The Daily Grind: Yes or no to STO away missions?

by Kyle Horner Jul 15th 2008 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Opinion, Star Trek Online, The Daily Grind

We've been having something of a Star Trek Online kick lately with The Daily Grind, but could you blame us with a suspiciously Cryptic clock ticking away? We figured that there wasn't any point in holding back our continuous thoughts on the possibility of Star Trek Online being announced in less than a month, so today we've got another question to ask you: Do you want away missions in your online space treks? It's not a cut and dry question, because away missions are arguably one of the core mechanics of the Star Trek series. Yet on the other hand, they're almost an entirely separate gameplay type than space exploration and combat.

It really comes down to whether or not away missions need to be in the game on launch day or if it could wait until an expansion or large free content update. We would argue -- in devil's advocate form -- that creating a thoroughly complete ship experience may actually be even more important for the game. Then again, it would be sort of strange to never leave your ship and explore the surface of strange planets with other players.

Tags: cryptic, cryptic-studios, star-trek, star-trek-online, the-daily-grind

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

recursive said on 8:30AM 7-15-2008

I must admit not having followed this one that closely, but wasn't there mention of ground gameplay in Perpetual's original vision? I'm sure I've seen some screenshots.

Whether it was or not, instancing would seem to lend itself well for away missions featuring a small team/party, could probably work better than it does for other MMOs. Some sort of non-instanced world to go with them after "first contact" would probably be required for immersion purposes though.

Of course, adding that to the other mentioned types of gameplay would venture into "biting off more than you can chew" territory, so I wouldn't mind them not being there. But it would add something "Star Trekky" to the game.

BookhouseBoy said on 8:41AM 7-15-2008

I think the away missions should be the bulk of the game, not the other way around... it's a way to incorporate thousands of players into the game, without having thousands of ships supposedly investigating whatever's going on. Have multiple ships, each representing a different level range as your character progresses, moving from ship to ship as they rank up, and each ship has a series of missions, both away missions (mostly) and events on the ship itself (holodeck, ship-fixing minigames, etc).

Brainiacrk said on 9:36AM 7-15-2008

I would think they would design the game so that the universe exists in a time at which the Federation is at war with one evil alliance or another (or the Borg). This would allow for a large ground-based component to the game, as well as justify the existence/need for multiple fighting classes and weaponry specializations.

In addition, the Elite Force FPS games open up a lot of possibilities as to the types of specializations and combat that could potentially be featured in a game like this.

There's a lot more to the Star Trek universe than being a generic crew member on a Starship (though being on and/or piloting a starship would also be sweet).

That said, away missions would be a great early game play component as well as a great way to earn special technology for yourself and/or your ship later in the game. Also, if they could work a diplomacy system into this game that would be sweet too.