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Up your game Cryptic!
cavalerius
Member Posts: 126 Arc User
I hope your going to read this cryptic cause this could be really useful inspiration.
Ok, so Star Trek online is set in the year 2409 right, that's 30 years after the events of Nemesis. That's pretty much the difference between the Enterprise C being constructed and Voyager being constructed. So why is it that STO's Federation looks like it's still set in the 24th century.
Come on Cryptic, up your game!
Now don't get me mistaken, the Klingon side I don't have too many quarrels over because their ship designs stay almost the same decades later, and so many new Klingon ships have been developed that look friggin awesome that have never before been seen in the films and series so they already look like they belong in the 25th century. The federation however has a very expressive design to their ships and so the designs change and become more advanced every decade. Take the Enterprise D as an example to Voyager and the Enterprise E; they were all constructed within a decade of each other in the years 2362, 2371 and 2372 yet they look so different to each other.
STO however has left behind the 24th Century and a continuing trend in modernizing the federation starships is by making them more sleeker more or less; and because Cryptic wanted players to be able to customize the looks of their ships they created sister classes to existing designs such as the Sabre, Intrepid and Galaxy classes.
So why don't these newly developed classes of ships look more sleek or more advanced. The Sabre class's sister designs I don't have a problem with. The Intrepid however, what were you thinking? After Voyager discovered the Slipstream drive and it was the first to test it out, you'd think they would create a much more sleek design to work with the next generations of starfleet's slipstream drives. The Cochrane however looks like an ugly whale which can't even exceed warp 9, let alone use slipstream; and the discovery, while it fits the advanced view it just doesn't look that futuristic or federation for a ship designed in the 2400s with slipstream tech.
The galaxy class's sister designs have also never before been seen in the TV or film series so you would expect them to be futuristic. Disappointment again from the developers at Cryptic. They pretty much copied the design and changed very little parameters of the original design and kept its sister designs looking like mid 24th century explorers.
Now I know that many old ships such as the Excelsior have been in service for over a century, a bit like the Ambassador and not so much the Miranda but in STO there are way too many 'old' ships active. It's alright to have one class looking like its a mid 24th century ship in a category such as a reconnaissance category, but having three ships in a category which look like they belong in the mid 24th century such as the cruiser category is not a good look.
The attempts at creating 25th century refits do look relatively good, but there are only a handful of them, mostly I believe because it's only the dawn of the 25th century. What STO needs though is ships that look like they were designed at the end of the 24th century, the very end that is, not whole categories of ships such as the heavy escort, reconnaissance and science vessel categories.
While it has been great for players to use the multi-mission Vesta class and her sister designs; it was a seriously late add-on to the game. The first Vesta class starship was constructed around the time of nemesis, 30 years before STO. It was designed solely for the testing of slipstream technology so why does it only have the ability to make its turn rate 4 times faster in slipstream and nothing else 30 years later? At least have it so it's in slipstream for a minute or decrease its recharge to 30 seconds, something like that.
The vesta is also a ship ahead of its time, meaning its design and technology is before its prime time. You can tell because it is way too advanced for a ship designed a decade after the Enterprise E. For example compare the Enterprise E to its precursor ship the Enterprise D. Relatively good advancement in design, but not extreme. Now this isn't a problem because things like this have happened many times before in human history. What the problem is, is that it is the only ship that looks like it belongs in the 25th century. Extremely sleek, advanced looking with a brilliant paint job. Designed to grab the attention of a trekkie. This, along with the current white refits is almost exactly what the 25th century star ships should look like for the fed.
