Step #1) Make big gigantic map, 1000 times the size of one of these Arena maps.
Step #2) Put in 10 resource nodes: Asteroid belts, planets, etc.
Step #3) Federation get 1 invulnerable starbase at one corner of the map, Klingons get 1 invulnerable starbase at another corner of map. Each of those starbases automatically generates resources.
Step #4) Rename Full Impulse to Warp, and reduce turning by 95% while at Warp.
Step #5)_ Allow hundreds of players to join. If too many players get into one area and start to lag everyone out, tough noogies. Or implement the Eve Online system. A "spatial anomoly" forms at the center of mass of players, slowing everyone's time down.
Step 6) Each player can control 5 NPC ship or bases. Those ships are manufactured at bases/starbases.
.
.
.
.
.
To make a long story short combine RTS game like StarCraft with this game here. In StarCraft a player builds stuff and other players blow it up.
dilithium = resource nodes.
Transport ships = SCV's which transport resources to and from the Command Center.
The Command Center = Barracks
NPC's you control = Marines/SCV/Buildings
______________________________
You know these game developers absolutely drive me up the wall.
PVP in MMORPG's is pointless bland arena style "go head to head with enemy and blast away", with no point whatsoever.
PVP in StarCraft is too quick. Everything happens too fast, and it's still in an isometric view. You know, dang, welcome to the 2010's.
COMBINE THE TWO!!!! GEEZ! What's so complicated about it? Game developers have no imagination whatsoever.
______________________________
Ya know why it's so hard to balance classes in MMORPG's, when PVP is involved? BECAUSE ITS ALL ARENA PLAY! Now if you were to combine REAL TIME STRATEGY with PVP here, than it would be a lot easier. See you could make smaller faster ships cheaper to produce, like the zerg. You could make the big heavy ships expensive, like the protos. And In the middle you have the Terrans. See you could balance it that way.
If you create a zone that can't perform relatively smoothly at max number of players within it, than it must be reduced. No one wants to hitch and lag around in pvp.
Unsigned. Your proposal doesn't seem to me to have any more 'point' than what we have now, and sounds distinctly less fun. It also sounds like it takes at least all day for one side to win.
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Pong, Pac Man, Space Invaders, Q-bert had "mass appeal".
And how many countless games have been developed based on mechanics from those games?
People buy what they want or what they think they want...etc, etc, etc.
I'm going to dip into WoW here, because I tend to run high bonus Defense and pretty decent resists (lol)...but consider the evolution (or devolution as I prefer) of what happened with Alterac Valley.
An epic combination of PvP and PvE where the fight could last for days...turned into a zergfest quickie that could be over if you had to take a leak.
The masses get what the masses want...those not in the masses, take a lot of Excedrin. /sigh
Unsigned. Your proposal doesn't seem to me to have any more 'point' than what we have now, and sounds distinctly less fun. It also sounds like it takes at least all day for one side to win.
Your obsession (players like you) with winning, winning at all costs and as quickly as possible so you can get your 10 points and grind the next PVP game, has turned PVP into a niche market.
Believe me, anyone who plays with me in PvP knows I'm not obsessed with winning at all. But I like to jump in, blow up some stuff, get blown up a bit, and get out. Quick paced fun is the goal.
I don't want to fight some lengthy campaign every time. For one thing, there are many other games that do that kind of thing better.
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Actually, stuff that's similar to what you suggest has been done before. Look at DotA. Also quite close to Airmech, which I dabble in sometimes. As such, I would say that such an idea could have some success.
Nevertheless, you say that arena-style play can be boring, and some may share that PoV. However, there are those of us who actually see some depth in the system. It's not quite the "mindless head-to-head blazing away" you think it is. Try looking at higher-level play involving science sometime, and you'll see what I mean. Also, while there is a possibility of making balance easier, it can be made tougher. Taking Starcraft 2 as an example, did you hear about how Protoss was pretty UP compared to the other factions? Balance is just as tough sometimes. Plus, this may be news to you, but there are those who actually prefer to play arena-style stuff, and not have to worry about NPCs. Although there are those who like hybrids, and those who like RTSes, each of these is a different market.
