Streamlining the mission journal, waste of available resources

snowwolf

Hello fellow players!

Now Streamlining the mission journal and moving some missions around and making some no longer be mandatory is alright, what I don't like is when missions are deleted. I for one miss the old Q missions, but nothing will be deleted this time just made optional like patrol missions.

However...

Star Trek Online wrote:

We’ve updated the Klingon War for Federation characters. Since this is the earliest content that most Federation characters encounter, we wanted to focus on missions that told a tight story of the Federation in 2409, and on how that story’s entangled with shapeshifter infiltration of governments, an infiltration that in turn sparked the entire conflict involving the Gorn, the Klingons, and the Federation. We’ve done some light polish work on several of the Klingon War episodes, including “Stranded in Space,” “Diplomatic Orders,” “Researcher Rescue,” “Secret Orders,” and “Doomsday Device.” All of these episode have received some updates, whether in the form of new visual FX, new characters, streamlining of difficult spots, or even just squashing little bugs.

Thirdly, we’ve taken out several of the Klingon War missions while we work on improving them, too. We want to give these missions the polish that will make them better, in the form of updated environments, streamlined gameplay, and a solid story. Since we can’t leave these missions in play while they’re under construction, we’ve removed them for now.

Now this is a huge problem and a waste of resources, let me explain why. Star Trek Online has always had the problem of some parts being new and polished while other area's are always in worse in overal presentation.

Earth Space Dock and New Romulus looks very well made in a graphical sense compared to First City on Qo'nos, going to First City on Qo'nos is such a graphical step down it's almost like changing games.

This kind of huge difference in the level of graphics on buildings, textures and models are very diverse in Star Trek Online.

The missions spoken of being updated were already updated once before and I still think they can play on the level with the newer missions being released today, while for example the missions for the Klingon players suffer from old maps, old interiors and a lot of old models.

Instead of furthering improving these already once updated missions, I believe it would be better to focus this manpower on updating the rest of Star Trek Online.

Deep Space 9 was also recently overhauled, and just like in the start of the Dominion Faction and missions to the mirror universe on Bajor, we see that Star Trek Online is capable of some impressive graphical environments.

Instead of updating content that already looks alright, I believe the free manpower should be spent on updating other older parts of the game that do severaly need an update in order to be on par with the rest of the game.

Remember we removed exploration missions because they did not feel to be up to the level of quality the rest of the game has, as the game continues to develop in features, graphical and just environments and models in general. The older parts of the game will simply look worse and worse, and age more and more heavily.

I am going to go out on a limb and say the environments that the Klingon faction has to play with are looking quite horrible compared to the rest of the game.

There are other examples such as older Starbase interiors compared to ESD and DS9, but these are not.. Or at least, they do not feel as old as the rest of the game in many area's.

This huge diversity can be compared to when the Galaxy Class ship had a texture and model overhaul while the Nebula Class ship did not. When you looked at the two models in game the difference was day and night in difference.

Instead of updating environments for the missions in the Klingon War arc for Starfleet players, we should use this free manpower to update the environments around the rest of the game.

The enviornments for each faction and their specific missions should be somewhat on the same level. I understand the new things will always look better, but really.. Some of the area's, graphical assets, maps and general environments in Star Trek Online are day and night.

And this is coming from a long time Starfleet player, I was shocked when I saw how bad the maps and First City on Qo'nos really was. It was almost like playing a mod for a game rather than something that actually is... Base game.

Just imagine of for example First City was overhauled and brought up to the level with ESD and DS9 and New Romulus, the rest of the missions maps could be done later. Even Drozana Station and Risa delivers a better environmental experience than the homeplanet of a faction.

We've seen what the graphical engine in STO is capable of, imagine a fresh First City with for example rain and thunder like we saw when it was represented in The Next Generation paired with new models, buildings and higher resolution Klingon symbols, banners and markings.

Sorry for the long text, just wanted to share my thoughts. Do you guys agree?

Other area's of the game do need a several overhaul in order to be on par with the rest of the game, overhauling First City on Qo'nos would be a great start before other maps and environments would be done as well. Such as K-7, Starbase 39-Sierra.

