STO Guidelines

When Cryptic (developers of the excellent superhero massive multiplayer online game, Champions Online) released Star Trek Online earlier this month we drew a sharp breath. A game that promises full space/ground combat, player versus player (PVP) combat and a metric tonne of customisation options…these are all grand ideas indeed even before you take the subject matter into account: Star Trek; possessing a ravenous and loyal fanbase for decades, satisfying them is surely a task too great for even an established MMO dev? Well, minus some bugs, we can safely say that Cryptic have done a bang-up job!

For a start, the amount of lore in this game is pretty ridiculous, and easily comparable with the heavyweight MMO games around today. Whilst it doesn’t quite match the millions of pages of text found in books across Oblivion’s world, there are many moments during STO where nostalgic memories are sparked due to some text or the appearance of a friendly face. Without offering spoilers, it’s safe to say that some familiar (and highly enjoyable) locations will be visited during a play through Star Trek Online.

The attention to minor details is very respectable, especially when it comes to character creation. There are a myriad of races to choose from, and a full range of uniforms and paraphernalia available for the player’s avatar and their bridge officers (more on them later!). Being particular fans of The Next Generation and it’s 80′s high-camp attitudes to clothing, our character was a female Science Officer not at all unlike Deanna Troi. Whilst it is easy to stay true to correct colour schemes (Blue for science, Red for engineering etc.), there have been plenty of instances during gameplay where we saw some excellent garment clothing and colour combinations.

Class wise, the game is flexible but also allows for some degree of specialisation. There are three main officer flavours; Tactical, Engineering and Science. These allow you access to abilities which help attack, defence and healing/debuffs respectively, although there is a certain amount of overlapping. Your ship is initially a generic cruiser, but later on you will get the chance to choose a ship from the three flavour classes, and their load outs will be different based on those classes. Do you want more brute fire-power and superior hull strength? Go for a Cruiser, and demolish the opposition with brute force. Your Escort ships are light but deadly when used for hit and run assaults.

This leads us on to Science ships, and to answer the standard MMO question, you WILL be able to play solo as a healer class without troubles (as we did). If you specialise your weapons, consoles and bridge officers you will be able to deal a hefty amount of damage too; knocking out an enemies’ shield from the inside with a virus before dropping a few well placed torpedoes is likely to put a grin on the face of even the most peace-loving Vulcan captains.

Bridge Officers are used to add abilities to your action bar, and bonuses to your ship. They also act as your sidekicks during ground combat, offering skills based on their class. Having a good healer is useful if you’re a gung-ho gunswinger, but sometimes it’s nice to let your computer controlled partners take the front line whilst you snipe from the back. Thankfully the friendly artificial intelligence is smart enough to deal with the correct targets, and if they ever lose their way you have the ability to order them around, which is always comforting. We have yet to issue a single order to our team-mates though, so if you hate multi-tasking you’ll still find something to love in this mode.

Ground combat is based on the good old “dice roll” style of damage dealing. Aiming is mostly automatic, and your use of skills matters more than your accuracy in a hectic firefight. Despite this, the action is nearly always frenetic and tense, aside the odd exploration mission. With some planets being procedurally generated (mostly found during exploration quests), you are guaranteed to never get bored with your supplied backgrounds, and there is some beautiful and ornate level design included in this game.

This leads nicely onto the excellent mission structures in Star Trek Online. Departing from normal MMO “kill 10 of these” quests, Star Trek Online splits many missions into different segments. This means that, for example, you may be tasked with clearing out some Orion raiders from a planet’s orbit, before beaming to ground to deal with a Klingon threat. On completion, your Bridge Officer informs you that there is a Klingon fleet moving to engage your ship, and they are NOT happy with your actions on the planet. So up you beam, and after a hectic battle you successfully dispatch your foe. Having this kind of multi-part layout really makes each mission enjoyable in its own terms. Yes, they may last longer than standard grind-fests, but it’s fun! Plus, the experience is generous in STO, so levelling up really isn’t a problem for even a casual gamer.

As with any freshly-launched MMO’s, there are some issues with the stability of the game. Star Trek Online does share part of the Champions Online interface, and a few times during our solar system sojurns did we approach an instanced sector only to be given an “Open Door” option (a route that often led to instances in Champions). PVP is also choppy sometimes, with ground matches sometimes leading to the game failing to respond at all.

These problems however, fail to dent what is an A-class MMORPG. As you have probably guessed, dear reader, we love this game! Cryptic have yet again produced a game that is as deep as it is accessible, and it fully honours the pedigree of the Star Trek franchise. While it is a bit too niche to be considered a WOW beater, Star Trek Online is easily the best MMORPG we’ve played in a long time, topping even Cryptics previous effort. A near-perfect sci-fi epic.