by Dalmarus on Nov 30, 2009
You
can create the greatest game in the universe, but if it
isn’t full of more loot than players can imagine,
you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle with your
playerbase the moment it releases. We managed to track down Star Trek
Online Producer, Dan Stahl, and System Designer, Joe Harrington, and
convinced them to
enlighten us on the importance gear plays in this upcoming title from
Cryptic Studios.
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Joe Harrington
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Dan
:
Ten Ton Hammer: That brings up a good point. What sort of storage
capabilities do you have? Is there a bank-type thing or a vault on your
ship where you can store all your goodies? You know, for all the pack
rats in us?
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Dan: We've been making some
modifications to that, but the way it is right now, is that you as the
captain have a personal inventory that is shared amongst all your
entities. So, for example, there are a certain number of slots you have
and right now, everything goes into those bags or whatever you want to
call them. We call them transfer bays or cargo bays. Those cargo bays
are shared among all your people. So when you get an item, or pick
something up, it just goes into your cargo bays. You don't have to
switch to a certain person and look at their cargo. It's all shared
amongst the player.
Ten
Ton Hammer: That makes sense. What about tiers of gear? Are there
separate tiers up to and including an epic weapon or armor set?
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Joe:
Yes. The gear progresses. It's sort of in a traditional fashion. We
have your basic gear, which is just a baseline item. We'll have gear
that is less common. We're using a color system to differentiate the
rarity of items. The additional rarity adds additional mods.
So like, I have a gun that does 10 points of damage, that's the
baseline item. I have a gun that does 10 points of damage and it has a
2% chance to crit, so that would be less common. As you'd expect, as
you progress through the game, your character will have more and more
of the rare items.
We do plan on having some really high-end stuff in there for players to
discover.
Ten
Ton Hammer: Cool. When you get bigger and better ships, do they have
more slots where you can attach more upgrades?
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Joe:
Yes, they do. They also introduce some extra characteristics. So the
ship you start the game with is pretty vanilla. I hate to use the
phrase, but it's probably the most accurate. When you get past your
initial beginning and get your first promotion, Starfleet will offer
you opportunities to try other ships that have different
characteristics.
Dan was talking about his Escort ship earlier. It's sort of like a
Defiant in that it's fast, it's aggressive, and it's agile. Maybe a
little thin on some of its defenses, but it's definitely of the good
offense/good defense type. Then you have a science ship that offers a
different type of gameplay where you'll be using different types of
powers and things. And then we've got the classic cruiser which is just
your stalwart, tough ship. It's flexible, capable, lots of people, and
is just a good, tough ship.
Dan:
I've found that the different classes of ships, because as you progress
you do get more and more slots in your ships, but they're specific to
the characteristics of that ship class. For example, in my tier one
Escort, I have more slots to put tactical gear in. So I can upgrade my
torpedoes, my phasers, and my beam weapons, but I don't have a lot of
options for upgrading my shields, engineering, or my science
capabilities.
That's kind of an interesting dynamic because I may get some really
good gear, but because I'm in an Escort ship, if I get that really
awesome science mod, I've only got one slot to use it in. You've got to
really pick and choose what you put there.
Joe:
The other thing too is the ships also determine the bridge officers you
assign, so you'll have more seats for more officers and the more
advanced ships open the door for more advanced bridge officers and
powers. So if you have a high-ranking science officer, he won't
necessarily be as capable in an Escort class ship as he would be in a
science vessel. You can also staff more science officers in a science
vessel than you can in say an escort.
Ten
Ton Hammer: All right.
style="font-weight: bold;">Dan:
We should also probably mention that certain gear is level capped or
rank classed. Like I can't just get that awesome tetryon beam and put
it in my light frigate. It doesn’t really work that way.
Ten
Ton Hammer: Right. Are you able to pick up armor and weapons from space
missions and conversely, are you able to pick up ship upgrades from
ground missions?
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Joe: Yes. From the missions
themselves, yes. The normal drops are still restricted to their domains
so you'll never see a Klingon warrior drop an impulse engine. With the
missions themselves, we're not trying to restrict ourselves because
frankly, so many of our missions are blended. You don't typically do a
mission that is all ground, or all space. A number of our missions have
a ground and space component to them. So I guess we should say that
mission rewards you get for complete the mission could be a ground or
space item.
Ten
Ton Hammer: With the rewards for these episodes and these missions, do
you have an option to select and choose your reward?
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style="font-weight: bold;">Joe:
Yes. We're trying to make sure that that's the case.
Ten
Ton Hammer: Is that an intelligent system where it will recognize what
your ship or class is and hence, offer an appropriate item or will it
list out everything, whether you need it or not?
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Joe:
At the moment, the system isn't so intelligent it can say, "Oh. You're
this class and have this type of ship so I'll offer you these items,"
It's much more generic. So we've been trying to make offerings that
provide some real choice.
So for example, let's say you get a kit for completing a mission. There
are three types of kits because there are three types of officers. So
we'll give you a choice of multiple kits. Like one for each class.
But there are also cases where the choice is more generic, like an
engine. So we'll give a choice of the high efficiency combat engine,
the high-speed engine, or the balanced engine. We try to have a mix of
both to try and make sure we keep it interesting.
Dan:
I find myself always spending time trying to figure out what loot I
want which I think is good. Because it means I really have to make a
choice. I want it all, but I can't have it all, you know?
Ten
Ton Hammer: Is there anything else you'd like to let our readers know
about the gear in STO?
Dan:
Joe mentioned it earlier, but I think this is the first time that
Cryptic has really pushed heavily to make gear an important part of the
game. Cryptic's known for being able to customize your character and
altering your appearance, so this is really exciting for us because not
only are we allowing you to do that, but we're now allowing you to get
gear that then supplements that costume. That's something that we've
worked really hard to sort of find the right balance between allowing
you to look the way you want to look and yet let the gear also kind of
define your character.
Ten
Ton Hammer: Very cool. Thanks a lot for taking the time out to talk
with us today.