Lots of immature one-dimensional thinking as usual.
Star Trek was always about people, with ships just as establishing shots (with maybe the occasional "space battle")
It's called "Sphere of influence" and there's no sign of the sphere yet -
It should be obvious to anyone that this is only one mission in the overall episode to come.
Just like "Mind Games" or "Spin the Wheel" is only one mission episode chain.
the sphere is the 'fixed terminus' of the gate at the end of the mission , with the omega signal that shuts down the engines and systems of the Enterprise F
thats why we will fight the voth, because of Omega and stopping them getting it
These are the Voyages on the STO forum, the final frontier. Our continuing mission: to explore Pretentious Posts, to seek out new Overreactions and Misinformation , to boldly experience Cynicism like no man has before.......
As for the 'pressing F' scenario you describe; I didn't see it like that.
What I saw was an experiement to activate unfamiliar technology backfire, resulting in being sent to another part of the galaxy.
You can call it whatever you want...if you want to roleplay in your head that hitting your F key caused purple unicorns to drop from the heavens and help open the gateway thats fine. But thats roleplaying, or immersing oneself in the story. Me, i want to fidget with my tricorder and scan for energy readings and use my brain. I'm not asking for anything new cause a lot of the stuff was already being done in the game before with all the examples i listed previously.
And guess how much difference the assignments make? I'd rather have the game railroad me into making the right choice than give me a choice which is completely meaningless.
I wasnt trying to highlight the fact that the game gave me a choice (which didnt really matter in the end). Instead of having us go from the cafeteria, past the Tholian guard, and straight to the ship they added this little distraction. Was it necessary? no, did it have any impact on the rest of the game? no, was it nice to have? i thought so. Just like all the other little distractions i listed...was it really necessary for the ship to ask me if i wanted to scan for tachyons, vertryons, triolic waves, and TRIBBLE emissions? I mean it's not the best puzzle, but it's better then what we are getting now with all the press-F.
Anyways TLDR: i'm not asking for more/less combat or more/less storytelling. I just want more gadgets to play around with.
A couple of things.. First, no more Feature Episode. Give us Feature Episodes. You cannot tell a good story in one mission. We need a block of 4 to 6, with each mission pushing the limits of STO. The last two Fe's added what looked like new elements, but were really just new window dressing on the same old experience.
Second, the ground combat is 50% of the game and it has never lived up to it's full potential. Ground combat should be as exciting and inviting as space combat...Clearly, it just doesn't in STO.
I didn't hate the new mission. I did find it a bit heavy on the running around and puzzle solving in order to make the mission seem longer than it really was.
You know Cryptic has Jumped the Proverbial Shark when they introduced Tractor Pulling to Star Trek Online!
How hard would it be to have a boarding party land on my bridge? I saw this idea in the PERPETUAL ENTERTAINMENT material years ago. Was a good idea.
It would be extremely hard. The devs would have to program appropriate group sizes and beam-in points for each individual bridge in the game, since there are so many choices and they vary pretty vastly in size and configuration.
...talking to players is like being a mall Santa. Everyone immediately wants to tell you all of the things they want, and you are absolutely powerless to deliver 99% of them.
Honestly? I loved the FE. It felt like I was a part of a Star Trek episode -- the dialog, the reveals, etc. really did it for me. And, it was beautiful. So what if I didn't have to go find medical part A to scan patient C so that I could discover that she had a boo boo that required special bandage E. The fun wasn't in the stupid puzzle solving, it was in the story.
And I thought the carrier was rather pretty, in an ugly sort of way. Definitely a nicely built model -- lots of small details. I hope the artist/modeler responsible stays on for a long time.
As for ground combat? I enjoy it. I don't want Call of Duty, anyway.
Seems to me that the OP is having a childish temper tantrum. People like this are the ones that make developers give up on their playerbase. Please, grow up or get out.
which is why im even bothering to play it. but getting through the ground combat in the sphere was literally torture.
Why do people say 'literally' when they mean the opposite? Torture is illegal and Tribble is voluntary. If it was 'literally' torture then the game would be shut down. If you hate it then why spend time on tribble playing it? There are plenty of space missions and lots of other games to play. Read a book, jog outside, so many things would be better than torturing yourself and then complaining about it on the forums.
(PS) You need the full text inside the brackets to get a quote right.
Why do people say 'literally' when they mean the opposite? Torture is illegal and Tribble is voluntary. If it was 'literally' torture then the game would be shut down.
Normally I'm against pedantry, but I feel it well justified in this case.
- I think from a financial POV, Cryptic struck gold with ship sales. They didn't expect the level of ship collecting that this playerbase has latched onto. But that is a fairly mature market, especially for older players who have many ships. The growth potential is probably in getting people to spend equal amounts of money on ground C-Store items. Costumes (even though I've bought them all) haven't done that. EV suits were an attempt at that. Reputation is an indirect effort to do that some. But a key to the game's longterm financial health is developing ground as more of a co-equal market to space and that means getting people playing ground more, while figuring out what it would take to get people to buy ground bundles similar to ship bundles.
