Third-Person, No-Save, and Consolitis 2

Apparently matters are worse at EA than I thought.

Here are a couple of quotes from an extensive interview given by EA boss John Riccitiello to Gamasutra regarding Mirror's Edge from DICE:

... Riccitiello says that at first, the idea of a first-person game with no shooting seemed risky and made him "a little freaked out" as a concept. In a particular meeting on the title, he was "pushing the bejesus" out of the idea that the game should be a third-person title.

"I was totally convinced that game needed to be third-person and not first-person, because I wanted to see Faith," Riccitiello says. Hence the DICE-developed game’s titular mirrors. "It didn’t have mirrors in it before the meeting -- I got mirrors so you can see her."

And now that he’s seen the end result, Riccitiello admits, “I was really wrong about the third-person thing.”

This raises a bunch of questions. For example, what in the world is the CEO of EA doing pushing any particular creative decision on the people designing a game? If he's so certain that their game design judgement is completely wrong on a matter as fundamental as the game's perspective, why fund their game at all? Did he also insist that Mass Effect be third-person? Did he also insist that Dead Space be third-person? And while he's busy interfering in creative decision-making, what's not getting done at the actual CEO level of business, which is what he's presumably being paid to do?

I respect Riccitiello's willingness to admit error on a creative choice. It's good to see that he's willing to give developers a chance to show him their ideas even when they conflict with his own; it's good that he's able to decide that he was wrong about a design feature and take appropriate action; and it's good that he's ready to acknowledge that error even in a public statement.

But why is he interfering in the creative side of game design in the first place? Yes, of course that sort of thing happens all the time; Riccitiello is not alone in this. And yes, of course when you make a big financial investment you want to exercise some level of control over the product being made with that cash.

The thing is, how far should that level of control extend? Can EA tell a developer what to do? Sure -- it's their money. But "do they have the power" is not the right question -- the right question is "is it wise?" Should John Riccitiello be telling creative leads what to do, especially after recently insisting that EA was backing off from trying to tell third-party developers how to do their jobs? Why, after all that, is EA's CEO still substituting his creative design judgement for that of professional game designers? After giving money to those folks on the basis of their creative capability, is it wise to assume that their judgement is wrong? What message does that send to game designers?

Finally, if Riccitiello was wrong to substitute his creative judgement for that of the developers at DICE, and if in particular he was wrong to insist that they use third-person perspective, does that mean he could be wrong to force that perspective on other games such as Dead Space?

I would hope that this experience would teach John Riccitiello two things: first, that third-person perspective is not right for every game and he should quit pushing it, and second (and more importantly), that he needs to stop interfering with creative decision-making and trust the talented people he's paying to do that stuff.

Third-Person, No-Save, and Consolitis 1

The infection of consolitis is spreading within the population of PC games.

I noticed today that Dead Space, which I had been looking forward to as another take on the wonderful System Shock, is not only third-person-only, but apparently the developers also decided to impose a checkpointing "feature" instead of allowing players to save their game when and where they choose.

So now I'm forced to reconsider buying this game. Now I have to miss out on what otherwise could have been a great game because its developers -- for whatever reason -- chose to impose game design concepts from some cramped console spec onto a PC version of the game that doesn't need them (with Dead Space being the latest example of such a game).

As a gamer, I'm really unhappy about the particular trends toward third-person and no-save designs. I do not find them immersive, which is what I want from a character-based game in a detailed gameworld.

I'm aware that some people claim it feels more "immersive" to them when they can see their character. I want to find these people and say to them, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

To me immersiveness is about suspending disbelief in a high-bandwidth gameworld to the point that I identify with my character and can easily pretend that the gameworld is a plausibly real place. Seeing the gameworld through the eyes of my character helps me to achieve that suspension of belief. That makes my gameplay experience of a very world-y game much more enjoyable.

Getting to watch my character's back as I move him or her through some landscape for fifty hours is not immersive -- no one's back (or other body part) is that interesting. All this forced third-person perspective does for me is prevent me from enjoying the more direct, personal, visceral experience of the gameworld that I enjoy.

Being able to save my game whenever I choose to do so also enhances my enjoyment of a detailed gameworld with a branching storyline by allowing me to back up and try different options. As I previously noted, I can cope with a checkpoint system in a game like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare because it's intended (in most parts) to be a very fast-paced, adrenaline-pumping action game, and saving/loading/replaying does slow down the action.

