Life and death in the solar winds – you can see it above in the picture from late closed beta. My ship is the Tier One Federation ship you see above…the one that is still in one piece. Now being a project manager rather than an astrophysicistI have no idea if said solar winds actually blow through space or not. The only blowing through space I am certain of is the space immediately following our Boston Terrier. We call her the gaseous anomaly, and with good reason. But blow the solar winds do and right through the pvp arena in Star Trek Online. This particular arena is one of my favorites. In the picture above you can see a Klingon Bird-of-Prey appearing (or disappearing) right after having blown a Federation ship to bits.
The reason for the picture above brings to mind an issue. Keen from Keen and Graev (a former guest on our show) has a nice discussion on death penalties in general which you can read here. Where Star Trek Online (STO) is concerned the death penalty has been one of debate during the closed and open beta. Mind you the official forums of any game is sort of a dangerous place to go for any sort of a decent discussion on an issue.
The discussion seem to range into areas such as “STO can’t even call itself an MMORPG” to people happy the way it is all the way up to things such as insults based on dubious parentage and being told to “know thyself” in the biblical sense. If you are one of those individuals who think the death penalty is fine like it is, it seems that the executive producer for Star Trek Online agrees with you and here is why:
“Well, first and foremost, it’s a game. We thought of a whole bunch of different ways to do interesting things for respawn, but it really came down to getting players back into the action. You don’t lose your ship [if it blows up]; you just respawn at the beginning of the map with a little damage done to your systems. But overall, we don’t want you to spend 80 hours getting that Sovereign class vessel, get owned, and then lose that ship.” – Craig Zinkievich
Personally, I couldn’t agree more. One of the more irritating aspects of Eve Online is the risk of “losing it all” in one match (and that usually happens in Eve Online PvP). There may be some people who feel that particular aspect of game play gives Eve Online it’s “white knuckles” feeling. While that may be true, what it generally means is the person with the biggest gun wins, and the match is almost never a fair measure of anything but time spent training and money spend on ships. I do understand that there may be a bit of balancing to do where the pvp is concerned, and that is only natural as it is, after all, only the first day of the official launch. In the end, the pvp in Star Trek Online will be more of a measure of tactics taking place on a level playing field and that means alot more fun.
It was not that long ago Keen made a comment in a beta impressions article wishing whoever took Ferengi out of the game…well lets just say that the wish would have been very painful had it actually been carried out. Well Keen will be one happy man today as he will no doubt find out that he and his brother can go back to role playing Ferengi. The only catch, of course, is that it will cost 80 Cryptic points to do so. Since Cryptic points currently run 500 for $6.25 that mean it will cost all of a dollar to play your favorite character. Is it worth it? If you like Ferengi is sure is, and if it helps keep the game in the black I am all for it. Now through in the ability to make a living hauling goods and defending those goods with your freighter and I will be the first one in line. Until then you will see my Liberated Borg online.
See You Online,
Julie Whitefeather
(posted by Webmaster for Julie Whitefeather)