I'm not sure how some of you guys still behave like you're confused and don't understand this, by now it seems pretty much like trolling.
If I'm holding an apple and somebody calls it an orange, yeah - I'm going to be confused. Like I said in my last post, and if you go back and look through many of the wtf moments by various sides in the discussion - folks are looking at the same thing and seeing something different.
What episode gives the expectation of exploration? How about every one of them?
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Given the only thing resembling exploration in the game are the clusters... yeah.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the removal of the clusters. However, I do think they shouldn't be removed without adding some alternative that at least has a feel of exploration.
It would be hypocritical of me to complain about this being removed since, honestly, I kind of gave up on this section of the game. I like the concept of it, but found the implementation weak and uninspired.
I only did a few of these early on (thinking I had to for the storyline mission) and gave up fast. Maybe there's more than what I experienced, but what I found was:
1. Multiple times scan points would be buried underneath a terrain object, making it virtually impossible to scan unless you could find just the right indentation to stand on.
2. The HUD couldn't seem to deal with topography.
3. The Borg have taken Seven of Nine's advice to try to elicit assimilation volunteers - now they're apparently trying to rig elections and make people want to side with them instead of the Federation.
4. The Jem'Hadar are weaker than the scorpions on Nimbus.
When I ran through those way back when, it definitely FELT like this was a left-over beta part of the game, so I can understand the desire to simply remove it instead of spending the probably significant amount of time needed to fix/correct it.
Still, without some form of exploration, it definitely feels more like any generic space shooter and not Star Trek at all. Maybe that's what they're going for, I don't know, it just feels like there needs to be something to incentivize exploration, at least on the Federation side.
What episode gives the expectation of exploration? How about every one of them?
A group of folks head off to explore an underground cave. They explore it, film it, take notes, map it, etc, etc, etc. They return. The end...exploration.
A group of folks head off to explore an underground cave. A typhoon comes in, trapping them underground. It becomes a fight for survival - man vs. nature. It's no longer just exploration.
A group of folks head off to explore an underground cave. They disturb a crypt of ancient vampires that start killing them off. It becomes a horror story - a fight for survival vs. evil. It's no longer just exploration.
A group of folks head off to explore an underground cave. Two of them have undisclosed feelings for each other, and during the course of the story they admit their feelings. It's a romance. It's no longer just exploration. Add in some bumbling, make one of the folks undecided, add in a second interest - you can go with a romantic comedy.
A group of folks head off to explore an underground cave. One of them believes there is buried treasure there and is intent on grabbing it for themselves. It's a thriller/adventure. It's no longer just exploration. Replace treasure with drugs, stolen money, or whatever. All sorts of stories to be told there.
The gist is...exploration is just the backdrop for the countless stories that have been told in all the episodes/movies. What episode was just...they go somewhere, they take some notes, and they move on? All the episodes included some form of conflict, action, drama...there was always more to them. Exploration was just the backdrop - the reason that they were out there so they could go on all the grand adventures - that all the various stories could be told. We didn't have 45 minutes of the crew looking at rock samples...stuff happened.
edit: It's why some folks will point to the episodes and Foundry...cause...what's happening there is what happened in Star Trek. The repetitive grind and wholesale slaughter of folks that takes place in much of the game - not so much. But hitting up episodes or hitting up the Foundry...there you go.
It would be hypocritical of me to complain about this being removed since, honestly, I kind of gave up on this section of the game. I like the concept of it, but found the implementation weak and uninspired.
I only did a few of these early on (thinking I had to for the storyline mission) and gave up fast. Maybe there's more than what I experienced, but what I found was:
1. Multiple times scan points would be buried underneath a terrain object, making it virtually impossible to scan unless you could find just the right indentation to stand on.
2. The HUD couldn't seem to deal with topography.
3. The Borg have taken Seven of Nine's advice to try to elicit assimilation volunteers - now they're apparently trying to rig elections and make people want to side with them instead of the Federation.
4. The Jem'Hadar are weaker than the scorpions on Nimbus.
Your experiences were pretty typical. Whenever I went back and visited these exploration missions, it did more, I think, to remind me that there was no actual exploration to them, thus no exploration in the game other than foundry and a few places in the story arc.
It makes perfect sense to trash this stuff, but I don't think anyone who is sad about the removal truly found them to be satisfying exploration missions. I did read somebody say that sometimes they could be a relaxing diversion, simply hunting a empty station for consoles and not finding a mob at every single one.
Name a single episode from any of the series...I'm curious - where the expectation has come from. Seriously...I've been sitting here off and on for a few days looking at episodes from each of the series trying to find where folks got the idea from - that the cluster missions have anything to do with Star Trek and aren't just generic random missions that you could drop in the middle of any game.
