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you listened once cryptic, please listen again
bjs1981
Member Posts: 33 Arc User
a couple years ago i posted how they promised to give every player a first contact, but hadn't. i was the first to call them on it. they never replied to my post in the forum, but in the very next patch they included my request.
thank you cryptic for listening.
now i ask that you listen again.
throughout all the star systems in the game, there's actually a minority that you can actually stop and do something at unless you have a mission. i find this to be a failure because with as much talent the crew has this type of thing should be a no brainer. it's the little details like these that don't give the game the polished feel that it needs.
believe me i understand the rational. you don't want to cheat the players by giving them something of substandard quality, just for the sake of having something there. i couldn't agree more.
but lets look at your assets that you have to work with. until you have time to sit down and put great content in, why don't you put SOMETHING in?
RISA is a good example of what i'm talking about. they put something there, but not much to do.
you have procedurally generated environments already in the game. couldn't you use that to put SOME sort of random encounter around these derelict planets? i should be able to pick a star, any star, plot a course and find SOMETHING when i get there, even if i don't have a mission there.
in addition to a random encounter above the planet, there should be SOMETHING on the surface. TEAM, if you can't think of something off the top of your head, just build a really neat little generic outpost map, where players can access the bank, exchange, mail, get supplies, commodities, talk to a ferengi or two and play some dabo to get latinum.
which reminds me... you have in the star trek universe a very precious currency, latinum. but you can hardly buy anything with it. come up with a variety of cool things you can buy with it. it doesn't have to be a super powerful thing a-ma-bob. perhaps purchasing a contraband cloaking device for use with non-authorized starfleet vessels, or just a runabout or something like that. but balance it by giving it a time limit instead of always-on.
anyway, just make one of these generic outposts and wherever there's a planet that doesn't have anything yet, plop it down. don't let perfectionism keep you from fleshing out the game. it can't be too terribly difficult. you have the foundry where players can create a wide array of environments in a short time-frame. i'm sure if you guys wanted to you could throw something together that is both visually appealing and functional.
now to the community. please dont use this as an example to start a flame war. i may be inaccurate in certain details. but for example, i AM aware that you can visit andoria. but you can't beam down at least to my knowledge. i recently stopped there. if some of these issues have already been addressed then i apologize and there must be something buggy going on.
thank you cryptic for listening.
now i ask that you listen again.
throughout all the star systems in the game, there's actually a minority that you can actually stop and do something at unless you have a mission. i find this to be a failure because with as much talent the crew has this type of thing should be a no brainer. it's the little details like these that don't give the game the polished feel that it needs.
believe me i understand the rational. you don't want to cheat the players by giving them something of substandard quality, just for the sake of having something there. i couldn't agree more.
but lets look at your assets that you have to work with. until you have time to sit down and put great content in, why don't you put SOMETHING in?
RISA is a good example of what i'm talking about. they put something there, but not much to do.
you have procedurally generated environments already in the game. couldn't you use that to put SOME sort of random encounter around these derelict planets? i should be able to pick a star, any star, plot a course and find SOMETHING when i get there, even if i don't have a mission there.
in addition to a random encounter above the planet, there should be SOMETHING on the surface. TEAM, if you can't think of something off the top of your head, just build a really neat little generic outpost map, where players can access the bank, exchange, mail, get supplies, commodities, talk to a ferengi or two and play some dabo to get latinum.
which reminds me... you have in the star trek universe a very precious currency, latinum. but you can hardly buy anything with it. come up with a variety of cool things you can buy with it. it doesn't have to be a super powerful thing a-ma-bob. perhaps purchasing a contraband cloaking device for use with non-authorized starfleet vessels, or just a runabout or something like that. but balance it by giving it a time limit instead of always-on.
anyway, just make one of these generic outposts and wherever there's a planet that doesn't have anything yet, plop it down. don't let perfectionism keep you from fleshing out the game. it can't be too terribly difficult. you have the foundry where players can create a wide array of environments in a short time-frame. i'm sure if you guys wanted to you could throw something together that is both visually appealing and functional.
now to the community. please dont use this as an example to start a flame war. i may be inaccurate in certain details. but for example, i AM aware that you can visit andoria. but you can't beam down at least to my knowledge. i recently stopped there. if some of these issues have already been addressed then i apologize and there must be something buggy going on.