The biggest hurdle they face is how to go about adding more itemization to ground? They were able to get away with selling ships because at the time most didn't consider the ship as their character, most still don't. But could they get away with outright selling or directly monetizing a ground set? More importantly, how do thy get you to pay the same for a ground set as you do for a ship? Especially in light that ships are relatively cheap to produce while ground sets are very art intensive? And it has to look good, otherwise no one will get it.
The solution they've come up is kinda ambitious and we can already see them testing it. By including boffs in the ground maps coming up in S8 they're making it so players will want to gear up their alts, potentially tripling the item requirements for ground! Lets be honest, how many have outfitted their full ground team with mk 12 omega rep sets? Or have gone through the trouble of getting unique costume options for their ground teams? Or even gotten one of the expensive lobi or c-store boffs? If it works and folks start gearing up their boffs in significant numbers I expect next season you'll be able to bring along all 4 boffs i whatever ground component they include, as well as taking out the no customization restriction most unique boffs have, given that the extra work to make them customizable (as they used to be) will be deemed worth it.
It would be extremely hard. The devs would have to program appropriate group sizes and beam-in points for each individual bridge in the game, since there are so many choices and they vary pretty vastly in size and configuration.
Why are players making excuses for Cryptic? Its one thing for Cryptic to bring out the old "its toooo hard!!" excuse, but players, as any consumers, should be constantly asking for more. Come on folks, demand more for your money or your time!
Why are players making excuses for Cryptic? Its one thing for Cryptic to bring out the old "its toooo hard!!" excuse, but players, as any consumers, should be constantly asking for more. Come on folks, demand more for your money or your time!
It is one thing to "ask for more" and another to be an annoying Uber-Consumer with no sense of logic or knowledge of how things are done...
I can say, for me only of course, I abhor the latter... "I want this! I want it now! I don't care how you do you it or if it is possible but I WILL drag you down into the mud if you don't meet my demands!", sorry but that is just complete BS and absolutely slap-worthy!
Educate yourself, gather knowledge, postulate your Idea, think about it, sleep one night, think again, plan out your details and THEN post it on the Forums/in the News Paper/talk about it in the Mall, open for further discussion and finally out of the discussion, file your final draft and discuss it again and don't expect it to be build in immediately if they take it because you did "some work" for it!
It is one thing to "ask for more" and another to be an annoying Uber-Consumer with no sense of logic or knowledge of how things are done...
I totally agree, but the one thing worse than that is someone trying so hard to take the intellectual high ground and then try to paint what they're posting a response to as some uber extreme statement. Because you know, making it sound like you're answering to an extreme statement, does not in fact make the statement extreme.
Well, they added one more thing to the two they have mostly right, out of everything in the game:
-Art,
-And now, ground-heavy episodes.
Now they just need to get ground and space non-episode content right. Which basically means changing everything about the game. They also need to make space content more than just Go To _ And Press F Then Go Somewhere Else And Press F.
Why are players making excuses for Cryptic? Its one thing for Cryptic to bring out the old "its toooo hard!!" excuse, but players, as any consumers, should be constantly asking for more. Come on folks, demand more for your money or your time!
*shrug*
The question was, "How hard could it be?" I answered the question, which is to say, I think the proposal would be pretty darned difficult to implement.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, and it's something I'd like to see, but given the cost/benefit ratio as I see it, I'm not going to hold my breath.
...talking to players is like being a mall Santa. Everyone immediately wants to tell you all of the things they want, and you are absolutely powerless to deliver 99% of them.
I totally agree, but the one thing worse than that is someone trying so hard to take the intellectual high ground and then try to paint what they're posting a response to as some uber extreme statement. Because you know, making it sound like you're answering to an extreme statement, does not in fact make the statement extreme.
That's just semantics, your post wasn't extrem per se but no matter how tame your intentions were it points in exactly that direction and others might fall into the trap, a situation I tried to preemptively dissuade anyone from.
We have enough "I don't think but cry the loudest"-People in the world and we don't need more of that
Yes we should be asking for something we'd like to see but we should go the route (or rather at least a similar route) that I pointed out in my earlier post, nobody will be happy otherwise.
Hmmm... I thoroughly enjoyed this new episode. I wouldn't call it "epic" but it was a lot of fun and Michael Dorn's Worf voice over was much appreciated and enjoyed. I wouldn't put it on a par with the new Klingon tutorial (say, guys, any chance of Michael adding voice over to that?? And if we could get the actor that originally played K'Mtar... WAY :cool:) but it was a very creditable effort, IMO. To each their own, I suppose. Yes, I'd love to see more interactive, puzzle/mystery solving mechanics with branching decision trees... I honestly think they're working in that direction.
