I misspoke. when i used the word active i was referring to the fact that those passive bonuses were "actively" helping you and not actual abilities that the captain could activate. hence why i said PASSIVE ABILITIES in my last statement.
I also believe that the first officer will only give us ONE active slottable power that was not included in my calculations and that this would be in addition to their Doff Passive Bonuses
To clarify, the current plan is for Department Heads to each provide three passive abilities, and your First Officer to provide three passive abilities PLUS one activatable ability.
In other words, you ding tier three in Exploration, you get a unique duty officer. That duty officer probably won't be tradeable. Having dinged tier three, that opens up repeatable assignments that let you get additional good duty (and bridge) officers - these would be tradeable.
Heretic, what is your expectation on how long it will probably take to max out one star cluster/ or even tier? Will there be limitations on how fast we can get the branch maxxed out - say, daily limit - or is is totaly up to us how many time we grind one specific branch?
Other than that.
Will there be any non-ingame possibility to see our roster like the captains page on the website, or is this purely ingame?
Now all we need is an iPad app (or website interface) for managing the duty roster and assignments.
This way I can sit at my desk, with my PADD, cup of Earl Grey feeling like a proper starship captain.
To clarify, the current plan is for Department Heads to each provide three passive abilities, and your First Officer to provide three passive abilities PLUS one activatable ability.
will the activatable ability be different depending on the Doff's my First Officer 'ate'?
example:
if i had 3 engineering Doffs 'eaten' by my Engineering Boff (who's my First Officer), who were skilled in emergency power to shields, but my First Officer didn't know Emergency Power to Shields... would this give my Boff Emergency Power to Shields III, as an activable ability?
also using this example, if i only 'ate' two of the EPtS Doff's, and had a different Doff 'eaten' as the third, would this give my First Officer Engineer Emergency Power to Shields II instead?
So will dinging to the next rank in a level be the only way we get these more exclusive doffs? Or will there be a wider, more elusive way of discovering/aquiring some of them?
Cluster mission patrols? Rescuing prisoners at the last second from Klingon brigs as you destroy their ship? Obtaining accolades? Or even perhaps completing entire missions?
Just curious. :-) Keep up the good work, btw! Don't let the impatient types discourage you. Yall are doing some of the best stuff this game has seen.
Do you have any plans to model any DOFFs on people around the office? This could provide an amazing opportunity for you to mock cooworkers.
Dstahl: So, um....I noticed an Ensign Dstahl in the DOFF system.
Heretic: Yeah, crazy what randomly pops up.
Dstahl: An Ensign? And it has the "forced labor" trait.
Heretic: Yeah, it gives a speed bonus at the expense of morale.
Dstahl: Its the only DO that has that trait.....and well, it looks like me. Exactly like me.
Heretic: hhhmmm...Wierd. I'll, uh fix it.
Dstahl: Make it so.
As a 3-year EVE veteran, i've been hoping to see a game mechanic that would bring some of the immersion and complexity that STO lacked in the beginning. This looks like a setup where people who don't care, can just continue to do their thing, and those of us who like complexity can go nuts with managing their crews. This is honestly something that probably should have been introduced much sooner, but i'm glad we're getting it.:D
So let me see if i'm reading this right. In total, when both the DOff system and the Department Head/First Officer System rolls out, you guys are currently thinking about (for end game): ~10 active Space Doff powers, ~10 active ground Doffs powers, ~3 per department via the DH system for ~18 doff powers, and an addition ~3 for the FO system.
For a grand total of ~41 passive abilities that we didn't have before.
WOW
I'm excited for that but mostly excited that these are characters we send on missions and can get injured. They're not just blue or yellow sockets or runes.
I really hope this system takes forever to max out.
I hate the idea that just because some people are OCD and need to have something completed ASAP that a system might be designed that would allow someone to complete it inside of a couple months of gameplay.
