To get back to the original thread/issue, I read it as you saying the game misses the 'soul of Star Trek', and someone later on made the point that it is lots of action and not much interaction/brain, as the Star Trek culture (before the last film) is.
I see your point. I also see that in the following discussion people are asking for either more PvP or more Story/Characterization/customization. I think this thread proves the problem, there are very different opinions as to what the problem is and how it should be solved. So it is up to the developers to make a choice, who are you going to please? And also, who are you going to compete with?
I think PvP doesn't work right now and it probably never will. First of all it does not really fit snuggly with Star Trek. Secondly, there are already games that have executed that so much better, like EVE Online for instance, why on earth would you come here for good PvP? I think you are never going to get masses of customers with that.
More storyline development, custumizations and expanding the look-and-feel might help making it more Star Trek. Again, EVE Online has a moving storyline, each year the universe changes, so as a player you literally experience periods. STO has a fixed storyline, it is always the same year. The universe does not change, although new content is added, the period will always be the same. I suspect the developers simply are not allowed to take the stories too far from ST canon, so their hands might be tied.
In my opinion STO is a pretty nice platform. Not a fantastic platform, but nice enough for fans. Cryptic will keep adding sellable content to that platform to upkeep it. And that is basically it. So where does the future lie?
With us!
The foundry is actually a pretty cool addition where we can use the STO platform to create our own enviroment. And that's the way it will work in the future anyway. Game providers will make a good platform, the community will make the content. It's a good deal that will offer you a nearly infinite source of gameplay, either pure action of story driven chapters that make you play in an interactive film, as it were.
There is only one problem for us Foundry builders. The Foundry is still a very limited and cumbersome tool. It's good it's there, but it needs a major investment to really give it potential. They gave it its first upgrade in a long time recently, and that's good. But it still is not there yet. It needs a 3d enviroment for map building. It needs to make it possible to stretch and shrink objects. It needs sounds. It needs to allow you to create and add objects. They are very simple tools, but for instance Mount & Blade had the most basic editor that allowed you to really make complete customizations. Put a tool like that in the hands of the STO community, and Cryptic would be amazed what kind of entertaining content they will get for free!
Oh, and one tip: some people already said it, but creating your own stories goes a long way. Why not pick a neglected species, develop it, get other people to join in, and before you know it you've created your own world in here. Check us out: http://www.defera.org
I am sure the devs are avare of many the issues people have with STO. Also I think they also have ideas, and dreams about how to improve STO experience.
I agree that player vesrsus player could be something what could generate loads of fun playtime.
Whatever we deny or embrace, we belong togheter./ Pat Benatar
I am sure the devs are avare of many the issues people have with STO. Also I think they also have ideas, and dreams about how to improve STO experience.
I agree that player vesrsus player could be something what could generate loads of fun playtime.
Yes, but they arent DOING anything about it. Haven't seen kdf content in awhile. Featured episodes, the strongest parrt of this game, were cut. We are, more or less, using the same end gane content we had at launch, and that's broken. Nws-broken. Stf's- broken. Xchange-broken. Leaver penalties- broken. Loot tables- broken. Looting system-broken. They devoted a whole season to converting to f2p, and another whole season to a glorified rez sink. Unless sonething changes, we have another year of fail ahead...
When in doubt, (hehe) c4!
This sig dedicated to the many random objects the Mythbusters crew has blow to smitherines
problem is even if the developers ie coders are enthusiastic about the game and have great ideas where they want it to go , i dought then guys who have the finance to make it happen. care , they are grey suited buisnessmen who only care about how much there making of us , its kinda an exploitation , they fire up the imagination of the fans then give minmal development support for max cash flow into the coorperate coffers .
i see the game is a way to waste my free time , i honestly dont let my imagination run wild with any game now . so many disapointments
Would be a lot of cutscenes...
Also would make people appreciate the boob slider more
Cutscenes? Too fast for that.
I'm thinking something like, press 1 for a shirt tug and accuracy bonus, press 2 for a punch, press 3 for an underhanded phaser fire, press three for an arm extended phaser fire, press 4 to facepalm - which doubles rate of health recover while toggled, press 5 to do a tango - the longer you do this the better your chance of dodging the next 5 attacks, press 6 to change from the "Picard" stance to the "Data" stance and get new body language abilities.
