Impressions from PAX: STO Space Combat

I could really sum this up in one word, "Fantastic" but I should really go into a bit more depth since some people might prefer that (you know who you are)

We've had leaked video which we could see a tiny bit of in-game footage but nothing that had a camera pointed directly at the screen. Thanks to Tamgros and Vmann we've had loads of screenshots to check through and a video showing off the space section of the game as well as some ground combat.

The main source of information for the game has been the Dev chats that Cryptic have held in IRC and unfortunately for them (at least from my perspective) they didn't really speak well of the game. The information was there but not with any excitement or interest which really carried over and made me lose interest. Thankfully what they lack in PR skills they make up in games design and the videos really explain what I think they were trying to do in the chats.

I quickly noticed how familar it looks in MMO terms, we had the quest helper on the right hand side, our skill bars down the bottom and of course we had enemies to kill. One Starship versus a few Birds of Prey. From a graphical point of view it was gorgeous just watching the ships fighting it out. It had a real cinematic quality to it even though a fan was playing, nothing staged. I hope combat will stay that interesting throughout the game because it is usually one of the first things that gets old very fast.

The actual mechanics to combat was great too. I liked the way you charged or loaded each weapon and had up to 30 seconds to use it before it had to be charged again and you can really see how positioning is going to be important in larger scale battles or even against a "higher level" ship.

Exploration is looking like its going to be fun, one thing which is easy to forget (and I do it quite often) in reality the size of your ship is really the same size as a character in Champions Online graphically so the scale of each sector could be massive and judging by the demo on show at PAX it's definitely going to be like that. I know Zinc has said on record that you won't be able to see players on the other side of a sector and I fully believe it now.

There was a quick glimpse of traveling through a sector at full impulse which seems to be fast enough to get through each sector in a reasonable amount of time. They also showed off the animation for warping to different sectors which was cool, it's very true to the TV shows.

It was nice to hear the Cryptic rep in the background of one of the videos speaking of the game telling you when an enemy might be out of your league. I know it's an expected feature in MMO's these days but it unintentionally might have answered a fear that I've been having for the game.

So far STO is looking to be a single player experience. Cryptic have gone above and beyond to make the game as enjoyable as possible for the loners of the galaxy as it will be for everyone else which is great but I really want as many opportunities to have massive space battles as possible where players have to work together to take down a stronger enemy.

Even the ground combat lets you bring your bridge officers who replace real players when there is space on missions with you but I'm saving ground combat for another blog!

Overall the space sections of STO is insanely polished for game that isn't even in beta yet. It could be released as a stand alone game and it would still do very well.