But in a more thoughtful game, such as a narrative-based or puzzle-rich game where thinking about options and exploring alternatives is the primary form of fun, a checkpointing-only system is unnecessary to the point of abusiveness. After promising a game with lots of conversational or interactive possibilities, the game then takes them away from you by not permitting you to save and restore in order to try out alternative approaches. How does that make any sense?

In some checkpoint games, the only way to see more of the game's content is to restart the whole damn level from the last point at which you were generously permitted to save. Maybe that works for the kind of mindless Mario/Kratos cotton candy that constitutes most console games, but it's absolutely wrong for a detailed-world game that takes advantage of a PC's capabilities. Here the developers have gone to so much trouble to make a detailed world full of interesting characters, ripe for exploration... and then they lock down the gameworld with a heavy-handed "we know what's best for you" checkpoint system that marginalizes the urge to explore.

If Dead Space is an example of a trend toward this kind of developer obtuseness, I guess maybe my gaming days are coming to an end.

...

Of course I know that the days are long gone when good games were made first for PCs and then ported (maybe) in reduced form to consoles. Now they're built pre-crippled for consoles and ported (maybe, or maybe not) to PCs.

That doesn't seem like progress to me. It feels more like "we don't want your filthy PC gamer money."

Too bad.

And why is EA so often the offender here? Madden NFL 2009... console-only. Mass Effect... console-only for months, and third-person-only. Dead Space... third-person-only, no save. Has EA under John Riccitiello really given up its lust to control game designers? Or is EA already back to its old tricks by insisting that all its third-party developers distort their games to meet some corporate "design-for-consoles-first" demand? (Of course it's possible that the developers of games published by EA all happen to be following a consoles-first design choice independently and voluntarily, and EA has nothing to do with it. But what fun would that be?)

Meanwhile, thank you, Todd Howard and Bethesda for resisting this stupid trend. Oblivion demonstrated (and I expect that Fallout 3 will follow suit) that it's possible to design and launch a game for the PC that supports console SKUs as well, and without having to be massively dumbed down in the process with third-person-only and no-save restrictions that degrade the immersiveness of the game.

Maybe there's still a glimmer of hope left for PC gamers....

EDIT 2009/01/23:
There is yet another utterly stupid issue occuring to PC games designed first for consoles: PC gamers using widescreen monitors actually lose big chunks of the gameworld as displayed on the top and bottom of their screens compared to gamers still using 4:3 glass monitors.

Instead of displaying more of the gameworld to the left and right (to fill the greater area available on a widescreen monitor) by increasing the horizontal field of view (FOV), designers who take the console-first approach actually zoom in on the gameworld and clip the top and bottom sections of the screen.

According to the invaluable Widescreen Gaming Forum, the reasons for this seems to be that many console games today are designed for a default display with an aspect ratio of 16:9. When they port their game to the PC, they simply don't bother messing with a FOV setting that would allow PC widescreen users to see the same amount of world vertically and more of the world horizontally as a 4:3 PC user.

This laziness afflicted BioShock until a clever gamer created a solution. (Months later, Take Two finally issued a patch of its own.) It afflicts Far Cry 2. It afflicts STALKER: Clear Sky. It afflicted Spore until the 1.001 patch. Strangely, it does not afflict Assassin's Creed or Dead Space, but those games (especially Dead Space) are so cripped by the other common symptoms of consolitis -- lousy controls, no quicksave/quickload/3rd-person only -- that while they may look good on a widescreen monitor, my experience of trying to play them on a PC was an non-stop exercise in boredom punctuated only by frustration.

So poor widescreen support for PC gamers isn't as common as the other aspects of the dread malady of consolitis. But it's bad enough to warrant a mention here.

Player Ship Interiors +

As just one more conception of a Star Trek MMORPG, I think there's room somewhere in between "an entire game ... needs to exist before player ship interiors become useful" and "nothing more than a ship-based recreation of a Trek episode".

I favor designing player ships with a few key interiors. Absolutely there is a cost to doing so; the question is whether the potential benefits sufficiently exceed the likely costs to make them worth accepting.

