The Concept of Exploration

flash525 · February 2015

Looking at the recently created [ongoing] poll results, there's no doubt about it that the choice for exploration is still favoured. As I type this, there's roughly 350 votes that put exploration in the lead over any other option, and whilst I never voted myself (I would have liked more options), I think that exploration is the best result. Why?

Out of all the options going, exploration has the potential to be something different. The game is very much in need of that right now. More missions/queues/functionality just isn't going to cut it I don't think. Exploration, if done right, has the potential to be the saving grace of this game, not only for current players, but for old and new players too; those that may enjoy the concept of a truer trek form of exploration.

I'm not here to tell anyone how to implement this, nor how to do their job. I don't know what ideas may already be floating around the Cryptic office, nor do I know what the game engine is capable of. All I would ask is that you make exploration less combat centric, yet still enjoyable. The old system was (quite frankly) dull and unimaginative. A good portion of the cluster missions involved conflict of some description, there was very little lets settle this with negotiation or lets help you do that, so that you can help us with this etc

Exploration missions should be about making first contact (for better or worse), about seeking new life, evaluating said life and then assessing it. Exploration should be about finding new science and technology (without the use of a rep system). Exploration should offer different challenges each time played.

Please don't give us another pew-pew feature.

That is all.

roadghost · February 2015

I voted for more exploration missions as well. Though I have to admit, re-playability on exploration is problematic without some good old fashion killin' goin' on. Compare the current Dust to Dust episode, not much killing, pretty good exploration and puzzles, hidden accolades. All in all, a nice non-shoot 'em up. But how often do I replay it? Just enough to get the set pieces, then I'll probably only run through it when I want to show someone what a good episode mission looks like. Now look at the standard kill everything on the map missions, Borg STF's. No story, no puzzles, just fly in and murder everything in your way. I play the bejeezes out of those. If I'm sitting around bored waiting for my doffing timer to reset, what do I do? Do I go chat with Harry Kim or do I go slaughter some mindless zombies? And sadly I'm one of those people who have whined about how the Federation is not about mass murder, but about the joy of discovery. Oh well, as Penguin Opus said, "Have I become another bit player in Ronald Reagan's 'Death Valley Days' America? *whack!* Apparently so."

flash525 · February 2015

The reason you have no reason to replay Dust to Dust is because once you've got all the goodies, there's no need to play it again and again. Exploration missions are going to need to reward people with items (or marks) worthy enough of their attention so that they will replay them.

Unknown · February 2015

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tacofangs · February 2015

So, how do you propose we "explore" the universe, without having to make a million custom maps/missions?
What would actually be enjoyable to do, that doesn't involve fighting. Scanning rocks and trees is going to get old.

anazonda · February 2015

I've been looking for Bottlecaps and other valeuables in containers in fallout 3 for longer than I've played STO...

angrytarg · February 2015

The Genesis engine was a step in the right direction. This would need "finetuning", though. But let me tell you, games that I still play after more than a decade of their release are games that feature randomly generated content, even if I don't get new "toys" to play around with, but the feeling that every time I start a new game the levels will look different or things will happen at a different pace delivers a lot of value for me.

Things to do besides scanning objects could be first contact situations with a diplomatic dialogue game. You had something like that in the early days where you had to pay attention to the things around you and choose dialogue accordingly. You could have search and rescue missions. You could have your usual scan things mission with the possiblity of random events like some ship warping in and asking for assistance. You could have "build an outpost" mission where a group of players would simultaneously work on submissions according to their specializations, like engineers go around the perimeter contructing things, tacs set security patrols, scientists gather data about the surroundings. Then at some point you have to defend your outpost, either defeat or disable the attackers which would lead to a diplomacy event to deescalate (or escalate) the situation. You could plant secret items in those missions so you could always stumble on a very rare, special item. Things like that.

EDIT: see anazonda's response. Repetetive tasks are nothing bad for a computer game. It's kind of the point. But they become a burden if you literally do the exact same thing over and over again. When I play a certain open-world RPG with the objective of "visit the settlements of the world and convince their chiefs to join your cause" you visit every settlement and run those guys errands, kill their enemies, solve their problems. Every time. But every settlement is different, every surrounding land is different and once in a while you have very special tasks to perform for them.

If I load up UFO Defense, I know exactly what I have to do - yet every battlescape I get is randomly generated, a new challenge every time and even with my 20 years of experience (I think it was released around '94?) I can lose an encounter in a heartbeat or take down an alien battleship with a bunch of rookies.

shpoks · February 2015

That depends on each individual. Like anazonda pointed out before me - different strokes for different folks. To someone scanning rocks and trees will get old, to others kill 5 gorups of 5 aliens is getting old. I would say a healthy mix of all elements would be best.

