Designs for Permanent Character Death

How could the permanent death of a character be made more palatable to gamers?

The main problem of game-ending character death stems from the player's perception of the return on their investment of time and effort. The more time and effort the player puts into improving a character's intrinsic assets (abilities, knowledge, relationships, progress), the higher the perceived cost of the loss of that character.

So the key questions related to permadeath are all related to the amount/number of personal assets that a character can accumulate in a game:

• How long does a typical game last?
• How much can a player invest in a character? (In other words, how much "character" can a character have?)
• Can accumulated player character assets be transferred upon death to another character?

These questions suggest ways that games can be designed to make character death, if not desirable, at least tolerable:

1. Make the game so short that reloading feels acceptable. In a game that's short enough to minimize the sting of permadeath, it probably won't be possible to have a character who's well-developed enough to be interesting. But very clever writing might make this possible.

2. Minimize the number and importance of assets that the player character can accumulate. Multiplayer shooters take this approach. Again, the "character" is not developed as such. Characters are essentially vehicles intended to be occupied temporarily; they're never given names or opportunities to collect assets that are intrinsic to them as people. (Players may be awarded badges for achievement, but player != character.)

Another example of this would be a game I imagined a few years back (before Spore was announced, incidentally): you'd be a cellular lifeform in a tidal pool trying to support the development of a particular kind of complex lifeform. (This would be similar to teams in an online shooter or factions in a MMORPG.) In this world, cells die all the time, so the gameplay would support players jumping into and out of cells at will, including into complex cells already hosting other players. The "character" of a cell (i.e., its abilities) would be intrinsic to the type of cell the player chooses to inhabit. So the death of an individual cell would be relatively trivial; the player would simply jump to a new cell. Again, though, this severely restricts the opportunity to create a fully-rounded "character."

3. Allow accumulated assets to be transferred to a new character. In this model, characters can be fully developed with both intrinsic assets (names, personalities, skills, story progress) and extrinsic assets (money, equipment), some or most of which can be transferred to a new character if the player's existing character dies. In a complex gameworld, it should be possible to provide some minimally plausible explanation for this: the magical restoration of souls in a fantasy gameworld, cloning or the transfer of minds in a science fiction setting, and so on.

One special note applies to roleplaying games in which "leveling" progress is a special type of intrinsic asset. In an RPG (including an MMORPG) that follows the usual class/level model, players invest considerable time increasing the level of their characters. This investment radically reduces the acceptability of permadeath. So eliminating leveling as an intrinsic asset would tend to reduce the perceived cost of permadeath.

This isn't as crazy as it might sound to people who've only played today's MMORPGs. There have been successful RPGs that offered virtually no leveling-driven character advancement as core gameplay -- the science fiction RPG Traveller might be among the best-known such game. In Traveller you don't spend any in-game time leveling up your character; all of your character's skills are generated before playing.

The cost of losing a level-free character in a game like Traveller is thus considerably less than losing a character in a MMORPG whom you've spent months leveling up. Only gear tends to be lost... and that could be "willed" to a new character.

Engineering Crafting Modes in a Star Trek MMORPG

INTRODUCTION

What might Engineering-specific crafting look like as actual gameplay in Star Trek Online?

To put it another way, if he encountered a technological problem, what would Scotty do? In a game set in the Star Trek universe, what might those gamers who want to play an Engineer character like Scotty want to be able to do as gameplay?

To get a handle on that, we need to define what we mean by "Engineering" in a Star Trek MMORPG. As a rough definition, I'd say that means wanting to be able to change the functionality of technological systems in ways that are fun as pure gameplay, and to experience mission and story content from that technology-manipulating perspective as set in the distinctive Star Trek universe.

On that basis, I suggest that Engineering in Star Trek Online should be focused on the repair, maintenance, and enhancement of technological devices. In essence, STO Engineering would be three games in one. (There'd also be a special fourth game for Engineers... but I'll get to that in a bit. Keep reading!)

So which of these is truly "crafting?" Enhancement is an obvious possibility... but what if all three activities, while distinctively different in their results, were so similar in presentation that we might talk about "repair crafting," "maintenance crafting," and "enhancement crafting" of devices?

First we need to consider the question: what is a device?

"DEVICES" DEFINED

Devices would have several design features suitable for Engineering-oriented gameplay activities:

1. Every device would be an example of a device type, where each device type has a distinctly different predefined primary effect.

2. Device types would be part of a hierarchy of objects. For example, a Starfleet-issue Type 2 hand phaser would be a type of device at the end of the hierarchy: Personal Devices -> Tools -> Personal Weapons -> Pistols -> Energy Pistols -> Hand Phaser, Type 2.

3. Every device would be "complex," not in the sense of being hard to understand, but rather in that it's composed of multiple elemental components.

4. The types of elemental components used would determine the precise nature of the device's primary effect. Changing one kind of component for another component of the same kind but a different type -- with a different effect -- would be "enhancement crafting."

5. The quality of individual components would determine the basic effectiveness of that device. Repairing a damaged component or replacing a destroyed component with a similar component would be "repair crafting."

6. The connections between components would determine the extra effectiveness of that device. Rearranging and reweighting connections between components would be "maintenance crafting."

7. Elemental components would also belong to a specific hierarchy, allowing them to be grouped into families of components with similar purposes and form factors, but moderately different effects. For example, the hierarchy: Components -> Energy Sources -> Power Cells -> Power Cell, Small -> Small Plasma Power Cell would mean that any Small Plasma Power Cell could be plugged into a device whose schematic requires a "Power Cell, Small", but a Small Fusion Power Cell (as another child of the "Power Cell, Small" family of components) would also work, albeit with some moderate change in the device's behavior.

A DEVICE EXAMPLE

To see how those gameplay modes might work in Star Trek Online, let's take a look at an example of a device which an Engineering-oriented character might want to repair, enhance, and maintain: a Starfleet-issue Type 2 hand phaser.

If we wanted to make these things really fun to play with, we'd let them have an interesting number of elemental components:

• barrel
• receiver
• grip
• trigger
• power cell
• prefire chamber
• phase emitter crystal
• output controls
• phasing regulator (programmable)

Standard versions of each of these components would be available from replicators (at whatever cost is normal for each type of component), while advanced and exotic versions could potentially be crafted or obtained as gifts or through trade (or, perhaps, as loot from destroyed foes). "Engineering crafting" (of any variety) would consist of breaking down the Type 2 hand phaser into its components.

I imagine this being done through a rag-doll interface much like that used in many games for equipping characters. The main window would display the slots corresponding to all possible components for that device, and each slot would be filled with whatever component is currently being used in that device. Another window would display an image of the completed device (which could be affected by the nature of the components used), while yet another window would show the various text and numeric information that describes that device and its effective characteristics.

ENGINEERING CRAFTING MODES

Repair Crafting

For repair crafting, an Engineer would first need to disassemble the dysfunctional device in order to expose the faulty component(s). Let's say the prefire chamber of a Type 2 hand phaser has become corroded. The Engineer might want to try to repair the damaged component. If successful, the phaser could be restored to fully operational functionality. If the component is too badly damaged to be repaired, a replacement would need to be obtained.

On an operational starship or starbase, a new component could simply be replicated. But if such an advanced source of stock components isn't available, the Engineer might be reduced to trying to construct a mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bearskins. :) In that case, the Engineer would have the option of playing the enhancement crafting minigame.

Enhancement Crafting

For enhancement crafting, an Engineer would deliberately replace existing components with different components, or add components to empty slots. Rather than trying to restore a device to standard functionality, enhancement crafting would be more exploratory -- the Engineer would be experimenting to see what happens when unexpected components are used, or attempting to compensate for necessary but unavailable components with improvised versions.