Just like bridges and starship interiors, there has always been the problem that creating new maps takes time, a lot of time. But it seems the developers have free time since we go back to overhaul missions that already look alright. I believe this free time should be spent upgrading parts of the game that really do need an upgrade, even if that will take longer.

The biggest scare I can think of, imagine if a brand new player starts playing Star Trek Online and picks the Klingon's as their starting faction because maybe they like them from the TV series? When they are presented the awful condition Qo'nos is currently in from a graphical standpoint and the missions they are given, they will easily and quickly think this is the level of quality the rest of the game has. Which is not impressive, considering what we know Star Trek Online and it's awesome developers are capable of delivering.

Thank you for reading.

Just look at this old screenshot of the Star Trek Online installer if you have the DVD release from Atari, the artwork had high hopes for the game. It's a shame the Klingon homeworld never looked like that at all when it was first introduced.

vegeta50024

snowwolf#0563 wrote: »

Hello fellow players!

Now Streamlining the mission journal and moving some missions around and making some no longer be mandatory is alright, what I don't like is when missions are deleted. I for one miss the old Q missions, but nothing will be deleted this time just made optional like patrol missions.

However...

Star Trek Online wrote:

We’ve updated the Klingon War for Federation characters. Since this is the earliest content that most Federation characters encounter, we wanted to focus on missions that told a tight story of the Federation in 2409, and on how that story’s entangled with shapeshifter infiltration of governments, an infiltration that in turn sparked the entire conflict involving the Gorn, the Klingons, and the Federation. We’ve done some light polish work on several of the Klingon War episodes, including “Stranded in Space,” “Diplomatic Orders,” “Researcher Rescue,” “Secret Orders,” and “Doomsday Device.” All of these episode have received some updates, whether in the form of new visual FX, new characters, streamlining of difficult spots, or even just squashing little bugs.

Thirdly, we’ve taken out several of the Klingon War missions while we work on improving them, too. We want to give these missions the polish that will make them better, in the form of updated environments, streamlined gameplay, and a solid story. Since we can’t leave these missions in play while they’re under construction, we’ve removed them for now.

Now this is a huge problem and a waste of resources, let me explain why. Star Trek Online has always had the problem of some parts being new and polished while other area's are always in worse in overal presentation.

Earth Space Dock and New Romulus looks very well made in a graphical sense compared to First City on Qo'nos, going to First City on Qo'nos is such a graphical step down it's almost like changing games.

This kind of huge difference in the level of graphics on buildings, textures and models are very diverse in Star Trek Online.

The missions spoken of being updated were already updated once before and I still think they can play on the level with the newer missions being released today, while for example the missions for the Klingon players suffer from old maps, old interiors and a lot of old models.

Instead of furthering improving these already once updated missions, I believe it would be better to focus this manpower on updating the rest of Star Trek Online.

While it's true that the missions were already updated once before, the devs aren't simply just updating the graphics this time around. They are also working on the story, which I believe will also include some discovery elements in, considering that he wants to keep the Klingons from tearing themselves apart from not having war with the Federation. He feels the only way to keep the war going is to make sure the empire stays united.

Deep Space 9 was also recently overhauled, and just like in the start of the Dominion Faction and missions to the mirror universe on Bajor, we see that Star Trek Online is capable of some impressive graphical environments.

Instead of updating content that already looks alright, I believe the free manpower should be spent on updating other older parts of the game that do severaly need an update in order to be on par with the rest of the game.

Remember we removed exploration missions because they did not feel to be up to the level of quality the rest of the game has, as the game continues to develop in features, graphical and just environments and models in general. The older parts of the game will simply look worse and worse, and age more and more heavily.

I am going to go out on a limb and say the environments that the Klingon faction has to play with are looking quite horrible compared to the rest of the game.

There are other examples such as older Starbase interiors compared to ESD and DS9, but these are not.. Or at least, they do not feel as old as the rest of the game in many area's.

This huge diversity can be compared to when the Galaxy Class ship had a texture and model overhaul while the Nebula Class ship did not. When you looked at the two models in game the difference was day and night in difference.

Instead of updating environments for the missions in the Klingon War arc for Starfleet players, we should use this free manpower to update the environments around the rest of the game.

The enviornments for each faction and their specific missions should be somewhat on the same level. I understand the new things will always look better, but really.. Some of the area's, graphical assets, maps and general environments in Star Trek Online are day and night.