I am sure the devs are avare of many the issues people have with STO. Also I think they also have ideas, and dreams about how to improve STO experience.
I agree that player vesrsus player could be something what could generate loads of fun playtime.
I got to avare... then started reading it with a Russian/Germanic accent. Am I the only one?
You're right, it is meant to appeal to everyone out there and that's why I think the game should have been set in a fixed, "neutral" setting. It's the 25th century - just stay there. People wouldn't get their favourite uniform but maybe a more consistent experience in a setting which makes more sense.
What you're implying is to take out content. Take out the customization options and make everything more streamlined. I disagree with this completely. Let people run around in whatever they want. Why? It's a game first, story second. I assure you that if Cryptic decided to force everyone into one secular uniform tomorrow, the backlash would be even worse than the KDF screaming for content (which they wholeheartedly deserve to complain about, but still).
What you're implying is to take out content. Take out the customization options and make everything more streamlined. I disagree with this completely. Let people run around in whatever they want. Why? It's a game first, story second. I assure you that if Cryptic decided to force everyone into one secular uniform tomorrow, the backlash would be even worse than the KDF screaming for content (which they wholeheartedly deserve to complain about, but still).
Yeah. At most, I could see visiting other eras and getting shunted into something era appropriate as a disguise.
But the 25th century is always going to be an "anything goes" framework.
There is a game out there called infinity: quest for earth. What does this have to do with Sto? well, pretty much all of infinity's universe is entirely explorable and changable. The stations, the people, the ships, all that stuff. Isn't that how STO should be?
Your story starts in the tutorial, either as a newly graduated and immediately commisioned ship commander/captain, or an ensign who ends up as acting captain of their ship and finds their entire career jumpstarted by getting your ship out of the Vega battle in one piece.
You just need a bit of imagination to make it happen, if I weren't so damn lazy I could probably write an entire fanfic format of my characters story.
Personally, I create my own story all the time, it's called imagination. I doubt any STO writer can outdo what I see in own head.
Also, your post doesn't seem to define the financial advantages of your proposal.
And removing the level requirments isn't a good idea IMO, the reality is that this is a Star Trek MMO. It's a video game. If you want a virtual Star Trek experience where the focus is on pure story telling and relationships, theres a few Star Trek sims in Second Life that focus purely on that.
STO is first and foremost a money making business. It's purpose is not so you can can have an escape to the 24th-25th century where you literally living it. It's just a game.
I want to bring something to the table to discuss. If you look at any star trek movie, or hard cannon, what do they all have very much in common? A story, STO lacks this. STO lacks a story but not just a story line, oh no; but a story that each player has with any given ship.
Look at your shipyard, how many ships do you own? Safe to say there's more than one, and what fond story do you have about any one ship that you can't say about another? Sure you have your favorite and your least, but can you honestly say you feel a 'trek' like connection to your ship.
Do you feel home sick for another ship while you fly another? Chances are no, all cruisers are alike, all science are alike, and odds are you're flying an escort (because lets face it, only way to get things done in the time given is with escorts).
The future of STO isn't the next great 25$ over priced 1's and 0's imaginary spaceship you buy, it's the story. It's the conversations you have with people over comms, the story you tell your co-worker about how your little Miranda beat the life out of a Borg sphere (by ramming it and self destructing but that's besides the point .
For STO to continue, the developers need to stray away from the 25$ space ship program. They need to develop the STO universe into something more than an bothersome sector space. They need to allow the player to bond with ship and crew. Allow the player to write their own story and feel part of the universe.
Poorly written missions played over and over do not do it either. My suggestion is conflict. Klingons and Feds have been at war, but the battle lines never change. The conflict seems like mock engagements, the battles alone are a disgrace for a Klingon to die in.
Adding conflict to STO will bring something no star ship can ever bring. Allow Klingons and Feds to fight over solar systems (containing missions and stores that only the owners can use/do). Allow pvp to be engaged through sector space, allow the players of STO to write the next big chapter.
I ask of you cryptic, to consider this. Consider how vast and intelligent your player base is. Open the flood gates, release the hounds of war. Let Klingons die in battle, and the Federation the chance to defend the freedom of thousands if not millions of lives.