Now if I have angered the STO team, fans or trolls, I apologize cause this was not what I intended to do. STO needs more of a futuristic theme to it, yet retain some of its originality. Divide the ships perhaps to be TNG themed, while the other half be proper futuristic themed around 2409. It isn't difficult either. The tng ships are already there. The inspiration for future designs is on the internet. For example here are some inspiring designs I found. Reload them if they don't work cause they seem to have a dodgy server:
http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/screenshots/File/95553/1
USS Arcadia, Vivace class starship, developed around the turn of the 25th entury.
http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/screenshots/File/111713/1
USS Kyoto, Kyoto class starship, developed during the final decade of the 24th century
http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/screenshots/File/73486/2
USS Voyager A, Intrepid refit, developed for transwarp tests during the final decade of the 24th century
http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/screenshots/File/96922/3
USS Juno, Outrider class, developed during the turn of the century to replace the nova
http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/screenshots/File/96921/2
USS Raptor, Leonidas class, developed around 2388
http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/screenshots/File/119380/2
USS Argonaut, Argonaut class, developed around 2406 as a carrier assault vessel with a slipstream drive
http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/screenshots/File/117861/2
USS Proteus, Proteus class, developed around 2403 as a testbed for the 3rd generation of the slipstream drive
http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/screenshots/File/117838/9
Stormcrow Runabout, designed to be carried on the USS Argonaut
http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/screenshots/File/112185/1
USS Australia, Commonwealth class, developed around the turn of the 25th century
Hopefully these ships should provide some insight on what future 24/25th century ships should look like. I don't expect any of these to go into the game, but it would be awesome if similar ships appeared around season 9 or something.
Beta Antares Shipyards advanced Starship development project.
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SUPPORT LOGICAL FEDERATION STARSHIP DESIGNS!
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Comments
USS WARRIOR NCC 1720 Commanding Officer
Star Trek Gamers
Nothing prevents Cryptic from releasing new ships that aren't based on canonical sources.
I'm not sure what the point of the OP is. If its "Cryptic should raise its game by not giving players the ships from the shows because they are too old in the STO timeframe..." then I am going to have to respectfully disagree.
I imagine that's a hard thing to justify - sinking development resources on all of the older/original ships. Would you rather they spend time adding/updating parts to ships that most people only use for a couple levels, or add something new that people will use for months, if not years?
So when the Ambassador ship is done, there are few canon Starfleet ships left that players are asking for. I have trouble thinking of any, but some players could probably mention some canon ships that are currently missing.
Taking out most of the canon ships just because this game is set further in the future would be a terrible idea (not that you are suggesting this of course). Most of the Cryptic designs follow the respective canon design closely because that's the ST style that we all know and love.
"I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment... because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived" Picard to Riker
Would be very difficult to do. The mechanics of the npc groups is dependent upon their style. TOS doesn't have an enemy similar to the borg to justify them having assimilation and the cubes are too big for a standard TOS enemy. So basically, the TOS fans would be playing the TOS game, TNG fans would be playing the TNG game, etc. The game would have to be segregated since you can't have the TOS fighting Borg and Undine. Also the story of the game would be a complete mess. Might be possible if time travel is heavily implemented. First few levels is where you play a TOS, TNG, etc. Captain and then you time travel to the 25th Century, but still some people would have problems with playing with characters from another time. Only possible way is to create Star Trek Online: Enterprise, Star Trek Online: The Original Series, Star Trek Online: The Next Generation, etc to keep everyone happy and that would cost a fortune.
That's exactly what I think the game should be! Crypic/PWE can afford the cost. What they make off of TRIBBLE boxes alone will keep the puny team that doesn't fix much of anything floating for quite some time. The team could actually use a trim too if they feel the need to cut costs. Things like Community Managers are a complete waste of money. If you want to make the players happy, give them what they want. Not some PR guy to try and justify the shortfall of the development team and their abilities when that job could go to employing another qualified graphic artist, code monkey, etc.
Problem is that Cryptic, PWE, and every game company are a business. So there is no possible way they would do this unless there is proof that their revenue will go up by having enough TOS fans playing the TOS version, enough TNG fans playing the TNG version, etc. Each type of ship would have to be created, different art styles used, different missions, different lore, and different npcs would have to be created. There is no way that Cryptic/PWE can justify or even afford the cost of creating at least 4 more MMOs that are pretty much the same. They could justify creating a Babylon 5 MMO, a Firefly MMO, and a Battlestar Galactica MMO since there are tons of players that play more than one MMO. There wouldn't be many players that would play a STO: TOS, STO: TNG, STO, etc since they are too similar and whats the point of playing another when they are pretty much the same. Players like variety between their MMOs and having them too similar is problematic since its easy to just play the game you like the best resulting in each STO MMO not getting enough players and increasing the development costs too much.
