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Is it really Cryptic or does Star Trek just not translate well to video games?

geoff484geoff484 Member Posts: 209 Arc User
I was thinking about the age old criticism that STO isn't "Star Trek enough" and I'm personally 50/50 on that - I think there is some missions/episodes that do have a very Trek feel to them. I've read quite a bit of posts claiming that this game is all pew pew, but what would you really do in a Star Trek game to make it fun?

Exploration is one option, sure, but once you discover a system or whatever, what then? What would the payoff be?

Personally Trek always seemed to be mostly a dialogue driven franchise to me, but maybe that's a false observation. I loved watching the characters, I'd love to be in one of the characters position - but as far as game play? Not so much.

Honestly, I think the best way to make it more Trek is to have more puzzles. To me that's what the shows were usually all about, them trying to figure things out. I remember the old Trek game for NES (25th anniversary) it was mostly ground stuff, you figuring out how to get things done - It was mostly puzzles and it felt very Trek. The best part of that is the one space combat mission it had was effing great, but I think it was great because the game didn't evolve around it. I might be going a little off subject, but I think that's why video games and movies alike are kinda going down hill and getting redundant - There's no build up any more. When something awesome happens it should be occasional, otherwise it becomes boring quick.


To me that's what the biggest element this game is missing - Trek was a thinking man's show, I don't ever have to think at all in this game (minus a few awesome FEs). In the age of Call of Duty, Halo, and movies that have to rush right into the action just to keep the generations audience from throwing temper tantrums because they need something shiney to look at every 2 minutes, I just don't think Trek can translate well into a game (or for a new movie for that matter).

This isn't me complaining by the way, I have my beefs with this game but this isn't really one of them, just a topic I wanted to engage in.
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Post edited by geoff484 on
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Comments

  • typhoncaltyphoncal Member Posts: 247 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    Ill 2nd that and i can do better in saying that Star Trek and past titles and current titles or title don't have a good track record and that is the continued problem which i like to say is what comes with the IP a bad stigma that is Star Trek gaming. I know, i played many of the past titles and this titles offers the same mechanics, offers nothing that the past titles offers and when you ask about it they claim oh we cant do that blah, blah. Iam at my end with STO, ive held on longer than i would but i like Star Trek but not enough to play in the manner and direction it is being taken.

    T
    Commander Shran - You tell Archer, that is three the pink skin owes me!
  • odstgeneralodstgeneral Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    typhoncal wrote: »
    I know, i played many of the past titles and this titles offers the same mechanics, offers nothing that the past titles offers and when you ask about it they claim oh we cant do that blah, blah. Iam at my end with STO, ive held on longer than i would but i like Star Trek but not enough to play in the manner and direction it is being taken.

    T

    So this is like Star trek legacy, bridge commander, elite force to name a few? Which mechanics are the same and why should it offer the same anything that past titles have had when most were considered bad?

    Is STO a good Star Trek game? I would say its decent, although it certainly needs more work before it truly feels trek. But to all the people who say this is all killing and that its so unlike the shows need to rewatch DS9, Enterprise, heck even Kirk insisted on destroying the Gorn at first.

    But I do agree with you more puzzles would be great as well as continued development of interesting characters and stories. Most characters feel like stale set pieces in the game and thats a shame. Once in a while we are lucky to get someone like Obisek but its far and few between.
    It is all relative
  • mavgeekrsamavgeekrsa Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    Uh, I dunno about you guys but previous Star Trek games generally have been awesome.

    Elite Forces 1 & 2 are great (which is one reason I like STO ground combat so much)

    Bridge Commander was epic.

    Armada, Borg, etc all great.

    Even the older ones like Final Unity were great back in the early dos days of point and click adventure games.

    There's been a few games in the franchise that haven't been quite as great (Legacy, or D.A.C) but as a whole most of them have been awesome.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    STO / Cryptic member since 2009 (mavgeek)
  • geoff484geoff484 Member Posts: 209 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    mavgeekrsa wrote: »
    Uh, I dunno about you guys but previous Star Trek games generally have been awesome.

    Elite Forces 1 & 2 are great (which is one reason I like STO ground combat so much)

    Bridge Commander was epic.

    Armada, Borg, etc all great.

    Even the older ones like Final Unity were great back in the early dos days of point and click adventure games.

    There's been a few games in the franchise that haven't been quite as great (Legacy, or D.A.C) but as a whole most of them have been awesome.

