Azaroth

That is, seemingly, into the Star Trek Online debate.

Fear the wit.

Now, Eric defends the design decisions made by Perpetual (which he, himself, was at one point a part of) by making the very valid point that MMOs are HARD, and that getting something out the door is, you know, a priority.

He believes that appealing to MMO gamers first and Star Trek fans second is a viable plan of attack, and I see his point. However, others have scoffed at the notion of reskinning WoW with Star Trek colours, and I am going to have to ultimately side with those types on this issue.

So, since I’ve made some rather brash comments on the subject recently and added to the clamour of fools (of course, I think my comments have merit.. making me the KING of the fools at least, right?), I thought I’d do something constructive and maybe slip into the shoes of the person I had harsh comments for just a little bit by putting myself out there and forming my own “design” for a Star Trek Online game. I mean, that’s only fair. And maybe he can come over here and tell me what a shitty idea MY design (”design”) is. It’ll probably be true, anyway. Jesus, maybe I should sit down and think this one out before I post it.

Nah.

Now, I don’t know what the budget that was set aside for STO’s development was. However, we’re going to assume “Not Infinite” for the sake of not appearing “Stupid” like the average fan who, I imagine, assumes that creating an exact replica of the universe for exploration in brutally-exact-down-to-the-last-detail Galaxy Class starships with fully operational Holodecks and Virtual Reality Appendage Attachments for realistic green alien woman Holodeck experiences is an attainable goal for development on a mid-sized MMO budget. Which means that Eric happens to be right about one thing - You can do a ground game or a space game, so pick one. It’s either or, not and. For now.

We’re going to keep in mind the point about “actually shipping” as best we can here. So as whacky and creative as I’d like to be (we COULD develop Virtual Reality Appendage Attachments, wouldn’t that be SO COOL??), this “design” might end up seeming a little feature poor. I’ll try to find a happy medium, considering this blog IS entertainment afterall. Really. Secret’s out. I’m not trying to pitch this to EA or Cryptic or Sony or anyone else, promise. Hell, I don’t even know what my design is yet. I’m just typing. I just assume everything will work out fine.

First, we decide between Ground Game and Space Game.

The obvious choice is ground game, for more than one reason. First, the space game has been done before. Everyone gets a ship, maybe you level the ship up, you collect gear for your ship in various manners. You fly around, you shoot people, you run quests. Could be fun in some ways. Could even be especially alluring to those who are some level of Star Trek fans, because even *I* would have fun picking between ship designs (Defiant pl0x) — or even customizing my own ship design! With Virtual Reality Appendage Attachments! (Not “Complete With”, but “Designed With” … here, kind of like this guy. Dont’ click that.)

But in the end, it’s all terribly obvious and done into the ground. So.. let’s.. go to.. the ground… game. There. Christ I’m good with segues. So what’s in the news lately.

Another important thing to note is that the space game can be added on later as an expansion. And it’s an expansion that’d actually capture people’s attention. Which is good, and goes beyond “you get power ranger outfits now and all your old gear is obsolete, level up some more and pay us more money. Please try not to take notice of how much time you’re wasting.”.

Point is, and let’s face it, adding a ground game after the fact isn’t really putting one foot infront of the other properly, and I think the players will somehow doubt the potential breadth of your addon ground game, making them slightly less excited about the possibilities of what should be the main part of any Star Trek MMO.

The proper choice is to go with the ground game first. Now that we’ve established that (and that anyone who disagrees is wrong), let’s get a move on and try not to make this post so ridiculously long that nobody reads it after glancing at its massive, unwieldy, horrifying length. I don’t want people to yawn every time they look at a post on my blog just because they’re all so fucking long that you wonder if you’re having a nightmare because the slider just. won’t. stop. That movie about the website that kills people? Based on a true story. Remember to eat, drink, and go to the bathroom once a day while you’re getting through one of my posts. I was one arrested for disturbing the peace. My post had grown so large that it invaded Poland. Etc.

I’ll admit, that’s one thing I really like about Eric & Sandra’s blog. Their posts are clean, concise, interesting and intelligent. Everything that mine aren’t. In fact, I think just about any post on their blog would end right about here (or well before) and have said everything it needed to say.

However, this is my blog. That means we haven’t even started.

