Memo to Away Team – STAY OUT OF BAD

Star Trek online has surprised me in a lot of ways. When I found the game for 9 dollars in a store and decided to give it a try I never expected to remain playing it past the initial 30 day free subscription, I had heard to many bad things about it. However I have decided to continue playing the game because quite frankly I am having a good time and have enjoyed most of the game play. That being said there are a number of things in this game that drive me crazy and this one has gotten the best of my mild manners.

            Of all the quirky little annoyances that this game possesses, away team missions are quite frankly the most annoying. I can accept the fact that they are basically the same mission every time just reanimated differently (I got used to this in City of Heroes/Villains) and I can deal with the apparent lack of intelligence of the enemy combatants. (I still chuckle every time I approach a group of combatants and they are wondering around in circles without direction or purpose.) The one thing I cannot stand is stupidity in my crew.

            When I toss a grenade into a group of baddies and the green glowing flames of pain are still on the ground, why must my crew always run into it? Even the enemy seems to understand that the simple philosophy of “this is bad” better than my own crew. This even goes to when after the battle is over and I run around the bad stuff, my crew for some reason doesn’t. Instead they take the shortest path even if that path incases them in green flames that slowly ticks little red numbers of health from them. It only makes it worse when they do this several times in one mission, it’s as if they are too stupid to learn from their mistakes and charge right into the bad a second or third time.

This might seem minor for the most part, but it destroys emersion and frustrates a player who is the leader of their tiny band of people. Ground combat is usually very disorganized and chaotic as people run around in all directions firing randomly. I can tolerate almost every other failing of away team combat in this game, but I just can’t take the mindless running into bad things. Maybe it’s just my years of raiding that has trained me to hate this with a passion, but I think this deserves a patch. Cryptic please fix my crew, they are not very bright.