Using different components than the "stock" components, an Engineer could significantly alter the primary effect of a device. The device would retain its basic function -- a weapon would still be a weapon; a sensor would still be a sensor; and so on -- but the specific form of that effect could be changed greatly.

For example, by replacing the stock Small Plasma Power Cell in a standard Type 2 hand phaser with a Small Fusion Power Cell, a directed-fire effect similar to (though differing from) that of a Klingon disruptor pistol could be produced. Perhaps such a weapon, if it were also modified to replace the stock phase emitter crystal with an exceptionally rare modified crystal from Varos IX (and had some unusual maintenance changes made as well), could become a rare and terrible Varon-T disruptor.

Maintenance Crafting

Finally, rather than restoring standard functionality or producing new functionality, an Engineer might want to try to optimize or maximize the existing functionality of a device -- this is where maintenance crafting would be useful. In this mode, an Engineer would manipulate the connections between the components of a device. This would simulate adjusting the fittings and tweaking the notional "glue" that holds together a device's various components.

I imagine this looking something like lines drawn between some -- but not all -- of the components existing in the Component Window of the Engineering Crafting screen for a given device, with each line drawn in green, yellow, or red to indicate the strength of that connection. The player of an Engineering character would be able to change which components are connected by moving the lines between components. And the strength of connections could also be modified.

In either case, the gameplay in this mode would come from two design features: first, the specific connections between the specific components in a device would be filtered through a complex calculation to produce an efficiency rating for that device. And second, moving a line (i.e., taking away a connection between two components to make a different connection) would, through a related calculation, adjust the weightings of all other existing connections.

The combination of these two rules would create an interesting minigame of efficiency maximization for devices as players attempt to find the optimal combination of connections and connection strengths for a device. (This would be similar to the kinds of efforts Geordie made in TNG: "Force of Nature" as he competed with an old classmate to see who could achieve the highest warp power conversion level.)

Note 1: In most technologically advanced (Information Age and later) devices, at least one component should always be a programmable component (such as the "phasing regulator" I proposed for the Type 2 hand phaser above). Including a programmable component would allow Science-oriented characters (or Engineers with the appropriate Science skills) to create and modify subroutines that condition the inputs or alter the outputs of devices in useful ways. If playing with components is "Scotty crafting," modifying a device's subroutines might be considered "Spock crafting." Perhaps I'll write another essay soon on that subject.... :)

Note 2: The suggestions I've made for an Engineering crafting interface might need to be tweaked somewhat to allow users of console controllers to easily perform the kinds of component manipulations I've described.

CHARACTER SKILLS

Some players are uncomfortable with gameplay that relies heavily on player skills. There are gamers who enjoy being able to play any part of the game to a high level of effectiveness as long as the attributes and skills of their character allow that level of effectiveness, even if they themselves don't personally possess the requisite attributes and/or skills. So it's useful to think about how character skills might play a role in each of the three Engineering Crafting modes I've suggested above.

An obvious skill for a repair crafting mode is a Repair skill. Perhaps a higher level of skill in Repair might allow an Engineer a better chance of restoring a damaged component to its stock state. As another possibility, we might imagine a Logistics skill that allows a character to improve their odds of successfully using their faction's requisitioning system to obtain needed replacement components. (A character with a high Logistics skill level could be fantastically useful as a "scrounger.")

Enhancement crafting might benefit from a character skill such as Improvisation, which would allow the use of more kinds of components in a component slot. Even simpler might be to disable some components slots for a device for any character without an Improvisation skill -- earning subsequent levels in this skill could switch on additional component slots in a device, allowing the player of an Engineering character with this skill to produce a much wider range of novel device functions than a character who chooses not to acquire levels in that skill.

As for maintenance crafting, this mode has a more apparent opportunity for character skills: increasing levels in a Maintenance skill (perhaps under some other more interesting name) would allow a character to add more connections between the components of a device, and/or could reduce the amount to which changing a connection reduces the strength of other connections. In other words, there could be a character skill that allows any player to become very good at tuning any device to its highest possible level of functionality.

HEY, WHAT ABOUT THAT FOURTH GAME?!

What, you didn't think I'd forgotten about that, did you? ;)

In addition to individual devices (both portable and ship-mounted) that an Engineer might enjoy repairing, enhancing, and maintaining, there's one device in particular that is special: a starship.

In a similar way to how devices are made up of elemental components (and their functionality determined in large part by the nature of those components and their interconnections), a starship could be thought of as being a collection of interconnected complex devices. So: what if Engineers could play the same sorts of repair, enhancement, and maintenance games with the devices that make up a starship as they could with the individual devices themselves?

What if starships could be treated by Engineers as big devices, and the subsystems that comprise a starship -- hull, engines, sensors, computer, weapons, etc. -- could be manipulated as the "components" of that starship-device? How would the repair, enhancement, and maintenance modes work in this special Engineering gameplay environment?

Well, it's worth noting that the "enhancement" game with respect to starships has already been confirmed by Cryptic: it's the "ship customization" game! From what's been said, it seems that players will be able to trade out existing ship systems for new ones. If so, I think it's not unreasonable to believe that we might be able not only to improve existing capabilities in this way, by trading out different systems for new kinds of systems we could be able to give our ships new capabilities. Doesn't that sound like the enhancement crafting I described above for individual devices?

I think it's also pretty likely -- although to my knowledge no details have been mentioned on this subject yet -- that Engineering-oriented characters will be able to perform damage control (i.e., repair) on ship systems. If so, would that use the same ship systems interface as the "ship customization" feature?

And if that's the case, then would something like the "maintenance crafting" concept I described above (which similarly reuses one crafting interface for devices) make some sense as gameplay for maximizing the effectiveness of starships themselves?

LIMITATIONS

Obviously this proposed gameplay feature has a number of detailed requirements. It could be a lot of work. Is it worth the effort? If something had to be cut in order to get any part of this idea, what's negotiable?

If the constraints of time until Launch Day prevent implementing all three of these modes of Engineering-oriented gameplay, I would suggest that the most important to implement is repair crafting, followed by enhancement crafting, followed in turn by maintenance crafting.

This doesn't mean I think maintenance crafting wouldn't be fun for many players naturally drawn to Engineering gameplay. I believe there are gamers who enjoy optimization minigames, which is essentially what a maintenance crafting mode is all about. This mode just isn't quite as valuable in a massively multiplayer game based on a technologically advanced IP as a gameplay activity based on repairing devices. Repair is both a very visible activity of engineers in Star Trek and a highly useful ability in a game that's obviously going to offer lots of combat gameplay, so if anything would make the cut, I'd think it would be a repair capability.

Another element I didn't cover in this proposal is how Engineers as commanders of their own vessels would use their skills when in space grouped with other ships. Repairing, enhancing and maintaining devices is relatively easy to understand as an avatar on an away team. And crafting the features of one's own ship seems equally desirable. But how should an Engineering-specialized character be allowed to affect the ships or devices of other players? This needs to be considered further.

CONCLUSION

Taken all together, these three modes of Engineering crafting -- repair, enhancement and maintenance -- would each offer a different but related set of gameplay opportunities. Each gameplay mode would not only provide pure rules-based Engineering-oriented gameplay activities, these three modes would also be fun for the knowledgeable Star Trek fan who has seen all three types of Engineering activities in the various TV shows and films.