Also, I think it would fit rather poorly with the rest of the game as it is. Controlling NPCs and bases would be something so new to most of the playerbase coming up through the ranks, that we would see an even bigger learning curve than we already do.
Also, speaking about lag limitations, the game already lags pretty badly with 25 people in a single map. 100 players or more would probably freeze things entirely, or crash the game. 1000 players....yeah, you see where I'm getting at. We're not talking lag, but complete unplayability. The engine just isn't designed for this kind of scale.
Finally, I would like to say that you should calm down before blaming game devs for having "no imagination". Sure, they might have it, but they can be constrained with limitations that you may not be able to see. If you truly want to see something like this reality, well, time to learn up some coding and pitch the idea to some devs who are making a game from scratch.
TL;DR - The idea has some merit, but it would be something that would fit better in its own game, not grafted onto the current system. Seriously though, try out Airmech sometime. It's kinda like what you propose here, but on a reduced scale (just 3v3).
Believe me, anyone who plays with me in PvP knows I'm not obsessed with winning at all. But I like to jump in, blow up some stuff, get blown up a bit, and get out. Quick paced fun is the goal.
I don't want to fight some lengthy campaign every time. For one thing, there are many other games that do that kind of thing better.
Well nothing would stop you from "jumping into" a campaign PVP game, "blow up some stuff", "get blown up a bit", and then "get out".
I said adopt some elements from RTS, not the whole thing where you have to play the game till the bitter end.
Also, speaking about lag limitations, the game already lags pretty badly with 25 people in a single map. 100 players or more would probably freeze things entirely, or crash the game. 1000 players....yeah, you see where I'm getting at. We're not talking lag, but complete unplayability. The engine just isn't designed for this kind of scale..
Planetside does just fine with several hundred players in one spot, as long as you got a good CPU. If you don't wanna lag then go somewhere else.
"Why don't you go play Planetside then"
I knew you were going to say that, forumites are so predictable. Well for one thing it's a pointless Arena game, there are no resources to defend, there is no strategy you just run around and shoot people for like "whatevah" reason.
Planetside does just fine with several hundred players in one spot, as long as you got a good CPU. If you don't wanna lag then go somewhere else.
"Why don't you go play Planetside then"
I knew you were going to say that, forumites are so predictable. Well for one thing it's a pointless Arena game, there are no resources to defend, there is no strategy you just run around and shoot people for like "whatevah" reason.
That's the thing. Planetside's engine and netcode was designed from the ground up to work with this sort of scale. STO's engine - simply wasn't. And if you change the engine, well, you might as well be making a different game from scratch. And that was my conclusion.
"If you don't wanna lag then go somewhere else" - but why would you introduce a game mode that virtually guarantees lag? Lag is not a good thing for game design. Sure, you might be OK with it, but what about the other players? You aren't the only one playing this game....
Look at all these balance complaints about PVP. And you find them in every single MMORPG forum on the planet.
"OMG It's a meatshield."
"No it's the Alpha strike is too powerful."
"OMG this is lame."
"This ship is OP MAN!"
If the goal in PVP weren't simply an arena, "Shoot your opponent in the face every chance you get", then you could balance ships other ways.
-You could make powerful ships cost more resources to obtain (respawn)
-You could make smaller ships faster at warp speed meaning the cruisers would never catch up
-You could give value to ships that can actually do recon. There is no such thing as reconnaissance in Arena maps.
-you could make some ships have a larger cargo hold.
See you can balance things in other ways other than DPS/HITPOINTS. Now wouldn't that be more interesting.
But that's impossible to balance that way with these pathetic 1995's Quake Arena style maps where all you do is go up to someone and shoot them in the face.
Believe me, anyone who plays with me in PvP knows I'm not obsessed with winning at all. But I like to jump in, blow up some stuff, get blown up a bit, and get out. Quick paced fun is the goal.
