MajorD
09-17-2009, 07:49 PM
This is a post I made in another thread (http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=26629) concerning my ideal for a Trek game's mission structure. I've posted some of these ideas elsewhere in pieces, but I feel they need their own place for discussion.
Summary: A proper Trek game needs not just the ability to chose your path to a mission's goal, with some ability to modify that goal, but the ability to chose why you chose that path. Decision, action, reason. This makes the missions cerebral and allows you to trully play missions, rather than merely watch them.
I think the problem with a game of this type is if it isn't a courier mission then it's a combat mission. The whole point of the stories, the characters, the ships, everything is to get you to the next fight, nothing more. This is how it was in CoX and more so in Champions. There's no third option and a Trek game desperately needs a third option if it is to truly be a Trek role playing game.
I've said it a bunch of times now, but STO needs Choose Your Own Adventure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure) style plots. Previously, I've compared it to games to Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_25th_Anniversary_%281992_video_game%29) and Judgment Rights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Judgment_Rites), as well as games by BioWare such as Mass Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_effect) and specifically the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic (http://www.swtor.com/). The common elements of those things are the player's ability to chose, if not their path, the personality of their character. In the first three you can choose your path, and to some degree this can express your personality, while in Mass Effect you can choose your personality and this can determine your path, if you let it. Recently, I've been playing a Paragon in Mass Effect, and this let me completely avoid a series of dangerous battles because I was able to talk my way through key points of confrontation and peacefully diffuse the situation. I could also be a Renegade and get the same result with a completely different personality. This is the most relevant to Star Trek of the Bio Ware choice and personality dynamics, because the choice is always pretty much the same, you only get to chose how that result gets achieved. In Star Trek, you would get a mission and it would be up to you how to achieve it as well.
Bio Ware games have missions where interesting interactions between personality and decision cross, in Jade Empire you can become cool or hot in personality, but it is regardless of your decisions. The end of the game exemplifies this by allowing your to make the same negative decision for the greater good or for personal gain, or the same positive decision based on your passion or peace. Knights of the Old Republic has this too, where you can be what I call Stupid Evil, or Smart Evil, you can be a blithering idiot who yells at everyone and kills and steals for no good reason, or you can be calculating carefully where and when to act amorally for the greatest gain. Or, you can be Mr. Righteous Dogooder, or use the law as an excuse to kill. This is a bit much, you might have more moral freedom with the Klingons, but not Starfleet. That's something that is never an option in the MMO's I've seriously played or dabbled in. However, even that is insufficient for a Trek game, it's interesting, but it doesn't require the player to think beyond who you are. You're following an interesting event tree but it's a limited one with predictable results in most cases.
Choose Your Own Adventure is good because the choices are more blind and can have greater consequence to how the story works out. It can be more fun than the above in some ways, but blind choices aren't much of a mental exercise because it's not much different from random chance based on personality. There's no critical thinking or skill involved in what you do and how you do it.
The Trek graphic adventure were very appropriate because your were truly playing episodes, not just following them on rails. There was a level of personal decision with relevant results. There is one mission in Judgment Rights that comes to mind where there is a sub sentient species that is reliant on an alien piece of machinery for survival. If I recall correctly, you could fix the machine and save the species, use the machine for parts, or leave the machine broken. As far as you're concerned the first time through, the decision you make may be the only one because the end of the mission is pretty much the same no matter what in that you will have finished the mission. But, surprise, the episodes have a story arc where your previous actions do have a big effect and graded on how effective you were in solving the situations.
What a Star Trek roleplaying game needs is a combination of all of the above. It needs ways to express and chose what kind of person you are, multiple ways to achieve the same goal, ways to achieve different goals, decisions both blind and educated, as well as some available based on previous actions. What it cannot have are thinly veiled excuses on rails to fight, transport, or collect goods. Choosing between Mission Giver X and Y's story arcs not a choice when those story arcs are completely meaningless to the completion of those missions. In the above games you have to pay attention to what is going on, and paying attention comes naturally, because what is going on is relevant to how things will end.
The way STO is working out, using MMO in its description is fine but it should not use RPG. Cryptic needs to be honest with us and tell us if this game is nothing more than a Star Trek ship and ground combat game. That's fine, if that's what it is that can be fun, but pretending it is any more than a combat game will be significantly disappointing.