    I'm not disagreeing with you, they probably were great games, but my question is did they really make you feel immersed into the Trek world? Do you feel like they did justice to making you feel like being on an episode of Trek or was it just another sci-fi shooter, space sim, etc. game?
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  • ksathra2ksathra2 Member Posts: 40 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    While I have played various trek games I have to say these are my favs.

    Elite Force 1 and 2
    Starfleet Command 1,2 and Orion Pirates (My ship during closed beta was named the U.S.S. Neversail)
    Bridge Commander
    Star Trek the next generation A Final Unity

    And last but not least.

    Star Trek The 25th anniversery CD rom edition
  • mavgeekrsamavgeekrsa Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    geoff484 wrote: »
    I'm not disagreeing with you, they probably were great games, but my question is did they really make you feel immersed into the Trek world? Do you feel like they did justice to making you feel like being on an episode of Trek or was it just another sci-fi shooter, space sim, etc. game?

    Some of them did yes.

    Generally speaking, for example, I really didn't care for Voyager as a show. For various reasons I won't go into here cause I don't wanna spark a flame war. However, with that said one of my favorite episodes was when Species 8472 had transported aboard, and there were several quick scenes of Security Officers roaming the corridors with phaser rifles, almost in a Metal Gear Solid or Splinter Cell-like way.

    Then I played Elite Forces 1 and 2, and at times it felt like that. Like I was trying to quietly and quickly protect the ship, out smart Borg, etc.

    So yea, some of them had great immersion. Did they all? No, no where near so. But quite a few did.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    STO / Cryptic member since 2009 (mavgeek)
  • red01999red01999 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    The fundamental problem, I feel, is that there are two major segments of the Star Trek world that feel unrepresented in STO.

    First we have the people who essentially enjoy Gene Roddenberry's attempts to have moral tales and symbolic allegory in order to put social and religious commentary out there. These people think that this should (somehow) be incorporated into the game.

    The second are those who like Star Trek for the non-violent aspects, particularly exploration. True exploration is very difficult to put into the game, and probably highly impractical with the current technology level. I don't see this changing, and it is highly impractical to do so. Non-violent problem-solving can be done to some extent, however, although it makes poor fodder for an MMO (see: Star Trek 25th Anniversary for the IBM PC). That said, some aspects of it such as diplomacy would probably lend themselves to endless streams of click-through missions.

    However, the thing is that STO is about wish fulfillment. It is not about a pure and unadulterated extract of Roddenberry's ideals. Wish fulfillment tends to revolve more about space battles than diplomatic twists and the like. This is set in the Star Trek universe. This is not a perfect slice of the shows.

    So, simply put, the violent aspects of Star Trek are ultimately easier and in far more demand than diplomacy and social commentary, and exploration, while in demand, is technically difficult to deliver on. And to be honest, I think that a lot of the thoughts of "Roddenberry's vision" are a bit of postulation as to an ideal that never was. If it gives you an indication, Star Trek TMP was more Roddenberry's vision than anything else in Trek. Wrath of Khan had Roddenberry's paws kept thoroughly off. The latter was considerably more popular, and shaped much of modern Trek all by itself. While this is not an all-telling metric, I do believe it indicates something important.
  • geoff484geoff484 Member Posts: 209 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    red01999 wrote: »
    The fundamental problem, I feel, is that there are two major segments of the Star Trek world that feel unrepresented in STO.

    First we have the people who essentially enjoy Gene Roddenberry's attempts to have moral tales and symbolic allegory in order to put social and religious commentary out there. These people think that this should (somehow) be incorporated into the game.

    The second are those who like Star Trek for the non-violent aspects, particularly exploration. True exploration is very difficult to put into the game, and probably highly impractical with the current technology level. I don't see this changing, and it is highly impractical to do so. Non-violent problem-solving can be done to some extent, however, although it makes poor fodder for an MMO (see: Star Trek 25th Anniversary for the IBM PC). That said, some aspects of it such as diplomacy would probably lend themselves to endless streams of click-through missions.

    However, the thing is that STO is about wish fulfillment. It is not about a pure and unadulterated extract of Roddenberry's ideals. Wish fulfillment tends to revolve more about space battles than diplomatic twists and the like. This is set in the Star Trek universe. This is not a perfect slice of the shows.

    So, simply put, the violent aspects of Star Trek are ultimately easier and in far more demand than diplomacy and social commentary, and exploration, while in demand, is technically difficult to deliver on. And to be honest, I think that a lot of the thoughts of "Roddenberry's vision" are a bit of postulation as to an ideal that never was. If it gives you an indication, Star Trek TMP was more Roddenberry's vision than anything else in Trek. Wrath of Khan had Roddenberry's paws kept thoroughly off. The latter was considerably more popular, and shaped much of modern Trek all by itself. While this is not an all-telling metric, I do believe it indicates something important.

    Very well said, you brought up a lot of points I was trying to make but said it a whole lot better.

    I think that is why it's so difficult to make a very Trek-like game.
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  • chikahirochikahiro Member Posts: 35 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    geoff484 wrote: »
    I'm not disagreeing with you, they probably were great games, but my question is did they really make you feel immersed into the Trek world? Do you feel like they did justice to making you feel like being on an episode of Trek or was it just another sci-fi shooter, space sim, etc. game?

    Part of the problem is different parts of Star Trek "speak" to different people. My favorite Star Trek series, bar none, was Deep Space 9. The episode, "In the Pale Moonlight," is one of my favorites. Conversely, a good friend of mine hates it, and it turned him off to the entire series. My favorite Trek movie was Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Another friend of mine cites Star Trek: First Contact as being the definitive Star Trek movie.

    As such, what makes any game feel like or not feel like Trek is going to vary wildly. I think, in some cases, it won't be possible to really capture what some people want/expect from a Star Trek game. Also, some people might want more (or less) what's inside the typical episode. I love the ship battles, for instance, so for me STO does a great job. It could be more sim-ish, but at the same time I know I won't enjoy those, and my frustration will break the immersion.

    My blog! Zen|Dilithium tracking on Thursdays
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  • lostusthornlostusthorn Member Posts: 844
    edited October 2012
    The main problem with STO is that it is basically handled like a super hero game with all the powers and gimmick items. And not like a Trek game. Plus way to many plot device of the week especially from Voyager got turned into actual powers or items.
    Oh and here is a special hint for the devs, you can make a good and challenging game without 10 million different holds and disables. The are just a cheap way to hide the inadequacy of the ai and contribute nothing to the game play.
  • chikahirochikahiro Member Posts: 35 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    geoff484 wrote: »
    Very well said, you brought up a lot of points I was trying to make but said it a whole lot better.

    I think that is why it's so difficult to make a very Trek-like game.

    Probably best off doing table-top role-playing, I think. Or writing. Both of which can be very enjoyable and satisfying ^_^

    My blog! Zen|Dilithium tracking on Thursdays
    http://samonmaui.blogspot.com
    As a lifetime member of STO, I officially became a financial liability as of April 2012 when compared to a subscriber.
  • typhoncaltyphoncal Member Posts: 247 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    So this is like Star trek legacy, bridge commander, elite
    force to name a few? Which mechanics are the same and why should it offer the same anything that past titles have had when most were considered bad?

    I need to clarify; I didn?t mean that all past titles are bad when in fact they aren?t. They were successful in part to its community stepping up to the plate and doing what the studios/devs failed to do or accomplish.


    1. Bridge Commander ? Great title for obvious reasons, its game play perspective, and its many layouts, to ship designs and space combat was another great aspect that lacks in STO.

    2. Elite Force I & II ? Great title, a title that was ahead of its time, its mechanics of ground combat are far superior even for today, even against STO. You could play mini-games, which look like rip offs in STO but they don?t go as far in STO as they did in EFI-II, the ability to crawl through tubes, opening and closing of doors and a real perspective in the game and its combat vs. STO which you don?t feel that.

    3. STLegacy ? A Complete shamble of a title, nothing new nothing real substantial in its release, hell it was released with no multiple connection. Again, modders stepped up and made it a semi-successful but very limited and gave the player nothing new.

    4. Armada I and II ? Great title, RTS but had a lot of great elements in mapping, building etc again, another great title one of my first.

    5. SFCI,II, II ? These were space sims, however I think in many different ways the space combat is ahead of STO in some elements, but I think the space combat is decent in STO, but great.

    5. Orion Pirates ? Another space Sim, very early development but modded and very good early development in mechanics of its space combat.

    6. Klingon Academy ? I don?t know much about this title, but it had community from my understanding but I don?t know much about it.



    As for STO, many people are dedicated but how far those people go is another story. Iam not in any way claiming to know that, but the community for STO is very active and passionate and I think that Cryptic doesn?t see that or that they say they are listening, but I have my doubts about that. As for the community, iam not putting anyone down in the community, however the foundry people have done a great job with what they have been given, but again that is Cryptics failure to allowing or giving the tools to make those effective.