I don't want to fight some lengthy campaign every time. For one thing, there are many other games that do that kind of thing better.
I see you point, there are definitely times for pew-pew. No one is suggesting that ANYTHING be removed, other than the couple trolls asking that PvP be removed entirely.
I'm with the OP (or other posters) that I'd list some enhancements, some more strategy based, or goal oriented PvP (read Territorial Control). But I am ALSO WITH YOU that I do not want to see Arena's removed, and would like some additional maps actually.
You can keep your horrendous little lagpit to yourself... I'ma gonna go play standard arena PvP. We already have a PvPvE warzone with resource nodes and such. It's called Kerrat. Yes, it's buggy and finishing the mission isn't usually worth doing, but it's there already. And guess what... it does not take a day to finish, like your idea does.
That's the thing. Planetside's engine and netcode was designed from the ground up to work with this sort of scale. STO's engine - simply wasn't. And if you change the engine, well, you might as well be making a different game from scratch. And that was my conclusion.
"If you don't wanna lag then go somewhere else" - but why would you introduce a game mode that virtually guarantees lag? Lag is not a good thing for game design. Sure, you might be OK with it, but what about the other players? You aren't the only one playing this game....
The "fear of lag" has made online games more boring. Notice how in Diablo 2 you could have a necro army of like 50 pets, now in Diablo 3 you have a pathetic 3 or 4. In Ultima Online you could run around with like 30 pets too, now in your typical MMORPG these days a pet class has one whole pet. Oooh one whole pet, how boring. In Planetside 1 you could drop equipment on the ground, but that takes up too much bandwidth, so in Planetside 2 you can't drop anything on the ground or even trade.
It's not "fear of lag" anyways, gaming companies are just being cheap with their bandwidth. They go cheap with their bandwidth and go cheap with their servers, and feed you cheap.
You can keep your horrendous little lagpit to yourself... I'ma gonna go play standard arena PvP. We already have a PvPvE warzone with resource nodes and such. It's called Kerrat. Yes, it's buggy and finishing the mission isn't usually worth doing, but it's there already. And guess what... it does not take a day to finish, like your idea does.
Kerrat is a mindless Arena game with no strategy whatsoever, what are you talking about.
The "fear of lag" has made online games more boring. Notice how in Diablo 2 you could have a necro army of like 50 pets, now in Diablo 3 you have a pathetic 3 or 4. In Ultima Online you could run around with like 30 pets too, now in your typical MMORPG these days a pet class has one whole pet. Oooh one whole pet, how boring. In Planetside 1 you could drop equipment on the ground, but that takes up too much bandwidth, so in Planetside 2 you can't drop anything on the ground or even trade.
I'm going to repeat myself just one more time here. None of this addresses the problem that I mention - namely, that STO cannot handle that many players without lagging to the point of freezing. And I brought up an example - Fleet Actions, which begin to lag due to the presence of 25 players. Talking about other games is all well-and-good, but we are talking STO here. Games like Diablo, Ultima and Planetside are not relevant to the argument I am making, which is that your addition to STO would cause bad lag, which would cause complaints and drive away players. Different games, with different engines, different netcode, different server locations, different infrastructure types. Remember that.
Furthermore, it is correct to avoid something that could be detrimental to the game experience. Point out to me one game - one game - that lags frequently and heavily, and yet is popular.
It's not "fear of lag" anyways, gaming companies are just being cheap with their bandwidth. They go cheap with their bandwidth and go cheap with their servers, and feed you cheap.
And how do you know this? Do you work in a gaming company? Have you made decisions with them? You have no more reliability than I do, and I content that these are coding limitations, not infrastructure.
Finally, you did not address the other drawbacks I mentioned in the first post. So I take it those drawbacks are correct? I don't disagree too much with the idea itself, but I completely disagree with the scale you suggest and the way you put it across.
It's not "fear of lag" anyways, gaming companies are just being cheap with their bandwidth. They go cheap with their bandwidth and go cheap with their servers, and feed you cheap.