Ouch. I find this comment pretty rude, and I don't think you realize what my role is here on the team and what would happen if there was no CM. Let me copy and paste something I wrote from a recent interview to enlighten you:
All the above not only supports the continued success and growth of the game from a non-dev role, but also supports the most important aspect of our game: our players. It is a sincere honor and privilege to support STO in my role as Community Manager. Thank you.
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
Indeed. I've worked with a few CMs in my time (I help Admin the Creative Assembly's Total War forums in my spare time), and I can tell you that you'd miss them if they weren't there! Having a dedicated person to keep the community in touch with what the developers are doing is vital, and believe me, there would be a lot more grouching if we didn't have someone like Branflakes around to keep us in the loop as to what the guys at Cryptic are up to on a regular basis.
This character is why I don't play my Romulan any more. Tovan Khev is NOT my BFF! Get him off my bridge!
You obviously have no clue what you're talking about. In the few weeks season 7 has been around the team has made fixes and adjustments almost WEEKLY based on player feedback.
As for our community manager, he's one of the most dedicated members of the team and invaluable to us and them. On many occasions he's gone above his job to help players out and he's constantly relaying info to the team from the players and back, EVEN on his time off.
Brandon is part gopher, part diplomat, part whipping boy at times, and a whole slue of other things. If you think he is a waste of money then you're in idiot. If it weren't for Brandon most of our feedback, suggestions, would be missed because quite simply the devs don't have time to go through everything themselves. His job goes so far beyond just giving us updates on patch notes and everything else like that, and if you really took the time to stop and think about everything he does, you'd realize his job is as important if not at times more important than a dev.
example:
"Hey Brandon we don't really have a lot of choices for Federation Civilian ships. Think you could ask the devs if they're doing more Non-Star fleet ships or even possibly just have a forum contest to see what people come up with and maybe the devs will like them enough to use it?"
Either he'll pass it on or if he feels like it he'll add it to another one of his forum contests, either way we're being heard and possibly get to show our creative sides as well. The point is if Brandon wasn't around chances are this would get missed by a dev trying to skim through all the forum posts.
On the Next Generation they had a "Captain Picard Day", well maybe we seriously need to have a "Branflakes Appreciation Day" because in a lot of ways he is the Captain of the Forums.
________
Now back on topic, Personally I sort of agree that there are too many older ships, but on the same side of the coin I love my Excelsior. Personally I would love to see more unique designs as evident by my ask cryptic question. However, more futuristic designs of existing ships would be welcomed as well. I know the U.S.S. Raven or S.S. Raven (whichever it actually is...the one from Voyager) would be a very welcomed addition, but definitely with a more modern look to it. For those not familiar with the ship it is designed as a long range vessel that can be crewed by very few people. 7 of 9's parents crewed the ship themselves when studying the Borg. As much as I'm not really into role-playing I think there is a huge potential within the game to open up game play into more of a Federation civilian aspect and this ship is a perfect example of one that could and did serve both Star Fleet and the civilian population.
Take it how you want but it's not intended to be rude at all. Some of the development team do frequent the boards. Personally, I think money on this game is better spent on people who can make content and fix bugs. Don't take it personally although you have with some of my comments in the past.
Example 1: DX11 has been in beta how long? If it's beta, it shouldn't be on Holodeck but it is. The team associated with this side of the game hasn't been working on this implementation much, if at all since it had been pushed to Holodeck. A lot of people would like to see DX11 finished since DX11.1 is due out early next year.
Example 2: Missing textures in both DX9 and DX11. You can justify DX11 being in beta but DX9 isn't a beta phase of this game. Where are those fixes?