    Iam only sorry that Stahl sees no need to addressing or bring forth those great elements into STO that made many of the past titles great, but ultimately failed in part to the lack of support or what the community needed. Instead, modders stepped up and did what the studios failed to do.

    I realize also that this is an MMO and cant be changed in that respect, however in claiming or stating that it can?t be done and we want to bring a new experience to the player, sorry Cryptic but you haven't brought a new experience into this game and no one wants a grind-fest which we are forced to endure.
    Commander Shran - You tell Archer, that is three the pink skin owes me!
  • fiberteksyfirfiberteksyfir Member Posts: 1,207 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    geoff484 wrote: »
    I'm not disagreeing with you, they probably were great games, but my question is did they really make you feel immersed into the Trek world? Do you feel like they did justice to making you feel like being on an episode of Trek or was it just another sci-fi shooter, space sim, etc. game?

    Most of them, with very few exception, did.

    ESPECIALLY:

    25th Anniversary
    Judgement Rites
    A Final Unity
    Pretty much all the old text-based adventures

    Then there's the "doesnt' have to feel like an episode but rather feels like you fill a role -

    Wanna be a starfleet engineer? Starship Creator // Warp II were awesome.

    Armada // II filled the role of fleet strategy really well, and still holds as my favourite RTS game(s) to date.

    Elite Force // II were both awesome as you filled a role of a crewmember in somewhat episodic content, almost like being say, Samantha Wildman on the series, basically the life of an ancillary character.

    The SFC Series holds legend as probably the best use of the IP for space combat.

    Starfleet academy was _awesome_ as it played out basically like a TV series we never got to see. Had events and interactions not related to the fact that you were to blow stuff up (which, incidentally, some of the story matter took more time than the missions)

    In Short: the majority of Trek games (Up until Legacy, which wasn't terrible, but wasn't good either) were pretty awesome I think, and didn't feel like generic space shooters for the most part.
  • mimey2mimey2 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    I agree that Star Trek tends to not have every game be a shining example. Legacy, Conquest, DAC, and a few others that slip my mind...aren't really quite up to snuff.

    I never played Bridge Commander and the like, although I did hear a lot of good things about it.

    To be fair, and while this might not sit well with many folks, I feel like Star Trek really and truly can't be wholly made into a game that could satisfy everyone.

    Star Wars, considering the notion of the IP, is much easier to make into a game, as we see by the copious amounts of those games in the first place. Doesn't mean all those games are good, nor all bad, just that it's easier to make Star Wars games than ST ones.
    I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
    I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
  • rikwesselsrikwessels Member Posts: 367 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    First of all: I don't think the attempt by Cryptic is all that bad . It's impossible to get the "trek-feel " translated into a game because the shows aren't about combat , space-travel or exploration but rather about storytelling and using all of the above to do so .

    When I first started to play STO - a while back ,just after it went f2p - and played the first mission after the tutorial I was wondering the entire time when I could hail the foes I was shooting at to tell them to be "prepared to be boarded and surrender" . That's what happened in the shows . I was disgusted about the heavy emphasis on combat and stopped playing totally ( wondering how someone could destroy a license like ST ) . After quite a while I thought to give it another chance and this time to play beyond the first few missions and it started to grow on me . The later content does in fact include disabling ships and beaming aboard and stuff like that. There's even quite a few "puzzle " and "diplomacy" missions.

    So the devs did in fact realize at some point that combat alone was in no way doing the IP justice and started to add that stuff . The only thing that's really missing is the element of surprise when beaming down to a new planet ( exploration ) which was such a big part of ST . They have to be careful when adding that to not make every indigenous species hostile but else I don't see why they can't add it .
  • momawmomaw Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    If you want the spirit of Star Trek in a video game, go play Mass Effect. Oceans of dialogue, complex interesting characters, and rarely is your objective simply "go here and blow this up". Granted there is little to no puzzle solving, but the thing you are trying to accomplish is well framed in a larger context. Hardware and character upgrades are basically thrown on the side of the road and come to you as a matter of course, while the actual mission reward was usually that you got to feel better about yourself or advanced the story. Some of the most complex and involved missions of the series are simply to learn about the history of your ship mates and to earn their trust, just as some of the most complex and interesting episodes of Star Trek did nothing to advance a story arc and were just a vehicle to explore moral concepts.

    So it's not that the basic soul of Star Trek can't be brought to a video game or would be unprofitable. It's already been made, and boxed, and earned a gajillion dollars for its developers.