Then perhaps the story can change, and an alliance formed against a bigger... common enemy. But allow us the chance to make a story to change.
In addition I add this. Remove level requirements. Why not make any mission playable by any player. Why not let rank 1's fight along side rank 50's? The way to do this is a very simple change!
An enemy ship is being attacked by two players, the damage would coincide with how they are now. A level 50 will do the damage that is done, and a level 1 will do the damage it is doing now. The change is on the npc side. No matter the level of the npc it will only hit the level 1 for what ever a level 1 npc would, but if it were to change target to the level 50 it would be the level 50 equivalent.
Exp, loot, and damage would be tied not to the NPC. But to the rank of the player. A level 50 player picks up a loot box, it is level 50 gear. A level 1 picks up level 1 gear.
Just a thought.
This game is so far off cannon, I honestly expect Borg Cubes to be available in the C-Store this holliday season.... It makes me sad.. This game feels so un-Trek...
This game is so far off cannon, I honestly expect Borg Cubes to be available in the C-Store this holliday season.... It makes me sad.. This game feels so un-Trek...
What you're implying is to take out content. Take out the customization options and make everything more streamlined. I disagree with this completely. Let people run around in whatever they want. Why? It's a game first, story second. I assure you that if Cryptic decided to force everyone into one secular uniform tomorrow, the backlash would be even worse than the KDF screaming for content (which they wholeheartedly deserve to complain about, but still).
No, I don't. People around here are REALLY sensitive when it comes to that kind of stuff. I was implying that they should have done that PRIOR to launch. Of course I don't want anything taken away from the players, don't be afraid to lose your stuff - unless of course this game shuts down which will happen sooner rather than later.
It'd have been a completely different game what I had imagined, not just STO with less costumes. And that's the whole problem, I was expecting something when I heard "Star Trek Online" - something you never should as it'll never come close to your expectations.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
They said they didnt want to hire an established Star Trek writer because they had too much vision and wanted to go their own course with the game storyline. Well SOME vision is better than no vision at all. Well written missions and a cohesive storyline would make up for the grind if the story was great. And how about hiring an author who can crank out a Foundry mission once every 2 mo at least to advance the storyline in between the FEs since Dan cant seem to release an FE without an epic budget of time and resources.
STO: @AGNT009 Since Dec 2010
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
They said they didnt want to hire an established Star Trek writer because they had too much vision and wanted to go their own course with the game storyline. Well SOME vision is better than no vision at all. Well written missions and a cohesive storyline would make up for the grind if the story was great. And how about hiring an author who can crank out a Foundry mission once every 2 mo at least to advance the storyline in between the FEs since Dan cant seem to release an FE without an epic budget of time and resources.
if they put one person on 'foundry duty' and his job was to select foundry content to be turned into fe's, we could get an fe every twoi weeks.
When in doubt, (hehe) c4!
This sig dedicated to the many random objects the Mythbusters crew has blow to smitherines
Gonna have to agree with the imagination folks; I have so many stories attached to different ships and characters (toons and BOffs), it's ridic. I'd also add that my first time through the game, during beta and after launch, I enjoyed playing through the ridiculous amount of single-player story based missions in the game. I took 10x as long to complete them as I should've, because I was so busy taking it all in, and taking screenshots for posterity. Those missions encouraged my imagination.
That said, more story content would be great, especially for those that don't necessarily wish to use said imagination (no offense intended, as this IP is based on TV/Movies after all). At this point, though, The Foundry seems the perfect source for it. I'd suggest to either start playing those missions and enjoy, or wait in hopes that Cryptic and PWE give you the amount of shiny reward for doing so that you feel is comensurate.
Admittedly, with limited playtime comes the incentive to chase shinies, if you are in any way competitive with other players. If you are so competitive that you ignore story in favor of shiny (which I've found myself guilty of), however, that's not really anyone's fault but your own. That's why I think that as far as story goes, ideas like territory control won't help.
I just don't GET the level of passion people have for ships. In my memory, most episodes didn't have ships fire one shot or do anything hugely impressive. Trek had people talk endlessly about their love for a ship but it was mainly a setting.
You're talking about two different things here: How much action the ships see, and how much passion people have for the ships.