The very first episode of STNG was an diplomatic mission with Q tagging along to wine up the crew.
The Star Trek Enterprise Strange New World was a pure exploration mission. ST-E Stigma. Vox Sola.
A group of folks head off to explore an underground cave. One of them believes there is buried treasure there and is intent on grabbing it for themselves. It's a thriller/adventure. It's no longer just exploration. Replace treasure with drugs, stolen money, or whatever. All sorts of stories to be told there.
The gist is...exploration is just the backdrop for the countless stories that have been told in all the episodes/movies. What episode was just...they go somewhere, they take some notes, and they move on? All the episodes included some form of conflict, action, drama...there was always more to them. Exploration was just the backdrop - the reason that they were out there so they could go on all the grand adventures - that all the various stories could be told. We didn't have 45 minutes of the crew looking at rock samples...stuff happened.
I get what you're saying. But without something more than staring at rocks I don't think the show would have lasted more than 1 episode. Even you just said, they always start off exploring but then something else happens. In the end, the idea was to go look at rocks, maybe hook up with some alien chick (I'm looking at you Kirk), or something along those lines. But without that 'something' else, they would never hook an audience. The idea of exploring is Star Trek. Back when I was a kid watching Kirk and crew on their adventures, if I got bored I'd flip the channel and watch Battlestar Galactica or Space 1999 if/when all I wanted was to see things blow up. Star Trek was the only one that truly felt like they had a mission back then, and that was the exploration. I'm rambling now but I hope you understand what I'm saying. Without some form of exploration, it's just not Star Trek anymore.
ETA: The Foundry. I've actually played quite a few foundry missions, and all of the spotlight missions up till a couple months ago. They're hit or miss. Some can be rated good but they're really not. Beauty in the eye of the beholder and all. And yes some are in fact really good. That even goes for spotlight missions. I don't remember which spotlight mission it was, but I played one that was just terrible, clunky, and had more than a handful of buggy things in it, that in the end I just dropped the mission in disgust. Cryptic can't just rely on the playerbase to make up for their shortcomings. They're the developer, it's up to them to make the game feel like a Star Trek game and not just some space shooter with recognizable ships.
The very first episode of STNG was an diplomatic mission with Q tagging along to wine up the crew.
Why is it a diplomatic mission to you? Rather than the spy mission where Picard has to explain "snooping" to Data? And enter Q, an omnipotent being suggesting all sorts of danger that the crew will face...er...diplomatic? It's trial...
There's all sorts of elements of all sorts of stories within Encounter at Farpoint - suggesting all kinds of adventures that the crew of the new Enterprise will experience. A diplomatic mission though? Why do you see it as that?
Why is it a diplomatic mission to you? Rather than the spy mission where Picard has to explain "snooping" to Data? And enter Q, an omnipotent being suggesting all sorts of danger that the crew will face...er...diplomatic? It's trial...
There's all sorts of elements of all sorts of stories within Encounter at Farpoint - suggesting all kinds of adventures that the crew of the new Enterprise will experience. A diplomatic mission though? Why do you see it as that?
Because the core of the mission was the opening up of relations with the Bandi People and on securing Federation access to the starbase. An the whole episode was aim at settling everything without destroying the two aliens creatures or punishing the Bandi people.
I'm still trying to understand where folks got these expectations for exploration and diplomacy from in the first place...it's as if they never actually watched any of the series or movies. They're sci-fi wild west action/adventure shows/movies...
It's like folks only listened to the Space speech and neglected to pay attention to anything else that was going on.
What are some of the exploration/diplomacy episodes they enjoyed from the shows or what movies stirred up these expectations?
Star Trek...is in the episodes and the Foundry. Not these atrocious missions that are an insult both to Star Trek and us...
Well, there's 'The Ship' (DS9), which started out with a geological survey; and then turned into a fight over some salvage (pretty standard star cluster setup really).
There was 'Strange New Worlds' (ENT) which is about checking out a newly discovered planet, and discovering that local pollen causes hallucinations.
'Cause and Effect' (TNG) was about a temporal loop Enterprise ran into while exploring the Typhon Expanse.
Really, the implication that they were on a mission of exploration is usually in the 'Captain's Log' introduction. What ends up happening is just because of weird stuff they find while doing so. This was true of many episodes.
The lack of variety in what could happen while nosing around was they only thing that really kept the clusters from being STO's 'monster/enemy of the week' type content. In a very basic sense, the formula was correct. Go explore, then something unfortunate happens.
---EDIT---
Looks like the conversation got to this while I was researching. Ah well.
The exploration cluster missions were developed using a procedural generator - a kind of basic and rudimentary one. It's possible, though, to see where Cryptic could have gone with it.