I want to still be maxxing my commendation status (or whatever it's called) come December. I want to still have to log in and manage duty assignments as I'm making Valentine's 2012 plans with my wife...I don't want this to be another thing that any concerted effort over the course of a week will result in me maxxing out things.
The biggest problem with this game is that everything takes so little time because so many people think that taking time to level and having to do lots of different things = grind.
This system isn't something you can actively level up the same as diplomacy or a character rank. It's something where you send people out and 20 min,40 min, a day later they come back (I hope). It should take me a month of managing duty officer assignments to max out any one tier in commendations (if not more).
This will in total make players more powerful if done correctly. But will it make current missions even more trivial than normal mode is now? That is not to say I don't want to see my captains more powerful as a result, since some additions ot the game were underwhelming, for instance the Scorpion fighters, to keep them from being too powerful. Launching scorpions, so far as I can tell, only gives your enemies something else to shoot at; they don't seem to kill anything quicker than you would without them. So in this instance we got additional server lag for basically no benefit. I hope the Doff system will confer actual benefits (as it seems it will) but perhaps a revamp of enemies across the board will be needed as well. Many of us don't like the higher difficulty levels (hassles with death penalties, one shot swordmasters, etc.) but normal mode is too easy as well. Power creep is a concern, but making the new system meaningful requres you give us some actual benefit for doing it.
By the by, talking about death penalties, when I die my ship blew up. It didn't get a warp plasma leak. Using a repair item to "patch the leak" doesn't feel right when my ship just spectacularly blew up. I've always believed the proper death penalty needed to include a smirking Q to appear telling us he had to save our sorry butts once again. Make it so.
Duty officers are intended to be generally tradeable and able to be put on the Exchange, though there is some possibility that some of this functionality may be come out shortly after the core system, since this has a very heavy UI component which isn't cheap for us to develop.
how will they be listed on the exchange, will we be able to search for warp core specilists or Xenobiologists or whatever specialisations will exist or will it just be names and colours like with BOffs?
I have an idea for BOff's and DOff's passives to affect ground combat.
What if, when you're choosing your 4-person away team, you make a secondary choice of whom to leave in command of the ship.
A "You have the con," choice.
So, let's say I leave my Tactical Officer in command of the ship in orbit. I then gain some buffs from her tactical passives; perhaps these help me directly with DPS in combat. Or let's say I leave my Science Officer in command. I gain some help from her passives; perhaps these help my expose chances, or give me a bonus for finding anomalies or crates of supplies. Or let's say I leave my CMO in command of the ship in orbit. I gain some buffs from his passives; perhaps when I revive a BOff in combat, they come back with more health.
Just an idea I had in the shower.
As an aside, if you read this Heretic, thank you very much for all the work you're doing (perhaps even in your off hours), and for the consistently intelligent and coherent posts you make with which to keep us informed. The DOff system is exactly what I wanted in STO.
I have an idea for BOff's and DOff's passives to affect ground combat.
What if, when you're choosing your 4-person away team, you make a secondary choice of whom to leave in command of the ship.
A "You have the con," choice.
So, let's say I leave my Tactical Officer in command of the ship in orbit. I then gain some buffs from her tactical passives; perhaps these help me directly with DPS in combat. Or let's say I leave my Science Officer in command. I gain some help from her passives; perhaps these help my expose chances, or give me a bonus for finding anomalies or crates of supplies. Or let's say I leave my CMO in command of the ship in orbit. I gain some buffs from his passives; perhaps when I revive a BOff in combat, they come back with more health.
Just an idea I had in the shower.
As an aside, if you read this Heretic, thank you very much for all the work you're doing (perhaps even in your off hours), and for the consistently intelligent and coherent posts you make with which to keep us informed. The DOff system is exactly what I wanted in STO.
i'd rather hear the passaves they are currently thinking of, with the DOff pasives and this idea pvp balance could me messed up severly, and we all know how much pvper 'wine' about balance
How will the DOff System effect our PvP gameplay? Will the Passive Abilities of our Duty Officers, added with The later addition of our choice on who we select to be our First Officer really make that much of a difference in PvP?
