Guess what? Another MMO went Free-To-Play on Steam at the beginning of February. Naturally, I jumped at the chance to squeeze into a Lycra bodysuit, pin on a comm badge and holster my phaser.
MMOs as a concept, baffle me. Something that I touched on in my DC Universe Online review. The idea of buying a game, and then continuing to buy the ability to play it just doesn't make even a modicum of sense to me. Clearly, I'm in the minority, judging by the sheer gargantuan success of MMOs including World Of Warcraft, EVE, Everquest etc. Therefore I shall be putting my prejudices aside for the time being.
Developed by Cryptic Studios (City of Heroes/Villains), using their Cryptic Engine, Star Trek Online is set during the 25th century - a turbulent time in the Alpha Quadrant, some years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis. The Federation and Klingon Empire are at war. Threat from the Romulan Star Empire, the Borg Collective, Hirogen hunters and many other smaller enemy factions are ever-present. Not to mention that the shape-shifting Udine (formerly Species 8472) are larking about impersonating high-ranking members of every faction's military, causing the breakdown of all hopes for a diplomatic solution.
How much? Oh I get it free during the game? Lovely.
It is into this world that you are thrown. As a low ranking Star Fleet officer you are given command of a star-ship, as the Fleet needs every available ship on the front lines. You are issued missions from various NPCs across the map, in standard MMO style. Some missions progress the main story line, which has been divided into handy 'episodes' used to help track your progress through the story and even be replayed at leisure. Other NPCs chuck out the standard, monotonous fetch quests etc that all MMOs have for resource collection/experience farming. These, I ignore. There are also PVP queues that can be accessed from any common area, but owing to the structure of the game (to be discussed later) they're barely worth any attention.
Even this doesn't do it justice.
Pretty standard MMO stuff then. The interesting aspects of Star Trek Online, as with all MMOs, comes from character creation and combat.
Character Creation
The first choice to make is career path. Are you a Spock, McKoy, Kirk or Wesley Crusher? The three paths, Tactical (Red), Engineering (Yellow) and Science (Blue) will be fairly familiar to many MMO players. Tactical focuses on combat buffs and aggressive abilities in order to ramp their DPS, Engineering focuses on support powers such as fabrication of turrets and shield generators, and Science officers provide healing and crowd control abilities. I chose Engineer.
Next, you are asked to choose your Race. Human, Trill, Bajoran, Vulcan, there are many to choose from. You are also presented with the opportunity to create your own entire species, from physical attributes to four specific character perks. I chose this option. I saw no reason to not indulge in every part of customisation, even down to the colour of my character's eyes and nails. Because I can. And that level of customisation, of sculpting an avatar into a being you created and you own, is what I love most about RPG games.
Spines? Yes please, two rows.
With my character styled to out-the-arse levels of detail, I was thrown right into the tutorial (narrated by the wonderful Zachery Quinto I might add) which leads you through a ground combat section, teaching you the basics. More on that later. Upon completion of the tutorial, and a few other sections of story progressing and 'go-here/press-this' mission etc. you are commissioned as a Captain, and given your own ship.
Here's the second level of character creation. There are three classes of ships; Cruisers, which are general warships set up to be balance between speed, damage and survivability, Escorts, smaller and faster than Cruisers, with more fire power but weaker shields, and Science Ships, with high shield strength but weaker hulls, focusing on abilities. Each one of these ship classes reflects the character classes, but does not mean all Science Officers only do well in Science Ships, as your own abilities have little effect on space combat. I picked Escort and stuck with it through the ranks, however it is easy to swap from one class to the other when you receive a free ship token from the Admiral upon reaching rank 10, 20, 30 etc.
Here's mine, she'll do 0.5 past light speed.
A word on the levelling system. It's simple enough to grind, easy enough to level without grinding and great for streamlining your class by choosing different upgrades. By assigning low ranking members of your crew to carry out missions on-board or elsewhere in the sector you can generate resources and XP without even playing the game, as they carry out these missions in real time.
From this point onwards everything is down to you and your character. As I've stated, there are story missions, daily missions and the PVP/PVE arenas to fight in. The stars are the limit.
Space Combat
Holy woah.