A possible next step, for instance, would have been to chain the existing missions together - you might, say, set out to "aid the planet", but instead of just sending you to fetch commodities, it might ask you to "repair the planetary whatever-it-is generators". So you might set out to do that, only you need to "collect data samples" to do it... you get the picture?
The next step in development might be to have conditional branches depending on choices made in each mission segment - say, for instance, you're in one of those "base" maps, where you have to hit X number of consoles, and there is a bunch of enemies running around. Only, instead of just standing there waiting to be shot at, the enemies are actively competing against you, and if they hit X number of consoles first, they succeed, and you fail (or, at least, are shunted onto a different branch of the storyline tree). This gives you a choice of trying to race for the consoles, or actively seeking out and engaging the enemy squad....
You get the idea? There are stubs and what looks like abortive attempts at this sort of thing scattered all through the game, and rather than grubbing them up and getting rid of them, Cryptic ought to be developing them. It would make for a richer, more varied, and more [I
Star Trek[/I] game world.
Procedural map generators are nothing new. Neither, in fact, are procedural storyline generators - I was playing tabletop games in the eighties and nineties which combined plot and character elements on the fly to make up stories. Not, necessarily, good ones, I'll concede - but certainly varied, and certainly with more interest to them than "go over there and kill stuff".
My point is, this sort of thing is achievable if the development effort is committed to it. I am not asking for the moon on a stick, here. You could develop a quasi-random map and mission generator, and it would do the job of providing that sense of exploration that we're losing - and it would probably fit into the space left in the game download by the deletion of the exploration cluster missions, too.
This can be done, if Cryptic have the gumption to try it. And it would enrich the game.
Random, funny, different, unpredictable, and most important throw away....
Throw away... While waiting for 10 minutes for The big Dig queue to for what did I do, cluster random missions, they could be thrown away once the PvE was ready to start, will you do that with a 30-40 minute foundary mission or a episode.
What now we all just sit in orbit or a space dock waiting for PvE queue timers, the clusters where fillers great to keep you occupied, now I'll just get bored.
Where ever you go, there you are.......
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
Your experiences were pretty typical. Whenever I went back and visited these exploration missions, it did more, I think, to remind me that there was no actual exploration to them, thus no exploration in the game other than foundry and a few places in the story arc.
It makes perfect sense to trash this stuff, but I don't think anyone who is sad about the removal truly found them to be satisfying exploration missions. I did read somebody say that sometimes they could be a relaxing diversion, simply hunting a empty station for consoles and not finding a mob at every single one.
And that makes perfect sense to me. I'm not (and never will be) a pvp player, even the queued events sometimes I'm not in the mood for because I just want to play on my own.
I really would like for there to be some actual form of exploration, maybe that unlocks new traits, skills, races, duty officers, duty officer assignments, bridge officers, bridge officer abilities, etc. Something like that could even justify having other types of ships beyond just pure combat.
The one thing I will say is that - as someone who works with software development and has done some very light programming myself - sometimes it's a lot easier to start from scratch than to try to figure out someone else's code. I've had situations where I spent two full days trying to backtrack what someone else coded with all the dependencies, only to ultimately scrap it and spend no more than three hours building the same type of program fresh.
None of those were anywhere near as complicated as this system would have to be, so I can only imagine how hard it would be to dive through the code depending on when it was built and how many owners ago (I haven't even been playing for a year so don't know the full history). It's entirely possible that there's no one left who knows enough about how this current system works to be able to update/fix it in any reasonable amount of time.
That's not a justification or excuse for removing exploration from Star Trek, just food for thought.
I'm still trying to understand where folks got these expectations for exploration and diplomacy from in the first place...it's as if they never actually watched any of the series or movies. They're sci-fi wild west action/adventure shows/movies...
It's like folks only listened to the Space speech and neglected to pay attention to anything else that was going on.
What are some of the exploration/diplomacy episodes they enjoyed from the shows or what movies stirred up these expectations?
Movie-wise, TMP was basically 90% character development. It's not an action flick at all, it's essentially 2001: A Trek Odyssey. The primary "weapon" Kirk and the crew used was knowledge since V'Ger could have and would have obliterated the Enterprise at any moment it so desired.
The other 10% of the movie was pretty lights, beauty shots of the Refit Connie, a cameo of some Klingons, and the bald chick.
I'm against the removal of the exploration clusters for several reasons:
1) The removal of content without any revealing of plans for adequate replacements. Some of which were non combat missions which is a complete rarity in this game. So much of the content is combat based which can be unappealing to some, adding more pure puzzle/logic type content into the game would give a nice variety.
2) Loss of easily and non combat farmed data samples. Not having to shoot x amount of things to gain loot was a nice change of pace, since you could fly around the cluster and scan anomalies.
3) Loss of a specific map/instance to share duty officer missions with other players, now all players are forced to go to the same spot.
