Cryptic surprised and, let’s be honest, upset a lot of fans this week when they announced that the eagerly anticipated Klingon faction would be PvP-centric for launch. We called up Cryptic Studios COO Jack Emmert to get the scoop on what they’re really all about, clear up some misconceptions about them, and find out why they made this choice.
“With any video game there are always hard choices to make,” said Emmert by phone as he walked around their Los Gatos, California office complex. “It’s just a simple matter of you have a certain amount of time and you have a certain size team and you have to make decision about how you’d make the best product at launch.”
The decision was thus made to make sure that the Klingon faction was a big part of launch. He admitted that there was no way with an IP as big as Star Trek that they could do everything everyone, himself included, wanted. He lamented the lack of Romulan and Cardassian factions specifically as things he’d have loved to have included given unlimited time and money.
For them, the biggest hurdle was fitting both away mission and space content into the game. Almost no MMORPG has ever launched with both, he pointed out (the only exception being Pirates of the Burning Sea) and it’s an absolutely massive undertaking.
“My own philosophy with MMORPGs is that if you don’t have it at launch, you might as well not bother having it,” he said, citing City of Heroes as an example of this.
Two of the biggest complaints people had is that it launched without PvP and without crafting, yet when they added those two elements later on they saw only negligible subscription growth. The fact is, people make their buying decisions early and he felt it was important to have Klingons in the game, even if they were not as deep as everyone would like, from day one.
“If I sit back and wait for it to be perfect, frankly people aren’t going to wait around for it,” he added.
To those who are disappointed, he promised them that what is there at launch is only the basis for more to come.
“Take a look at the history of Cryptic Studios, take a look at how much stuff we put out after we launch a game,” he said in reference to their City of Heroes franchise and more recently Champions Online.
One of their philosophies, a refrain I’ve also heard from Bill Roper many times, is that they really want to be more reactive to their player base. While admitting past faults, Emmert underlined this:
“One of the lessons I’ve learned over the years is not to be too rigid as a designer, always try to keep a very open mind, because the players will tell you what they want,” he told us. “In the past I got tunnel vision in what I wanted, maybe I was right, maybe I wasn’t, but sometimes the players are right too and I’d rather go with their right than my right.”
So, what will the Klingon faction really be? Emmert insists that it is a full fledged faction within the game and not just a glorified version of Lord of the Rings Online’s Monster Play. They have a full set of skills, their own bridge officers, their own ships, their own territory, their own advancement and their own missions.
Part of this belief has come from the fact that Klingons have to be unlocked. When you buy the game, you must complete the first sector of Federation content, at which point the ability to create someone in the Klingon faction is unlocked. This is a global unlock and must only be done once.
“We want players to focus on a particular aspect of gameplay and kind of learn the basics of space and ground combat before entering into PvP,” he said. The Federation content is already a lot to take in and while much of the Klingon content is different, the basic mechanics of ground and space remain the same. He added, only half joking, that they only needed to do one tutorial this way.
Having played the Beta, this amount of content they’re asking players to complete is trivial. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.
Once unlocked, the Klingon faction has a full slate of races, just like their own Federation counterparts. Emmert gave us an exclusive first peek at what they are. Players can choose between Klingon, Gorn, Orion, Lethean, Nausicaan, and of course the custom alien option.
Bridge officers will be roughly the same, with a few surprises. Specifically, there will be a Borg officer. I immediately assumed “Seven of Nine,” but Emmert said no, that this one will be something different. What that is, we will have to wait and see.
These groups have all the same abilities and ranks to progress through as the Federation, the difference is that the bulk of the content will be directed at PvP, although perhaps not quite as exclusive as some thought.
“It’s not just limited to PvP, but it’s just not the same depth of PvE content as the Federation,” he explained. There will still be encounters in the Sector Space. These are visible on the map, and analogous to the random encounters people find in older RPGs like Baldur’s Gate as they travel to place to place (although being a real time game, you can also avoid them by simply flying around). They provide an outlet for some PvE, which includes a nice way to get some interesting loot.
And again, on the theme of player feedback, Emmert hopes that their next step with Klingons comes from the community. Will there be an advanced territory control PvP game with the Federation? Will they have full “episodes” of PvE content? He wants the players to tell them once they’ve tried the game.
Klingon space will be divided into two core sectors. The first is an area only for Klingons where they are free to fight each other. The second is an area, the neutral zone, where Federation and Klingon space overlap. Both will have a lot of content.
“When you go into that system it will spawn a PvP arena map and then you fight it out,” Emmert explained.
All PvP in Star Trek Online, initially, will take place in instances. This, for one, eliminates the problems of population imbalance, which could really get out of control in a single shard game.
Curiously, Emmert himself mentioned Dark Age of Camelot’s use of three factions as a specific example of faction based PvP done right. Star Trek will initially only have two factions, but as the conflict is limited to instances, he doesn’t foresee possible imbalances in population and possibly skill (given you would assume most hardcore PvPers will role Klingons) as being a game breaking problem.
“Am I concerned that there might be imbalances? I guess it’s possible, but that’s why there’s Klingon vs. Klingon,” he added. If the Starfleet side tends to shy away from PvP, the PvP race obviously has something to do.
The current largest encounter is 10 vs. 10, and at launch they will have 10 different maps for players to use (four ground, six space), as well as a variety of generated maps.
PvP content comes in four brands, which we learned about in a touch more detail than their official release today:
•Challenges: This is when two players or groups simply want to fight. Unlike Champions Online, which has this fight in the public areas, the two are sent off into an instance. These are available in space and in avatar form. They will use the generated instances.
•Arenas: These are in pre-fabricated maps. Players go into space and enter the queues, which then assigns them to teams and matches them against like-skilled opponents.
•Scenarios: Unlike Arenas, which are just about fighting it out, these have specific goals. Think of Battlefield area control as a pretty good analogy.
•War Zone: These are static areas players can explore from both factions. They have PvE objectives, but also run the risk of running into PvP enemies.
With all this PvP though, I wondered how players got loot. Cryptic traditionally doesn’t believe in heavy death penalties, and this hasn’t changed. You won’t lose your stuff when you die in PvP.
Loot will come about in three core ways: PvE encounters, rewards for PvP encounters (the game tells you the reward for, say, an Arena and you can win it) and also loot within PvP combat. They are not sure on the exact mechanic yet, Beta will determine this, but there will be loot for people to get. For example, it is possible that when you destroy another player ship it will drop something, even though the player them self didn’t actually lose anything.
The Klingon faction also has its own list of ships, which Cryptic outlined in its release today. There is no overlap, and the highlights are that Klingon birds can cloak, are a bit more maneuverable and tend to be more head on.
One big difference in ships is the Carrier. This is unlike any Starfleet ship and Emmert sounded positively giddy about it. It is in the highest tier of ships and is the only one in the game capable of launching fighters at the enemy.
So, for launch, this is what the Klingon faction will really be all about. It no doubt won’t please every player, but Emmert is convinced that it is better than the alternative of not having them at all. It’s something he pushed for and mandated for launch. Now it’s there for everyone and rolling into the Closed Beta this week.
Is it enough? Would you rather they waited and did more with it? Let us know.