DEFEATING THE MAZE & HAMPSTER WHEEL - Good Gameplay Ideas To Think On

overkilltbp

TO START OFF - STO and ALL modern MMORPGs I have played have lost track of there roots and no longer seek to build a world which the players manipulate and turn into their own. I have been playing Star Trek Online a very long time.

I remember the old earth space dock, the old skill system, I remember not having anyone to play with and having nothing to do but fly my ship around and despite the incredible improvements to the game the essential elements are the same, its a game where you level up then do missions for the coolest stuff... except i have 4 sets of MKXII omega ground gear for my away team and the MKXII MACO and Adapted MACO ground gear, 2 sets of omega xii space parts 2 sets of maco xii space parts purity much all the special event and rep items i care to have and unlike games of old I've run out of things to do and realized that i have no way of effecting the world around me.

The worlds of WoW, STO, LoTR, DCU, SRO, SWTOR, WOL, and many others are incredibly stagnant and repetitive, leaving players to roam through environments which never change and become after time uneventful.

Now I am one of those pick a side play a side kind of people and I have limited my self to Federation on top of that I prefer to play one character, that being said off the top of my head I can think of several UPDATES which would be relatively drastic departures the STO Dev Teams focus but I feel they would in some cases be simple to carry out and in other cases just down right important to the construction of a immersive star trek experience.


A.SPICE THINGS UP- I don't care if I only get to decorate the captains quarters of my ship, I don't even care if I only get specific spots to put specific types of items in my captains quarters (I.E. spot for a lamp here, spot for a bed there, book shelve for any books i might have), I would rather spend my time decorating my ship and hanging out in my ship then flying from station to station and planet to planet because I'm bored from not playing anything or doing anything different.

Trophies are neat and complement the room they are in quite nicely, however having trophies as the soul customizable feature in the ship interior represents a sorry attempt at creating a personalized atmosphere inside your ship.


B. PERSONAL SPACE - The ship interiors much like the decoration of them has bin sadly neglected. Even Star Trek Elite Force had a better ship interior then the great Star Trek Online. First off there is no way 50 people sleep in my defiant unless they sleep on the floor, second there's no way a Galaxy Class Star Ship is that small on the inside. 90% of Star Trek takes place inside ships am I the only one who sees this disconnect with STO game play.

Further more, I understand STO cannot be Star Wars Galaxies but why cant people rent out Quarters on different stations, maybe give Fleet Admirals special quarters on the Fleet Star base, Rentable quarters for fleet members at the Fleet Star base which could add to the Fleet Bank coffers, or even an apartment overlooking some part of San Francisco or Andoria or Vulcan.

For Vets like me maybe let us rent some super sweet Digs on the Veteran Station. This would give a motive for more constant foot traffic through these areas and allow a person to feel like they have some personal space that's theirs in the Galaxy.

C. CITIES ARE THE FUTURE - As civilizations grow their cities grow along with them. By the time any civilization has gotten to the point of space travel they've almost certainly constructed massive awe inspiring cities.

One of the only things SWTOR(38 GIGS of Not Fun) did right was capture the massive size of Starwars Cities.

Star Trek Online, has no cities. It has some city maps in the story line but it has nothing to stroll around, there is a lack of the one environment most highly associated with advanced civilizations when planet side, CITIES.

If other districts could be added to existing areas such as Star Fleet Acadamy, Bajor, Vulcan, or Andoria in the form of separate instances it would bring a depth to the game which could be built upon and eventually allow Star Trek Online to expand beyond just a simple WoW/EVE clone with my favorite theme, to a full bodied original Sandbox/Themepark MMORPG with businesses people could own or events at the local pub or any number of a world of ideas. Use for Vehicles, future-trains.


D. World of Warriors - Now we all know Star Trek isn't just about killing and phasers, in fact I have watched all of star trek movies and series at least 80 times each and throughout them they depict a perfect representation of an entire galactic society.

