Interview with Star Trek Online's Design Director

eldavojohn writes "In a brief QJ article about STO, the Glen Dahlgren (Design Director of Star Trek Online) mentions a few details about STO:

Dahlgren insists that it's still too early to reveal the game's specifics and in-depth details, but tells that players will be able to choose whether to group in space or join a crewed ship. Gamers will also be able to fly more powerful ships and vessels and the captain will have some incredible abilities that players will surely look forward to. He also reveals that they are currently working on ensuring that new players will get the help they need when faced with unfamiliar terrain. There won't be auto-leveling of characters but they will provide tools to make off-line time valuable to the online experience.

What makes this interesting is that there have been a lot of indicators that STO will be aiming to achieve 'high-end content' and not just combat content. It's becoming obvious that MMO's new to the scene need to offer consumers more than just combat content. Will STO be able to coax both the Sims Online and World of Warcraft crowds?"

Comments

Attracting the WOW and SIMS crowd

[grapeape]

If the game is mundane and simplex enough to attract your average SIMs players its going to be too mundane for ST fans. The WOW would be fine but they already have their "communities" so why change? It's kind of funny that the biggest franchises in the movie world seem to create the biggest flops in online ones. Look at Matrix online (which sounded like pure mecca for geeks) or Star Wars galaxies. It just looks like some things are better left to the imagination.

If you play a borg does one of the other borgs make all the gameplay decisions for you?

Re:flexiblity

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I'll be happy if it doesn't take 8 months for me to get to a high enough level that Starfleet Academy lets me set my phaser on a setting higher than "5 shots to kill a rat^H^H^Htribble".

Only federation means its a dead duck

[cliffski]

Im fairly high on the trek geek scale. I use a klingon daqh-tagh knife to open letters with. But I doubt I'll play this. Why?

federation only.

They offer up excuses, but basically its so they can cash in with race-specific expansion packs.
I'd love to be a Jem hadar,Ferengi or a klinogn, but federation? yawnsville.
LucasArts have the right idea, their new lego game covers all 3 original movies in one game, plus its actuaklly fun.
I cant see trek online lasting long.

Still too early? its been 2 years!

[aztektum]

i hope they mean it's still too early to talk gameplay because marketing doesn't want to let anything slip yet. it's been 2 years since they announced the game. if it's still too early because they don't have anything designwise firmly in place, this game won't see the light of day anytime soon.

Re:PVP and other MMOs

[meglon]

While my MMO gaming experience is a bit limited (i didn't jump on every bandwagon to go by); 6 years of EQ, a little CoH, very little DAoC, Guild Wars, Realms, and Eve; it seems that when players are given the option of PvP vs. PvE, the majority will go for PvE.

At EQ's peak, with almost 50 servers, only 4 servers were PvP, and those 4 servers were consistanly in the bottom 5-8 servers for players online (prior to Sony eliminating the ability to see that distinction). Admittedly, EQ was designed to be PvE, and it's PvP was, at best, a dreamland for gankers.

I haven't tried WoW, although I can count. They have more PvE servers than PvP. I'd assume, they running the servers at a certain capacity, as opposed to having far more people on far fewer PvP servers... so it'd follow that there's more PvE players.

With Eve, the only option for non-pvp content is to stay in high-sec(security) space. One of the most common complaints from the pvpers is: there's so few people in low-sec space; the reason given by high-sec's: gankers. If CCP would come out with an alternate server cluster that was PvE only, I'd guess that CCP would find itself with well more than double it's current player base. When you cancel Eve, one of the specific choices of "reasons" is: pvp. Obviously it's a downside for a significant number of people who trial the game.

Any PvE game could be describe to be "You'll be able to adventure and have fun, but only WITH friends. Not against them." and they sell fine. If you can do both in one game, and do them well, you'll have a hit.. but that's extreemly difficult because of the differing mindsets of the two groups.

It's hard to fathom a game that will come close to WoW's marketshare, although it was hard to fathom a game that could come close to EQ's marketshare when they had 500k subscribers. I don't think being PvP will be the defining requirement for any game to come to that, i think it'll simple have to be a good, solid, well developed game and a vast game world.

Peace does sell... it just has to be good peace.