Great detail, thanks
Looking forward to trying it out.
An idea just popped into my head with regards to the Duty Officer system:
Develop an iphone/ipad/android app that only displays the duty officer system and/or web site section on the STO website that provides access to your duty officer system.
I think this would make a cool "on the go" system to play with when I'm out and about (I can log on my iphone, check the status of my duty officers on missions, check which ones are available for the next mission, etc).
Just an idea
To clarify, the current plan is for Department Heads to each provide three passive abilities, and your First Officer to provide three passive abilities PLUS one activatable ability.
What kind of active ability it will be btw ? some unique ones ? or from existing captain careers ? or bridge officer abilities ?
I would love captain career ones, that would greatly increase the customization options....although may probably lead to some unexpected outcomes like usual
But for example being a tactical captain with engineering first officer, that provides me with the lt.engineering ability, sounds tempting
I wonder if the randomized assignments allocation is an expansion of the tech how Jiro handed out investigations.
I think I'll play that through.
Create a new 'seed' of assignments for each sector every four hours. Which would look sth like this (simplified of course):
Di4 Me2 Tr1 Tr2 De3 Sc1 Sc1 Di2 Me2 En1 Re3 En1 Me3 Es1 Es4 En2 Mi1 Me4 En4 Sc3Es3 Sc3 Sc3 Tr4 Mi4Es4 En4 Sc4
First two letters stand for the category the number is the tier of the category.
Now enter the player, in the sector that seed belongs to.
We work the seed backwards:
- Has the player completed a very rare assignment during his last 4 hours playing time? Yes = He doesn't get a new very rare. No = Proceed (check).
- Sc4 - Is the player viable for Science 4 assignments? No = Go to next assignment.
- En4 - Is the player viable for Engineering 4 assignments? Yes = Proceed
- Has the player completed the En4 assignment during the last 24 real life hours? Yes = Go to next assignment. No = Display assignment and go to next quality. (check)
The lower qualitys would have similar checks which would fill up your possible assignments window until the desired total amount is met or you have run through the seed.
So far understood the principle? Good, moving on.
The thing is. While it would fake some kind of true randomness due to players not having the same assignment category progression the further people progress through those categories the less diluted the assignments become, in the end handing out exactly the same assignments for two players who have 'capped' their progression. Which would be boooooring.
However, if capacity (and tech) permits it you could create additional 'mirror' seeds, and vary with them. It would require to assign a changing variable (lets call it naughty/nice) on a per character basis though and I'm not sure if the tech is there for that. So far I have only seen globals in STO.
If a char has his flag on nice he gets the original seed, naughty boys obviously would get the mirror seed to work through. And voila, more variance even with similar chars.
From there it would be a small step to vary Jiro's investigations a bit more (yay!) or even the emblem dailys (imagine the confusion if people don't get the same PvP daily anymore!).
Awesome Thread,... I read all that Heretic-stuff and I can't wait to see that going live.
I've two ideas concerning the foundry and I know that it could be a longterm goal.
1. Let us create DO Assignments with the Foundry.
2. If the system is able to trigger assignments out of missions, give us the possiblity to add them to our missions too (random assignments or foundry authored).
Where will this interface exist?
Our ready room?
Anywhere within our ship?
Anywhere in the game?
New assignments can only be gotten in sector space or in certain specific social spaces, and possibly in select missions as well. You may be able to check the status of existing assignments or collect rewards anywhere - we're still working out some of the technical aspects on that side of things.
Heretic, what is your expectation on how long it will probably take to max out one star cluster/ or even tier? Will there be limitations on how fast we can get the branch maxxed out - say, daily limit - or is is totaly up to us how many time we grind one specific branch?
Other than that.
