Al Rivera Talks Star Trek Online Page 2

02 Nov 2009 at 15:13:23 by Bill Vaughan

Do you intend for there to be other playable factions added at a later date or will there always just be two? The Borg would be an awesome faction to play...

There is no shortage of ideas from the IP.  Certainly, we have considered Romulan, Borg, Dominion and more. We are not committed to anything specific at this time – we’re just focusing on Federation and Klingons right now.

What actually happens to your ship when you are defeated in battle?

You will suffer a death penalty – we are iterating on that now, but it will likely involve loss of some crewmen, and damage to some of your items. However, you don’t lose your ship.  You can respawn at the last unlocked respawn point.

What can players look forward to at end game once the levelling portion has been done? Assuming you already have a pretty good ship, what else will there be to do?

STO is a skill based system, so you can continue to advance your character’s skills, as well as your Bridge Officers Skills. Your Bridge Officers and their skills can vary greatly, so training them and giving them new seating assignments in new ships really changes your gameplay. You can basically re-invent yourself just by changing ships and Bridge Officer skills. You will be able to acquire the resources you need to accomplish this by playing end-game PvP, raids, and endless procedurally-generated exploration of Star Cluster content.

The game is based 30 years after 'Star Trek Nemesis', so many characters from the films or TV series will still be alive. Who can we expect to bump into, if any, and will any original actors lend their voices to the game?

You’ll see a few – friend and foe alike - but more often you will interact with many of their children and other relatives.

Champions Online launched recently and, after a couple of early hiccups, the game seems to be doing very well. Did you learn anything from the launch?

Since we share the same code base, we have been able to benefit from all the performance enhancements and stability that has been put into the core engine. This has really given us a head start. Cryptic also feels very strongly about listening to its community, so the feedback Champions players are given are considered for all our titles.

The latest Star Trek film created an alternate timeline so we assume that future films, possibly TV series too, will be based in that timeline. Do you think STO marks the end of story-telling in the 'Prime' universe?

I don’t believe that. Comics and Novels continue to come out about the Prime Universe. Events in STO take place in the Prime Universe, but our back history starts from the events in the last movie and the Star Trek Countdown comic. The fiction of STO in the Prime Universe is rich and deep and anything can happen. I don’t think it was an accident that the last movie left both timelines separate and intact, but if you are asking me if we will ever see the Prime Universe on screen or on TV, you’ll have to ask CBS.

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