Now, the thing about Star Trek is that it, in no fashion whatosever, lends itself to EQ or WoW style gameplay. It’s just not Hack&Slash. It’s not about getting more power or more items. However, the best thing about it is that it’s emo as hell.

Remember those old websites in the late 90’s that were called E/N? They were basically the predecessors of blogs, and they called themselves Everything/Nothing sites. Which is what their authors wrote about. Inbetween writing bad poetry and cutting themselves. Star Trek is kind of like that. Not because everyone involved is a total loser, but because it’s everything and it’s nothing. Let me take a moment to explain.

See, Star Trek isn’t really about PvP. You can’t MAKE the GAME about PvP. That’d be stupid. But, there’s an important place for it.

Star Trek isn’t about loots and gears. You can’t MAKE the game about loots and gears. That’d be stupid. But, there’s an important place for it.

Star Trek isn’t ABOUT a crafting. Or socializing. Or space fights. Or politics. Or anything, really. It’s about all of it, just very carefully crafted into segments and pieced together to create a very specific vision of a certain fantasy universe. That’s why I think it makes such a god damn interesting MMO IP, where other people think it makes an impossible one.

See, where people spend time trying to figure out how to sew a disgusting Diku appendage onto a Star Trek body (or the other way around, but I wanted to emphasize the Diku as the negative part. Fuck I should really learn how to write one of these days..), I say - Fuck the hell off with all of that! Star Trek isnt’ ABOUT any of your LABELS. You can’t BOX STAR TREK IN. It’s not about your EXPECTATIONS. It HATES YOU.

SIDE NOTE: I think there are some interesting ideas in that direction, though. Even if people had to struggle to figure them out, which is artificial and stupid.

I’ve seen a few and I’ve thought up a few, just for fun. Or, well, probably because I was trying to do something else and my ADD kicked in and forced me to procrastinate by doing the all important task of thinking about Star Trek MMOs.

For one, you can have a group of people flying a ship and assign a job to each of them. You’ve got your gunner as your mage, your pilot, your engineer as your buffer (EVER PLAYED A GAME WHERE YOU HAD TO DO MATH TO BUFF OTHER PEOPLE??? NO?? … WANNA??? … Oh…), you’ve got McCoy running around healing people when they get consoles blown up in their faces, etc. Fun fun. But, well, ok. Not really. But it might be, and if you’re at a total loss beyond having little men in jumpsuits run around and level up by phasering foozles, it might be something to think about a little more…

See, the entirety of space could be viewed through the viewscreen. Admirals pop up and give quests, stars go by, planets come into view, Romulan Cruiser Decloaking! It sounds so much like a bad game from 1985 that it scares the hell out of me. And at your leisure, you can walk around the ship and bitch about how bad the game is in ten forward.

See, while Star Trek isn’t ABOUT any of those things, and making it a game ABOUT any of those things is dumb as hell - it’s also about ALL of those things. It’s such a logical sandbox that it should scare the hell out of you. And it might. Because it wears some really freaky ass clothing to school. Am I taking the emo thing too far?

Now, I’ll demonstrate my Vulcan mind-reading abilities. I’m reading your mind right now. Stop thinking about porn. Oh wow that’s sick dude. I can’t believe you’re thinking about that.

Ah, okay. There it is. You’re also thinking “Well, how can we make this game about EVERYTHING without a budget of, say, $600m??”. Good point, sire. Captain, I mean.

In fact, the problem goes FARTHER than that. How do you make this game about everything AND have enough content to make it truly worth of the Star Trek name??? Adventure! Politics! Pew Pew with laserbeams! I’ll tell you!

First, I mentioned that we’ve got a ground game. Alright, so assume we have an engine that works. Someone made one. There are no problems with it, and anything we want to do isn’t a big problem. Our tools programmer, also great. I’ve known him since way back (don’t mention the mole on his nose).

What we want now is a good base of gameplay. For instance, let’s start with three races. Logical choices? Human, Klingon, Ferengi. That’s logical enough, right? I’m sure there’ll be a lot of people whining about the lack of Vulcans and such, but we’ll make some vague promises about expansion packs and they’ll be quite happy with that.

Okay, so let’s develop our base of gameplay. I don’t mean walk, talk, fight, UI, etc. That’s BORING, and our developers have executed it all without flaw.