There are traders, engineers, miners, security officers, farmers, colonists, and just a wide array of other professions besides ship captain.

Now true even scotty got to captain so everyone having a ship not such a big problem but if you had special ships you had to use for certain jobs like hauling a load somewhere it would give people a reason to fly something other than some sort of large weapon bristling vessel which would give the large weapon bristling vessels something to escort making for good roll play and good game play all at the same time.

New types of vessels could be made and sold in the Zen store, an entire new realm of adventure would be opened up to those old school players like myself who have just killed one to many ships and one to many Elite Drones and now just wants to run around DS9 in circles till someone joins in.

In fact, for me personally I would quite enjoy having to do missions on my ship getting parts doing mini games climbing in tubes to go fix parts of the engine maybe having to work on the transporter go to some station to pick up 5000 loads of something to take to some other station which of course will have enemies along the way waiting to take my goods.

Another Neat RP related job idea would be small jobs like bar tender, chef, dancer, musician(would have lots of references back to the series) each having special abilities and benefits related to their job description. Dancers and musicians could give out light buffs. long lasting, death removing buffs which would increase in variety and potency as they level up but can only be given out at dance areas. Bar tenders could have the ability to walk up to a bar interact with get behind it, and be able to make better then normal food and drink buffs to real people crowds.

Any number of possibilities and if the devs don't want to take the time to seamlessly build it into the game they can put it in with the Rep System. Crafting could be done in the form of what rep level you have for different types of jobs.

E. STRONG GOVERMENT - Fleet leaders do not have enough Definition/Choices. Despite the strong push the STO development team have made at giving Star Trek Online Fleets a point, the Fleet controls and general Fleet logistics setup given to fleet leaders is extremely rudimentary compared to the benefits and physical infrastructure which have bin bestowed upon them.

Fleet leaders need the ability to define specifically what provision types each rank is allowed to take. Fleet leaders also need to be able to define more precisely how far each promotion capable rank is allowed to promote a person (I.E. give captains the ability to promote past ensign but no further or give Rear Admirals the ability to promote to Commander but not Captain).

A better logistics system has to be put in place, something allowing for a daily message to specific ranked fleet members, a BLACKBOARD of sort which all ranking members of a fleet could use to leave messages on anything relevant, promotions, demotions, concerns, any information which may be of importance to the other leading members of a fleet, things that may sometimes cause problems because everyone wasn't informed and no everyone checks their mail.

FLEET ADMIRALS NEED TO BE ABLE TO SEND MAIL TO ALL OF A SPECIFIC RANK!!!! I have the worst time keeping certain ranks informed of information without having to send a fleet mail to everyone.

The bank needs more pages if not a complete reworking. The ability to make actual formal in game alliances with other fleets needs to become part of this game. Give fleets who have made alliances something special because of it and reward everyone just a little bit more when they make new more alliances. Give people the ability to put the TAGs of their alliance under their name somewhere above their character maybe.

IN CONCLUSION - I don't expect anything to come of this post, I truly doubt anyone will read all that I've written and a good chance people will disagree but I've spent far to much time talking to other people about things like what I have written about and I desired it was time I at least put my voice out there to hopefully but doubtfully make a difference a game I play solely because i love star trek and because I have a fleet of people which I'd like to give a good experience and help them be as good as I am in the hope they will not be like me, one who has burned so many times on so many different games, and continue to help others with the same motivation that drove me to help them.

P.S This is from The FA Spycho in 101st Airborne modified by his good pal Overkill, which agrees with what he has said and we can only hope you can all agree as well.

spycho2

I agree on all points in every way

overkilltbp

I agreed before you knew how to spell agree :rolleyes: JK BUMP

spycho2

I may not know how to spell but 14,000 hours plus logged on both xfire, raptr, separately and a bunch on steam says I know computer games like the back of my hand and this one eventually needs all those things in it. the sooner it happens the sooner I stop sleeping on benches and dancing on boxes for something to do in game

spycho2

theres so much more I didn't add it was already getting ridiculously long I wanted atleast someone to read it

tucker84

I agree!