    Star Trek Online, however, has little in common with Star Trek. The missions are almost entirely combat-based in a way that often leaves your ultimate goal hazy past "kill these guys in your way". There's rarely any option to resolve anything by trickery or diplomacy. There's no great characters. I doubt I can name half a dozen people in STO, much less what their personality traits are. I can't even remember the names of all my bridge officers. They have no identity except that which I devise for them, in a vacuum, without prompting or framework or gameplay integration. I don't remember any mission in STO where the ultimate resolution was "Mistakes have been made, but we can stop making mistakes if we all just sit down and talk about this rationally", which was an common theme in Star Trek.

    Since it's such a massive failing, it's worth talking some more about characters. In STO your officers and crew are merely gameplay contrivances. Why didn't my engineer raise any concerns about equipping Borg technology? We know for a fact that the Borg can be subtly subversive and that their technology is fabulously complex and multi-layered. Why didn't my XO question my sanity when I brought a Breen onboard and offered him a commission? Who are the hundreds or thousands of people on my ship that make it go? Who am I? Why can't I have a partner, either happily or regretfully? Or maintain an apartment to relax between missions? Who are the other officers who are my peers? Do they like me? What do they think of the campaign I've been assigned to?

    On and on, and that's just one of multiple areas of fail that the game doesn't even try to address.

    How would you fix STO? It's much too late for that. The game is what it is. Sweeping design priorities are what you nail down before you even hire any programmers to start building. If you were to start rebuilding STO from scratch, then to capture Star Trek's feel you to start with great characters who are driven by strong moral systems in a strange and confusing universe where patience, logic, and mercy are tools to greater understanding. Once you have that, then you can add guns.
  • rikwesselsrikwessels Member Posts: 367 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    I disagree with mass effect being like star trek. It comes nowhere near ST ( it doesn't have space combat at all for example ) and it's highly linear in scope . You just think you have options - dialogue or otherwise - but the end result is always a or b .

    And SW:TOR has shown a singleplayer RPG is something entirely different ( Bioware didn't really make that transition very well) Wondering how Bethesda will do with the Elder Scrolls MMO .....

    MMO's have to change continously so it is very hard to have solid storytelling in them ( if not impossible ) and storytelling is what the shows were about .
  • xantrisxantris Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    Obviously the combat translates spectacularly to videogames, even if Cryptic sucked it up on the ground portion of that. A cover based ground system FPS would work fantastically if well done.

    I think the dialogue and storylines portions would work perfectly fine in the hands of a AAA developer that specializes in that sort of thing. I'm sure Bioware could develop a plausible universe that would hit the Trek feel, but they also have a tendency to suck at engine development and combat mechanics. So it's kind of a pick your poison.

    So yeah, I think it can translate well. But it's something that requires a fantastic amount of talent in storytelling, dialogue, and voice acting... and there just aren't very many developers that meet those credentials. There are probably no developers that are capable of it on the MMO scale.
  • rikwesselsrikwessels Member Posts: 367 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    The problem is that solid storytelling only works in an RPG ( like Mass effect, Fallout 3 or Skyrim) and not so much in an MMO . And when you start to think about it it Star Trek is highly complex because it uses space travel,exploration and combat to tell that story ( and does it in 50 minutes, lol ) . The best games just take one aspect of the shows and emphasise that ( elite force for the ground combat,bridge commander for the rpg, other games for space combat etc.) whereas STO tries to "do all" . Very difficult to get that right
  • alchemistidalchemistid Member Posts: 74 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    rikwessels wrote: »
    First of all: I don't think the attempt by Cryptic is all that bad . It's impossible to get the "trek-feel " translated into a game because the shows aren't about combat , space-travel or exploration but rather about storytelling and using all of the above to do so .

    It isn't impossible. Bridge Commander would reward the player for out of the box thinking in certain situations. Such as hailing a hostile ship instead of immediately opening fire like the gamer mindset normally would. You were rewarded for actually thinking like a Starfleet officer.

    Starfleet Command allowed you to end a battle without even destroying the enemy ship. One could hail or capture an attacking starship and spare the lives of the enemy crew. You could even lure the enemies away with a decoy in order to accomplish the mission with as few lives lost as possible. SFC1 and SFC2 beat the notion into the player's head as much as they could that Combat often wasn't the only answer.

    Echoes from the past on the Sega Genesis allowed you to talk your way out of most fights without resorting to violence, AND had massive dialogue trees. And then you have games such as 25th Anniversary, Judgement Rites, and A Final Unity, which WERE pure exploration, space-travel, and had HEAVY storytelling, with occasional combat.

