We get it, Ben. You don't like the current zoom setting.
He has a habit of posting repeatedly about things he strongly dislikes about the game. Usually, I agree with what he's arguing about, but not his methods. I agree that this change was extremely ill-advised. The camera has different zoom levels for a reason.
He has a habit of posting repeatedly about things he strongly dislikes about the game. Usually, I agree with what he's arguing about, but not his methods. I agree that this change was extremely ill-advised. The camera has different zoom levels for a reason.
Well, unfortunately, after being a part of this community for over two years, something that has become apparent is that the devs rarely pay serious attention to anything unless you repeatedly bash them over the head with it.
The problem is that some people like me enjoy seeing the name and registry number on our ship's hull. With the camera zoom limited as it is now, I can barely see my ship's registry number. As for my ship's name, I can't see anything but a thin black line where the name should be located because I can't zoom in any closer. I wear glasses; I have a hard enough time seeing without the zoom being limited.:o
Well, unfortunately, after being a part of this community for over two years, something that has become apparent is that the devs rarely pay serious attention to anything unless you repeatedly bash them over the head with it.
Two years? Try three and a half. I agree that Cryptic's response to some community issues is sub-par, but even so, you could be a little more tactful and constructive. You were posting just about everywhere you could about the Galor system messages, even where it wasn't relevant. I appreciate that you're keeping your current grievance confined to this thread, though. We all agree that this was a dumb idea, and I believe Tumerboy said the fix would be coming next week. We have the change we requested scheduled, so there's no need to continue harping on about it.
Two years? Try three and a half. I agree that Cryptic's response to some community issues is sub-par, but even so, you could be a little more tactful and constructive. You were posting just about everywhere you could about the Galor system messages, even where it wasn't relevant. I appreciate that you're keeping your current grievance confined to this thread, though. We all agree that this was a dumb idea, and I believe Tumerboy said the fix would be coming next week. We have the change we requested scheduled, so there's no need to continue harping on about it.
I just checked Tumerboy's post history. I do not see any promise of a fix. Where are you sourcing this information from?
This whole situation reminds me of something that happened on a game I worked on. I'm not going to name the game, maybe someone will figure it out. Whatever.
The game I worked on was a tactical strategy turn based isometric collectible game. When you clicked on a unit, it showed a movement grid for where they could move. If you clicked on one of their abilities, it showed a targeting grid. The unit was selected, but there was no other indication other than the unit's info being in the lower HUD. A piece of feedback came my way, probably from a convention where I was demoing it, that it wasn't clear who was selected. I talked to an artist who art-ed me up a small 'glow' which we put under the unit's base. The effect was pretty subtle, but you could tell who was selected. I showed it to the other developers and the designers and we all agreed that it was good, it was an improvement. We then later patched it live as part of one of our normal patches.
Needless to say, there was reaction to it that matches the reaction this zoom change has had. Some players HATED it. People talked about how it was visually distracting, it bothered them, I think someone claimed it made them nauseous (always love that card being thrown out for changes), etc etc etc. I was completely caught off guard by the reaction. Was I so off base as to not know people would dislike it? Were people really this upset? Was it a vocal minority? Even the other devs and our community guy were like "wait, what?" at the reaction this change got. If I recall correctly, I know that I tweaked it, tried to make it more subtle without it being unnoticable, and I remember even talking to my dev lead about putting in an option to remove it completely. Ultimately, we left it in, and within 2 days we never heard another word about it.
The point of that story? Devs don't just 'do things', and there are times where they make a change that they thing will go well and people will like and will be caught off guard by how it goes over. This is obviously one of those changes. Personally, the zoom level doesn't bother me. Maybe it could be closer to cruisers but 'eh'. Like Tumerboy said, this wasn't done with malicious intent and it wasn't done by some 'clueless dev' who has 'no idea what the player's want'.
Sometimes stuff they do just doesn't jive with what players expect. That is to be expected. It can be mitigated but there's very, very little chance that it won't happen from time to time and when it does I think we could all be better served by not making a huge scene that makes both parties walk away hating each other, which is ultimately what the forums have done for months now.
Well then...here's my proposed solution. Let them give us zoom functionality back, and then you can zoom your camera out till your Odyssey is the size of a quarter and leave it there, if this change is that inconsequential to you. :rolleyes:
Well then...here's my proposed solution. Let them give us zoom functionality back, and then you can zoom your camera out till your Odyssey is the size of a quarter and leave it there, if this change is that inconsequential to you. :rolleyes:
Jeez Ben, I'm known for hammering away at things I disagree with, but even I think you need to chill. It's just the camera zoom and they're working on a fix that will take our concerns into account.
Jeez Ben, I'm known for hammering away at things I disagree with, but even I think you need to chill. It's just the camera zoom and they're working on a fix that will take our concerns into account.
Actually, if you had read my post in context, you would have noted that I was responding to the comment above mine. It was not directed at anyone else.
Actually, if you had read my post in context, you would have noted that I was responding to the comment above mine.
My post was about the fact that devs made a change with the idea that they thought would (a) solve an 'issue' and (b) didn't expect this kind of response. It's a human mistake to make. Asking for them to change it back because we're not satisfied is fine. Telling them that they're incompetent, that they're stupid to not know people would be upset, that they're liars and thieves and other such is not going to prompt people to fix something. All we have to do is let them know that people are displeased with the change and would prefer to be able to still zoom in. I think we can agree that we've convinced them of that, yes?
