That's not really fair, You do get a little bit of new content with the remastered episodes, you get the cutscenes, the extra minimissions for each tactical, science and engineering specialisations and sometimes new rewards and probably soon, voiceovers as well, that's certainly enough to make those episodes worth replaying
There's PvP, dailies, crafting missions, and more that have been discussed during the past few weeks. Not all new content is Featured Episodes.
Dstahl can confirm this if he likes, but I'm pretty sure the majority of players dont PvP. Dalies are not new content, they are replayable old content. I dont know what crafting missions means, so I cant comment on that. But like I said in my last post, what keeps people playing a game is new things to do, not constantly changing how the mechanics of the game work.
Expansions usually only come out for games that have fully developed content for their existing factions.
Hmm...not in my experience. I can't think of an MMO on the market that didn't launch without at least a few elements that are now considered integral to the core design missing, only to have them added in paid expansions. I'd give examples but I've a feeling that it'd be pointless, so instead we'll just agree to disagree.
Garbage isnt even an option. We're talking about professional people here, so even suggesting that is an insult to them. The actual options would be super high quality missions that take a long time to make, or more average quality missions that take less time to make. Yes, the super high quality missions are great, but once your done your done. What do you do until the next series comes out if its several months away?
I'd rather wait myself.
I have plenty to do with my time other than STO; I don't need to be on it 8 hours a day or anything like that. However the time I *do* spend on it, I want to enjoy as much as possible - and really really good episodes are worth infinitely more to me because of this.
I would rather have 1 FE series per season that's really, really good, than 3 that are 'eh'.
*edit*
On the subject of remasters -
I want them all done eventually, and I will tell you why:
Because FE's show what this game is capable of, and bringing up the normal content to that level is good not only for old players to go back and replay - but it also provides an incentive for new players to join.
The fact is, no MMO can survive without a regular influx of newbies, and right now STO's early game sucks. I'm sorry, but it does. While there's no doubt some newbies have continued to join, and I'm glad for that, the game will do better in the long term (and thus we, as players, will get more in the long term), if those first hours are as inviting as possible.
Furthermore, no matter how fast they crank out content, there is NEVER going to be enough. People need to learn this, and fast, because disappointment is the only thing you'll get if you don't.
Why is this the case?
Simple - for every hour of game play, there are several hours of work behind it, usually more than 10x as many. The only way to keep that from being the case is on really, really bland stuff like Patrols*. Even the basic episodes, like the pre-remastered Azura mission, required hours of labor to get working.
This is not unique to STO, this is a universal MMO thing, and players at large need to understand that fact.
Back to the Remasters - there's another big reason for them:
SW:TOR - Now, I personally intend to play TOR in addition to STO - I like both universes; but I think it's pretty obvious that TOR is going to be STO's main competition. It's going to be the only other 'big' sci-fi MMO out there, and TOR has a budget bigger than some states.
STO needs to be able to continue attracting newbies *in spite* of a game with that kind of budget. The early missions we have? Ain't gonna cut it; someone pops into the game expecting to play episodes of Star Trek, and finds themselves running around doing bleh patrols for hours, they aren't going to stick around to find out that there's all kinds of awesome stuff higher up in level. I think we all know how demanding people are right now - do you really think that's going to lessen when a game who's entire schtick is going to be 'high production values' is coming down the pipe?
I don't think STO is in any danger of dying mind you - the danger isn't the end of the game; it's the reduction in support that so many MMOs see, where gradually they only add stuff once in a blue moon. Right now, the STO team is playing smart: they're adding good things that people clearly enjoy doing, they're cleaning up stuff left from a rough launch, and generally speaking trying to become the game they always wanted STO to be.
This is smart from a business perspective, from a game development perspective, and it's smart for the long-term enjoyability of the game.
/ramble off
*Why do you think most MMO content is "Go, hunt, kill X mobs"? It's because it's easy as heck to do in comparison to actually spending the effort to make something worthwhile.
While the FE's are good. They need to keep them working. I have not been able to do Cold Call for about a week now because you cannot scan the warp particiles at the beginning of the mission. And before anyone says submit a ticket.....I did.
The team we have is literally working extra hours every week to deliver as much content and features as we can as fast as we can. There are a lot of areas of the game that we are working on simultaneously and we have a ton of work to do in order to deliver Season 4. We will continue to make feature episode series as often as we can. Since August we will have shipped 3 series along with all of the other features we've put into the game.
I know - they are awesome. I want more too. We will continue to work as hard as possible to deliver.
I know you heard me say this stahl (hire more people). I mean your the man in charge in some reguard for the dev team, start talken to the heads and telling them that there are obviously more people playing and that you need to get more devs so that you can get stuff out. If it continues two things can happen.
