Hmm... What's not "up to the quality of current content" about exploration?
Let's do a comparison...
Current content:
Spacebar spam
Piloting
"F" spam
Exploration:
Pressing of various buttons depending upon the mission.
"F" spam
Walking/piloting
Aiming (if anyone does this at all)
in rare cases minigames
Wait a sec... Exploration has 2 more criteria than current content... So that's why it's not up to current standards it takes a more thinking...
By that logic, the next thing in line has got to be pvp.
I used to do those missions often. But even myself quit due to a few things. Main part was the rewards was too low. Where I can get more dil and exp from other stuff far quicker. Next going around and around in circles to collect crafting stuff. When the current crafting wasn't even worth to do other than kits. Which was my source for them. Lastly the missions was buggy. Many times I couldn't finish them due to my characters would disappear, get stuck, other stuff disappear or parts of map wouldn't load.
Yes I will miss some of those missions to see why a station got abandoned, protecting a planet, making a supply run, or scanning for anomalies. But in a way I won't due to glitches and lack of rewards.
Now on to the main question. Its hard telling since other areas needs to be worked on.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
It's that simple. Since they've decided shrinking the game is acceptable as long as it raises the "average quality," what's the next most execrable, screwed-up thing in the game that they can boost overall quality by removing? PvP? Ground combat? Queued content that rarely fills?
Let's help'em out here by showing them what needs to go next until they've got extremely high quality in the 4 remaining missions that constitute the entire game!
pvp is prehistoric, somehow its always slipped into a crack in the ground without the devs noticing, and the pvp has become good at hiding from the dev attention. the devs have to stop doing that and do something about it at some point, now clearly their attention is focused on finishing off the expansion for later in the year, but if they are planning on lifting the game upto a more higher average, pvp will either have to go, or be rebuilt from the ground up and frankly the pvp community wouldnt want pvp removed but thats a 2 edged sword as it is because if pvp remains , what exactly will be done to make it a better thing to play. this also means ker'rat is a larger question mark.
i always knew that this queue system would never work and these cut in half stf's...
Borg STFs. They're old. Monotonous. And not up to the standard of quality that has gone into the more current STFs like Voth Battlezone and Undine stuff.
... the old stfs were better, back in the day the sub service only brought in a small group of players, with f2p things have changed, there are far more people and the queue system needs to be reevaluated for its potential now. with the more players, communication on f2p has become more a an annoyance then something that you need in a team, thats backwards. would you drive a racing car backwards without mirrors at 75mph and hope you dont hit anything on the way? of course not. teamwork requires communication, so if and when the queue system is dropped the old stfs come back, hopefully the community can get around to doing more the attacking each other and using that overly exploited ignore feature.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
They're getting rid of an entire swath of content and one of the reasons they gave was that people got lost and confused in these basic maps.
Teamwork? Communication? These concepts do not fall within their development protocols. Hence why the STFs got that first set of changes. Do you really think they plan on making things more challenging? Or more grind-oriented?
so if and when the queue system is dropped the old stfs come back, hopefully the community can get around to doing more the attacking each other and using that overly exploited ignore feature.
I haven't used the ignore button in so very very long. It's probably another thing they could get rid of, to save on DL-time.
Hmm... What's not "up to the quality of current content" about exploration?
Let's do a comparison...
Current content:
Spacebar spam
Piloting
"F" spam
Exploration:
Pressing of various buttons depending upon the mission.
"F" spam
Walking/piloting
Aiming (if anyone does this at all)
in rare cases minigames
Wait a sec... Exploration has 2 more criteria than current content... So that's why it's not up to current standards it takes a more thinking...
By that logic, the next thing in line has got to be pvp.
You have a strange way of counting. "Pressing of various buttons depending upon the mission" is F, because there are no other buttons to interact with the environment (outside the buttons for fighting.)
Aiming is a ground only thing - and is available in all current ground content, too.
The only mini-games exploration content uses is the standard anomaly detection stuff. Newer content also had other types of mini-games (that "align these items" thing, the "drill control", the radiation scan puzzle.). And sometimes riddles.
What new content doesn't have is NPCs on some buildings outside of weapon ranges, Borg looking for artefacts of their 3rd Dynasty, BOs falling through the ground.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
What new content doesn't have is NPCs on some buildings outside of weapon ranges, Borg looking for artefacts of their 3rd Dynasty, BOs falling through the ground.
