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Food For Thought - Ideas that can change how people play STO
sgtstarfall
Member Posts: 205 Arc User
Greetings to the STO forums! I have been playing Star Trek Online for over a year and it has been quite and enjoyable experience since. However, like many MMO's out there, there are still a great deal of things that can this game can improve on and/or perhaps even implement to change how people play the game. I know there are people out here in the forums that have great ideas that can expand this game into something more unique; hence the reason I created this thread. With this in mind, I'd like to share a few of my own ideas.
PvE Trading/Raiding: After playing both Federation and Klingon factions for an extensive period of time, I sum up my space/ground combat to something along these lines: Go into an instance, blow stuff up, tag/talk to a few panels/NPCs, and in a few rare instances, solve a few puzzles, and win. And maybe with time limits.
Above is the summary of how almost every encounter in STO goes. While there is nothing inherently wrong with tagging panels and blowing stuff up etc, there are a lot of things I like to do more than just fighting (aside from DOff missions).
So I ask the question: What if STO implemented high-risk trading/smuggling into the game, where your objective is to get across a certain cargo from point A to B (or C) for a high reward? The objective would be more 3D than just simply blowing up every enemy that crosses your path (because hopefully you can't in a cargo ship o_o). Rewards can also scale by difficulty level. PS, if you guys are curious, I do have a Tuffli...just cause.
And of course, you can't mention trading without pirating/raiding. While the Klingon side has hinted at some slight beginnings of raiding missions (Pi Canis daily repeatables/DOff missions), it would be awesome to see a full blown gameplay style where your objective is to disable (not destroy) and raid higher end goods whether it be from player cargo ships or NPCs. I know this is do-able with the engine they're using.
To be continued...
PvE Trading/Raiding: After playing both Federation and Klingon factions for an extensive period of time, I sum up my space/ground combat to something along these lines: Go into an instance, blow stuff up, tag/talk to a few panels/NPCs, and in a few rare instances, solve a few puzzles, and win. And maybe with time limits.
Above is the summary of how almost every encounter in STO goes. While there is nothing inherently wrong with tagging panels and blowing stuff up etc, there are a lot of things I like to do more than just fighting (aside from DOff missions).
So I ask the question: What if STO implemented high-risk trading/smuggling into the game, where your objective is to get across a certain cargo from point A to B (or C) for a high reward? The objective would be more 3D than just simply blowing up every enemy that crosses your path (because hopefully you can't in a cargo ship o_o). Rewards can also scale by difficulty level. PS, if you guys are curious, I do have a Tuffli...just cause.
And of course, you can't mention trading without pirating/raiding. While the Klingon side has hinted at some slight beginnings of raiding missions (Pi Canis daily repeatables/DOff missions), it would be awesome to see a full blown gameplay style where your objective is to disable (not destroy) and raid higher end goods whether it be from player cargo ships or NPCs. I know this is do-able with the engine they're using.
To be continued...
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All hands! Prepare the popcorn and tinfoil hats!
All hands! Prepare the popcorn and tinfoil hats!
Post edited by sgtstarfall on
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Aye that's true, it won't sound right for a Fed VA to smuggle, but what about a Klingon? Feds can have trade runs or so. Granted, this would take some balancing, but that'd be something interesting besides the usual grind.
Edit: I know I mentioned "high-risk trading", but that wasn't supposed to be mixed with smuggling. What I meant there was that it would be interesting to make trade runs that has the open possibility of ambushes/environmental hazards and what not.
All hands! Prepare the popcorn and tinfoil hats!
When you play for some time, you probably have high level gear and most missions are too easy. There's always the option of replaying missions in your T2 ship or shuttle, but what if you had to do a mission with just the low level ship/equipment you had.
Don't know about you folks, but that would actually be a challenge.
Something like a holodeck simulation where you replay the breen assault on earth and you are given command of an Oberth Class which happened to be in spacedock at that time.
That's not a bad thought. In fact, what made Star Trek fun the first time around was that your ship wasn't godly. You actually had to have a plan of attack before going in guns blazing.
All hands! Prepare the popcorn and tinfoil hats!
Maybe because EVE's developers actively encourage an antisocial, piratical community of griefers that makes the game extremely hostile to newcomers?
But before we all get off topic, I really wanted to throw out an idea that's not quite refined on my part yet:
Open Space War Zones with rewards on capture points based on holding time. (And yes, I know about Kerrat)
All hands! Prepare the popcorn and tinfoil hats!
LOL. I think the OP has a good idea and I hate EVE.
Things that STO does better than EVE:
1. FTL travel in STO isn't centered around jumpgates and the gate-camping that it brings with it. If I want to go from Sol to New Romulus, I don't have to jump through 14 different jump gates, and 3 gate camps to do it.