1) You do hire more people and there is more content coming out and also bug fixes... as it seems you guys arent keeping up with that ( borg set and aegis sets still are buggy since release -the flickering of nacelles and effects on the ships not right, i know its not huge deal but still, its an example of something that needs to be fixed and not )
2) You cant keep up and people get aggressive and finally.. leave the game. Ive seen a big boost of population and people seem to like what the game has, if they find it gets slow again.. once again we will lose people. This game isnt as small as it started out.. its getting more attention. Time to think bigger my friend.
Hmm...not in my experience. I can't think of an MMO on the market that didn't launch without at least a few elements that are now considered integral to the core design missing, only to have them added in paid expansions. I'd give examples but I've a feeling that it'd be pointless, so instead we'll just agree to disagree.
Man, I cant believe what has happened to this whole featured episode system since it first came out. They originally planned to have a new mission every single week, then they said there would be a few weeks between series, and now its turning into several months. The time span keeps growing and growing.
Honestly - that is a big reason why the Foundry is such an interesting concept, because NO studio can ever keep up with player's ability to consume the content. Heck TV shows with million+ dollar per episode budgets can only make so many episodes a year due to the time it takes to make them.
However, YouTube can put forth constant video entertainment because it is the crowd making their own content. Not that I want to watch everything on YouTube, but you get the idea...
Foundry will allow those who love the Star Trek world to create amazing stories that will capture the attention of STO players and become some of the best content in our game.
Between Feature Episodes, the Foundry, Remastered Episodes, and our constant release of new features and other content, I think players are going to see an amazing amount of content to play in 2011.
Dan just let me ADJUST the faces and bodies in the Foundry. I refuse to use it as is when it feels like I hired the same actor to portray all the characters, and all he's doing is changing costumes and wigs. I dont know why you are worried about giving us that (assuming you are worried), the face creator is good, but we can only get so close to real peoples faces, its still not so close they could sue you. I still dont understand why we cant use existing characters in resemblence (best the STO face creator will give us) and character name as main characters in our stories. I mean, do you have the rights to Trek or dont you? Brent Spiner doesnt OWN the name Data. And our best attempts to recreate his face STILL wont be THAT close to Spiner's face for instance. Id really appreciate you letting us know now if this is a problem for your company as far as Foundry is concerned, and what the real deal is, legal wise. Again, your face creator isnt THAT good, so I fail to see what you all could ever be sued over.
Dstahl can confirm this if he likes, but I'm pretty sure the majority of players dont PvP. Dalies are not new content, they are replayable old content. I dont know what crafting missions means, so I cant comment on that. But like I said in my last post, what keeps people playing a game is new things to do, not constantly changing how the mechanics of the game work.
*face palms*
You mean dailies like the Orellius Sector, the Eta Eridani Sector, the Klingon Sorties, etc. don't count as new content?
Those weren't remasters. They may be repeatable now but they were new when they were released and fleshed out areas of the game (like making Orellius feel persistent).
You mean dailies like the Orellius Sector, the Eta Eridani Sector, the Klingon Sorties, etc. don't count as new content?
Those weren't remasters son.
Is he actually your son, or are you just being condescending because you disagree with him? That would be a sad and unfortunate change for you, so I hope its the former. Anyway, those new patrols are definitely new content and as long as actual new content continues to be released thats cool with me.
I'd vote for dumping the 'remastered' for new playable content such as Featured Episodes. Thanks for your honesty DStahl. Keep up the good work.
I second this. Stick with new eps, and improved gameplay, and give the Foundry nearly every tool you all have, and we WILL take the load off you guys, lol. Improved gameplay improves the Foundry too.
And the old can stay old IMO, gives it that retro feel to the missions when we are looking back 5 years from now, lol.
Is he actually your son, or are you just being condescending because you disagree with him? That would be a sad and unfortunate change for you, so I hope its the former. Anyway, those new patrols are definitely new content and as long as actual new content continues to be released thats cool with me.
Son is also a term of endearment. However, I now realize that it can be interpreted negatively too.
My point was that content doesn't always take the form of remasters or Featured Series. Maybe it's because a player needs to actually travel to specific sector blocks to access them but some of the dailies were superb little missions (that get overlooked during bigger updates; i.e. Feds got a new daily during Season 3 but it was largely overshadowed by Sector Space and crafting).
With the Foundry in dev hands, I don't see why dailies wouldn't be possible.
I second this. Stick with new eps, and improved gameplay, and give the Foundry nearly every tool you all have, and we WILL take the load off you guys, lol. Improved gameplay improves the Foundry too.