The thing is, that is not really the point. Nobody says the random missions are perfect, the system is obviously flawed. But Cryptic proclaiming they improve the game by removing ths since-launch feature which doesn't work is simply hypocrite. Whose fault is the state of the cluster missions? They never got around to improve them. Now they rip them out but (personal opinion:) because it wouldn't tie in with their current grind plans (crafting). The exploration could have been improved, but it has been completely neglected and now they remove the only thing we have remotely resembling "explring strang new worlds" and instead alter the dilithium game on current grinds to compensate for the dailies. What is that supposed to mean? Bringin ESTFs back to 1000 dilithium, so we have a reason to play the same four maps we play for three years already even more? Yeah, I see how that will greatly increase the game's quality
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
"For those who will miss the opportunity to explore these particular locations, we will be adding doors to the Foundry so that player-created missions can make use of these settings. The limitless nature of the potential missions that can be created using the Foundry as well as the high quality of content that Foundry authors continue to deliver are both exactly in line with the original goals of Exploration Clusters.
While we are removing part of the game,........"
Cryptic double standards are in full flow again.
*Please foundry authors, make free content for us.... oh you want some foundry support, we don't have time for that... :rolleyes:
Unless you know which mission is linked to the door, nothing is gonna happen if you pass by that sector, so it's not like all of a sudden those areas are going to be full of player made missions that you can just click to your hearts content to explore.
This. Not seeing how random foundry missions will just pop up as you fly through the galaxy??
It isn't exploration if you choose the mission from the journal beforehand.... :rolleyes:
I find it hilarious the amount of people now white knighting for Explorations clusters, which were probably one of the most complained about things that wasn't the KDF, for the first year this game existed.
No more hilarious than the number of trolls coming out from under every bridge to ignore the real issue. :rolleyes:
What new content doesn't have is NPCs on some buildings outside of weapon ranges, Borg looking for artefacts of their 3rd Dynasty, BOs falling through the ground.
Don't fret, they're replacing "Exploration Cluster Missions" with Foundry Missions, and I've had plenty of BOffs fall through the ground in those. "Flashbacks to the good ol' days?"
The thing is, that is not really the point. Nobody says the random missions are perfect, the system is obviously flawed. But Cryptic proclaiming they improve the game by removing ths since-launch feature which doesn't work is simply hypocrite. Whose fault is the state of the cluster missions? They never got around to improve them. Now they rip them out but (personal opinion:) because it wouldn't tie in with their current grind plans (crafting). The exploration could have been improved, but it has been completely neglected and now they remove the only thing we have remotely resembling "explring strang new worlds" and instead alter the dilithium game on current grinds to compensate for the dailies. What is that supposed to mean? Bringin ESTFs back to 1000 dilithium, so we have a reason to play the same four maps we play for three years already even more? Yeah, I see how that will greatly increase the game's quality
Do you understand why they never got around to improve them?
By some estimates, the mission count is what - 3000 to 4000? Each mission consists of at least one map that is directly important and needed to be looked at.
Let's look at their map productivity in Season 9:
In Season 9, what did they add to the game:
- Undine Space Zone (one map)
- 3 mission revamps (roughly 3 maps each)
- 2 Undine Space Missions (1 map)
- 1 Undine Ground Mission (1 map)
- 1 New featured episode (4 maps)
- 1 Earth Space Dock revamp ( 1 map)
Let's be generous and say this have been worth 100 revamped exploration maps. That would still require them 30 to 40 seasons spending all their effort just to fix all those exploration missions.
Imagine for the next 10 to 40 years, Cryptic is doing nothing but revamping exploration missions. Maybe they could give us a new reputation each year and new ships and lockboxes (since I assume most of this type of content creation is not related to space maps) - but no more story advancement in this time, because the map designers and writers are busy fixing exploration missions.
And when would you actually start to see a notable impact - after a year, 20-40 exploration missions up to current standards. Say 15 %. So every time you do an exploration cluster mission, you have a 15 % chance to find a new, improved map.
Do you consider that a useful use of their resources?
Just in case you were wondering - no, I don't.
I think it would be a good use of their resources to create a new Genesis system that produces better results than the old one. I think that's not entirely infeasible. (But I am not sure how well such a system can avoid BOFFs falling through floors, if they old one couldn't. But I think one can devise a system where the Borg won't suddenly create a 3rd Dynasty or where plants don't look like stones.)
