It goes without saying if you know me, I love Star Trek. I’ve played almost all related games. They’ve mostly been a mixed bag, but there are very good ones out there. Bridge Commander nailed space combat. Naval in style, it was all about manoeuvring your ship to face their weakest shields with your strongest weapons. Then there was Elite Force, where firing a phaser never felt so good (even if there were some silly weapons in there that weren’t very Trek-like!). If they were to fuse these two games together for STO they’d have had gold-dust. So what went wrong?
Well, before I go into the lengthy list of what they got wrong, I’ll talk about what they got right.

The Ship

The space combat feels good. The ships aren’t nippy fighters, they’re slow to turn, hulking big ships with the nice and simple phasers to take down shields and torpedoes to blow up the hull. Yeah there are variations of that, disruptors, cannons, quantum torpedoes etc, but it boils down to the main Trek weapons. To spice things up you have special abilities dictated by your crew, which leads me to the other thing I think they got right.

The Crew

As you progress through STO you will steadily build up your bridge crew. These guys, like you, fall under the Tactical, Science or Engineering categories and each will bring special abilities both in space and on ground. For example my Science officer can fire a beam from the main deflector that drains enemy shield power on all 4 sides equally. But on ground he’s my doctor, ready with a hypo spray and medical tricorder. You can customise these guys in the same way you do your own character, the main difference is you can’t equip them with a ‘kit’, something that grants special abilities. You can change which special abilities they have though by getting new crew members to train them.

The Feel

One thing that’s quite clear, is the game feels like Trek. The ships, the uniforms (even with their customisation), the bases and planets all feel right. Each mission can feel like an episode of the show. The missions often have multiple stages, seeing you fend off enemy ships in space before beaming down to a space station or planet and back again. They can feel like adventures, especially when you’re playing with others.

What went wrong

For me, the bad things fall into three categories, usability, repetition and the small things. Usability wise it is very, very unfriendly. The tooltips may as well be the technobable you get in the show. There are stats for things that aren’t explained, and often the tooltips seem auto-generated. When I get +7.5% deflector power I’d like to know what advantage that actually gives me, and as far as I can tell there is nothing in-game that explains this or the other half a dozen stats your ship has. The quests are hard to track, there are options hidden away and the maps are horrible.

Now to the small things. You can actually visit your own bridge but it’s lifeless. You can’t even sit in your own chair! There is a sit emote hidden away in the chat menu, but you have to position yourself standing on the chair first for it to work. Why can’t you just right click on the chair like the majority of MMOs? Also you can’t do anything on your bridge. It’s mainly for RP reasons as far as I can tell. And if that is the reason, why can’t I visit my ready room? Perhaps this is something planned for the future.  On a similar note, I’d love to be able to roam my own ship. I don’t expect it to be filled with NPCs and things to do yet, but the option to wonder would be cool and you could also have scripted missions where you can fend off invaders. Plus you know, holodecks are a must. I want my Irish village damnit!

Time Squared

The final thing is repetition. All MMOs have it, it’s their ability to disguise it or distract us from it that makes or breaks an MMO and so far STO has not managed to hide it. Sure they don’t have you doing “kill mob X to get item Y” style quests, but they do have “Kill X patrols” quests that unfortunately take a long time to complete. Often you have to travel most of the way round a planet to kill 5 groups of ships and it can take a good 15 minutes. When all you usually get loot wise are shield or engine batteries (essentially health and mana pots), there’s no sense of progression as you do these kill quests.

Quest rewards are mostly numbers, with XP, skill points, bridge officer points, Starfleet merits and Energy Credits, which although are useful they are a bit boring, often feeling like meaningless numbers. You do get other things for your ship or to equip on your character, but not all that often.

Overall

It’s hard to dislike the game for me, having grown up on Trek. You can live in the Star Trek world. You can fire phasers, redirect shields and beam down to new worlds. It could easily be an RPers dream. It just lacks any kind of polish, any thought to usability or sense of progression. When I spend a talent point in WoW, I get a new ability or improve an existing one in a way that feels like it’s making a difference. In STO I’m spending hundreds of points to improve weapons and shields yet it doesn’t feel like there’s a difference. I’m sure there is one, but it just doesn’t feel like it and I think in any game you need to feel like your character/ship is getting more powerful as you acquire more abilities and equipment.

So because of these reasons I won’t be subscribing to STO. I’ll revisit in a few months time, hopefully when there’s a bit more polish and a bit more content. But by all means give it a go, it’s not a bad game, just not quite as good as it could have been.