In my opinion in Star Trek, the ships always play a very important part. In most of the series the story is about a crew of a ship. That is why i am a little bit dissapointed in the fact, that in STO the interiors, and overall the role of the player's own vessel, is mostly for space battles, and travel. You cannot do enough inside. You are unable to feel, that your ship is your home, base, workplace... etc.

(I like the first contact missions, where you have to deal with the diplomats in your ship's meeting room.)

Ideas I heard somewhere, or I was thinking about them.:

0. Different ship interiors for different ship classes. (I would buy them for Zen, but I do not want to own a Defiant with great hallways. It is not a Galaxy class or something...)

1. Some minigames playable in a cabin, so you can invite your friends, fleetmates, others over to your ship. (poker, Kal-toh, Kadis-kot, chess... etc.)

2. You can set the uniform you would like to see on your crew.

3. Somehow your DOFFs, should appear as NPCs aboard.

4. Option to change the interior of your own cabin on the ship. With trophies maybe.

+1. Holodeck. (Something like on Bajor. You and your away team/ friend(s) against an enemy of your choice. They should come in waves, and get more difficult with every wave. Or you and your friends in the same situation.)

+2. On harder difficulty setting you and your BOFFs, and your ship can get injuries. It would be good if we can repair, heal with DOFF missions. (I'm not sure- maybe the heal option is there in the ship's Medbay.)

[+X. Friendship/ marriage or something like that. Some kind of personal connection with another. Why not? When you are in a team with your mate, spouse, brother... ect. you could give extras to each other or something...]

I came to play this game, because it is Star Trek. I wanted to live Star Trek. This is just shootin' and lootin' and grinding. I would like to experience the essence of Trek. Just a little...

skanvak

Well I was expecting more actually. I share you analysis. The world does not evolve and therefore become uneventful.

The problem is that MMORPG base their model on computer RPG (in the japanese sense) which at one point you stop playing (generally after having finished the story and a few side story). But if you want a permanent world where people play for years, then you cannot use this model.

You need to think of persistent world which imply that character have an impact on how the world evolve. This is the point that most company don't want : if character have an impact then this could negatively impact other player experience. It can too make it diffult with their developpement and some law too.

Nevertheless what I think should really be inside is more interaction between the world and the player. For example, instead of making the Romulan republic allied with both side, the character of the romulan republic could be given a reputation task that will give support to an alliance of one side or the other. At the end of each month, the 2 polls are compare and the higher one define the alliance of all Romulan Republic characters for the next months. This will give them good reason to discuss and imply themselves in the game.

We need more PvP from my point of view. What make persistent world interesting is that the opposition between the player. Conflicting goal can lead to conflict between the character that could be interesting for all from my experience. Pvp should not be free (though I wonder why Klingon and Federation cannot attacked each other freely...) but with the duty officer and reputation system you could make thing interesting. For example someone launch a political project (plot a coup d'Etat in the Federation to make is Terran Empire like) then other player can either back the project or attack it. Any attack lost OR LEFT UNANSWERED would lower the project.

We need to have real battlefield which are like the Realm vs Realm of some other game (the one I have in mind have huge no pvp area and the Realm pvp (you still cannot target your ally) but the battle is huge putting several hundreds of players on each side with castles being taken and lost). I could very much see a front line that move with land battle to control the planet (and why not insurrection activity) that would give bonus to production of the side controlling the planet. Each side could invest ressources (fleet mark?) to build defenses on planet and repair the mine and factory. Battle will damage the mines and factories (as insurgent activity as it is a persistent battle). I'd like that if a side really win, this lead to a period of peace between the Klingon Empire and the UFP. This would be startrek like. It would be nice that the war is not only between the Klingon Empire and the Federation. The relationship between the 2 should evolve which mean that this war should be able to come to an end BUT the PC action should lead to this decision. The relationship should be either war, cold war (no war but the 2 factions stay a bit hostile), alliance (this is the only form of peace the Klingon really understand).