Also, my odyssey is hardly the size of a quarter on my screen.
According to the above dev, your camera distances are now based on the collision size of your ship, hence you can seemingly zoom in closer to a smaller ship. I don't know if this will persist after he addresses your concerns or not.
/Snip
I just read through the entire thread, please have the "collision size" reduced greatly to match the actual size of the ships, as the circumference of this "collision size" is massive compared to the actual ships size (according to this post combined with the evidence in game).
Btw, if this were done it would fix 2 problems, the zoom issue and also the fact that ships bounce off other ships when they're hardly anywhere near each other, ever noticed that. Leave the Sol System for example and you'll notice if there's a large group near Sol in Sirius sector block that when you spawn you get bounced away from other ships even though you're not really that close to them.
A long time back the "collision size" was reduced for characters on ground maps, before that you would bump into every NPC on ground map etc...
This imo is the best solution... And just wanted to post because I didn't really explain why I brought up the "collision size" thing.
I too have zoomed in quite close for screenshots, etc. Ultimately, whatever affords the most choice without aggravation seems the best choice. Whomever complained about zooming and clipping their ship should have, uh, zoomed out. Count me as +1 for the old zoom setup.
Btw, if this were done it would fix 2 problems, the zoom issue and also the fact that ships bounce off other ships when they're hardly anywhere near each other, ever noticed that. Leave the Sol System for example and you'll notice if there's a large group near Sol in Sirius sector block that when you spawn you get bounced away from other ships even though you're not really that close to them.
A long time back the "collision size" was reduced for characters on ground maps, before that you would bump into every NPC on ground map etc...
This imo is the best solution... And just wanted to post because I didn't really explain why I brought up the "collision size" thing.
And it's really annoying if I am in a tiny ship and want to get close in to a larger ship to look at it. Bouncing off when I'm hundreds of meters away from it is annoying and makes me very disappointed with whomever was in charge of the collision boxes.
Personally, I'd prefer multiple collision boxes for the ships. One for the saucer, one for the neck (if applicable), one for the engineering hull (if applicable), one for each of the pylons/wings (if applicable) and one for each of the nacelles. Make the boxes small, only just larger than the portion of the model they are surrounding. This would take care of the camera clipping through if it can't cross into the collision box so we could still zoom right up to the hull as well as being bounced around by ships that are no where near you. A bonus would be that I could take a shuttle and fly right up underneath a ship and be all "oooh" and "aah".
Multiple boxes may also create options that could be used in the future that would require less preparations, an example would be if the devs ever decided it would be neat to target different parts of the ship.
Completely agree AngelSilhouette and would love to be able to target different parts of a ship or see different parts of a ship become battle damaged, even come away from the main hull... in future.
Completely agree AngelSilhouette and would love to be able to target different parts of a ship or see different parts of a ship become battle damaged, even come away from the main hull... in future.
And options in PVE missions like blowing off a nacelle to cripple the ship and keep it from escaping to warp.
Whoops, I am going off topic.
I digress and return to the original topic.
Fix the zoom rawr! (Shrink the collision boxes if they are what limits the camera from getting too close to the ship. Break the single collision box into several smaller ones around the different parts of the ship (saucer, primary hull, pylons, nacelles, etc) to allow even further zooming and future gameplay options.)
And it's really annoying if I am in a tiny ship and want to get close in to a larger ship to look at it. Bouncing off when I'm hundreds of meters away from it is annoying and makes me very disappointed with whomever was in charge of the collision boxes.
Personally, I'd prefer multiple collision boxes for the ships. One for the saucer, one for the neck (if applicable), one for the engineering hull (if applicable), one for each of the pylons/wings (if applicable) and one for each of the nacelles. Make the boxes small, only just larger than the portion of the model they are surrounding. This would take care of the camera clipping through if it can't cross into the collision box so we could still zoom right up to the hull as well as being bounced around by ships that are no where near you. A bonus would be that I could take a shuttle and fly right up underneath a ship and be all "oooh" and "aah".
Multiple boxes may also create options that could be used in the future that would require less preparations, an example would be if the devs ever decided it would be neat to target different parts of the ship.
Completely agree AngelSilhouette and would love to be able to target different parts of a ship or see different parts of a ship become battle damaged, even come away from the main hull... in future.
And options in PVE missions like blowing off a nacelle to cripple the ship and keep it from escaping to warp.
Whoops, I am going off topic.
I digress and return to the original topic.
Fix the zoom rawr! (Shrink the collision boxes if they are what limits the camera from getting too close to the ship. Break the single collision box into several smaller ones around the different parts of the ship (saucer, primary hull, pylons, nacelles, etc) to allow even further zooming and future gameplay options.)
I am in full and complete agreement, hit boxes for each part, let me fly my shuttle in between nacelles!!
I don't post here much, but I have to say this to the developers, bc this latest change was the final straw for me. You took a franchice with a large fan base. You removed everything the fan base loves(exploration, roaming the ship, interacting with crew, large open systems) and replaced it with slap dash combat, broken UI, and a truly horrific world that looks nothing more than a board game. The game was a failure before it even launched. Star Trek could have been an AMAZING MMO. I was thinking something like EVE but more casual friendly. Shame. Oh well, there's always Star Trek: Excalibur which looks amazing and if made by people who are huge star trek fans and understand what people want.
I've gotta say... I didn't realize just how horrible the new minimum distance is until I went to a bigger ship. On shuttles and escorts, it's barely noticeable.
But on the Odyssey? wow... it's really far. As a friend mentioned, "I can't even read my ship's registry number", much less the actual name of the ship.
Devs, please change it back. Going inside the ship doesn't hurt anything if you can zoom out, but not being able to zoom in close enough to see anything definitely does.
Completely agree AngelSilhouette and would love to be able to target different parts of a ship or see different parts of a ship become battle damaged, even come away from the main hull... in future.
The engine already has the capability of doing this, at least to some extent. One of the first trailers for Star Trek Online featured in-game footage of a Klingon Vor'cha shooting the starboard nacelle off of Perpetual's Excalibur design. Occasionally, when my ship is vaporized by the Borg command ship's plasma bolt, my nacelles will float off.
I don't post here much, but I have to say this to the developers, bc this latest change was the final straw for me. You took a franchice with a large fan base. You removed everything the fan base loves(exploration, roaming the ship, interacting with crew, large open systems) and replaced it with slap dash combat, broken UI, and a truly horrific world that looks nothing more than a board game. The game was a failure before it even launched. Star Trek could have been an AMAZING MMO. I was thinking something like EVE but more casual friendly. Shame. Oh well, there's always Star Trek: Excalibur which looks amazing and if made by people who are huge star trek fans and understand what people want.
Good going guys.
When Perpetual had the license, it appeared that there would be much more 'Trek' to the game. But after Cryptic got their hands on it, everything changed.
To be fair, though, if Cryptic hadn't acquired the license, I'm not sure whether or not there would currently be a Star Trek MMO at all.
I just wish they'd stop doing TRIBBLE things to the only 'living' Star Trek experience we have right now.
I've done a cursory check of the various various ships my characters use. All of the large Cruiser/Battle Cruisers ships seems to have their Minimum Camera Distance increased quick a bit. I can no long put the camera close my Galaxy variants, Odyssey, Bortas, Vor'cha, et al. Class ships. All other ships don't seem to be affects (Miranda Class, T5 Escorts, T5 Science ships, etc).
Just in case this is a bug. Tticket ID #1,303,640.
Its annoying. The "new" max zoom in-distance is about the same distance I used before in most (but not all) fights, but its far from my prefered spin around my ship while travelling, or waiting, or just everything else than fights. Cannot even zoom close enough to read the shipname now (Yeah, I know the name of my ship, but I like how it looks written on the hull, I'm easily entertained with such fluff).
When Perpetual had the license, it appeared that there would be much more 'Trek' to the game. But after Cryptic got their hands on it, everything changed.
To be fair, though, if Cryptic hadn't acquired the license, I'm not sure whether or not there would currently be a Star Trek MMO at all.
I just wish they'd stop doing TRIBBLE things to the only 'living' Star Trek experience we have right now.
The idea that Perpetual was going to do much differently is one I continue to find silly, considering all their later interviews, FAQs, mock-up images, and concept art ended up being basically what STO is like currently.
Everything from the basic way ships were to be handled (in space, players become the ship in third-person view with a tray full of powers, windows that popped up on screen with talking heads, etc.) to much of the concept art they turned out actually ended up in Cryptic STO. There was a time when they mentioned that they had no intention of even putting in a multiplayer single-ship crew at the start and promised to look into it later on, again much like Cryptic did, both of which were disappointing to me at the time.
You have to realize that when Cryptic took it on, they probably didn't just take hold of the concept art, but all the game design documents that laid out how the game would actually play. That's more than likely how they were not only able to put together the look fairly quickly (based on already completed concept art from Perpetual) but also how the game plays overall, because that stuff can take years on its own to work out, long before any part of the game is really operational.
So if we were playing a Perpetual STO right now (presuming they found a way to fund themselves and work on STO to a point where it was playable), I doubt we'd be playing that different a game from what we have now. For all we know, the camera system could have even been worse, but that much is speculation at this point, considering the events of Perpetual's double downfall (from Perpetual to P2).
So point being...pining for a Perpetual *fantasy* STO isn't going to fix things as opposed to constructive feedback. In this case, they've got our feedback (hopefully also some of the feedback about the odd ship fade I've been discovering on smaller ships from certain camera angles despite not actually clipping) and are looking to make some changes to it. Not much else you can do but wait until the changes come up to provide continued feedback on.
So point being...pining for a Perpetual *fantasy* STO isn't going to fix things as opposed to constructive feedback.
You are putting words in my mouth. I never wished, nor stated, that Perpetual could have done a better job; in fact, they did a demonstrably worse job by blowing their entire production budget and only having a few pretty pieces of concept art to show for it. I am not even entirely certain that they had any kind of working tech model for all their efforts, whatever those may have been. I merely commented, in response to another person's post, that the level of Trek immersiveness represented to be in the works by that company appeared to be of a greater depth than what we have here.
That's more than likely how they were not only able to put together the look fairly quickly (based on already completed concept art from Perpetual) but also how the game plays overall, because that stuff can take years on its own to work out, long before any part of the game is really operational.