And the old can stay old IMO, gives it that retro feel to the missions when we are looking back 5 years from now, lol.
On this note, I am a little concerned about the precedent that remastering episodes sets. They are doing this because of changes to their code and to be able to update old missions with new features. So what happens in the future when code is updated new things are added again? Are they going to go back and remaster everything again?
On this note, I am a little concerned about the precedent that remastering episodes sets. They are doing this because of changes to their code and to be able to update old missions with new features. So what happens in the future when code is updated new things are added again? Are they going to go back and remaster everything again?
I believe dstahl explained they were replacing mobs to fix their behaviors and make them more modular (i.e. scales better and can be switched out more easily).
I might be wrong (and I'll look for a source) but one of the rationales was that fixing the mobs would need to be hand-done this cycle and then changes would be more easily done from here out.
Remember the huge Season 2 update to star clusters that enabled them to modify them individually rather than as a bulk set? It's analogous to this if I recall properly.
You mean dailies like the Orellius Sector, the Eta Eridani Sector, the Klingon Sorties, etc. don't count as new content?
Personally I can only stomach doing the 'Dailys' for a week max. Just becuase they are called 'Daily' doesn't mean we need to feel like we are stuck that movie 'Ground Hog Day'. I dont know what I am going to do between now and the next Feature Series. I feel like the last daily was such a long time ago..
I can appreciate the point James.T.Picard is making. New playable content needs to be more regular, wether it be new Featured Episodes, or more regular dailies. Repeating Dailies & Mission Replay is not going to keep us long time players satisfied for long.
When these FE started i assumed it was a 1 episode per week, 52 weeks a year. Pretty sure thats how it was worded when they started only later they said there would be breaks between them after 5 FE.
Its a shame that FE is mainly the only new missions coming out. I love em but i wish they did some new every day missions as i dont think ive seen any new ones for quite awhile that wernt FE or somit else that isnt a regular mission.
You mean dailies like the Orellius Sector, the Eta Eridani Sector, the Klingon Sorties, etc. don't count as new content?
Personally I can only stomach doing the 'Dailys' for a week max. Just becuase they are called 'Daily' doesn't mean we need to feel like we are stuck that movie 'Ground Hog Day'. I dont know what I am going to do between now and the next Feature Series. I feel like the last daily was such a long time ago..
I can appreciate the point James.T.Picard is making. New playable content needs to be more regular, wether it be new Featured Episodes, or more regular dailies. Repeating Dailies & Mission Replay is not going to keep us long time players satisfied for long.
I completely agree that I wish content were more regular. I doubt anyone would contest that (dstahl himself agrees).
However, the OP failed to take in any other form of content (than Featured Episodes) as content:
A new daily is content.
A new PvP map (and, despite Jame.T.Picard's assertion) would be welcome by the thousands of players who do PvP (unless their wants are somehow less important than anyone elses). Remember, this section of the community hasn't had new PvP content since last year around this time. This makes James.T.Picard's assertion seem a bit weak: a few months for 5 weeks of content is nothing next to one PvP mission last year.
A new crafting mission is content (dstahl mentioned this).
A foundry mission isn't necessarily by a player and there's some hidden talent on the team (I.e. non-content devs that could probably fool a few players). Diplomacy missions (and their expansion) would totally work with the new branching dialogue. I'd love the devs to flesh that out (and it'd be a good chance for Kestrel to show off the lore she's developed with the team and CBS).
Defari dailies ARE getting old. Now I just ignore the story, and just try to see what new moves and tactics I can try. And damn the game for leveling up with me, I actually got KILLED once in the Defari Daily tonight, lol. Multiple tractor beams just isnt fair, lol.
Im commander 8, and STILL havnt played PvP once. Im eager to see if some of my moves will work against real people. Im also working on my keys / camera/ ship control to minimize and remove dead time between firing off something, and turning the ship. Thats coming along nicely. I feel Im just as good at firing at stuff to my aft, as I am the front.
Best move tonight: They tractored me, I popped smoke RIGHT in their eye, and then they sent out a pulse to push me away, lol. Guess I left a bad warp plasma taste in their mouth. I then fired off torps as they rotted in my TRIBBLE gas.
What keeps people playing your game is new things to do, not constantly updating the way the game works.
I appreciate your suggestions. You obviously really like the Feature Episodes and want many more of them. As I said. We will make as many of them as we possibly can.
You have obviously figured out the secrets of MMOs. It boils down to content. Luckily, we have a very talented and highly trained staff of MMO experts who also know this and work on it every day for hours upon hours. It took 1/3 of my team 3 weeks to make "Coliseum". If you do the math that means that I could theoretically do 52 missions like today's a year (and trust me when I say that is a huge nearly impossible stretch). Unfortunately, we have many more things to do in the game other than Feature Episodes - which we all agree are awesome - but I don't have the luxury to just ship Feature Episodes non-stop and nothing else.
