I have been introduced to a new game lately, and I find myself playing a lot of it; quite against my will. The game is called “hide and go aggravate” and is a new twist on one of everyone’s childhood favorite game that involves seeking – and believe me if you find yourself an unwilling participant in a game of “hide and go aggravate” you will indeed do a lot of seeking, but very little findings, for that is the nature, and the purpose of the game.
The game recently arose out of player vs. player (pvp) in Star Trek Online (STO). It is one of those examples of emergent gameplay that are the result of player taking the path of least resistance. For those not acquainted with pvp in Star Trek Online, there are both ground and space combat matches. Those pvp matches set in space go until one side or the other gains 15 points…without a time limit. Unfortunately (at least unfortunately for my peace of mind) cloaking technology (making a ship disappear for those one or two of you out there who have never seen Star Trek) is such a major part of the Star Trek universe that they couldn’t leave it out without the complaints reaching a deafening din. You would think then that the side having use of cloaking technology (the Klingons) would be the one making the most use of it to prolong a match indefinitely.
You would think.
But it isn’t.
As a Federation player (think Alliance vs. Horde for all you Warcraft players out there) I only rarely had to wait until the Klingons and their cloaked ships came out of hiding. Perhaps that is because they knew just how easy it was to wipe up the arena with our warp plasma ejected from our exploding ships. However, now that my Federation Liberated Borg character has reached the level of rear admiral “OMG what’s that on your face” I have been playing more of my Klingon character. More often than not (at least in the lower levels) I find myself circling for what seems like an eternity while the Federation players hide…somewhere. And they have become very, very good at it. More than once I have found myself logging off the game in disgust. The odd factor in this is that Cryptic has arranged pvp matches so that win or lose, every side gains. If this were truly about gaining something it would benefit the Federation players most to get the match over quickly if they had little chance of winning. After all, in the time they spent trying to aggravate the Klingons they could have lost that match and been half way through another (which is called “power leveling” by the way, but that is another story).
After spending an hour chatting with Joe Blancato from Cryptic Marketing during yesterdays recording session of show 57, it seems that the STO team has a lot of changes in mind – hopefully one of them will do something to address “hide and go aggravate.”
See you online,
Julie Whitefeather
(posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster)