The argument I'm loving is "Don't tell me how to play the game".
Imagine someone suggests that people should be able to press a button and level up to level 50. Another player says that shouldn't really be a feature of the game.
"Don't tell me how to play the game. You don't have to do it if you don't want to."
That argument doesn't follow because swapping in space is something that arrived due to a lack of compelling game play inherent in sector space travel. Now, if you had said that we should have a "level to 50" button because the exist method of just being logged in for X number of hours is pointless and inconvenient, that request would be valid and no different than asking for ship swapping in space. Expecting players to drudge through sector space when there's nothing to actually do when you're there is just silly on its face. As the game stands right now, there is actual game play tied to leveling up. You do missions and experience content, engaging stuff happens. In sector space, you pick a heading and hit warp only to stare at the screen until you get where you want to be. Nothing happens on the way because there's nothing to do at all.
I'm neither for nor against space swapping, I probably won't use it because I usually have other things I want to do when I decide to swap my ship. But as I've said before, sector space needs something engaging to do. People are avoiding it because it's dull and uneventful. Would you skip the waiting room at the clinic if you had a choice? You sure would! Who wants to be subjected to tedium if they can avoid it? Sector space is pure tedium because it is a horribly neglected part of the game.
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That argument doesn't follow because swapping in space is something that arrived due to a lack of compelling game play inherent in sector space travel. Now, if you had said that we should have a "level to 50" button because the exist method of just being logged in for X number of hours is pointless and inconvenient, that request would be valid and no different than asking for ship swapping in space. Expecting players to drudge through sector space when there's nothing to actually do when you're there is just silly on its face. As the game stands right now, there is actual game play tied to leveling up. You do missions and experience content, engaging stuff happens. In sector space, you pick a heading and hit warp only to stare at the screen until you get where you want to be. Nothing happens on the way because there's nothing to do at all.
I'm neither for nor against space swapping, I probably won't use it because I usually have other things I want to do when I decide to swap my ship. But as I've said before, sector space needs something engaging to do. People are avoiding it because it's dull and uneventful. Would you skip the waiting room at the clinic if you had a choice? You sure would! Who wants to be subjected to tedium if they can avoid it? Sector space is pure tedium because it is a horribly neglected part of the game.
If the reason for ship swapping is the lack of compelling game play in sector space then the solution is providing actual compelling gameplay in sector space. Ship swapping as a substitute for compelling gameplay is laziness.
I'm neither for nor against space swapping, I probably won't use it because I usually have other things I want to do when I decide to swap my ship. But as I've said before, sector space needs something engaging to do. People are avoiding it because it's dull and uneventful. Would you skip the waiting room at the clinic if you had a choice? You sure would! Who wants to be subjected to tedium if they can avoid it? Sector space is pure tedium because it is a horribly neglected part of the game.
Can't say I disagree with a word of that.
I think your analogy of a waiting room for sector space is, for many people not all, absolutely correct.
It's why I believe this is not a mechanism to oppose on a fundamental level, merely modify so that it doesn't preclude any further expansion of sector space's role.
Perhaps preclude isn't the best word either.
Point is, if ship swapping is allowed in any sector where you have a friendly starbase, I see absolutely no valid objection.
It's convenient and canon. No subsets of players are inconvenienced and some get a big bonus to QoL play.
If we do not allow ship swapping where you don't have a friendly base it does two things.
Firstly it makes people think, even a little bit, about where they are. This gives sector space a small boost to significence.
I'd hope that would allow future thinking on what could happen differently in unfriendly sector space.
Secondly, and it is important to acknowledge this, it does inconveneince people for whom ship swapping is a welcome boon.
However, are we talking major, horrific, game destroying inconvenince?
Good grief no.
Pretty much all unfriendly sectors are immediately bordered by a friendly one.
This means that, if the compromise is used and someone wants to swap ships in unfriendly space, they just have to make one sector transition, swap and be done.
They're not forced back to base or more than a loading screen in and out of the sector.
This is minor......and its STILL better than what is in place now.
Seriously, this is a fair compromise.
It doesn't take anything away from anyone, merely asks that Cryptic be ever so slightly less generous in a relatively small number of occasions.
That argument doesn't follow because swapping in space is something that arrived due to a lack of compelling game play inherent in sector space travel.
So you're saying that this new feature of the game design is necessary because the current game design is not compelling? That somehow invalidates any method, other than that announced, of making the game more compelling.
Now, if you had said that we should have a "level to 50" button because the exist method of just being logged in for X number of hours is pointless and inconvenient, that request would be valid and no different than asking for ship swapping in space. Expecting players to drudge through sector space when there's nothing to actually do when you're there is just silly on its face. As the game stands right now, there is actual game play tied to leveling up. You do missions and experience content, engaging stuff happens. In sector space, you pick a heading and hit warp only to stare at the screen until you get where you want to be. Nothing happens on the way because there's nothing to do at all.
So, the game isn't a space simulation, but rather a career simulation? I mean, all those stories and activities you cite don't require a level or ship progression.
Star Trek. The thing that drew me to it was that it was about the exploration of space. I'm not looking for a completely faithful simulation of space, that was never part of the IP. However, I am continuously disappointed in the near complete disregard for the nature of space in this game.
So you're saying that this new feature of the game design is necessary because the current game design is not compelling? That somehow invalidates any method, other than that announced, of making the game more compelling.
No, when did I ever allude to that? It's not necessary at all, but opposing the idea doesn't make any progress either. I'll put this bluntly. Stop focusing on the sector space swapping. It's a reasonable reaction to the problems with sector space. The problem is that sector space sux, that's what is necessary to address. If sector space was more interesting to players, they would spend more time on it and the swapping option would be of no consequence.
So, the game isn't a space simulation, but rather a career simulation? I mean, all those stories and activities you cite don't require a level or ship progression.