So what do you want me to say? We're not making content fast enough for you? That seems pretty obvious.
I'd like to say that I do want more than 1 featured series per season, especially for Season 3 since it is spanning from December to June/July, but I don't want more at the expense of 'meh' series. That said, I have enjoyed each series better than the last (as I think they're getting better over time, and this current one is my favorite by far. That may have something to do with the fact that the Romulan/Reman/Borg/Wack-a-doodle madness arc has always been my favorite part of STO's story since closed beta, but it has also been a great series, heh.), so I have pretty good faith that the future ones will be great as well. Especially one the Tholians hit the stage.
I'm looking forward to (hopefully) some new PvP missions (I don't PvP really at all in STO, but if the ground arenas at Andoria, Vulcan, Qo'noS, and Rura Penthe open up, I'm definitely going to be doing those a lot. I've been waiting to be able to Ushann on Andoria since the first time I beamed down.) and crafting missions (I already bought the Delta Flyer from the C-Store, but I'm still going to try the crafting mission(s) for it at least once, and numerous times if I enjoy it).
As for the Remastered ones, I can't wait to see what they come up with to make some of my older favorites better with new cut scenes, tweaks, new rewards and level scalability (I will certainly be using my Mission Replay a whole lot more). I also think that once some of devs start making Foundry missions, I will enjoy those a lot as well (I'm not expecting a massive volume of new missions made on their personal time, but I suspect probably a good majority of them have at least one, if not more, Trek stories they really want to make. I'm waiting on dstahl's V'ger one, and Zinc's (If he still plays, which I pray that he does) Horta one the most.).
Darren_Kitlor made a good point about fleshing out some of the Diplomacy missions, too. I'd love to have more/different missions and First Contacts. If that's done, though, I think the Klingons should get some more episodes/sorties or something of that nature as well.
So, tl;dr - I want more than 1 series per season (especially with a 7-8 month long season like Season 3), but not if they go down in quality. However, I'm looking forward to all the other new missions and Remastered/Foundry missions as well. New Diplomacy and Klingon episodes/sorties would be most excellent to boot. (Notwithstanding all the other changes and content the team pump out).
edit: dstahl ninja posted while I was constructing my wall-o-text, so I'd like to say that I do want all of the above I posted, but I don't want to kill the team while doing it. Of course, if a couple have to be sacrificed to accomplish all the great missions above, so be it. Muwahahahaha!
I'm on record stating that our goal for Feature Episode series is 5 full series per year on top of all the other content and missions we add. And it is just that... a goal based on current headcount. We may end up making 4. We may end up making 6. We may end up making 10000... ok.. no that is impossible.
its not like Feature Episodes are the only thing we work on. The release notes for the last 6 months speak for themselves and you'll see that Feature Episodes are a small part of the updates we are constantly adding to the game.
We realize everyone wants more... because they are awesome. We will make as many as we possible can. What else am I supposed to say?
You're supposed to answer the question, "why would anybody log in the other 27 weekends of the year?"
I appreciate your suggestions. You obviously really like the Feature Episodes and want many more of them. As I said. We will make as many of them as we possibly can.
You have obviously figured out the secrets of MMOs. It boils down to content. Luckily, we have a very talented and highly trained staff of MMO experts who also know this and work on it every day for hours upon hours. It took 1/3 of my team 3 weeks to make "Coliseum". If you do the math that means that I could theoretically do 52 missions like today's a year (and trust me when I say that is a huge nearly impossible stretch). Unfortunately, we have many more things to do in the game other than Feature Episodes - which we all agree are awesome - but I don't have the luxury to just ship Feature Episodes non-stop and nothing else.
So what do you want me to say? We're not making content fast enough for you? That seems pretty obvious.
No complaints here, totally understandable. And yes, even the new TNG eps couldnt come out 52 weeks a year. Ignore the unreasonable fans Dan. But, what about that Foundry faces question I asked?
You're supposed to answer the question, "why would anybody log in the other 27 weekends of the year?"
You're right. I give up. I clearly don't communicate enough exactly what we are working on. We should just start selling half year subscriptions and just shut the game down when there is no new content that week.
In fact, you should contact your cable provider and demand the same.
...Ignore the unreasonable fans Dan. But, what about that Foundry faces question I asked?
hmm.. first you say the character face creator isn't that good... and wonder why you aren't allowed to make a face that looks like Brent Spiners... arguing that our face creator isn't good enough to do it and this is why you want the ability to have all the face customization options???
so to answer your questions in a round about way -
The Terms of Use on the Foundry are legal language. I'm not a lawywer, so if you need someone to help explain the legal reasoning behind the term, I'd suggest contacting a lawyer, or someone you know who practices law.