Finally, because all three modes would share the same interface, some code reuse could be achieved (as opposed to developing three completely dissimilar systems). I believe this outline for a "Scotty crafting" system captures many of the wishes I've heard mentioned by those who've expressed an interest in this kind of gameplay. But I certainly don't expect it will satisfy everyone!

Economics in a Star Trek MMORPG +

In trying to reconcile real-world economics and what's been said in and observed in Star Trek, the best I've ever been able to come up with is the notion of "intellectual capital."

So my theory of Trekonomics -- and, by extension, the kind of gameplay economy I'd hope to see in a MMORPG based on Star Trekk -- depends on how we get from the production-oriented society we still have today to a society in which intellectual capital is by far the primary source of economic value.

Human technological and economic history has been a progression from the immediate and tangible to the long-term and abstract. We've gone from pure moment-to-moment survival mode (hunter-gatherer) to subsistence permitting cities and codes of law (Agricultural Revolution) to complex societies (Industrial Revolution) to a world of interconnected individuals (Information Revolution).

That last change is the one we're in the middle of today. Yesterday, capital was created by smokestack industries cranking out tangible mass-produced products. Today, we're experiencing the initial shocks of what I call "virtualization" -- the process of transforming the information that defines real, tangible objects into ones and zeros. The legal wrangling we see today over copying music; Kindle letting you read thousands of books; services for creating 3D sculptures of species that you create in Spore... all of these things and more are examples of the ongoing process of shifting from an economy based on mass-production and physical distribution to one based on the generation of unique ideas that can be duplicated and spread world-wide in mere minutes as virtualized concepts.

Now take that process and shift it forward two or three centuries, adding to it technologies such as anti-gravity, fusion and anti-matter power, faster-than-light travel, matter transporters, and matter replicators.

Question: In a society like that, where does "value" come from?

When basic material needs are all cheaply/easily met, when physical capital has lost most of its value, when mass-produced goods are no longer as desirable as individually-tailored services, what's left as a source of value that a person can contribute to a society in order to receive the advantages of participation in that society? (That is, assuming we want to try to set the Federation inside any kind of capitalistic economic environment, and not just give up and call it a full-blown Marxian communist utopia.)

All I can come up with is intellectual capital.

I guess that in the United Federation of Planets, your social rewards are somehow made proportional to the intellectual capital you contribute to that society. If you want to sleep all day, you can do that, and you'll get the essentials of life you need to do it: food, water, shelter. If however you create new things, if you demonstrate an aptitude for and interest in generating intellectual capital of some kind, then you're provided with whatever tools and services you can use to support your creative efforts.

And that would hold true whether you're an artist or a scientist or a starship captain. If you can demonstrate that you'll effectively use those tools and services to generate intellectual capital for the Federation, the Federation will allocate resources to you to insure that you're able to contribute to the maximum extent possible. Both you and Federation society (i.e., every other Federation citizen) win when the full creative potential of every individual is nurtured.

So that's the theory, which tries to explain Star Trek within something like a plausible real-world framework of economic behavior (albeit one extrapolated into a technologically-advanced future).

What about the practice? I have severe doubts that this could actually work.

My guess is that the trend toward replacing physical capital with intellectual capital is real, and that virtualization will not only continue but intensify. (The legal battles over who owns easily-distributable virtual assets are only going to intensify.) So intellectual capital could indeed become the basis for a new economic expansion -- in fact, I believe this process is already underway as an Information Revolution -- that will lead to a vastly better quality of life for most people on our planet. (Though it will also widen the gap between those who embrace the democratic capitalism that enables an Information Revolution and those still trapped in more repressive communistic, socialistic, and despotic cultures that promote statist power over individual rights, including the right to personally profit from one's creative labor.)

But even in Star Trek we still have that age-old practical problem of coercive power: who decides? If I labor creating works of art or doing science or flying a starship, who decides whether that creative effort is good enough to warrant handing me the keys to an efficiency apartment or a luxury home in the mountains? Who controls the rewards for achievement? Who judges what the creative effort of an individual is worth? And who's in charge over the people making these decisions, insuring that their decisions are fair and accurate?

This is where I see the "humanity has changed" argument (which Picard made a couple of times) as a necessary condition for Star Trek to work as an economic system. Without some critical change to what it means to be a human being, I see no reason to believe that Lord Acton's observation -- power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely -- has suddenly ceased to apply to us as a species.

Maybe the mostly-global transition to an Information Society will be enough to cause a dramatic shift toward altruism and trust, allowing a distribution-of-rewards system like that seen in Star Trek to work.

Maybe.

Finally, it seems to me that this theory of intellectual capital, which distinguishes between Industrial Age mass-production of physical capital and Information Age creative expression of intellectual capital, is very -- and not coincidentally -- similar to the difference between the manufacturing/sales and creative/exploratory models of "crafting" in MMORPGs.

It seems to me that many MMORPG designers are satisfied with simple pre-Industrial Age economic systems. For the feudal-era games set in fantasy milieux they usually crank out, that's perhaps not a problem. (A bit boring, but not a real problem.)

For a game set in a science fiction milieu, however... that's a problem. In what way does it make any sense at all that a technologically advanced society would still be using a barter-based economic model that's already antiquated today in 2009? Shouldn't the currency of a science fiction game be intellectual capital created by characters in the gameworld? Shouldn't letting players add to the total of wealth inside the gameworld be baked into the design of a game set in a near-term star-spanning future?

This is part of the reason why I advocate a crafting system for Star Trek Online that's based on players creating new kinds of objects and subroutines. It's a system based on the production of intellectual capital, rather than on the consumption of physical goods. I think this not only fits better in any science fiction MMORPG than mere barter, it fits much better into a MMORPG based on Star Trek for all the reasons described above.

For the truly hardcore gameplay designers still reading this novel :), I go into this subject in more game-specific detail in my essay Economic Stages in MMORPGs. For now, though, suffice it to say that I'd enjoy seeing Star Trek Online offer some gameplay more appropriate for its futuristic setting than just another medieval-era barter economy in which the concept of "banking" is considered far too advanced to implement....

This Is How the World Ends

In his gaming blog today, Brian "Psychochild" Green offers a thoughtful discussion of the difference in "feel" between how the lights went out for earlier games versus today's games, prompted by the termination on Saturday of Tabula Rasa.

In considering Brian's reflections, I can't help but see this difference in feel as yet another expression of the difference between the "play in" and "live in" preferences of gamers.

I've described this theory here before, but to put it another way: some people naturally look to MMOGs for their rules-based gameplay. Their focus is on the mechanics of play in a MMOG; their rallying cry is "it's just a game!" To the extent that they see a MMOG as a place, it's just a location to "play in."

Others see a MMOG for its worldy qualities. They talk about "immersion"; they like having houses and emotes and complex systems to discover over time. The rules-based play of a MMOG is less important to these gamers than that it feel plausible as a place they can pretend to "live in."

Where this intersects with shutting down gameworlds is that the latter kind of gamer, who tend to form the deeper and longer-lasting communities within one particular world, were more prominent in the dawn of MMOGs than in today's gameworlds. More of the few MMOGs there were catered more to the interests of "live in" players than today's games do.

Maybe there were always more people who wanted "play in" than live in, and game developers just got better at satisfying the former group. Or maybe game developers started making more "play in" games, creating more of those gamers as kids get old enough to start playing. (I suspect that both processes occurred.)

Either way, MMOGs shifted from being about "live in" to focusing more on "play in." Thus, when earlier "live in" games shut down, their players wanted to come together as a community to say goodbye to the world in which they'd lived. Later "play in" games, which focused less on supporting that type of emotional investment in a sense of place, saw a different kind of send-off. For the "play in" gamer, gameplay is gameplay; if one game shuts down, you just find a new game.