Will there be any non-ingame possibility to see our roster like the captains page on the website, or is this purely ingame?
The details of how long it will take to max out as well as any explicit limits will probably continue to be in flux all the way up to the time it goes out on live, as we need to see some datamining on Tribble before we can make certain final determinations. The goal, however, is for it to be at the same time feel less grindy than Diplomacy currently does while also overall providing long-term gameplay - especially at cap - for players to explore relatively indefinitely. The expectation is an average player might have 2-4 of the commendation cateogories eventually maxed out, and I hope virtually no one ever winds up having all.
The initial implementation will be purely in game. There have been internal discussions about the possibility of exploring out of game accessibility.
will the activatable ability be different depending on the Doff's my First Officer 'ate'?
The specifics on the active ability is still being decided, but it will almost certainly not have anything to do with the three standard duty officers your First Officer ate for their passive abilities. It may simply depend on your Branch or Department, it may be trained in some way, or it may be something else entirely.
So will dinging to the next rank in a level be the only way we get these more exclusive doffs? Or will there be a wider, more elusive way of discovering/aquiring some of them?
Unique duty officers will be acquireable randomly, by commendation achievements, by certain very rare assignments, and almost certainly other mechanics as well.
Will we be able to get new BOs in a similar manner, and of varying quality? Will there be missions to train our BOs or to change/modify their traits (or something along this idea)?
The expectation is an average player might have 2-4 of the commendation cateogories eventually maxed out, and I hope virtually no one ever winds up having all.
Gotta say, unless there's some kind of cap, or it's just takes so crushingly long that people give up, I imagine most people would eventually be maxed out. And I don't really see that being a bad thing so long as there's still rewards to be had and it wasn't a headlong fall there.
I remember back before the in-depth discussions started of the First Officer, DOFF, and Department Head systems there was talk of these systems giving meaning to the currently (largely) meaningless number of crew in your ship and their losses/injuries sustained in combat.
Is this still one of the goals of the DOFF (and related) systems or has this idea been largely dropped?
(Im guessing that it has, just curious what the official word is on this)
[...]and I hope virtually no one ever winds up having all.
[...]
Unless there is going to be a hardcap I can assure you that a lot more players will achieve that in a lot less time than you expected in your wildest dreams.
New assignments can only be gotten in sector space or in certain specific social spaces, and possibly in select missions as well. You may be able to check the status of existing assignments or collect rewards anywhere - we're still working out some of the technical aspects on that side of things.
Aaaaawww maaaaaaaaan.... I was hoping that there would be some kind of ship interior functionality with the interface, or at least be available on ground maps. Have something else to do while I sit, twiddling my thumbs in my ready room.
Unless there is going to be a hardcap I can assure you that a lot more players will achieve that in a lot less time than you expected in your wildest dreams.
^ This. If you're going to build this system with the intent that proper balance means most people won't cap every skill, then you need to put a hard cap in place, because the hardcore players WILL cap everything they possibly can.
Comments
To clarify, the current plan is for Department Heads to each provide three passive abilities, and your First Officer to provide three passive abilities PLUS one activatable ability.
Our ready room?
Anywhere within our ship?
Anywhere in the game?
Heretic, what is your expectation on how long it will probably take to max out one star cluster/ or even tier? Will there be limitations on how fast we can get the branch maxxed out - say, daily limit - or is is totaly up to us how many time we grind one specific branch?
Other than that.
Will there be any non-ingame possibility to see our roster like the captains page on the website, or is this purely ingame?
This way I can sit at my desk, with my PADD, cup of Earl Grey feeling like a proper starship captain.
example:
if i had 3 engineering Doffs 'eaten' by my Engineering Boff (who's my First Officer), who were skilled in emergency power to shields, but my First Officer didn't know Emergency Power to Shields... would this give my Boff Emergency Power to Shields III, as an activable ability?
also using this example, if i only 'ate' two of the EPtS Doff's, and had a different Doff 'eaten' as the third, would this give my First Officer Engineer Emergency Power to Shields II instead?