A big chunk of my "yes" answer comes from the following beliefs I hold:

1. Serving aboard a powerful and complex starship is one of the two or three most crucial aspects of all of Star Trek. Hub ships with interiors and operable systems will help offer that in a Star Trek MMORPG, but not enough if most players spend most of their time aboard player ships. To maximize their value, key license features need to be implemented where the players are... and players in Star Trek Online will, I think, be predominantly in player ships.

2. Gameplay consisting of working with a few other players aboard a vessel with segmented systems would positively distinguish ST:O from SWG and EVE, its main competitors in the science fiction genre. Those games are mostly about single-player fighter craft, giving Star Trek Online a legitimate chance to be the only mass market AAA online RPG offering a richly detailed multiplayer shipboard experience.

3. Interacting with the other players on board a ship solely through an outside-the-ship "viewscreen" metaphor will not deliver the same You-Are-There feeling provided by a 3-D interior model that allows characters to interact with other characters as avatars. Tactical efficiency is not the only thing that matters in designing the character interface model for a game.

Overall, I think a measured selection of features that are likely to pay off their development cost is exactly what ST:O needs, for the question of player ship interiors as for every other design question.

Others have expressed their opinions on what would be the best measure, and that's fine. For me, that measure comes with implementing a few key interior locations -- say, Bridge, Engineering, and Sickbay -- aboard every player ship big enough to reasonably have such locations. Let those interiors house controllable ship systems, and populate each ship with enough NPCs of the right type to offer interesting content for each location based on the ship's current mission.

At that point I think you have a game design that makes effective use of the license.

Player Ship Interiors +

Originally Posted by lethalkungfu:
please ask yourself the question. do you want yourself to have to go through all the npcs or playercharacters in order to operate you own ship every single time? i know i sure wouldnt.

From the way you're posing the question, I gather that you believe the obvious answer is "no way!"

Uh-oh. :)

I don't say this to be difficult or provocative or anything like that, but the fact is that yes, I do most emphatically want exactly that kind of command structure to be available to players in the larger starships.

It's because of how I define "fun" when it comes to playing a character who's a Starfleet officer in the world of Star Trek. Being part of a hierarchy whose members work together to achieve the positive goals of Federation military, diplomatic and exploratory policy sounds like fun.

But to achieve that goal, the game needs to be designed to make this non-combat action a style of play available to those who want it. Because it's the way the TV shows and movies worked, a big chunk of the "content" of an online RPG based on Star Trek depends on there being other members of Starfleet (whether players or NPCs) with whom one can work to accomplish interesting tasks.

So yes, I personally would get a lot more out of a Star Trek MMORPG that lets me be a part of a good crew of specialists than one that treats even large starships as mere mounts operable by a single player. (And again, I think I have to say this even though I'm definitely a soloer. Star Trek is a social universe whether I like it or not.)

Now, some objections to this position.

1. "Having to go through a bunch of subordinates to get anything done will slow down the game."

That's true... but I don't consider slower combat gameplay to always be a flaw.

If Star Trek Online works as I'd like it to, small ships which don't need many crew will be highly maneuverable, so the action in them will be fast-paced for those who prefer that kind of gameplay.

Meanwhile, the big ships will feel more like slow-to-turn naval vessels so that there's time to think and plan. In that kind of ship, having people to whom you can delegate control functions will actually make starship control much more fun for the gamers who prefer a thoughtful approach to gameplay over constant bang-bang-bang action.

There's nothing wrong with bang-bang-bang action... unless it's all there is in a gameworld based on Star Trek.

2. "You'll have hub ships for that kind of crew-interaction gameplay."

Possibly so, and that's not entirely a bad thing.

Although I think there are valid reasons for the larger player ships to have crews with specific control responsibilities, having that kind of gameplay on hub ships only would be better than not having it at all.

3. "But I don't want to play that way!"

That's why I was careful to phrase my initial "I wish" statement as hoping this crewed approach is "available to players," rather than being the only option.

As long as I can get the most out of a big ship by having highly skilled characters (player or NPC) handling specific ship functions, I have no objection whatsoever to allowing individual players to control even the biggest player ships by themselves. (To be fair, I could even go along with letting these two styles of play be equally capable.)