As far as Cryptic's actual construction of this game is concerned, according to the STOked podcast (reference: 'STOked: How Cryptic Saved Star Trek Online'), they slapped some Star Trek-ish graphics on the Champions engine and went from there. They did not use any tech handed off to them by Perpetual. If this is true, it would explain a lot of the game's eccentricities, problems, and its distinctly comic-book feel.
Again, they were still one step ahead of Perpetual in this regard, as they were at least able to kludge something together that resembled a working model.
To quote Chris Fisher from the STOked episode in question: "It had problems, but it worked."
Now if they'd only quit TRIBBLE with things that aren't broken. That's where my frustration lies - that a company that seems to take particular delight in making all the wrong decisions has been appointed the custodian of the Star Trek legacy.
You are putting words in my mouth. I never wished, nor stated, that Perpetual could have done a better job; in fact, they did a demonstrably worse job by blowing their entire production budget and only having a few pretty pieces of concept art to show for it. I am not even entirely certain that they had any kind of working tech model for all their efforts, whatever those may have been. I merely commented, in response to another person's post, that the level of Trek immersiveness represented to be in the works by that company appeared to be of a greater depth than what we have here.
However, we will never know.
You clearly said: "When Perpetual had the license, it appeared that there would be much more 'Trek' to the game. But after Cryptic got their hands on it, everything changed."
That is what I was responding to, but as we both have said they have had nothing to show for it but their concept art and some other materials, which I'm sure include some models, as they needed something to work with to make the mock-up images they showed off. But what else?
They had nothing beyond the above-mentioned materials to show what level of "immersiveness" we'd get. Except for the mock-up images that showed a pretend-game that never happened (mock-ups are usually done by developers to show what kind of style or look their game is going for, and how it might look as if being played. This is both to set something to shoot for for themselves, and to show their investors, bosses, etc. that they're making some progress and okay to continue on) ...until Cryptic STO, which appears to have utilized much of the basic look from the mock-ups in their final game.
I'd go so far as to say the Perpetual STO *is* Cryptic STO based on those alone, aside from what material they spoke of prior to falling apart.
You can find some of these mock-up concepts searching for "Perpetual STO concept" in Google images.
As far as Cryptic's actual construction of this game is concerned, according to the STOked podcast reference: 'How Cryptic Saved Star Trek Online'), they slapped some Star Trek-ish graphics on the Champions engine and went from there. They did not use any tech handed off to them by Perpetual. If this is true, it would explain a lot of the game's eccentricities, problems, and its distinctly comic-book feel.
Again, they were still one step ahead of Perpetual in this regard, as they were at least able to kludge something together that resembled a working model.
To quote Chris Fisher from the STOked episode in question: "It had problems, but it worked."
If that's how engines worked, making games would be a lot easier, I tell you. But it isn't.
The cartoonish look I hear some attribute to STO as being from CO right off the bat doesn't hold water. This is because nearly all of STO's art assets are made *for* STO. With the minor exceptions of some animations and a water fountain, STO's art has nothing to do with CO. This isn't something generated by the engine itself, artists make this stuff up and import it in.
So if you feel STO's art is comic'y, then that's because the STO team artists who worked on STO's assets made it that way right off the bat (yes, I know artists in the same company can switch development teams, from CO to STO or the other way around, but they still have to build new assets to conform with the look of the game they're working on).
For instance, STO's character models and textures especially are completely different from CO's. They may use a similar character creator, but that's more a programming spill-over than anything from the artists or the engine.
Having a ready-made engine does make the process faster, but it doesn't make the game the same as any other game the engine is used for. I can't find an analogy that would work best to easily explain this, but I can tell you, and I know devs have stated even recently, that this isn't the case. It's all the programming and scripting that goes into the ready-made engine *after* the fact.
And this is the only thing closest to what you mean that has probably spilled over, scripting for how a character moves (not to be confused with how the movement is animated, that's completely separate, and so annoying to do...), how a menu works, the chat system, the most basic things. STO combat gameplay is quite different (and I daresay, much more responsive, dynamic, and more hands-on) than CO's combat gameplay, which is much closer to how standard MMO's play nowadays. Add to the fact that CO has nothing like STO's starship combat as well.
But that's stuff piled on top of the ready-made engine. And it is far from easy as you suggest.
The only example (borrowing Tumerboy's comparison from another topic, I believe) I can think of is how the Unreal engine has been used. Sometimes you notice similarities, but it's used in a wide variety of games nowadays, everything from the obvious first-person shooters to the less obvious RPG's, space-sims, aircraft simulators, and other genres. The stuff an engine does isn't as much to the forefront as you expect.
EPIC may have made the Unreal engine, license it out and the like, but they don't make those other games. They may sometimes have similar features gameplay-wise, but that's not the engine doing that. That's the individual developers who paid to have the engine licensed to them and the features they've added, or made similar enough to how another game using the same engine does things because it just works, and would be counter-productive to not adapt it.
Basically, you're mixing up what's involved with what: 2D artists work on concept art and textures, 3D artists work on models, programmers work on scripting functions to work a certain way and such. Separate teams working on different games with the same engine make different assets (which include the prior-mentioned 3D models, 2D artwork, etc-etc.). And engines don't do all of that themselves either.
As far as adapting the look and feel of the game, again I refer to Perpetual's concepts and mock-ups, which weren't exactly striking realism either, and are far closer to Cryptic STO than CO ever could be.
