Originally Posted by Biggs:I was thinking about that when it occurred to me: Why should we assume that the people who want to play ST:O in the Federation universe would find it fun to have a war break out in their preferred gameworld?
While on another thread I'll complain about having farmers and Warrior Players trying to thwart the efforts of Federation Role-Players - if you remove them all, who's going to fight the wars!!!
I'm not saying that there shouldn't be drama or conflict of some kind in the Federation universe. I'm just wondering now -- assuming this dual-universe approach were implemented -- whether military conflict would be the kind of gameplay action most likely to satisfy the gamers who chose the Federation universe precisely to get away from that kind of constant-competition stuff that other MMORPGs are so full of.
If players of a Star Trek MMORPG want a war, let them have it in the Mirror Universe where it belongs.
Originally Posted by Biggs:I honestly don't know. I definitely agree there'll be some number of players who personally want to experience both conventional MMORPG-style conflict/accumulation gameplay and technobabular Star Trek-style discovery/interpersonal gameplay.
I'm also starting to think we should avoid the idea that there are only two types of players - The MMO gamers might only want to fight and farm and guild up, but the Trekkie players like me want a little of that (minus the farming) and the fun happy Trek stuff. Granted there will be extremes on both sides of the coin, I think most people fall somewhere in the middle.
Even so, I'm more inclined to expect a bimodal distribution -- one big bunch of players doing almost nothing but combat, and another big bunch of players doing nothing but whatever Star Trek-themed non-combat stuff is available. How Star Trek Online's gameplay might be designed to satisfy both of these interests is the question.
(Side note: It would be great if there were some MMORPG with the same amount of Explorer content and Socializer content as Achiever content. That's a minimum requirement for getting an accurate picture of how many players really prefer which style of play -- the MMORPGs currently available make everyone who plays them look like an Achiever because that's pretty much all there is to do....)