As far as action, there weren't constant space battles in the shows, but every single episode started with Starship TRIBBLE: U.S.S. Enterprise zooming around space and orbiting planets. TOS, TNG, ENT. Then there the seque shots of the Enterprise, again in every episode, when we came back from commercials. Plus, the numerous times the Enterprise was used to save some poor planet full of people from a rogue moon or some-such that couldn't save themselves. Not to mention the occaisional space battle, which by ENT time became quite epic. When you watch Star Trek, you are made fully aware that they are on a Starship. That ship, by the way, had a voice! Majel Roddenberry ftw.
Then there is the issue of passion; the image that pops into my head is that of the TOS/TMP crew on the surface of the Genesis planet, watching as the Refit burns upon re-entry. Kirk is practically crying. Also, Riker just can't let go of the D, even going so far as to create the maligned "dreadnought". Let's not forget the "uppity" 1701-A, which had the personality of tempermental child.
I was once asked who my favortie Star Trek character is. There were so many, I didn't think I could choose. Then I remembered the little paper doll I made as a child and brought with me when I was taken to see Star Trek IV (admittedly a movie spent primarily on Earth): I answered that my favorite character was the Enterprise. The person who asked me that question was rather incensed, too. :cool:
[Edit]
I just remembered that ENT didn't follow the same paradigm exactly, but instead showed navigation TRIBBLE through the ages, leading up to the Enterprise. VOY did, though, and even DS9, although that was more starbase TRIBBLE than starship, until the Defiant's sexiness came in to being.
Because it's the sound that steel shod boots make on the deck plating of a real warship. As opposed [to] the cushy carpeting on the Federation luxury liners.
Cryptic went wrong in not telling CBS/Paramount/Whomever that a Star Trek MMo could not be done in just 2 years, that more time to do it properly and to gain fan approval of it would be needed.
Cryptic failed in not fleshing out the KDF to a full factional experience, with a storyline that mirrored the PT2409 backstory, closer to the launch date instead of letting it lanquish in being not complete.
In hindsight, thier aproach to the issues that arose from Atari, game format changes, etc could have possibly been handled better.
They said they didnt want to hire an established Star Trek writer because they had too much vision and wanted to go their own course with the game storyline. Well SOME vision is better than no vision at all. Well written missions and a cohesive storyline would make up for the grind if the story was great. And how about hiring an author who can crank out a Foundry mission once every 2 mo at least to advance the storyline in between the FEs since Dan cant seem to release an FE without an epic budget of time and resources.
I disagree, Kestrel is an excellent and way overloaded writer for STO. What she needs is minions to work under her in creating more PvE content while she supervises and maintains they stay within what ever story Cryptic is trying to follow.
Cryptic went wrong in not telling CBS/Paramount/Whomever that a Star Trek MMo could not be done in just 2 years, that more time to do it properly and to gain fan approval of it would be needed.
If Cryptic had taken that route, one of two things would have happened:
1) Some German company nobody ever heard of would have gotten this contract, and done it as a flash-based browser game, in even less time than Cryptic spent.
2) There would be no STO.
Cryptic was bidding on "companies that can complete this in the time remaining in PE's contract", not "companies wanting to make a Star Trek MMO on terms to be negotiated". As it is, they did successfully get CBS to agree to more time than they'd wanted to spend.
I think what we got was not everything it could be, but at least it's good enough to enjoy while it grows. Now that it's got some investment going on again, it should become even more fun as time goes on.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
If Cryptic had taken that route, one of two things would have happened:
1) Some German company nobody ever heard of would have gotten this contract, and done it as a flash-based browser game, in even less time than Cryptic spent.
2) There would be no STO.
Cryptic was bidding on "companies that can complete this in the time remaining in PE's contract", not "companies wanting to make a Star Trek MMO on terms to be negotiated". As it is, they did successfully get CBS to agree to more time than they'd wanted to spend.
I think what we got was not everything it could be, but at least it's good enough to enjoy while it grows. Now that it's got some investment going on again, it should become even more fun as time goes on.
My mistake then.
I have been of the belief that Cryptic got the bid but never communicated that the alotted time was insufficient to properly build a MMO to standards for the industry and as such we ended up with a snowball of time and resource limitations rolling into a big ball of ice that we had at launch.
While STO is more than it was then, and is enjoyable, it needs much more growth to be considered a fully functioning MMO.