There are conflicting accounts from Perpetual devs as to what they felt was working or not working from a design PoV but I think from everything I saw that if you had to crank a game out of Perpetual's notes and art, what you'd wind up with is:
- The player avatar (excluding helm officers) is always a humanoid. Direct control of the ship is not in the cards when your guilds are crews who cooperatively manage a ship through minigames. Junior officers may pilot shuttles but the ship herself is NOT your avatar.
- Ship interiors would be both guilt/crew housing and cities that you pass/progress through. I think the majority of single player play would be onboard ships and at well traveled hubs. Your ship is your capital city though and ship interiors would serve much the same role that Stormwind does in Warcraft or ESD/DS9 do in STO.
- In terms of getting outside of ships/starbases/colonies (which would be the established PvE solo areas where you'd get XP for stopping fights in Ten Forward and doing delivery quests across your ship), AWAY TEAMS would be that game's code for dungeons/raids/STFs on the ground and space combat encounters would be RED ALERTS where you have 5-10 people basically played bejeweled with warp core power conduits and targeting systems to win.
So space would be entire gimmick fights... Like Karazhan chess in Warcraft. And dungeons/raids would be away teams. And PvE progression would be aboard ships and starbases with your crew's ship as the capital.
I think they had slightly grander ambitions but analyzing their game, I think I've managed to nail where they'd have wound up landing.
There are conflicting accounts from Perpetual devs as to what they felt was working or not working from a design PoV but I think from everything I saw that if you had to crank a game out of Perpetual's notes and art, what you'd wind up with is:
- The player avatar (excluding helm officers) is always a humanoid. Direct control of the ship is not in the cards when your guilds are crews who cooperatively manage a ship through minigames. Junior officers may pilot shuttles but the ship herself is NOT your avatar.
- Ship interiors would be both guilt/crew housing and cities that you pass/progress through. I think the majority of single player play would be onboard ships and at well traveled hubs. Your ship is your capital city though and ship interiors would serve much the same role that Stormwind does in Warcraft or ESD/DS9 do in STO.
- In terms of getting outside of ships/starbases/colonies (which would be the established PvE solo areas where you'd get XP for stopping fights in Ten Forward and doing delivery quests across your ship), AWAY TEAMS would be that game's code for dungeons/raids/STFs on the ground and space combat encounters would be RED ALERTS where you have 5-10 people basically played bejeweled with warp core power conduits and targeting systems to win.
So space would be entire gimmick fights... Like Karazhan chess in Warcraft. And dungeons/raids would be away teams. And PvE progression would be aboard ships and starbases with your crew's ship as the capital.
I think they had slightly grander ambitions but analyzing their game, I think I've managed to nail where they'd have wound up landing.
A lot of that was conjecture on their part on how the game would *eventually* be like...but those conflicting reports you mention aren't contradictions so much as changed ideas during the course of their early development, which is the stage where they're basically only doing concept art and game design document-type stuff.
If you follow a lot of developers that don't mind showing off their pre-working game stuff, or even stuff that *is* working in a very early version of the game, they tend to have a lot of grand, awesome ideas that they have to cut up or find are unfeasible as time goes on, especially in the last half of development when it's crunch time and they've gotta make do with what they've got.
As for the expansive use of player interiors, they weren't even going to have interiors at the start. The big interiors they were going to have of starships were going to be a few non-playable, static starships that were going to serve as "hubs" to venture off from, not our own starships. There's still a few articles on that somewhere, Suricata's site has a nice one, along with a bunch of the mock-ups I've mentioned: http://www.suricatafx.com/?p=332
A lot of that was conjecture on their part on how the game would *eventually* be like...but those conflicting reports you mention aren't contradictions so much as changed ideas during the course of their early development, which is the stage where they're basically only doing concept art and game design document-type stuff.
If you follow a lot of developers that don't mind showing off their pre-working game stuff, or even stuff that *is* working in a very early version of the game, they tend to have a lot of grand, awesome ideas that they have to cut up or find are unfeasible as time goes on, especially in the last half of development when it's crunch time and they've gotta make do with what they've got.
As for the expansive use of player interiors, they weren't even going to have interiors at the start. The big interiors they were going to have of starships were going to be a few non-playable, static starships that were going to serve as "hubs" to venture off from, not our own starships. There's still a few articles on that somewhere, Suricata's site has a nice one, along with a bunch of the mock-ups I've mentioned: http://www.suricatafx.com/?p=332
I'm not saying that's what I would have liked and what I described doesn't entirely match their grandiose plans. I'm conjecturing, mainly based on the "reality checks" made by Perpetual devs in blog posts after STO came out.
The idea of ship interiors being cities still resonates more with me and it bugs me that Cryptic seems to be passing over interiors for fleet starbases. I'd rather they focused on fleet FLAGSHIPS first and put the love into ship interiors with a fleetmaster's ship interior serving as hub for the fleet.
:mad:
Man, this camera zoom bug drives me crazy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Isjgc0oX0s
See Video, if you do not know what to do with what you screwed up.
DO IT NOW!
Enable an Option in System Settings called MIN | MAX Camera Zoom
Other games can do that - why cant you and p*** off so many people?!