If I can play in the way I find the most fun, and so can you, that seems like a pretty desirable state of affairs to me.

Player Ship Interiors +

Originally Posted by lethalkungfu:
in outerspace a spaceship is an entity, a living being perhaps and its actions are dictated by a single will. Why must there be intermediate steps before you "will" your ship other than for roleplaying purposes.

For a number of us (and presumably a number of those who'll try Star Trek Online) those "roleplaying purposes" are equally important forms of gameplay as blasting aliens and leveling up.

The ability to roleplay the command and operation of a starship with the avatars of other players (which PSIs enable) isn't just some trivial bit of throwaway code. It is "content," just as much as rules-based, numbers-driven gameplay is content, and as much as the visual and sonic and textual environment of the game is content.

Not to implement this social functionality in Star Trek Online's gameplay -- perhaps from a belief that combat efficiency is the overriding goal -- would IMO immediately disconnect a Star Trek MMORPG from a significant percentage of the value of the Star Trek license.

(Note that I'm actually arguing against my own personal interests here. I'm very definitely a solo gamer -- for whatever reason, depending on other people in these games, or feeling like I "have" to be online at a certain time, just isn't fun for me. So I'd personally prefer to be able to operate a nice complex ship in a Star Trek MMORPG all by myself... but I argue against that because I don't think that style of play is the best fit for the Star Trek license.)

This game definitely wants to be different things to different gamers, doesn't it?

Player Ship Interiors +

I think the word "perspective" is exactly the right word with which to frame this player ship interiors discussion.

The player ship interface perspective matters because Star Trek, as drama, isn't just about action -- it's about characters.

In drama, character supplies meaning. Action is cool, but for action to have any meaning, it has to happen to characters and characters must be seen to react to it. Ultimately action has to be about people because it's the choices people make that communicate what's really important in this all-too-brief existence of ours.

Is it possible to have "characters" if you interact with them from an outside-the-ship perspective? Sort of -- you could show representations of their faces in a GUI window that pops up while you're steering the ship.

But is that as effective for showing the inner struggle (the meaning) of how we face hard situations? Is seeing a picture of a person as gripping as seeing the whole person from the perspective we've always seen Trek characters, that being inside the ship with those interesting people?

I don't think so. Seeing a picture of a thing is not as powerful as having the feeling of being in the same place as the thing itself. It feels less immediate, less real; it conveys less meaning. It is, in a word, less "immersive."

Immersiveness doesn't matter to everyone. And that's fine. Having a third-person exterior interface is great. I fully support implementing a third-person outside-the-ship interface for player ships.

But whether such an interface for player ships should exist isn't the question. Whether it should be the only interface is the question, because immersiveness matters greatly to some prospective subscribers to a Star Trek MMORPG. For a lot of people, story (the character motivations that drive the action) is necessary to make the action of a game fun. Without implementing a gameplay interface that maximizes the immersiveness of the action, telling a good story about interesting characters gets harder.

A third-person, outside-the-ship perspective doesn't maximize immersiveness.

A first-person, inside-the-ship perspective doesn't maximize immersiveness, either... but it comes a lot closer to doing so than an exterior perspective does.

By emulating all the Star Trek TV shows and movies that put the audience right there in the room with the characters, Star Trek Online has a chance to be a more broadly satisfying and therefore more successful game. Yes, the Star Trek shows included cutaways to exteriors to show some action... but the camera never, ever stayed there. It went back inside the ship to show us the characters, because having a first-hand experience of their reactions gives the action much more punch for the viewer.

It can and should do the same for Star Trek Online players, and for the same reason.

To the argument that "hubs will provide this first-person experience," I respond that if that experience is so good to have, why restrict it to hubs? Letting immersive gameplay happen only on hubs would be to miss an important opportunity to improve the gameplay for the many players who will be spending most of their game time aboard player ships. Considering the likely numbers of such players at any moment in time, player ships need to have features that appeal to a wide variety of gamers. That justifies spending a lot of development time on offering different kinds of gameplay (combat, exploration/science, diplomacy) as well as on making each kind of gameplay especially appealing.