First, we’re going to get the obvious fact that we’re using skills instead of levels out of the way. The quick version of the explanation is that Star Trek is about expanding yourself as a person, choosing your own path, and existing in a romantic vision of the future in the way you personally see fit. Not grinding to level 70 on Targs (or redshirts, depending on your starting race, I suppose).

It’s just not. I’m really sorry to everyone out there who either thinks it should be, or thinks it should be because that’s a lot easier. As much as I’m sure you’re very pleasant and attractive with an appealing floral bouquet about you, you’re wrong. There’s no reason that we can’t appeal to people who like that without copying WoW, either.

Moving on.

So we’ve got our skills. We’ve got our races.

How much of our budget have we spent so far?

There are going to be, I’m sure, people who read this and have the first thought that it’ll be too expensive. Okay, fine. As much as I attempt to be light on the budget and forgo the implementation of a space game, endless mountains of handcrafted content, 10 races, 100 different customizable ships, etc., that’s going to happen.

That’s fine. Doesn’t mean you can’t still cut costs in a lot of ways. Again, and doesn’t mean I’m pitching this to someone. If I were it wouldn’t be on my blog for people to steal. There are enough people pretending to be me that I’m sure that’ll happen post haste regardless of how bad the idea is, anyway.

Again. Moving on. Like, today.

Skills are obvious. Dream your own up. It’s an interactive design blog where you do all the work. But we won’t restrict skills by race. Meaning, you can fully learn to fight with a batliff if you want to no matter your race. Just because you happen to be a Ferengi doesn’t mean you can’t pick one up (Deep Space Nine Season 5, Episode 3: Looking for par’Mach in All the Wrong Places — as everyone reading this screams “NERD!!!!!!!!” and readies themselves to punch me in the kidneys, let me remind you that I weigh 225 pounds and carry a Klingon knife in my boot at all times. So don’t bother fucking around.) . However, we want to achieve some semblance of realism in this area too.

We also want people choosing races for a reason, and the population of that race SOMEWHAT resembling what it does in the Star Trek universe. For this reason, you just start with the obvious stat differences between the races. Then you add more obviousness with modifiers to skill gain based on race. Ferengi should be able to learn to use a batliff, but probably isn’t going to pick up the skill quite as quickly as a Klingon. Then, beyond that, you don’t really need to add trainers to every city on every planet for every skill. If you want to learn to swing a batliff with any precision whatsoever, you’ll have to go to Kronos (I called it Kronos, not “Klingon”. Have I endeared myself to Star Trek fans yet?).

So everyone has access to the list of skills. That’s fun, I guess. At least I’m not grinding levels for that epic purple level 70 phaser and my character can be whatever the hell I want him to be. Even if that means a batliff-swinging Ferengi Starfleet captain who also happens to own a Creole restaurant.

What else is there to do?

Well, there are the planets and the associated gameplay for those who happen to be on those planets.

Kronos is easy. Klingons are a race of warriors! Kaplah! On Kronos, our main theme is combat. If this is what you’re interested in, you might roll a Klingon.

Lots of places to learn fighting skills, lots of things to fight.

We can have arenas for willing combatants and even a Klingon dueling system if the game isn’t PvP+ (or even if it is, it can be ceremonial or virtue/honour based).

There are lots of quests to gain favour with the High Council and various Houses, or the Military.

In fact, Klingons are about the easiest thing to do here. And it doesn’t need to cost a lot of money, or involve a lot of insanely intricate and complicated systems.

You could even make a good EQ/WoW style game if you based it entirely around the Klingon Empire. But let’s remember that we’re not. Patak.

So have fun on Kronos and rumble with other Klingons, become a powerful warrior, start a guild (House!) and set up simple and benign quests for other Klingons to do to get noticed by your noble House (House Kaplah! wants you to kill the –insert list of nearby roaming wild animals here - say, Mad Targs– for –50– –Mad Targ Tusks– which will reward you with –500– –Reputation– with House Kaplah! … House Kaplah! may or may not offer various items of their own posession as rewards for these turn ins, or possibly money. Certainly a different system than would be employed on Ferenginar for commerce - after all, anywhere we can add benign player created content, we give people an endless source of additional content that we didn’t pay for).

Regardless, you can go on and on with dumb ideas for providing gameplay on Kronos. Or you can be more conservative and just go with the bare minimum of some cities, some quests, and some roaming monsters. The bonus here is that you don’t need to provide 50 zones to accomodate grinding from level 1-100. Just provide a wilderness and some “dungeons” (crypts, tombs, downed ships filled with terrified redshirts, whatever).