4) Cryptic's handling of the entire situation, its arrogant and condescending. "We at Cryptic believe that the exploration clusters will not fit well into a reputation based system, and that new players are some how getting upset about the download size and are unable to use the map key, so we are removing them from the game altogether"
Here is a potential solution to the problem at hand, hunt and remove the broken missions that were generated from the RNG. Move the exploration clusters all to an interact in the Gamma Orionis Sector Block (this is a ~level 50 gated instance so new players wouldn't be able to entire and get frustrated at the content). Keep the exploration clusters maps/instances separate to appease the doffers and the people who enjoy scanning the anomalies.
With that solution it removes the bugged/broken/non-sensible content from the game, effectively hides it, and gates it to a high rank, all the while keeping the existing players from getting upset with any type of removals. It is a win-win, everyone gets what they want.
I spend a good part of my time in the exploration clusters. It is my favorite part of the game. Why would you remove something people like? Please just leave them as they are for those of us that want to play that part of the game. It doesn't cost you anything to just leave them alone. If other players don't care for them they won't visit them.
when I think of randomly generated content... I tend to think of Dragon Warrior Monsters 2.
It's system for random Key worlds well, it was an actual live randomizer. Genesis is not and never was. Genesis is a dev tool that the developers used to create a bunch of missions that the game assigns to you at random. And it hasn't been used for quite awhile.
Thing is... the randomizer in DWM2 made a bunch of really screwball stuff. It might give a world a zombie theme and populate it with plants, or vice-versa, another anomaly was regions where it'd use a weird mixed up them that didn't make sense... such as putting grass inside underground hallways, and stuff like that...
Why go to random key worlds in DWM2? Well I actually ended up saving several of the keys I found either because that world looked cool, or because it had useful monsters. Like pokemon, DWM has a feature centered around acquiring monsters you fight in the wild. Some magic key worlds had monsters that were hard to find but very usefull.
But ultimately there was very little to do in them. Fight a few bosses, collect some loot, then you're done. Granted some of the loot was stuff you couldn't otherwise acquire, like Meteorbs and the high-end armor items.
Story? Um yeah, not much to be had. The only story was self contained. The basic gist of it was that each magic key gave you the ability to access a realm you couldn't reach otherwise, and was otherwise totally unconnected to the world you lived in(physically and story wise). Basically, each had an evil overlord of some sort and you had to defeat the evil overlord to do much in that realm. And that was the only story. The overlords didn't even have names.
Sure Exploration cluster missions did what they were designed for, but... that time is long gone.
In removing this content, based on what they (Cryptic) saw as an issue moving forward may have a silver lining for the fans.
Star Trek is about Exploration - even if that exploration was poorly designed and implemented, and resulted in the loss of countless players.
Maybe this will engage Cryptic to bring about a new 'exploration' feature in Season Ten - the Delta Quadrant.
And maybe crafting will make the game fun again.
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out dots on galactic maps, to boldly go to isolated map corners where no man has gone before.
It's destined to encourage players of all ages to grind.
To boldly go where no Star Trek would ever think of going before.
What the...
Kirk spent lots of time "exploring"... His ship on the other hand didn't do very much. And the few times they did exploration it involved weapons fire...
Basically he just stated that Cryptic is to lazy to fix the sandboxes. So were going to let the community do our work for us. For free by having them make foundry missions using their own free time to replace the sandboxes.
While I never agreed with Dstal, and felt he was a bit lazy with updates and new content. He had a dream of creating open areas Were no man has gone before. He hoped that the sandboxes would be expanded, and developed to give players the feeling of exploring the galaxy.
Now we have Jurassic Park dinosaurs hunts. A broken PVP system. Unfinished planets like Vulcan, Andoria, Bajor, Delfar. Remember the Karat sector at some point fix the content you have. However, don't be lazy sacks of bio fluid and just take the easy route of removal. Without some sort of replacement system.
That said, I think that the IDEA of exploration is something that really needs to be kept in STO. I HOPE that exploration will be revamped for expansion 2, and last I checked the wiki said that a full revamp was on the devs' radar.
They're not dong that. They're relegating exploration to the Foundry. As this blog clearly states. There's no exploration coming in the expansion. Just like there's no new faction coming. There is a new lockbox coming, with enterprise era content. But everytime someone mentions that it gets redacted because Smirk for some strange reason has never seen any other MMO where players datamine files.
A set of real, in-depth exploration missions
Let's be honest here. That is something far beyond their capability. They talk about quality of missions and standards of quality, but what you're asking for is a quality that this game has yet to attain in ANY of its content.
Basically he just stated that Cryptic is to lazy to fix the sandboxes. So were going to let the community do our work for us. For free by having them make foundry missions using their own free time to replace the sandboxes.