That link says it all. I haven't been in game since this zoom TRIBBLE happened, and i'm not going to until it's fixed! :mad::mad:
Man, never mind the Perpetual was gonna do this, or Cryptic did that junk... are they going to fix the camera zoom problem? While my Oddyssey looks "Okay" in it's full Jem'hadar dress, the Bortas looks like it might be pretty sweet looking, however it's hard to see the details half a sector away from my ship. Yeah I like the fluff stuff too, I love "beauty shots" of my ship, so what?
Comments
He has a habit of posting repeatedly about things he strongly dislikes about the game. Usually, I agree with what he's arguing about, but not his methods. I agree that this change was extremely ill-advised. The camera has different zoom levels for a reason.
Well, unfortunately, after being a part of this community for over two years, something that has become apparent is that the devs rarely pay serious attention to anything unless you repeatedly bash them over the head with it.
Two years? Try three and a half. I agree that Cryptic's response to some community issues is sub-par, but even so, you could be a little more tactful and constructive. You were posting just about everywhere you could about the Galor system messages, even where it wasn't relevant. I appreciate that you're keeping your current grievance confined to this thread, though. We all agree that this was a dumb idea, and I believe Tumerboy said the fix would be coming next week. We have the change we requested scheduled, so there's no need to continue harping on about it.
I just checked Tumerboy's post history. I do not see any promise of a fix. Where are you sourcing this information from?
The game I worked on was a tactical strategy turn based isometric collectible game. When you clicked on a unit, it showed a movement grid for where they could move. If you clicked on one of their abilities, it showed a targeting grid. The unit was selected, but there was no other indication other than the unit's info being in the lower HUD. A piece of feedback came my way, probably from a convention where I was demoing it, that it wasn't clear who was selected. I talked to an artist who art-ed me up a small 'glow' which we put under the unit's base. The effect was pretty subtle, but you could tell who was selected. I showed it to the other developers and the designers and we all agreed that it was good, it was an improvement. We then later patched it live as part of one of our normal patches.
Needless to say, there was reaction to it that matches the reaction this zoom change has had. Some players HATED it. People talked about how it was visually distracting, it bothered them, I think someone claimed it made them nauseous (always love that card being thrown out for changes), etc etc etc. I was completely caught off guard by the reaction. Was I so off base as to not know people would dislike it? Were people really this upset? Was it a vocal minority? Even the other devs and our community guy were like "wait, what?" at the reaction this change got. If I recall correctly, I know that I tweaked it, tried to make it more subtle without it being unnoticable, and I remember even talking to my dev lead about putting in an option to remove it completely. Ultimately, we left it in, and within 2 days we never heard another word about it.
The point of that story? Devs don't just 'do things', and there are times where they make a change that they thing will go well and people will like and will be caught off guard by how it goes over. This is obviously one of those changes. Personally, the zoom level doesn't bother me. Maybe it could be closer to cruisers but 'eh'. Like Tumerboy said, this wasn't done with malicious intent and it wasn't done by some 'clueless dev' who has 'no idea what the player's want'.
Sometimes stuff they do just doesn't jive with what players expect. That is to be expected. It can be mitigated but there's very, very little chance that it won't happen from time to time and when it does I think we could all be better served by not making a huge scene that makes both parties walk away hating each other, which is ultimately what the forums have done for months now.
Jeez Ben, I'm known for hammering away at things I disagree with, but even I think you need to chill. It's just the camera zoom and they're working on a fix that will take our concerns into account.
Actually, if you had read my post in context, you would have noted that I was responding to the comment above mine. It was not directed at anyone else.
Quote and snip my friend, quote and snip, otherwise we're losing the context.
My post was about the fact that devs made a change with the idea that they thought would (a) solve an 'issue' and (b) didn't expect this kind of response. It's a human mistake to make. Asking for them to change it back because we're not satisfied is fine. Telling them that they're incompetent, that they're stupid to not know people would be upset, that they're liars and thieves and other such is not going to prompt people to fix something. All we have to do is let them know that people are displeased with the change and would prefer to be able to still zoom in. I think we can agree that we've convinced them of that, yes?
Also, my odyssey is hardly the size of a quarter on my screen.
Btw, if this were done it would fix 2 problems, the zoom issue and also the fact that ships bounce off other ships when they're hardly anywhere near each other, ever noticed that. Leave the Sol System for example and you'll notice if there's a large group near Sol in Sirius sector block that when you spawn you get bounced away from other ships even though you're not really that close to them.
A long time back the "collision size" was reduced for characters on ground maps, before that you would bump into every NPC on ground map etc...
This imo is the best solution... And just wanted to post because I didn't really explain why I brought up the "collision size" thing.
Wholeheartedly agreed.
And it's really annoying if I am in a tiny ship and want to get close in to a larger ship to look at it. Bouncing off when I'm hundreds of meters away from it is annoying and makes me very disappointed with whomever was in charge of the collision boxes.
Personally, I'd prefer multiple collision boxes for the ships. One for the saucer, one for the neck (if applicable), one for the engineering hull (if applicable), one for each of the pylons/wings (if applicable) and one for each of the nacelles. Make the boxes small, only just larger than the portion of the model they are surrounding. This would take care of the camera clipping through if it can't cross into the collision box so we could still zoom right up to the hull as well as being bounced around by ships that are no where near you. A bonus would be that I could take a shuttle and fly right up underneath a ship and be all "oooh" and "aah".
