Story Chaining, YAY and NAY

System

I do like the concept of story chaining.

To a point.

I think the episodes should start like they do now (on Holo), but the next story should be gated to finishing the previous story, like they are in FEs.

In the past with older stories I've been able to do them out of order all I had to do was be at the perquisite level.

I prefer to keep the FEs available early. (Breen)

I find the merging of the Dividan and Klingon story lines a stretch at best. Yes they are the same sector so what? It's a different story line.

The way it is now is too straight forward.

Archived Post

SOME story chaining at te start (to introduce players to how the Mission Journal works) is a good thing.

Craeting a "Railroad" of asorts where (for EVERY character you make); you need to do the story arc missions in order teh eact same way from level 1 - 51 is a VERY BAD idea.

I also don't agree with holding one of then best sectors (and secdtor Dalies) like the Breen until Level 49; and tnjhey are actually the most varied, and interesting dailies in the game; and very good for leveling characters.

Archived Post

There's been debate on this in other threads. Here's some suggestions that I had that I think will smooth over some of the issues, at least they're a compromise for everyone.


1.) Lock the Silver members, but give them llimited skips for broken/too hard missions. Gold players free from the rails and can level as they want.

2.) Unlock each front and it's chain seperarely. As the OP stated, keep them like the FE's so that you have to play them order. This way the story stays intact for people who run a front, but it doesn't lock you up 100% as it does now.

3.) Keep the Overview as it is, with Episodes listed in order as they're presented, giving the previously mentioned 'advanced' players the options they desire.

I'd move both the Devidians and the Reman FE missions later into the arcs. Both sets of missions refer back to other episodes in the normal progression of Episodes. Make THOSE the prerequisites. The first encounter with the devidians the Episode has you solving a mystery and learning how to deal with the Devidians. Then Admiral T'nae and her referencing the Iconians and you encountering them previously, at the ending of the Romulan arc.

Both of those really throw the arcs and storylines out of wack.

The Breen/Deferi missions should be locked until you run the trade mission on SB-39, seeing as the Ambassador tells you when you start that he was impressed with how the trade talks wrapped up.

Personally, I have several characters on live, and I don't want to have to deal with every single mission over and over again exactly as they're 'supposed' to be played as I have done them before.

I do like the level scaling feature, and am glad that's in. I'd actually prefer it to apply game-wide between Patrol missions, explorations in the lower clusters as well as episodes. ( Rewards need to scale too, being a Commander getting MK 3 items sucks.)


Thoughts?

Archived Post

i still largely hate it and i know im repeating myself here but i cant express just how much of a bad idea i think this is.

i see so many people popping up on tribble saying cant finish the vault, got stuck on stop the signal, night of the comet is broken etc etc. you can get stuck on stranded in space if you beam down to starfleet academy instead of beaming outside esd. you can get stuck on shutdown if you dont know to go to ds9. there are too many ways to get stuck and everybody will hit a problem at some time. its not like the rest of the content is awesome at the moment. the story eps are the games highlight.

most of these issues will either be fixed or can be worked around, but these are people who have played the game for ages getting stuck. many new players will hit a wall somewhere and either not know what to do or just give up. the whole point of this story chain thing was to make it easier for them but one problem and it could ruin their experience. free players will be a little more picky about their experience and you dont want to scare them off because they have trouble with one mission.

as for me, i have so many alts, this whole thing will really destroy my enjoyment of the game because it will be boring to be forced to do them in order every time. this is an mmo, not a single player game. yes certain aspects should follow each other but not the entire story bases aspect of it. if there are 2, 3, 4 part arcs then i understand locking episode 2 until you do episode 1 like the FE series are, that makes perfect sense, but many of the arcs have nothing to do with each other, or are even stand along episodes. I compare it to watching the shows. do you really want to watch season 1 and 2 of next gen every time, or suffer episodes like threshold for voyager just to get to the good stuff?

i like the fact they put them in order, i like the fact they scale and i even like the fact some episodes need to be unlocked to make the story flow correctly but it just seems to me to do the whole thing is at the expense of the game and of enjoyment.

ive suggested multiple ways before for them to help the situation and i hope they pick one because i honestly think this is a bad thing. most people will still want to play the episodes in order (certainly new players will) and the overview tab gives them that option to see what is next, but who wants to be forced into it and forced into it every single time?

if every mission was guaranteed to work 100% of the time or if very misison was awesome fun then its not so bad, but they wont always work and not everybody likes every episode. let it be unlocked for gold, let me buy a c-store unlock, let me unlock it after one character hits max rank, keep the fronts separate - anything, but please do something.

Archived Post

I would definitelty say NAY for any toon created after you reach RA with one toon.

I could see a new player doing it the first few but after w hile you need to unlock.

Archived Post

I too have alot of alts, i really don't want to have to repeat the same missions over again

I do like the fact that the story arcs are chained, but its too strict, each arc should unlock with level like it is now. Also the featured episodes should be done as stand alone missions, like they are now, making player go through the entire arcs just to play the new weekly missions will no doubt be annoying to players.

A solution to the running the same missions over and over on all alt's would be to make completing the mission an account wide unlock for all alts of whatever faction the mission was unlocked on.

Another thing I like is the fact that the missions scale, but the rewards should also scale with the missions, like the FE's and the remastered episodes do.

Archived Post

Here is a thread I started on this very issue

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=234046&page=2

with a suggestion or two from the community