So, yesterday when I was at work, I was thinking about STO (filling shelfs doesnt require brains). More specifically, about Exploration. Yes, this particular horse has been beaten, tortured, decapitated, burned, eaten by dogs, thrown in acid. Well, I thought it was time for some Hazard Emitter on it. Cause I think I have found the solution.
The main problem we now have with Exploration is the Genesis engine that lets us scan relics of the Third Dynasty of the Borg. Aka, the missions we get are boring. Yet they have to be random every single time.
Right now when players really want to do some exploration, you end up in the Foundry. Great stories there, some that make you feel all Trekkie. But the Foundry is usually about the already-known factions in the game, because designing new factions is extremely hard in the Foundry, and even then limited.
What I was thinking about would be a secondary Foundry, next to the current one. This Foundry would have a large set of differences with the current Foundry. First off all, using any of the currently existing factions would not be ok. Secondary, the maximum amount of enemy NPC groups that are allowed in each map will be restricted to 5. Thirdly, we would need a minimum requirement list for each mission.
In more detail (if you dont feel like reading it all, these lines can be skipped). Restricting the current NPC factions would mean we face something new. Players would design their own NPCs. First with the tailor for ground characters. Expanding on current uniforms would be great, but we can already do so much with the current tailor. For space I am thinking of allowing a large variety of kitbashes. You could choose, say, the Defiant standard pattern, and replace the nacelles with Acamarian engines. And this one might be a lot harder to encode, but in the case of designing an NPC, we get to load up the abilities, weapons and everything. All restricted within a limited number of universal slots, but something fresh and potential as powerful as the current NPCs.
The maximum number of NPC groups to 5 serves a purpose. Exploration should not be about flying around with guns blazing. A max of 5 groups would almost force us into story-driven content. It would also prevent us seeing loot driven missions: restricting the potential loot to something uninteresting would keep farmers out of the Exploundry, and keep them in the Foundry.
Minimum requirements would make sure that an explofoundry would not be farmable. Say, each mission must have x amount of dialogs, at least y interact objectives and must contain at least z maps.
What use for an Explofoundry? It would slowly begin to replace the Genesis engine. As more player missions are being made, the chance of getting a Genesis mission would become smaller and smaller. When entering a system in a nebula or star cluster, we could be prompted to a random Explofoundry mission. This way, the Exploration daily could start featuring player made missions.
The Explofoundry would ofcourse be searchable for special missions. Playing a searched mission would still count towards a daily, but in a lesser way than playing a random mission. This feature would mostly be to give incentive to authors to actually make missions.
Where is the money for Cryptic in this idea? A reputation system. Exploration Reputation would work similar to the current ones. Playing an Exploration daily would give Exploration Marks. Each daily would need 3 Genesis missions, or 1 random player mission, or 2 chosen player missions. Next to that, the current Foundry missions could be updated to replace the dilithium reward for eligible missions by an Exploration mark reward. First Contact missions could also give a fair amount of Marks. Finally, Cryptic could make a PvE featuring a random enemy attacking an outpost. Nothing too fancy, but with an enemy that is different each time, so that requires different strategy to beat every time. Ofcourse this one cannot be very hard, since players will need to adapt every time. This PvE would be for those of us that do not care that much about storyline, and prefer to play with guns blazing.
Next to the standard rewards, Id also like to propose both Foundry and Explofoundry project slots to be purchaseable from this reputation. Think of it as a dilithium claiming project, but with slotzs instead of dilithium as the reward. Id go with a project in the first 4 weeks that demands dilithium for slots, but then change it to requiring marks for slots. This to give a good reason for authors to play the content that other authors are creating.
Im not expecting to see something like this implemented any time in the near future. The second expansion is probably already filled in concerning what content we should expect. Season 10 will most likely be a sit back season for Cryptic. Maybe Season 11?
Anyway, what do you guys think of this idea? Replacing Genesis with Playermade missions and an Exploration reputation? Personally, I think this is the answer we are looking for.
