Star Trek Online producer blog explains early choices made in development

NPC crews are the way to go. If players want forced teaming, there's an MMO market already saturated with it out there. Nothing would kill my interest faster than finding out I can't operate my ship because one of my crew hasn't logged on.

The original system proposed by Perpetual took this into account. (It was usually a design flaw which was posited on by everyone the second they heard about a Star Trek MMOG, immediately proceeding excitement at living and playing with a real crew.) When a player left a post, an NPC would (Fittingly much like the real series'.) leave a post, an NPC would take over, the NPC was both less effective than a player and also less fun than playing with a friend. It also allowed you to play the game solo if you should wish.
Of course this idea, fun, obvious, the first to come to mind of anyone thinking about a Star Trek MMOG, was eventually even slightly backed-off by Perpetual themselves and is certainly not on the agenda of Cryptic, who seem bent on getting STO out as quickly as they can.
We can expect a game more akin to the current generation of MMOGs which, despite their efforts to date having gained absolutely none of the market share WoW supposedly brought to the genre as a whole. Without the ability to walk around your ship (There is contradictory information on this, so at this point I will assume, based on screenshots that we can at least walk around the bridge) and live on it, as Perpetual originally envisioned, to have friends onboard with you, I can see something deeply missing. It also ruins the idea of the size of the starships, I have a fear they will interact and feel like the frigates in EvE.
Having said all of that, there are always the Klingons, I have no feelings of great fascination with their ships interiors because we rarely saw them and it was always dark and uninteresting and who cares if their ships handle like frigates, the Bird of Prey is supposed to do so! I will miss player crews, but they have been dead for years.

Good post. Nothing more to say.

If I read the blog correctly, they haven't discarded the idea of multiple PCs manning the ship. It just won't be in game at launch...that and no ship interiors (bummer)

The question isn't if they can do it, but how can they do it. It is one thing to say a competent dev team could it. It is a completely different story to do it in a way that will make for good game play.

Remember that for an mmo you need content that is going give the players incentive to play. How are you going to make each station fun to play, active at all times of the game, and not a mini-game? Some stations are very easy to think of in terms of content for the station. The helm and tactical comes to mind. Others would not be that easy.

Remember that in the tv shows the characters were only needed at their stations in order to advance the plot lines. They didn't have to show Geordi grinding engineering skills. They didn't have to show what the characters do during times that have no effect on the plot of the story. A game like STO is different, because the characters are player controlled. They need to have content that will encourage them to continue playing. Being a captain is the easiest way to go as it lets you have complete control over all of your actions.

I personally like that they haven't completely ruled out player crews. I would love to see it in the game in the future, if the dev team can make it meaning full. I would hate to see a half-baked player crew system.

It amazes me that these companies still seem to be missing the point of the IPs they work on.

We're getting a STAR WARS game that hasn't mentioned any, you know, starship combat.

And now we have a STAR TREK game that isn't going to take place where 90% of the show/movie spent: inside the ship.

Ugh.

Just give me any Romulan ship and some Federation people to hunt down and call me happy. :)

I think Cryptic is making the right call on the player crew thing.

I was going to start off by saying "On paper" or "In theory" but to be honest, it doesnt take much of either to see that it doesnt make for a great game design to have player crews.

Flying through space where you're breaking up a simple task like setting a heading and engaging warp into...what? at least 3 "tasks"? You have a captain who asks a navigator to set a course and the navigator sets the speed and then an engineer has to fire up the warp engines? What happens when your chief engineer DC's? The ship is stuck there until you kick him out? And then once the ship is actually traveling, what does everyone do?

Not to mention character experience. How do you progress in the game sitting at the conn for your buddies ship? You go from night watch to day watch? And then what, each ship function has to have its own little UI and gameplay?

Not to mention, what's the actual benefit to having multiple people on one ship? At worst, it makes your ship a mess because you cant coordinate actions. At best you're...what? a little more efficient than a single player ship? What kinds of challenges can they throw at a ship with 5 people in one ship vs a 5 player fleet? wouldnt it almost always be better to have 2 ships instead of one ship with 2 people and if it wasnt, doesnt that just put a solo player at a huge disadvantage?

There are solutions to all of these problems of course. It just makes for a much more complicated game to design and deliver on for not much more fun factor. "Captain your own starship" sells game boxes. "Run your friend's science station" sells the game to people who will already be buying anyway because its star trek.

I think that being able to "pull off" the complete Star Trek experience is going to be difficult for any MMO make happen.

Mirilene's post (above) did a great job highlighting the whole PC vs NPC crew dynamic.

Personally, I wouldn't mind just working my way up from the Starfleet Academy and then picking an assignment on a ship (floating player guild) or doing odd jobs around Deep Space Mall, or even going on solo (shuttle) missions or something. I like the idea of being small in the scope of such a huge, well defined universe. And I think it'll feel a lot smaller when everyone has their own pimped out spaceship.

It'll be crazy when five players all warp out to the same planet, and then join each other on the ground for an away team mission. It's like that scene at the beginning of "The Fast and The Furious" where the whole racing gang arrived in seperate cars for breakfast.

[Looking for Group]: "Flying to Romulan space, LF1M helmsman then gtg!"


Very horrible idea to force PC crews...Need i say more?