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Isnt it time to re-think the current ranks?
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
Should we all really be starship captain vice admirals? It really makes no sense at all.
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...I also wouldn't mind changing "Rear Admiral (Lower Half)" to "Commodore," but I'm told that is so 23rd-century.
Its damn silly seeing the text with upper and lower half...
they'd just say 'rear admiral' or 'admiral'
Though it would also be nice, though silly in some cases, if they called you by your chosen title
I think the ranking system could use an overhaul to be honest, otherwise we're going to run out of ranks and limit expandability, otherwise we'll be taking on missions beyond VA as VA upper half, Admiral lower tier1, tier2, Admiral middle tier 1, tier2, Admiral upper tier1, tier2, Head of Starfleet operations....
Where would it end?
And really, there are FAR too many VAs around as it is. If people keep on tearing through the ranks, we'll all have orders and noone to give 'em to. Its silly that VAs will get stuck with all the donkeywork while the ensign NPCs coast through life knowing the higher-ups will take care of everything for them.
LOL! "Congratulations, Moist Naomi Cortez, on your promotion!"
No, my title isn't actually Moist, it's The Dauntless. xD
But as long as we are out there alone, we are at all not more than just a captain; and nothing speaks against it to let us be captain 11,21,31 instead of admiral.
People complain you can go from ensign to admiral in a week. Well you might not gain ranks that fast but if you experianced 300+ battles in a week youd be a veteran and picking up skills and tactics fast.
My title never changes off captain once i get it.
Klingons having their own distinct non-naval structure would set them apart.
If they want to include Commodore (TOS) or Rear Admiral (lower and upper half) I wouldn't really object - however at those ranks I would want to have some companion ships in space for my Task Force to command like I do BOFFs on the ground.
Imagine having all of the admiral level content leveled for 5 ships and if people team with you they simply take the space previously used by one of your companion ships. This would give a far more epic feel to those ranks.
Vice Admiral should be an honorary rank reserved for top rank admirals who are also the leader of a fleet with X number of members. (I would make X be 50 to build communities instead of breaking them by having everyone be their own fleet leader)
That being said its just a title, some people like being Admirals, no need to nerf the system because TOS Fanpersons get hung up on an outdated title like Commodore. That being said, they should tie what your called into Titles so if people want to be a Captain forever you tick on Captain and npcs will forever call you captain. Im all for that option.
Though I wouldnt mind seeing Lt junior grade introduced into the scheme to push Admiralty further up the chain of command.
I would, however, be in favor of NPCs using your chosen title. Or to combat silliness (if that's really necessary, because it'd only effect the one who chose the silly title), perhaps they address you by what pips you wear; so if you choose to wear the 4 Captain pips, they'd call you Captain.
I could also understand decoupling level and rank--perhaps rank could be tied into the commendation system--but again, only if I at least have the choice of remaining VA.
As for only fleet leaders being admiral--I could see that if the Fleet Admiral rank, specifically, was reserved for them, but not Vice or full Admiral. It's already annoying enough for said Admiral main to be considered a mere "crewman" or "chief" or "lieutenant" or such just because I'm part of a fleet, not leading one. xD
well now that is an idea!
If the top ranks of klinks are army titles, why not have all them be army titles?
So you would have LT, Captain, Major, and Colonel instead of the naval ranks which then makes sense why they go onto be Generals
Let people keep their titles and pips. Maybe some up with a new way to assign them for new players.
But people don't generally fantasize about being admirals so the in-game rank should be Captain.
Anything above that should be a cosmetic upgrade.
!!My main problem!
I mean Captain is the most "iconic" Star Trek rank.
Threads like this are coming up again and again and again... and no reaction that can be taken seriously.
I have no understanding for making it that way in the first place.. I dont want to be forced to be admiral.
Now I know alot of people probably dont like it but thats how it is, rarely does MMO continuity acknowledge outside of Raids and specifically designed group missions that there are multiple special people existing.
It starts with a rather Mary-Sue story:
Captain: "What? That ship's been damaged & is short on crew? Ensign Expendable, beam over and get yourself kil... I mean, make yourself useful."
*beams*
*bees kinda useful*
Transporter Chief: "Good job Ensign Expendable, oh, and remember that bit where we were desperately short on officers and needed you to beam over from your ship? We were wrong, we're overstaffed, you can take one of our Ensigns back with you."
*beam back*
New Buddy: "Gee sir, looks like every one else important is dead, guess you're in charge despite the fact that I'm the same rank as you, and was serving on one of the most advanced ships in the fleet, so probably more experienced & capable."