It very well could have a leveling system. Exploration. You boldly go and collect technology, make contact, do missions, and investigate phenomena which can be applied to a research and development track where you research ways to upgrade your existing systems. You could build outposts in new territory for access to resupply.
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Anything that makes managing boff slots and builds more pleasant is very welcome. As for immersion breaking, there is already so much like that in game and this is relatively minor. Please get over it.
So if it is a mess, why not turn it into something even messier. Like some French Astronomer. But then again, he tried to bring order to the mess. That would be a stellar move in my book.
No, when did I ever allude to that? It's not necessary at all, but opposing the idea doesn't make any progress either. I'll put this bluntly. Stop focusing on the sector space swapping. It's a reasonable reaction to the problems with sector space. The problem is that sector space sux, that's what is necessary to address. If sector space was more interesting to players, they would spend more time on it and the swapping option would be of no consequence.
You alluded to that with the reasoning you used to dismiss daramouss1's argument.
I'm not focusing on sector space. I'm focusing on your selective application of what is and is not necessary for compelling gameplay as though it was not a matter of individual perspective.
It very well could have a leveling system. Exploration. You boldly go and collect technology, make contact, do missions, and investigate phenomena which can be applied to a research and development track where you research ways to upgrade your existing systems. You could build outposts in new territory for access to resupply.
Of course it could have a leveling system. It could have any number of things. The point being that those things are not required and are just as subject to being considered an inconvenience as is sector space travel.
Since we will be able to swap out ships like underpants, in public or otherwise, it has come to my attention that we have all kinds of terminals scattered throughout the game, that you actually have to approach, in order to utilize.
In the spirit of this new and glorious streamlined MMO experience, I propose that all these objects be turned into buttons on a menu, in order to save oceans of time. For think about it, when you routinely can swap out entire starships on the fly, these lesser objects can only be identified as the incarnation of needless minutia, hardly worth the effort and energy to actually have to physically bother with.
It will also be much tidier inside all these superfluous structures that are placed there in order to bother people. In fact, what purpose do they serve, since it would be much easier to just warp somewhere with more action. And why do we have to warp, why not spawn directly into the appropriate maps immediately. That would be more effective. All these other areas are just there to slow you down after all. Unless you should need some kind of environment to level up in, for some bothersome reason. Solved by making everything accessible with buttons on a menu of course. The more windows, and less travelling, the better!
And don't forget to properly abstract that tailor as well, so we can change clothes randomly wherever we go. Surely this is not an underpant-swapping simulator, where you have to hide anything!
To be honest I haven't really seem a good reason this feature should not be implemented. Even if they decided to make sector space more interesting to travel through (which forced random enciunters do not make), having more stuff to do in sector space isn't an argument against it.
Nor is anything that had to do with removing other time sinks since those come off as more childish than anything else.
You alluded to that with the reasoning you used to dismiss daramouss1's argument.
I'm not focusing on sector space. I'm focusing on your selective application of what is and is not necessary for compelling gameplay as though it was not a matter of individual perspective.
No, I didn't. I was making an example, I was not advocating it that it was a correct solution. I was only making the point that it was a valid complaint. The request for a correction was valid, the proposed solution was not the best one. I was just trying to establish a parallel. I said I don't really care about them adding the option and I don't. Do I think it's a good idea? No, it's probably not, not for the reasons others have posited, but because implementing this band-aid solution neglects the source of the issue and leaves it unresolved.
Compelling game play is something that has to actually have game play. Sector space is a 3D lobby at best, at worst it's a complete waste of time. Sector space is a nothing but a time vampire that doesn't have to be.
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So, the game isn't a space simulation, but rather a career simulation? I mean, all those stories and activities you cite don't require a level or ship progression.
Star Trek. The thing that drew me to it was that it was about the exploration of space. I'm not looking for a completely faithful simulation of space, that was never part of the IP. However, I am continuously disappointed in the near complete disregard for the nature of space in this game.
I can understand your disappointment. If that allure of space exploration was one of your reasons for joining the game, then your disappointment is perfectly legitimate. I'd say your experience is not unique - in reflecting on my previous comments it occurs to me that potentially a lot of people don't come to STO for the 'O' part, but for the ST part - and varying degrees of in-between the two. That is the nature of a game based on such a popular and iconic IP. Another IP-based MMO in a galaxy far, far away suffers from the same problem.
As for "So the game isn't a space simulation...?"
Depending on how you define "space simulation", I would say no, it's not. The game and its mechanics not only very poorly represent the mechanics of space travel in our reality, but it doesn't even do that good a job of mirroring space travel in the Star Trek universe. I would have to say the space combat in this game is more arcade game than simulation, and the setup of sector space is not an accurate representation of the real thing (whether in our world or ST).
I and probably many others could launch into massive walls of text about just how badly this game simulates space (either real or with the artistic license used by Star Trek), but we'd mostly just be telling people what they already know.
I would have to say, though, that it seems to me that in this thread there are two separate issues being argued here - one is the sector space ship-swap, with some people feeling it will detract from the game experience by removing another reason to visit social hubs like ESD. The other seems to be the concern that the game itself (sector space and social hubs) have been poorly designed and become meaningless and not enjoyable - which has led to people asking for the sector space ship swap mechanic in the first place.
I wouldn't say sector space is dead - there are still things to do there, but it's not a really enticing or immersive place to be. Once the initial "wow" (as in amazement, not World of.... yeah, that game) wears off, there's nothing really enticing or compelling people to be there. But then the social hubs are much the same. Unless you're there to use the facilities (exchange, mail, bank, shipyard, etc.) then there's really nothing to do at any of them. What detracts from them even more is the IQ-draining verbal diarrhea that goes on in some places, and the fact that for fleet members they are easily avoidable by using fleet holdings.