Other things, it would be nice to offer formal place in Starfleet Command and KDF to lead player to have them make decision. I am a bit tired of having a moronic admiral as my superior.

About the city : I say YES! They would be nice and they would be an interesting battlefield area for the warzone. I'd like to visit Andoria and not only the cold part.

BUT I would say that it would be better if the player can participate in a dynamic devellopement of colony that you can actually visit (and that the opposing faction could attack). Eventually the colony could evolve in a full fledge City.

More use for the interior of our ship : Yes too. Star Trek are about interaction with your crew too and some adventure inside the ship.

I do hope that this game will evolve. It has already evolved a lot.

edwardianed

I do not consider myself a grammar TRIBBLE (although I suppose grammar TRIBBLE don't either), but there is just one thing in the original post that is driving me nuts:

"BEEN!!!", for heaven's sake the word is "Been". A "bin" is where you put your rubbish.

Sorry that I have nothing more constructive to say. :rolleyes:

skanvak

I would like to add about what you say of other activity like being a bartender or other side activity. Well I somewhat disagree. But I think and interesting evolution could be to be able to play civilian which would either be civilian duty officer (but played by a player) or civilian merchant with their ship.

This could lead to the possibility to raid other side merchant player. The merchant could either accept the raid or withdraw to the nearest starbase (losing time) or negociate a bribe with the raider. Otherwise a fight start and a distress call is send to all allied player that can join.

twg042370

overkilltbp wrote: »

I have been playing Star Trek Online a very long time.

That's the problem. You're suppose churn with everyone else and stop playing a few months after hitting the cap. The coming back for each expansion and doing it again.

It can suck if you're dedicated. But the MMO model relies on this because not even the wealthiest of companies can produce enough content to keep the hangers-on happy. So the best thing to do with a game is to not be dedicated.

lykum

funny how the same ones and ohhh's could be 're-organized' to a point to where no one rly ever complains on the forums... and no-one sees it but meeeeeee ahahahaha

spycho2

your point is valid which is why i step away from STO from time to time to not get burned out but that being said, the way things are is the way things are is very complacent and a poor reason to stop asking and trying for something better.

spycho2

where as i agree that nothing will ever be perfect something better is always out there and you may not be able to combine ones and zeros in the correct fashion to form the perfect game one cannot give up striving for perfection and one cannot stop hoping for the best otherwise that person has nothing better to look forward to just the knowledge that nothing will ever change.

spycho2

Tucker i love what you have to say all really good ideas and a great addition to the post.

spycho2

and skanvak your ideas, extremely bold I love them. Ill be honest i think the programming would be beyond the Dev team to complete in a timely manner but if they did... damn. And if they brought some sandbox elements in to the game they might find people not getting bored so fast in between updates.

spycho2

sandbox = make your own fun = more fun for your coding with themepark games you basically run through some programming metaphorically the same way you watch a movie

thehellnback

yes .. this is long ... overdue

doubleohnine

Ideally, STO would make 3-5 community PvE type events at once. Then give a time frame for how long the stats from those events are tracked. If the community pushes option A the most during the time frame and its objectives are completed more than B or C, then the universe evolves to X. If we all push B, it evolves to Y, etc. Then things dynamically change in the universe as the months and years go by where alliances are changed, restricted or unrestricted areas open or close, maps change reflecting new ownership/damage/rebuilding as a result of the dynamic events. Its still not too late to do this.

But Dan Stahl and his dev team cant even keep the stagnant model storyline going when even their expansions rehash old calendar dates and the actual STO story hasnt been pushed forward in over a year. The dev team we are stuck with hasnt got the first clue how to make the dynamic changes I suggested.

skanvak

spycho2 wrote: »

and skanvak your ideas, extremely bold I love them. Ill be honest i think the programming would be beyond the Dev team to complete in a timely manner but if they did... damn. And if they brought some sandbox elements in to the game they might find people not getting bored so fast in between updates.

