What they need to do is just say, “Yeah, it’s a freaking MULTIplayer game, you can’t play solo.” And then build a robust system into the game that makes it easy and intuitive to find other people to join your crew…specifically other people you WANT to join your crew.

Ideally, you’d have your “guild” model, where you and your buddies crew the same ship together all the time, but for the casual player, you’d log on and then enter yourself into a sort of crew roster. Crews looking for members could search the roster and find out what skills you have, how long you’ve been playing the game, your level, and maybe some kind of player rating like Xbox Live uses (but, one that actually functions in some meaningful way).

Crews seeking members could also be in a roster, so you could search for crews in need of a ship’s doctor, and then see similar information about that ship’s current crew. This would encourage people to work together, improving pick-up teams by making sure people could choose who they want on the team, and making it unwise to be a total d-bag because the rating system would make it hard to get on a crew.

Every MMORPG I’ve played either has some kind of retardedly primitive player/team search method, or none at all. And this is a core feature of these games! I’ve given up on a lot of them because I couldn’t be bothered to figure out what esoteric chat channel and commands I needed to use to find a team, plus having to decipher the game’s particular abbreviated jargon. “M34 ScaPo lf millfarm/elg team.” Uh, yeah.

Sadly, Ed hit the nail on the head with his lamentation about the true spirit of Star Trek lost in a violence-oriented game. Part of what made Star Trek so appealing to many people is the humanity of the characters. Making each person a phaser-toting soldier leaves that to the wayside. Did they forget that Picard spent 7 seasons trying to convince Q that humans weren’t the uber-violent race he accused them of being? Also, too bad.

You could also make it so that a few players have different characters on the ship. So Tactical, Engineering and Helm would be important in a fight but when dealing with exploration, you take over ass first officer, science officer and doctor or some such assemble af team members. That way a player won’t be SOL just because his character has a limited role in a specific mission.

I really like the idea Ed. I think that would be a helluvalotta fun!