As a fairly recent addition to the game, I was never around to see the random enemy contacts in sector space, but now that I've heard people talking about them, I wonder why they were changed? There is no realism, immersion or anything else from being able to blithely warp past a swirling catfight of Klingons, or a Borg cube ominously twirling its way towards Earth... The fact that you can just fly past them makes them completely meaningless in my eyes. Others may choose to engage in them (there's that choice again) but there's nothing compelling about them, and unlike some optional things (for example, the reputation system or Doff missions), there is no tangible reward for engaging in them either.
So with no real reason to spend time in sector space, it can become little more than a motorway people use to get somewhere. On top of that, the transwarp system bypasses sector space travel anyway - if not by using the actual transwarp list, then by picking up an episode set near a destination and spending a few EC's to jump with no cooldown. I mean, I can get to Drozana, K7 and my fleet spacedock (and from that the embassy, spire and dilithium mine) for 500 EC using the right episode transwarp. Heck, even getting to ESD only costs 100 EC and about 10 seconds of sector space flight if you know where to look.
If that's the level of 'convenience' that Cryptic are willing to go to (basically making sector space an optional extra) then it's not much of a stretch to let players switch their underwear... er, I mean ships, without the inconvenience of having to transwarp to a starbase. With this precedent, what's the point of withholding sector space ship changes?
As always, just my thoughts.
Somewhere on the wrong side of insanity.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately be explained by stupidity" ~ Robert Heinlein.
I'm a bit on a fence on this one. I do understand it can be annoying if you use several different ships on a single character to TW back to the next shipyard (or switch to your tuffli/cell ship) every time you want to use another one.
But than again refusing certain convenience updates might keep a certain illusion of deepth or pseudo-realism in the game which is always a good thing.
It feels a bit like when in a certain blizzard game about the craft of war in a world convenience updates removed the requirement to keep flint & steel and wood in your inventory to make fire or removed ammunition items. Sure, you did not needed to keep in mind to have that to cook or shoot but it made the gameworld a bit smaller and greyer.
I'm a bit on a fence on this one. I do understand it can be annoying if you use several different ships on a single character to TW back to the next shipyard (or switch to your tuffli/cell ship) every time you want to use another one.
But than again refusing certain convenience updates might keep a certain illusion of deepth or pseudo-realism in the game which is always a good thing.
It feels a bit like when in a certain blizzard game about the craft of war in a world convenience updates removed the requirement to keep flint & steel and wood in your inventory to make fire or removed ammunition items. Sure, you did not needed to keep in mind to have that to cook or shoot but it made the gameworld a bit smaller and greyer.
Step by step, piece by piece, a more mechanical and streamlined experience, in the battle to save time. Ultimately it turns out a more sterile and artificial world, but the perceptions have obviously been altered along the road. What was once unthinkable, is now accepted, and the transformation goes as planned. I still think of this as late game woes though, and a matter of borrowed concepts, from one game to the next. Which means individual game design is a distant dream. And so any attempt at uniqueness. When all has turned into the same, there is only the setting left. But it seems they abstracted away that one too, taking away the little things.
Whether this change is bad for immersion, players' mental health, or a damning indictment of modern society is kind of academic.
I think it's reflecting the economic reality of STO; as the game has grown, more and more players now have multiple "favourite" ships per toon, including fleet / lockbox ones which they spent large ammounts of effort acquiring. Cryptic want players to have something to do with all of the ships they've acquired, as well as the multiple rep / fleet gear sets most long term players now sit on. It's still not clear whether you can prep ships outside of a fleetyard, or whether you will need enough gear to kit out all of your active ships concurrently (rather than swapping between them).
We've long been told that our characters were admirals - IMO something that was wrong with the game from the start, but others differ. We've also long had the ability to have more DOffs than crew spaces on our current ships (by an order of magnitude in the extreme case - a player with a B'rel and 400 DOffs).
If you assume that your character is indeed a flag officer, with a small task group of ships under command, the new system makes more sense than the old. The Admiral selects a ship for a mission, just as he would select a team of BOffs for an away mission. All you need to do is get your head around the fact that your current ship is simply where the admiral's planted his flag, and the others in your task group are tagging along somewhere else. This is (at worst) no less realistic than the existing system where the Admiral on a ship of 2000 crew goes into ground assault either on his own, or with a handful of senior officers.
I have an idea that might alleviate the tension over this. What if all of your ships were "deploy-able" to any location you choose and you can rendezvous to transfer your admiral? Pick a ship, pick a rendezvous point, and go there. If you choose to have the ship meet with you, the ship simply warps in, you take command, and your other ship warps out. Done. Convenient and immersive.
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I have an idea that might alleviate the tension over this. What if all of your ships were "deploy-able" to any location you choose and you can rendezvous to transfer your admiral? Pick a ship, pick a rendezvous point, and go there. If you choose to have the ship meet with you, the ship simply warps in, you take command, and your other ship warps out. Done. Convenient and immersive.
I'll be happy with anything that does not consist of a raw mechanical switch, in place of substance to be honest. Visual cues to what is going on, instead of nothing? Now that would be something!
I As a fairly recent addition to the game, I was never around to see the random enemy contacts in sector space, but now that I've heard people talking about them, I wonder why they were changed?
As an old vet here, I can explain that one. For one thing, a lot of players (including myself) did not like the mechanic. It was clunky, too common, and too intrusive when one was just wanting to do their missions.
But the killer was that they were not level-gated. That is, it was commonplace for a lowbie to get pulled into an enemy contact in the Sirius Sector Block that was scaled to Admiral level because of higher level players already there. This often meant you were destroyed as soon as you entered the contact, and since enemy craft were often near the respawn point, you couldn't always leave the instance before getting blasted again. You couldn't fight, and it was difficult to leave. Not fun.
Also, the enemy signal contacts consist of flying around destroying random enemy vessels. No real story behind it, just get pulled in and start blasting. For some players, that's fun, for others it gets monotonous when it happens too often.
Thus, they became optional. Those who want to do it can, those who don't can bypass them.
I'm a bit on a fence on this one. I do understand it can be annoying if you use several different ships on a single character to TW back to the next shipyard (or switch to your tuffli/cell ship) every time you want to use another one.
But than again refusing certain convenience updates might keep a certain illusion of deepth or pseudo-realism in the game which is always a good thing.
It feels a bit like when in a certain blizzard game about the craft of war in a world convenience updates removed the requirement to keep flint & steel and wood in your inventory to make fire or removed ammunition items. Sure, you did not needed to keep in mind to have that to cook or shoot but it made the gameworld a bit smaller and greyer.
Nobody is forcing you to switch ship on the spot if you want to keep an illusion of depth.
Just like I see some people walking in ESD, instead of running.
You have a choice, and nobody is forcing you to do it. So, don't force other to do as you want.
Don't blame the devs because you are too lazy not to use their tools
Personally, I like the idea of being able to call a different ship, and transfer command on the fly. I generally have 3 builds/ships that I want to access... PvE, PvP, and NWS. Being able to call up my ship for the content about to be accessed (or the loadout (boff/doff/consoles, weps, power tray assignments) would be a god send.
To the OP... I also am not a fan of how "convienent" the game has become... but in a very real sense, it is convienent as you wish to make it.
I'll give some examples;
Transwarps to everywhere: This bugged me when it first came out... no need to travel through sector space, you can just transwarp there... Counter: Noting forces you to use transwarp. You can travel via sector space everywhere if you so choose.
Ship Switching: Again, there is nothing "requiring" you to use the feature... if you want to keep the immersion of going to a space dock and switching ships... go at it.
I'll give you a one better... I am not a huge fan of repairing injuries (ship/character) on the fly... Carry a stack of Regens and Components... and you never need a med facility or shipyard... I advocated for modification to this that allowed everyone to repair minor injuries, a sci/eng would be able to heal major... but you would have to travel to a facility (SpaceDock/Med Facility) to repair criticals (and you would be locked out of missions until repairded). Again... in the end, to some extent this is a player choice thing... I can certainly not carry Critical Regens/Components and travel to fix... I can require myself to visit a space dock for all repairs if that is how I wish to play the game, the mechanic exists (in fact its free if you go to a social zone to fix).
Queues: This was a biggy for me, you can spend your entire endgame play existance sitting at a social zone... I was able to complete all reps for a toon sitting on K7... this bothered me immensely. As did the death of certain maps because of this. Specifically Gamma Orionis (The death of DS9 came with the Rep system). I miss the days when every one was out there looking for teams, as opposed to just click Join... or doing a private match... Counter: Really don't have one... i hate the queue system, and would prefer to travel to the mission start location. But this is me, I know I do not speak for the majority of players on this... take Terradome for example... it was almost impossible to get a match going... because it was like the old ways... you had to travel there and build a team... Alternatively... I suppose I could travel to Gamma Orionis, approach Vorn, and form a private match for Cure... basically the same thing... so I still could do it... but doesn't make much sense.
Honestly, I shut zone chat off moons ago... very little of anything good came out of zone chat... ever. So to me, in a lot of cases, the other players are just background decoration...
Cryptic has to walk that tightrope between the multitude of "it should be this way" posts. What works for me, doesn't work for someone else...
Nobody is forcing you to switch ship on the spot if you want to keep an illusion of depth.
Just like I see some people walking in ESD, instead of running.
You have a choice, and nobody is forcing you to do it. So, don't force other to do as you want.
Don't blame the devs because you are too lazy not to use their tools
And what if ships should be disappearing and reappearing for no good reason, on a map where everything else is done by "Trekking?" Why should some pieces work, and others be subject to a Deus Ex Machina mechanic? Why have to move to your destination, when you can summon ships on a whim? Why not summon yourself to the destination, using the same logical approach? That of throwing consistency out of the window? Are we free to ignore the release of the Kraken in this game? That is some solid rights right there! :P
All I want is that it saves my bridge officer and quick bar menu setup between ship swaps. It's a pain to spend 10-15 minutes redoing that every time I swap a ship. Also save my mapped out custom power levels.
Funny I see that all the time in Exploration clusters because people go there, queue DOFF assignments and leave.
Ships "disappearing and reappearing" happens all the time when they are entering and leaving maps, Exploration cluster have a leave button were we dont have to even have to move to the map border and people appear back were they logged offed, there is no "warp out" or "beam out" effect, the model simple ceases to exist.
So what are you complaining about really?
Thank you for pointing out that warp space effects need more work. They obviously need to look at that. All of this is going on in Warp Space, but what goes away comes back again, it is not like they transmogrify into something else, with ship swapping that should not take as long as logging out, or do a mission. :rolleyes:
Personally, I think the larger problems with this would go away if they just jettisoned sector space entirely and maybe repurposed a few sectors or sector assets like the Dyson Sphere zones.
Since we will be able to swap out ships like underpants, in public or otherwise, it has come to my attention that we have all kinds of terminals scattered throughout the game, that you actually have to approach, in order to utilize.
In the spirit of this new and glorious streamlined MMO experience, I propose that all these objects be turned into buttons on a menu, in order to save oceans of time. For think about it, when you routinely can swap out entire starships on the fly, these lesser objects can only be identified as the incarnation of needless minutia, hardly worth the effort and energy to actually have to physically bother with.
It will also be much tidier inside all these superfluous structures that are placed there in order to bother people. In fact, what purpose do they serve, since it would be much easier to just warp somewhere with more action. And why do we have to warp, why not spawn directly into the appropriate maps immediately. That would be more effective. All these other areas are just there to slow you down after all. Unless you should need some kind of environment to level up in, for some bothersome reason. Solved by making everything accessible with buttons on a menu of course. The more windows, and less travelling, the better!
And don't forget to properly abstract that tailor as well, so we can change clothes randomly wherever we go. Surely this is not an underpant-swapping simulator, where you have to hide anything!
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You, sir, are a literary genius. Your posts are nothing short of the sweetest champagne!!
Personally, I think the larger problems with this would go away if they just jettisoned sector space entirely and maybe repurposed a few sectors or sector assets like the Dyson Sphere zones.
Personally, doing away with sector space would be worse than anything short of an I Win button.
And what if ships should be disappearing and reappearing for no good reason, on a map where everything else is done by "Trekking?" Why should some pieces work, and others be subject to a Deus Ex Machina mechanic? Why have to move to your destination, when you can summon ships on a whim? Why not summon yourself to the destination, using the same logical approach? That of throwing consistency out of the window? Are we free to ignore the release of the Kraken in this game? That is some solid rights right there! :P
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We already have HP bar, we can die and respawn, see our ship being destroyed and respawn. We have thousands of admiral running everywhere, but much less lower ranks.
I see Klingons scanning space rabbits for their new Romulan friends. I have more DOFFs than my ship have crew. I see people with dozens of injuries, some of them criticals, and they still fight, run, and talk like there is nothing wrong, instead of being crippled and scream of pain. I fight Trex with lazerz, and evolved hadrosaurus (of all the dinosaurs).
There are Scimitars with thalaron weapons orbiting Earth, Jem'hadar ships around Qo'nos, and Fed captain attacking a medical facility following the orders of an obvious infiltrated Undine. Same captain that will attack a Romulan fleet around their new homeworld, as a preventive strike for what may (or may not) happen.
I use the transporter when I'm in a turbolift. I can use a strange discoball that will make everyone dance around me. Or a strange game that will affect luck (!). But it's not compatible from some bonus I have when petting a tribble. I don't know, it's like petting a cat and suddenly feeling I can take more injuries than before, or do more damage.
I can see a lot of Shpocks, Spokz, Shepard and Enterprize, Normandy around.
Everytime I want to change sector space, I have a loading screen, and people can see me disappear on one side, and appear on the other side.
Everytime I log off, I also disappear, and reappear when logging on.
But yeah, I agree, seeing ship disappear and reappear could definitely break immersion and realism. :rolleyes:
Realism and immersion is something you can't have in a MMO. People around you will break it. You can either ignore him and play your way.
That nobody else cares to suffer inconvenience for their "immersion." :rolleyes:
Fine. Just for you, the Devs can set things up so that your toon has to eat and drink like a real member of the species (however many calories and cups of liquid they require at the required intervals), go to the restroom at required intervals, sleep at required intervals, crawl into the Jeffries tubes to repair your ship, carry your modular consoles on the interior of your ship from wherever they're stored to wherever you have to plug them in, go to the shipyard to equip all of those consoles and weapons and shields and deflectors by crawling around and carrying stuff from point A to point B, carry your dilithium ore to a refinery and actually refine it in order to have refined dilithium, exercise, etc, etc, etc. Oh, and no more watching your ship move around from outside the vessel, either. Now you will have to sit on the bridge and watch the viewscreen if you want to see anything outside, whether in sector space or in system space or in a space mission (even space PvP), and manually switch the view to various angles and directions in order to see what enemies are around you and where ...
I mean, really, this is as nonsensical as people whining about "dinosaurs in Trek, zomg!" while conveniently forgetting Native Americans in space (TOS episode "The Paradise Syndrome"), post-Communist-invasion USA in space (TOS episode "The Omega Glory"), Christianity in space (TOS episode "Bread and Circuses"), and other such things (and mind you, I love all of those episodes). We can overlook TRIBBLE in space (TOS episode "Patterns of Force") and the main idea of "Bread and Circuses (Romans in space, with machine guns!), because those were the results of cultural contamination from Starfleet personnel (as was the story in TOS episode "A Piece of the Action"), but if you can swallow Native Americans in space and a post-Communist-invasion USA on a world that looks exactly like Earth, light years from Earth, and the idea of Christianity in space, then why get your knickers in such a twist over dinosaurs in Trek? What was Val supposed to be, anyway (the stone dinosaur "god" in TOS episode "The Apple")?
So now "They're going to kill my immersion by letting other players switch ships in space without any apparent reason to explain it!" but ships with names like "I.K.S. Big Mac" under the command of characters with names like "Southern Comfort" (these names are hypothetical examples, but if you've paid attention at all to other ship names and character names, I'm sure you get my point) don't bother your immersion at all? Please.
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That argument doesn't follow because swapping in space is something that arrived due to a lack of compelling game play inherent in sector space travel. Now, if you had said that we should have a "level to 50" button because the exist method of just being logged in for X number of hours is pointless and inconvenient, that request would be valid and no different than asking for ship swapping in space. Expecting players to drudge through sector space when there's nothing to actually do when you're there is just silly on its face. As the game stands right now, there is actual game play tied to leveling up. You do missions and experience content, engaging stuff happens. In sector space, you pick a heading and hit warp only to stare at the screen until you get where you want to be. Nothing happens on the way because there's nothing to do at all.
I'm neither for nor against space swapping, I probably won't use it because I usually have other things I want to do when I decide to swap my ship. But as I've said before, sector space needs something engaging to do. People are avoiding it because it's dull and uneventful. Would you skip the waiting room at the clinic if you had a choice? You sure would! Who wants to be subjected to tedium if they can avoid it? Sector space is pure tedium because it is a horribly neglected part of the game.
If the reason for ship swapping is the lack of compelling game play in sector space then the solution is providing actual compelling gameplay in sector space. Ship swapping as a substitute for compelling gameplay is laziness.