Thanks for the support. Well for the warzone, indeed it is a huge task for the dev team. But for the Romulan switching side I don't think so.

I guess we will all be happy is something evolve regularly. Let's have faith they will surely do some of the simple thing.

spycho2

I only include the romulan switch sides thing because when the Klingons came out they had a bad problem of having no quest line for them they had 4 long mission then you basically did pvp or go to nebulae so if you where a level 50 klink you really wanted it. I am sure things could have changed by now they didn't have nearly as many people playing so funding was obviously less but i think maybe it could have worked well except once they chose to have the romulans pick a side it would cause havoc if they tried to change it. that being said they should instate something that follows those lines because the idea is sound. It would give a unscripted element of diplomacy to the game if assembled correctly which would go along way to making the player feel they are not doing something prewritten. Which I think is essentially what were getting at with all of this, game development which causes the player to feel as though they are in charge of what happens and capable doing something people have never seen before (I.E. just one example of many - in starwars galaxies there was a finite number of decorations in the game but people would take them and create fish tanks, statues, entire bars, entire rooms, some of the most original things you've ever seen all from just a handful of options ). Currently id say the only real feature in STO which mirrors that idea in some way is the character customization and skill system including ship parts, boffs, and traits. its actually rather difficult to do something with ship decoration that you wont see someone else with although it is possible ive seen it. I was also thinking, since I have all these really cool weapons now it would be nice to have an armory on my ship which i could A. use as storage for my special weapons i don't use and B. give me a way of looking at all the cool guns i have all in one spot. id even be cool with a gun wall. but an armory seems far more appropriate.

spycho2

I was thinking about how hard it would actually be to bring any sort of exploring/sandbox style ship game play and I was thinking most likely in the long term future it would be nice to see and I think a smart move to add a pop-up screen displaying a map of the solar system you have just flown to which would allow a player to chose what planet or even maybe what moon the player wants to fly to in any given solar system which would
A. allow for scenarios such as capturing an outpost for your fleet which is in orbit around any given planet or moon. The outpost could preferably have an interior or could just be captured and used for a bonus in some way. scenarios could involved PvP in some cases allowing 2 sides to fight over parts of a solar system for control or even have random spawns of dilithium asteroids which players have to search the galaxy for.
B. It allows for a vast increase in space size with no need to figure out where your going to put it keeping the galaxy a reasonable size while making you feel like space just got a lot bigger. It will allow the game Developers a place they could try out new things and have space there wouldn't be a worry of contaminating a quest area and the vast size increase would truly allow people to feel as though they are exploring a galaxy
For people doing quests either a particular planet could be off limits unless you have a quest or have them load up in their own instance maybe even connect another ground instance maybe small village or just a beach or some rocks with the quest instance so if you don't have the mission theres something to look at but if you do have the mission you can continue threw a threshold of some sort which will load you into the quest. of course in some cases the direct beam in is best but it allows for variety. All and all id say Solar Definition is a viable theory on how to bring the huge explorer element of star trek out in STO

spycho2

I've heard rumors about the STO Dev team dabbling with a weapon customization set up to create your own weapon I thought that was purity neat. However I would personally like to see something a little bit more rewarding. Its cool to be able to have a different weapon then other people but why not take it one step further. I Would love to see Ground weapon parts come into the game. Weapons without any parts would not work the same way a ship can barely move when it has no engines. New Omega, Nukara, and Romulan weapon parts could be added as new items to unlock in the reputation store or have a weapon smith class that makes them. what a gun means in the game will have to be altered you might not be able to just put it on you anymore or maybe you could if the Dev team was able to add a tab when you right click on a weapon to alter its parts. Regardless, it would allow for customization of a weapons stats in most likely a slight manner but allow people to alter their gun so theirs might just be a little bit better then someone one else's. A weapons dimensions could be altered based on weapon and part "category" which would allow for a predetermined look on that gun while making it different from the normal gun at the same time giving the guns a uniformity which is often associated with factions and weapons and at the same time allow for a gun to be something personal.