*STO*Its mission: To destroy strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations... and then kill them, to boldly annihilate what no one has annihilated before!
The biggest hurdle they face is how to go about adding more itemization to ground? They were able to get away with selling ships because at the time most didn't consider the ship as their character, most still don't. But could they get away with outright selling or directly monetizing a ground set? More importantly, how do thy get you to pay the same for a ground set as you do for a ship? Especially in light that ships are relatively cheap to produce while ground sets are very art intensive? And it has to look good, otherwise no one will get it.
The solution they've come up is kinda ambitious and we can already see them testing it. By including boffs in the ground maps coming up in S8 they're making it so players will want to gear up their alts, potentially tripling the item requirements for ground! Lets be honest, how many have outfitted their full ground team with mk 12 omega rep sets? Or have gone through the trouble of getting unique costume options for their ground teams? Or even gotten one of the expensive lobi or c-store boffs? If it works and folks start gearing up their boffs in significant numbers I expect next season you'll be able to bring along all 4 boffs i whatever ground component they include, as well as taking out the no customization restriction most unique boffs have, given that the extra work to make them customizable (as they used to be) will be deemed worth it.
One of the big things Geko has talked about and I foresee in the next year is the rebalancing of kits, in addition to the recent trait revamp which allowed them to begin selling traits indirectly (and directly if they so chose).
My understanding is that the new system involves breaking kits down into four equippable items, possibly with designated "types". Existing kits will get exchanged for the four item sets. There are possibilities from there like adding stats to individual kit components or powers or supplying kit powers with set bonuses.
Now, where we get into total speculation on my end is the idea that we could see thematic ground sets that include, say, a trait, a kit "unit" with a special power, and a costume.
I think to really make this as desirable as I would hope in their position that the longterm strategy would also involve:
- Bridge Officer trait respecs.
- Bridge officers converted to using kits in place of skills.
- Special BOs with customizable costumes as good or better than the current ground BOs, which tends to favor ground BOs who don't benefit from costume purchases.
And as an outside thing that seems modest at first but which could rock gameplay and mission replay:
- Reworking of the expertise "economy" or possibly folding expertise into dilithium or EC rather than maintaining expertise as a separate "currency". I think this is likelier longer term and something that makes sense to look at in conjjunction with revamps of crafting, food, and loot.
Just makes me happier I didn't get into sto for the ground missions. I agree, the whole sphere of influence episode was lacking. Though I understand its just the start of what's to come. Its been like that in all the previous episodes. Starts with a very mild mission, and each one gets harder and more intense as you go through. I expect we'll see greater challenges later on.
Comments
the sphere is the 'fixed terminus' of the gate at the end of the mission , with the omega signal that shuts down the engines and systems of the Enterprise F
thats why we will fight the voth, because of Omega and stopping them getting it
You can call it whatever you want...if you want to roleplay in your head that hitting your F key caused purple unicorns to drop from the heavens and help open the gateway thats fine. But thats roleplaying, or immersing oneself in the story. Me, i want to fidget with my tricorder and scan for energy readings and use my brain. I'm not asking for anything new cause a lot of the stuff was already being done in the game before with all the examples i listed previously.
I wasnt trying to highlight the fact that the game gave me a choice (which didnt really matter in the end). Instead of having us go from the cafeteria, past the Tholian guard, and straight to the ship they added this little distraction. Was it necessary? no, did it have any impact on the rest of the game? no, was it nice to have? i thought so. Just like all the other little distractions i listed...was it really necessary for the ship to ask me if i wanted to scan for tachyons, vertryons, triolic waves, and TRIBBLE emissions? I mean it's not the best puzzle, but it's better then what we are getting now with all the press-F.
Anyways TLDR: i'm not asking for more/less combat or more/less storytelling. I just want more gadgets to play around with.
Me, too.
Exactly.
Second, the ground combat is 50% of the game and it has never lived up to it's full potential. Ground combat should be as exciting and inviting as space combat...Clearly, it just doesn't in STO.
I didn't hate the new mission. I did find it a bit heavy on the running around and puzzle solving in order to make the mission seem longer than it really was.
It would be extremely hard. The devs would have to program appropriate group sizes and beam-in points for each individual bridge in the game, since there are so many choices and they vary pretty vastly in size and configuration.
And I thought the carrier was rather pretty, in an ugly sort of way. Definitely a nicely built model -- lots of small details. I hope the artist/modeler responsible stays on for a long time.
As for ground combat? I enjoy it. I don't want Call of Duty, anyway.
Seems to me that the OP is having a childish temper tantrum. People like this are the ones that make developers give up on their playerbase. Please, grow up or get out.