Post edited by bjs1981 on
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It's better to not do a thing in the game than to half-TRIBBLE it.
Keep calm, and continue firing photon torpedoes.
it's like vulcan, there is nothing to do here. there is a big station, and what we have is just beam down on a lazy place. make a city on vulcan, andoria etc like bajor .
For risa its a planet who appears alot in the serie you could do something too.
you could make sonething on utopia planitia. mars is the place where ships are made! we could have ship requisition officer here and a place for ship equipement. (the map exist)
what you said is basically that if they decide to put something there "half-TRIBBLE" then that means the game crew are so completely lazy that they will NEVER get around to doing it right. i don't know how long you've been playing, but i can tell you in three years, so far they haven't gotten around to doing it "right" yet.
so your counterpoint is nullified. they have had ample time to do something "right" or do it "best" ..... but they HAVEN'T. and who knows how long until they DO?
sometimes all you have time to do for a scraped knee is stick a bandaid on it. if that's the best you can do at least it won't get infected. but doing SOMETHING is better than doing nothing.
like i said i'm not dogging them. they've been working hard on the romulan expansion for a couple years now. i applaud them for that. but lets not forget the other things that make the game.
i knew someone was guna come back with that. that's the complete opposite of what i just said. the point i was making is that if these planets have no current use in the game then they could just put an outpost there so that at least i don't have to fly all the way across the map to get to the nearest starbase. there should be SOMETHING useful there.
what you said is basically that if they decide to put something there "half-TRIBBLE" then that means the game crew are so completely lazy that they will NEVER get around to doing it right. i don't know how long you've been playing, but i can tell you in three years, so far they haven't gotten around to doing it "right" yet.
so your counterpoint is nullified. they have had ample time to do something "right" or do it "best" ..... but they HAVEN'T. and who knows how long until they DO?
sometimes all you have time to do for a scraped knee is stick a bandaid on it. if that's the best you can do at least it won't get infected. but doing SOMETHING is better than doing nothing.
like i said i'm not dogging them. they've been working hard on the romulan expansion for a couple years now. i applaud them for that. but lets not forget the other things that make the game.
Not to mention transwarp makes getting back to a hub ridiculously simple, and transwarp engines make getting around just as easy.
i agree to a certain extent. but when i transwarp back to ESD then i still have to huff it all they way back. but that's part of the game.
what would world of ******** be like if there was no gryphon ride? part of the game is the ride from one point to another. unfortunately star trek doesn't have visuals like world of ********.
dangit... now i wana go play WoW for a bit haha.
another criticism is the zone borders. WoW has zones too but they're border-less. come on, they gotta be able to do something about this? there aren't even any terrain features to process. and why do the zones have to be SQUARE? shouldn't they follow the 3D spacial territorial borders of the nations that own them?
the only places that should NOT have hubs are in the 'unexplored' areas. but even those have the random encounters, like in the hromi cluster. all procedurally generated. you tell me they can't throw in a damaged freighter distress call in these planets we all fly past every day on our way out far away from ESD?
now that the romulan expansion is finally finished they need to put some time into the regular stuff that will make it great and compete with games like WoW. for that you need some great, unique ground maps. and they need to be immersive. ground missions with ground NPCs .... taking a shuttle down and piloting from point A to B to complete your mission.
STO is great and they seem to be doing well, taking the server load into consideration. but they shouldn't be small minded about it. have a vision. if they could grow the business to ten servers by investing some time in immersive worlds i think that would only make everybody happy. not only that but you're talking big money, which i'm sure everyone who works for cryptic would like a nice bonus check.
i can understand not wanting to let forum users abuse the forum by advertising or attempting to take players away from STO for the competition, but filtering out the word like it's a dirty word is just too funny!!
To the meat of your post.
Terrible idea.
There is no point in putting a generic outpost on every planet just so you can visit and have nothing to do.
Also if they have future plans for a planet your idea means that they basically wasted the effort in putting your generic outpost on said planet when the get around to doing what they desire.