I think this theory not only explains the different feel of turning off a M59 versus a TR, it also puts the "New Gameplay Experience" of Star Wars Galaxies in perspective. If the goodbye for M59 felt like a wake, the NGE seems to have felt to the "live in" players of SWG like a doctor pulling the plug without giving the family members a chance to say their farewells. For the "live in" gamers, the worldiness of pre-NGE SWG has become a Paradise Lost -- it was the last, best expression of a theory of MMOG design that says "live in" is as important as "play in." Losing that unique place for scratching the "live in" itch generated intensely emotional reactions that some players are still expressing to this day.

Perhaps if they'd been given a chance to say goodbye -- "closure" as we call it today -- the gamers who most enjoy the feeling of "living in" a secondary reality would have been able to let go with less drama. They'd have felt more free to look for some new gameworld in which they could put down roots.

... Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

SWG's dispossessed have never found their Happy Isles, since the MMOG developer gods in our age have elected not to create anything like pre-NGE SWG's worldiness. But that's another topic. :)

The point here is that MMOG sendoffs today may feel different than they once did because games -- and the majority gamer type these games attract -- have shifted from "live in" to "play in."

Game Mechanics for Faster-Than-Light Travel

Some time back while working on a game design, I toyed with some ideas for an interstellar travel mechanism that didn't copy the hyperspace/warp or "folding" metaphors of well-known science fiction.

One approach, though perhaps a little too close to Douglas Adams's "infinite improbability drive," was based on the quantum-mechanical notion of particles existing as packets of probability: locations where something has merely a high probability of existing, but bumped up to the macro level similar to the box where Schrödinger's cat lives (or doesn't live).

In this model, "moving" is a matter of minimizing the probability that a macro-level-sized object (and everything on or inside that object) exists in one location and maximizing the probability that it exists in another, desired location. If the universe can be made to believe that rather than being where I seem to be right now, I'm much more likely to be in Paris, or on Mars, or somewhere deep within the Messier 13 globular cluster, who's going to argue with what the universe says is true?

This was sort of cute, and could work as written fiction, but I didn't feel it was quite right for a game in which the theory behind superluminal travel should be a bit more mechanistic, allowing it to be translatable into functional gameplay effects.

So another idea I liked better was something I called "temporal space," or "t-space," wherein the dimension of time essentially doesn't exist. To put it another way, anything that exists anywhere in t-space can exist everywhere in t-space simultaneously. Since t-space maps onto our normal space (albeit in an extremely complex way), if you could move an object from our space into t-space, then determine the point in normal space at which this object could be made to exit t-space, you should be able to travel between any two points in real space in only the time it would take you to perform the entry and exit transitions.

The limits to this were three: interface junctions between normal space and temporal space are rare and hard to find; calculating the precise flow of energies necessary to exit t-space at the desired location is extremely difficult at best; and normal space momentum is preserved within t-space, meaning that the further away you exit t-space from your entry point, the greater the delta between your velocity and that of objects at your target position.

Obviously all this stuff is what the wonderful rulebook for Paranoia would likely have called examples of "pseudoscientific gibberish." It's utter rubbish, but there are enough scientific-sounding phrases to create an illusion of plausibility sufficient for literary or gaming purposes.

Fun to invent and play around with, though. :)

Five Ways MMORPGs Can Be Fixed

Tom Chick, over at fidgit.com, put together a very interesting list of his "Five reasons MMOs are broken." He concludes by saying, "MMOs have failed me and I have no idea how they can get me back into their good graces."

Like Tom, I also feel that the MMOGs available today (and most of the ones known to be in development) have failed me. He mentions some of the reasons why I feel that way; I have others. (*cough*balance of content for different playstyles*cough*)

But before I launch into my own suggested "solutions," I'd like to express the optimistic view that this journey to discover new frontiers in online game design is worth making. These online game things have only been around for a few years now; we have only just dipped our toes into the ocean of possibilities awaiting us.

This is because online games, in addition to having rules of play, can be worlds. There are certainly going to be limits to the size and depth of a gameworld -- in a commercial game particularly, time and budget are always constraints. But in terms of creative expression, there are no limits. Designers of MMOGs get to create entire universes!

In which case, how can we reasonably assert that the few online games created so far have already exhausted all the possibilities?

I go into this in more detail (and offer a visual guide to what hasn't been tried yet) in my essay, "It's All Been Done? No Way!" Recommended reading if you need a fast way to get to sleep. :)

So with that said, let's get to the five problems that the author sees in MMOGs (or, more accurately, MMORPGs) today.

5) The problem: subscription fees

What needs to be done to fix it: The subscription fee is brilliant, insidious, and tremendously effective. It is single-handedly responsible for the immense success of MMOs. I have no idea how to overcome that sort of fiscal momentum. I have no answers here.

I think the tremendous success of paying the equivalent of fifteen dollars a month for unlimited play time is a pretty good clue that this revenue model is not a problem requiring a solution.

To the extent that it forces game developers to be creative in finding gameplay that's so much fun that it discourages subscribers from canceling their accounts... how is that a bad thing?

4) The problem: aggro

What needs to be done to fix it: Search me. Someone hurry and invent a new gameplay model that doesn't rely on aggro.

I've agreed with this one before. As pure gameplay it's not inherently evil. But as an attempt to model interestingly aggressive conflict resolution methods, "aggro" is a cheap hack applied to avoid implementing environmental depth.

A sufficiently complex environment creates opportunities for competitive success that don't require abitrary and artificial gimmicks like "pulling" and "taunting," not to mention having to jam the entire play experience into a few stovepiped classes based entirely on bizarrely restrictive roles like "tank" and "DPS." The fact that some people mistake this stuff for actual tactical gameplay does not mean that MMORPG developers must mindlessly copy these tropes in every single game from now unto eternity.

3) The problem: button lock

What needs to be done to fix it: Can someone replace all the math with action? Is there some way to do this? Is it even possible? Or should I just stick to Diablo?

See above re: environmental depth. Button-mashing is not, never has been, and never will be "tactics." And the problem with button-mashing isn't that it involves math -- it's that the mathematical calculations are being applied to the intersection of character-inherent "special moves" instead of to how each character interacts with functional elements of their local environment.

So I conclude that MMORPGs won't support interesting tactical gameplay until their developers abandon this belief that cheap game-rule gimmicks are an adequate substitute for environmental depth. For example, an environment whose features are selected to highlight visibility and detection would enable stealthy play as a viable alternative to the silly special-move-spamming slapfights that pass for "combat" in today's MMORPGs.

Bottom line: spending the time to build a gameworld with a broad spectrum of environmental phenomena that can be detected, created, and countered by characters will reduce mindless button-mashing intended to game some mathematical calculation in favor of action that rewards perceptiveness, adaptability and creativity.

2) The problem: static worlds

What needs to be done to fix it: Beats me. You can't very well have evil get vanquished by the first hero to come along. Is this just an innate problem by virtue of the word "massively" in the genre?

Actually... yes. I think it is. Fairness mandates that everyone have exactly the same opportunity to enjoy exactly the same content. Most MMORPG developers interpret that requirement by implementing the "respawn" mechanic.

But what does "same" mean? Exactly the same in every inherent respect? Or just the same kind of content?