Do you remember watching any of the Star Trek series or movies and wishing you could be in the captain's chair, barking orders at your bearded First Officer to 'engage evasive manoeuvre Alpha Epsilon 3 on your mark?' Well, Star Trek Online pretty much has that to a tee. Space combat is great. The encounters are all within fully 3D maps, allowing for everything you could think to do with your Star Ship. Cloaking, tractor beams, evasive manoeuvres, torpedo spreads, tachyon beams, boarding parties, they're all incorporated somehow. I would liken it to Star Trek Legacy, because that's what it is, but with a ton of extra abilities and tactics thrown in to expand the opportunities in each battle. Also, it's Archer free!
Least threatening pirate queen ever.
Two examples of how you can engage in space combat. I am currently Level 32, using a Defiant class (the one from Deep Space 9, also Worf has one. Photo below) which is an Escort rammed to the bulkheads with narrow firing arc/high damage cannons and not a lot else. Generally my tactic is to come at an enemy, usually a Romulan D'Deridex at present, with all power to weapons, forward shields at max and all offensive abilities activated (increased rate of fire, damage, area of effect). When in range a tacyhon beam depletes their facing shields, my cannons hammer down the rest and expose the hull. At this point I activate my tractor beam, to hold them in place and deal light damage over time, as I come about and fire a full spread from my aft torpedo launcher, striking massive damage against their hull.
This is Worf. Worf is displeased.
One of my fellow captains chooses a different, but equally effective approach. He is currently in command of an Excalibur class Cruiser, fore and aft torpedoes, several phaser banks, but not as nimble. Because of the firing arc of phaser banks, there is one specific way to broadside an enemy where both fore and aft banks overlap and can deal near continual punishment to shields. Once his enemy's shields are down, a quick turn and a few torpedo spreads is all it takes to finish them off.
U.S.S. Akkan. Does not play well with others.
Both of these tactics have Star Trek written all over them. I can recall scenes in films and episodes where nearly all of those manoeuvres have been done, which is what makes them all the more satisfying to do in game!
Space combat demonstrates that the three ship classes clearly occupy the same character types as the three Character classes. Escorts are focused damage dealers, Cruisers can take the punishment and manage threat control whilst Science Ships heal allies, cripple enemy movements and bolster allied weapons.
I love this more than Ensign Crusher loves stupid jumpers.
Your space combat abilities come from a wonderful system of Bridge Officers (or BOFFs). Each ship has slots for Tactical, Engineering and Science BOFFs, with each class of ship favouring one over the other two in numbers. My Escort has two tactical, one engineering and one science. These BOFFs are recruited or bought during the game and serve as your bridge crew during space combat. They are also able to accompany you on ground missions by joining your away team. As you progress in rank you increase the number of BOFFs you can have at any time. When completing missions, destroying enemies and achieving certain objectives you earn XP for your own progression but also BOFFXP, which is used to increase the abilities of your BOFFs. Once you have spent a sufficient amount of BOFFXP on an officer, you can choose to spend resources to promote them. When promoted, a BOFF gains access to the next tier of abilities, both space and ground. This added an element of loyalty and a real essence of being a proper Star Fleet crew.
Ground Combat
Ever played Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic 2? Well, ground combat is like that on a quality-free diet. It has limited FPS appeal, awkward ability cooldowns, over-zealous AI that want's you and ONLY YOU dead RIGHT NOW, despite being out numbered 5-to-1 and having all four of my away team shooting the crap out of it. For me, it's mostly a case of "Fine, STO, I will do your 9000th corridor rail shooter-esque away team mission, so long as you let me back into space in the next ten minutes."
Flee! Flee from my poorly-executed combat mechanics!....Or don't.