Why do people say 'literally' when they mean the opposite? Torture is illegal and Tribble is voluntary. If it was 'literally' torture then the game would be shut down. If you hate it then why spend time on tribble playing it? There are plenty of space missions and lots of other games to play. Read a book, jog outside, so many things would be better than torturing yourself and then complaining about it on the forums.
(PS) You need the full text inside the brackets to get a quote right.
Space is all tab targetting as well, why don't you complain equally?
FPS are full of Aimbot auto aim cheaters, no thanks.
Normally I'm against pedantry, but I feel it well justified in this case.
Are you calling me a pettifogger? Because I actually consider myself more punctilious.
The biggest hurdle they face is how to go about adding more itemization to ground? They were able to get away with selling ships because at the time most didn't consider the ship as their character, most still don't. But could they get away with outright selling or directly monetizing a ground set? More importantly, how do thy get you to pay the same for a ground set as you do for a ship? Especially in light that ships are relatively cheap to produce while ground sets are very art intensive? And it has to look good, otherwise no one will get it.
The solution they've come up is kinda ambitious and we can already see them testing it. By including boffs in the ground maps coming up in S8 they're making it so players will want to gear up their alts, potentially tripling the item requirements for ground! Lets be honest, how many have outfitted their full ground team with mk 12 omega rep sets? Or have gone through the trouble of getting unique costume options for their ground teams? Or even gotten one of the expensive lobi or c-store boffs? If it works and folks start gearing up their boffs in significant numbers I expect next season you'll be able to bring along all 4 boffs i whatever ground component they include, as well as taking out the no customization restriction most unique boffs have, given that the extra work to make them customizable (as they used to be) will be deemed worth it.
Why are players making excuses for Cryptic? Its one thing for Cryptic to bring out the old "its toooo hard!!" excuse, but players, as any consumers, should be constantly asking for more. Come on folks, demand more for your money or your time!
It is one thing to "ask for more" and another to be an annoying Uber-Consumer with no sense of logic or knowledge of how things are done...
I can say, for me only of course, I abhor the latter... "I want this! I want it now! I don't care how you do you it or if it is possible but I WILL drag you down into the mud if you don't meet my demands!", sorry but that is just complete BS and absolutely slap-worthy!
Educate yourself, gather knowledge, postulate your Idea, think about it, sleep one night, think again, plan out your details and THEN post it on the Forums/in the News Paper/talk about it in the Mall, open for further discussion and finally out of the discussion, file your final draft and discuss it again and don't expect it to be build in immediately if they take it because you did "some work" for it!
I totally agree, but the one thing worse than that is someone trying so hard to take the intellectual high ground and then try to paint what they're posting a response to as some uber extreme statement. Because you know, making it sound like you're answering to an extreme statement, does not in fact make the statement extreme.
-Art,
-And now, ground-heavy episodes.
Now they just need to get ground and space non-episode content right. Which basically means changing everything about the game. They also need to make space content more than just Go To _ And Press F Then Go Somewhere Else And Press F.
*shrug*
The question was, "How hard could it be?" I answered the question, which is to say, I think the proposal would be pretty darned difficult to implement.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, and it's something I'd like to see, but given the cost/benefit ratio as I see it, I'm not going to hold my breath.
That's just semantics, your post wasn't extrem per se but no matter how tame your intentions were it points in exactly that direction and others might fall into the trap, a situation I tried to preemptively dissuade anyone from.
We have enough "I don't think but cry the loudest"-People in the world and we don't need more of that
Yes we should be asking for something we'd like to see but we should go the route (or rather at least a similar route) that I pointed out in my earlier post, nobody will be happy otherwise.
One of the big things Geko has talked about and I foresee in the next year is the rebalancing of kits, in addition to the recent trait revamp which allowed them to begin selling traits indirectly (and directly if they so chose).
My understanding is that the new system involves breaking kits down into four equippable items, possibly with designated "types". Existing kits will get exchanged for the four item sets. There are possibilities from there like adding stats to individual kit components or powers or supplying kit powers with set bonuses.
Now, where we get into total speculation on my end is the idea that we could see thematic ground sets that include, say, a trait, a kit "unit" with a special power, and a costume.
I think to really make this as desirable as I would hope in their position that the longterm strategy would also involve:
- Bridge Officer trait respecs.
- Bridge officers converted to using kits in place of skills.
- Special BOs with customizable costumes as good or better than the current ground BOs, which tends to favor ground BOs who don't benefit from costume purchases.
And as an outside thing that seems modest at first but which could rock gameplay and mission replay:
- Reworking of the expertise "economy" or possibly folding expertise into dilithium or EC rather than maintaining expertise as a separate "currency". I think this is likelier longer term and something that makes sense to look at in conjjunction with revamps of crafting, food, and loot.