What Kind Of Star Trek MMO Do You Want?

Via Gamecloud, a Nielsen survey on the Star Trek Online site giving some interesting insight into what kind of game people want. From the article: "Another surprise was that the Borg is the most appealing opposing player faction. We knew the Borg would be a popular enemy, but we didn't expect that actually playing as a Borg drone would be so appealing. Though it was a surprise, I think we can understand why they would be a popular player faction. In fact, these results would appear to contradict the overall conclusion that faction value is marginal. One explanation is in the wording of the question. We asked people to select their favorite opposing faction. I can only guess that this wording had the effect of swaying people away from the Federation. Still, this point clearly deserves more research." Interesting to see some thought going into player reaction to development plans.

Comments

Godlike sysadmins

[amliebsch]

Do the sysadmins play as the Q?

Ensigns..

[Sierpinski]

I'd want the ability to enlist numerous red-shirted, no-named ensigns, who will run up to the action when a fight starts, and gladly sacrifice themselves for the good of the "named" Enterprise crew!

Also just make sure you don't announce a major game overhaul the day after an expansion goes on sale!

What do I want?

[Deanasc]

I'd do anything for an hour on the holodeck with 7 of 9.

Forget other players. Here's what I want.

[RogueyWon]

The difficulty in creating a Star Trek MMO is that you're dealing with a much less combat-intensive universe than is normal for a franchised MMO. With Final Fantasy, Star Wars, the Matrix etc, combat has always been the most notable aspect of the universe, so having a game based heavily upon it is understandable. Of course, this also means that you end up with the Galaxies situation of having to spend weeks running around hitting wamp rats with a stick before you can do anything interesting.

The challenge for Star Trek Online, or whatever they call it, is to break out of the traditional MMORPG mode by balancing combat more evenly against other game elements and offering new modes of progression. My own suggestion would go something like this:

Players start out by picking an affiliation to one of the game's factions. Probably Federation, Romulan, Klingon and a couple of other races if the devs have time. I'm not really sure Borg would work. Players start out with a 1 man shuttlecraft, the bare minimum of skill to find it and a couple of whatever resource unit the game decides to use as currency (which is a major issue in itself). From here, players can choose to develop their character (who would start as a blank template - no class selection) through their actions. Participating in exploration, combat, trading etc would all increase the player's stats in that field. So far, so Galaxies. You've got people running around on planets exploring, encountering monsters, trading with eachother and so on.

However, where the Star Trek franchise really has the potential to turn into a great MMO is in the social and interstellar sections of the game. What I'd really like to see, and what would make me vastly more likely to buy the game, would be some kind of co-operative ship-control system. Make it so the smallest ships, shuttles and whatnot, can be flown by a single player, but also make it so that they're fairly useless except as runabouts.

However, make it so that controlling a starship requires a team of players, each with their own specialisations. So, for example, a specialist helmsman would be able to turn a starship more efficiently and execute more complicated manoeuveurs. Make it so that master engineers could coax more speed from a ship's engine and repair shields faster. For the stuff that doesn't directly involve turning or shooting a ship, use minigames whose difficulty scales depending on the player's skill level. Remember Paradroid for the C64? The minigame you played to take over an enemy droid? Have stuff like that for engineering, sensors and whatnot, with the difficulty scaling depending on both the player and the size/type of the ship. Imagine fighting a battle between two capital ships where not only do you have 1 player turning and one shooting, but you've got other players in the background doing their own thing to keep the ship functioning effectively.

Now extend it so that you can do more than just fight each other ships. Add appropriate minigames etc to incentivise research, exploration, negotiation etc and, most importantly, MAKE IT FUN.

Now add in an optional military command system (I'd have players start as Civilians with the option of joining their faction's military) and you've got a game I might consider playing.

The moon on a stick would be nice, as well.

Here is my list:

[vertinox]

1. No leveling. What? Did Captain Kirk constantly go on away missions to zap thousands of space rats with his phaser just so he could travel to a more dangerous planet? Hell no!

2. Realistic ships. By god, they have documented each varient of the enteprise down to the excact inch and they better not make any mistakes.

3. Non-loot oriented. Well... Unless you play as the Ferengi faction, but Federation member shouldn't have to buy armor or their own equipment (unless they are stranded on a planet and have to buy a phase modulater from a Ferengi at twice the price and to triangulate their coordinates via subspace to a passing vessel, but not on the ships).

4. Make it open ended and that you always have the choice of which planet to go to.

5. Make it so the players crew the ships. Not some NPCs.

That's all I got.

Re:Forget the massive multiplayer stuff...

[Otter]

"Excuse me, do you know where I can find Starfleet crew?"

"Starfleet crew?"