And this is coming from a long time Starfleet player, I was shocked when I saw how bad the maps and First City on Qo'nos really was. It was almost like playing a mod for a game rather than something that actually is... Base game.

Just imagine of for example First City was overhauled and brought up to the level with ESD and DS9 and New Romulus, the rest of the missions maps could be done later. Even Drozana Station and Risa delivers a better environmental experience than the homeplanet of a faction.

We've seen what the graphical engine in STO is capable of, imagine a fresh First City with for example rain and thunder like we saw when it was represented in The Next Generation paired with new models, buildings and higher resolution Klingon symbols, banners and markings.

Sorry for the long text, just wanted to share my thoughts. Do you guys agree?

Other area's of the game do need a several overhaul in order to be on par with the rest of the game, overhauling First City on Qo'nos would be a great start before other maps and environments would be done as well. Such as K-7, Starbase 39-Sierra.

Just like bridges and starship interiors, there has always been the problem that creating new maps takes time, a lot of time. But it seems the developers have free time since we go back to overhaul missions that already look alright. I believe this free time should be spent upgrading parts of the game that really do need an upgrade, even if that will take longer.

The biggest scare I can think of, imagine if a brand new player starts playing Star Trek Online and picks the Klingon's as their starting faction because maybe they like them from the TV series? When they are presented the awful condition Qo'nos is currently in from a graphical standpoint and the missions they are given, they will easily and quickly think this is the level of quality the rest of the game has. Which is not impressive, considering what we know Star Trek Online and it's awesome developers are capable of delivering.

Thank you for reading.

I understand that the klingon areas of the game are in need of much needed TLC. However, Qo'noS was already revamped once before, long before ESD got the revamp. The Federation is getting more detail though because Discovery is primarily Fed oriented and is going to be the faction people are primarily going to be playing the most when they start a new character.

davefenestrator

It's not a waste of resources because it will make the experience better for new players, giving them more reason to keep playing the game.

New players = new money = more resources to keep the game alive and for adding new content.

Just look at the rotting corpse of SWTOR (almost 2 years without new story content) to see why you should care about attracting the wallets of new players.

vegeta50024

somtaawkhar wrote: »

snowwolf#0563 wrote: »

but nothing will be deleted this time just made optional like patrol missions.

Incorrect, several missions are being deleted from the Klingon War arc in the new streamlining update.

You're only partially correct there. While they are being removed from the arc, its a temporary removal as they have plans to update the story and when they're done, return them to the arc.

vetteguy904

they are backfitting DS9 actors into the klingon arc. researcher rescue is now Dr Bashir, not the andorian guy

jrdobbsjr

> @somtaawkhar said:
> vegeta50024 wrote: »
>
> You're only partially correct there. While they are being removed from the arc, its a temporary removal as they have plans to update the story and when they're done, return them to the arc.
>
>
>
> We know some of them, like City of the Edge of forever, and Past Imperfect, are coming back, but we don't know if all of them are.
>
> Cryptic has also suggested they might combine down missions, like the two mentioned above, so we will end up seeing missions cut, and replaced by the time the revamp is over.

It'll be interesting to see if they take the opportunity to retcon things to make them conform to TRIBBLE.....I have a bad feeling this is what it's really about.

darkbladejk

I think there is some misunderstanding as to what they're actually going to do. They are NOT and I repeat are NOT deleting missions from the game. what they are doing is making certain ones no longer mandatory such as the Wasteland arc as one example. You'll still be able to do those missions, but they won't be in the mission journal itself. A few missions have been temporarily removed to improve them and then they will return. Some of the earlier missions have not aged that well and need a facelift. I would encourage you guys to head over to tribble and test it out there and leave feedback in the forum there. While the devs may not respond to every single thread, they do in fact read the feedback given.

spiritborn

Also I think some missions might get merged so that storyline flows better so while the literal mission count is less the actual amount of content is still more or less the same.

Honestly I don't see why this would be a bad thing all we're really loosing is seeing the briefing screen twice and bad mission flow.

mirrorchaos

davefenestrator wrote: »

It's not a waste of resources because it will make the experience better for new players, giving them more reason to keep playing the game.

New players = new money = more resources to keep the game alive and for adding new content.