As far as allowing full facial customization options - there is a trade off in game performance/data storage and reusing assets that you might not fully grok. For example, there is a big reason why all mobs in games use the same geo/animations/textures/faces etcs for similar creatures. Every time we add a unique NPC, it adds overhead. The Foundry could take this to the nth degree if we're not careful. That's not to say that we will not find a way to do it, but there are issues related to how games work that you may/or may not be considering.
Honestly, I've never played a game (specifically an MMO) thats had so much "new" content pumped out consistently during its existence.
Normally, its like "oh, nothing new for 6 months to a year, then a big expensive EXPANSION pack" so I'm enjoying this more gradual yet continuous change in the game.
HOWEVER, new "episodes" are great and all, but remember, thats only 45 minutes or so per player (maybe an hour or two if they play it once or twice) of new content.
In my personal opinion, other than the foundry, the best way to add more long-term type content is to go with more Fleet Actions, STF's and larger-scale type missions involving more sector-control type features. Something that a player can spend hours and hours on one or two pieces of game content instead of just a one-shot-its-over deal.
Heck, a feature series with nothing but 5 new Fleet Actions would be truly EPIC! (Iconian war? Just a thought)
You're right. I give up. I clearly don't communicate enough exactly what we are working on. We should just start selling half year subscriptions and just shut the game down when there is no new content that week.
LMAO. Nice attitude, I like it. We're all about to get banned a week and dan is going down with us! Having said that, do you ever see the team doubling in size some day? Or is the plan to stay at the employee levels you have now? People who think you all need to spend 168 hours a week at work are idiots. Dont let them keep you up at night Dan. People who understand the big picture, GET the big picture.
Frankly, Ive been non stop sucking up STO content since I bought the game in Dec, my other games havnt been played ONCE, LOL. Actually, I need to take a STO break so the rest of my library has a chance, lol.
You're right. I give up. I clearly don't communicate enough exactly what we are working on. We should just start selling half year subscriptions and just shut the game down when there is no new content that week.
In fact, you should contact your cable provider and demand the same.
hmm.. first you say the character face creator isn't that good... and wonder why you aren't allowed to make a face that looks like Brent Spiners... arguing that our face creator isn't good enough to do it and this is why you want the ability to have all the face customization options???
so to answer your questions in a round about way -
The Terms of Use on the Foundry are legal language. I'm not a lawywer, so if you need someone to help explain the legal reasoning behind the term, I'd suggest contacting a lawyer, or someone you know who practices law.
As far as allowing full facial customization options - there is a trade off in game performance/data storage and reusing assets that you might not fully grok. For example, there is a big reason why all mobs in games use the same geo/animations/textures/faces etcs for similar creatures. Every time we add a unique NPC, it adds overhead. The Foundry could take this to the nth degree if we're not careful. That's not to say that we will not find a way to do it, but there are issues related to how games work that you may/or may not be considering.
When I say "not good enough", Im not knocking it, that came out wrong. I find it very good. I meant its not like LA Noire good where we can get THAT close to real faces the actors could sue you. Your creator does very good at getting close enough that you can say, ok, thats Riker, or Picard, or Data and not ruin immersion, but not SO close the actors could cry foul.
That was a good answer, and sad too. I understand the unique assets / overhead thing when you put it that way. If it cant get better, I'll use the "same actor" if I must. But dont do anything to lag or bog down the game to grant my wish, its not THAT important. It just would have been nice.
...Having said that, do you ever see the team doubling in size some day? Or is the plan to stay at the employee levels you have now? ....
Jack and I talk about this a lot and I have faith that if there is a way for us to get more people on STO, he will find it. He is the one who interfaces directly with Atari on these issues and the one who fights for our budgets etc.
Speaking of Jack, he and I have a good relationship and enough isn't said about the efforts that man goes through to get the resources that I do have. He really likes STO and plays even more than I do. Some of his suggestions are those little cool things that make these Feature Episodes so great.
To add a bit of personal commentary to all this. I imagine it must be very hard to go from a small independent studio to a subsidiary of another company. Having to work with a set of new upper management and keep the studio on a steady course is a challenge for sure.
Personally, I really do feel Cryptic is doing absolutely awesome with the resources we've been given and our contribution to Atari is public knowledge.
So to answer your question... if there is a way to get more resources for STO... my trust is with Jack because he cares and is trying.