Summary: A proper Trek game needs not just the ability to chose your path to a mission's goal, with some ability to modify that goal, but the ability to chose why you chose that path. Decision, action, reason. This makes the missions cerebral and allows you to trully play missions, rather than merely watch them.
I think the problem with a game of this type is if it isn't a courier mission then it's a combat mission. The whole point of the stories, the characters, the ships, everything is to get you to the next fight, nothing more. This is how it was in CoX and more so in Champions. There's no third option and a Trek game desperately needs a third option if it is to truly be a Trek role playing game.
I've said it a bunch of times now, but STO needs Choose Your Own Adventure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure) style plots. Previously, I've compared it to games to Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_25th_Anniversary_%281992_video_game%29) and Judgment Rights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Judgment_Rites), as well as games by BioWare such as Mass Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_effect) and specifically the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic (http://www.swtor.com/). The common elements of those things are the player's ability to chose, if not their path, the personality of their character. In the first three you can choose your path, and to some degree this can express your personality, while in Mass Effect you can choose your personality and this can determine your path, if you let it. Recently, I've been playing a Paragon in Mass Effect, and this let me completely avoid a series of dangerous battles because I was able to talk my way through key points of confrontation and peacefully diffuse the situation. I could also be a Renegade and get the same result with a completely different personality. This is the most relevant to Star Trek of the Bio Ware choice and personality dynamics, because the choice is always pretty much the same, you only get to chose how that result gets achieved. In Star Trek, you would get a mission and it would be up to you how to achieve it as well.
Bio Ware games have missions where interesting interactions between personality and decision cross, in Jade Empire you can become cool or hot in personality, but it is regardless of your decisions. The end of the game exemplifies this by allowing your to make the same negative decision for the greater good or for personal gain, or the same positive decision based on your passion or peace. Knights of the Old Republic has this too, where you can be what I call Stupid Evil, or Smart Evil, you can be a blithering idiot who yells at everyone and kills and steals for no good reason, or you can be calculating carefully where and when to act amorally for the greatest gain. Or, you can be Mr. Righteous Dogooder, or use the law as an excuse to kill. This is a bit much, you might have more moral freedom with the Klingons, but not Starfleet. That's something that is never an option in the MMO's I've seriously played or dabbled in. However, even that is insufficient for a Trek game, it's interesting, but it doesn't require the player to think beyond who you are. You're following an interesting event tree but it's a limited one with predictable results in most cases.
Choose Your Own Adventure is good because the choices are more blind and can have greater consequence to how the story works out. It can be more fun than the above in some ways, but blind choices aren't much of a mental exercise because it's not much different from random chance based on personality. There's no critical thinking or skill involved in what you do and how you do it.
The Trek graphic adventure were very appropriate because your were truly playing episodes, not just following them on rails. There was a level of personal decision with relevant results. There is one mission in Judgment Rights that comes to mind where there is a sub sentient species that is reliant on an alien piece of machinery for survival. If I recall correctly, you could fix the machine and save the species, use the machine for parts, or leave the machine broken. As far as you're concerned the first time through, the decision you make may be the only one because the end of the mission is pretty much the same no matter what in that you will have finished the mission. But, surprise, the episodes have a story arc where your previous actions do have a big effect and graded on how effective you were in solving the situations.
What a Star Trek roleplaying game needs is a combination of all of the above. It needs ways to express and chose what kind of person you are, multiple ways to achieve the same goal, ways to achieve different goals, decisions both blind and educated, as well as some available based on previous actions. What it cannot have are thinly veiled excuses on rails to fight, transport, or collect goods. Choosing between Mission Giver X and Y's story arcs not a choice when those story arcs are completely meaningless to the completion of those missions. In the above games you have to pay attention to what is going on, and paying attention comes naturally, because what is going on is relevant to how things will end.
The way STO is working out, using MMO in its description is fine but it should not use RPG. Cryptic needs to be honest with us and tell us if this game is nothing more than a Star Trek ship and ground combat game. That's fine, if that's what it is that can be fun, but pretending it is any more than a combat game will be significantly disappointing.