Of course that is my opinion, and it may be wrong.
Where it went wrong in essence was from the point on where it was handled like a superhero game in space, instead of a more hardline Trek. Just look at all those gimmick powers and consoles. Ever saw a ship flinging black holes around in trek battles?
Yup... this is exactly where it started "super heros in space" whether it's a ship or a character....
And then it just kept going downhill with an exploration system that simply mocks the idea of exploration and storylines that almost seem as though they were written to antagonize players who enjoy reading the mission text.
The dev team wants to make "generic free to play sci fi mmo" and that's what we have... any resemblance to Star Trek is there to help drive sales and for marketing purposes.
Reading this thread has been a great help. I've been working on a a storyline to a multi-mission story over the past two weeks. All of your comments have given me ideas that I hadn't thought of before. While I'd always been planning on grand battles (big and small), lots of puzzles (both mathematical and mechanical), I hadn't considered a "Choose-your-own-dialogue-path" too heavily until now. Such a pathways could allow one to talk their way out of a fight, trade their way out, or, TRIBBLE up at any point and fight.
The "Trek"-feeling is in my head. It's about imagination.
If I start a new mission (mostly Foundry) I go to my bridge and sit on the captains chair and open the dialog box.
I write regulary Captains Log. I do this in my ready room.
I created costumes for my captain and also two totally different ones (okay, it's still the same gender and race ^^) for my first science and first tactical officer. So if I do an exploration mission "I" order my science to do it because it feels odd to let the scanning-thing be done by the captain.
I created background stories for my BOs. I even let one BO "die" in my imagination when I just wanted to remove him from the roster (she got killed in a ground mission and I didn't revive her).
So for me the Trek-feeling works very well in this game
I'm exactly the same, my main BO's all have a backstory and one of my costume slots is taken up as my Captains Father (who is an Admiral)
My Fed character and Klingon Character are mortal enemies and one of the Klingon BO's is an Orion female made up to look like one of my Fed BO's who has been captured (Think Princess Leia outfit) :-)
Imagination can really make this game great, I don't PvP or PvE or interact largely with other players as it's not what I want from the game.
The Continuing Voyages of Bridge Commander Captain Lee Drake - USS Sovereign Captain Draxon - IKS RanKuf Commander Torenn - IRW Soryak Captain Gregory MacCray - USS Geronimo
Comments
Would be a lot of cutscenes...
Also would make people appreciate the boob slider more
This sig dedicated to the many random objects the Mythbusters crew has blow to smitherines
I see your point. I also see that in the following discussion people are asking for either more PvP or more Story/Characterization/customization. I think this thread proves the problem, there are very different opinions as to what the problem is and how it should be solved. So it is up to the developers to make a choice, who are you going to please? And also, who are you going to compete with?
I think PvP doesn't work right now and it probably never will. First of all it does not really fit snuggly with Star Trek. Secondly, there are already games that have executed that so much better, like EVE Online for instance, why on earth would you come here for good PvP? I think you are never going to get masses of customers with that.
More storyline development, custumizations and expanding the look-and-feel might help making it more Star Trek. Again, EVE Online has a moving storyline, each year the universe changes, so as a player you literally experience periods. STO has a fixed storyline, it is always the same year. The universe does not change, although new content is added, the period will always be the same. I suspect the developers simply are not allowed to take the stories too far from ST canon, so their hands might be tied.
In my opinion STO is a pretty nice platform. Not a fantastic platform, but nice enough for fans. Cryptic will keep adding sellable content to that platform to upkeep it. And that is basically it. So where does the future lie?
With us!
The foundry is actually a pretty cool addition where we can use the STO platform to create our own enviroment. And that's the way it will work in the future anyway. Game providers will make a good platform, the community will make the content. It's a good deal that will offer you a nearly infinite source of gameplay, either pure action of story driven chapters that make you play in an interactive film, as it were.
There is only one problem for us Foundry builders. The Foundry is still a very limited and cumbersome tool. It's good it's there, but it needs a major investment to really give it potential. They gave it its first upgrade in a long time recently, and that's good. But it still is not there yet. It needs a 3d enviroment for map building. It needs to make it possible to stretch and shrink objects. It needs sounds. It needs to allow you to create and add objects. They are very simple tools, but for instance Mount & Blade had the most basic editor that allowed you to really make complete customizations. Put a tool like that in the hands of the STO community, and Cryptic would be amazed what kind of entertaining content they will get for free!