If they would actually put any effort in it ... it might actually work ... but this way nobody really cares if Foundries start in System X, (former Exploration Cluster) or any other Solar System Y ...
... I.E. one Star Cluster with Random Points where you could get Random Foundries etc ... but nope, to much effort ... better to revamp something in a 20 year grind ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
Seems a bit backwards though I understand their 1st though (clusters all "seeming" the same) so wouldnt it had been better to add more kontent inside them vs removing them ? The area to Explore is already tiny... I figure if you're going todo something like that, replace it with more sector maps/words
Though my vote is to add more sector/words AND improve the Cluster. I liked those areas oddly enough. Gave me a reason to travel via space. Da well
[Edit] Gasp! So this also removes the Diplomatic feature as well ? If anything I thought they expand on that. Non battle features that still reward. Even add the like for KDF. What a questionable move by the DEV Team.
Originally Posted by virusdancer:
What are some of the exploration/diplomacy episodes they enjoyed from the shows or what movies stirred up these expectations?
<< Just made me realize what all 1 simple area would effect. There's also an unlocked Diplomatic Mission that takes place on the ship & you have to chat w/ everyone to ease your Guest mind at some point (they needed more of those missions in Clusters) #Sad
I'm against the removal of the exploration clusters for several reasons:
1) The removal of content without any revealing of plans for adequate replacements. Some of which were non combat missions which is a complete rarity in this game. So much of the content is combat based which can be unappealing to some, adding more pure puzzle/logic type content into the game would give a nice variety.
2) Loss of easily and non combat farmed data samples. Not having to shoot x amount of things to gain loot was a nice change of pace, since you could fly around the cluster and scan anomalies.
3) Loss of a specific map/instance to share duty officer missions with other players, now all players are forced to go to the same spot.
4) Cryptic's handling of the entire situation, its arrogant and condescending. "We at Cryptic believe that the exploration clusters will not fit well into a reputation based system, and that new players are some how getting upset about the download size and are unable to use the map key, so we are removing them from the game altogether"
Here is a potential solution to the problem at hand, hunt and remove the broken missions that were generated from the RNG. Move the exploration clusters all to an interact in the Gamma Orionis Sector Block (this is a ~level 50 gated instance so new players wouldn't be able to entire and get frustrated at the content). Keep the exploration clusters maps/instances separate to appease the doffers and the people who enjoy scanning the anomalies.
With that solution it removes the bugged/broken/non-sensible content from the game, effectively hides it, and gates it to a high rank, all the while keeping the existing players from getting upset with any type of removals. It is a win-win, everyone gets what they want.
Although I do want a sense of 'exploration' in a Star Trek game, this model *was* lackluster. Cryptic has properly identified it as such and is doing something about it. Yes, there is a hole left in the total game ... but I am thinking Cryptic is working on an alternative in the long run.
For my part, it only took a few runs in these clusters to realize what was happening and it *was* a disappointment for me as a new player. The clusters were there for me to grab accolades and the oft-mentioned supplies for Crafting ... until even that well ran dry. Lately, I used them to practice new BOff abilities in space and ground as well as weapons. It was also my way to break the chain of Rep progression I get into. So that much will be lost to me on this, but it is small compared to my overall game experience.
I think their lazy goal is to not add anything & just center stuff around PvE Ques vs Free Roaming. When they stated "We'll leave it up to the ppl/Foundry to fill in the gaps" ...it doesnt say much on their part. Other then that, what game w/ any sense REMOVES kontent.. really. Cluster had more then just synthing items. I personally would have added more random generated mission... battle and Diplomatic alike for KDF and SF... seems like a better move.
Comments
If I'm holding an apple and somebody calls it an orange, yeah - I'm going to be confused. Like I said in my last post, and if you go back and look through many of the wtf moments by various sides in the discussion - folks are looking at the same thing and seeing something different.
If you have no idea how an apple or an orange looks like, yeah, you're going to be confused alright.
Thus, asking people what on Earth they're talking about...
Given the only thing resembling exploration in the game are the clusters... yeah.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the removal of the clusters. However, I do think they shouldn't be removed without adding some alternative that at least has a feel of exploration.
I only did a few of these early on (thinking I had to for the storyline mission) and gave up fast. Maybe there's more than what I experienced, but what I found was:
1. Multiple times scan points would be buried underneath a terrain object, making it virtually impossible to scan unless you could find just the right indentation to stand on.
2. The HUD couldn't seem to deal with topography.
3. The Borg have taken Seven of Nine's advice to try to elicit assimilation volunteers - now they're apparently trying to rig elections and make people want to side with them instead of the Federation.
4. The Jem'Hadar are weaker than the scorpions on Nimbus.
When I ran through those way back when, it definitely FELT like this was a left-over beta part of the game, so I can understand the desire to simply remove it instead of spending the probably significant amount of time needed to fix/correct it.