    Whereas any player character in STO who has been around before F2P, and even some after, have almost more blood on their hands then the most bloodthirsty general during the dominion war at this point. IN FACT, by attempting to rewrite history as they have regarding the cloaking glitch (which is most certainly NOT a feature and demonstrably hasn't been working as intended since season 3), Cryptic is making it even worse for STO. A starfleet captain with a working cloaking device (Gal dreadnought or Tac Escort retro) could use it to prevent taking lives whenever possible, a course of action in keeping with Starfleet and the Federation's ideals.

    The addition of diplomacy was nice, but doesn't in any way change how a player can approach a situation, nor does it allow a player to have a career as a diplomat instead of a front-line officer blowing things up every five minutes.

    Aside from that: Star Trek is, first and foremost, an exploration of the merits and flaws of humanity through alien eyes, and the possibility that one day we'll all get our act together and things will be better. Star Trek uses space-travel, exploration, and combat as tools and window dressing to do this so as to be able to approach turbulent issues without being overly hamstrung by the censor. Failing that, shows such as TNG and Deep Space Nine made an effort to simply tell a compelling story set in the Star Trek Universe.

    To Star Trek Online such an exploration is almost meaningless, and Cryptic has allowed the plot of the game to hang unresolved for so long (over 2 years at this point) that it's incredibly difficult for those who have kept this game alive over the years to muster any excitement. Season 7, their self declared big return to storytelling, has only been revealed to be more grinding so far, with small supplementary materials unlocked by yet more grinding in the new sector block.

    It must be said that Cryptic has in fact told some interesting stories within STO. But continue to consider advancing the stagnant main plot with nothing more dedicated or passionate than a shrug and a "maybe later".

    So yes. It is Cryptic. It is more than possible for games to capture Star Trek, either by analyzing aspects of humanity using the tools science fiction provides, or just telling a compelling Sci-Fi story using the established rules and continuity of the setting. Whether by executive mandate or otherwise, as long as the developers stubbornly refuse to start telling an actual story, and refuse to give the players (functioning) tools to possibly behave like a starfleet officer (Or in many cases, a Klingon Warrior worth his salt), STO fails to do either.

    Sorry about the partial quote rikwessels. Just stating my two cents and the first bit segued well into it.
  • captainrevo1captainrevo1 Member Posts: 3,948 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    Pure star trek does not translate well, or at least it only translates into a very specific type of game. TNG is 99% talking and 1% action. that would lend itself to a very dialogue heavy/puzzle game like the old point and click adventures (broken sword etc) which is not to everyone's cup of tea.

    star trek taken as a whole is very robust though. you can have a space game, a first/third person shooter, a RTS, a RPG, single player, multiplayer etc. STO tries to incorporate all aspects of star trek, which i like, although by doing so certain elements dont get the attention it deserves. MMO's are typically combat based with a story tact on, and STO does follow a similar path.

    if this was a single player game, i think the story would get much more attention, and we could have real interactions with our bridge crew (a mass effect type game) but it would still have way more action than what the shows would.

    i do think people need to try and isolate star trek the games from star trek the shows, and appreciate the different types of games out there. i always wondered if people who complain about STO not being trek, ever play games like armada and dislike it because its all ship combat and little else? it is what it is.

    not to say it cant be better but STO is defined by its game type. even TOR which is very dialogue/story heavy (and cost the earth to make) is also very combat heavy and follows that wow style mmo game style. no one minds the combat because star wars is about combat. make STO more trek like and quite frankly it would be pretty boring, especially to the masses.
  • stark2kstark2k Member Posts: 1,467 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    Is it Cryptic or does Star Trek just not translate well to video games?

    the answer is quite simple, almost any genre, series, or movie CAN translate well into a Great game. The problem lies in both the company programming the game and what the community desires from set genre etc...

    Is it CRYPTIC? Answer: YES

    Problems with STO per se in relations to a pure Star Trek Game;

    A) Canon issues, severe canon issues

    B) Over utilizing every bit of Star Trek Canon characters & starships

    C) Creating far fetch un-Star Trek story arcs (This applies to #2 as well)

    D) Creating arcade like gameplay

    E) Placing features to compliment their arcade style of gameplay

    F) Warfare Heavy - while Star Trek does revolve solving conflict issues and self defense, CRYPTIC implements this very poorly. They purposely created a chaotic Trek universe to promote the game and to be the center of STO.

    G) No resepct for the original Triune Factions: Federation, Klingons, Romulans

    H) Cryptic Studios have some of the poorest and terrible writers in gaming history, at least in my honest opinion, they have no regards to canon and their plotlines are shallow at best.