Now, to get this thread back on topic. How about a system that takes STO through the TOS time period first to reach the TNG era and so on? I don't think the implementation for this game would have to be 3 separate ones to have the different looks. Just like with the ship skins, you just lock out instances to specific themed periods that players are using. TOS era players have their own instances to keep with the theme. It would require a lot of work but I think it would be something I would personally like to see. Every player has different wants and annoyances with this game. It would be nice if Cryptic made an attempt to cater to more of a broad base of what the players want in small imcrements and work their way up to trying to make more players want to play longer.
As others have stated, you are way off base sir. Brandon is not only our Community Manager, he was and still is a player. In fact, he was playing STO and started Priority One podcast long before he stepped into his current role.
To your statements about development, have you ever done any programming before? I am not talking about making a window that says "hello world" but an actual program that is used by several thousand people. I work with several programmers for a Fortune 500 company and no matter how hard you try, there are always bugs that the programmers cannot foresee.
Find us at CovenantofHonor.com. My Twitter handle; @jmattmiracle
Not to put too fine a point on it, at this you're making fun of people and insulting and belittling Branflakes who is among the best Community Manager's I have met.
What the players want and what is good for the longevity of the game are often 2 completely different things.
They'll have seperate budgets for community support and development, Community support is the ingame GMs and the Community Mangers. It's highly unlikely that Brandon's pay comes out of STO's budget and more than likely it comes from a generic Community Support budget that covers Champions Online, Star Trek Online and Neverwinter Online. It's also possible that he doesn't work for Cryptic at all but for PWE.
This of course isn't meant to detract from the important and excellently done job that Branflakes does, just that getting rid of him doesn't necessarily ensure another member of the development team.
That being said I've also never seen Branflakes try to justify the shortcomings of the dev team, just patiently ferry our opinions and what the devs say back and forth. His job isn't to make excuses for the Dev Team, it's to ensure that the correct and proper communication goes back and forth between us and the devs.
I don't do programming but there are a lot of bugs that need to be addressed and faster than they get done. They may not be priority bugs but those who paid for the Venture ship that are unhappy with the windows on the saucer not being able to match the windows on the lower hull does annoy some. How long did it take to fix Second Wave and is it actually tested to the point where it can be said it's actually fixed?
I'm not here to debate how Brandon does his job or how well he does it. Someone mentioned they like Brandon's job. That's cool! I have said before that I prefered StormShade but that's just my preference. All I was trying to say that I think the money would be better spent else where. It's nothing personal against the guy but there are things I would like to see or fixed in this game that take longer than I would like. I would still think the exact same way if StormShade was still the Community Rep also. For example: the 7 months it took to fix the AGT uniforms that had some major clipping issues. That's not what I call acceptable for a clipping issue fix. We need more graphic artists to work on these issues faster. If I pay for added content in this game and there is an issue with it. I expect it fixed promptly!
Also, I don't think this has been pointed out yet, but BranFlakes is not employed by Cryptic. He is employed by Perfect World as the Publisher of the game developed by Cryptic. His salary is no doubt not at all part of Cryptics expenses with this game, so he has absolutely no impact Financially on what does or doesn't happen.
Lastly, I don't know how you can say someone's job is pointless and unnecessary and not think it rude.
Seeing as we have ships that are over 200 years old in the game, I don't see any issue with including the following ships (or 25th Century variants of said ships). One of which is already ingame:
Challenger Class (Based on Galaxy Class)
Cheyenne Class (Ingame as a Tier 3 Heavy Cruiser variant)
Freedom Class (Based on Ambassador/Galaxy Class)
New Orleans Class (Based on Galaxy/Nebula Class)
Niagara Class (Based on Ambassador/Galaxy Class)
Springfield Class (Based on Cheyenne/Galaxy Class)
Most of these ships were heavily influenced by Galaxy Class components, so in theory wouldn't be too difficult to replicate. It would also be pretty nice to see additional "Galaxy"-style ships, fill other roles rather than just Cruisers. The New Orleans Class with it's extra torpedo pods could easily serve as a Destroyer/Escort. While the Springfield Class could potentially serve as a Science Vessel.
Now, I wouldn't argue that these ships -must- be "low tiered" despite canon. But I think it may be a good inspiration if Cryptic were to make new ship classes (at any tier), and base them on these designs.