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I think it would be a good use of their resources to create a new Genesis system that produces better results than the old one. I think that's not entirely infeasible. (But I am not sure how well such a system can avoid BOFFs falling through floors, if they old one couldn't. But I think one can devise a system where the Borg won't suddenly create a 3rd Dynasty or where plants don't look like stones.)
That is actually what I'm taling about. The Genesis ssystem randomly generated missions from a set of variables. Fine tuning this system, add more variables, mission times and whatnot and add rewards to it would greatly improve the game. But I'm one of those gamers that likes a good roguelike experience instead of scripted story missions, but that's personal bias as I don't consider the story of STO a good or even consistent one.
The Genesis system is a launch feautre and was a main selling point of the game, because it catered to the original headline of the franchise.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
They're getting rid of an entire swath of content and one of the reasons they gave was that people got lost and confused in these basic maps.
Teamwork? Communication? These concepts do not fall within their development protocols. Hence why the STFs got that first set of changes. Do you really think they plan on making things more challenging? Or more grind-oriented?
I haven't used the ignore button in so very very long. It's probably another thing they could get rid of, to save on DL-time.
yes, back in the day with the old stfs, you had to work with your new teammates, work out a plan of actions to conquer KA space first part, sometimes invited to teamspeak to listen in on plans and what not.
its too bad they are not cutting the grass with a lawnmower huh? they are using a cultivator instead, and making a pigs ear of it! its likely to be the latter out of the two choices unfortunately, challenging doesnt even factor into it.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
That is actually what I'm taling about. The Genesis ssystem randomly generated missions from a set of variables. Fine tuning this system, add more variables, mission times and whatnot and add rewards to it would greatly improve the game. But I'm one of those gamers that likes a good roguelike experience instead of scripted story missions, but that's personal bias as I don't consider the story of STO a good or even consistent one.
The Genesis system is a launch feautre and was a main selling point of the game, because it catered to the original headline of the franchise.
I still have the hope that Expansion 2 will have something about this. But... I must admit, the hope is getting slimmer day by day. If it is, whoever required the NDA is really serious about it and doesn't feel like providing some hints to quell some forum anger. Of course, one could argue that it's not really needed, if that was expansion 2.
It's not like I don't want exploration content, and I think that can only be achieved with an automated / procedural content generation system.
I could see that with the Foundry in place, auto-generated content may allow different things than before. As I understand it, individual Foundry missions are not part of the install of the game itself, but can be delivered on demand. When exploration missions were created, there was no on-demand patching and the Foundry and its special content delivery system obviously didn't exist either.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I still have the hope that Expansion 2 will have something about this. But... I must admit, the hope is getting slimmer day by day. If it is, whoever required the NDA is really serious about it and doesn't feel like providing some hints to quell some forum anger. Of course, one could argue that it's not really needed, if that was expansion 2.
It's not like I don't want exploration content, and I think that can only be achieved with an automated / procedural content generation system.
I could see that with the Foundry in place, auto-generated content may allow different things than before. As I understand it, individual Foundry missions are not part of the install of the game itself, but can be delivered on demand. When exploration missions were created, there was no on-demand patching and the Foundry and its special content delivery system obviously didn't exist either.
Honestly, since one of their excuses (and sorry, it's nothing more than that) was that the game is too large in size and newbies are confused because of that and don't DL the game, it makes me wonder if we will see new content *at all* from this time onward
I don't know if on-demand downloading Genesis content would work, but in my opinion the game needs this feature. Randomly generated content, even with a few oddities here and there, make a solid game virtually immortal. To this day my most favourite games feature next to no story but lots of "exploring" and learning to play a different game each time you press the "new game" button.
Cryptic has their priorities all wrong in my opinion. And telling the playrbase to make their own content for them is a very cheap move that doesn't sit well with me, unfortunately
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
What new content doesn't have is NPCs on some buildings outside of weapon ranges, Borg looking for artefacts of their 3rd Dynasty, BOs falling through the ground.
The new Undine Assault launched with a bug where you could get stuck in the base on respawn.
Which is the space map version of falling through the ground.
By some estimates, the mission count is what - 3000 to 4000? Each mission consists of at least one map that is directly important and needed to be looked at.
Other estimates claim there's only 5 missions. I'm an old player and I'm too confused to know which to believe.