    I) No respect for the iP

    Star Trek as an MMO is a very very difficult concept to flesh out. to make a Trek game in the purest sense of the iP, would be a very dull and boring experience and will only cater to a small diehard Trek fanbase.

    The Key to making a Great Trek game:

    1) is all about balance - balancing gameplay, carefully studying and managing the iP as to not violate the source.

    2) Strictly sticking to canon - Only issue with that is that some canon can be interpreted in various ways.

    3) Seasons should be more around the lines of TRUE Expansion packs and not patchful add-ons. Example:

    - Seasons should be heavy in deep story arcs, intricate plotlines, careful character development, and present a main antagonist per season release. It should introduce us to new sector areas and gameplay, with numerous side quests to enhance the gameplay experience.

    - Gameplay should remain balance between Ground and space, and have a mixture of Crisis intervention, Puzzle solving, exploration of new races, lifeforms, and technology. It should NOT be too arcade'ish

    - The utilization of the starships.

    Example - Bridge commader Interior utilization of the bridge & its stations
    - Combat needs to be focused, where ships are disabled via pinpoint selection of the different aspect of the ship. Shields, life support, weapons, comm, etc...

    Traditionally, combat should be more methodical and Tactical, while maintaining a well pace.

    4) In a true Star Trek MMO, PvP should be fluid, involving 3 factions, and should be control for territory.

    5) Ground combat should involve complex skill management, ala GW, RIFT etc.. with an element of Planetside combat or your traditional warfare combat such as Battlefield or Call of Duty.

    6) trade secondary professions - like fabrication, chemistry, tactical training, cooking, arts, trailblazing, survival training, fishing, etc...

    7) the ability to be a Freighter Captain and unaligned to any Faction (make it a nuetral Faction)

    8) End Game like dungeons encompassing both space and ground.

    9) True diplomacy - based off speech skills and traits that one can develope etc..

    These are some of the features that should be incorporated in a true Trek game
    StarTrekIronMan.jpg
  • rikwesselsrikwessels Member Posts: 367 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    What you're describing is the problem for every MMO out there . It's never been accomplished to make the "perfect game " - let alone perfect MMO - nor will it ever be. I'd settle for them to be able to incorporate the exploration -aspect properly .Making the perfect ST-MMO is overambitious ( imagine what kind of budget you're talking about then, and that's just one thing : you'd also need a massive dev-team)
  • stark2kstark2k Member Posts: 1,467 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    rikwessels wrote: »
    What you're describing is the problem for every MMO out there . It's never been accomplished to make the "perfect game " - let alone perfect MMO - nor will it ever be. I'd settle for them to be able to incorporate the exploration -aspect properly .Making the perfect ST-MMO is overambitious ( imagine what kind of budget you're talking about then, and that's just one thing : you'd also need a massive dev-team)

    True, you need excellent programmers and a decent team - BUT, it can be done.

    there have been smaller companies that have met with great success in regards to creating an MMO, others are larger and still develop decent ones.

    What I presented is not really that difficult, and some MMO's out there already incorporate some or many of what I suggested.

    The key here is NOT to create the perfect MMO, but to make the experience a rich one, There is no true perfect MMO, only Great ones.

    To sum it up:

    #1 - Gameplay
    #2 - Story
    #3 - Variety, in regards to Great choices etc..

    = Experience
    StarTrekIronMan.jpg
  • wraithshadow13wraithshadow13 Member Posts: 1,728 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    For me, it's very possible that Star Trek would translate very well into a video game. The devs are Star Trek nerds just like the players. Some a little less, some a little more, but they used to have a real passion for the job and a lot of that often reflected in game with little things here and there, or how excited devs would get about new additions that they would talk about it on the forums and people would rejoice.

    The problem is that star trek is bad for business. At least from a financial standpoint, it can be costly and time consuming, in terms of shows, movies, games, toys, and anything you can toss money at. What makes it work it the IP itself has such a following that the fans are what make it work. The fans are the ones willing to let bad episodes slide for the good ones far outweigh them. The fans are willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money just to have a small piece of something they love.


    Even from the IP's own standpoint, it's bad for business (unless you're ferengi) as most of today's money centric lifestyle had been done away with. but sadly Cryptic is a business and they're priorityis to make money. My issue is that making money can be done just a well if not more so with better quality content, not cheap cash grabs like lotto boxes and +1 ships.