Sometimes the non-combat ground sections are just awful. For example, I went back in time to stop the Devidians from stealing a meteor (I think...I blew it up, close enough). I met Bones, and he was a dick. The guy made me do the most ridiculous fetch quest. First, I had to find a Barmaid, then she told me to go talk to Bones again. So back I went, across the map, to find him. He then told me I needed to make a Nerve Tonic to calm the Barmaid's nerves so she would tell me what transpired before my away team and I arrived. Back I go to the Barmaid to give her a Nerve Tonic, which I didn't have, and she directs me to the Bar. Here, I am presented with five tiers of choices regarding the composition of said Tonic. Not a clue. Not a bloody clue. So I made one, gave it to the Barmaid, bitch doesn't like honey. Well fuck. Space bees make shit honey, apparently. So back I trotted to Bones who proceeded to tell me everything the Barmaid liked about drinks. And I mean everything. I had to start taking notes to get it all down. Eventually I sort of had an idea of what she would want, so I went back to the Bar to make the drink. Needless to say, she didn't like it. I had to repeat the note-taking exercise four times. I wanted to kill Bones.
Even the Ghost-Busting missions didn't make up for it.
PVP Combat
Don't even bother. The Federation-on-Federation training exercises are barely running, due to lack of interest, and when they are there's always some uber-rank with a plasma mini-gun wasting everyone else. The space combat stuff is basically the same, no one understands how to work as a team so no one survives very long.
The fact that you can't even unlock a Klingon character slot until level 25 means there is about an 80:20 split in players in favour of Federation, which means PVP never, ever gets going.
On the rare occasion that PVE has worked, it's been pretty cool. We hunted a Romulan fleet, lead by a ship similar in design to the Scimitar seen in Star Trek: Nemesis. It didn't resemble it for long:
Kaboom.
Bad Stuff
The game features an in-game shop, the C-Store, where actual money with the Queen on it and everything can be exchanged for C-Credits. These are used to purchase new ships, equipment and even pets to follow you around, something that I absolutely cannot understand people spending money on. This in-game currency worth real money irritates me. It's clearly another way to continue to make money from a product, especially since it's now FTP, and I understand that. However, I'm not paying £15 to find out what the hell is inside every single one of the 56 Cardassian Lockboxes I have sitting in my inventory. It might be driving me insane.
A dog is for life. But apparently not for Sulu.
During peak hours the game has started to become a tad sticky but not unplayable. This is probably due to server strain, and for the first time a few days ago I was asked to wait in a queue before there was room for me to play. It took a full nine days of FTP status for that to happen, about 9 times as long as it took DCUO, thank god. Minor issues really, the servers will calm down after a few weeks.
Good Stuff
There are some great little things that I enjoy about this game. It patches a little bit every loading screen, something which all MMOs may do, but DC Universe Online certainly did not. That bastard made me wait for nearly 20 minutes every time I wanted to play it. However, the game does take forever to load certain maps, most probably due to heavy usage.
Some time and effort has clearly gone into making direct and indirect connections to the various iterations of Star Trek. Admiral Janeway, Ambassador Picard, Spock, Kirk, Sisco they're all in the game somewhere, mostly just by name. I get warm and fuzzy feelings when someone references an episode that I remember. Hell, you can even replicate Feline Supplement 74, the cat food Data gives to Spot. I do love attention to detail like that.
Overall
Yep, nice space combat, ground combat that I can deal with til it goes away coupled with rewarding progression and a highly detailed universe; all good things. Not much to say visually, it's alright on the ground but nothing special, much better in space however. It's an MMO, so longevity is usually a case of money but seeing as it's FTP I don't really see an end to my enjoyment. I'll take breaks, but I feel certain I'll come back to this again in the future.
Go get it, it's free for Kirk's sake!
A Final Point
Y'know Star Wars? The most popular franchise in the history of ever? Well, I'm nearly bored of it. There are so many games based on, admittedly, an excellent universe, that there's very little new ground left to cover. Unless you start making games based upon the colossal amount of fan fictions and other "novellas" based on the lives of the characters, characters children, children's children, pets, accountants etc. and I really don't want another Star Wars Christmas Special fiasco to be frank. Which is why this game appeals to me so much. It's a relatively new universe for me. Yes, I've seen large chunks of TNG and I'm currently re-watching all of Voyager, but I'm in no way saturated with Picardicles, not by a long shot. It's this freshness coupled with highly enjoyable space combat and rewarding gameplay that has stolen over 50 hours from me in the last 15 days. Thoroughly recommend to all MMO fans as well as anyone who's always wanted to play an MMO but morally objects to paying more than once for a game. Also, Star Trek fans of all sorts.