Other estimates claim there's only 5 missions. I'm an old player and I'm too confused to know which to believe.
Spend an hour playing those clusters and you'll find every mission, but not every flavor. Imagine if there are 1000 subtle varieties of 5 flavors of gum. They all taste bad, but the wrappers look different.
out of all this exploration business what i would miss are the unique races that sto had in the alien category. a few of which i will miss from the roster but only seen on nimbus III hessan's bar. i really hope these sto races make a come back, a number of them really look unique and outside some of the sliders i could ever get near.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Honestly, since one of their excuses (and sorry, it's nothing more than that) was that the game is too large in size and newbies are confused because of that and don't DL the game, it makes me wonder if we will see new content *at all* from this time onward
I don't know if on-demand downloading Genesis content would work, but in my opinion the game needs this feature. Randomly generated content, even with a few oddities here and there, make a solid game virtually immortal. To this day my most favourite games feature next to no story but lots of "exploring" and learning to play a different game each time you press the "new game" button.
Cryptic has their priorities all wrong in my opinion. And telling the playrbase to make their own content for them is a very cheap move that doesn't sit well with me, unfortunately
(Pretending you like coffee) Well, you wouldn't buy a cup of coffee for 1,000 US $, but you don't say no to one for 2 $.
Things must be worth their price. In this context - their price in storage space.
The new Undine Assault launched with a bug where you could get stuck in the base on respawn.
Which is the space map version of falling through the ground.
Standards yo! HIGH standards of quality!
And, does it still have that bug? How many variations of the Undine Assault missions did the devs have to look through to find that mission?
Other estimates claim there's only 5 missions. I'm an old player and I'm too confused to know which to believe.
There is a difference between number of mission templates and variables, and actual missions. When you played one "Scan 5 wrecks to identify attacker" mission, the 20 variations that exist of that mission don't really matter any more. But each variation is still its own mission, and each would need its own bugfix. Even if all have the same bug. Or its own writer going through the text and making it sensible. (Imagine having to go through all those scan-wreck missions and change the text so that the culprit you identify at the end has a unique matching weapon signature description, so that not one day anti-proton residues point clearly to Klingon Disruptors and the next time to Widrab disruptors. It would be easier, if the naming system for these mission made sense, but as tacofangs explained, they don't.)
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
And, does it still have that bug? How many variations of the Undine Assault missions did the devs have to look through to find that mission?
I honestly don't know. I haven't played it since I got stuck. I moved on to the much less confusing ground mission with its lower challenge but higher standards of quality. And recycled ground map.
Oh and if I really wanted marks, I'd do the battlezone, with its recycled space map.
Ack I just remembered another bug that their high quality launched with ...
The Undine set comes with a set bonus that is supposed to affect the bobbing you experience in fluidic space.
But that doesn't work.
I haven't done Viscous in awhile, has that been fixed yet?
Or you know, have the devs been too busy removing content to bother with fixing bugs for expensive reputation items that people ground for?
There is no bugfixing in STO. If content doesn't fit the high quality standards it gets removed and new content gets developed. Different content, mind you, they're not replacing. It's a one shot.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Do you understand why they never got around to improve them?
By some estimates, the mission count is what - 3000 to 4000? Each mission consists of at least one map that is directly important and needed to be looked at.
Let's look at their map productivity in Season 9:
In Season 9, what did they add to the game:
- Undine Space Zone (one map)
- 3 mission revamps (roughly 3 maps each)
- 2 Undine Space Missions (1 map)
- 1 Undine Ground Mission (1 map)
- 1 New featured episode (4 maps)
- 1 Earth Space Dock revamp ( 1 map)
Let's be generous and say this have been worth 100 revamped exploration maps. That would still require them 30 to 40 seasons spending all their effort just to fix all those exploration missions.
Imagine for the next 10 to 40 years, Cryptic is doing nothing but revamping exploration missions. Maybe they could give us a new reputation each year and new ships and lockboxes (since I assume most of this type of content creation is not related to space maps) - but no more story advancement in this time, because the map designers and writers are busy fixing exploration missions.
And when would you actually start to see a notable impact - after a year, 20-40 exploration missions up to current standards. Say 15 %. So every time you do an exploration cluster mission, you have a 15 % chance to find a new, improved map.
Do you consider that a useful use of their resources?
Just in case you were wondering - no, I don't.