Multiple boxes may also create options that could be used in the future that would require less preparations, an example would be if the devs ever decided it would be neat to target different parts of the ship.
And options in PVE missions like blowing off a nacelle to cripple the ship and keep it from escaping to warp.
Whoops, I am going off topic.
I digress and return to the original topic.
Fix the zoom rawr! (Shrink the collision boxes if they are what limits the camera from getting too close to the ship. Break the single collision box into several smaller ones around the different parts of the ship (saucer, primary hull, pylons, nacelles, etc) to allow even further zooming and future gameplay options.)
I am in full and complete agreement, hit boxes for each part, let me fly my shuttle in between nacelles!!
Good going guys.
But on the Odyssey? wow... it's really far. As a friend mentioned, "I can't even read my ship's registry number", much less the actual name of the ship.
Devs, please change it back. Going inside the ship doesn't hurt anything if you can zoom out, but not being able to zoom in close enough to see anything definitely does.
The engine already has the capability of doing this, at least to some extent. One of the first trailers for Star Trek Online featured in-game footage of a Klingon Vor'cha shooting the starboard nacelle off of Perpetual's Excalibur design. Occasionally, when my ship is vaporized by the Borg command ship's plasma bolt, my nacelles will float off.
When Perpetual had the license, it appeared that there would be much more 'Trek' to the game. But after Cryptic got their hands on it, everything changed.
To be fair, though, if Cryptic hadn't acquired the license, I'm not sure whether or not there would currently be a Star Trek MMO at all.
I just wish they'd stop doing TRIBBLE things to the only 'living' Star Trek experience we have right now.
Its annoying. The "new" max zoom in-distance is about the same distance I used before in most (but not all) fights, but its far from my prefered spin around my ship while travelling, or waiting, or just everything else than fights. Cannot even zoom close enough to read the shipname now (Yeah, I know the name of my ship, but I like how it looks written on the hull, I'm easily entertained with such fluff).
The idea that Perpetual was going to do much differently is one I continue to find silly, considering all their later interviews, FAQs, mock-up images, and concept art ended up being basically what STO is like currently.
Everything from the basic way ships were to be handled (in space, players become the ship in third-person view with a tray full of powers, windows that popped up on screen with talking heads, etc.) to much of the concept art they turned out actually ended up in Cryptic STO. There was a time when they mentioned that they had no intention of even putting in a multiplayer single-ship crew at the start and promised to look into it later on, again much like Cryptic did, both of which were disappointing to me at the time.
You have to realize that when Cryptic took it on, they probably didn't just take hold of the concept art, but all the game design documents that laid out how the game would actually play. That's more than likely how they were not only able to put together the look fairly quickly (based on already completed concept art from Perpetual) but also how the game plays overall, because that stuff can take years on its own to work out, long before any part of the game is really operational.
So if we were playing a Perpetual STO right now (presuming they found a way to fund themselves and work on STO to a point where it was playable), I doubt we'd be playing that different a game from what we have now. For all we know, the camera system could have even been worse, but that much is speculation at this point, considering the events of Perpetual's double downfall (from Perpetual to P2).
So point being...pining for a Perpetual *fantasy* STO isn't going to fix things as opposed to constructive feedback. In this case, they've got our feedback (hopefully also some of the feedback about the odd ship fade I've been discovering on smaller ships from certain camera angles despite not actually clipping) and are looking to make some changes to it. Not much else you can do but wait until the changes come up to provide continued feedback on.
However, we will never know.
As far as Cryptic's actual construction of this game is concerned, according to the STOked podcast (reference: 'STOked: How Cryptic Saved Star Trek Online'), they slapped some Star Trek-ish graphics on the Champions engine and went from there. They did not use any tech handed off to them by Perpetual. If this is true, it would explain a lot of the game's eccentricities, problems, and its distinctly comic-book feel.
Again, they were still one step ahead of Perpetual in this regard, as they were at least able to kludge something together that resembled a working model.
To quote Chris Fisher from the STOked episode in question: "It had problems, but it worked."
Now if they'd only quit TRIBBLE with things that aren't broken. That's where my frustration lies - that a company that seems to take particular delight in making all the wrong decisions has been appointed the custodian of the Star Trek legacy.
You clearly said: "When Perpetual had the license, it appeared that there would be much more 'Trek' to the game. But after Cryptic got their hands on it, everything changed."
That is what I was responding to, but as we both have said they have had nothing to show for it but their concept art and some other materials, which I'm sure include some models, as they needed something to work with to make the mock-up images they showed off. But what else?
They had nothing beyond the above-mentioned materials to show what level of "immersiveness" we'd get. Except for the mock-up images that showed a pretend-game that never happened (mock-ups are usually done by developers to show what kind of style or look their game is going for, and how it might look as if being played. This is both to set something to shoot for for themselves, and to show their investors, bosses, etc. that they're making some progress and okay to continue on) ...until Cryptic STO, which appears to have utilized much of the basic look from the mock-ups in their final game.
I'd go so far as to say the Perpetual STO *is* Cryptic STO based on those alone, aside from what material they spoke of prior to falling apart.
You can find some of these mock-up concepts searching for "Perpetual STO concept" in Google images.
If that's how engines worked, making games would be a lot easier, I tell you. But it isn't.