Combat-focused players will have plenty of that; I don't think anybody believes that whoever finally completes a Star Trek MMORPG is going to skimp on starships unleashing electric death at each other. Offering an interface that supports fast-paced tactical fun makes sense. But what about the gamers who care more about playing with cool advanced technology and interacting with interesting characters? Why should they be stuck with only a utilitarian third-person external interface because that's considered best for tactical (combat) gameplay? If a first-person interior interface brings in more cash from the immersion-focused gamers because that's more responsive to their gameplay interests, and if there are enough such gamers, then why is it necessary to argue against also providing this interface for them?

Would having only exterior views for space-based gameplay "ruin" Star Trek Online as a Star Trek MMORPG? I don't think so, not entirely. It would, IMO, just make ST:O less satisfying for a financially significant number of potential subscribers -- enough, I think, to make implementing an interior interface for player ships worth the development cost.

So, to summarize: An interior, "you are there" interface for player ship gameplay is a more emotionally engaging way of representing characters than an exterior, "viewscreen" interface. Showing engaging characters will attract more of the subscribers (including ST fans) who prefer a story-driven play experience. If there are enough such gamers (and I'm convinced there are), they will more than subsidize the development costs of providing an interior gameplay interface.

So I think the reasons for implementing an interior gameplay interface for player ships outweigh the reasons given for deliberately not including such an interface. I therefore hope Star Trek Online's developer will choose to offer both an interior and exterior interface for player ships.

Player Ship Interiors +

If there's any one core mechanic in popular literature, it's the use of "tension and release." You build up tension by showing conflict, then you resolve that tension through action. This resolution then creates the next conflict, and so on.

In considering MMORPGs so far, I get the feeling that their developers don't come from literary backgrounds because these games are all release and no tension. There's no build-up; it's just bang-bang-bang action without meaning. It's as though every developer takes as gospel the notion that if a gameplay feature isn't about "fast-paced exciting action," nobody will play.

But there's nothing that says game developers can't take a page from their theater-arts colleagues. To be "fun" doesn't require starship combat in Star Trek Online to be the equivalent of two people constantly hitting each other with sticks. There's a more dramatic alternative: content that communicates a build-up to action, then "exciting fast-paced action," then a refractory period where the consequences of that action, its meaning, can be assessed.

So how could we get this greater sense of drama in ship combat in Star Trek Online? By designing starships to be less like individual fighter aircraft and more like aircraft carriers.

Consider how carriers work. To the darkened Combat Information Center comes word of a possible attack. General Quarters is sounded, and crew move smartly to man their battle stations. Fighters are launched on Combat Air Patrols to guard the ship. Picket ships take up their stations. A sensor net is spread, and people try to make sense out of the raw data. Now people have time to think about the upcoming struggle. Was the warning true? Was the intel accurate? Are we ready? Will I perform well under fire? Will I make it? Now there's tension.

Then the attack comes. Life gets crazy; there's noise, light, motion; problems have to be solved in real time under difficult conditions. There's all the action anyone could want, and we feel a release from the built-up tension.

And then it's over. Now there's time to assess what just happened. Are my friends OK? Do we need urgent repairs? How did I perform? Was there any pattern to the attack? Why did they attack us? The release leads to re-tensioning as we consider the consequences of our action. This after-action review allows action to be more satisfying in a dramatic sense than mere slam-bang activity because it's possible to see how the action fits into a larger context.

Which brings me, finally, back to the question: would being able to see the avatars of our crewmates be useful if ship combat were designed according to this large-ship model that allows for dramatic tension and release? Or not?

Obviously I believe it would; I think being able to see people is an important component of drama, which is about people.

And I think starship combat in a Star Trek MMORPG would be more satisfying for more people if it were more dramatic, rather than being yet another "exciting fast-paced action" fistfight design that's just about who's got the bigger, um, gun.

Action needs to mean something or it's just calisthenics. And meaning comes from people.

An external interface is not about people.

Admittedly, neither is staring at consoles... but at least if we can see consoles, we can look up occasionally to interact with the avatars of our shipmates.

Player Ship Interiors +

Originally Posted by Neth:
I'm wondering though just how much people are wanting internal ship combat vs external ship combat. If when your captain calls a red alert do you think it would be ok to see your character going into the teleport and then loading up an external view of the ship as though it assumes you arrived at your duty station?

I'm inclined to guess that most players would be able to accept that transition, but I'm probably biased.