I think it would be a good use of their resources to create a new Genesis system that produces better results than the old one. I think that's not entirely infeasible. (But I am not sure how well such a system can avoid BOFFs falling through floors, if they old one couldn't. But I think one can devise a system where the Borg won't suddenly create a 3rd Dynasty or where plants don't look like stones.)
But they are generated procedurally so all they have to do is improve the genesis engine get it to spit out some new missions. vet them and then use those new missions to slowly replace the current 3 or 4 thousand missions currently in the same, once they have enough of the new missions they can remove the old ones. I consider building new exploration missions and a new updated genesis engine better use of resources than a new crafting system that I will be 6 months from now will be use by no one.
Ack I just remembered another bug that their high quality launched with ...
The Undine set comes with a set bonus that is supposed to affect the bobbing you experience in fluidic space.
But that doesn't work.
I haven't done Viscous in awhile, has that been fixed yet?
Or you know, have the devs been too busy removing content to bother with fixing bugs for expensive reputation items that people ground for?
That set bonus has been fixed last time I checked. The problem is that Cryptic's bug priorities are different from our bug priorities or what we assume is a simple bug fix is actually extremely complicated.
I think the player base which is upset with this move should commit to officially boycotting the new crafting system. This means:
1. Don't do crafting
2. Don't farm mats for the crafters
3. Don't buy crafted goods on the exchange
4. Don't spend zen or buy dilithium
Let's send them a message they will understand and actually heed. They should understand that limiting choice and game play and turning everything into an Oriental Grind Fest (TM) is not what we want.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
But they are generated procedurally so all they have to do is improve the genesis engine get it to spit out some new missions. vet them and then use those new missions to slowly replace the current 3 or 4 thousand missions currently in the same, once they have enough of the new missions they can remove the old ones. I consider building new exploration missions and a new updated genesis engine better use of resources than a new crafting system that I will be 6 months from now will be use by no one.
But they were all created once with the engine as it was then, and that engine created the bugs. Retroactively trying to find out why the engine created certain bugs will be very difficult. And the story problems requires a serious extension of the Genesis engine.
I figure they could do that. I actually hope they will do that. But that still means the old exploration missions are dead. No one can fix them any more.
And there is no "either/or" with the Crafting System. Its not exploration vs Crafting. They don't need to remove the exploration sectors because they need to remove it for a a new crafting system. The new crafting system is why they believe they can afford removing the exploration sectors - the crafting materials will work differently. It is not standing in the way of a new exploration system - the old crafting system was standing in the way of removing the old exploration system.
I am not sure if am happy about the new crafting system, but I think the talk about the kind of special modifiers and special gear it will grant, plus the traits - I don't think it will be dead in 6 months. Maybe people will complain about Dilithium cost, crafting times, randomization, what not. But the big deal is - Mark XII items, special modifiers. That will keep the system alive until the time where they introduce new item levels and rarity levels and omit to add them to the new crafting system.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I still want to know what you guys were exploiting in those exploration clusters.
The wailing and gnashing of teeth is disproportional to what is should be.
It's where the secret high-difficulty content was hidden, to prevent the wailing and gnashing of teeth caused when ultra-casual spacebar-mashers thought they might have to actually learn to play.
But they were all created once with the engine as it was then, and that engine created the bugs. Retroactively trying to find out why the engine created certain bugs will be very difficult. And the story problems requires a serious extension of the Genesis engine.
I figure they could do that. I actually hope they will do that. But that still means the old exploration missions are dead. No one can fix them any more.
And there is no "either/or" with the Crafting System. Its not exploration vs Crafting. They don't need to remove the exploration sectors because they need to remove it for a a new crafting system. The new crafting system is why they believe they can afford removing the exploration sectors - the crafting materials will work differently. It is not standing in the way of a new exploration system - the old crafting system was standing in the way of removing the old exploration system.
I am not sure if am happy about the new crafting system, but I think the talk about the kind of special modifiers and special gear it will grant, plus the traits - I don't think it will be dead in 6 months. Maybe people will complain about Dilithium cost, crafting times, randomization, what not. But the big deal is - Mark XII items, special modifiers. That will keep the system alive until the time where they introduce new item levels and rarity levels and omit to add them to the new crafting system.
They are spending developer time on the crafting system, time they could spending developer time on sorting out the genesis engine and expanding its capabilities. They have always moan about the lack of resources, how small their team is, but then they can apparently spend months of work on something no one was demanding and something which has already receive numerous revamps in the past already.