If being able to experience the same kind of content is (in some cases) acceptable, then one solution to static worlds is to rethink how content is generated. Rather than hardcoding every piece of content to specifically reference some existing physical object within the game world, developers could try instead to create "fill-in-the-blanks" content. Content that references a specific NPC could instead reference any appropriate NPC, allowing NPCs who have different qualities and goals to come and go. Rather than specifying particular objects as targets of quests/missions, different objects from one specific class of objects could be permitted as targets of a mission, allowing many players to have a highly similar but still distinct play experience.

In effect, a fill-in-the-blanks approach would allow some aspects of a massively shared world to change over time while preserving the general actions defined in each piece of quest content.

Another -- and possibly better -- solution to the problem of a massively multiplayer gameworld that doesn't change: give up. Stop trying to allow multiple people to share the unchanging assets of a gameworld. Switch to making massively single-player games, whose worlds can and should change over time depending the actions of the player's character and the NPCs in that world.

I explore the possibilities of this option in my "Living World" essay, also guaranteed to cure insomnia.

1) The problem: you can't play with the people you want to play with

What needs to be done to fix it: Something. Anything. For pete's sake, if I can't play with my friends, I'm just going to go mess around with horde mode in Gears of War 2.

I think this is not quite as bad a problem as the author makes it out to be, but it certainly wouldn't hurt if playing with friends could be made easier.

One possibility may be found in the gradual transition away from hardcore games to games with a more casual set of rules. More granular gameplay makes it easier for friends to drop in and drop out with a minimum of negative consequences.

Another possibility, albeit one much more difficult to contemplate or implement, might come from a greater level of integration among all MMORPGs. Imagine if one game-building system were to completely dominate all MMORPG development -- in that case, it might be possible to design every game on the same foundation, making it relatively much easier to jump between gameworlds. That way if you're playing Game A but your friends are over on Game B, it's quick and easy for you to join them.

There could be some severe creative problems in that kind of environment. I'm not convinced it would be a good thing to have One Platform To Rule Them All, and I certainly don't want to see one company controlling the means of (game) production. But maybe that's what it would take to lower the perceived barriers to friends playing with friends.

...

To sum up, I'd say all of these perceived problems with MMORPGs are symptoms of a more systemic disease, which is that their designers are much, much too focused on providing Achiever-oriented play to the exclusion of other content. The "play" in these games is wrapped almost entirely around formal rules enshrining zero-sum competitive/acquisitive economics. In other words, they're mostly about "winning" by killing others and taking their stuff.

It should be noted: there is nothing inherently wrong with Achiever-oriented play! The only problem with it is the degree to which this one playstyle is permitted to overwhelm every other possible kind of fun. At best, narrative and exploration play get implemented as mere support systems for combat and object-collection. But without treating those other playstyles as worthy of actual content, attracting other kinds of gamers and creating a healthy diversity of player types within a gameworld, the fun of the competitive/acquisitive style of play gets concentrated down into mere grinding: fun for a while, but eventually stale.

Aggro, button lock, static worlds, and content so hardcore that it's necessary to schedule one's fun time... all these things are typical of highly Achieverish designs. If they're perceived as problems, they can't be fixed by going after them piecemeal. They are -- and they need to be understood as -- part of an overall pattern of design. And the solution to them is to change the pattern. It's to stop making yet more excessively-Achieverish gameworlds, and instead design gameworlds to have a broader appeal by offering richer physical and emotional environments, creating a gameworld with a far better balance of gameplay opportunities for more potential players.

To put it another way, most of the things that Tom Chick describes as problems are artifacts -- side-effects -- of focusing the design of MMORPGs too much on the hands of players, and not enough on their hearts and minds. When developers finally decide to change that pattern, then the problems mentioned here will begin to recede...

...to be replaced with other problems. :) But that's just how it goes when trying to make any system in which lots of people can interact in relative anonymity. There is no perfect solution for imperfect human beings.

Which is probably just as well.

Player Ship Interiors and Star Trek Online... Again

Well, here we go again.

Cryptic, the current developer of the Star Trek Online MMORPG, has mentioned in an interview that player ship interiors would probably be viewable only as instances during certain missions. The potential feature of letting characters walk around and interact with key locations of starships, such as the Bridge and Engineering, is now being described as unlikely to be included in Star Trek Online when it launches.

From the interview with Craig Zinkievich conducted by Irdnova on behalf of Hailing Frequency:

HF: We know from the Vegas trailer and from discussion on the STO Forums that ship interiors are going to be available, however we still do not have many details on these, so can you tell us how much freedom will players be allowed in their ships – are we just going to see key areas like the bridge and engineering available, or will corridors and turbolifts and all of the other locations that are typically on a ship, be available?

CZ: At launch, we are probably only going to have ship interiors available during mission instances, however we hope to add the ability to players to freely walk around their ship and host gatherings in an expansion pack.

Over on Cryptic's official Star Trek Online forum, this comment has already spawned the same responses and counter-responses and failures to listen to what anyone else says that went on for months when Perpetual, the former developer of Star Trek Online, made its similar announcement.

These responses come in a few distinct forms:

1. This feature was absolutely critical for me. The developers are a bunch of liars; they obviously don't understand Star Trek or value Star Trek fans. They're just rushing a WoW-clone to market to make a quick buck. If the game that ships doesn't implement key locations of our personal starships that we can walk around in whenever we want, I'm not going to play it, period.

2. This feature was very important to me personally, and its loss is a severe disappointment to me. I don't mind rules-based gameplay, but I really wanted a Star Trek MMORPG that created the world of Star Trek for me to "live in." For me, a richly detailed (and graphically semi-realistic) world isn't an alternative to gameplay, it is gameplay -- it's just not the arbitrary following of formal win/lose rules that other people enjoy. I was really hoping to get to do things like perform sensor sweeps and align phasers and have detailed diplomatic negotiations with alien races, so a ship that's just a "mount" is pretty upsetting. Without being able to walk around as my character through the key locations of the starship I command, this game just won't feel enough like the world of Star Trek. I'm considerably less likely to play it now as a result of this design decision.

3. This feature was important for a Star Trek MMORPG and for the MMORPG industry as a whole. Starships were virtually starring characters in Star Trek. So cutting both the player crew feature and player ship interiors (outside of some mission instances) is a failure to understand that this is one of the most iconic elements of the entire Star Trek IP. Not richly rendering starships is a failure to take advantage of what's probably the last major opportunity to create a richly realized IP as a major MMORPG. I'm somewhat less likely to play this game now.

4. This would have been nice to have, and I wish they'd included it, but I figure the developers know what they're doing. Maybe not implementing key locations on player ships makes sense given their previous design decision (such as Cryptic's decision not to allow players to work together as crew on one ship). Without that capability, there's probably not enough value in letting individual players walk around key locations of their own ship. So I suppose cutting this feature is just the developer being realistic. I guess I'll probably still play it as long as they don't cut anything else.

5. Huh? I don't care about walking around on some ship, I just want to start shooting stuff. What's all the complaining about? Where can I download this game? Can I be in the beta, like, right now?

6. The developer is going to give us interiors as instances for missions. So for you few oddballs who claim to like that kind of thing, you can do all the walking around and staring at consoles you want -- you'll just have to do it as part of a developer-provided mission. I'll definitely buy this game, and I'll probably play it for at least a year or so while I level up my main character and alts.

7. All you people who say you want interiors are just a bunch of whiners. IT'S NOT GOING TO BE A SIMULATOR! SHUT UP! The only valid definition of "gameplay" is flying places and shooting people and taking their stuff. All that other stuff like stories and sandboxes and how long a day lasts is just a distraction from real gameplay content. The devs aren't going to spend a single minute making that crap that only a few weirdos want, and I'm glad. SHUT UP! Go back to your mommy's basement, you retard trekkie losers! This is MY game! MINE! MINE! I'll buy this game, but I want to play for free forever, or at least until I beat it in a couple of months and quit.