Personally, I'm still sad and kinda' in disbelief that the exploration clusters were removed. While they were not top-notch gameplay by any standards, they provided a nice calm distraction from the main course and with a little bit of imagination a lot of us enjoyed them. I would prefered if they were somehow trimmed or improved upon rather that the outright removal that happened.

Maybe it's possible for each class to influence the type of exploration players will encounter, wheather it will be some scientific scanning and puzzle solving, fighting or helping a small colony/civilization with some techical issues. Or if that isn't fair for people to be locked because of the class they picked, maybe a toggle where one could select what profile of exploration missions they want? Or if that's too much and too complicated work, just a healthy dose of everything for everyone would work just fine.

There is a thread that I can't seem to find atm, maybe you can work some dev. magic to locate it (or maybe the OP will show up) - it was basically a thread about exploration ideas and it had at least a dozen of pages of some seriously good suggestions to pick from. Maybe that can be usefull for inspiration.
One thing noone can deny is that this community is thirsty for exploration content, the outrage following the removal of the clusters has shown that and this current poll is on it's way to show that as well.

captaintrueheart · February 2015

Excellent question and not a simple one to answer....

Here's an idea...

Allow foundry authors to build this for you. The "top 3" feature would allow this to work fairly well. When creating a mission it could be designated as "exploration" which would put it in the "Deep Space" sector. With some refinement this may be a good starting point.

It'd be great to see some dev resources though on a few "exploration" missions as well. Heck just hiding some interesting bits on maps would be enough, something to warrant going off the beaten path.

The hardest part I think would be rewarding the effort. Exploring is fun because of the hope of finding something. Would it be reasonable to offer rare gear, materials, etc. as a reward for exploring?

The thing I dislike the most about the current state of the game is that if you want a specific type of resource you are required participate in a specific type of content. If you need "x" you run "y" mission. I would LOVE if exploration provided an alternative, if you needed ultra rare borg salvage you could either run an elite STF OR scour deep space looking for some. The goal would be to provide an alternative method that required an equal time investment on the part of the player. You could spend your time gearing up your ship, finding a team and running BHE or head off into the great unknown looking for what you need, as an example.

Ideally there'd also be a reasonable dilithium reward as well. Again, given an equal investment of player time exploring could net a similar dilithium reward as grinding queues.

Not sure if any of this is good or even feasible, but i'm confident if the devs and players work together on this the final result could be amazing. There are some extremely creative thinkers on both sides.

captainhunter1 · February 2015

This is from a thread I posted back in August last year. It has some really cool ideas about making exploration exciting and virtually limitless.

Exploration: Is 18.4 quintillion worlds enough?

"It would take about 7.3 billion persons, all working from birth until death, visiting a planet every second of their lives in this game, to see 18.4 quintillion worlds combined. The current population of Earth is 8 billion people...."

Lol - is this enough of an open universe to explore for STO?

A new game coming out has a 'super-genesis' system of generating entirely new planets, creatures, plants, etc. making in effect a true, limitless universe to explore - that CAN be revisited by players. In fact, players are given credit for discovering new planets and new species as they travel throughout the universe.

Could STO get something like this implemented for the Deep Space areas, finally giving us the big missing exploration side of Star Trek? Imagine if this were combined with the Foundry to add the possibility of detailed missions in unexplored areas as well...

Preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLtmEjqzg7M
How it works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVl1Hmth3HE

I particularly like the ability to take a shuttle from a planet's surface to space and back again. (and the underwater exploration looks great too )

captaintrueheart · February 2015

LOL, as have I....

Perhaps spending a few weeks exploring the Capital Wasteland would be a good idea for how exploration can be done

crazyned1066 · February 2015

Well said.

centaurianalpha · February 2015

The best missions I have played in STO were the ones which require some intelligent analysis, under some time constraints, with some imminent danger to the Captain & crew. Some measure of self-defense is required, but the best solution is the intelligent one. I can imagine missions where there could be more than one way to complete the mission, but using the more forceful approach would reduce the rewards for completion.

This is the core of the Trek mission & canon; there are decades worth of episodes to peruse to get ideas for such a scheme. In some cases, a mission might succeed because there is a bridge officer of just the right race or relation to the crew (ST:TMP, for example?), just the right ship, providing needed emergency supplies, crafting some item needed by the locals, etc, etc. Here is where the "out of the box" thinking is the most rewarding for game developers and players alike!

noroblad · February 2015

exploration would be great but its going to need to be something more than randomly generated junk. The old ones were mostly a maze --- you went thru a planet or a starbase or something looking for the 4 things to click on, some had an enemy group or two for combat and some were just big empty mazes. That is not exploration, that is doing the same thing over and over with a random background image. I hate seeing stuff removed from a game --- why not leave it in? --- but that certainly did not make me feel like I had found a strange new world or species or whatever else.