Kerrat is a mindless Arena game with no strategy whatsoever, what are you talking about.
Kerrat is an open PvP zone. You just called all of PvP mindless, because after all, it's just fighting other people for the fun of it. That's the point of Kerrat, that's the point of PvP altogether, no?
And how do you know this? Do you work in a gaming company? Have you made decisions with them? You have no more reliability than I do, and I content that these are coding limitations, not infrastructure.
Your computer is communicating with the server information about:
-the coordinates your character is at X,Y,Z
-character rotational orientation
-Current character velocity and which way it's headed
-Chat text
-On/Off one bit of information are you shooting something or using a skill?
-A couple more bits here and there
The same thing Quake was doing in 1995. The computers have gotten more powerful, and we've moved from telephone modems to cable modems. Now why are we being restricted to less characters? And why is lag just as much as it was when we were using cable modems playing Quake 1?
Because in a game PING is KING, not bandwidth.
Watching a 5 minute youtube video eats up more bandwidth than a month of gaming. What do you think the cable company complains about the most when you exceed your GIG or so of bandwidth? No they don't complain about gaming they complain about streaming.
The same thing Quake was doing in 1995. The computers have gotten more powerful, and we've moved from telephone modems to cable modems. Now why are we being restricted to less characters? And why is lag just as much as it was when we were using cable modems playing Quake 1?
Because in a game PING is KING, not bandwidth.
Watching a 5 minute youtube video eats up more bandwidth than a month of gaming. What do you think the cable company complains about the most when you exceed your GIG or so of bandwidth? No they don't complain about gaming they complain about streaming.
Think you're underestimating the sheer amount of data that is going back and forth while playing the game and not taking into consideration that even with that, it's likely your not taking into account the number of clients transferring data back and forth.
Also, it's likely that some of the lag you're experiencing has nothing to do with bandwidth or latency.
Sounds like your want Battlestar Galactica Online but with Trek. There was something in the works called Star Trek: Infinite Space. Is was Unity based like BSGO but they couldn't find a parent company to sponsor it so it died. It had sector control and open space PVP and maps with 2 star bases and players would battle for system control. It also had the same type of system that the OP was asking for. Too bad it never made it past beta as another Star trek MMO would make this game better as nothing improves a products quality like competition.
Your computer is communicating with the server information about:
-the coordinates your character is at X,Y,Z
-character rotational orientation
-Current character velocity and which way it's headed
-Chat text
-On/Off one bit of information are you shooting something or using a skill?
-A couple more bits here and there
The same thing Quake was doing in 1995. The computers have gotten more powerful, and we've moved from telephone modems to cable modems. Now why are we being restricted to less characters? And why is lag just as much as it was when we were using cable modems playing Quake 1?
Because in a game PING is KING, not bandwidth.
Watching a 5 minute youtube video eats up more bandwidth than a month of gaming. What do you think the cable company complains about the most when you exceed your GIG or so of bandwidth? No they don't complain about gaming they complain about streaming.
You were the one who brought up bandwidth, not me.
It's not "fear of lag" anyways, gaming companies are just being cheap with their bandwidth. They go cheap with their bandwidth and go cheap with their servers, and feed you cheap.
You just proved yourself wrong here. How would going cheap with bandwidth affect you then?
What I said was that the engine was the problem. Coding was the problem. The game program itself is the problem. Have you ever entered a match with multiple clouds of Warp Plasma? Gravity Wells? For goodness' sake, haven't you heard about the invisitorp problem in STFs? All these come about because of software limitations, not the Internet, and those are what you would see if you introduced a map of this scale in STO.
Honestly, a lot of the backlash you are getting is because you come barging in here with your naive assumptions about this game, and you immediately assume that your suggestion is the best thing ever, without thinking of practicality. If this is what you do in other games, as I saw from your posts in other suggestion threads, no wonder you get shot down in every one of them.
Honestly, a lot of the backlash you are getting is because you come barging in here with your naive assumptions about this game, and you immediately assume that your suggestion is the best thing ever, without thinking of practicality.
