It's an MMO, but not as we know it

When I'm playing an MMO, or writing about one, I often draw comparisons to other games in the genre that I've played. I've noticed recently that Star Trek Online doesn't come up very often when I do this.

 

 

Some of this is down to STO being sci-fi rather than fantasy and direct parallels to many other MMOs don't suggest themselves so readily. Fantasy settings remain the default for MMOs: the 'Big 5' are all set in fantasy worlds. It's not just that though. It's got a lot to do with STO being very different from other MMOs.

 

Most significantly, the fact that the action takes place both in space and on the ground is like nothing I've played in any other game in this genre. Yes, Star Wars The Old Republic has space combat, but that's a mini-game at best and entirely extraneous to the core experience. STO does give the initial impression that space combat is the main focus of the game, but as I've progressed through the episodes the ground mode has come more and more into its own and no longer feels like a secondary mode that's there only because it has to be. Indeed, at times it takes over completely for long stretches of some story arcs. That said, ground encounters can get chaotic - rather like running a Mastermind in City of Heroes - and space combat does feel more polished.

The pace of combat in STO also differs drastically from other games in the genre. It's true that my Bird of Prey is built for stealth and speed, not resilience, but even so there are times when I can get blown to bits in literally seconds. Nor do I fare any better on the ground if and when all the enemies decide to ignore my away team and focus fire on me. To be fair, a lot of the time I can do the same to them.

I'm not a one man army. There have been a few moments when my entire away team has been down and I've pulled off a win against multiple foes, but that's very much the exception and not the rule and tends to involve a lot of kiting. Even on normal difficulty I rarely get the impression that I'm wading through trash mobs on the way to the 'real' fight. A lot of encounters can go wrong if you're not at least a little bit wary, and quickly. There's not much of the attrition that is so characteristic of MMO combat.

That's less true in space, where a fight against a powerful enemy ship can run longer than a boss fight in most games but at the same time be more engaging because there's usually more to it than just hammering away at an overlong health bar. Support skills matter. So does positioning.

Another important difference is in the character building. As I said, my captain is not a one man army but rather part of a team comprised of herself, her bridge officers and her ship; all of which offers endless opportunities for customization. This is not something that comes up in other MMOs and the closest comparison I can think of is SWTOR's companions... or rather SWTOR's companions before BioWare gutted that part of their game. 

So the reason I draw less comparisons to STO than I do to other MMOs is because this game is so notably its own thing. Sometimes I think it doesn't get nearly enough credit for that.