G. B. Jackson: The Opinionated One

G. B. Jackson
The Opinionated One

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It breaks the mold?

In a discussion on the official forums, players once again asked for the ability to tilt their ships up and down at greater than 45 degrees. And this is what Star Trek Online Team member dstahl had to say about it:

This was talked about quite a bit during beta - but it really is a design decision to disallow flying inverted because it breaks the mold of what we remember from Star Trek battles. How many times have you seen ships inverted in Star Trek? It may not be scientific - but its an aesthetic quality that makes Star Trek combat have a "tall ships" - cinematic feel to it.

We have toyed around with the pitch angles some - but it starts to become frustrating to most players when we test it because you'd be suprised how difficult it is for most people to grasp firing arcs on a 2D plane - and when you add more and more 3D - many people get very upset. (I know - i've been in the play tests)

You may be like me and have no problems with 3D orientation and could probably have no problems and get a thrill out of full on 3D combat - but its a huge negative point to the majority of players who tested it.

We are very happy with where it is now - and it would take a huge amount of proof to the contrary before I could see us changing this.

It breaks the mold? I have to call foul on that excuse... As it is now, the very nature of Star Trek Online breaks the mold of what any dedicated viewer of the Star Trek shows remembers those shows as being like... In those shows, the protagonists were never depicted as blood-thirsty mass-murderers, killing civilians, scientists and unborn babies. Someone in defense of the game's "kill everything that moves" approach to problem solving asked, "How many Klingons do you think Kirk killed?", which someone else countered with, "Not as many as I killed this morning before breakfast..."

If cryptic really cared about not breaking the Star Trek mold, then the entire game would be modeled after how things played out in the Star Trek shows, not just one aspect... And honestly, Space combat IS about the only element of STO that was actually designed to accurately represent its counterpart in the shows. But if Cryptic would be completely honest with themselves, they would admit that there were a few times, where scenes in an epic space battle broke the general Trek space combat mold. In TNG's "All Good Things..." The Enterprise-D was seen flying straight up, underneath some Klingon ships. In DS9's many space battles, ships were seen making many mold-breaking moves.

So it would seem that the real reason for sticking with this very limited space navigation system has little to do with not breaking the mold, and a lot to do with Cryptic wanting to railroad something that they think is cool into the game in spite of what many people think. The fact that people have been asking for more freedom of movement since before the game launched validates the request.

In the same thread Community Member UncleRomulus responded to dstahl by saying:

This may very well be true. However, you guys seem to have gone out of your way to design some areas to demonstrate this limitation extensively. It's not fun to spawn in with an anomaly or an objective directly above or below you.

If you are dead set against making realistic space flight, then stop making the maps in such a a way where corkscrewing is necessary.

I think that really, this would be the easiest solution to the issue... In existing maps where anomalies and/or objectives are placed, Cryptic should make sure that they are spread out far enough that they are in a straight line from each other and from the player spawn points that they can be directly reached within the scope of the 45° pitch limit. and they should do this for all existing maps, as well as maps they have yet to create.

In Christ,
G. B. Jackson

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