Comments
That's not really fair, You do get a little bit of new content with the remastered episodes, you get the cutscenes, the extra minimissions for each tactical, science and engineering specialisations and sometimes new rewards and probably soon, voiceovers as well, that's certainly enough to make those episodes worth replaying
Dstahl can confirm this if he likes, but I'm pretty sure the majority of players dont PvP. Dalies are not new content, they are replayable old content. I dont know what crafting missions means, so I cant comment on that. But like I said in my last post, what keeps people playing a game is new things to do, not constantly changing how the mechanics of the game work.
Hmm...not in my experience. I can't think of an MMO on the market that didn't launch without at least a few elements that are now considered integral to the core design missing, only to have them added in paid expansions. I'd give examples but I've a feeling that it'd be pointless, so instead we'll just agree to disagree.
...carry on.
*exists stage left*
I'd rather wait myself.
I have plenty to do with my time other than STO; I don't need to be on it 8 hours a day or anything like that. However the time I *do* spend on it, I want to enjoy as much as possible - and really really good episodes are worth infinitely more to me because of this.
I would rather have 1 FE series per season that's really, really good, than 3 that are 'eh'.
*edit*
On the subject of remasters -
I want them all done eventually, and I will tell you why:
Because FE's show what this game is capable of, and bringing up the normal content to that level is good not only for old players to go back and replay - but it also provides an incentive for new players to join.
The fact is, no MMO can survive without a regular influx of newbies, and right now STO's early game sucks. I'm sorry, but it does. While there's no doubt some newbies have continued to join, and I'm glad for that, the game will do better in the long term (and thus we, as players, will get more in the long term), if those first hours are as inviting as possible.
Furthermore, no matter how fast they crank out content, there is NEVER going to be enough. People need to learn this, and fast, because disappointment is the only thing you'll get if you don't.
Why is this the case?
Simple - for every hour of game play, there are several hours of work behind it, usually more than 10x as many. The only way to keep that from being the case is on really, really bland stuff like Patrols*. Even the basic episodes, like the pre-remastered Azura mission, required hours of labor to get working.
This is not unique to STO, this is a universal MMO thing, and players at large need to understand that fact.
Back to the Remasters - there's another big reason for them:
SW:TOR - Now, I personally intend to play TOR in addition to STO - I like both universes; but I think it's pretty obvious that TOR is going to be STO's main competition. It's going to be the only other 'big' sci-fi MMO out there, and TOR has a budget bigger than some states.
STO needs to be able to continue attracting newbies *in spite* of a game with that kind of budget. The early missions we have? Ain't gonna cut it; someone pops into the game expecting to play episodes of Star Trek, and finds themselves running around doing bleh patrols for hours, they aren't going to stick around to find out that there's all kinds of awesome stuff higher up in level. I think we all know how demanding people are right now - do you really think that's going to lessen when a game who's entire schtick is going to be 'high production values' is coming down the pipe?
I don't think STO is in any danger of dying mind you - the danger isn't the end of the game; it's the reduction in support that so many MMOs see, where gradually they only add stuff once in a blue moon. Right now, the STO team is playing smart: they're adding good things that people clearly enjoy doing, they're cleaning up stuff left from a rough launch, and generally speaking trying to become the game they always wanted STO to be.
This is smart from a business perspective, from a game development perspective, and it's smart for the long-term enjoyability of the game.
/ramble off
*Why do you think most MMO content is "Go, hunt, kill X mobs"? It's because it's easy as heck to do in comparison to actually spending the effort to make something worthwhile.
I know you heard me say this stahl (hire more people). I mean your the man in charge in some reguard for the dev team, start talken to the heads and telling them that there are obviously more people playing and that you need to get more devs so that you can get stuff out. If it continues two things can happen.
1) You do hire more people and there is more content coming out and also bug fixes... as it seems you guys arent keeping up with that ( borg set and aegis sets still are buggy since release -the flickering of nacelles and effects on the ships not right, i know its not huge deal but still, its an example of something that needs to be fixed and not )
2) You cant keep up and people get aggressive and finally.. leave the game. Ive seen a big boost of population and people seem to like what the game has, if they find it gets slow again.. once again we will lose people. This game isnt as small as it started out.. its getting more attention. Time to think bigger my friend.
Why is that, exactly?
Dan just let me ADJUST the faces and bodies in the Foundry. I refuse to use it as is when it feels like I hired the same actor to portray all the characters, and all he's doing is changing costumes and wigs. I dont know why you are worried about giving us that (assuming you are worried), the face creator is good, but we can only get so close to real peoples faces, its still not so close they could sue you. I still dont understand why we cant use existing characters in resemblence (best the STO face creator will give us) and character name as main characters in our stories. I mean, do you have the rights to Trek or dont you? Brent Spiner doesnt OWN the name Data. And our best attempts to recreate his face STILL wont be THAT close to Spiner's face for instance. Id really appreciate you letting us know now if this is a problem for your company as far as Foundry is concerned, and what the real deal is, legal wise. Again, your face creator isnt THAT good, so I fail to see what you all could ever be sued over.