8. Everything this developer does is wonderful! Anyone saying anything negative about this or any other decision they make about Star Trek Online's design should go away. We should only talk about the things we're all happy to see announced. The only way I would not buy the Collector's Edition of this game is if it gets cancelled.

I'm probably around a 2.5 in my reaction. I understand that things get cut when making a game; I just don't think it should always be the features that make the gameworld more interesting and that are iconic to a licensed IP that lose that contest.

The Star Trek IP would have been a terrific basis for a major AAA-quality MMORPG that deliberately gives equal weight to story and world and rules-based play.

It's too bad Cryptic aren't going to be the ones who profit by making that balanced gameworld.

Who will?

Warren Spector, Andrew Stanton, and Barsoom

Stop me if you've heard this one before: I have a great idea for a game.

For those whose eyes haven't glazed over already, let me explain... but I need to backtrack a bit first.

In 1992 I brought home a computer game that changed forever my ideas of what a game could be. It was Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, and it has never gotten the positive notice it deserves for the features it offered.

Here's a partial list off the top of my head:

• true three-dimensional environments and objects
• numerous characters to interact with
• hundreds of places to explore in eight large levels
• thousands of objects to find and use
• open-world design allowing the player to follow the game story at his own pace
• intricate storyline set in the popular Ultima universe
• branching dialogue system
• "constructive" magic system with undocumented spells that could be discovered
• music that changed depending on the player character's context (walking or combat)
• a simple but completely new language to learn, with meaningful gameplay value

Bear in mind: this was 1992. A lot of these things seem obvious today in games like Oblivion, but they were astonishing innovations at the time.

It's also worth noting that Ultima Underworld shipped before Wolfenstein 3D. Where Wolf3D offered only a 2-1/2-dimensional world, players of UU were already enjoying a true three-dimensional gameworld. Of course the system requirements for UU were higher than those for Wolf3D, despite UU's relatively simple 3D graphics. id absolutely deserves credit for (among other things) Wolf3D's remarkable optimizations that allowed it to run on many more of the personal computers of 1992 than UU. (John Carmack, in fact, has said that Wolf3D's graphical engine was based on his seeing an early version of Ultima Underworld's graphics and feeling he could do better.) But in terms of providing a rich and highly immersive space to explore, UU blew the doors off that goal well before anything else.

(An in-joke reference to Wolf3d's greater success despite having far less depth might have been found in UU's sequel, Ultima Underworld 2: The Labyrinth of Worlds. In a section of the game rendered in a 3D wireframe style, the player character encounters a hostile goblin named C.I. Crunchowicz whose name bears a certain resemblance to that of the hero of the Wolfenstein games, B.J. Blazkowicz.)

If Ultima Underworld 2 improved on the features of the original, Looking Glass's next game, System Shock, came close to perfecting them.

Then came Thief.

Then, from Ion Storm, came Deus Ex.

So what do all of these games have in common besides setting their absorbing and intelligent gameplay mechanics inside huge and deeply-realized worlds?

Warren Spector.

Which brings me (finally) to the aforementioned great idea for a game, which depends on two facts I just put together today.

1. After Ion Storm, Warren Spector formed his own development company, Junction Point Studios. JPS was acquired in 2007 by Disney, and we were told that this would give JPS access to Disney's and Pixar's stable of characters and worlds.

2. Andrew Stanton, a long-time writer, producer and director with Pixar, has acknowledged that he's mostly done with a screenplay for Disney for a live-action film. This movie will be based on Edgar Rice Burroughs's first novel, A Princess of Mars, the first in the "John Carter, Warlord of Mars" series of adventure tales set on the Red Planet.

See where I'm going with this?

I've been suggesting for several years now that Burroughs's Barsoom novels would make a fine basis for a MMORPG. But there's no reason why -- in the right hands -- they couldn't also be translated into a superb single-player game.

Since both the movie and Junction Point Studios are Disney properties, why not take advantage of that synergy?

JPS is apparently already working on a game for Disney (the so-called "Steampunk Willie" concept). But aside from that admittedly large impediment, am I the only person who thinks a collaboration between two creative and smart people like Andrew Stanton and Warren Spector to bring Barsoom to life as a gameworld is worth pursuing as a rare commercial and artistic opportunity?

I could happily wait until 2012 for a game like that.

Distribution > Content?

Gamasutra reported today on the comments by game business analyst Mitch Lasky that distribution power is more valuable than developing good game content.

I think content matters more than that, but even so it's nice to see the value of a smart distribution model getting the attention it deserves.

I've been saying for years that id's success -- and the enormous kick-start their success gave to all PC gaming -- was due in large part to how the game design and distribution model for Wolfenstein 3D (not DOOM, which simply reused this model) were deeply intertwined. The game was built as a collection of levels with a boss fight at the end... and only the first collection was essentially free. Once you'd played the initial shareware levels, then discovered that there were two more collections of levels, each more over-the-top than the last, paying for "the rest of the game" seemed absolutely justifiable.

It was brilliant then, and it's still brilliant. All that remains to be seen is which developers and publishers will embrace it in its new "episodic content" form to work with the new broadband-enabled digital distribution portals coming into being, and reap the rewards thereby.

Some will naturally believe that retail sales of physical boxes have some special power that allows them to resist the allure of digital distribution. I think this misses what may be by seeing only what currently is. (The danger of straight-line projections, etc.)

Retail currently has two advantages over the ones and zeros of online distribution: one, it lets potential customers look at the game art and review blurbs on a physical box when deciding whether to buy a game, and two, it's still more comfortable than online shopping to older customers who buy games for their kids or grandchildren.

The second advantage is going to resolve itself with the passage of time.

The first advantage is one that digital distributors can counter in multiple ways, and some of those ways are unique to digital distribution. The obvious is to release each game with its own Web site full of glossy promotional content, and publishers are already doing that. I expect they'll become even more sophisticated at it over time.

Less obvious but perhaps ultimately more important will be the shift to design games for online distribution from the very start, allowing them to be designed to provide a small part of the game that can be downloaded and test-driven for free... which brings us back to the Wolf3D fusion of game design and distribution.

So who's going to control this brave new world of digital distribution of games?

I would be very surprised if the larger publishers like EA weren't already building their own portals. Their deal with Steam shows they're willing to test whether the retail channel retains its value.

In fact, I think it's a process that's already in progress across the computer game industry. Valve's Steam is just an easy-to-see example of the new "e-tailers" that are emerging as product accumulators. Sony Online Entertainment has been turning itself into precisely the same kind of one-stop-shop for MMORPGs for the past several years, either buying online games outright or making publishing/distribution deals with developers (through their "Platform Publishing" program) and making all the games available through their "Station Pass" system. CD Projekt recently introduced their GOG.com portal. Even Amazon.com can be seen as an important player in this emerging business environment of product accumulators -- the choice of Amazon.com as the target soapbox for opponents of EA's DRM protection of Spore suggests something of its growing importance as a game source.

The visible scramble by each of the big three console makers to provide their own online game distribution portals is another important thread in this pattern.

Within the next year or two I expect to see announcements from EA, Vivendi/Activision, and Infogrames/Atari of their own online distribution networks to try to compete with Valve. If their stables of games (and whoever else they can get to sign up) can be made large enough without becoming shovelware, that's probably going to be a successful line of business for the next decade or so at least, especially for those which value-add most effectively.