Sounds like a certain other person and their suggestions, just a few weeks ago...
But, um, yeah, back on topic, I totally agree with scurry5.
You were the one who brought up bandwidth, not me.
You just proved yourself wrong here. How would going cheap with bandwidth affect you then?
What I said was that the engine was the problem. Coding was the problem. The game program itself is the problem. Have you ever entered a match with multiple clouds of Warp Plasma? Gravity Wells? For goodness' sake, haven't you heard about the invisitorp problem in STFs? All these come about because of software limitations, not the Internet, and those are what you would see if you introduced a map of this scale in STO.
Honestly, a lot of the backlash you are getting is because you come barging in here with your naive assumptions about this game, and you immediately assume that your suggestion is the best thing ever, without thinking of practicality. If this is what you do in other games, as I saw from your posts in other suggestion threads, no wonder you get shot down in every one of them.
I come "barging in here with na?ve assumptions" with this same idea in every MMORPG, including MMOFPS like Planetside. Last game I posted this idea in was SWGemu. Before that it was Planetside 2. Before that World of ********, you know that game based on the RTS called ********? Yeah. And you know what? PVP in all those games is meh and pointless.
You know what their problem is? No strategy, you just run around and shoot other players in the face. What's the point? What's the goal? What's the setting and context? To capture the flag, or to just mindlessly frag other players. We've been doing that since Quake1 way back in the mid 1990's. Hey I have an idea, let's move beyond Quake1, eh? Whadaya say buddy. Buddy ole pal. Wanna move past Quake1 PVP?
I come "barging in here with na?ve assumptions" with this same idea in every MMORPG, including MMOFPS like Planetside. Last game I posted this idea in was SWGemu. Before that it was Planetside 2. Before that World of ********, you know that game based on the RTS called ********? Yeah. And you know what? PVP in all those games is meh and pointless.
You know what their problem is? No strategy, you just run around and shoot other players in the face. What's the point? What's the goal? What's the setting and context? To capture the flag, or to just mindlessly frag other players. We've been doing that since Quake1 way back in the mid 1990's. Hey I have an idea, let's move beyond Quake1, eh? Whadaya say buddy. Buddy ole pal. Wanna move past Quake1 PVP?
lol why is ******** edited out?
It's not the fault of the game that you don't see the complexity involved in the game. There is tactical depth, not strategic depth. Do you understand the difference?
Instead of manipulating NPCs and capturing huge bases, you are regulating energy levels, making tactical maneuvers, synchronising spikes and debuffs with teammates, passing buffs and heals, managing cloaks, running crowd control and a whole host of other things. If you choose to simply ignore all this and see it as simply as than 'shooting people in the face', the problem is with you, not the game.
Nevertheless, I did not say that your idea would be all bad. Indeed, I said it had some merit, and could be an improvement. You have repeated that point over and over, and I already said I agree. However, there is a little something called cost-benefit analysis, and practicality studies. Your idea could benefit somewhat. But it is not practical based on this game's engine.
What you suggest on the scale you want is not something you add on to a game. It's something to build a game from scratch to be. And this game is not it. Whether I want it or you want it is irrelevant unless you can convince others that your idea is practical.
TL;DR : No matter how good your idea is, it will not receive support unless it is practical and feasible. And that is what you are lacking here. Prove that the idea is practical, that it is possible in this game's engine capabilities, and you will persuade more effectively.
Your computer is communicating with the server information about:
-the coordinates your character is at X,Y,Z
-character rotational orientation
-Current character velocity and which way it's headed
-Chat text
-On/Off one bit of information are you shooting something or using a skill?
-A couple more bits here and there
The same thing Quake was doing in 1995. The computers have gotten more powerful, and we've moved from telephone modems to cable modems. Now why are we being restricted to less characters? And why is lag just as much as it was when we were using cable modems playing Quake 1?
Because in a game PING is KING, not bandwidth.
