Crafting Preview for Star Trek Online

I've been reviewing Star Trek Online for the past couple of weeks, after receiving a beta code from Curse.com. In my last post I mentioned a few first impressions of the game, so I'll be attempting to expand on that here. Sadly, I was not able to access any crafting content during my time in the beta test. That's not for lack of trying, there just wasn't anything available to me. So I'm just going to share the content I was able to find in combination with information I found through other sources. This isn't ideal, which is why I'm calling this a preview instead of a review. But under the circumstances it's the best I can offer. I hope to follow up this information with a more substantive review after the game goes live and presumably has some sort of trial account available.

Star Trek Online (STO) doesn't appear to follow a traditional model for crafting. In fact, some of what they call crafting I would call training. A description given by their lead designer, Al Rivera, indicates that you acquire bridge officers, train them up in various skills that you unlock from your trainers, and then trade the improved bridge officers to other players. This isn't really my idea of crafting. Based on my own experience in the game, bridge officers are more like pets. You gain them through early quests (you can also buy them from vendors, weird I know), you use skill points to train them in various specialties and they help you in combat. This didn't feel like a crafting activity to me, but perhaps other folks would see it as such.

The other crafting activity mentioned by Rivera was their harvesting feature. This is very similar to typical gathering in that you find random "anomalies" out in the world and you harvest them. The objects you harvest from these anomalies are then traded in for new items and recipes. Personally, I found the gathering rather basic. There's only the one "node" type and the objects you collect from it are randomized and sometimes junk. Each time you enter a new zone you can use your scanner to detect anomalies. The resulting analysis will tell you how many nodes are found, but it doesn't mark them on your map. So you have to fly through the whole system looking for them, there's no tracking at all. If you don't happen to spot the node on the screen, you miss out. I found this very frustrating from a gathering perspective.

Plus, the trading part of this scenario was problematic for me. I was able to successfully purchase items from the vendor with my collected wares, but I never saw any recipes on the vendor. It's possible that I wasn't high enough or friendly enough to access those particular items, but I found no confirmation of such on the STO forums. There seems to be a lot of mystery with regard to actual recipes being in the game. From what I observed, the vendors on Memory Alpha (the purported source of in-game recipes given by Rivera) only had items in their inventory that were ship upgrades or gear for ground missions. At this time I have no way of determining whether the problem is me or the content just isn't there.

Rivera has described their crafting as having no levels or skill points. The ability to craft better items is dependent on you acquiring the proper amount of "mats" to make such items. The more mats you collect, the better items you can create. Each item on the vendor requires a specific combination of materials, if you don't have the exact items you can't make the purchase. That's a bit of a limiting factor when you have 20 of one item type but zero of another. This isn't unusual in concept, but in practice there are items that are more commonly harvested than others. The end result is that you can have dozens of some item types and still not find even one of the item you actually need. Surely this problem will be resolved when the economy is more robust, but early on it will be a stumbling block.

Rivera also states that all recipes will be available to all players if they have the proper materials for a particular item. There is no segregation into different types of craftables, anyone can unlock a particular recipe if they work for it. This would be pretty cool except that there's just not a lot of craftable stuff overall. There are three main disciplines: Science, Engineering and Tactical. There doesn't appear to be any information at this time regarding how many recipes are available within each discipline. Based on the categories, I'd say that no matter which type you pick, you'll be making ship upgrades and ground combat upgrades. Ground items seem to consist mostly of weapons, body armor, shields and body armor "kits", there aren't separate armor slots for each body part. Ship items are a bit more diverse as upgrades can include weapons, shields, engines, batteries and a special console for each specialty. The variety of item types seems small to me, but since the main goal is to improve on your ship they may be sufficient for that task.

Based on what I've seen and read about STO, I'd have to guess that the crafting game isn't terribly deep. The descriptions from their lead designer sound fairly simplistic and the in-game functionality is not easily accessible. Contrasting this with other MMOs I've reviewed, players are usually exposed to tradeskill content within the first five levels. My STO character made it through the entire tutorial and all the way to level five (lieutenant 5) without experiencing any actual crafting. I did manage to visit Memory Alpha (the crafting hub) but did not find any recipes on the vendors there. Generally by this point in a typical MMO you'll have found crafting trainers in at least one of the various locations you've been sent and be able to start crafting in some capacity.

For the most part I enjoyed my time playing Star Trek Online. The game play is different enough to appeal to gamers who want something new in an MMO. More specifically, the mechanics for space combat were pretty new to me. Ground combat is a little more true to standard, but with the added variable of a team it had enough novelty to keep it fun. The integration of the Star Trek experience was great, I think big Trek fans will love playing this game. The graphics are really appealing and a welcome breath of fresh air compared to the rampant fantasy MMOs we have now. The character customization is amazing, but surely MMO veterans would expect no less from Cryptic. There were a few annoyances I found in certain areas in terms of playability, but nothing that would prevent me from recommending this game to someone looking for a space MMO. It's really hard to quantify the long-term viability of STO. Right now I would guess that it's not great based on what I've seen so far, but if they continue to develop it, iron out the rough spots and keep new content flowing it could do just fine.

Overall, this game felt like a combination between EVE Online and City of Heroes (possibly Champions Online as well, haven't tried that one). They took some of the more interesting aspects of EVE and bundled it with some of the stronger qualities of CoH. Unfortunately it appears that right now the potent crafting component of EVE was left behind, at least from what I could see. I think it would have helped the stickiness of STO to incorporate a strong crafting element into the game and I hope that as it matures they will do just that. If not, I don't think I could recommend this game to crafting enthusiasts. As the game stands now, the crafting is too light to attract players who consider tradeskills to be a valuable part of MMO gaming.