*face palms*
You mean dailies like the Orellius Sector, the Eta Eridani Sector, the Klingon Sorties, etc. don't count as new content?
Those weren't remasters. They may be repeatable now but they were new when they were released and fleshed out areas of the game (like making Orellius feel persistent).
Is he actually your son, or are you just being condescending because you disagree with him? That would be a sad and unfortunate change for you, so I hope its the former. Anyway, those new patrols are definitely new content and as long as actual new content continues to be released thats cool with me.
I second this. Stick with new eps, and improved gameplay, and give the Foundry nearly every tool you all have, and we WILL take the load off you guys, lol. Improved gameplay improves the Foundry too.
And the old can stay old IMO, gives it that retro feel to the missions when we are looking back 5 years from now, lol.
Son is also a term of endearment. However, I now realize that it can be interpreted negatively too.
My point was that content doesn't always take the form of remasters or Featured Series. Maybe it's because a player needs to actually travel to specific sector blocks to access them but some of the dailies were superb little missions (that get overlooked during bigger updates; i.e. Feds got a new daily during Season 3 but it was largely overshadowed by Sector Space and crafting).
With the Foundry in dev hands, I don't see why dailies wouldn't be possible.
On this note, I am a little concerned about the precedent that remastering episodes sets. They are doing this because of changes to their code and to be able to update old missions with new features. So what happens in the future when code is updated new things are added again? Are they going to go back and remaster everything again?
I believe dstahl explained they were replacing mobs to fix their behaviors and make them more modular (i.e. scales better and can be switched out more easily).
I might be wrong (and I'll look for a source) but one of the rationales was that fixing the mobs would need to be hand-done this cycle and then changes would be more easily done from here out.
Remember the huge Season 2 update to star clusters that enabled them to modify them individually rather than as a bulk set? It's analogous to this if I recall properly.
Personally I can only stomach doing the 'Dailys' for a week max. Just becuase they are called 'Daily' doesn't mean we need to feel like we are stuck that movie 'Ground Hog Day'. I dont know what I am going to do between now and the next Feature Series. I feel like the last daily was such a long time ago..
I can appreciate the point James.T.Picard is making. New playable content needs to be more regular, wether it be new Featured Episodes, or more regular dailies. Repeating Dailies & Mission Replay is not going to keep us long time players satisfied for long.
Its a shame that FE is mainly the only new missions coming out. I love em but i wish they did some new every day missions as i dont think ive seen any new ones for quite awhile that wernt FE or somit else that isnt a regular mission.
I completely agree that I wish content were more regular. I doubt anyone would contest that (dstahl himself agrees).
However, the OP failed to take in any other form of content (than Featured Episodes) as content:
Im commander 8, and STILL havnt played PvP once. Im eager to see if some of my moves will work against real people. Im also working on my keys / camera/ ship control to minimize and remove dead time between firing off something, and turning the ship. Thats coming along nicely. I feel Im just as good at firing at stuff to my aft, as I am the front.
Best move tonight: They tractored me, I popped smoke RIGHT in their eye, and then they sent out a pulse to push me away, lol. Guess I left a bad warp plasma taste in their mouth.
I appreciate your suggestions. You obviously really like the Feature Episodes and want many more of them. As I said. We will make as many of them as we possibly can.
You have obviously figured out the secrets of MMOs. It boils down to content. Luckily, we have a very talented and highly trained staff of MMO experts who also know this and work on it every day for hours upon hours. It took 1/3 of my team 3 weeks to make "Coliseum". If you do the math that means that I could theoretically do 52 missions like today's a year (and trust me when I say that is a huge nearly impossible stretch). Unfortunately, we have many more things to do in the game other than Feature Episodes - which we all agree are awesome - but I don't have the luxury to just ship Feature Episodes non-stop and nothing else.
So what do you want me to say? We're not making content fast enough for you? That seems pretty obvious.
I'm looking forward to (hopefully) some new PvP missions (I don't PvP really at all in STO, but if the ground arenas at Andoria, Vulcan, Qo'noS, and Rura Penthe open up, I'm definitely going to be doing those a lot. I've been waiting to be able to Ushann on Andoria since the first time I beamed down.) and crafting missions (I already bought the Delta Flyer from the C-Store, but I'm still going to try the crafting mission(s) for it at least once, and numerous times if I enjoy it).