I'm all for more elaborate exploration rewards, and I'm all for expanding the foundry's available assets in the manner you describe.
I am not in favour of using the foundry to replace actual dev made exploration content. Expanding the foundry is great, but there is no need to sacrifice an existing feature for it. We can already access the foundry any time we want; so using it to replace the existing exploration system doesn't actually gain us anything.
Besides, player generated content shouldn't be used to patch flaws in the game; we shouldn't be giving the devs excuses to not fix stuff themselves (you know I love you really devs ).
though I have never used the foundry I have heard that the system is limited in that the items maps and characters can only be made up with what is already in the game so you cannot for example design your own enemy ships or design your own props and you do not have a completely free hand when designing enemy characters, so you cannot produce aliens with 6 arms, 10 legs and 3 heads and such.
what you have with the foundry can almost be compared to what you have in a lego set.
in a lego set you have different bricks that all fit together in a certain way to make certain models but you cannot make different bricks to suit your own vision, if you cannot make the model you want with the bricks that are provided you cannot make the model at all and that's that.
same thing with the foundry, you have certain things provided that all fit together in a certain way that you can use to create your mission but you cannot make different items to suit your own vision so if you cannot make the mission you want with the items and tools provided you cannot make the mission and that is that.
to the best of my knowledge from what I have read regarding the foundry, you will never have a completely free hand when it comes to designing the items and characters and such you just have to use what is provided.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
I'm all for more elaborate exploration rewards, and I'm all for expanding the foundry's available assets in the manner you describe.
I am not in favour of using the foundry to replace actual dev made exploration content. Expanding the foundry is great, but there is no need to sacrifice an existing feature for it. We can already access the foundry any time we want; so using it to replace the existing exploration system doesn't actually gain us anything.
Besides, player generated content shouldn't be used to patch flaws in the game; we shouldn't be giving the devs excuses to not fix stuff themselves (you know I love you really devs ).
^^^This.
Having the foundry is all good....well, better than good actually as there currently are a lot of better and more Trek like missions that the official content offers. However, we shouldn't and in fact I believe we can't hope to swap a system that is suposed to be developed by the people creating the game with random user-generated content, regardless of how good it can be.
I'm all for expanding and further developing our own STO foundry, that seems to be forgotten in time, unfortunately. But we don't need a "second" foundry based on exploration. What we need is further developing and enhancing the current foundry we have.
As for exploration ideas, I highly recommend reading capnmanx's thread, the one he has linked in his sig. - there are a lot of really good ideas there. What I really think can be done with the "genesis", until some real exploration model is implemented, is gradually expanding the potential of variable missions that are generated randomly. Yes, they'll still be in 80% scan 5 this, kill 5 that, but at least they could come with more variations of stories and explanations until they get to finally do something meaningfull and significant in the exploration department.
P.S. The exploration in STO is not a dead horse and it can't be qualified as one.
I have found 0 enjoyment in the foundry, mainly due to broken maps, what seems like never ending load screens and to be honest too much RP. I don't know that this is the place to expand on exploration. I think a good majority of people only do them for the large sum of Dilithium. Exploration in this game would be great but I don't think translates well from the Star Trek we all watched and found so much enjoyment from. In order to have a great exploration mission it must be well constructed and some boundaries the player can't go beyond(from a programming perspective). The problem with this is once you have done this mission once most times you know what is going to happen every time, it gets boring. There is a trade off of quality missions vs exploration. If you want more exploration(mission quantity) or randomness you may have to give up some quality to pump out new missions constantly. You could have more options or randomness in missions but this leads to longer production times and risk of bugs, we have enough of those in game already. One thing I think would be cool is a set of missions that replay some of the greatest episodes in Star Trek TV history based on some temporal catastrophe. I know there are some missions that already explore some of TOS. This has the exploration aspect and the added thrill of experiencing something familiar from childhood watching those old Star Trek shows. These few missions that exist that explore the past, where you run into McCoy and Scottie and the Drozna space station with TOS motif were some of the most fun for me. "Sphere of Influence" was neat for me as well because it dealt with the Iconians that came from that one TNG episode that Troy was having "nightmares" with aliens in them. I'm sure if we went back and looked through some old missions we would find some fun little Easter eggs.