The most I felt like I was exploring was the new rom missions. Go here, scan this system. Go there, scan that system, see what is there. Hey, this one is a nice planet, go down to it and scan the lifeforms and such. That was as close as the game ever got, and it was GOOD stuff.

evilmark444 · February 2015

There's one major problem with this idea though. Every major patch, the foundry has to republish, and add time goes on there are more and more foundry missions, which means the down time gets longer and longer. Quick and easy exploration missions would accelerate this problem, and before you know it foundry downtime will hit 3-4 weeks as opposed to the 2 we just had.

Without some serious refinement of the republishing process, foundry exploration would just be too inconsistent on its own.

edna · February 2015

exploration means more broken boring repetitive singleplayer content in a mmo.

good part is that I nolonger play ...just came back to vote for what matters in all good multiplayer games...PvP.

stealthrider · February 2015

I was hoping the Foundry "top-3" system would be a good fit as exploration content.

When it was announced, my original thought was that it would be a good way to use the exploration cluster zones. Basically instead of having the foundry missions show up at already explored planets, they'd show up at the "new" exploration nodes.

Probably unlikely to happen, especially now, but that was my dream version.

flash525 · February 2015

Fighting is enjoyable to me, what I'm saying is that if anyone is truly considering revamping the exploration side of the game, then you guys are going to need to think what else can be done in addition to fighting.

Others have replied to you with their suggestions, but surely you guys have some ideas of your own? If you don't, it was a bit daft putting it up there as a poll option, was it not?

I wouldn't dare ask for a million maps or missions either, but (and this likely isn't just my opinion) but the game lacks variety at the moment. It's all good jumping into an STF, unloading your weapons and destroying everything, but there's no... enjoyment in it. I think the best STF you've got going at the moment is Korfez (which is still bugged by the way).

Exploration missions aside for the moment, could STF's not undergo a tweak? Save Donatra appearing at the end of Khitomer Vortex, have a Tholian/Voth/Undine Dreadnought warp in instead? The Starbase Defense is a good one because you never know your enemy until you're facing them.

Back to Exploration, more quests; maybe a couple more mazes to navigate? Freighter Escorts where you've got to fend off raiding parties (but not fixed groups); typically nomatter the patrol or whatever, you know you're going up against two groups of one ship type, then one group of another ship type, then a boss. Don't do that. Completely randomize the enemy encounters.

Have missions where you're rewarded with R&D materials (via the exploration system), maps where you're required to ... I don't know, work out puzzles within a set time, or turn on specific concoles in a specific order; better results grant better rewards.

I don't doubt that this isn't going to be a walk in the park, but if you're going to revamp the system, you'll want to do a grand job out of it. You managed the R&D system after countless requests, and minus some of the cost, the system is great. Do it again.

roadghost · February 2015

I do like the ability to stumble onto missions. There was the one at Memory Alpha with the Ferengi (I'm not sure if it's still there), where you talk to one, he asks for help, you end up stumbling across another who asks for something else... It took me a while to realize I actually had 3 missions running at once. And each one was hilarious. I didn't have to shoot anyone, either.

I like replaying Enemy Mine when I am leveling a new character. The opening when you run around helping the settlers with their issues. Maybe something like that expanded onto the galaxy map, where instead of just running from point a to point b to pick up something, you have to travel to another sector. Maybe carrying diplomats, try to avoid enemy contact if you can for a diplomacy bonus, or if you want to shoot it out with the bad guys you can get a cool weapons drop but lose the diplomacy bonus. Get enough diplomacy bonus' and you can get a "talk yourself out of a fight" traits (with the appropriate cooldown of course) where you can persuade an enemy to leave, but still get the loot drops. It would have been kinda neat to be able to talk the Hirogen out of shooting at Zombie-Harry's ship at the end of Dust to Dust.

flash525 · February 2015

Hah, ironically that mission annoyed the hell out of me. Too much going on. :P

It is no longer available though, since the R&D revamp, Memory Alpha was locked out.

drreverend · February 2015

An important thing is to make these things teamable. You should be able to bring along 4 of your buddies or your boff crew.

Another thing is to unlock the Sector Patrol missions so you can replay them. There are some awesome maps on those, but once your character plays them once they can never play them ever again.

Unknown · February 2015

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gonalius · February 2015

Occasional non-combat missions are relaxing. Shooting stuff day after day is fun, but there are times you just want to relax. The old first-contact missions could make a comeback, listen to the requirements of a species, respond based on those. Or perhaps diplomatic functions, same idea, with plenty of opportunities to mess up. These could be done on pre-existing maps (Or say a slightly altered meeting room from DS9's misson 'Second Wave'), with RNG created aliens that were already in the game.

One similar to the old go scan 5 of this, but on pre-warp planets where you have to avoid being seen by the locals, though I'm not sure if the engine would support this. Add a bit of tension to the old standard.