Still, without some form of exploration, it definitely feels more like any generic space shooter and not Star Trek at all. Maybe that's what they're going for, I don't know, it just feels like there needs to be something to incentivize exploration, at least on the Federation side.
A group of folks head off to explore an underground cave. They explore it, film it, take notes, map it, etc, etc, etc. They return. The end...exploration.
A group of folks head off to explore an underground cave. A typhoon comes in, trapping them underground. It becomes a fight for survival - man vs. nature. It's no longer just exploration.
A group of folks head off to explore an underground cave. They disturb a crypt of ancient vampires that start killing them off. It becomes a horror story - a fight for survival vs. evil. It's no longer just exploration.
A group of folks head off to explore an underground cave. Two of them have undisclosed feelings for each other, and during the course of the story they admit their feelings. It's a romance. It's no longer just exploration. Add in some bumbling, make one of the folks undecided, add in a second interest - you can go with a romantic comedy.
A group of folks head off to explore an underground cave. One of them believes there is buried treasure there and is intent on grabbing it for themselves. It's a thriller/adventure. It's no longer just exploration. Replace treasure with drugs, stolen money, or whatever. All sorts of stories to be told there.
The gist is...exploration is just the backdrop for the countless stories that have been told in all the episodes/movies. What episode was just...they go somewhere, they take some notes, and they move on? All the episodes included some form of conflict, action, drama...there was always more to them. Exploration was just the backdrop - the reason that they were out there so they could go on all the grand adventures - that all the various stories could be told. We didn't have 45 minutes of the crew looking at rock samples...stuff happened.
edit: It's why some folks will point to the episodes and Foundry...cause...what's happening there is what happened in Star Trek. The repetitive grind and wholesale slaughter of folks that takes place in much of the game - not so much. But hitting up episodes or hitting up the Foundry...there you go.
Your experiences were pretty typical. Whenever I went back and visited these exploration missions, it did more, I think, to remind me that there was no actual exploration to them, thus no exploration in the game other than foundry and a few places in the story arc.
It makes perfect sense to trash this stuff, but I don't think anyone who is sad about the removal truly found them to be satisfying exploration missions. I did read somebody say that sometimes they could be a relaxing diversion, simply hunting a empty station for consoles and not finding a mob at every single one.
The very first episode of STNG was an diplomatic mission with Q tagging along to wine up the crew.
The Star Trek Enterprise Strange New World was a pure exploration mission. ST-E Stigma. Vox Sola.
I get what you're saying. But without something more than staring at rocks I don't think the show would have lasted more than 1 episode. Even you just said, they always start off exploring but then something else happens. In the end, the idea was to go look at rocks, maybe hook up with some alien chick (I'm looking at you Kirk), or something along those lines. But without that 'something' else, they would never hook an audience. The idea of exploring is Star Trek. Back when I was a kid watching Kirk and crew on their adventures, if I got bored I'd flip the channel and watch Battlestar Galactica or Space 1999 if/when all I wanted was to see things blow up. Star Trek was the only one that truly felt like they had a mission back then, and that was the exploration. I'm rambling now but I hope you understand what I'm saying. Without some form of exploration, it's just not Star Trek anymore.
ETA: The Foundry. I've actually played quite a few foundry missions, and all of the spotlight missions up till a couple months ago. They're hit or miss. Some can be rated good but they're really not. Beauty in the eye of the beholder and all. And yes some are in fact really good. That even goes for spotlight missions. I don't remember which spotlight mission it was, but I played one that was just terrible, clunky, and had more than a handful of buggy things in it, that in the end I just dropped the mission in disgust. Cryptic can't just rely on the playerbase to make up for their shortcomings. They're the developer, it's up to them to make the game feel like a Star Trek game and not just some space shooter with recognizable ships.
Why is it a diplomatic mission to you? Rather than the spy mission where Picard has to explain "snooping" to Data? And enter Q, an omnipotent being suggesting all sorts of danger that the crew will face...er...diplomatic? It's trial...
There's all sorts of elements of all sorts of stories within Encounter at Farpoint - suggesting all kinds of adventures that the crew of the new Enterprise will experience. A diplomatic mission though? Why do you see it as that?
Well, there's 'The Ship' (DS9), which started out with a geological survey; and then turned into a fight over some salvage (pretty standard star cluster setup really).
There was 'Strange New Worlds' (ENT) which is about checking out a newly discovered planet, and discovering that local pollen causes hallucinations.
'Cause and Effect' (TNG) was about a temporal loop Enterprise ran into while exploring the Typhon Expanse.
Really, the implication that they were on a mission of exploration is usually in the 'Captain's Log' introduction. What ends up happening is just because of weird stuff they find while doing so. This was true of many episodes.