So whenever someone says that "Cryptic are running out of canon designs", I just point towards the ships that appeared during the Wolf 359 battle as a shining example, of additional ships that could potentially be added. If nothing else, I would love to see them added as skin variants to existing ships, and not necessarily added as an entirely new ship and unique consoles.
Now your splitting heirs...
There is no distinction between a ship that made 1 appearance, and a ship that made 100 appearances. Case in point: NX-01 Replica (98 episodes), Ambassador Class (1 episode). After the Ambassador Class is added, you can't use your argument to "block" adding some ships, while adding others.
You dont do programming, so you would not realise that when you start altering E, it can affect the interation with J,Z,B, and U. And then when you fix J it messes up how A interacts with E...
There are so many things that have to be done to fix something small and unimportant, alongside continuing to code the next update to keep people playing (the weekly updates) AND also coding parts of the next season - all of which are also interlinked!
As to Brandon being superfluous - He is the first community manager I have seen in any of the games I have played over the years (right back to the beginning of the interwebz, and some of the text communities on BBS before that) who actually came out onto the "beta" server, and played team games along with others so that bugs that had been reported could be seen, documented, and relayed to the devs.
He is active, he is visible, he is approachable, and has the time both in game - and in forums for the players (paying AND free).
I can't see how that can be a waste, irrelevant, OR a waste of money
(just the very last one, that looks like a starship on its head lol)
But i have to disagree, when i look around ESD + DS9 i barely see a Ship that i would recognize as a TV accurate Star Trek Ship, everybody has silly Borg parts or Tron kits applied or flies Ships that are heavily kitbashed together, or straight out Alien Ships.
I have a hard time to find purists that fly a straight from the line oldschool non-2409 Federation Ships when i look around a bulk of Playerships.
Out of 10 there may be one or two these days.
So i say NO this fleet looks NOT like a 24th century Starfleet.
Bit i also agree that is doesn't look like a futuristic 25th century Starfleet to me...
to me it looks more like a MMO Game fleet with a bunch of silly borg parts, deflector glows and fireworks.... and some very just very ugly ships between.
Overall i agree Cryptic UP YOUR GAME.
There are new players coming in all the time, every Ship is a new Ship to them, if you don't upgrade your partially really old and ugly sub par Ships, then that is a first impression that sticks around.
The quantity over quality approach is not helping here.
We need at least 2 Ship artists, one dedicated to pump out NEW ships and one dedicated to fixing bugs and polish up *old* Ships.
and to the Players: you are NOT cool if you fly around cluttered in Borg parts or in a Romulan Set, if everybody has these visuals then they don't make you stand out at all, you can make good looking Ships with any Set visual, but not every Set visual looks good on every Ship.
And for crying out loud, at least deactivate ANY and ALL Deflector visuals and glows, those look so... GAME-ish. (in particular the Borg Deflector looks bad on a lot of Ships but only on a few it looks not gimmicky.)
I like some of the ships the OP listed, but some of them seem to inch towards the pitfalls of sweeping but formless curves. I personally like the Cochrane saucer and can appreciate some of the blockier designs when done right. But it just goes to show that both angular and curvy designs can be done wrong.
Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
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I direct you all to the Enterprise CVN-65, built in 1958, retired from service nov 2012....
how many decades is that with todays building capabilities.....so, one must think...if the damn thing can still fly around and be useful when its built in 2350 something...than it is...end of story.
What I mean is that all of the canon ships should be kept because otherwise the game wouldn't be the same. The sister classes however that cryptic developed such as the cochrane, quasar, vesper; many of them should look more futuristic (as in 25th century or late 24th). They should look sleek; more eye catching and advanced. A lot of those sister vessels however are bulky looking, not eye catching or futuristic looking; hell they don't even look like they were built to exceed warp 8, let alone travel at slipstream.
What would be nice to see is the non canon sister starships look more eye catching, more advanced and futuristic and sleek.
Oh and by the way, I think the community manager a brilliant person who goes beyond his job at cryptic. Good on you mate.
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