it as the base of the space aspects of this game.

Starfleet Command Gameplay

Star Trek Online Space Gameplay

With all that stated…I am willing to dismiss all those gripes with the exception of only one. I am greatly disappointed with this developer for a total lack of vision and creativity with the community aspects of the game. The horrendous over use of instancing in this game is going to kill it. I highly recommend they find a way to make it a more open world, and find a way to facilitate the community feeling of the game.

Recommendations:

Instances: The only thing instanced should be starbase and starship interiors and planet surfaces.

Starbases: Everyone can be at the same starbase AND see AND interact with one another. None of this multiple instancing crap.

Sector Space: Remove instance loading when going from one sector to another. Open it up so that its all seamless. If there is a starbase…be able to orbit and board it from sector space (What is the point of an instance in an instance like at K7 and Earth Spacedock? It just makes for load screen after load screen. Seriously who the hell thought that was a good idea?) While I don’t mind sector space, I recommend it be redesigned to make it feel galactic. The premise is nice, but it makes the entire world feel too small. Perhaps expand the size of sector space, remove the “map” theme you have, and add in actual star systems with planets (all explorable) and stars so that people can actually transit trough a system while you are doing a mission (Think Eve Online for star system scale, but maybe not that big.).

Star Trek Online Sector Space:

Planets: Make planets explorable. I mean you can fly up to a planet and you can beam down to any point on the planet. Imagine a UI where you can use your mouse to pick an exact point on a map to beam down to. Each planet should be the size of a planet from Star Wars Galaxies (I am talking old days before it was screwed up. I haven’t played it in years though). On these planet you should be able to explore and even find missions from NPC’s on the Planet. There should be HUB worlds that each have large capital cities that you can visit (Note that these planets should be large explorable worlds outside of the city) To further flesh this planet use out, a player should be able to completely level from exploring planets and doing ground based missions. Likewise the leveling should be the same for space based missions. To even spice this up a bit…make some planets with hostile environments that require your crew to wear environmental (EVA) suits. To add to this even further, if sector space was huge and each star system has multiple planets (1 -10 planets per system) you could even allow player structures on the planets. Furthermore by expanding sector space to scale like it should be, you would even have room in space to allow fleets to construct their own starbases.

Starships: They should be fully explorable. Hell it doesn’t have to be elaborate. Its a starship so all you have to do is create faction oriented interior sections and repeat them as needed. Also key areas such as the bridge, ready room, captiain’s quarters, etc. should be open to decorating by the ship captain. This would facilitate a fleet meeting on their admiral’s ship, for example a fleet briefing room or a ship’s bar.