Can't say I disagree with a word of that.
I think your analogy of a waiting room for sector space is, for many people not all, absolutely correct.
It's why I believe this is not a mechanism to oppose on a fundamental level, merely modify so that it doesn't preclude any further expansion of sector space's role.
Perhaps preclude isn't the best word either.
Point is, if ship swapping is allowed in any sector where you have a friendly starbase, I see absolutely no valid objection.
It's convenient and canon. No subsets of players are inconvenienced and some get a big bonus to QoL play.
If we do not allow ship swapping where you don't have a friendly base it does two things.
Firstly it makes people think, even a little bit, about where they are. This gives sector space a small boost to significence.
I'd hope that would allow future thinking on what could happen differently in unfriendly sector space.
Secondly, and it is important to acknowledge this, it does inconveneince people for whom ship swapping is a welcome boon.
However, are we talking major, horrific, game destroying inconvenince?
Good grief no.
Pretty much all unfriendly sectors are immediately bordered by a friendly one.
This means that, if the compromise is used and someone wants to swap ships in unfriendly space, they just have to make one sector transition, swap and be done.
They're not forced back to base or more than a loading screen in and out of the sector.
This is minor......and its STILL better than what is in place now.
Seriously, this is a fair compromise.
It doesn't take anything away from anyone, merely asks that Cryptic be ever so slightly less generous in a relatively small number of occasions.
Perhaps not a WIN/WIN, but definitely a WIN/win
So you're saying that this new feature of the game design is necessary because the current game design is not compelling? That somehow invalidates any method, other than that announced, of making the game more compelling.
So, the game isn't a space simulation, but rather a career simulation? I mean, all those stories and activities you cite don't require a level or ship progression.
Star Trek. The thing that drew me to it was that it was about the exploration of space. I'm not looking for a completely faithful simulation of space, that was never part of the IP. However, I am continuously disappointed in the near complete disregard for the nature of space in this game.
No, when did I ever allude to that? It's not necessary at all, but opposing the idea doesn't make any progress either. I'll put this bluntly. Stop focusing on the sector space swapping. It's a reasonable reaction to the problems with sector space. The problem is that sector space sux, that's what is necessary to address. If sector space was more interesting to players, they would spend more time on it and the swapping option would be of no consequence.
It very well could have a leveling system. Exploration. You boldly go and collect technology, make contact, do missions, and investigate phenomena which can be applied to a research and development track where you research ways to upgrade your existing systems. You could build outposts in new territory for access to resupply.
So if it is a mess, why not turn it into something even messier. Like some French Astronomer. But then again, he tried to bring order to the mess. That would be a stellar move in my book.
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You alluded to that with the reasoning you used to dismiss daramouss1's argument.
I'm not focusing on sector space. I'm focusing on your selective application of what is and is not necessary for compelling gameplay as though it was not a matter of individual perspective.
Of course it could have a leveling system. It could have any number of things. The point being that those things are not required and are just as subject to being considered an inconvenience as is sector space travel.
In the spirit of this new and glorious streamlined MMO experience, I propose that all these objects be turned into buttons on a menu, in order to save oceans of time. For think about it, when you routinely can swap out entire starships on the fly, these lesser objects can only be identified as the incarnation of needless minutia, hardly worth the effort and energy to actually have to physically bother with.
It will also be much tidier inside all these superfluous structures that are placed there in order to bother people. In fact, what purpose do they serve, since it would be much easier to just warp somewhere with more action. And why do we have to warp, why not spawn directly into the appropriate maps immediately. That would be more effective. All these other areas are just there to slow you down after all. Unless you should need some kind of environment to level up in, for some bothersome reason. Solved by making everything accessible with buttons on a menu of course. The more windows, and less travelling, the better!
And don't forget to properly abstract that tailor as well, so we can change clothes randomly wherever we go. Surely this is not an underpant-swapping simulator, where you have to hide anything!
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Nor is anything that had to do with removing other time sinks since those come off as more childish than anything else.
Now I play a game with dinosaurs. I'm not all that worried if people can change their ship on the fly from sector space.
No, I didn't. I was making an example, I was not advocating it that it was a correct solution. I was only making the point that it was a valid complaint. The request for a correction was valid, the proposed solution was not the best one. I was just trying to establish a parallel. I said I don't really care about them adding the option and I don't. Do I think it's a good idea? No, it's probably not, not for the reasons others have posited, but because implementing this band-aid solution neglects the source of the issue and leaves it unresolved.
Compelling game play is something that has to actually have game play. Sector space is a 3D lobby at best, at worst it's a complete waste of time. Sector space is a nothing but a time vampire that doesn't have to be.
I can understand your disappointment. If that allure of space exploration was one of your reasons for joining the game, then your disappointment is perfectly legitimate. I'd say your experience is not unique - in reflecting on my previous comments it occurs to me that potentially a lot of people don't come to STO for the 'O' part, but for the ST part - and varying degrees of in-between the two. That is the nature of a game based on such a popular and iconic IP. Another IP-based MMO in a galaxy far, far away suffers from the same problem.
As for "So the game isn't a space simulation...?"
Depending on how you define "space simulation", I would say no, it's not. The game and its mechanics not only very poorly represent the mechanics of space travel in our reality, but it doesn't even do that good a job of mirroring space travel in the Star Trek universe. I would have to say the space combat in this game is more arcade game than simulation, and the setup of sector space is not an accurate representation of the real thing (whether in our world or ST).
I and probably many others could launch into massive walls of text about just how badly this game simulates space (either real or with the artistic license used by Star Trek), but we'd mostly just be telling people what they already know.
I would have to say, though, that it seems to me that in this thread there are two separate issues being argued here - one is the sector space ship-swap, with some people feeling it will detract from the game experience by removing another reason to visit social hubs like ESD. The other seems to be the concern that the game itself (sector space and social hubs) have been poorly designed and become meaningless and not enjoyable - which has led to people asking for the sector space ship swap mechanic in the first place.
