In an older thread, Tacofangs had this to say:
- FULL Ship interiors cost a LOT of time/manpower/money to develop.
- There is, as players repeat constantly, nothing to do there, so players don't USE their interiors.
- There used to be more to DO in your interior, but people complained about having to run all over their ship, so all of that was consolidated to your bridge.
- There is no good reason to throw money at making these huge interiors with nothing to do in them, when players are going to run around them once, and then ignore them for the rest of time.
- Currently we've been focused more on story content, which I believe is what more players are into atm.
In other words, we won't be developing new FULL interiors without some kind of major rework to the whole system, new content surrounding them, or other major improvement to them.
Note that bridges are NOT Full interiors, and we will continue making them, I'm sure.
That doesn't mean that someday we won't shift focus away from story content, back to interiors, develop fun stuff to do there, and/or put in something like the above exploration system. It's just not going to happen right now. We have other priorities at the moment.
To which I would like to respond to by saying this:
So why not write some stories that involve ship interiors, space and ground? All ship interiors have common elements to them. the Engine room, sick bay, the science lab, etc. The only variable element is the preferred size of the ship interiors. We've got three options there. Tweak the master files that are called. Set up interactable elements in the areas that are common to all layouts. Link a door to the conference lounge and shuttle bay. If interactables and spawn reference points are added to all common areas in the master files that are pulled when loading a ship interior, then missions in ship interiors can become modular in nature and be adaptable to all potential layouts.
The proble, Taco, is that your company has become so narrow... no... CLOSED-minded that aside from featured episodes, nothing different is even being bothered with. If ship interiors are not being used, then it is not the players' fault. It is Cryptic's fault for not exploring the possibilities.
Personally, I like the idea of if entering an exploration sector, we should load automatically into our ship interior in the ready room looking out the window, in our quarters looking out the window, in the lounge looking out the window, etc. Maybe make that a choice in ship customization. Where to start when loading into exploration.
When sitting in the captain's chair, we should get a GUI button labeled "Orders" which would populate with five options, each with an ETA associated with it:
1:00
2:00
3:00
4:00
5:00
In addition to being time delays for how long it would take the ship to reach the objective, these would also serve as multipliers for the reward payouts:
x 1.0
x 1.5
x 2.0
x 2.5
x 3.0
There will be either an Unknown System or Anomaly in each slot. This way we can know what each possible event we can go to. If we are looking for anomalies and we have a full list of Unknown System we can use a sixth option, "Continue Exploring." A cooldown of 3 minutes is in effect as the ship moves on to the next cluster of possible objectives, after which a new five options presents itself.
Anomalies in the 5:00 ETA slot would yield way more anomalies, so for those looking to maximize their materials gathering, these would be the best way to go about doing it.
RISK FACTOR
As the travel timer clicks down, every minute there would be a check for some sort of hazard that would drop the ship out of warp. or a distress signal. These are the situations that would put the players into combat situations. When resolved, travel to the original destination resumes. The chance of an encounter would decrease the closer to the destination the ship is. for a 5:00 ETA destination, at 4 minutes out, there would be a 50% chance. At 3 minutes out, there would be a 40% chance. at 2 minutes out, there would be a 30% chance. at 1 minute out there would be a 20% chance. At 0 minutes, there would be a 10% chance.
REWARDS:
A wrapper mission could be taken that would award a mark box that would grant the player 5 of any type of reputation mark available in the game, including FLEET MARKS. The catch is that it would require completing five 5:00 ETA exploration objectives. The wrapper would be on a 60 minute cool-down
With exploration removed from sector space flight and tied through ship interiors, with the potential to earn marks of the player's choice, then it becomes incentivized. People will start using them a lot more.
[sigh]
You know, I like the story driven aspect of the featured episodes... The problem is that they now come out so few and far between. Their quality is awesome. But there's this whole rest of the game that people are expected to play in between released, and there are features and elements that are not even used. They just sit on the server and eat up space.
If the rest of the game MUST be one huge grind-fest, then why cannot cryptic make it at least wrap the grind around Star Trek rather than attempting to wrap Star Trek around the grind? The IP should be the heart and soul of the game with mechanics built around it. There is so much material that can be gleaned from all the shows that have aired: Material that can be adapted into all sorts of gameplay mechanics. Someone needs to seriously sit down and go through every single Star Trek episode... not just to watch it and get put into a Star Trek mood. But to make notes while watching about how anything they see might be adapted for use in STO.
If I was Jack Emmert, and I had the entire development cycle originally granted with the license before Perpetual blew half of it, I would have directed every single member of the design team to do this before a single line of unique code was written and before the first original art asset was produced. My philosophy would have been, if it isn't backed up somewhere in the shows than it ain't happening without a very very plausible reason.
The spirit of Star Trek is next to non-existent in this game, with the exception of what the Featured Episodes grant. We have a whole game called Star Trek Online, and less than half of it feels even remotely like Star Trek...
...In my opinion.