The Many Relms of Relmstein

Cryptic is a young studio having only released one MMO, but they seemed to have gained a lot of experience from it. Even though the game design for City of Heroes/Villains was grindy they did try out a lot of new ideas. Not all of them worked out they way they intended, but it doesn't mean they were a waste of time. For example, Cryptic used procedural generated content for missions and accidentally created very repetitive and boring instances. However, the idea of procedural generated content definitely has applications for randomizing PvP areas like arenas or battlegrounds. It's because of Cryptic willingness to be different that I try to keep track of whatever they are working on.

Champions Online looks to be interesting, but I have a feeling it's basically a remake of City of Heroes without NCSoft's interference. While secret identities and customizable power effects are nice features, it doesn't really have me excited. I will try out the game since I'm a fan of the cell shaded artwork, but it will probably be a 2-3 month fling rather then a long term relationship. Star Trek Online on the other hand might actually be worthy of long term involvement. I've made posts on other blogs that it's going to be very tricky making this game. There are a lot of different versions of Star Trek and a player's expectations are going to be heavily influenced by what series they watched. However, it seems Cryptic realized this and has made several design decisions to nip the problem in the bud.

Based on the FAQ sheet they just recently put up on their website it seems they are going to place their game in a future timeline after all the television series. Hopefully, this will keep most of the lore lawyers from screaming bloody murder whenever Cryptic tries to do anything innovated with the game design. I've already read some fanatic complaining about Klingons and the Federation fighting after the big peace treaty in the television show. Game designers need to ignore these people who quite frankly share a lot in common with the comic book guy from the Simpsons. I've written before how I thought the Lord of the Rings Online lost a lot of appeal because Turbine was too afraid to give any class abilities that might seem too "magical".

Another thing I noticed on their FAQ sheet that had me smiling was that their PvP ruleset seems similar to the security system that EVE Online uses. The rules are basically; no PvP inside a faction's territory, consensual PvP in the neutral zone, and open PvP in the unexplored regions of space. It's not as hardcore as EVE Online's system, but it seems to follow the basic tenet of space being more dangerous the further you get from civilization. This ruleset leads me to suspect that the majority of combat in the game will be space based. I'm sure there will still be a decent amount of avatar combat, but I think Cryptic knows the big appeal of Sci-Fi games is spaceships. I'm just hoping that they'll allow us to customize and earn upgrades for our ships.

I'm feeling good that Cryptic might be able to pull off a decent Star Trek MMO at this point. Things are still early, but I haven't seen any warning flags yet. There are a couple common concerns that are being thrown around by bloggers at the moment. The biggest one seems to be the mission structure which some people are afraid will follow the classic "Kill Ten Rats" structure. I'm hoping that Cryptic avoids this issue by using the thousands of Star Trek episodes to come up with missions/assignment ideas. The other concern seems to be having the two waring factions be Klingons and the Federation. Quite frankly all I can say is that Klingons have the most appeal out of all the Star Trek races. It might have made more sense to use a different alien race, but hell people actually speak Klingon.