I have played STO for a while, but never "played" it. I have watched it from almost the start. It just wasn't enough to pull me away from WoW.
Now that they have nerfed WoW so much a 2 yr old can play it, it is no longer fun. Back when it was a "game" it was fun and well..... blizzard is just the KING of RPG starting with diablo. They just have it and know how to do it... untill...... they slowly nerfed and nerfed it to where you get 1 skill choice every 10 levels or so and choose between 3 skills.
STO has "expanded" the experience, not contracted it like blizzard did. I gave Blizzard my $15/month since the "vanilla days" all the way to the last expansion.
WIth that said, I have decided to bow out of wow and concentrate on STO.
When I first started WoW, I thought the whole "Mods" thing would totally ruin the game. Through the years, I found that the whole "Addon Community" did the exact opposite. Blizzard set fourth strict guidelines that HAD to met.... beyond that, if you did not cross those lines they drew, your mod had free reign of the API.
STO's UI system totally SUCKS!. It is workable but..... Blizzard did recruit people to join their "team" as well, but by opening up the API to mods, they recruited the whole gaming community to improve their game, and...... those people were paying THEM to work for them because they had to pay their $15/month just like everyone else.
And just like STO, Blizzard's UI just SUCKED!!!!!! through the years, blizzard noticed some the top mods, and absorbed them into the default UI.
I used Bartender for years for my action bar system untill a guy wrote a little bar addon that blew it away. Bartender had option screen after option screen just to set the thing up and was super complicated. This guy wrote a mod that had 1 OPTION, "click to show". a box pops up with basically "create, delete". Once it creates the bar, there was 10 or so little buttons on the bar in "edit" mode. you could create as many bars as you want with as many buttons as you want with the size drag and all that. You set hotkeys, visibility condition macros, EVERYTHING from 10 or so buttons on the actual bars. He advertised this as a "companion" to the default bar system to put a couple bars where you want. I pushed this mod as far as I could push it to see what it could do..... With this "baby toy" mod, I created an action bar system with 50 or so bars on my druid, stacked them all up into the space of "1 bar" and all 50 bars' buttons were hot keyed to "1-9", "Shift + 1-9", "Ctrl + 1-9" and "alt + 1-9".... 50 bars, each with those hotkeys and they didn't conflict with each other. Using the Visibility conditions, only 1 bar would be visible on the screen at any given time. If its not visible, the keybind is not active allowing the "other bars" to use them. 50+ action bars running off the main "action" hotkeys and it only has 1 option in the game options menu. O ya, and the memory usage was less than most mods. I wrote a step by step with screen shots on how to do all of this to show what this little mod could do. http://www.rage-web.com/buttonforge. PURE GENIUS.
I do not know what the fear is of opening up the API... Yes... you have a TON of mods that are worthless, do nothing, and just take up space on the screen and eat up valuable memory but the ones that revolutionize the game become popular and well known, and the others are just there taking up space.
Blizzard had all this and let you create super complex macros that could check for multiple conditions to fire off different stuff depending on conditions. If focus exists and its enemy fire this, if focus exists and its friendly fire this, if no exist and my target is enemy fire this, if friendly fire this. so with 1 "smart button" that checks several conditions fires what needs to be fired.
But... you could not have a macro that had every skill you own and cycle through them nonstop. It would cycle through them and once it hit a skill that was on cooldown, the macro would stop. "Cant spam 1 button nonstop to kill something" They had their lines you could not cross.
In STO you can macro 1 button to "fire all weaps + syncronize shields + cycle every skill on a hotbar nonstop" 1 button spam that does everything......
Take that away and allow us to make a better bar sysem, auction window thats more useful.....
Certain parts of the API are "secure" that you cannot access. In wow you can create a window that displays who your teammate is target without target your teammate to see his target, or display enemy and say how many of you are target him.... but.... you cannot access the function in reverse to show how many of THEM are target any of your team.
You can open up your API and STILL restrict what you can access and what functions are "secure" that only the game can access. You don't just open up everything in the game for a "free for all" feeding frenzy.
In WoW I found "OpenRDX" that was a UI framework. It was not a UI but a wire frame you could build on. With this, I totally deleted all of WoW's default UI and built a UI from the ground up using a mod that acted like "front page" or "dreamweaver" program to build a web page.
I think you guys should SERIOUSLY consider allowing mods..... It would take a huge strain off your programmers that would need to come up with those genius "buttonforge" ideas then go through the process of revamping the bar system piled on top of the already tedious tasks you have to do to keep the game going and expanding with new content and such.
Your "arrange UI" function where you can move/hide the UI pieces" is almost there.... let some gifted people help you out and do some stuff that would NEVER get done by a few that have a plate full already keeping the game going/expanding.
Instead of making a Auction window that is not a pain to use (REALLY REALLY needed) you make a function that moves stuff on a ship to a new "readied stars ship".
I think the "Foundry" is a step in the right direction, and should let THAT expand and grow. Not only does it remove some strain, but gives you a awesome platform to hand pick people for your "team" As was mentioned before, you do this already, but there are much more out there that would gladly do their "magic" and pay you $15/month in the process, and give you a much better idea of the skill your community has. Not only those that can make a "map" and put a story line or mission to it" but people that can blow your mind with a super tiny mod that uses practically nothing to create a miracle auction window that does a 100x more than what you have and eat less system resources to do it.