Oh, and one tip: some people already said it, but creating your own stories goes a long way. Why not pick a neglected species, develop it, get other people to join in, and before you know it you've created your own world in here. Check us out: http://www.defera.org
http://www.defera.org
I agree that player vesrsus player could be something what could generate loads of fun playtime.
Yes, but they arent DOING anything about it. Haven't seen kdf content in awhile. Featured episodes, the strongest parrt of this game, were cut. We are, more or less, using the same end gane content we had at launch, and that's broken. Nws-broken. Stf's- broken. Xchange-broken. Leaver penalties- broken. Loot tables- broken. Looting system-broken. They devoted a whole season to converting to f2p, and another whole season to a glorified rez sink. Unless sonething changes, we have another year of fail ahead...
This sig dedicated to the many random objects the Mythbusters crew has blow to smitherines
i see the game is a way to waste my free time , i honestly dont let my imagination run wild with any game now . so many disapointments
Cutscenes? Too fast for that.
I'm thinking something like, press 1 for a shirt tug and accuracy bonus, press 2 for a punch, press 3 for an underhanded phaser fire, press three for an arm extended phaser fire, press 4 to facepalm - which doubles rate of health recover while toggled, press 5 to do a tango - the longer you do this the better your chance of dodging the next 5 attacks, press 6 to change from the "Picard" stance to the "Data" stance and get new body language abilities.
I got to avare... then started reading it with a Russian/Germanic accent. Am I the only one?
What you're implying is to take out content. Take out the customization options and make everything more streamlined. I disagree with this completely. Let people run around in whatever they want. Why? It's a game first, story second. I assure you that if Cryptic decided to force everyone into one secular uniform tomorrow, the backlash would be even worse than the KDF screaming for content (which they wholeheartedly deserve to complain about, but still).
Yeah. At most, I could see visiting other eras and getting shunted into something era appropriate as a disguise.
But the 25th century is always going to be an "anything goes" framework.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity:_Quest_for_Earth
http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=33
(infinity is most likely going to be free
You just need a bit of imagination to make it happen, if I weren't so damn lazy I could probably write an entire fanfic format of my characters story.
THIS x 1000
This game is so far off cannon, I honestly expect Borg Cubes to be available in the C-Store this holliday season.... It makes me sad.. This game feels so un-Trek...
this^^^^^^ X100000000000
also dont forget they can do a Cub in a Box :P
system Lord Baal is dead
No, I don't. People around here are REALLY sensitive when it comes to that kind of stuff. I was implying that they should have done that PRIOR to launch. Of course I don't want anything taken away from the players, don't be afraid to lose your stuff - unless of course this game shuts down which will happen sooner rather than later.
It'd have been a completely different game what I had imagined, not just STO with less costumes. And that's the whole problem, I was expecting something when I heard "Star Trek Online" - something you never should as it'll never come close to your expectations.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
They said they didnt want to hire an established Star Trek writer because they had too much vision and wanted to go their own course with the game storyline. Well SOME vision is better than no vision at all. Well written missions and a cohesive storyline would make up for the grind if the story was great. And how about hiring an author who can crank out a Foundry mission once every 2 mo at least to advance the storyline in between the FEs since Dan cant seem to release an FE without an epic budget of time and resources.
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
if they put one person on 'foundry duty' and his job was to select foundry content to be turned into fe's, we could get an fe every twoi weeks.
This sig dedicated to the many random objects the Mythbusters crew has blow to smitherines
That said, more story content would be great, especially for those that don't necessarily wish to use said imagination (no offense intended, as this IP is based on TV/Movies after all). At this point, though, The Foundry seems the perfect source for it. I'd suggest to either start playing those missions and enjoy, or wait in hopes that Cryptic and PWE give you the amount of shiny reward for doing so that you feel is comensurate.
Admittedly, with limited playtime comes the incentive to chase shinies, if you are in any way competitive with other players. If you are so competitive that you ignore story in favor of shiny (which I've found myself guilty of), however, that's not really anyone's fault but your own. That's why I think that as far as story goes, ideas like territory control won't help.