Earth is a little harder. However, in the Star Trek universe, Humans tend to be a generally morally enlightened race of people following their own chosen paths. So let’s build on that.

You can obviously choose to join Starfleet if you want, which isn’t a gameplay stretch. Starfleet Acadamy, classes (tutorials), and quests that advance you as a student in your chosen field (reputation). How WoWy!

But, if you want to achieve the coveted rank of Captain, you’ll have to master quite a few different disciplines. The thing that’s not very compatible with a WoWesque design is that a captain is generally not chosen based on who has the most powerful phaser rifle and looks most like a power ranger (although I’m entirely sure that you could design the game like that).

It certainly has more to do with the knowledge the person possesses and the skills they’ve attained. Remember, the captain is ALWAYS able to take the helm, and they rarely stare blankly at an engineer who is trying to inform them of what their current predicament is (hint: it’s always a plasma leak, you’d know that if you didn’t spend your entire career grinding tribbles for rare drops). But as time consuming as it might be, being a captain will, I ASSUME, have great rewards once the “Where No Man Has Gone Before” space game expansion goes in. (Which doesn’t mean that nobody else can get a ship, but having a Galaxy Class starship might be more advantageous to your adventuring than, say, a rented Ferengi shuttle. Even if Starfleet DOES keep pestering you with quests you have to do for them on a certain timeline).

That isn’t what Earth is ABOUT, however. It’s just something you can go ahead and do if you like. Something pretty necessary to the game, but just something.

Earth is the socialization and crafting game. It’s a haven for crafters and tavern owners and the like. In fact, that’s where you’ll find all of the best trainers for, oh, Winemaking. And there will be FAR more NPCs patronizing your restuarant or museum of space oddities than on, say, Kronos where they’d be more likely to be harassing you and calling you a Patak.

Player towns, houses, shops (most especially tools for custom housing - I want an old vinyard like the Picard family has, please), crafting, socializing, politics and player elections. There are a lot of things you can do with Earth. You can even make it the planet with the most scientific research going on (which I suppose is just another crafting skill, really). Regardless, Earth is a great place to hang out, and down and out the best place to be for most crafters (do grapes really grow anywhere else but on earth?).

Unless you’d like to buy or sell those grapes (Do Humans do anything but make wine in this game?). At which point you may be better off on…

Ferenginar.

A centre of commerce. Your only auction house is here, and it’s more of a marketplace, really.

The Ferengi game is a little more unorthodox, and has more to do with things like playing the stock market (which would probably just end up being a gambling minigame) or even purchasing your own dilithium rich moon on which your hired workers toil for the lowest amount of payment you can possibly get away with giving them.

The simplest way to implement something like this before the space game goes in (you can certainly wait until after) would be to have NPCs selling moons (provide some sort of visual, please) and such (read the text of that crafty Bolean carefully to make sure you don’t fall for a lemon!) along the Sacred Marketplace, and various NPCs walking around offering the mining services of their team for x dollars (make sure you hunt around for a good deal!).

Good stores along the Sacred Marketplace are expensive, so save up. Venture into the Tower of Commerce to bribe those in the Commerce Authority for access to their quests (from simple things like Bring Me X Latinum Troll Dolls, Sell These For Me, to Broker This Deal With That NPC, etc. Of course, as you gain reputation and are able to suck up to more powerful Ferengi within the Commerce Authority, you might be buying entire moons for them).

Of course, a higher reputation within the Commerce Authority would certainly have its rewards. Better business opportunities, rare items, etc. Ferengi really ARE about the loot. And its’ an MMO, so SOMEBODY had to be.

So be a good Ferengi and build yourself an empire of commerce and a mountain of latinum. If you have the lobes for it. Because those ships will be AWFULLY expensive in the expansion, and I’d imagine you can charge a premium for vendor spots in the BEST location in the entire Sacred Marketplace.

There are a lot of things you can do with Ferenginar. Again, just depends on how much of your budget you want to sink into its gameplay. The above are just a few very simple suggestions.

So basic gameplay is easy, and it’s not the most extreme thing in the world to think about providing a sandbox (with some shovels, buckets, and a few slides) for the kids to play in (or poop in, it’s a MMO after all). Things, of course, get much more interesting once space and space ships are added.