But maybe this is the right place to mention that I've been thinking this whole "exterior view" thing is a little misleading.

The fact is, all of us who play Star Trek Online will be experiencing it as a 3D environment flattened onto and displayed on the 2D screen of our computer's monitor. (I'm assuming ST:O will be a PC game.) None of us humans will actually be in space or on a ship; we'll all have to represent the gameworld as some kind of view on a 2D screen.

The thing is, the specific form of this representation isn't set in stone. We actually have two choices on how the exterior view could be displayed on our monitors:

• unbordered -- "space" and the ship take up the whole monitor screen (with UI overlays)


• bordered -- the exterior ship view is displayed in its own window, or as a screen on a ship console

I suspect some of us are simply assuming that Perpetual will represent the ship exterior view as an unbordered, full-screen view. But there's nothing that forces that choice.

If players can accept having the exterior view of their ship displayed on their real-world 2D monitor, then how much cognitive distance is there between that and putting exactly the same visual information on a 2D in-game ship console that is itself then displayed on their real-world monitor?

In other words, how far off is console control really from the "exterior view" that Perpetual has indicated was the better choice for a ship combat interface? We'd still have that exterior view; it would just be rendered as a subwindow rather than as a view that takes over our entire monitor.

Does the one additional level of abstraction really make a significant difference?

What if the console-displayed exterior view was the default, but you-the-player could double-click on the exterior view section of the console to bring it up in unbordered form?

It seems to me that implementing the exterior ship view in this way -- as a console display that can be zoomed into -- would satisfy both the players who prefer the iconic feel of a console interface and those who want the gameplay immediacy of an unbordered, full-screen exterior view.

Sure, that's extra work for the developers, but since I'm not one of them I can just snap my (flat) fingers and say, "Make it so!" :) But the primary question isn't one of technical feasibility -- it's whether the concept would fly at all. The technical stuff matters; it's just not the first question that has to be answered.

Am I completely off-base in thinking that most players wouldn't have a problem with a console-based display of their ship's exterior if they could switch to (or even default to) a full-screen view?

...

Back to the notion of using a site-to-site transport for quickly accessing a duty station (in support of the possibility of implementing ship control through functional consoles) -- here's another crazy idea.

Let's say that whoever "has the bridge" (normally the captain) whacks the button that activates the red alert. What if, in addition to turning on the red lights and the klaxon, this automatically transports players to their stations?

If I were implementing this I'd set it up so that a player not at their assigned station gets a modal pop-up message:

*** RED ALERT ***
You are about to be transported to your
assigned duty station. Are you ready?
[YES] [NO]

If they click on YES, poof, instant transport; if they say NO, then nothing special happens. They can finish what they're doing and punch the Emergency Station Transporter (EST) button, or make their way to their post by some other means (turbolift?), or even not report to their station at all.

Of course, the captain will want to know their reason for this dereliction of duty!

Overall, I think this approach has the virtue of making it absolutely clear what's expected of each player and gets it done in the most efficient possible way, while still leaving players free to make their own choices.

Does this go too far, or is there maybe some value somewhere in this alternative approach?

Originally Posted by Neth:
Also I am sorry to go back to this but has anyone though of how to deal with the stress of the number of mobile HUBs in the game? If it's just a few there would not be a problem but if every one and their grandmother wants to have one there is just no way to make it possible. Even limiting them to end game rewards is only a short term solution as I am sure you can understand.

I guess this depends on how you're using the term "hub."

My impression is that the intention for hubs is that there are just a few of these, basically serving the same role in ST:O that cities serve in fantasy MMORPGs: quest-giving NPCs, personal storage space, item trading centers, and so on. Most would probably be stationary starbases -- the idea that some of these cities could actually be mobile (ships) is actually a pretty slick one. (Sort of reminds me of James Blish's wonderful "Cities in Flight" tetralogy.)

So the possibility of there being many of these things seems remote. I would guess -- and this is nothing more than a guess -- that there'd actually be fewer hubs than there are sectors (leaving some sectors open as "wild frontiers"). If there are 27 sectors, then I'd guess that there'd be something like 6-20 actual hubs in all.