The game is and always will be "yours" and you draw those lines that you don't want crossed to keep the game within your "vision" but let us create a bar system or auction window, or....
As I said, I truly thought the whole "mod" thing would ruin WoW, but it ultimately amplified the game greatly while keeping it within blizzard's "vision" and "values" of what they wanted the game to be. It was Blizzard that "broke" their own game, not the people that wrote the addons.
Let your community surprise and amaze you
I played the Age of Empires series for years. In AoE2 I made a super simple map, nothing big or flashy. All I did was make a map with no water, had 1 type of tree on it, 1 type of terrain, put the gold/stone resourses, deleted the Town Center you start with, increased the range your villagers start at, and LAND NOMAD was born. No flashy "eye candy" on the map, 1 terrain type, 1 tree type and u pick where you start your Town Center, one of the most simple concepts you could possibly make and if you go to the game rooms for AoE2 TODAY you will still see LN played. EVERYONE and their mother copied it, and messed around with the resource amounts/placements, and some even copied my original exactly and renamed it, but through the years, my little simple map is still played, and was one of the most popular maps for the game. Just shows you, something simple and small can revolutionize a game. I got on the Alpha test team for their next game "Age of Mythology" because of that map.
Back on the Commodore64, my dad wrote a program that "ran the joystick". The one being used was like 2+ pages of code to run the joystick and he got it down do like 1/2 page of code. He submitted it to the magazine for entry. If they publish your program in their magazine u got like $100. They didn't publish it, but they used it on every disk that came with every magazine that had a few games and stuff on it every month. He didn't get the $100 cuz it was not published, but came out with every magazine ever since on that disk. He was a Heating/Air installer untill he retired.
Your community is not just full of people who guy a game and play in thier spare time, there are TONS of people who do amazing things that have nothing to do with the actual "game production" industry.
Well, thats my 2 cents worth about the whole idea and I hope to see a STOinterface.com community rise up in the near future.
Now that they have nerfed WoW so much a 2 yr old can play it, it is no longer fun. Back when it was a "game" it was fun and well..... blizzard is just the KING of RPG starting with diablo. They just have it and know how to do it... untill...... they slowly nerfed and nerfed it to where you get 1 skill choice every 10 levels or so and choose between 3 skills.
Which bleeding-edge raid guild do you raid with?
But seriously, putting five talent points into a talent to make one ability do 1% more damage per talent point was SO HARDCORE MAN! Magnets had nothing on the old talent trees.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Where is askray or Bluegeek when we need to close a necroed thread?
Right here. Dropping a rock on this thread.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Comments
Now that they have nerfed WoW so much a 2 yr old can play it, it is no longer fun. Back when it was a "game" it was fun and well..... blizzard is just the KING of RPG starting with diablo. They just have it and know how to do it... untill...... they slowly nerfed and nerfed it to where you get 1 skill choice every 10 levels or so and choose between 3 skills.
STO has "expanded" the experience, not contracted it like blizzard did. I gave Blizzard my $15/month since the "vanilla days" all the way to the last expansion.
WIth that said, I have decided to bow out of wow and concentrate on STO.
When I first started WoW, I thought the whole "Mods" thing would totally ruin the game. Through the years, I found that the whole "Addon Community" did the exact opposite. Blizzard set fourth strict guidelines that HAD to met.... beyond that, if you did not cross those lines they drew, your mod had free reign of the API.
STO's UI system totally SUCKS!. It is workable but..... Blizzard did recruit people to join their "team" as well, but by opening up the API to mods, they recruited the whole gaming community to improve their game, and...... those people were paying THEM to work for them because they had to pay their $15/month just like everyone else.
And just like STO, Blizzard's UI just SUCKED!!!!!! through the years, blizzard noticed some the top mods, and absorbed them into the default UI.
I used Bartender for years for my action bar system untill a guy wrote a little bar addon that blew it away. Bartender had option screen after option screen just to set the thing up and was super complicated. This guy wrote a mod that had 1 OPTION, "click to show". a box pops up with basically "create, delete". Once it creates the bar, there was 10 or so little buttons on the bar in "edit" mode. you could create as many bars as you want with as many buttons as you want with the size drag and all that. You set hotkeys, visibility condition macros, EVERYTHING from 10 or so buttons on the actual bars. He advertised this as a "companion" to the default bar system to put a couple bars where you want. I pushed this mod as far as I could push it to see what it could do..... With this "baby toy" mod, I created an action bar system with 50 or so bars on my druid, stacked them all up into the space of "1 bar" and all 50 bars' buttons were hot keyed to "1-9", "Shift + 1-9", "Ctrl + 1-9" and "alt + 1-9".... 50 bars, each with those hotkeys and they didn't conflict with each other. Using the Visibility conditions, only 1 bar would be visible on the screen at any given time. If its not visible, the keybind is not active allowing the "other bars" to use them. 50+ action bars running off the main "action" hotkeys and it only has 1 option in the game options menu. O ya, and the memory usage was less than most mods. I wrote a step by step with screen shots on how to do all of this to show what this little mod could do. http://www.rage-web.com/buttonforge. PURE GENIUS.