Of course, the breadth of the space game (and whether it’s added at all, even) depends on the success and profitability of the game in the first place. If it’s doing really well, the things you can do with space are really pretty limitless. There’s all kinds of questing, adventure, raiding, PvE and PvP possibility there.

If it’s not, you can save yourself a lot of money by not developing it.

But oh no! We’ve got our character customization and basic gameplay and planets and skills and all of that, but now we’ve nearly run out of our imaginary budget (or we had even LESS of a budget and Fereginar is just an NPC world with an auction house, or whatever)!

Well, what a predicament. Maybe the level of traditional content we have isn’t on a level that can compete with WoW, or even close to it.

Even though it’s sort of been a focal point already (and we’ve hopefully also entertained and appealed to the traditional ding-ding-shiny people with a lot of stuff on Kronos, in Starfleet, etc), you can go back to the community again.

So, analyze the situation. We’ve got a bunch of worlds and not enough adventure. Not enough quests, not enough points of interest, just not enough hand generated content. This problem potentially gets even worse if we’ve added (or intend to add) the space game.

Here’s where we can learn lesson from places like NWN, Second Life, Multiverse and the like.

We’ve got a universe, a strong built in fanbase, and a good core of basic sandbox gameplay. If we’re hurting for content or lacking in budget from the start, we once again rely on the existing and potential communities and give them strong tools to not just make this game another blip on the radar of Star Trek fans, but something that captures their imagination and becomes a part of Trek culture and even Trek history.

Very simply, to start, you can allow players to, possible for a fee, set up and run their own instances of the game under their “Q” control. Provide them tools to DM their game, allow them to invite friends into the game. Works a lot like a more official UO server or NWN server. The “Q” has the ability to, with provided tools, created certain types of content - like quests.

Beyond that, on these servers (ONLY on these servers), you can also provide something else to allow the creation of content by these players. One option would be an ability to, much like Second Life, import models and textures. You could instead, or also, form a marketplace on your website for the sale of models and textures. Just call it the Sacred Marketplace and do some Ferengi art on the site. Players could sell to other players, you could sell to players, or both. Figure out the business side of that however you like.

With these abilities (both ability to create simple content through the use of simple tools and the ability to import/buy models and textures) you would not only facilitate a whole offshoot community for the game you’ve made, but you’ve also be able to create a system of purchasing the hard work that was crafted exceptionally by players and integrate it into the live game very easily.

What better solution could you have for filling space with adventure than having others do it for you? Pick through for the best stuff and add it in. What Q wouldn’t want to create adventures for players on the actual game? What company wouldn’t want a foolproof screening process (picking and choosing, no actual code involved, etc)? What Star Trek fan wouldn’t want to get PAID for generating fun content for the game they play?

Star Trek Online becomes a game truly about its community. And I think that’s exactly what a Star Trek MMO should be.

Note: I realize I didn’t get very deeply into example content or examples of gameplay. I realize I probably explained a lot of things more poorly than I realize. I realize some people will think there isn’t enough of a game. I realize some people will think there’s too much of a game and I spent too much money. I understand that Sandra would have written some text from the Boleans selling moons, and it would have been cute and entertaining and I should have probably done that. I understand that reviewing the created content might take as long as making it yourself, so you might be better off keeping it all on the private servers and not integrating any of it. Have I prevented most comments yet? I hope so.

Are there massive amounts of adventure content? No. Are there three or four games in one, fully encompassing everything that a Star Trek MMO should ever be? Nah. Will there be a level of “okay, what do I do now?” for people who are used to playing WoW? Yep, probably.

But as long as you provide people with the ability to do as they generally please with their Star Trek Online life, join Starfleet, fight Klingons sometimes, use some tools to do things like build their own houses and acquire latinum through businesses, I’m not sure they’ll need their hands held. But that’s catering to Star Trek fans first and MMO fans second, which could be a mistake.

However, I don’t think it’s so totally out in left field. Besides, isn’t intentionally addicting and forcefully strapping fourteen year olds to never ending treadmills likely to attract the attention of politicians one of these days?

Give people a universe in which they can play, chill out, socialize, and follow their own paths. Generally do as they please, when they please. It’s a little more morally defensible as a game design - and I think Star Trek is the best IP do it in.

-Az