I wouldn't say sector space is dead - there are still things to do there, but it's not a really enticing or immersive place to be. Once the initial "wow" (as in amazement, not World of.... yeah, that game) wears off, there's nothing really enticing or compelling people to be there. But then the social hubs are much the same. Unless you're there to use the facilities (exchange, mail, bank, shipyard, etc.) then there's really nothing to do at any of them. What detracts from them even more is the IQ-draining verbal diarrhea that goes on in some places, and the fact that for fleet members they are easily avoidable by using fleet holdings.
As a fairly recent addition to the game, I was never around to see the random enemy contacts in sector space, but now that I've heard people talking about them, I wonder why they were changed? There is no realism, immersion or anything else from being able to blithely warp past a swirling catfight of Klingons, or a Borg cube ominously twirling its way towards Earth... The fact that you can just fly past them makes them completely meaningless in my eyes. Others may choose to engage in them (there's that choice again) but there's nothing compelling about them, and unlike some optional things (for example, the reputation system or Doff missions), there is no tangible reward for engaging in them either.
So with no real reason to spend time in sector space, it can become little more than a motorway people use to get somewhere. On top of that, the transwarp system bypasses sector space travel anyway - if not by using the actual transwarp list, then by picking up an episode set near a destination and spending a few EC's to jump with no cooldown. I mean, I can get to Drozana, K7 and my fleet spacedock (and from that the embassy, spire and dilithium mine) for 500 EC using the right episode transwarp. Heck, even getting to ESD only costs 100 EC and about 10 seconds of sector space flight if you know where to look.
If that's the level of 'convenience' that Cryptic are willing to go to (basically making sector space an optional extra) then it's not much of a stretch to let players switch their underwear... er, I mean ships, without the inconvenience of having to transwarp to a starbase. With this precedent, what's the point of withholding sector space ship changes?
As always, just my thoughts.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately be explained by stupidity" ~ Robert Heinlein.
But than again refusing certain convenience updates might keep a certain illusion of deepth or pseudo-realism in the game which is always a good thing.
It feels a bit like when in a certain blizzard game about the craft of war in a world convenience updates removed the requirement to keep flint & steel and wood in your inventory to make fire or removed ammunition items. Sure, you did not needed to keep in mind to have that to cook or shoot but it made the gameworld a bit smaller and greyer.
Step by step, piece by piece, a more mechanical and streamlined experience, in the battle to save time. Ultimately it turns out a more sterile and artificial world, but the perceptions have obviously been altered along the road. What was once unthinkable, is now accepted, and the transformation goes as planned. I still think of this as late game woes though, and a matter of borrowed concepts, from one game to the next. Which means individual game design is a distant dream. And so any attempt at uniqueness. When all has turned into the same, there is only the setting left. But it seems they abstracted away that one too, taking away the little things.
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I think it's reflecting the economic reality of STO; as the game has grown, more and more players now have multiple "favourite" ships per toon, including fleet / lockbox ones which they spent large ammounts of effort acquiring. Cryptic want players to have something to do with all of the ships they've acquired, as well as the multiple rep / fleet gear sets most long term players now sit on. It's still not clear whether you can prep ships outside of a fleetyard, or whether you will need enough gear to kit out all of your active ships concurrently (rather than swapping between them).
We've long been told that our characters were admirals - IMO something that was wrong with the game from the start, but others differ. We've also long had the ability to have more DOffs than crew spaces on our current ships (by an order of magnitude in the extreme case - a player with a B'rel and 400 DOffs).
If you assume that your character is indeed a flag officer, with a small task group of ships under command, the new system makes more sense than the old. The Admiral selects a ship for a mission, just as he would select a team of BOffs for an away mission. All you need to do is get your head around the fact that your current ship is simply where the admiral's planted his flag, and the others in your task group are tagging along somewhere else. This is (at worst) no less realistic than the existing system where the Admiral on a ship of 2000 crew goes into ground assault either on his own, or with a handful of senior officers.
I'll be happy with anything that does not consist of a raw mechanical switch, in place of substance to be honest. Visual cues to what is going on, instead of nothing? Now that would be something!
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As an old vet here, I can explain that one. For one thing, a lot of players (including myself) did not like the mechanic. It was clunky, too common, and too intrusive when one was just wanting to do their missions.
But the killer was that they were not level-gated. That is, it was commonplace for a lowbie to get pulled into an enemy contact in the Sirius Sector Block that was scaled to Admiral level because of higher level players already there. This often meant you were destroyed as soon as you entered the contact, and since enemy craft were often near the respawn point, you couldn't always leave the instance before getting blasted again. You couldn't fight, and it was difficult to leave. Not fun.
Also, the enemy signal contacts consist of flying around destroying random enemy vessels. No real story behind it, just get pulled in and start blasting. For some players, that's fun, for others it gets monotonous when it happens too often.
Thus, they became optional. Those who want to do it can, those who don't can bypass them.
Just like I see some people walking in ESD, instead of running.
You have a choice, and nobody is forcing you to do it. So, don't force other to do as you want.
Don't blame the devs because you are too lazy not to use their tools
To the OP... I also am not a fan of how "convienent" the game has become... but in a very real sense, it is convienent as you wish to make it.
I'll give some examples;
Transwarps to everywhere: This bugged me when it first came out... no need to travel through sector space, you can just transwarp there... Counter: Noting forces you to use transwarp. You can travel via sector space everywhere if you so choose.
Ship Switching: Again, there is nothing "requiring" you to use the feature... if you want to keep the immersion of going to a space dock and switching ships... go at it.