spycho2

A system could be set up which would allow a person to chose to be in a "PVP state" or not and if in PvP mode it should read "PvP" somewhere above your name and your ships name. If players chose to enter a PvP state any players of the opposing faction also in a "PvP state" could fly up to you in warp and throw you into a space PvP match which would end in the disabling or destruction of one of the combatants ships (having the players lose control of there ship weapons and bridge officer buffs at 10% health and get invincibility to keep them from dropping lower until the winner choses to continue the battle or board might be smart). If the champion of the space battle decides to board the defeated players ship the rewards would be far greater for both winner and loser. Of course the champion having been the one to initiate the boarding action would have to fight with his away team past the opposing player and their away team plus a bunch of low level Red Shirt NPCs. To add to the PvP element any player in a PvP state could move freely through the faction boarders to attack other PvP players but the deeper they go the more they risk. There could be people that just patrol the sectors looking for trespassers. Any Ship which enters another factions space would be locked into PvP mode until they exited that factions space or blow up and got send back to their own. Multi-Person battles could take place by allowing another player in pvp mode to enter by interacting with a battle representation in sector space. Once they have entered they would battle the space battle the same way only now with worse odds for one side and when the time came to chose to board or not both team members would board normally with the defender gaining the benefit of slightly stronger red shirts. If it were possible for the Dev Team to create a way of informing PvP players when opposing faction members is coming to intercept, players could decide if they wanted to kill and run or board and loot, risking having to go back into space combat or exit the fight losing bonus rewards. This would also make a good model for Trading Ships and how raids on cargo ships might work. Trading ships could even send out a distress call that players who are "On Patrol" could pick up from greater ranges and come to assist. Low level Traders could have NPCs come after them and a rank limit of maybe 45 could be placed on the players who can enter those instances to assist.

edwardianed

Wow... that wall of text could keep the Mongols out of China...

a3001

edwardianed wrote: »

Wow... that wall of text could keep the Mongols out of China...

agreed, but i digress.

Anyways, back to the OP: i like your ideas and it's a good start to see where some of this kind of stuff will lead. Would be interesting in having more than just the "holy trinity" of MMO roles. I mean, even in World of Tanks there are different game modes with diffrent goals. One minute you're in the thick of things on an urban map with loads of cover, next round you're sniping enemy tanks from across the map.

spycho2

well that's nice isn't it edwardianed... sorry I don't understand... a million things to say and you chose that because I'd think you could simply ignore the entire post if its to much for you. Letting people know obvious things like,"that wall is wide" or "that tree is tall" or "that that post is big" mean nothing to people who have any thing important to say so why bother?

spycho2

Yeah regardless of how it happens STO needs to bring out the exploration element of star trek in STO and we need more room to do that

spycho2

I've just been using this post to write out my ideas for the game some where so I apologize if its to long in most cases.

edwardianed

spycho2 wrote: »

well that's nice isn't it edwardianed... sorry I don't understand... a million things to say and you chose that because I'd think you could simply ignore the entire post if its to much for you. Letting people know obvious things like,"that wall is wide" or "that tree is tall" or "that that post is big" mean nothing to people who have any thing important to say so why bother?

My apologies if you were offended, I was just making a joke, albeit a sarcastic one

spycho2

That cool I'm just baked and that whole wall is the culmination of years of waiting for the next highly detailed vast sandbox style MMORPG which I looked an waited for and played every MMO then realized there wasnt one coming. I started following STO before it came out hoping. Then played it and the only way I can describe the game play was flat. It was more like a tour of the Star Trek Universe then a game. But, because STOs environment is set up differently from games like SWTOR and WoW, they could implement so many good sandbox features that could separate them from their competition and move them to a market that hasn't seen ANY action in years, not because the game style was bad but because the game technology was not advanced enough and WoW was a big success.