Watching a 5 minute youtube video eats up more bandwidth than a month of gaming. What do you think the cable company complains about the most when you exceed your GIG or so of bandwidth? No they don't complain about gaming they complain about streaming.
PC is communicating a lot more than that. It also doesn't end there. Millions of calculations performed every minute serverside transmitted back to client side and vice versa. The game engine was not optimized for those types of massive fights and it isn't a simple "fix" to suddenly make it optimized.
You are comparing to games like quake using sprites without real time rendering and shadows to a game that utilizes quite a few post process render effects. This is apples to oranges.
From your speech about bandwidth, you don't seem to have much technical knowledge on serverside vs clientside.
Step #1) Make big gigantic map, 1000 times the size of one of these Arena maps.
Step #2) Put in 10 resource nodes: Asteroid belts, planets, etc.
Step #3) Federation get 1 invulnerable starbase at one corner of the map, Klingons get 1 invulnerable starbase at another corner of map. Each of those starbases automatically generates resources.
Comments
Game Developers develop for the mass market appeal and what players generally want.
Pong, Pac Man, Space Invaders, Q-bert had "mass appeal".
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And how many countless games have been developed based on mechanics from those games?
People buy what they want or what they think they want...etc, etc, etc.
I'm going to dip into WoW here, because I tend to run high bonus Defense and pretty decent resists (lol)...but consider the evolution (or devolution as I prefer) of what happened with Alterac Valley.
An epic combination of PvP and PvE where the fight could last for days...turned into a zergfest quickie that could be over if you had to take a leak.
The masses get what the masses want...those not in the masses, take a lot of Excedrin. /sigh
BUT
This can only be a dream of what PvP could be like for the moment
Five Reasons why Star Trek Online Cant Have This
1 Cryptic
2 Cryptic
3 Cryptic
4 Cryptic
5 The Game Engine Cant Do PvP on this Scale Currently (I would Think)
Do you even Science Bro?
Cryptic, Blizzard, Bioware, Arenanet, Sony.............
Your obsession (players like you) with winning, winning at all costs and as quickly as possible so you can get your 10 points and grind the next PVP game, has turned PVP into a niche market.
I don't want to fight some lengthy campaign every time. For one thing, there are many other games that do that kind of thing better.
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Nevertheless, you say that arena-style play can be boring, and some may share that PoV. However, there are those of us who actually see some depth in the system. It's not quite the "mindless head-to-head blazing away" you think it is. Try looking at higher-level play involving science sometime, and you'll see what I mean. Also, while there is a possibility of making balance easier, it can be made tougher. Taking Starcraft 2 as an example, did you hear about how Protoss was pretty UP compared to the other factions? Balance is just as tough sometimes. Plus, this may be news to you, but there are those who actually prefer to play arena-style stuff, and not have to worry about NPCs. Although there are those who like hybrids, and those who like RTSes, each of these is a different market.
Also, I think it would fit rather poorly with the rest of the game as it is. Controlling NPCs and bases would be something so new to most of the playerbase coming up through the ranks, that we would see an even bigger learning curve than we already do.
Also, speaking about lag limitations, the game already lags pretty badly with 25 people in a single map. 100 players or more would probably freeze things entirely, or crash the game. 1000 players....yeah, you see where I'm getting at. We're not talking lag, but complete unplayability. The engine just isn't designed for this kind of scale.
Finally, I would like to say that you should calm down before blaming game devs for having "no imagination". Sure, they might have it, but they can be constrained with limitations that you may not be able to see. If you truly want to see something like this reality, well, time to learn up some coding and pitch the idea to some devs who are making a game from scratch.
TL;DR - The idea has some merit, but it would be something that would fit better in its own game, not grafted onto the current system. Seriously though, try out Airmech sometime. It's kinda like what you propose here, but on a reduced scale (just 3v3).
Well nothing would stop you from "jumping into" a campaign PVP game, "blow up some stuff", "get blown up a bit", and then "get out".
I said adopt some elements from RTS, not the whole thing where you have to play the game till the bitter end.
