Star Trek Online officially goes free-to-play on January 17th, but those of us who at some point were previously subscribers to the game have gotten a chance to get in early and see what is in store for the masses. Yes, there is currently Star Trek theme music playing in the background, and there will be for the entire time it takes me to write this article. I humbly suggest you put on a little Trek mood music yourself, and let’s take a look at what Star Trek Online has to offer. Join me in an adventure to explore strange new worlds, as we seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go where no MMO has gone before!
I logged in the day of F2P early access with no problems at all. The ease with which I was able to install and log-in already puts this experience a step above my attempts to get into the game upon the initial launch 2 years ago. There’s a plus already! My Lieutenant Commander was sitting there, patiently waiting as he had been for the better part of two years. He would have to just keep waiting however. This was my first time back into a game that had reportedly changed quite a bit since I had last played it, so that called for a new character.
Character creation is one of the things Cryptic Studios does well, and Star Trek Online is no exception. The amount of character options are enormous, and the amount of detail you can put into each of your creations can leave you in an epic daze of character creation for hours. You can choose an existing Star Trek Lore species, and create an avatar to your liking, or you have the ability to just go wild and create and entirely new alien species.
The only negative thing I have to say about character creation is that you are forced to choose some attributes for your character right then and there. At this point I am not sure just how much these choices can make or break you, but I really do not like having to make skill/attribute choices before I play one second of the game. For veterans it’s most assuredly not a big deal, but for a new (or relatively new) player it can leave you afraid that you may have screwed something up before you even get started.
Once you’ve created your character you can visit any tailor in game to change your uniform options, and even tweak the look of your character for a cost of energy credits (the normal in-game currency you acquire by completing missions, vendoring items, etc.). The uniform and basic detail options of your Bridge Officers and Away team can be adjusted here as well. Of course, being a free-to-play game, there are plenty of options that can be unlocked in the C-Store for real world money. The in-game store itself is laid out in a very simple to use, intuitive manner which makes it easy to find available items and their costs.
Upon loading into the game for the first time in a long time, my initial impression was absolutely positive. Within minutes I began noticing changes that had been made, not only in the game world, but also with the game systems. The graphic textures of the game have vastly improved since my time in STO, and gameplay felt smoother than I remember. Cryptic is working on utilizing DirectX11 for users whose rigs are optimized for it, and I’ve heard some really good things about it. Even without DX11 though, the graphical and overall systems improvements were absolutely apparent.
A little side note: There are many players complaining about the visual beauty (or lack there of) of the information signs found on the Earth Spacedock. They may not be much to look at, but their simplicity and utility are a gift sent down from the heavens for those of us who easily get lost in giant circles.
As far as visual presentation, game performance, and character creation go, Star Trek Online gets an A+ from me. I wanted Cryptic to slap me in the face with improvements the moment I logged in, and they did just that.
The main reason I walked away from STO two years ago can be summed up like this: Boring, repetitive gameplay. Sure, most MMO’s on the market today feature quests that essentially do the same things over and over, but in STO it just felt like a never ending treadmill of identical quests in identical sectors of space.
One measure Cryptic has taken to alleviate some of this grindy repetitiveness is to organize their quests into Episodes which consist of a group of missions that are part of an over-arching storyline. This fundamental change in how receiving quests is perceived, and what completion of a quest means, has done wonders in my opinion to revitalize the questing, and for the first time in years I find myself quite often taking the time to read the quest text. Yes, some quests can be a bit repetitive, but the conclusion of the overall Episode story is the motivation to finish out the duller missions so you can see what happens next.
Some of the missions I have gotten have been familiar from my time in initial launch, but they have been tweaked to fit within the new episode stories and streamlined to make completion of the objectives less strenuous. Everything isn’t roses however. There are occasionally quests that have you beam down to a planet’s surface, find and scan an item, and then find and scan more of those items. Unfortunately said items can be ridiculously far apart, and difficult to spot. There have been times when there weren’t even any enemies to fight along the way, which yes can be annoying at times as well, but without them you are left spending ten minutes roaming around an empty world to scan four items, in which there are exactly four. This is by far my least favorite quest type in the game. It can also be difficult at times to quickly and easily recognize where you should be going next as the mini-map and world map do not always do a good job of pointing you in the right direction. Sector space can be particularly confusing when trying to locate your next destination and the map system there could really use some updating.
Cryptic’s Episodic missions aren’t your only available option in order to get your quest on. The Foundry is one of the boldest innovations in any MMO. At first glance the ability for users to create their own game content may seem like laziness on the part of the developers, and to an extent it may be, but once you delve into some of the highly rated missions that players have created it quickly becomes apparent that there are true Trek fans in this game who possess an intense love for the deep story of exploration and peace at the heart of the Star Trek Universe.
If you played STO early on, you already know that the ground combat was some of the worst gameplay to be found in any game. Slow, methodical, dull, ridiculous. Those words only begin to describe how bad ground combat was. To fix this, the developers re-imagined ground combat completely, and have implemented an over-the-shoulder third-person shooter style combat that brings a bit of the action back to ground missions. Upon logging in for the first time in years, ground combat was one of the things I wanted to see immediately, and the game didn’t make me wait long. While it may not be able to compete with top of the line shooters that are out there, this system is WORLDS ahead of where it was before. If you’re a big time shooter fan, you’re probably not going to want to come to STO just because of the ground combat, but in a game that leans more towards space combat, the new ground combat system is a fun way to keep things interesting during Away Missions.
Space combat will be familiar to anyone who has played STO before, as it has not changed much, and really it did not need to. The space combat system itself was done very well from the beginning and it was typically the unoriginal quests and locations that really brought it down. In a ship-on-ship phaser fight in space everything “feels” as you would think it would. Ships turn for better firing angles against weakened sections of the enemy ship, or to protect their own damaged shields. During combat you are choosing which weapons to fire, controlling power to different shield sections, and utilizing your bridge crew’s abilities to give you an advantage over the enemy. Star Fleet doesn’t traditionally come in guns blazin’, but when it’s time to protect a defenseless colonized planet from invaders, STO space combat will deliver a satisfying battle encounter.
The Duty Officer system brings a unique mini-game experience that has become a hit with STO players. The system gives you the experience of running day-to-day activities on your ship as you assign duty officer personnel to tasks based on their personal attributes in order to generate the best possible outcome for each particular mission. These tasks can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, and can generate rewards if successful such as experience, skill points, dilithium and more. The Universe isn’t a safe place however, and your Duty Officers can wind up injured and have to report to sick bay to recover, or in some instances even be killed in the line of duty. You begin with a small selection of officers and can expand your roster by leveling up or purchasing more roster spots through the C-Store.
You can literally play Star Trek Online without spending a dime if you so choose, and the Dilithium Exchange is the feature that makes that possible. Dilithium ore can be acquired through gameplay such as certain daily missions, and up to 8.000 dilithium ore per day can be converted into Refined Dilithium which in turn can then be traded for Cryptic Points in-game via the Dilithium Exchange. There is a floor and ceiling for how much Dilithium a Cryptic point can sell for, but there is room for economic flux and a bit of competitive marketing. As an example, at the time of this writing each Cryptic Point is going for just under 300 Refined Dilithium.
STO still suffers from it’s share of problems, but the bar has undoubtedly been raised from where it was when this game originally made its debut. The rumors you’ve heard about this game being much improved from its original incantation are definitely true, and if you’ve been thinking of trying it out again, especially for Star Trek fans, it is for sure worth the download so you can decide for yourself if Star Trek Online deserves a place in your gaming library.
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