Cluster mission patrols? Rescuing prisoners at the last second from Klingon brigs as you destroy their ship? Obtaining accolades? Or even perhaps completing entire missions?
Just curious. :-) Keep up the good work, btw! Don't let the impatient types discourage you. Yall are doing some of the best stuff this game has seen.
Dstahl: So, um....I noticed an Ensign Dstahl in the DOFF system.
Heretic: Yeah, crazy what randomly pops up.
Dstahl: An Ensign? And it has the "forced labor" trait.
Heretic: Yeah, it gives a speed bonus at the expense of morale.
Dstahl: Its the only DO that has that trait.....and well, it looks like me. Exactly like me.
Heretic: hhhmmm...Wierd. I'll, uh fix it.
Dstahl: Make it so.
I'm excited for that but mostly excited that these are characters we send on missions and can get injured. They're not just blue or yellow sockets or runes.
I hate the idea that just because some people are OCD and need to have something completed ASAP that a system might be designed that would allow someone to complete it inside of a couple months of gameplay.
I want to still be maxxing my commendation status (or whatever it's called) come December. I want to still have to log in and manage duty assignments as I'm making Valentine's 2012 plans with my wife...I don't want this to be another thing that any concerted effort over the course of a week will result in me maxxing out things.
The biggest problem with this game is that everything takes so little time because so many people think that taking time to level and having to do lots of different things = grind.
This system isn't something you can actively level up the same as diplomacy or a character rank. It's something where you send people out and 20 min,40 min, a day later they come back (I hope). It should take me a month of managing duty officer assignments to max out any one tier in commendations (if not more).
By the by, talking about death penalties, when I die my ship blew up. It didn't get a warp plasma leak. Using a repair item to "patch the leak" doesn't feel right when my ship just spectacularly blew up. I've always believed the proper death penalty needed to include a smirking Q to appear telling us he had to save our sorry butts once again. Make it so.
how will they be listed on the exchange, will we be able to search for warp core specilists or Xenobiologists or whatever specialisations will exist or will it just be names and colours like with BOffs?
:eek: you dont
What if, when you're choosing your 4-person away team, you make a secondary choice of whom to leave in command of the ship.
A "You have the con," choice.
So, let's say I leave my Tactical Officer in command of the ship in orbit. I then gain some buffs from her tactical passives; perhaps these help me directly with DPS in combat. Or let's say I leave my Science Officer in command. I gain some help from her passives; perhaps these help my expose chances, or give me a bonus for finding anomalies or crates of supplies. Or let's say I leave my CMO in command of the ship in orbit. I gain some buffs from his passives; perhaps when I revive a BOff in combat, they come back with more health.
Just an idea I had in the shower.
As an aside, if you read this Heretic, thank you very much for all the work you're doing (perhaps even in your off hours), and for the consistently intelligent and coherent posts you make with which to keep us informed. The DOff system is exactly what I wanted in STO.
i'd rather hear the passaves they are currently thinking of, with the DOff pasives and this idea pvp balance could me messed up severly, and we all know how much pvper 'wine' about balance
Yes this would so rock!
What kind of active ability it will be btw ? some unique ones ? or from existing captain careers ? or bridge officer abilities ?
I would love captain career ones, that would greatly increase the customization options....although may probably lead to some unexpected outcomes like usual
But for example being a tactical captain with engineering first officer, that provides me with the lt.engineering ability, sounds tempting
I think I'll play that through.
Create a new 'seed' of assignments for each sector every four hours. Which would look sth like this (simplified of course):
Di4 Me2 Tr1 Tr2 De3 Sc1 Sc1 Di2 Me2 En1 Re3 En1 Me3 Es1 Es4 En2 Mi1 Me4 En4 Sc3 Es3 Sc3 Sc3 Tr4 Mi4 Es4 En4 Sc4
First two letters stand for the category the number is the tier of the category.