Minor mysteries to solve, one of your crew is accused of a crime, you find the real culprit (This was used in the shows a few times). Can be done in a single room, scanning a few items.

What else... Something to do on your ships Bridge perhaps? Chuck in something interesting and who knows? You may sell more bridge packs!

These may not be 'fun' in the normal sense of the word, but done right, they can be satisfying, (And you get to shut up the people who complain that the game isn't Star Trek, as all you do is hurt things and break people)!

lostusthorn · February 2015

The main problem with Exploration is that you cannot make it with hand crafted maps. It needs to move away from the themepark setup STO is using and go for a Sandbox with a persistent world design where changes are not forgotten once the player leaves the instance.

there needs to be real secrets, wonders, even gear or outfits to discover and those can't be in the same place for everyone. Move away from the mission structure except for overarching general missions, like the TOs 5 year mission, but not every single map, that is random created, can have a mission.

In short, if you can not or will not do a persistent sandbox environment for exploration, don't bother.

neoakiraii · February 2015

Yay scanning rocks and trees, my favorite episode of Star Trek was all about that

gulberat · February 2015

Personally, I feel like you guys already *took* the right step with what you have done recently to the Foundry. I am very leery of another genesis system and I honestly dread the idea of getting something like the Delta Rising patrols. I would rather the effort go towards figuring out how to extend the new system onto ground maps.

I truly think it is better to incorporate exploration into missions and have some more that are not all about fighting (AND do not make you feel ripped off of XP in the process) as part of the storyline. And of course continuing to enhance the options available to players who are developing Foundry missions. While some of us have found a way to incorporate puzzles into Foundry missions, it would be nice to have more options in this regard so that we can break up the monotony of scan this tree or rock, and perhaps enhance base XP rewarded for the Foundry so that missions without a lot of pew pew pew are still worth the players' while.

But yeah...I am very skeptical of a new exploration system and think this is a case of "be careful what you vote for."

Unknown · February 2015

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flash525 · February 2015

Well it's not like we had a huge variety, is it? :rolleyes: :P

New Vote: Revamped Missions (including the FE ones).

gavinruneblade · February 2015

Modular design. Random le gth adding modular elements. Over to e you can add more modules.
Mix in some of the nicer features from missions that have never been used often enough:
* Eng/sci/TAC sub objectives only that class can do, encourages teams
* Integrated doff missions (ala the 2800, or nimbus iii) that further the plot
* Using the ship interior/computer (ala mine enemy)
* unlocking new options via dialog as a puzzle (the cardassian diplomacy mission in bajor orbit, the defera ambassador diplomacy mission at sb39 is another great example)
* multiple paths/choices where you can't do everything (Gaul's attack on the talaxians)
* options that unlock based on items, doff skill, or previous actions (the 2800 dealing with diplomats then the big meeting)

Add in something like the champions nemesis missions that are Dev written but spawn randomly via clues and have changeable features (mostly enemies, but also maps etc).

The combo of random plus crafted will work better than either alone. Also those mini objectives in the dyson sphere are great for this sort of thing.

But the biggest goal is to emphasize logic over combat (which is not to say, no combat).

EXAMPLES

Short, med, long missions

Short = 1 or 2 objectives/modules, reward level x
Example: planet unfit for colonization (space only)
Strange energy signature from planet (space), beam to surface find enemies (ground) or ancient tech or crashed ship

Medium = 2 - 4 objectives/modules, reward level 1.5x or possibly 2x
Example:
Receive distress call, save ship (engineering problem, space combat or anomaly one solution for everyone, one might only be one class); carry crew home or acquire needed cargo or hunted by enemy (integrated doff missions for medical aid, trade, diplomacy etc); arrive at their world find you've been helping a villain, resolve problem with diplomacy or violence (space and ground variants possible).

Long 4+ modules. Could be a tough first contact that goes poorly, or a low tech world with a high tech ruin. Etc.

These examples obviously all come from trek episodes. They can easily have the prices mixed and matched. Some fast, some long. With an initial roll of mission length, then roll for which modules then boom. Mix in some Dev created missions as well.

And they don't have to be deep space only.

gulberat · February 2015

Just as an FYI, based on my experience in the Foundry, a brand-new-from-scratch space map that actually catches the eye and people want to look at takes more effort than you would think. It may not be AS labor-intensive as ground, but it is not something you can just expect a random number generator to cough up and have it actually look good.

x10110100 · February 2015

I second the idea of randomly generated content.

Maybe create a dozen or so goals to start and give a variety of terrains indoors and outdoors, ground and space or combinations of both. This could be a great concept for future growth by just adding new themes and objectives over time, you could get a lot of value for time spent I think, if it was made easily mod'ible.

And preferably to me personally give it easy access to groups. (que'd)

Random generation and different goals really add replay value.

The Concept of Exploration

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