*KILL ALL OF THE BORG!*
Admiral Quinn: "Grats kid, sucks about your CO, but you did ok, might as well keep the ship. And don't worry about sending that Ensign back to the Khitomer, we don't need it to show up for any future missions, so we'll say it got blown up after you left."
Then you get promoted with maybe a dozen missions each rank. Kirk was a captain for 5+ years before they made him an Admiral, Picard for 7+, Sisko for at least 4. They each ran hundreds of missions before even being offered promotions.
I agree with the poster above who says we should just be captains. Make us first officer of our ship, a Commander, when we beam over to the Khitomer. Cause according to starfleet regulations, the First Officer is supposed to lead away teams. Riker did it, Chakotay did it, we can do it. We get back to find the Captain's been killed. That puts us in command and lets us maintain command without just leapfrogging the entire chain of command to take over our ship when there's probably an ambitious young first officer somewhere eager for his own command.
Then we just progress as Captain, with levels. The devs have stopped referring to levels as rank-grade for the most part anyways, and just call it "level 28" or "level 51" etc.
Let us become Admirals when we hit 51, since supposedly Cryptic wants to put in an "away team in space" system for when they open up the ranks to level 61 anyways. Which is what an admiral does in space, he commands a fleet or a battlegroup.
This is one of the best rethinks I've encountered and you have converted me
I'm now cool with being a Commander during the tutorials, with a promotion to Captain and going all the way to the Admiral level content as a Captain of various levels and "promotions" being atta-boy & given new ships at every 10 levels.
I was happy enough knowing that the title of Commodore would likely come to us through future fleet functionality (as has been previously suggested to us). And I still am. But if it were to be squeezed between Captain and Admiral before f2p is launched I wouldn't complain either. I'd be happy either way.
I would personally take away the "tactical / operations / sciences" disciplines away rfom the klingons and make the Klingon departaments something completelly diferent.
This would be acceptable except for one detail - the promotion to Admiral should be optional. There are those of us out there who do not want to command an 'away team in space' at all. I want to command one ship and only one ship. Aside from that, I like the idea of starting at the Commander rank - starting at Ensign and being promoted rapidly from there because all the senior staff on your ship were inexplicably targeted by the Borg never made a bit of sense. It's a giant plothole that, at this point, could be easily fixed with zero impact to gameplay.
I always envisioned the perfect setup to be that you play the first section (even a very substantial section) of the game as a first officer. Keep most stuff as it is now, start out as Lt in the tutorial, after which you are commendated and promoted (partly through valor via the introduction and partly via death of your superiors in the tutorial) to 1st officer. Tutorial/intro ends at starfleet HQ with you being a mid/upper grade Lt where you get your choice of new commission on a ship (so you can choose what model/type/skin to fly). Forced story progression falls in well with this, the game "creates" a random captain character under which you serve, the forced order of missions is because the Captain is the one choosing the mission, not you. Throw in some text about the captain being a nurturing mentor and giving you a lot of freedom to make decisions on the ship, because he sees great potential in you to be a great captain one day and wants to train you right. That helps explain away some of the free decision-making you would do in this phase of the game. Missions start out with your captain saying "Starfleet has ordered us to XYZ planet blah blah" instead of contacting Admiral Quinn or something to get missions. It's all linear progression like it is now, only explained away under the veil of there is someone above you dictating where the ship flies.
After a bit of this, you get promoted to LtCmdr along with it a new commission (new ship). Keep going under the same circumstances. Basically Cryptic can use this time in the early game to stretch out the tutorial some, and give players a little more specific direction on how to work each game mechanic. Crafting, DOFF system management (you are first officer, after all), etc can be fleshed out in more detail instead of just being thrown at you with no explanation whatsoever. Your portrait would show up as 1st officer in the DOFF assignment system, and you given the authority to change dept heads. Thinking in terms of game content as it exists now, you are basically led through the klingon campaign as a FO.
Once you hit Cmdr, you get your first command (I believe in canon commanders were commonly in command of lesser ships), new ship again. It would be a much more monumental event in the game as you'd be given "full operational freedom" to command a ship as you see fit. Have a short mission that takes place on ESD or wherever that actually has a little ceremony of you getting your first ship (mission would be optionally repeatable after this, every time you got a new ship). Then the game progresses much like it does now, instead of your "captain" giving you details about your missions, you contact HQ direct. Forced mission progression goes away, replaced by choice of several combat theatres to engage in (cardassian, romulan, borg, etc. in essence making it more like Holodeck than the current tribble). Cryptic gets its tighter, more focused storyline progression it is forcing upon us now for low level chars, but gives back the freedom to more experienced players.