I'll give you a one better... I am not a huge fan of repairing injuries (ship/character) on the fly... Carry a stack of Regens and Components... and you never need a med facility or shipyard... I advocated for modification to this that allowed everyone to repair minor injuries, a sci/eng would be able to heal major... but you would have to travel to a facility (SpaceDock/Med Facility) to repair criticals (and you would be locked out of missions until repairded). Again... in the end, to some extent this is a player choice thing... I can certainly not carry Critical Regens/Components and travel to fix... I can require myself to visit a space dock for all repairs if that is how I wish to play the game, the mechanic exists (in fact its free if you go to a social zone to fix).
Queues: This was a biggy for me, you can spend your entire endgame play existance sitting at a social zone... I was able to complete all reps for a toon sitting on K7... this bothered me immensely. As did the death of certain maps because of this. Specifically Gamma Orionis (The death of DS9 came with the Rep system). I miss the days when every one was out there looking for teams, as opposed to just click Join... or doing a private match... Counter: Really don't have one... i hate the queue system, and would prefer to travel to the mission start location. But this is me, I know I do not speak for the majority of players on this... take Terradome for example... it was almost impossible to get a match going... because it was like the old ways... you had to travel there and build a team... Alternatively... I suppose I could travel to Gamma Orionis, approach Vorn, and form a private match for Cure... basically the same thing... so I still could do it... but doesn't make much sense.
Honestly, I shut zone chat off moons ago... very little of anything good came out of zone chat... ever. So to me, in a lot of cases, the other players are just background decoration...
Cryptic has to walk that tightrope between the multitude of "it should be this way" posts. What works for me, doesn't work for someone else...
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
And what if ships should be disappearing and reappearing for no good reason, on a map where everything else is done by "Trekking?" Why should some pieces work, and others be subject to a Deus Ex Machina mechanic? Why have to move to your destination, when you can summon ships on a whim? Why not summon yourself to the destination, using the same logical approach? That of throwing consistency out of the window? Are we free to ignore the release of the Kraken in this game? That is some solid rights right there! :P
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That nobody else cares to suffer inconvenience for their "immersion." :rolleyes:
Thank you for pointing out that warp space effects need more work. They obviously need to look at that. All of this is going on in Warp Space, but what goes away comes back again, it is not like they transmogrify into something else, with ship swapping that should not take as long as logging out, or do a mission. :rolleyes:
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You, sir, are a literary genius. Your posts are nothing short of the sweetest champagne!!
Personally, doing away with sector space would be worse than anything short of an I Win button.
I see Klingons scanning space rabbits for their new Romulan friends. I have more DOFFs than my ship have crew. I see people with dozens of injuries, some of them criticals, and they still fight, run, and talk like there is nothing wrong, instead of being crippled and scream of pain. I fight Trex with lazerz, and evolved hadrosaurus (of all the dinosaurs).
There are Scimitars with thalaron weapons orbiting Earth, Jem'hadar ships around Qo'nos, and Fed captain attacking a medical facility following the orders of an obvious infiltrated Undine. Same captain that will attack a Romulan fleet around their new homeworld, as a preventive strike for what may (or may not) happen.
I use the transporter when I'm in a turbolift. I can use a strange discoball that will make everyone dance around me. Or a strange game that will affect luck (!). But it's not compatible from some bonus I have when petting a tribble. I don't know, it's like petting a cat and suddenly feeling I can take more injuries than before, or do more damage.
I can see a lot of Shpocks, Spokz, Shepard and Enterprize, Normandy around.
Everytime I want to change sector space, I have a loading screen, and people can see me disappear on one side, and appear on the other side.
Everytime I log off, I also disappear, and reappear when logging on.
But yeah, I agree, seeing ship disappear and reappear could definitely break immersion and realism. :rolleyes:
Realism and immersion is something you can't have in a MMO. People around you will break it. You can either ignore him and play your way.
Fine. Just for you, the Devs can set things up so that your toon has to eat and drink like a real member of the species (however many calories and cups of liquid they require at the required intervals), go to the restroom at required intervals, sleep at required intervals, crawl into the Jeffries tubes to repair your ship, carry your modular consoles on the interior of your ship from wherever they're stored to wherever you have to plug them in, go to the shipyard to equip all of those consoles and weapons and shields and deflectors by crawling around and carrying stuff from point A to point B, carry your dilithium ore to a refinery and actually refine it in order to have refined dilithium, exercise, etc, etc, etc. Oh, and no more watching your ship move around from outside the vessel, either. Now you will have to sit on the bridge and watch the viewscreen if you want to see anything outside, whether in sector space or in system space or in a space mission (even space PvP), and manually switch the view to various angles and directions in order to see what enemies are around you and where ...
I mean, really, this is as nonsensical as people whining about "dinosaurs in Trek, zomg!" while conveniently forgetting Native Americans in space (TOS episode "The Paradise Syndrome"), post-Communist-invasion USA in space (TOS episode "The Omega Glory"), Christianity in space (TOS episode "Bread and Circuses"), and other such things (and mind you, I love all of those episodes). We can overlook TRIBBLE in space (TOS episode "Patterns of Force") and the main idea of "Bread and Circuses (Romans in space, with machine guns!), because those were the results of cultural contamination from Starfleet personnel (as was the story in TOS episode "A Piece of the Action"), but if you can swallow Native Americans in space and a post-Communist-invasion USA on a world that looks exactly like Earth, light years from Earth, and the idea of Christianity in space, then why get your knickers in such a twist over dinosaurs in Trek? What was Val supposed to be, anyway (the stone dinosaur "god" in TOS episode "The Apple")?
So now "They're going to kill my immersion by letting other players switch ships in space without any apparent reason to explain it!" but ships with names like "I.K.S. Big Mac" under the command of characters with names like "Southern Comfort" (these names are hypothetical examples, but if you've paid attention at all to other ship names and character names, I'm sure you get my point) don't bother your immersion at all? Please.