The lack of variety in what could happen while nosing around was they only thing that really kept the clusters from being STO's 'monster/enemy of the week' type content. In a very basic sense, the formula was correct. Go explore, then something unfortunate happens.
---EDIT---
Looks like the conversation got to this while I was researching. Ah well.
A possible next step, for instance, would have been to chain the existing missions together - you might, say, set out to "aid the planet", but instead of just sending you to fetch commodities, it might ask you to "repair the planetary whatever-it-is generators". So you might set out to do that, only you need to "collect data samples" to do it... you get the picture?
The next step in development might be to have conditional branches depending on choices made in each mission segment - say, for instance, you're in one of those "base" maps, where you have to hit X number of consoles, and there is a bunch of enemies running around. Only, instead of just standing there waiting to be shot at, the enemies are actively competing against you, and if they hit X number of consoles first, they succeed, and you fail (or, at least, are shunted onto a different branch of the storyline tree). This gives you a choice of trying to race for the consoles, or actively seeking out and engaging the enemy squad....
You get the idea? There are stubs and what looks like abortive attempts at this sort of thing scattered all through the game, and rather than grubbing them up and getting rid of them, Cryptic ought to be developing them. It would make for a richer, more varied, and more [I
Star Trek[/I] game world.
Procedural map generators are nothing new. Neither, in fact, are procedural storyline generators - I was playing tabletop games in the eighties and nineties which combined plot and character elements on the fly to make up stories. Not, necessarily, good ones, I'll concede - but certainly varied, and certainly with more interest to them than "go over there and kill stuff".
My point is, this sort of thing is achievable if the development effort is committed to it. I am not asking for the moon on a stick, here. You could develop a quasi-random map and mission generator, and it would do the job of providing that sense of exploration that we're losing - and it would probably fit into the space left in the game download by the deletion of the exploration cluster missions, too.
This can be done, if Cryptic have the gumption to try it. And it would enrich the game.
Random, funny, different, unpredictable, and most important throw away....
Throw away... While waiting for 10 minutes for The big Dig queue to for what did I do, cluster random missions, they could be thrown away once the PvE was ready to start, will you do that with a 30-40 minute foundary mission or a episode.
What now we all just sit in orbit or a space dock waiting for PvE queue timers, the clusters where fillers great to keep you occupied, now I'll just get bored.
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
And that makes perfect sense to me. I'm not (and never will be) a pvp player, even the queued events sometimes I'm not in the mood for because I just want to play on my own.
I really would like for there to be some actual form of exploration, maybe that unlocks new traits, skills, races, duty officers, duty officer assignments, bridge officers, bridge officer abilities, etc. Something like that could even justify having other types of ships beyond just pure combat.
The one thing I will say is that - as someone who works with software development and has done some very light programming myself - sometimes it's a lot easier to start from scratch than to try to figure out someone else's code. I've had situations where I spent two full days trying to backtrack what someone else coded with all the dependencies, only to ultimately scrap it and spend no more than three hours building the same type of program fresh.
None of those were anywhere near as complicated as this system would have to be, so I can only imagine how hard it would be to dive through the code depending on when it was built and how many owners ago (I haven't even been playing for a year so don't know the full history). It's entirely possible that there's no one left who knows enough about how this current system works to be able to update/fix it in any reasonable amount of time.
That's not a justification or excuse for removing exploration from Star Trek, just food for thought.
Unlike Dinosaurs with Lasers on their heads?
Laughing out loud. Cryptic considers giants dinosaurs with laser mounted on top of their heads, quality work! Really is.
By the way, some links to procedural generated worlds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bQz5ugtfLY
"Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra"
The other 10% of the movie was pretty lights, beauty shots of the Refit Connie, a cameo of some Klingons, and the bald chick.
1) The removal of content without any revealing of plans for adequate replacements. Some of which were non combat missions which is a complete rarity in this game. So much of the content is combat based which can be unappealing to some, adding more pure puzzle/logic type content into the game would give a nice variety.
2) Loss of easily and non combat farmed data samples. Not having to shoot x amount of things to gain loot was a nice change of pace, since you could fly around the cluster and scan anomalies.
3) Loss of a specific map/instance to share duty officer missions with other players, now all players are forced to go to the same spot.
4) Cryptic's handling of the entire situation, its arrogant and condescending. "We at Cryptic believe that the exploration clusters will not fit well into a reputation based system, and that new players are some how getting upset about the download size and are unable to use the map key, so we are removing them from the game altogether"
Here is a potential solution to the problem at hand, hunt and remove the broken missions that were generated from the RNG. Move the exploration clusters all to an interact in the Gamma Orionis Sector Block (this is a ~level 50 gated instance so new players wouldn't be able to entire and get frustrated at the content). Keep the exploration clusters maps/instances separate to appease the doffers and the people who enjoy scanning the anomalies.