Commander evolves into Captain with a new ship, but the captain rank spans more levels than the previous ones (say 20 levels) and maxes out at still being a captain. Reaching admiral is an optional title (as stated above) under the DOFF system or some other game mechanic, as discussed earlier in other threads.
Basically you could use the beginning of the game to create a much tighter, more involved story focused experience spanning a lot more play time than the current tutorial. Player freedoms would be a little limited but that is part of the experience, and part of the fun when you rank up to captain and get unrestricted access to the galaxy. It would almost be like 2 games in one, the first being a 10hr or so "mini RPG" that gives players a solid grounding in both the game mechanic as well as the universe that STO takes place in. The rest of the game from Cmdr onwards being a more open-ended traditional MMO like it is now.
Heck it might even give you more attachment/involvement with your BOs (and the new first officer designation in the DOFF system, as well as the oft-talked about possibility of taking BOs in the game and upgrading them to full characters) as you would have been in their shoes for a bit, and know what it is like to be on "crew". Treat them like characters in the game instead of disposable gear like they are now.
It even makes some bit of sense in the light of away missions, since for example in TNG Riker was always the one heading out on away missions, not the captain.
Just my thoughts but I think something like this done well would be a really immersive and great experience. Excellent introduction to the game and hook for new (F2P) players, a lot better than the ultra rushed shove out the door and into the great unknown we have now. Use this opportunity to showcase Cryptic's talents at making premium missions (featured episodes) to get players hooked on those, get them excited to keep playing, dedicate themselves to the game so they will be able to regularly experience new FE content (HUGE CAVEAT: this content HAS to be made and regularly released). Admittedly for as many flaws as STO has, playing through some of the missions as part of powerleveling my tribble character reminded me of some of the real gems they have created in the missions and stories. (There's some good stuff in there, just far, far, far, far too little of it!) It'd do a lot better job of educating the players on the STO universe than the "Lore" daily we have now.
HMM, but why?
We know they have them.
We've seen a Klingon Science officer in TOS "Day of the Dove", a Tactics Officer and a Science Station in TNG "A Matter of Honor" and an Engineering Officer in DS9 "Soldiers of the Empire".
So why change somthing we know they have into somthing they don't have?
What I would support without question would be that they change more than just the descriptions
on the character creation screen, meaning both the character and BO skills should be somewhat different.
Some might change only a bit, for example I guess the Klingons would use a "Photon Mine Barrier" which has more damage but does not slow down or different Attack Patterns for the Klingons (preferably with Klingn-sounding names) that increase damage but possibly reduce your own defenses because you're willing to do an all-out attack.
Some might be quite different like Dampening Field could be changed to a White-Noise Jammer that drastically reduces the chance of allied ships to get hit when inside the field.
While others might change completely like SNB which is something I don't think the Klingons would use.
For example in "Once more Unto the Breach" a BoP used a "Graviton Burst" to force the enemy ships to reintialize their warpcores.
So a skill that briefly blasts the ship's power levels could have and equally "unnerving" effect without doing the same thing as SNB.
These are just a few random thoughts and ideas of course.
But I think the classes can remain the same without problem when the skills change to reflect the factions.
1-10 Lt. Junior Grade
11-20 Lieutenant
21-30 Lieutenant Commander
31-40 Commander
41-50 Captain
51+ Renowned Captain (think like Picard or Kirk, someone who has been through a lot and is highly respected. While still only a captain, their opinion is given a much higher weight.)
51+ Gold subscriber: Rear Admiral as an option
Lol, SO true...
It should be just an optional Title.
This just delays but keeps the old problems. Rank shouldnt be tied to to level.
There are even some who not only want to stay Captain, but lower: Lt or Lt. Cmdr.
Well, they're so sold on the ranks as-is, I'd just be happy if they made the max rank Captain.
But I agree with you. I would have had the tutorial take place at Commander rank. MAYBE Lt. Commander. And then had numeric levels for the game.
One other suggestion I had was simply to have us start out AS a seasoned Captain, visiting our academy. We get hit with a memory wipe weapon, ala "Tabula Rasa." A friendly hologram helps us defend the Academy by reminding us what we're supposed to do and how to fly a ship to fend off the memory wiping villains. But we start off completely unfamiliar with the 24th century or our faction and get details revealed through cutscenes that introduce the player to Star Trek, with the assumption that the player isn't necessarily familiar with Star Trek.
So we'd have cutscenes set across the various eras, revealing the history of Trek as your Captain's memory gets jarred. By the end of the tutorial, you're declared "fit enough" for duty given the shortage of personnel even though they aren't sure your memory is 100%.