    If a ship came with the custom (and scaled correctly) bridge/interiors, and maybe a few small extras from that ship, be it a console, some phaser pistol variants or such how much money they would make? Less than a bundle but more than a ship, and people would eat it up. If costume packs had a few variants of a main costume for the price of the single costume now (i don't consider male/female as two different costumes) how much people would love them? The weapons pack failed kind of hard simply because it was two weapons, no variants, they stats were TRIBBLE, and they weren't account wide all for three bucks. Even though it's only three dollars, it's not worth how little you're getting for how much they charge.

    That's kind of my biggest problem with the game: It's not worth how little you get for how much you're getting charged. For twenty five dollars, fans should be getting a lot better quality than just a single ship with an extra ability or two.




    TL;DR of it is, if it weren't money instead of quality this game would be a lot better all around in terms of both Trek as well as being a video game.


    P.S. i'm sorry about the rant....
  • rikwesselsrikwessels Member Posts: 367 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    It's not a rant and I agree . I have mentioned numerous times : asking 45 euro/$ for 5k Zen ( getting you 3 ships -bundle and that's it, not even ship slots ) ,is ludicrous in terms of value for money .And that's just one example....
  • captainrevo1captainrevo1 Member Posts: 3,948 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    rikwessels wrote: »
    It's not a rant and I agree . I have mentioned numerous times : asking 45 euro/$ for 5k Zen ( getting you 3 ships -bundle and that's it, not even ship slots ) ,is ludicrous in terms of value for money .And that's just one example....

    45 euro's would have bought you Patrick Stewart's autograph at star trek london over the weekend (assuming you had already paid to get in the door).

    now some people will value the ship(s) and some people will value the autograph, but the being a star trek fan is expensive no matter what you buy these days.
  • vesterengvestereng Member Posts: 2,252 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    To go where no one has gone before in an infinite environment, yeah that could be hard to simulate.
    But look at the size of space in eve and how it's in constant change by players. If you wanted to move from one area of space to another it would take a long time and you'd never know what was going to happen.

    The tv-shows had a lot of human interaction, talking and decision making from the bridge.
    Ships of exploration right.

    But more than anything every captain helped form the history of the universe :rolleyes:

    I think the way they chose to go were the easy way out, such as not creating space travel from the bridge and having zero impact on the story but I also see how a real trek game might be too complex and loose on the action side for the youngsters.

    One way to solve all that would be "free space" pockets, where you could mine, pvp and run into either friendly or hostile npcs. Transport cargro from site a to b or make first contact and some of the tools are actually already there.
    Slap on a little weather effects that mess with your ship and you suddenly have a living unknown environment. Hiding behing astroid belts, systems disabled inside nebula's that kind of thing would be very star trek in having to deal with strategy of the environment.

    That way sometimes you running for your lfie other times reading through textboxes but more than anything everytime you go in you won't know what to expect AND it will also be a place where alert status, red, green, yellow could come into play.

    So far from impossible
  • szimszim Member Posts: 2,503 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    I think pure Star Trek CAN translate very well. I still remember the game "A Final Unity" which is for me the perfect Star Trek game. Exploration, puzzles, space combat AND real multiple choice. You could actually prevent combat by giving the right answers. Furthermore even though this game is now 17 years old space combat was in many ways more complex.

    As STO is now the game is just too much fighting. Almost evers storyline mission involves space and ground combat. In the few missions that involve diplomacy or multiple choice it does not make any difference weither you give the correct answers or not.

    For me STO in its actual state is a decent MMO game in a Star Trek COSTUME, not a Star Trek game.
  • orondisorondis Member Posts: 1,447 Arc User
    edited October 2012
    The major problem is everyone has different likes and dislikes when it comes to Trek.



    Some prefer the TOS era, some prefer the TOS movie era, some the TNG era. Some even want an era further in the future.

    Some like the casual magical technology of TNG era like holodecks.

    Some want Star Wars dogfights in space (DS9 and Enterprise) and some want slow naval style battles in space (TOS, TOS movies, TNG).

    Some want their ships to be super sleak, some prefer them to look slightly bulky.

    Some prefer the super science that resolves problems, some find those stories a mess of technobabble with no real resolution.

    Some want their stories to have a moral, some find the moralising very heavy handed.

    Some want it to be a fun wagon train to the stars (TOS), some want to to be super serious.

    Some like it for it's portrayal of a better humanity, some find the humans rather dull and flat.

    Some want Trek to be a progressive show, some realise it's no where near as progressive as some people think.


    Etc etc etc.
    Previously Alendiak
    Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
    Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
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