Making a zone in the foundry is a lot easier then making a zone in the persistent world. The foundry zone has to only worry about a max. load of 5 players. The zones you want have to be stable with a significantly larger load. Second foundry zones are riddled with environment bugs. I don't know how many times I have falling or a crew member has fallen through the map as the number is too high. And I just started playing this game. It simply takes a LOT of work to add a persistent zone to the game. A lot more work then you seem to grasp.
Its better to let Cryptic add content to theses planets as they need to at their own pace. The demand for content will ALWAYS be higher then the ability to produce it. So your "easy" idea for content simply means that people will demand content in a different area it never ends.
Its not like they can just add your idea to the list of thing to do. If they do as you suggest they have to drop something else. There are a finite amount of resources and manpower they can use in development every thing you add means something else has to be dropped. I really don't relish the idea that a generic zone is causing them to drop or delay other areas of the game.
why do you have to mock? is hard to accept the idea that cryptic is responsive to the input of the players? isn't that why we have the forums here? you just have a self-serving bias. you don't like the idea, so you have to discredit the possibility that cryptic listened to me before. as if they would listen to the entire community and what they want, EXCEPT ME... especially when my request was fairly easy to accommodate in the first place.
second, what you said is the very reason why they didn't respond. so they could fulfill their promise and still save face. they can pretend "we were uhhhhh... planning to do that this next patch anyway! yeah!"
by simply addressing the issue and not mentioning the mistake, they get to save face.
you don't seem very well education on interpersonal communication styles. you have your favored opinion, and then construct weird, unsubstantiated arguments to try to say not only that you don't like the idea, that you think it would be terrible. as if, my idea would somehow destroy the entire game because currently useless planets would become useful in some way.
your statement is not true, and my suggestion would only help the game. if you don't LIKE the random encounter/ standard outpost idea, you're free to not visit those planets. oh wait, you already don't visit those planets cause there's nothing there.
as to the 'trade off' ... between "bigger and better" vs. generic zones. the problem here is that cryptic can see the forrest, but they can't see the trees. in other words, they have a great big-picture plan, but they are always lacking on the details... and their "big picture" ideas always take FOREVER to execute. that's not bad thing entirely... WoW has taken years to come out with expansion pacts one after another. but in the mean time, they always put out smaller content updates to keep the fans happy with something fresh.
now if you want to retort with "this isn't WoW, don't compare!" or apples to oranges... don't bother. a good idea is still a good idea no matter what barrel the apples come out of. it's up to CRYPTIC to decide if they can spend the man-hours to execute it. not YOU, my little egotistical friend.
if you have a LEGITIMATE argument as to why they shouldn't i'd be open to hear it. something along the lines of... "instead, they should get a line of credit, hire some additional programmers, and do it RIGHT" ....
that would make sense. but just poo pooing the idea because you're afraid they won't get around to the next mysterious, distant project that you have absolute faith that they MUST be working on, but to which they haven't consulted you on. you just come off as a mindless, fan-loyal-worshiper of the GOD cryptic that can do no wrong.
mind you, there where others who said exactly what you just said, shortly before i got my first contact mission.
Adding dozens of new maps in a way that isn't blatantly cutting and pasting the same map 40 times is not "fairly easy".
Secondly, enabling your laziness (since you've effectively admitted that's the primary thing driving this demand) in no way takes priority over getting actual playable content out into the game.
Want to hang out on a shiny map? Make a foundry mission for yourself.
you know what? you are ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. i am lazy. i don't want to spend hours running around when i could be getting into missions faster.
secondly, you brought up a good point. with a little added programming. they could spice things up by making these currently 'useless' zones capture-able by opposing factions. the benefit being that each faction would receive a bonus to some skills, or perhaps a daily dilithium mining allowance based off of the number of planets held by each faction.
the capture might only be temporary, say, one week. then auto-reset. this would keep players involved in the conflict. it would be a combining of PvP & PvE ... as when a planet is disputed, players from the owning faction could come to the aid of the planet.
to mitigate the battle, players would only be allowed into the contest once. once eliminated, they wouldn't be allowed back in until next reset. BUT, they could go on to fight for other planets.
rewards would be based on similar fleet actions, like those at starbase 24.
another way to make them useful would be to allow fleets to choose where to place their starbases. that way they could choose to let their starbase help play a defending roll for the planet. if you want to play it safe, keep your starbase near earth. if you want more action and more reward, place it near the klingon neutral zone.
there are ALL SORTS of great ideas that could be utilized here but don't be closed-minded. think of possibilities, not reasons to maintain the status quo. be a BRAIN STORMER. star trek is about new ideas, new inventions, removing limitations on humanity. grab hold of something and contribute. don't just sit there and wait for them to spoon-feed you whatever they come up with.