Planetside does just fine with several hundred players in one spot, as long as you got a good CPU. If you don't wanna lag then go somewhere else.
"Why don't you go play Planetside then"
I knew you were going to say that, forumites are so predictable. Well for one thing it's a pointless Arena game, there are no resources to defend, there is no strategy you just run around and shoot people for like "whatevah" reason.
That's the thing. Planetside's engine and netcode was designed from the ground up to work with this sort of scale. STO's engine - simply wasn't. And if you change the engine, well, you might as well be making a different game from scratch. And that was my conclusion.
"If you don't wanna lag then go somewhere else" - but why would you introduce a game mode that virtually guarantees lag? Lag is not a good thing for game design. Sure, you might be OK with it, but what about the other players? You aren't the only one playing this game....
"OMG It's a meatshield."
"No it's the Alpha strike is too powerful."
"OMG this is lame."
"This ship is OP MAN!"
If the goal in PVP weren't simply an arena, "Shoot your opponent in the face every chance you get", then you could balance ships other ways.
-You could make powerful ships cost more resources to obtain (respawn)
-You could make smaller ships faster at warp speed meaning the cruisers would never catch up
-You could give value to ships that can actually do recon. There is no such thing as reconnaissance in Arena maps.
-you could make some ships have a larger cargo hold.
See you can balance things in other ways other than DPS/HITPOINTS. Now wouldn't that be more interesting.
But that's impossible to balance that way with these pathetic 1995's Quake Arena style maps where all you do is go up to someone and shoot them in the face.
I see you point, there are definitely times for pew-pew. No one is suggesting that ANYTHING be removed, other than the couple trolls asking that PvP be removed entirely.
I'm with the OP (or other posters) that I'd list some enhancements, some more strategy based, or goal oriented PvP (read Territorial Control). But I am ALSO WITH YOU that I do not want to see Arena's removed, and would like some additional maps actually.
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
The "fear of lag" has made online games more boring. Notice how in Diablo 2 you could have a necro army of like 50 pets, now in Diablo 3 you have a pathetic 3 or 4. In Ultima Online you could run around with like 30 pets too, now in your typical MMORPG these days a pet class has one whole pet. Oooh one whole pet, how boring. In Planetside 1 you could drop equipment on the ground, but that takes up too much bandwidth, so in Planetside 2 you can't drop anything on the ground or even trade.
It's not "fear of lag" anyways, gaming companies are just being cheap with their bandwidth. They go cheap with their bandwidth and go cheap with their servers, and feed you cheap.
Kerrat is a mindless Arena game with no strategy whatsoever, what are you talking about.
I'm going to repeat myself just one more time here. None of this addresses the problem that I mention - namely, that STO cannot handle that many players without lagging to the point of freezing. And I brought up an example - Fleet Actions, which begin to lag due to the presence of 25 players. Talking about other games is all well-and-good, but we are talking STO here. Games like Diablo, Ultima and Planetside are not relevant to the argument I am making, which is that your addition to STO would cause bad lag, which would cause complaints and drive away players. Different games, with different engines, different netcode, different server locations, different infrastructure types. Remember that.
Furthermore, it is correct to avoid something that could be detrimental to the game experience. Point out to me one game - one game - that lags frequently and heavily, and yet is popular.
And how do you know this? Do you work in a gaming company? Have you made decisions with them? You have no more reliability than I do, and I content that these are coding limitations, not infrastructure.
Finally, you did not address the other drawbacks I mentioned in the first post. So I take it those drawbacks are correct? I don't disagree too much with the idea itself, but I completely disagree with the scale you suggest and the way you put it across.
Interesting theory. Now go prove it.
Kerrat is an open PvP zone. You just called all of PvP mindless, because after all, it's just fighting other people for the fun of it. That's the point of Kerrat, that's the point of PvP altogether, no?
Your computer is communicating with the server information about:
-the coordinates your character is at X,Y,Z
-character rotational orientation
-Current character velocity and which way it's headed
-Chat text
-On/Off one bit of information are you shooting something or using a skill?