2. The skill system in STO is much more rewarding. I don't have to wait 3 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, and 37 minutes for my next skill to train up. In STO if I do a mission and blow some stuff up, I can reasonably expect to earn a new skill rank. Not so for EVE!
3. Consensual PVP makes a better community. I can explore sectors of space in STO without needing to take an expendable ship, and without any overwhelming sense of paranoia. In the past I have even had requests from strangers to beam onto the bridge of my ship because they wanted to check it out (which I granted). Would you do that on EVE? In 0.0 you don't trust ANY ONE.
EVE trolls can go back to the EVE forums. Enjoy your cruddy game.
New Defeat Condition: Starship Crew Numbers:
Intro: STO has implemented many different stats on ships, including ship power systems, crew numbers, and other modifiers. One of the most under-represented stat currently is the crew number. Currently, crew numbers is useless except for some innate starship repairs. There's only one BOff ability that is actually affected by crew numbers...that being Boarding Party.
Seeing as how most of the forum threads I've been reading goes something along the lines of: "omg cruisers suck...they don't do enuf damage/omg cruisers getting nerfed by EPtX changes" and "escorts are getting a buff again" etc, I propose a new system that may (or may not) freshen up PvP/PvE gameplay a bit:
Idea Proposal: The new defeat condition: Starship captured
Here's a very simple explanation of how it works: Your ship is "defeated" (just like if you get blown up) if your crew runs down to 0 and you get boarded (via boarding party, borg transport system, etc.). Should you defeat an opponent with boarding party, that ship is now an NPC that fights for you (Or if it's an object that needs to be destroyed, then self-destruct after boarding party beams back).
This would not only open up a completely new strategy for ships to compete in, but also give everyone a new avenue to win a fight (namely cruisers and sci vessels). This change would make "Crew Protection" consoles viable again, and is an indirect way to solve the problem of "shield tanks", "speed tanks", "insane cross healing".
We already have a lot of crew killing capabilities in the game...why not capitalize on it? It would not only encourage more diversity in builds in both PvP and PvE, but also encourage more teamwork and discourage one-man-armies charging in a battlefield with reckless abandon.
(To Be Continued...)
All hands! Prepare the popcorn and tinfoil hats!
*The Sims on-board. It would be fun if there was a kind of sims approach with on-board ship crew interactivity.
*Shipboard morale system. A morale system for your crew, active and otherwise that impacts their effectiveness/activities.
*Adding something like 'ship interior slots' where ship interiors have a number of slots that allow players to place room types in order to benefit your ship crew. (an example of this might be a science vessel placing mostly science labs in their ship interior slots to increase particular science skills)
*Skins and placeables for your ship interiors. Something like what Cryptic has done with CO and what Turbine does with LOTRO.
*Reverse engineering and randomly generated equipment/weapon drops. (maybe a player would need to have a reverse engineering room installed in their ship and a certain type of engineering doff to effectively reverse engineer)
Seems kinda odd a ship operating at full capacity with 0 crew.
But yes, I agree they would have to fix the crew loss mechanics. The goal of making crew numbers a bigger impact in gameplay is not only to make the cruiser viable again, but also forgotten consoles like forcefield generators and the likes.
"The Sims on-board" would suck up a lot of dev time that's probably not a feature a lot of people want to invest in at the moment. If they do add some more crew interactivity though, it would be interesting though.
A ship's morale system sounds a bit tedious to add in my opinion. I'm thinking of what kinds of upkeep we would all have to do to uphold "morale". It might end up more as a burden than a feature, so I would have to disagree with this one.
I do like the idea of "interior ship slots" though. I could definitely picture myself going around the ship, telling my engineers to reinforce the bridge consoles or structural integrity. But in more conceivable terms, if these interior modifications have some marginal stat modifiers, it'll be an interesting thing to add.
Reverse engineering a weapon or equipment should probably be added to a separate branch of crafting. If that's going to happen, it'll likely be in Season 9. Definitely in support of this idea.
PS. To the community: I was hoping to post more on this, but time wouldn't allow it. Good to see some people read it at least xD
All hands! Prepare the popcorn and tinfoil hats!
It could be a sanctioned clandestine smuggling operation given to you by Quinn. Mission, smuggle X item to spy hideout on Y planet and pick up Z to smuggle out. the mission "The Doomsday Device" o fed side had a stealth infiltration that was pretty good and something similar where you avoid targs or whatever to locate the spies.
To start the mission it could be capture X ship, warp to somewhere else to pick up cargo. Then attempt to deliver cargo, either sneak past patrols or if spotted the patrols ask for identification codes or something, if all goes good you beam down to the surface using personal holo emitters and have to sneak past sentries or whatever. Once you make it to the spiy base you drop off the delivery and pick up who/what you need to smuggle out and repeat the sneak past sentries, beam out, and sneak out of the system with the cargo.
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