They are spending developer time on the crafting system, time they could spending developer time on sorting out the genesis engine and expanding its capabilities. They have always moan about the lack of resources, how small their team is, but then they can apparently spend months of work on something no one was demanding and something which has already receive numerous revamps in the past already.
So you are just saying you rather have a better exploration mission than a better crafting system.
hat's okay, but it's just a personal preference - the Devs can't do wrong or right in that regard - they can just pick one and do it. You know what they picked.
Though I believe the two systems are not the same. The Crafting system doesn't seem to need map designers, for example - it's all about systems and UI. Maybe Expansion 2 requires a lot of map and character art (tacofangs mentioned that he's busy with that), but less systems and UI, it could very well be that this is why they picked Crafting now.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Comments
Let's do a comparison...
Current content:
Spacebar spam
Piloting
"F" spam
Exploration:
Pressing of various buttons depending upon the mission.
"F" spam
Walking/piloting
Aiming (if anyone does this at all)
in rare cases minigames
Wait a sec... Exploration has 2 more criteria than current content... So that's why it's not up to current standards it takes a more thinking...
By that logic, the next thing in line has got to be pvp.
Yes I will miss some of those missions to see why a station got abandoned, protecting a planet, making a supply run, or scanning for anomalies. But in a way I won't due to glitches and lack of rewards.
Now on to the main question. Its hard telling since other areas needs to be worked on.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
pvp is prehistoric, somehow its always slipped into a crack in the ground without the devs noticing, and the pvp has become good at hiding from the dev attention. the devs have to stop doing that and do something about it at some point, now clearly their attention is focused on finishing off the expansion for later in the year, but if they are planning on lifting the game upto a more higher average, pvp will either have to go, or be rebuilt from the ground up and frankly the pvp community wouldnt want pvp removed but thats a 2 edged sword as it is because if pvp remains , what exactly will be done to make it a better thing to play. this also means ker'rat is a larger question mark.
i always knew that this queue system would never work and these cut in half stf's...
... the old stfs were better, back in the day the sub service only brought in a small group of players, with f2p things have changed, there are far more people and the queue system needs to be reevaluated for its potential now. with the more players, communication on f2p has become more a an annoyance then something that you need in a team, thats backwards. would you drive a racing car backwards without mirrors at 75mph and hope you dont hit anything on the way? of course not. teamwork requires communication, so if and when the queue system is dropped the old stfs come back, hopefully the community can get around to doing more the attacking each other and using that overly exploited ignore feature.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
They're getting rid of an entire swath of content and one of the reasons they gave was that people got lost and confused in these basic maps.
Teamwork? Communication? These concepts do not fall within their development protocols. Hence why the STFs got that first set of changes. Do you really think they plan on making things more challenging? Or more grind-oriented?
I haven't used the ignore button in so very very long. It's probably another thing they could get rid of, to save on DL-time.
Aiming is a ground only thing - and is available in all current ground content, too.
The only mini-games exploration content uses is the standard anomaly detection stuff. Newer content also had other types of mini-games (that "align these items" thing, the "drill control", the radiation scan puzzle.). And sometimes riddles.
What new content doesn't have is NPCs on some buildings outside of weapon ranges, Borg looking for artefacts of their 3rd Dynasty, BOs falling through the ground.
The thing is, that is not really the point. Nobody says the random missions are perfect, the system is obviously flawed. But Cryptic proclaiming they improve the game by removing ths since-launch feature which doesn't work is simply hypocrite. Whose fault is the state of the cluster missions? They never got around to improve them. Now they rip them out but (personal opinion:) because it wouldn't tie in with their current grind plans (crafting). The exploration could have been improved, but it has been completely neglected and now they remove the only thing we have remotely resembling "explring strang new worlds" and instead alter the dilithium game on current grinds to compensate for the dailies. What is that supposed to mean? Bringin ESTFs back to 1000 dilithium, so we have a reason to play the same four maps we play for three years already even more? Yeah, I see how that will greatly increase the game's quality
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Cryptic double standards are in full flow again.
*Please foundry authors, make free content for us.... oh you want some foundry support, we don't have time for that... :rolleyes:
Yes, apparently those lockboxes require the whole team to work on them..
This. Not seeing how random foundry missions will just pop up as you fly through the galaxy??