-A couple more bits here and there
The same thing Quake was doing in 1995. The computers have gotten more powerful, and we've moved from telephone modems to cable modems. Now why are we being restricted to less characters? And why is lag just as much as it was when we were using cable modems playing Quake 1?
Because in a game PING is KING, not bandwidth.
Watching a 5 minute youtube video eats up more bandwidth than a month of gaming. What do you think the cable company complains about the most when you exceed your GIG or so of bandwidth? No they don't complain about gaming they complain about streaming.
Think you're underestimating the sheer amount of data that is going back and forth while playing the game and not taking into consideration that even with that, it's likely your not taking into account the number of clients transferring data back and forth.
Also, it's likely that some of the lag you're experiencing has nothing to do with bandwidth or latency.
You were the one who brought up bandwidth, not me.
You just proved yourself wrong here. How would going cheap with bandwidth affect you then?
What I said was that the engine was the problem. Coding was the problem. The game program itself is the problem. Have you ever entered a match with multiple clouds of Warp Plasma? Gravity Wells? For goodness' sake, haven't you heard about the invisitorp problem in STFs? All these come about because of software limitations, not the Internet, and those are what you would see if you introduced a map of this scale in STO.
Honestly, a lot of the backlash you are getting is because you come barging in here with your naive assumptions about this game, and you immediately assume that your suggestion is the best thing ever, without thinking of practicality. If this is what you do in other games, as I saw from your posts in other suggestion threads, no wonder you get shot down in every one of them.
Sounds like a certain other person and their suggestions, just a few weeks ago...
But, um, yeah, back on topic, I totally agree with scurry5.
I come "barging in here with na?ve assumptions" with this same idea in every MMORPG, including MMOFPS like Planetside. Last game I posted this idea in was SWGemu. Before that it was Planetside 2. Before that World of ********, you know that game based on the RTS called ********? Yeah. And you know what? PVP in all those games is meh and pointless.
You know what their problem is? No strategy, you just run around and shoot other players in the face. What's the point? What's the goal? What's the setting and context? To capture the flag, or to just mindlessly frag other players. We've been doing that since Quake1 way back in the mid 1990's. Hey I have an idea, let's move beyond Quake1, eh? Whadaya say buddy. Buddy ole pal. Wanna move past Quake1 PVP?
lol why is ******** edited out?
It's not the fault of the game that you don't see the complexity involved in the game. There is tactical depth, not strategic depth. Do you understand the difference?
Instead of manipulating NPCs and capturing huge bases, you are regulating energy levels, making tactical maneuvers, synchronising spikes and debuffs with teammates, passing buffs and heals, managing cloaks, running crowd control and a whole host of other things. If you choose to simply ignore all this and see it as simply as than 'shooting people in the face', the problem is with you, not the game.
Nevertheless, I did not say that your idea would be all bad. Indeed, I said it had some merit, and could be an improvement. You have repeated that point over and over, and I already said I agree. However, there is a little something called cost-benefit analysis, and practicality studies. Your idea could benefit somewhat. But it is not practical based on this game's engine.
What you suggest on the scale you want is not something you add on to a game. It's something to build a game from scratch to be. And this game is not it. Whether I want it or you want it is irrelevant unless you can convince others that your idea is practical.
TL;DR : No matter how good your idea is, it will not receive support unless it is practical and feasible. And that is what you are lacking here. Prove that the idea is practical, that it is possible in this game's engine capabilities, and you will persuade more effectively.
PC is communicating a lot more than that. It also doesn't end there. Millions of calculations performed every minute serverside transmitted back to client side and vice versa. The game engine was not optimized for those types of massive fights and it isn't a simple "fix" to suddenly make it optimized.
You are comparing to games like quake using sprites without real time rendering and shadows to a game that utilizes quite a few post process render effects. This is apples to oranges.
From your speech about bandwidth, you don't seem to have much technical knowledge on serverside vs clientside.
tl:dr, but I support this general concept.