Now enter the player, in the sector that seed belongs to.
We work the seed backwards:
- Has the player completed a very rare assignment during his last 4 hours playing time? Yes = He doesn't get a new very rare. No = Proceed (check).
- Sc4 - Is the player viable for Science 4 assignments? No = Go to next assignment.
- En4 - Is the player viable for Engineering 4 assignments? Yes = Proceed
- Has the player completed the En4 assignment during the last 24 real life hours? Yes = Go to next assignment. No = Display assignment and go to next quality. (check)
The lower qualitys would have similar checks which would fill up your possible assignments window until the desired total amount is met or you have run through the seed.
So far understood the principle? Good, moving on.
The thing is. While it would fake some kind of true randomness due to players not having the same assignment category progression the further people progress through those categories the less diluted the assignments become, in the end handing out exactly the same assignments for two players who have 'capped' their progression. Which would be boooooring.
However, if capacity (and tech) permits it you could create additional 'mirror' seeds, and vary with them. It would require to assign a changing variable (lets call it naughty/nice) on a per character basis though and I'm not sure if the tech is there for that. So far I have only seen globals in STO.
If a char has his flag on nice he gets the original seed, naughty boys obviously would get the mirror seed to work through. And voila, more variance even with similar chars.
From there it would be a small step to vary Jiro's investigations a bit more (yay!) or even the emblem dailys (imagine the confusion if people don't get the same PvP daily anymore!).
Rambling done for today.
I've two ideas concerning the foundry and I know that it could be a longterm goal.
1. Let us create DO Assignments with the Foundry.
2. If the system is able to trigger assignments out of missions, give us the possiblity to add them to our missions too (random assignments or foundry authored).
i'm prty sure the assignments are going to be 'text based' i.e. no maps.
New assignments can only be gotten in sector space or in certain specific social spaces, and possibly in select missions as well. You may be able to check the status of existing assignments or collect rewards anywhere - we're still working out some of the technical aspects on that side of things.
The details of how long it will take to max out as well as any explicit limits will probably continue to be in flux all the way up to the time it goes out on live, as we need to see some datamining on Tribble before we can make certain final determinations. The goal, however, is for it to be at the same time feel less grindy than Diplomacy currently does while also overall providing long-term gameplay - especially at cap - for players to explore relatively indefinitely. The expectation is an average player might have 2-4 of the commendation cateogories eventually maxed out, and I hope virtually no one ever winds up having all.
The initial implementation will be purely in game. There have been internal discussions about the possibility of exploring out of game accessibility.
The specifics on the active ability is still being decided, but it will almost certainly not have anything to do with the three standard duty officers your First Officer ate for their passive abilities. It may simply depend on your Branch or Department, it may be trained in some way, or it may be something else entirely.
Unique duty officers will be acquireable randomly, by commendation achievements, by certain very rare assignments, and almost certainly other mechanics as well.
Duty officers cannot currently be placed in bank slots. The exact mechanics of trading and putting them on the Exchange is still being determined.
-Auspice
Edit: Correct the link.
Sounds like a challenge to me.
Is this still one of the goals of the DOFF (and related) systems or has this idea been largely dropped?
(Im guessing that it has, just curious what the official word is on this)
Unless there is going to be a hardcap I can assure you that a lot more players will achieve that in a lot less time than you expected in your wildest dreams.
Aaaaawww maaaaaaaaan.... I was hoping that there would be some kind of ship interior functionality with the interface, or at least be available on ground maps. Have something else to do while I sit, twiddling my thumbs in my ready room.
^ This. If you're going to build this system with the intent that proper balance means most people won't cap every skill, then you need to put a hard cap in place, because the hardcore players WILL cap everything they possibly can.
Maybe this explains why Sulu was transferred out of Adm Quinn's office.:D
Might be a good theme for a Foundry episode, some explanation for Sulu's departure.