It isn't exploration if you choose the mission from the journal beforehand.... :rolleyes:
Hope the mission isn't removed "to improve the average quality of the game" before the 10 minutes is up? :P
No more hilarious than the number of trolls coming out from under every bridge to ignore the real issue. :rolleyes:
Don't fret, they're replacing "Exploration Cluster Missions" with Foundry Missions, and I've had plenty of BOffs fall through the ground in those. "Flashbacks to the good ol' days?"
Do you understand why they never got around to improve them?
By some estimates, the mission count is what - 3000 to 4000? Each mission consists of at least one map that is directly important and needed to be looked at.
Let's look at their map productivity in Season 9:
In Season 9, what did they add to the game:
- Undine Space Zone (one map)
- 3 mission revamps (roughly 3 maps each)
- 2 Undine Space Missions (1 map)
- 1 Undine Ground Mission (1 map)
- 1 New featured episode (4 maps)
- 1 Earth Space Dock revamp ( 1 map)
Let's be generous and say this have been worth 100 revamped exploration maps. That would still require them 30 to 40 seasons spending all their effort just to fix all those exploration missions.
Imagine for the next 10 to 40 years, Cryptic is doing nothing but revamping exploration missions. Maybe they could give us a new reputation each year and new ships and lockboxes (since I assume most of this type of content creation is not related to space maps) - but no more story advancement in this time, because the map designers and writers are busy fixing exploration missions.
And when would you actually start to see a notable impact - after a year, 20-40 exploration missions up to current standards. Say 15 %. So every time you do an exploration cluster mission, you have a 15 % chance to find a new, improved map.
Do you consider that a useful use of their resources?
Just in case you were wondering - no, I don't.
I think it would be a good use of their resources to create a new Genesis system that produces better results than the old one. I think that's not entirely infeasible. (But I am not sure how well such a system can avoid BOFFs falling through floors, if they old one couldn't. But I think one can devise a system where the Borg won't suddenly create a 3rd Dynasty or where plants don't look like stones.)
That is actually what I'm taling about. The Genesis ssystem randomly generated missions from a set of variables. Fine tuning this system, add more variables, mission times and whatnot and add rewards to it would greatly improve the game. But I'm one of those gamers that likes a good roguelike experience instead of scripted story missions, but that's personal bias as I don't consider the story of STO a good or even consistent one.
The Genesis system is a launch feautre and was a main selling point of the game, because it catered to the original headline of the franchise.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
yes, back in the day with the old stfs, you had to work with your new teammates, work out a plan of actions to conquer KA space first part, sometimes invited to teamspeak to listen in on plans and what not.
its too bad they are not cutting the grass with a lawnmower huh? they are using a cultivator instead, and making a pigs ear of it! its likely to be the latter out of the two choices unfortunately, challenging doesnt even factor into it.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I still have the hope that Expansion 2 will have something about this. But... I must admit, the hope is getting slimmer day by day. If it is, whoever required the NDA is really serious about it and doesn't feel like providing some hints to quell some forum anger. Of course, one could argue that it's not really needed, if that was expansion 2.
It's not like I don't want exploration content, and I think that can only be achieved with an automated / procedural content generation system.
I could see that with the Foundry in place, auto-generated content may allow different things than before. As I understand it, individual Foundry missions are not part of the install of the game itself, but can be delivered on demand. When exploration missions were created, there was no on-demand patching and the Foundry and its special content delivery system obviously didn't exist either.
Honestly, since one of their excuses (and sorry, it's nothing more than that) was that the game is too large in size and newbies are confused because of that and don't DL the game, it makes me wonder if we will see new content *at all* from this time onward
I don't know if on-demand downloading Genesis content would work, but in my opinion the game needs this feature. Randomly generated content, even with a few oddities here and there, make a solid game virtually immortal. To this day my most favourite games feature next to no story but lots of "exploring" and learning to play a different game each time you press the "new game" button.
Cryptic has their priorities all wrong in my opinion. And telling the playrbase to make their own content for them is a very cheap move that doesn't sit well with me, unfortunately
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
The new Undine Assault launched with a bug where you could get stuck in the base on respawn.
Which is the space map version of falling through the ground.
Standards yo! HIGH standards of quality!
Other estimates claim there's only 5 missions. I'm an old player and I'm too confused to know which to believe.
