Balance Changes Beaming into Star Trek: Online

Cryptic Studios has recently unveiled a major project aimed at re-balancing a great number of the abilities and items in Star Trek: Online.

Fresh off of their wildly successful 7th-Anniversary expansion, Cryptic Studios is wasting no time in continuing its improvements for Star Trek: Online.

Long time players of the Trek MMO have historically criticized 3 major areas regarding the game:

• Balancing
• Exploration
• Lack of Content

With the release of 3 content updates last year and the 20+ sector expansion for the Alpha Quadrant back in January, there was little doubt what area the studio would focus on next: Balance.

New Stealth Mode in-game. Courtesy of Star Trek: Online. Produced by Cryptic Studios

An article published a few days from Star Trek: Online’s associate system designer, Jon Leavens details the “guiding principles” that his team enforced to ensure “that the game, as much as possible, only gets better.” 

The Principles:

• “Increase the fun – Games are about having fun, and players should not be made to feel that their fun is “wrong.”
• Player investment retains value – While things need to be adjusted, a setup that was optimized before should still be useful and effective afterwards.
• Choices should be meaningful – Anywhere the game gives you a choice, there should be no choice that you always take nor one you never take.”

The article also provided a short list of changes coming to ground combat. This included a new stealth module, combadge activities, and an update to security escorts.

A full patch implementing these updates will be released on the Star Trek: Online test server ‘Tribble‘ within a few days. This means, barring any major issues, we can expect to see these updates hitting the live server before the end of the month.

There is no word on whether or not this will affect console players of Star Trek: Online, but these updates will no doubt eventually trickle down into those systems as well.

Regardless of your feelings on these changes, you have to admire Cryptic’s attempt at keeping their game fresh and fun for all players. Stay tuned in for a follow-up article as we break down all of the balancing updates once they get released.

Star Trek Online is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online game designed by Cryptic Studios and its publisher, Perfect World Entertainment. 

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What do you think? Are you excited about the changes coming to Star Trek: Online? Let us know on Facebook or in the comments below.