Looking for more info on Dilithium Rising? Click on the link below:
What I would rather see is an indoctrination type thing where the super good foundry missions get remastered into actual Featured Episodes.
That'd be nice. There are a lot of great missions that are kind of let down by the limitations of the Foundry (not to mention the odd bugs it throws up sometimes); a dev rebuild could really make them shine.
The problem with exploring is that it really isn't exploring.
I propose the expansion of the game map to include server-side procedurally generated sectors, where each sector contains 4-12 stars. Each star could have potentially 10 planets orbiting it. Each planet could have potentially 10 moons orbiting it.
All areas in a sector would need to be explored before adjacent unexplored sectors can be unlocked.
Exploring a location would work similarly to the way fleet holdings work, except that they would be open to everyone rather than just people in fleets. Each location would be single-tier. There would be a massive number of locations. Multiple factions could vie for control of each one. Whichever faction reaches the goal first claims that location.
A form of competitive PvE utilizing the Duty Officer system could be used to cause factional control to shift.
Each sentient planet discovered would have a randomly generated alien species. Each species would have a randomly generated disposition towards outsiders. Each species would have a randomly generated set of needed commodities for its civilization, as well as a randomly generated set of commodities it produces. Players, on behalf of their respective factional governments, can broker interstellar trade among sectors.
Sentient species may or may not be aware of things going on in adjacent unexplored sectors, depending on whether or not they are a deep-space faring race. If they know about civilizations in adjacen sectors, then diplomatic missions for ecological fact-finding might be possible. If a sentient species in a neighboring sector is hostile, learning of them through diplomatic contacts in the sector that is currently being explored could help with dealing with them when or if their sector is unlocked.
All sorts of things can be done with this hypothetical system. It would use resources that already exist.
The sectors generated this way would be persistant, and after being fully explored could be manipulated by the players to cause things to change over time.
An interesting idea. I would rather this be something more on an individual basis and it not be anywhere in Alpha or Beta quadrants. It would have to be end game, no fleet support, no group support all by yourself in maybe the Gamma or Delta quadrant or maybe even a new galaxy. Whether or not it should be an uninterruptible "5 year mission" as it were, meaning once you started you can't do anything else until you finish, would probably be up for debate. This would make it more of a challenge though.
Also discovery of very rare ships, equipment should be possible but not guaranteed. Mega RNG time!!
Looking for more info on Dilithium Rising? Click on the link below:
The problem with exploring is that it really isn't exploring.
I propose the expansion of the game map to include server-side procedurally generated sectors, where each sector contains 4-12 stars. Each star could have potentially 10 planets orbiting it. Each planet could have potentially 10 moons orbiting it.
All areas in a sector would need to be explored before adjacent unexplored sectors can be unlocked.
Exploring a location would work similarly to the way fleet holdings work, except that they would be open to everyone rather than just people in fleets. Each location would be single-tier. There would be a massive number of locations. Multiple factions could vie for control of each one. Whichever faction reaches the goal first claims that location.
A form of competitive PvE utilizing the Duty Officer system could be used to cause factional control to shift.
Each sentient planet discovered would have a randomly generated alien species. Each species would have a randomly generated disposition towards outsiders. Each species would have a randomly generated set of needed commodities for its civilization, as well as a randomly generated set of commodities it produces. Players, on behalf of their respective factional governments, can broker interstellar trade among sectors.
Sentient species may or may not be aware of things going on in adjacent unexplored sectors, depending on whether or not they are a deep-space faring race. If they know about civilizations in adjacen sectors, then diplomatic missions for ecological fact-finding might be possible. If a sentient species in a neighboring sector is hostile, learning of them through diplomatic contacts in the sector that is currently being explored could help with dealing with them when or if their sector is unlocked.
