Is it because wrist-rescuing phaser auto-fire would further oversimplify space skirmishes? Should you even bother with extraordinary measures to keep your craft cohesive, or just let the respawn timer handle the healing? Can the human brain suffer a repetitive stress injury? Crush arbitrary numbers of functionally indistinguishable aliens long enough, and - as your hand cramps into a claw, and you catch yourself contemplating the comparative durability of every keyboard you've ever broken, and your mom/roommate/wife/whoever comes by and dramatically closes the bedroom door because they're disgusted by the sound of that single key clicking again and again, and your friends on Ventrilo tell you to turn your f**king microphone off because it sounds like they're listening in on a busy Mumbai data entry center - you might begin to wonder why you have to mash the space bar so much. But here, the corrosive effect of repetitive play kicks in. Scrapping it up in space seems more involved at first glance, with subsystem power and shield management combining with the need to dish out phaser fire to opposing pilots. perseverance in the face of certain boredom.
Not that kicking the bucket counts for anything: With no death penalty to discourage poor play, every encounter becomes a matter of perseverance. Ground combat is typically a two-button business, and the assistance of a bridge officer (STO's simplistic answer to MMORPG pets) drastically reduces your odds of dying. Unfortunately, STO is simple and shallow. Chess grandmasters operate on the same simple ruleset as the scrubbiest neophyte, but the former understands intricate strategies that elude the latter. Simplicity doesn't always preclude depth, just as complexity doesn't always guarantee it. This data looks complicated, but it's patently meaningless to the player. Accessibility is one thing shallow is something else entirely. Rather, it's overly simplistic, devoid of depth to such a degree that success is all-but-guaranteed in spite of the absurd web of incomprehensible numbers and terminology attached to every item, skill, and ability. Casual implies easily accessible, and STO - like all of developer Cryptic Studios' games and many massively multiplayer games in general - is anything but. Lifetime subscription owners are quick to label STO's repetitive combat as casual and arcade-y, but neither marker quite matches up. After what felt like eons of quest grind, I'm finally tooling around in Deep Space 9's Defiant. New spacecraft and memorable locales act as the sole enticements for advancement, and obtaining or reaching them is only slightly less dull than spinning that one-armed bandit's dials for hours on end. Just as games in a gambling joint rely on the psychology of addiction to lighten wallets, Star Trek Online seems to leverage the same principles to generate sustainable subscription numbers. Tug a slot machine enough times, and the ting-a-ling of instant income might convince you to continue emptying your change bucket, but it won't make yanking the lever much more enjoyable.
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