Just look at the rotting corpse of SWTOR (almost 2 years without new story content) to see why you should care about attracting the wallets of new players.

Bioware got cut in half by EA not long after Mass Effect Andromeda was launched and now they are literally burning the wick out at six ends.
1. They have SWTOR near maintience mode but not quite as there is a mission coming, some daily and an expac beyond that in 2019.
2. They got Anthem they are rushing to release before the end of March 2019 for the EA market quarter and where most of their resources are at for now.
3.They have an unnamed dragon age game in the works as well.
4. Potentially there could be somethingg Mass Effect in the distant future as they didn't completely declare the series braindead yet.
5. Limited staff and resources with two remaining studios.
6. A lot of rumors persisting of an immenent shut down by EA not long after Anthem's launch.

Cryptic almost faced the same fate back at the end of 2010. Although i don't expect EA to be as generous, there is still the chance of things getting better, after all look at what happened with Cryptic: it was on the verge of death with Atari and then Perfect World swooped in to revive the studio and eventually ween it off life support. While not exactly the same circumstances, it could happen to any developers at any time to fall on hard times and potentially recover... or die off completely.

snowwolf

I'm afraid that in an attempt to update these missions they will become even more buggy and broken.

For example upon the release of Victory is Life, they decided to update a lot of things in the older Cardassian Struggle story arc.

I made a bug report in the link below and it was never acknowledged or fixed, I'm afraid that if they start changing the older Klingon War story arc in order to make similar changes in order to improve the missions the result will be the same. Quickly done and a broken buggy mess.

https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1241001/the-updated-missions-in-cardassian-struggle-arc-list-of-bugs

rattler2

Rushing to meet a deadline is never good. Pretty sure that's what happened to ME3, and even KoTOR 2. And EA shelved Mass Effect after Andromeda flopped, and they also shelved Command & Conquer after C&C4 flopped. And they were actually working on Generals 2 but canceled it because of the C&C4 fail.

Also... C&C4 was just a glorified MOBA in a way. NO base building. NO Resource Gathering... your ability to produce units tied to an overall Faction Level, which impacts ALL aspects of the game and not just single player...

It was doomed from the start when EA decided to frak with the formula of what makes C&C C&C. They did very well with C&C3, and relatively well with RA3. But then they dropped this stinker called C&C4 on us that looked and played nothing like any other C&C, expected it to rope in the Multiplayer crowd... and flopped big time.

legendarylycan

it wasn't C&C4's failure that got G2 canned - or at least not the whole reason​​

meimeitoo

I cautiously agree with the OP, and feel this reshuffling is probably a bit of a waste of resources and time. It's pretty much the same theme as in Tune's awesome "Queues/TFOs, and why most of them don't get played" thread: 'A queue, by any other name, still pops as bad.' Cutting some dead wood may be useful, but 'temporarily' removing some missions has a way of resulting in "You will never see it back, as CBS has us working on the next shiny now."

rattler2

I admit I am a bit cautious about this.

While I am interested to see how the revamp works out... we have seen things just disappear, such as the Elite Borg STFs.

I won't miss Nimbus being required though.

lordsteve1

Removed to be improved like with exploration or like Minetrap?

We know how Cryptic roll....

rattler2

Plans change. Focus gets shifted.
It happens.

Frankly... I was getting tired of locating artifacts from the 3rd Borg Dynasty.

vegeta50024

rattler2 wrote: »

Plans change. Focus gets shifted.
It happens.

Frankly... I was getting tired of locating artifacts from the 3rd Borg Dynasty.

Exactly @rattler2 Plans change.

That's why Cryptic never talks about upcoming content. They don't want to promise that X is coming and later have to say we nixed X because Y came up. We've seen it before.

- Way back when Season 12 was in development, Re-engineering was part of the initial Tribble build. It got removed sometime later as it had to be put off to the side and didn't come until a year later.
- Most recently, we've seen it happen with the Personal Endeavors. Originally announced earlier this year, this was supposed to have come with VIL, but was scrapped because it wasn't ready.

snowwolf

Just as I suspected, the new mission Journal is a mess and the storyline of the game no longer makes sense for a new player or a new character. That means I won't be playing anymore new characters, which limits the gameplay available... Quite a bit.

baddmoonrizin

Necro. /Thread