I do not know what the fear is of opening up the API... Yes... you have a TON of mods that are worthless, do nothing, and just take up space on the screen and eat up valuable memory but the ones that revolutionize the game become popular and well known, and the others are just there taking up space.
Blizzard had all this and let you create super complex macros that could check for multiple conditions to fire off different stuff depending on conditions. If focus exists and its enemy fire this, if focus exists and its friendly fire this, if no exist and my target is enemy fire this, if friendly fire this. so with 1 "smart button" that checks several conditions fires what needs to be fired.
But... you could not have a macro that had every skill you own and cycle through them nonstop. It would cycle through them and once it hit a skill that was on cooldown, the macro would stop. "Cant spam 1 button nonstop to kill something" They had their lines you could not cross.
In STO you can macro 1 button to "fire all weaps + syncronize shields + cycle every skill on a hotbar nonstop" 1 button spam that does everything......
Take that away and allow us to make a better bar sysem, auction window thats more useful.....
Certain parts of the API are "secure" that you cannot access. In wow you can create a window that displays who your teammate is target without target your teammate to see his target, or display enemy and say how many of you are target him.... but.... you cannot access the function in reverse to show how many of THEM are target any of your team.
You can open up your API and STILL restrict what you can access and what functions are "secure" that only the game can access. You don't just open up everything in the game for a "free for all" feeding frenzy.
In WoW I found "OpenRDX" that was a UI framework. It was not a UI but a wire frame you could build on. With this, I totally deleted all of WoW's default UI and built a UI from the ground up using a mod that acted like "front page" or "dreamweaver" program to build a web page.
I think you guys should SERIOUSLY consider allowing mods..... It would take a huge strain off your programmers that would need to come up with those genius "buttonforge" ideas then go through the process of revamping the bar system piled on top of the already tedious tasks you have to do to keep the game going and expanding with new content and such.
Your "arrange UI" function where you can move/hide the UI pieces" is almost there.... let some gifted people help you out and do some stuff that would NEVER get done by a few that have a plate full already keeping the game going/expanding.
Instead of making a Auction window that is not a pain to use (REALLY REALLY needed) you make a function that moves stuff on a ship to a new "readied stars ship".
I think the "Foundry" is a step in the right direction, and should let THAT expand and grow. Not only does it remove some strain, but gives you a awesome platform to hand pick people for your "team" As was mentioned before, you do this already, but there are much more out there that would gladly do their "magic" and pay you $15/month in the process, and give you a much better idea of the skill your community has. Not only those that can make a "map" and put a story line or mission to it" but people that can blow your mind with a super tiny mod that uses practically nothing to create a miracle auction window that does a 100x more than what you have and eat less system resources to do it.
The game is and always will be "yours" and you draw those lines that you don't want crossed to keep the game within your "vision" but let us create a bar system or auction window, or....
As I said, I truly thought the whole "mod" thing would ruin WoW, but it ultimately amplified the game greatly while keeping it within blizzard's "vision" and "values" of what they wanted the game to be. It was Blizzard that "broke" their own game, not the people that wrote the addons.
Let your community surprise and amaze you
I played the Age of Empires series for years. In AoE2 I made a super simple map, nothing big or flashy. All I did was make a map with no water, had 1 type of tree on it, 1 type of terrain, put the gold/stone resourses, deleted the Town Center you start with, increased the range your villagers start at, and LAND NOMAD was born. No flashy "eye candy" on the map, 1 terrain type, 1 tree type and u pick where you start your Town Center, one of the most simple concepts you could possibly make and if you go to the game rooms for AoE2 TODAY you will still see LN played. EVERYONE and their mother copied it, and messed around with the resource amounts/placements, and some even copied my original exactly and renamed it, but through the years, my little simple map is still played, and was one of the most popular maps for the game. Just shows you, something simple and small can revolutionize a game. I got on the Alpha test team for their next game "Age of Mythology" because of that map.
Back on the Commodore64, my dad wrote a program that "ran the joystick". The one being used was like 2+ pages of code to run the joystick and he got it down do like 1/2 page of code. He submitted it to the magazine for entry. If they publish your program in their magazine u got like $100. They didn't publish it, but they used it on every disk that came with every magazine that had a few games and stuff on it every month. He didn't get the $100 cuz it was not published, but came out with every magazine ever since on that disk. He was a Heating/Air installer untill he retired.
Your community is not just full of people who guy a game and play in thier spare time, there are TONS of people who do amazing things that have nothing to do with the actual "game production" industry.
Well, thats my 2 cents worth about the whole idea and I hope to see a STOinterface.com community rise up in the near future.
Which bleeding-edge raid guild do you raid with?
But seriously, putting five talent points into a talent to make one ability do 1% more damage per talent point was SO HARDCORE MAN! Magnets had nothing on the old talent trees.
Right here. Dropping a rock on this thread.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek