Star Trek Online's Art Director Speaks

Uniforms:

The uniforms in Star Trek have been, and continue to be, one of the single most dentifiable elements of the franchise. We felt that we had to get the uniforms right and that when we did, the design cues and solutions we had come up with would go a long way towards informing how we evolve the rest of the Star Trek universe for STO. As well, we had to tackle the quintessential MMO problem of character customization. How can we make the MMO player experience in Star Trek payoff when we have a world based in uniformity? How can we make our version of the Federation uniforms be personal and malleable enough while still retaining the team feel that is Star Trek? What you see is our solution (well at least 4 images towards it). We had to keep the department colours along with the area between the chin and the chest (shoulder area). These are the key elements of the Start Trek uniform and our design had to work with them. As long as we kept the shoulder area of the uniform "feeling" like Star Trek we realized we could add other elements to the uniform. We’ve also made the uniforms more visibly purposeful so that departments could be distinguished by more than just colours. This has allowed us to add specific features, details and add-ons for every department and every rank which will allow players to differentiate themselves from one another and to wear their accomplishments and progress as all MMO’s allow you to do. To allow for player customization and gear / detail add-ons to the uniforms we had to make rank a much more visible element in the uniform designs...