If that's the case, then the real issue is how "big" the largest player ships will be. My guess: nowhere even remotely as big as a hub. Again, this is just a guess, but I suspect even the biggest player ships aren't going to have all the amenities of hubs; they won't be anywhere near as complex or fully-rendered as hubs. (Which is fine by me, just as long as player ships aren't merely combat platforms -- players who like exploration and socializing are, IMO, far too important to ST:O's commercial success not to put plenty of features for them on player ships.)

Player Ship Interiors

[2008/04/01: One of the design elements of Star Trek Online proposed by its former developer, Perpetual Entertainment, was the decision that the interface to player starships would be a third-person external view. Rather than treating player ships as mobile structures with internal rooms in which player avatars would be able to see and interact with each other, player ships would essentially be like the "mounts" of fantasy online games.

This player ship interiors (PSIs) decision generated a lot of discussion. Some defended Perpetual's design, which was based on the assertion that the third-person external view was most efficient for tactical action gameplay. Others objected to this design on the grounds that the gameplay of an online Star Trek RPG should be driven by more than just "tactical action," and that not allowing players to see and interact with each other's avatars inside starships would completely fail to deliver the crucial social aspect of the Star Trek experience.

The entries I wrote on this subject follow the latter viewpoint. I thought, and still think, that "players as ships" is the wrong design choice for this game, and I hope Star Trek Online's new developers will not make the same mistake.]

...

Originally Posted by Suricata:
I think Characters at consoles is a bad idea for combat. ... after watching some consoles displaying the water pressure of the fire main, or the RPM of the gas turbines, or the power output of the diesel generators, it gets boring very very fast. ... Having to run from console to console to raise the shields, to activate a thruster, to fire a torpedo was a lot of fun, but I could not imagine it would be fun to do again and again like things do in MMO's.

Great points, Suricata. In response, I'd say we're lucky that Star Trek Online will be a game and not a hardcore simulation!

Because it'll be a game, there's nothing stopping its developer from abstracting (or even inventing) only the most fun parts of operating a starship. There's no reason why "characters at consoles" has to only mean staring at one dial and occasionally clicking a button -- there've already been plenty of ideas in this forum for fun things that players at consoles could do.

For example, there was the excellent idea that the console user's screen could be split into (at least) two parts -- one that shows controls and readouts (the console), and one that shows the exterior of the ship, which displays what happens when the player takes an action. Sure, it's a little odd -- where's the camera outside the ship that sees this stuff? -- but it's no odder than being outside the ship all the time.

Furthermore, there's nothing whatsoever that says consoles can offer only a few boring commands. Take for example the Tactical station. Without even breaking a sweat I can think of five things that would be fun to do through that control station:

• designate and prioritize threats to my ship


• manually target an enemy ship


• manually target a specific feature of an enemy ship


• select a torpedo's warhead type for maximum effect


• scan for and identify intruders who've boarded my ship

I'm sure other people can think of even more things that would be fun to do at a console. And all this would be in addition to (not "instead of") the other completely non-console-y things that a Star Trek character could do on the inside of a starship.

Could we do those things "outside" the ship? Sure... but then we wouldn't be able to see our comrades in arms cheer when we take out the bad guy. Representing characters inside ships allows for much more immersive interaction with other players than some weird disembodied voice telling us what to do.

So yes, "characters at consoles" could be very, very boring... if it was designed that way. Fortunately, there's nothing inherent in that particular design mechanic that limits it to the boring bits.

Originally Posted by Suricata:
It's understandable that players would love to reproduce how Star Trek is to perfection, but people need to realise that by doing that you risk turning the game into something that could end up feeling more of a chore or job. ... I'd also like to point out that as nice as some people think it would be for PE to make a game solely for hardcore Trek fans, it really is an impossable task, especially when some Trek fans refuse to even accept offical canon stuff as canon ... I seriously believe that a 100% simulation of a starship will only hit a very niche market of Trek fans which would seriously put the success of the game at risk.

This isn't a fair argument. I don't believe anyone here has proposed or wants a "perfect" or "100%" simulation of Star Trek (whatever that might look like). So arguing against that as you're doing here doesn't really address what some here actually want, which is just a more even balance of gameplay (the MMORPG side) and immersiveness (the Star Trek side).

I'm sure this is this a goal shared by most of us, including Star Trek Online's developers. We just have somewhat different ideas of what this "balance" looks like.