Spend an hour playing those clusters and you'll find every mission, but not every flavor. Imagine if there are 1000 subtle varieties of 5 flavors of gum. They all taste bad, but the wrappers look different.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Things must be worth their price. In this context - their price in storage space.
And, does it still have that bug? How many variations of the Undine Assault missions did the devs have to look through to find that mission?
There is a difference between number of mission templates and variables, and actual missions. When you played one "Scan 5 wrecks to identify attacker" mission, the 20 variations that exist of that mission don't really matter any more. But each variation is still its own mission, and each would need its own bugfix. Even if all have the same bug. Or its own writer going through the text and making it sensible. (Imagine having to go through all those scan-wreck missions and change the text so that the culprit you identify at the end has a unique matching weapon signature description, so that not one day anti-proton residues point clearly to Klingon Disruptors and the next time to Widrab disruptors. It would be easier, if the naming system for these mission made sense, but as tacofangs explained, they don't.)
I honestly don't know. I haven't played it since I got stuck. I moved on to the much less confusing ground mission with its lower challenge but higher standards of quality. And recycled ground map.
Oh and if I really wanted marks, I'd do the battlezone, with its recycled space map.
The Undine set comes with a set bonus that is supposed to affect the bobbing you experience in fluidic space.
But that doesn't work.
I haven't done Viscous in awhile, has that been fixed yet?
Or you know, have the devs been too busy removing content to bother with fixing bugs for expensive reputation items that people ground for?
There is no bugfixing in STO. If content doesn't fit the high quality standards it gets removed and new content gets developed. Different content, mind you, they're not replacing. It's a one shot.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
But they are generated procedurally so all they have to do is improve the genesis engine get it to spit out some new missions. vet them and then use those new missions to slowly replace the current 3 or 4 thousand missions currently in the same, once they have enough of the new missions they can remove the old ones. I consider building new exploration missions and a new updated genesis engine better use of resources than a new crafting system that I will be 6 months from now will be use by no one.
That set bonus has been fixed last time I checked. The problem is that Cryptic's bug priorities are different from our bug priorities or what we assume is a simple bug fix is actually extremely complicated.
Yes there is. They're doing some massive bugfixing on all those "Exploration" Cluster missions.
Oh...you meant actually fixing, not "amputating the foot to avoid having to do anything about that hangnail."
1. Don't do crafting
2. Don't farm mats for the crafters
3. Don't buy crafted goods on the exchange
4. Don't spend zen or buy dilithium
Let's send them a message they will understand and actually heed. They should understand that limiting choice and game play and turning everything into an Oriental Grind Fest (TM) is not what we want.
- Judge Aaron Satie
I figure they could do that. I actually hope they will do that. But that still means the old exploration missions are dead. No one can fix them any more.
And there is no "either/or" with the Crafting System. Its not exploration vs Crafting. They don't need to remove the exploration sectors because they need to remove it for a a new crafting system. The new crafting system is why they believe they can afford removing the exploration sectors - the crafting materials will work differently. It is not standing in the way of a new exploration system - the old crafting system was standing in the way of removing the old exploration system.
I am not sure if am happy about the new crafting system, but I think the talk about the kind of special modifiers and special gear it will grant, plus the traits - I don't think it will be dead in 6 months. Maybe people will complain about Dilithium cost, crafting times, randomization, what not. But the big deal is - Mark XII items, special modifiers. That will keep the system alive until the time where they introduce new item levels and rarity levels and omit to add them to the new crafting system.
The wailing and gnashing of teeth is disproportional to what is should be.
It's where the secret high-difficulty content was hidden, to prevent the wailing and gnashing of teeth caused when ultra-casual spacebar-mashers thought they might have to actually learn to play.
They are spending developer time on the crafting system, time they could spending developer time on sorting out the genesis engine and expanding its capabilities. They have always moan about the lack of resources, how small their team is, but then they can apparently spend months of work on something no one was demanding and something which has already receive numerous revamps in the past already.
hat's okay, but it's just a personal preference - the Devs can't do wrong or right in that regard - they can just pick one and do it. You know what they picked.
Though I believe the two systems are not the same. The Crafting system doesn't seem to need map designers, for example - it's all about systems and UI. Maybe Expansion 2 requires a lot of map and character art (tacofangs mentioned that he's busy with that), but less systems and UI, it could very well be that this is why they picked Crafting now.