As for the Remastered ones, I can't wait to see what they come up with to make some of my older favorites better with new cut scenes, tweaks, new rewards and level scalability (I will certainly be using my Mission Replay a whole lot more). I also think that once some of devs start making Foundry missions, I will enjoy those a lot as well (I'm not expecting a massive volume of new missions made on their personal time, but I suspect probably a good majority of them have at least one, if not more, Trek stories they really want to make. I'm waiting on dstahl's V'ger one, and Zinc's (If he still plays, which I pray that he does) Horta one the most.).
Darren_Kitlor made a good point about fleshing out some of the Diplomacy missions, too. I'd love to have more/different missions and First Contacts. If that's done, though, I think the Klingons should get some more episodes/sorties or something of that nature as well.
So, tl;dr - I want more than 1 series per season (especially with a 7-8 month long season like Season 3), but not if they go down in quality. However, I'm looking forward to all the other new missions and Remastered/Foundry missions as well. New Diplomacy and Klingon episodes/sorties would be most excellent to boot. (Notwithstanding all the other changes and content the team pump out).
edit: dstahl ninja posted while I was constructing my wall-o-text, so I'd like to say that I do want all of the above I posted, but I don't want to kill the team while doing it. Of course, if a couple have to be sacrificed to accomplish all the great missions above, so be it. Muwahahahaha!
No complaints here, totally understandable. And yes, even the new TNG eps couldnt come out 52 weeks a year. Ignore the unreasonable fans Dan. But, what about that Foundry faces question I asked?
You're right. I give up. I clearly don't communicate enough exactly what we are working on. We should just start selling half year subscriptions and just shut the game down when there is no new content that week.
In fact, you should contact your cable provider and demand the same.
hmm.. first you say the character face creator isn't that good... and wonder why you aren't allowed to make a face that looks like Brent Spiners... arguing that our face creator isn't good enough to do it and this is why you want the ability to have all the face customization options???
so to answer your questions in a round about way -
The Terms of Use on the Foundry are legal language. I'm not a lawywer, so if you need someone to help explain the legal reasoning behind the term, I'd suggest contacting a lawyer, or someone you know who practices law.
As far as allowing full facial customization options - there is a trade off in game performance/data storage and reusing assets that you might not fully grok. For example, there is a big reason why all mobs in games use the same geo/animations/textures/faces etcs for similar creatures. Every time we add a unique NPC, it adds overhead. The Foundry could take this to the nth degree if we're not careful. That's not to say that we will not find a way to do it, but there are issues related to how games work that you may/or may not be considering.
Normally, its like "oh, nothing new for 6 months to a year, then a big expensive EXPANSION pack" so I'm enjoying this more gradual yet continuous change in the game.
HOWEVER, new "episodes" are great and all, but remember, thats only 45 minutes or so per player (maybe an hour or two if they play it once or twice) of new content.
In my personal opinion, other than the foundry, the best way to add more long-term type content is to go with more Fleet Actions, STF's and larger-scale type missions involving more sector-control type features. Something that a player can spend hours and hours on one or two pieces of game content instead of just a one-shot-its-over deal.
Heck, a feature series with nothing but 5 new Fleet Actions would be truly EPIC! (Iconian war? Just a thought)
LMAO. Nice attitude, I like it. We're all about to get banned a week and dan is going down with us!
Frankly, Ive been non stop sucking up STO content since I bought the game in Dec, my other games havnt been played ONCE, LOL. Actually, I need to take a STO break so the rest of my library has a chance, lol.
When I say "not good enough", Im not knocking it, that came out wrong. I find it very good. I meant its not like LA Noire good where we can get THAT close to real faces the actors could sue you. Your creator does very good at getting close enough that you can say, ok, thats Riker, or Picard, or Data and not ruin immersion, but not SO close the actors could cry foul.
That was a good answer, and sad too. I understand the unique assets / overhead thing when you put it that way.
Jack and I talk about this a lot and I have faith that if there is a way for us to get more people on STO, he will find it. He is the one who interfaces directly with Atari on these issues and the one who fights for our budgets etc.
Speaking of Jack, he and I have a good relationship and enough isn't said about the efforts that man goes through to get the resources that I do have. He really likes STO and plays even more than I do. Some of his suggestions are those little cool things that make these Feature Episodes so great.
To add a bit of personal commentary to all this. I imagine it must be very hard to go from a small independent studio to a subsidiary of another company. Having to work with a set of new upper management and keep the studio on a steady course is a challenge for sure.
Personally, I really do feel Cryptic is doing absolutely awesome with the resources we've been given and our contribution to Atari is public knowledge.
So to answer your question... if there is a way to get more resources for STO... my trust is with Jack because he cares and is trying.