All sorts of things can be done with this hypothetical system. It would use resources that already exist.
The sectors generated this way would be persistant, and after being fully explored could be manipulated by the players to cause things to change over time.
It sounds nice... but.... peeps would grind it at a frantic pace. The sheer volume required to keep people occupied for one DAY would exceed the size of the current galaxy map.
While they are expanding the foundry maybe they can finally make the appropriate updates to it's engines so that it doesn't take three forevers to load.
That's the only time I have an extended load time is on this game and when I'm going into an explore between maps or going into a foundry and it's what 4 years later now? cmon.
I agree about the rewards. However from what I've read they've said they might remove all of the particle rewards, revamp and reset crafting entirely forcing all of us to start over.
Comments
I am not in favour of using the foundry to replace actual dev made exploration content. Expanding the foundry is great, but there is no need to sacrifice an existing feature for it. We can already access the foundry any time we want; so using it to replace the existing exploration system doesn't actually gain us anything.
Besides, player generated content shouldn't be used to patch flaws in the game; we shouldn't be giving the devs excuses to not fix stuff themselves (you know I love you really devs
what you have with the foundry can almost be compared to what you have in a lego set.
in a lego set you have different bricks that all fit together in a certain way to make certain models but you cannot make different bricks to suit your own vision, if you cannot make the model you want with the bricks that are provided you cannot make the model at all and that's that.
same thing with the foundry, you have certain things provided that all fit together in a certain way that you can use to create your mission but you cannot make different items to suit your own vision so if you cannot make the mission you want with the items and tools provided you cannot make the mission and that is that.
to the best of my knowledge from what I have read regarding the foundry, you will never have a completely free hand when it comes to designing the items and characters and such you just have to use what is provided.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
What you propose is a new exploration system. I'd be fine with that, but don't believe that calling it a "fix" will make it easy or fast.
^^^This.
Having the foundry is all good....well, better than good actually as there currently are a lot of better and more Trek like missions that the official content offers. However, we shouldn't and in fact I believe we can't hope to swap a system that is suposed to be developed by the people creating the game with random user-generated content, regardless of how good it can be.
I'm all for expanding and further developing our own STO foundry, that seems to be forgotten in time, unfortunately.
As for exploration ideas, I highly recommend reading capnmanx's thread, the one he has linked in his sig. - there are a lot of really good ideas there. What I really think can be done with the "genesis", until some real exploration model is implemented, is gradually expanding the potential of variable missions that are generated randomly. Yes, they'll still be in 80% scan 5 this, kill 5 that, but at least they could come with more variations of stories and explanations until they get to finally do something meaningfull and significant in the exploration department.
P.S. The exploration in STO is not a dead horse and it can't be qualified as one.
[SIGPIC]Click here to visit my STO YouTube channel[/SIGPIC]
That'd be nice. There are a lot of great missions that are kind of let down by the limitations of the Foundry (not to mention the odd bugs it throws up sometimes); a dev rebuild could really make them shine.
An interesting idea. I would rather this be something more on an individual basis and it not be anywhere in Alpha or Beta quadrants. It would have to be end game, no fleet support, no group support all by yourself in maybe the Gamma or Delta quadrant or maybe even a new galaxy. Whether or not it should be an uninterruptible "5 year mission" as it were, meaning once you started you can't do anything else until you finish, would probably be up for debate. This would make it more of a challenge though.
Also discovery of very rare ships, equipment should be possible but not guaranteed. Mega RNG time!!
[SIGPIC]Click here to visit my STO YouTube channel[/SIGPIC]
My character Tsin'xing
That's the only time I have an extended load time is on this game and when I'm going into an explore between maps or going into a foundry and it's what 4 years later now? cmon.
I agree about the rewards. However from what I've read they've said they might remove all of the particle rewards, revamp and reset crafting entirely forcing all of us to start over.
This is not a good thing people.