The cartoonish look I hear some attribute to STO as being from CO right off the bat doesn't hold water. This is because nearly all of STO's art assets are made *for* STO. With the minor exceptions of some animations and a water fountain, STO's art has nothing to do with CO. This isn't something generated by the engine itself, artists make this stuff up and import it in.
So if you feel STO's art is comic'y, then that's because the STO team artists who worked on STO's assets made it that way right off the bat (yes, I know artists in the same company can switch development teams, from CO to STO or the other way around, but they still have to build new assets to conform with the look of the game they're working on).
For instance, STO's character models and textures especially are completely different from CO's. They may use a similar character creator, but that's more a programming spill-over than anything from the artists or the engine.
Having a ready-made engine does make the process faster, but it doesn't make the game the same as any other game the engine is used for. I can't find an analogy that would work best to easily explain this, but I can tell you, and I know devs have stated even recently, that this isn't the case. It's all the programming and scripting that goes into the ready-made engine *after* the fact.
And this is the only thing closest to what you mean that has probably spilled over, scripting for how a character moves (not to be confused with how the movement is animated, that's completely separate, and so annoying to do...), how a menu works, the chat system, the most basic things. STO combat gameplay is quite different (and I daresay, much more responsive, dynamic, and more hands-on) than CO's combat gameplay, which is much closer to how standard MMO's play nowadays. Add to the fact that CO has nothing like STO's starship combat as well.
But that's stuff piled on top of the ready-made engine. And it is far from easy as you suggest.
The only example (borrowing Tumerboy's comparison from another topic, I believe) I can think of is how the Unreal engine has been used. Sometimes you notice similarities, but it's used in a wide variety of games nowadays, everything from the obvious first-person shooters to the less obvious RPG's, space-sims, aircraft simulators, and other genres. The stuff an engine does isn't as much to the forefront as you expect.
EPIC may have made the Unreal engine, license it out and the like, but they don't make those other games. They may sometimes have similar features gameplay-wise, but that's not the engine doing that. That's the individual developers who paid to have the engine licensed to them and the features they've added, or made similar enough to how another game using the same engine does things because it just works, and would be counter-productive to not adapt it.
Basically, you're mixing up what's involved with what: 2D artists work on concept art and textures, 3D artists work on models, programmers work on scripting functions to work a certain way and such. Separate teams working on different games with the same engine make different assets (which include the prior-mentioned 3D models, 2D artwork, etc-etc.). And engines don't do all of that themselves either.
As far as adapting the look and feel of the game, again I refer to Perpetual's concepts and mock-ups, which weren't exactly striking realism either, and are far closer to Cryptic STO than CO ever could be.
There are conflicting accounts from Perpetual devs as to what they felt was working or not working from a design PoV but I think from everything I saw that if you had to crank a game out of Perpetual's notes and art, what you'd wind up with is:
- The player avatar (excluding helm officers) is always a humanoid. Direct control of the ship is not in the cards when your guilds are crews who cooperatively manage a ship through minigames. Junior officers may pilot shuttles but the ship herself is NOT your avatar.
- Ship interiors would be both guilt/crew housing and cities that you pass/progress through. I think the majority of single player play would be onboard ships and at well traveled hubs. Your ship is your capital city though and ship interiors would serve much the same role that Stormwind does in Warcraft or ESD/DS9 do in STO.
- In terms of getting outside of ships/starbases/colonies (which would be the established PvE solo areas where you'd get XP for stopping fights in Ten Forward and doing delivery quests across your ship), AWAY TEAMS would be that game's code for dungeons/raids/STFs on the ground and space combat encounters would be RED ALERTS where you have 5-10 people basically played bejeweled with warp core power conduits and targeting systems to win.
So space would be entire gimmick fights... Like Karazhan chess in Warcraft. And dungeons/raids would be away teams. And PvE progression would be aboard ships and starbases with your crew's ship as the capital.
I think they had slightly grander ambitions but analyzing their game, I think I've managed to nail where they'd have wound up landing.
A lot of that was conjecture on their part on how the game would *eventually* be like...but those conflicting reports you mention aren't contradictions so much as changed ideas during the course of their early development, which is the stage where they're basically only doing concept art and game design document-type stuff.
If you follow a lot of developers that don't mind showing off their pre-working game stuff, or even stuff that *is* working in a very early version of the game, they tend to have a lot of grand, awesome ideas that they have to cut up or find are unfeasible as time goes on, especially in the last half of development when it's crunch time and they've gotta make do with what they've got.
As for the expansive use of player interiors, they weren't even going to have interiors at the start. The big interiors they were going to have of starships were going to be a few non-playable, static starships that were going to serve as "hubs" to venture off from, not our own starships. There's still a few articles on that somewhere, Suricata's site has a nice one, along with a bunch of the mock-ups I've mentioned: http://www.suricatafx.com/?p=332
I'm not saying that's what I would have liked and what I described doesn't entirely match their grandiose plans. I'm conjecturing, mainly based on the "reality checks" made by Perpetual devs in blog posts after STO came out.
The idea of ship interiors being cities still resonates more with me and it bugs me that Cryptic seems to be passing over interiors for fleet starbases. I'd rather they focused on fleet FLAGSHIPS first and put the love into ship interiors with a fleetmaster's ship interior serving as hub for the fleet.
That link says it all. I haven't been in game since this zoom TRIBBLE happened, and i'm not going to until it's fixed! :mad::mad: