Star Trek Online to feature skill-based leveling

by Kyle Horner Sep 17th 2009 at 5:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, New titles, News items, Star Trek Online

So, Star Trek Online is using a skill-based progression system where experience earned translates into new skill points instead of new levels. Players start at the wide end and specialize into the "point" of the triangle as they progress in rank. Speaking of ranks, there are five of them: Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, Commander, Captain and Admiral.

It sounds like the nature of the system is to allow players some granularity in their specialization as they level. The types of skills invested in at the Lieutenant rank will determine what kinds of more specialized skills are available at the Lieutenant Commander rank. Then, once a player invests enough skill points to become a Commander, they'll dig even further into their chosen specialty.

There's a lot more detail in the Ask Cryptic write-up, and you can even post questions directly to the devs in the forum thread linked to the article.

Tags: ask-cryptic, atari, cryptic, cryptic-studios, progression, skill, skill-based, skills, star-trek-online, sto

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Chimpo said on 5:16PM 9-17-2009

Finally another MMO with this type of skill based leveling. It gives the player so much more freedom to their character.

YourMother said on 5:29PM 9-17-2009

Awesome. Can't wait to play it. I'll be in the beta for sure! Woo!

This and FFXIV and Star Wars is gonna keep me real busy.

THAC0 said on 5:32PM 9-17-2009

I am soooooooo happy to hear they aren't using a strict level using system. I want to get into Beta really bad now!

bartillo said on 6:03PM 9-17-2009

glad to see more and more mmos are breaking away from the boring level/class system.
I mean mmos that are going to be skill based are:

final fantasy 14, the secret world, star trek online, earthrise, mortal online, and I am sure there are a bunch of others.

Game companies are seeing that levels and classes ruin the immersion of games.

CCon99 said on 6:32PM 9-17-2009

Glad to hear someone is making a skill based system, it's been way to long since an MMO did one.

I still can't feel this game is just wasting a huge opportunity by making it a simple singleplayer game and not taking advantage of the full license. I just can't picture the game feeling like "Star Trek" when there are 300,000 Captain and Admiral's running around the quadrant.

eddie said on 7:16PM 9-17-2009

I must have eaten NitPickyOs for breakfast... so I apologize in advance... but "determinate"? Seriously?

The picture of the game that's emerging looks like a good match for skill-based advancement, however. Gaining Star Trek levels would just seem a bit silly.

However, I fully support Cryptic's decision to give everyone a ship of their own. I felt the most honest moment in all of Star Trek happened in Deep Space 9 when they began flying their own ship around... but with only a handful of crew. Seriously, what are those thousands of people on board the Enterprise in Next Generation supposed to be doing? I'm just not up for spending months at a time conducting botany experiments in a ship's lab.... or better yet, remember all those little crew kids? How about your first 9 months of gaming as Day Care officer? I suppose you could get lucky and be one of the 12 or so people standing around playing touch-screen Tetris in Engineering. Seriously, did they really need a person to stand there and "adjust" levels all the time?

Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that the game simulates Star Fleet... not a single starship. I think convoys of warships, science ships, and medical ships will be fairly common and a fun way to play.

Kyle Horner said on 7:20PM 9-17-2009

1.) I really have no idea how that got in there and wasn't caught.

2.) It's kind of an awesome word, actually.

Ingrod said on 7:38PM 9-17-2009

They explain in other FAQs that you can manage the entire tripulation of your ship, but only training, equip and give orders directly to the main bridge officers.

eddie said on 7:22PM 9-17-2009

Well, I actually kind of like the use... I'm still blaming NitPickyOs for making me say something.

Kyle Horner said on 7:24PM 9-17-2009

I blame my use of it on reading too many Neal Stephenson books.

Lethality said on 8:13PM 9-17-2009

Awesome... reminiscent of the original SWG :)

Maybe STO is the sleeper that will kill TOR... heh.

dudemanjac said on 4:35PM 9-18-2009

I think Eve has more to fear than TOR.

JWC said on 8:26PM 9-23-2009

STO is not 'teh hardcorez'. Eve will see some of it's new blood divert to this instead, I'm sure. But existing players, I doubt they'll defect.

Sniggab Odorf said on 9:20PM 9-17-2009

I hope by the time Star Trek launches Cryptic will have learned to describe abilities better.

robert said on 9:44PM 9-17-2009

I was always a bit interested in this game as a fan of the original Star Trek series, but skill based just made my interest keener.

Bob said on 10:37PM 9-17-2009

I like the ideas in this game...

But I HATE Cryptics graphics...

Champions Online has an ok feel to it, but only because its a "comic-game".

That does not mean that every single other Cryptic game should be a "comic-game" as well... :(

nathor said on 1:04AM 9-18-2009

Very excited for the Star Trek Online and like the skill based system similar to the SWG before the NGE when there was much more variety in the universe. I understand the playability of giving every player their own ship, but it would be nice to see an expansion that allows multiplayer vehicle use, particularly for the larger ships. For example, similar to SWG POB ships where you can fly them alone, but to really make them battleships, you need an engineer making repairs, a specialist tweaking the ships performance, multiple crew manning the guns, etc. I mean is it really Star Trek without an Engineer complaining about the beating the ship is taking? Or a science officer tracking damage to the enemy?

Dread said on 3:18AM 9-18-2009

Awesome, can't wait to unattend macro my way to epeen greatness!

I better start hoarding the blu tack and small weights now......

propkid said on 4:52AM 9-18-2009

When I read the title I thought that the talk is about the REAL skill, not in-game abilities... disappointed

eddie said on 11:55AM 9-18-2009

You might want to try actually reading the words of an article before commenting. Star Trek is not going to reward performing a skill... it's going to reward you with points to buy up skills as you do missions and such.

So the advancement comes from traditional experience-gaining actions, it can just be spent to raise skills as you can afford them, rather than lumping it all together at a "level".

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