You're talking about two different things here: How much action the ships see, and how much passion people have for the ships.
As far as action, there weren't constant space battles in the shows, but every single episode started with Starship TRIBBLE: U.S.S. Enterprise zooming around space and orbiting planets. TOS, TNG, ENT. Then there the seque shots of the Enterprise, again in every episode, when we came back from commercials. Plus, the numerous times the Enterprise was used to save some poor planet full of people from a rogue moon or some-such that couldn't save themselves. Not to mention the occaisional space battle, which by ENT time became quite epic. When you watch Star Trek, you are made fully aware that they are on a Starship. That ship, by the way, had a voice! Majel Roddenberry ftw.
Then there is the issue of passion; the image that pops into my head is that of the TOS/TMP crew on the surface of the Genesis planet, watching as the Refit burns upon re-entry. Kirk is practically crying. Also, Riker just can't let go of the D, even going so far as to create the maligned "dreadnought". Let's not forget the "uppity" 1701-A, which had the personality of tempermental child.
I was once asked who my favortie Star Trek character is. There were so many, I didn't think I could choose. Then I remembered the little paper doll I made as a child and brought with me when I was taken to see Star Trek IV (admittedly a movie spent primarily on Earth): I answered that my favorite character was the Enterprise. The person who asked me that question was rather incensed, too. :cool:
[Edit]
I just remembered that ENT didn't follow the same paradigm exactly, but instead showed navigation TRIBBLE through the ages, leading up to the Enterprise. VOY did, though, and even DS9, although that was more starbase TRIBBLE than starship, until the Defiant's sexiness came in to being.
Cryptic failed in not fleshing out the KDF to a full factional experience, with a storyline that mirrored the PT2409 backstory, closer to the launch date instead of letting it lanquish in being not complete.
In hindsight, thier aproach to the issues that arose from Atari, game format changes, etc could have possibly been handled better.
I disagree, Kestrel is an excellent and way overloaded writer for STO. What she needs is minions to work under her in creating more PvE content while she supervises and maintains they stay within what ever story Cryptic is trying to follow.
R.I.P
If Cryptic had taken that route, one of two things would have happened:
1) Some German company nobody ever heard of would have gotten this contract, and done it as a flash-based browser game, in even less time than Cryptic spent.
2) There would be no STO.
Cryptic was bidding on "companies that can complete this in the time remaining in PE's contract", not "companies wanting to make a Star Trek MMO on terms to be negotiated". As it is, they did successfully get CBS to agree to more time than they'd wanted to spend.
I think what we got was not everything it could be, but at least it's good enough to enjoy while it grows. Now that it's got some investment going on again, it should become even more fun as time goes on.
My mistake then.
I have been of the belief that Cryptic got the bid but never communicated that the alotted time was insufficient to properly build a MMO to standards for the industry and as such we ended up with a snowball of time and resource limitations rolling into a big ball of ice that we had at launch.
While STO is more than it was then, and is enjoyable, it needs much more growth to be considered a fully functioning MMO.
Of course that is my opinion, and it may be wrong.
R.I.P
Yup... this is exactly where it started "super heros in space" whether it's a ship or a character....
And then it just kept going downhill with an exploration system that simply mocks the idea of exploration and storylines that almost seem as though they were written to antagonize players who enjoy reading the mission text.
The dev team wants to make "generic free to play sci fi mmo" and that's what we have... any resemblance to Star Trek is there to help drive sales and for marketing purposes.
Captain Ariel Trueheart Department of Temporal Investigations
U.S.S. Valkyrie - NCC 991701
=/\= ================================= =/\=
This is going to be fun!
I'm exactly the same, my main BO's all have a backstory and one of my costume slots is taken up as my Captains Father (who is an Admiral)
My Fed character and Klingon Character are mortal enemies and one of the Klingon BO's is an Orion female made up to look like one of my Fed BO's who has been captured (Think Princess Leia outfit) :-)
Imagination can really make this game great, I don't PvP or PvE or interact largely with other players as it's not what I want from the game.
Captain Lee Drake - USS Sovereign
Captain Draxon - IKS RanKuf
Commander Torenn - IRW Soryak
Captain Gregory MacCray - USS Geronimo