And, yes, you can beam down to Andoria. And, when you do, there are NPC's to talk to.
Keep calm, and continue firing photon torpedoes.
Could you be any more arrogant and condescending? Assuming that anyone who doesn't instantly and blindly support your ideas is visionless luddite is about as far from the truth as you can get.
Cryptic has very limited resources. In light of that fact, I put forward ideas, suggestions and feedback when and where they are most needed, can do the most good, and can be acted on the easiest. What you've put forward fits into none of those categories. Thusly, I don't go around leaking ideas on the general forum (where concepts get buried anyway) during the middle of a server meltdown.
So please, spare me the white knight routine.
i don't ask for instant or blind following, especially since you've already given yours to cryptic. your flatulent contentiousness is now reduced to defending cryptic's lack of action in this department because of their limited resources. defending a baseless position is not anywhere close to proposing an alternative that would satisfy customer desire.
seriously, if that's the business image that cryptic wants to portray, then why play their game. i don't think that they want to be known as small-house, low budget, cheap as you can get people to still pay for-studio.
if i was owning a business i'd want to be known as the biggest, best, most innovative, and exciting franchise out there. not sitting there like a beggar with my withered hand out begging people to come play my game so i won't starve.
with that said, its not unreasonable to expect that they DO have resources available to meet reasonable customer requests. my request is reasonable, logical, functional, and could potentially meet many player's needs. not only that, as i said before it opens the door to gaming possibilities that previously haven't been explored.
your "requirements" for being able to make a contributing suggestion are: where they are most needed, can do the most good, and can be acted on the easiest.
this implies a number of things.
1) that you feel you're the emissary for cryptic to tell others what kind of input they want to listen to,
2) that you alone have the ability to judge where the ideas are most needed, and therefore nobody else is smart enough to conclude for themselves what THEY think is needed,
3) you assume that YOU do in fact, 'the most good'... when you might only be harming things for all you know, and that anyone who doesn't agree with your types of input automatically are not doing any good, and
4) that cryptic is so tyrannical that they won't even consider a suggestion unless it is of the utmost convenience to implement, and we players ought to worship at their feet at being given the opportunity to even make a suggestion. therefore, if we are going to do so, just make a minor suggestion in hopes of it being approved. this is called a door-in-the-face psychological appeal and is the earliest and most immature appeal that humans learn. it works like this: your child only wants 5 dollars for some candy. so they ask for 30 dollars for some new toy. when you turn them down then they hit you up for the 5 dollars they originally wanted and you're more likely to give it to them. you are admitting that you only engage in door-in-the-face appeals because in your opinion they will be the most successful.
you fail to consider that someone other than yourself might have a bigger, brighter, bolder, more industrious suggestion that would win them over. NOT because they are simply pandering to your request, but because the request in-of-itself is GOOD.
egotistical people typically consider others to be arrogant and condescending when they are by nature in an inherently inferior position. this is called narcissism, and the primary defense of a narcissist is to project into OTHERS what they themselves propagate, as well as being aggressive, as well as fantasizing and displaying delusions omnipotence. kinda falls in line with a fantasy role-play where you get to be God, doesn't it? character roles are: hero, tyrant, or star of the show, characterized by cynical platitudes or dismissing others that are deemed to be inferior.
now we are debating as to whether i should be even allowed to make a suggestion on the basis of your subjective criteria. it is you who are in fact arrogant and condescending to think that just because you have a better idea of how to manage cryptic's resources that they shouldn't be allowed to hear my suggestion or that i should not be allowed to make it.
Keep calm, and continue firing photon torpedoes.