Whether all these will eventually shake down to just two or three big players, I can't guess yet.

Exploration as Survey Gameplay in Star Trek Online

INTRODUCTION

With Cryptic's various statements that they intend for exploration-focused gameplay to play a meaningful role in Star Trek Online, I thought it might be fun to come up with some of my own notions for how exploration might work in this game. To keep from getting too high-level, I'll focus my suggestions on a specific practical gameplay activity that encompasses exploratory play: namely, Survey.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I consider "exploration" to be about more than just mapping physical terrain -- the true explorer is someone who enjoys discovering new knowledge about any system, whether physical or abstract. The point is not the excitement of travel or the stimulation of constant variety, nor is it racing to see who can visit the most new locations in the shortest amount of time; the point of exploration is adding to the sum of knowledge about the universe. To define exploration in some other way is to miss the point of what makes exploration uniquely valuable to a society and satisfying to the individuals who do it.

Jean-Luc Picard did not choose to remain captain of the Enterprise, seeking out new life and new civilizations, because he thought that racing from one new world to the next was a good way to accumulate XP for leveling up.

That said, drawing a chart of a star system or a map of a new planet is certainly one kind of exploration. As I suggest below, that's gameplay content I'd enjoy seeing in Star Trek Online. But cataloging the diversity of life on a newly-encountered world, and assessing the level of development of an alien civilization in several spheres of social activity -- those are also valid forms of exploration in a science fiction universe like that of Star Trek. They could also become fun gameplay features.

So what I'd like to attempt here is the outline of a gameplay system that wraps all those activities together in a coherent way as "Survey" content. I'll first provide simple descriptions of possible gameplay features in four areas of survey-related gameplay. Then I'll examine how the entire Survey feature could fit usefully into Star Trek Online's gameplay as a whole (as we currently understand it).

(Please note that I'm not saying I think every one of the ideas given below should be implemented in Star Trek Online. These ideas are intended as possibilities for a limited set of actual features -- just the things that would be fun if exploration in this game were to be designed around the concept that players are asked by their factions to survey new worlds.)

SURVEY SPECIALIZATIONS

SYSTEM: "This system contains seven planets orbiting a G-type primary star."

The System-level survey consists of determining the nature of the stars bound together by gravity into a system and the non-stellar bodies orbiting those stars.

The basic information about the stars of a system themselves may already be known through high-powered telescopes. Most of the information obtained by a system survey will come from warping into a new system to gain first-hand knowledge of the various bodies orbiting the star or stars comprising a system.

A system survey will normally begin when a vessel drops out of warp above the ecliptic of a system (or the primary ecliptic if the system is composed of multiple stars). (The ecliptic -- more precisely, the invariable ecliptic plane of a star system -- is the imaginary two-dimensional plane along which the planets of a star orbit that star.) If a system contains space-faring lifeforms traveling among the worlds of that system, they will almost always move along the plane of the ecliptic for efficiency in fuel and time. So a survey vessel that drops out of warp well above (or below) the ecliptic will be well-positioned to detect local space vessels before the survey vessel itself is detected, or, if detected, before hostile ships can intercept it.

Once out of warp, if no anomalies or immediate threats are observed, the survey vessel can begin conducting passive scans across all bands of energy and radiation. This will provide simple information on the number and general types of all major orbital bodies in the system, as well as their orbital element data. If there are artificial bodies in space, they too will be detected by a passive scan if they are radiating any kind of energy or broadcasting an omnidirectional communication signal.

[Note: For more information on how a ship might use its sensors for active and passive scans in Star Trek Online, as well as for a detailed listing of the kinds of particles and energies that have been referenced in Star Trek, please see my essay Sensors and Star Trek Online.]

Examples of the kind of data that a System survey could collect include:

• Stars
  
  • number of stars
  • class and spectral type of each star
  • luminosity of each star
  • orbital elements if multiple stars
• Local Phenomena
  
  • gas/dust clouds -- location and composition
  • subspace anomalies -- location and type
  • temporal anomalies -- location and type
  • wormholes -- location (it is suggested that exploration of wormholes be left to specialized exploration vessels)
  • space-based lifeforms [special -- see World-Biological section below]
• Natural Bodies
  
  • number of planetary bodies orbiting each star
  • general type of each planetary body (gas giant, rocky planet, planetoid belt)
  • orbit number of each planetary body
  • mean distance from the star they orbit
  • eccentricity of their orbit
  • size/density of Oort cloud
• Artificial Bodies
  
  • location and characteristics of relatively stationary space-based artifacts (space stations/starbases, communication arrays)

WORLD-PHYSICAL: "It's an M-class world with rich deposits of dilithium."

Once the system survey is completed, if the survey vessel is properly equipped and any of the planetary bodies seems worth a closer look, the survey vessel can proceed to the next stage, the World-Physical survey.

Depending on personal style, natural hazards, or Prime Directive concerns (if applicable), a survey vessel may choose to begin a closer inspection of individual worlds either in order from innermost to outermost (or vice versa), or starting with the worlds that seem most interesting for some reason, such as a planet orbiting within the habitable zone of a star.

[Note: One possible mission type in Star Trek Online might be to travel to a newly cataloged star system to collect basic scan data for each of the planets in that system. The player would need to warp to the system, travel using impulse drive to within some reasonable distance of each planet, and perform the sensor scans necessary to "fill in the blanks" of a short list of planet features taken from the list given below. Another mission type might be to collect detailed survey information for a specific planet. In that case, most or all of the applicable items from the list below would be presented to the player, to be filled in by performing the appropriate sensor scans. Yet another mission could be to visit a number of star systems and scan all their orbiting worlds until a sufficiently high concentration of some specific mineral resource is detected on one of those worlds.]

Information that a World-Physical survey could reveal might include:

• world type (large gas giant, small gas giant, rocky, planetoid belt)
• Gas Giants:
  
  • number, orbital distance, and composition of moons
  • equatorial diameter
  • average density
  • general composition (hydrogen/helium, water/ammonia/methane ["ice giants">)
  • location and strength of natural field effects (magnetic, polaric, radio, etc.)
  • rotation speed (length of local "day")
  • axial tilt relative to orbital plane
  • surface feature map
• Planets:
  
  • number, orbital distance, and composition of moons
  • location, size and composition of planetary ring(s), if any
  • equatorial diameter
  • average mass
  • average surface gravity
  • rotation speed (length of local "day")
  • axial tilt relative to orbital plane
  • general composition (iron-rich, silicate-rich, carbon-rich, watery/icy, carbon monoxide, hydrogen)
  • interior structure
  • tectonic/seismic activity (none, one continent, a few large continents, many volcanic islands)
  • surface topography map
  • albedo
  • location and strength of natural field effects (magnetic, polaric, radio, etc.)
  • atmosphere composition (nitrogen/oxygen, nitrogen/chlorine, methane, etc.)
  • atmosphere density
  • mean surface temperature
  • surface temperature bands (annual average)
  • average wind speeds
  • surface/subcrustal liquid composition
  • surface/subcrustal liquid coverage extents
  • average tidal height/frequency (if significant coverage by surface liquid and a sufficiently large/close moon is present)
  • detailed composition (including central location of concentrations of key elemental and mineral resources)
• Planetoid belts:
  
  • width of belt along ecliptic plane
  • height of belt
  • estimated number of planetesimals
  • size distribution of planetesimals
  • orbital element data for the handful of largest planetesimals
  • composition distribution (carbonaceous %, stony %, metallic %, other %)

WORLD-BIOLOGICAL: "I just love scanning for lifeforms!"

On some occasions, a world will be scanned that has the potential to support life as we know it.

When a world is found that appears to be capable of supporting life, then a World-Biological survey may be initiated. This will normally begin by entering a parking orbit around the world to be scanned. Once in orbit, the survey vessel may begin performing both passive scans (such as infrared) and active scans (such as cloud-piercing radar) for identifying the types of lifeforms and their extent across the world.

Be aware, however, that if at any point at any time in a survey of a star system intelligent life is detected, all survey operations will be suspended and First Contact protocols will be in force.

[Note: it's possible that we may on rare occasions encounter forms of space-based life. If so, then this part of the system survey will be focused on filling in the "Photonic/Other Life" section of the information fields given below, rather than being down to a planet's surface... although it might be possible to beam into a sufficiently large space-based lifeform, such as "Tin Man."]

Assuming that no intelligent life has yet been detected, if there is interest in or need for a detailed World-Biological survey then the survey vessel may continue to perform scans from orbit to collect aggregate data on lifeforms. This process will normally require several days to complete [game time, not real time] for worlds on which life is abundant.

After careful review of the World-Biological survey data, the commander of the survey vessel may decide that a first-hand visit to the newly discovered world is desirable (usually to collect more detailed data on certain lifeforms). In this case, an appropriately outfitted away team or teams will be formed to travel to the planet's surface. There they will use science and medical tricorders to detect and classify specific aspects of the lifeforms they encounter.

Once the desired scans are complete, the away team will return to the survey vessel. At that time, each member of the away team -- without exception -- will submit to whatever decontamination procedures are deemed appropriate by the ship's Medical Officer.

[Note: as with World-Physical surveys, there are several different kinds of missions that players of Star Trek Online could take related to collecting World-Biological data. These could be to locate 5 new worlds within the habitable zone of a star, to take general scan data from 3 worlds capable of supporting humanoid life, or to take detailed scans of a new lifeform with a handheld medical tricorder. Again, items from the list below could be presented to players in a "fill in the blanks" format, where performing the appropriate sensor scans will insert the scan results into each field of the form. This could a very simple process that always succeeds the first time, or, depending on how energetic the folks at Cryptic are feeling, such fill-in-the-blank scans could be designed as a minigame.]

Information collected through a World-Biological survey could include:

• general planetary ecosphere (desert, tundra, swamp, grassland, forest [boreal, temperate, jungle], sargasso, world-city)
• mapping of individual ecospheres by location and extent
• Viral "Life":
  
  • number and diversity of forms
  • number and distribution of individuals of each form
  • structure of each form
  • method of propagation
  • effects of each form on known sentient lifeforms (human, Vulcan, Klingon, etc.)
• Plant/Algal/Fungal/Microbial Life:
  
  • number and diversity of forms
  • number and distribution of individuals of each form
  • physical characteristics of each form
  • chemical/molecular composition of each form
  • primary life-sustaining processes for each form (photosynthesis, absorption)
  • method of propagation
  • effects of each form on known sentient lifeforms (human, Vulcan, Klingon, etc.)
• Animal Life:
  
  • number and diversity of forms
  • number and distribution of individuals of each form
  • method of propagation
  • physical characteristics of each form
  • intelligence level of each form
  • prefered habitat of each form
• Photonic/Other Life:
  
  • number and diversity of forms
  • number and distribution of individuals of each form
  • internal structure
  • method of propagation
  • special characteristics of each form (structural basis, intelligence level, etc.)

WORLD-CIVILIZATION: "Veridian IV supports a pre-industrial humanoid society."

In some very rare cases, a survey vessel will encounter new life and new civilizations in a newly charted star system. As noted above, First Contact protocols will go into force the moment any new form of intelligent life is detected during the survey of a new system.

If those protocols (as defined by the applicable factional command) permit it, a general World-Civilization survey may be initiated. This may occur under either of two circumstances:

1. if the newly-discovered intelligent lifeform is observed to be warp-capable, and the survey vessel is authorized and able to conduct First Contact operations, or
2. if the new lifeform is intelligent but not warp-capable, and the survey vessel is authorized and equipped to conduct short-term covert surveillance and study operations.

Survey teams will collect general physical and sociological data related to the following key forms of intelligent behavior:

• Military: aggressiveness, level of development of tactical/operational/strategic principles
• Political: types and extents of governments (anarchy, democracy, republic, feudalism, bureaucracy, dictatorship, police state)
• Economic: level of development of economic principles (money, currency, trade, banking, capitalism, ethovalunomics)
• Social: individual/group orientation, xenophilia/xenophobia, altruism, level of health, level of education
• Religious: atheism, agnosticism, deism, individual worship, communal worship, organized worship, missionary zeal
• Ethical: philosophies, moral/ethical principles, art/architectural styles
• Technological: inventiveness, development of military, transportation, communication, energy-generation, and medical artifacts
• Intellectual: curiosity, level of development in mathematics, scientific principles, and universe-knowledge

Other general information useful to gaining an understanding of new intelligent lifeforms and civilizations includes:

• number, boundaries, and forms of political entities
• location and size of population clusters (villages, cities, megalopoli)
• location and output of power generation facilities
• transportation grid (types, locations)
• communications (types, frequencies, modulations, formats)
• planetary shielding/cloaking

Be aware that, as part of a standard survey team, you are not expected to obtain highly detailed World-Civilization data. Collecting that data requires the placement of long-term assets, who will consist of teams of specialists in the fields of diplomacy and long-term covert assessments [or just plain intimidation if you happen to be a Klingon ;)].

[Note: One special aspect of dealing with newly discovered intelligent lifeforms is the possibility of being able to "hire" new NPC bridge officers from among them. This might allow us to fill in more World-Civilization survey details about a particular world by having conversations with a hired NPC bridge officer. It could be an interesting way to integrate NPC interactions, bridge operations, storytelling, and survey gameplay.]

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Some examples have already been given (in the notes for each survey specialization) for how players of Star Trek Online might enjoy Survey content. At this point, I'd like to consider some possibilities for how the Survey feature might help support the rest of the game and vice versa. While we still don't know much at the present writing (January 2009) about what the normal course of gameplay will be like in Star Trek Online, we've been told that there'll be things to do in space in a starship, things to do on planetary surfaces (and perhaps artificial locations in space such as starbases), that these things will include combat and exploration, that we'll have NPC "pets" serving as our bridge crew for operating our ship's systems, and that we will be able to group with other players in their own personal starships.

Based on this very rough description of the gameplay environment, it might be fun for exploration to be given some gameplay structure for players who want it. A Survey system like the one whose elements are described here would create numerous possibilities for gameplay, including (but not limited to) the following:

• every player who finds new habitable worlds is allowed a one-time opportunity to name a new world
• groups of ships could pool their survey data to more rapidly complete detailed surveys
• talking with bridge NPCs hired from a new civilization could unlock new NPC abilities by revealing special world survey data
• completing some number of detailed world surveys could provide some kind of Achievement
• completing a detailed survey optionally spawns random events (valuable new resource, appearance of hostile claimant, etc.)
• factional expansion as Realm vs. Realm (RvR) competition by identifying systems with useful resources or colonizable worlds
• discovering habitable worlds permits colonization gameplay (if Cryptic feels that's worth implementing)
• survey data about a system could provide a tactical advantage in combat in that system
• survey data could be an economic commodity (probably not for Federation players, however)
• survey data could be a diplomatic commodity (e.g., gifting star charts as a show of good faith)

As always when I unleash one of these novels, the patience of readers is appreciated. :)