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S9 Suggestion: Colony Development/Holdings
kobayashikumiho
Member Posts: 8 Arc User
S9 Suggestion: Colony Development/Holdings
Objectives:
Increase community control over game's direction
Increase player's sense of building something greater than themselves
Increase sense of "my vote and actions matter"
Winning colony directs Cryptic's resources
Prepaid colonies decrease development resource "risk" fear factor
Allows opportunity for KDF players to "prove" faction's value
Gauges player interest in a possible new faction development
Creates tangible contract, players do this, Cryptic will give that
Colonies available to contribute to:
Federation Colony on Planet A
Klingon Colony on Planet B
Civilian Colony on Planet C
Romulan Colony on Planet D
Liberated Borg "Treatment" Colony on Planet E
An Online Faction Poll for a Colony on Planet F
How it works:
Players individually contribute to colony projects akin to fleet projects. Projects would add experience points to the colony being supported. Players could monitor each colony and how much experience it is gaining. Each colony would have T0 to T5+ levels, each level that the community unlocks would increase development of that colony. For example, at T0 nothing exists. At T1, in the next update the staff places that new planet in a space sector. At T2 players can travel planet side and expore a limited barren surface and complete scanning missions to add colony experience. At T3 a small bubble community is added. At T4 this becomes a large community. At T5 this becomes a major planet with a vast exporable surface, related missions, an embasy, and possible promotion to a mini-faction.
Resources required to do colony projects would be commodities, colonists, data samples, particle traces, or whatever the developers want us to spend our time collecting. In order to "prepay" for colonies to be developed, dilithium and/or Lobi would be required as well since these represent real dollars. For example, if it costs $1,000,000 USD of Cryptic resouraces to build a colony and design some missions around it, then 14,000,000,000 dilithium would need to be raised by the players to "prepay" for the project.
Doing colony projects would be completely voluntary. Those who contribute would receive colony marks that could then be used to turn in on a variety of rewards including colony related duty officers, bridge offices, provisions, items, weapons, faction specific ship, a house on the colony, faction specific lock box, master key, dilithium, etc. The rewards would be released as the colony reacheda specific tier level.
How players benefit:
The KDF wants their faction to be beefed out. If the KDF community can band together and build the colony then that should signal to Cryptic that they are worth the resources to finish. Players who have asked to have a civillian mini-faction can do the same and prove its popularity. Players can determine what faction matters most to them and determine where the STO story should go next. Colony development creates a contract between Cryptic and the players that if you do these things we will give you these rewards. No more empty promises or maybes.
How Cryptic benefits:
Cryptic is prepaid for their work on colonies so there is no worries about doing something and then it not being received well and resources having been wasted on it outside of installing a few windows to receive the resources for colony experience. If one colony never receives enough experience to make even tier 1, then the resources spent by those players are absorbed by Cryptic as "free money".
Objectives:
Increase community control over game's direction
Increase player's sense of building something greater than themselves
Increase sense of "my vote and actions matter"
Winning colony directs Cryptic's resources
Prepaid colonies decrease development resource "risk" fear factor
Allows opportunity for KDF players to "prove" faction's value
Gauges player interest in a possible new faction development
Creates tangible contract, players do this, Cryptic will give that
Colonies available to contribute to:
Federation Colony on Planet A
Klingon Colony on Planet B
Civilian Colony on Planet C
Romulan Colony on Planet D
Liberated Borg "Treatment" Colony on Planet E
An Online Faction Poll for a Colony on Planet F
How it works:
Players individually contribute to colony projects akin to fleet projects. Projects would add experience points to the colony being supported. Players could monitor each colony and how much experience it is gaining. Each colony would have T0 to T5+ levels, each level that the community unlocks would increase development of that colony. For example, at T0 nothing exists. At T1, in the next update the staff places that new planet in a space sector. At T2 players can travel planet side and expore a limited barren surface and complete scanning missions to add colony experience. At T3 a small bubble community is added. At T4 this becomes a large community. At T5 this becomes a major planet with a vast exporable surface, related missions, an embasy, and possible promotion to a mini-faction.
Resources required to do colony projects would be commodities, colonists, data samples, particle traces, or whatever the developers want us to spend our time collecting. In order to "prepay" for colonies to be developed, dilithium and/or Lobi would be required as well since these represent real dollars. For example, if it costs $1,000,000 USD of Cryptic resouraces to build a colony and design some missions around it, then 14,000,000,000 dilithium would need to be raised by the players to "prepay" for the project.
Doing colony projects would be completely voluntary. Those who contribute would receive colony marks that could then be used to turn in on a variety of rewards including colony related duty officers, bridge offices, provisions, items, weapons, faction specific ship, a house on the colony, faction specific lock box, master key, dilithium, etc. The rewards would be released as the colony reacheda specific tier level.
How players benefit:
The KDF wants their faction to be beefed out. If the KDF community can band together and build the colony then that should signal to Cryptic that they are worth the resources to finish. Players who have asked to have a civillian mini-faction can do the same and prove its popularity. Players can determine what faction matters most to them and determine where the STO story should go next. Colony development creates a contract between Cryptic and the players that if you do these things we will give you these rewards. No more empty promises or maybes.
How Cryptic benefits:
Cryptic is prepaid for their work on colonies so there is no worries about doing something and then it not being received well and resources having been wasted on it outside of installing a few windows to receive the resources for colony experience. If one colony never receives enough experience to make even tier 1, then the resources spent by those players are absorbed by Cryptic as "free money".
Post edited by kobayashikumiho on
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Comments
So, you're basically asking for an in-game version of Kickstarter, paid in dilithium with stretch goals as the reward. Or is it a version of Steam Greenlight, where people vote with their dilithium?
What's the difference between this and Season 7, except that in your version the devs are supposedly beholden to whatever insanity is on the players' wish lists?
Also, what's to stop them from simply reneging on the contract? Do players get their dilithium, colonists, marks, EC refunded? How will this even be tested? What if players on Tribble only vote for one colony and then all of them go live on holodeck?
I'm not saying this is a bad idea, mind. I'd like to be able to say "this is what I'll donate to" and then see it happen, but it doesn't seem like a very big or significant change otherwise, especially given that Cryptic are in no way obligated to do what we say, nor do we necessarily understand the costs/complications associated with putting up new content on an "on-demand" basis.
and it would take a great amount of time and work on cryptics side.
but i would be glad if they did this.. !
How about something, you know, FUN?
Feel free to post your ideas. This thread isn't a dictatorship but a conversation. And the more we talk about it the greater the liklihood that Cryptic will take notice and give it fair consideration.
As for being FUN, what is "fun" for people? Is it featured episodes? If that is the case then T5 could be to award a featured episode series related to the colony or its faction. Here's the problem though. Cryptic said that FE's don't make them any money so why are they going to develop them? The only way they are going to be developed is by players prepaying for them through a sort of kickstarter system.
If its not FE's then what is "fun" for people? Everyone has a different idea of what is entertaining to them.
Sure, Cryptic could completely change their mind and cancel the contract and TRIBBLE the players out of all the resources they put into the system. If that did happen it would probably be the greatest admin failure and I know many people would leave, including myself.
I may be alone in this feeling, but STO seems like a game where there isn't a dollar spent improving it until a dollar comes in. Lock boxes, as much as we despise them, saved the game. Prepaying for colonies might actually trigger more STO hiring and resources spent on the game, and that's a good thing.
You want fun, go play call of duty.
Star trek is never always fun, sometimes its really boring (i fell asleep on a lot of occasion while watching ST series because some episodes are just really boring!)