With that solution it removes the bugged/broken/non-sensible content from the game, effectively hides it, and gates it to a high rank, all the while keeping the existing players from getting upset with any type of removals. It is a win-win, everyone gets what they want.
It's system for random Key worlds well, it was an actual live randomizer. Genesis is not and never was. Genesis is a dev tool that the developers used to create a bunch of missions that the game assigns to you at random. And it hasn't been used for quite awhile.
Thing is... the randomizer in DWM2 made a bunch of really screwball stuff. It might give a world a zombie theme and populate it with plants, or vice-versa, another anomaly was regions where it'd use a weird mixed up them that didn't make sense... such as putting grass inside underground hallways, and stuff like that...
Why go to random key worlds in DWM2? Well I actually ended up saving several of the keys I found either because that world looked cool, or because it had useful monsters. Like pokemon, DWM has a feature centered around acquiring monsters you fight in the wild. Some magic key worlds had monsters that were hard to find but very usefull.
But ultimately there was very little to do in them. Fight a few bosses, collect some loot, then you're done. Granted some of the loot was stuff you couldn't otherwise acquire, like Meteorbs and the high-end armor items.
Story? Um yeah, not much to be had. The only story was self contained. The basic gist of it was that each magic key gave you the ability to access a realm you couldn't reach otherwise, and was otherwise totally unconnected to the world you lived in(physically and story wise). Basically, each had an evil overlord of some sort and you had to defeat the evil overlord to do much in that realm. And that was the only story. The overlords didn't even have names.
Sure Exploration cluster missions did what they were designed for, but... that time is long gone.
My character Tsin'xing
To boldly go where no Star Trek would ever think of going before.
What the...
Rules of Acquisition at Priority One
Star Trek is about Exploration - even if that exploration was poorly designed and implemented, and resulted in the loss of countless players.
Maybe this will engage Cryptic to bring about a new 'exploration' feature in Season Ten - the Delta Quadrant.
And maybe crafting will make the game fun again.
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out dots on galactic maps, to boldly go to isolated map corners where no man has gone before.
It's destined to encourage players of all ages to grind.
My character Tsin'xing
While I never agreed with Dstal, and felt he was a bit lazy with updates and new content. He had a dream of creating open areas Were no man has gone before. He hoped that the sandboxes would be expanded, and developed to give players the feeling of exploring the galaxy.
Now we have Jurassic Park dinosaurs hunts. A broken PVP system. Unfinished planets like Vulcan, Andoria, Bajor, Delfar. Remember the Karat sector at some point fix the content you have. However, don't be lazy sacks of bio fluid and just take the easy route of removal. Without some sort of replacement system.
They're not dong that. They're relegating exploration to the Foundry. As this blog clearly states. There's no exploration coming in the expansion. Just like there's no new faction coming. There is a new lockbox coming, with enterprise era content. But everytime someone mentions that it gets redacted because Smirk for some strange reason has never seen any other MMO where players datamine files.
Let's be honest here. That is something far beyond their capability. They talk about quality of missions and standards of quality, but what you're asking for is a quality that this game has yet to attain in ANY of its content.
The Big Goodbye specifically states they're on a diplomatic mission and you see it all take place in the sub plot and the ending of the episode.
It's a wonderful example of how diplomacy missions in STO could reflect the show quite well as it was a sub plot.
For an exploration mission, the Last Outpost is a decent example that quickly springs to mind.
If they would actually put any effort in it ... it might actually work ... but this way nobody really cares if Foundries start in System X, (former Exploration Cluster) or any other Solar System Y ...
... I.E. one Star Cluster with Random Points where you could get Random Foundries etc ... but nope, to much effort ... better to revamp something in a 20 year grind ...
Though my vote is to add more sector/words AND improve the Cluster. I liked those areas oddly enough. Gave me a reason to travel via space. Da well
[Edit] Gasp! So this also removes the Diplomatic feature as well ? If anything I thought they expand on that. Non battle features that still reward. Even add the like for KDF. What a questionable move by the DEV Team. << Just made me realize what all 1 simple area would effect. There's also an unlocked Diplomatic Mission that takes place on the ship & you have to chat w/ everyone to ease your Guest mind at some point (they needed more of those missions in Clusters) #Sad
>>I agree w/ this.
I think their lazy goal is to not add anything & just center stuff around PvE Ques vs Free Roaming. When they stated "We'll leave it up to the ppl/Foundry to fill in the gaps" ...it doesnt say much on their part. Other then that, what game w/ any sense REMOVES kontent.. really. Cluster had more then just synthing items. I personally would have added more random generated mission... battle and Diplomatic alike for KDF and SF... seems like a better move.