This is a terrible idea. It would not be fun, and it would be beyond abused by level 60 jerkwads camping the edges of low level story paths that pass near the borders so they can gank anyone that somehow clips the death zone. (The Federation missions involving the Gorn and the Derpy Paris storyline would be big targets for this.)
First of all, we were talking about the "home sectors" that are currently off limits to anyone that doesn't have DI or RP anyway. I'm talking about Sirius and Omega Leonis for ex. There is no mission of any oposing faction that takes you through those "home" sectors.
Seconldy, that's easily solvable - they can just make your First Officer pop-up on the side as our Boffs already do in game and warn you that you're approaching restricted space, so nobody will just happen to cross because they're lost.
Personally, I will not PVP. Ever, for any reason. If they added anything like this, my reaction to getting an un-refusable challenge would be to change characters. If they somehow blocked that, I'd alt-tab and exit the game. If it started happening with any regularity, my most likely reaction would simply be to quit playing the game entirely.
So don't. I would never fight a bear. But if I walk into a bear's cave and start throwing acorns at the bear, it probably means I want to fight the bear. That's the entire point - if one wants to be "the man" and hang over Qo'noS without DI, one should expect angry Klingons.
PVP should only EVER be voluntary. And yes, in games like EVE, you've consented based on the fact that the game is openly stated to be full PVP - if you don't want to risk ever getting ganked, you're most likely not playing EVE.
You're completely missing the concept here - I'm talking about entering a hostile or restricted area, another faction's "home base". It's as voluntary as entering Ker'rat - when you walk in there, you walked into PvP by your own choice. This is the same. If a KDF is headed towards Earth/Vulcan/Andoria without immunity - he/she volunteers to PvP.
Voyager didnt ever once say "we are going home to the beta quad". Sol should be on the Alpha side no matter which way you look at it. I think its important that you get the location of OUR OWN HOMEWORLD correct, even if you fudged the location of a few other places. PLEASE MOVE SOL before going holodeck.
Well, technically Sol is directly on the divide between Alpha and Beta. But we can't put half of it in one and half in the other. We made a choice.
I like this all around and am glad to see it happening!
However, knowing ya'll are going to be following the Star Charts book fairly closely, I do want to ask/comment about the distinct possibility of Nimbus getting repositioned for this (based on the little dots being shifted around in the dev blog) for commanderander and/or tacofangs.
According to Star Charts, Nimbus is way up in the Northern part of space, basically across Romulan space from where Klingon space resides. Now I know Star Charts likely has its reasons for it, but I always felt it was more logical to be positioned where it is currently in the game, being that it's almost in between all three of the major factions.
The more recent Federation: The First 150 Years also decided to "place" it where all three faction boundaries meet, in text at least, stating that it was the most logical place for all three to meet together and settle. I always thought First 150 Years was one of the more compatible non-canon sources when paired up with STO (I always felt the novels went off the deep end after the prime universe films/shows ended) and especially appreciated the idea of Nimbus III being within reach of all three powers.
So my question is: Does Nimbus have to get repositioned so far North? Could it instead remain positioned as a more logically-placed former meeting place for all three factions to get together before its utter failure as a world of galactic peace?
And yes, the Gamma Orionis sector Block would technically be like 4 or 5 sectors further south of our Beta Quadrant map. We couldn't extend down that far. However, the content located there mostly didn't need to be located there. We had to move Cestus to the wrong location, but Kessik and the sectors have been renamed so they make more sense where they are now.
Is there anything you guys can do about that? I've got characters whose homeworld is Cestus III and seeing it moved to the far side of Romulan space just looks and feels... wrong.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Some of the questions in my list have been addressed in the blog post. My major concerns are about how well the changes were tested. I realized that the revamp requires moving every transwarp and every entry point to every system, mission, and queue. There are hundreds of systems. Did anyone have time to test them all?
What about load testing? Do you have plans to bring back Tribble weekend in order to test whether the new maps can handle all the players?
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
so when does the new season with this in it go live?
Most likely will depend on how the current lockbox goes. They usually gauge releases based on when most everyone who was going to go after stuff on lockboxes has everything they want then usually shortly after that you will see a new release so most likely anywhere from april to november.
TacoFangs and CommanderAnder, I am totally blown away by what you've done here. I'm downloading the tribble update now to get the full glory of your work as soon as I can.
I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.
Is there anything you guys can do about that? I've got characters whose homeworld is Cestus III and seeing it moved to the far side of Romulan space just looks and feels... wrong.
There is no good solution. Cestus is supposed to be so far off the map it isn't even funny. So. . . where do we put it?
Your ignoring the player base except for a handful of whiners makes you lackluster developers.
If you worked for me, you would have learned the phrase...do you want to supersize it?.....months ago.
Your cash grabbing f2p game is dying, a new map won't help.
I would expect someone would leave if this game is dying. We aren't East Germany people!
Now, there are easy ways to get rid of lag. Get a better comp, delete running programs, etc. This shouldn't be a problem since you care so much about this game.
Kurland Here Kurland Here This is Kurland Kurland Kurland Here Kurland, Do you copy?
First of all, we were talking about the "home sectors" that are currently off limits to anyone that doesn't have DI or RP anyway. I'm talking about Sirius and Omega Leonis for ex. There is no mission of any oposing faction that takes you through those "home" sectors.
.
Actually, pretty much all content from the point where the storylines merge and KDF start running missions on DS9 could potentially take you through there. Right now, getting to DS9 means using the transwarp and paying credits, or going the long way around through through the weird connections between Deferi space and the top edge of the DS9 sector. With the new setup, the most efficient way would be to just fly there in a straight line, which means basically every KDF captain who for any reason decides to fly from Qu'nos to their current mission door would potentially be crossing a PVP flag area.
And to be clear, I hate the idea of PVP flagging areas in general. PVP should be something you *always* have to specifically and deliberately opt into - by setting a manual character flag, or logging into a PVP server. Zones where you get automatically flagged by the game are stupid, because sooner or later some Dev who thinks PVP is funny will put a PVE encounter in there. (It happens constantly in SWTOR - there's two Open PVP areas in the *entire game,* and yet the devs keep shoving objectives for stuff like unlocking a PVE-only companion into them. Most of the limited time events also stick bosses in there, so that if you want to unlock the "I did everything" accolade, you MUST PVP, because reasons.)
The zone locking honestly appears to be a relic of design decisions that are no longer relevant - when the game launched, KDF were barely more than PVP monster play. They had no mission content outside their home block (and barely any inside it) and there was no game mechanic for challenging people to PVP. And during beta, in the few instances where KDF ships did get out, it didn't take long for people to start breaking stuff. KDF players being considered allied to the Deep Space Encounter NPCs, but also untargetable because it wasn't a proper PVP map, or getting loose on ESD and killing all the NPCs, for example. So the simple solution was to lock the KDF into the one area set up to handle them, and lock everyone else out to prevent game breaking problems.
In any case, I have 28 characters, and have been playing fairly constantly since the game was in beta. I believe three of those characters have Diplomacy at a level where they have access to Diplomatic Immunity, and those three were from before it changed to the current system. NONE of the rest of my characters are anywhere close, even though I focus on Diplomatic / Marauding missions as often as I can find them. Tying those to PVP would be game ending for me. There's enough other things that are (in my opinion) wrong with the game that adding "You can be attacked in PVP" on top of it would be the final straw.
Thank you everyone that was involved in this. So far, it looks like something to bring some interest back into the game for a little bit. Awesome work.
Hopefully, by the time this goes live on Holodeck, the higher ups would have fixed a lot of game quality problems that the higher ups made with DR. If so, this will be a big draw for many, and will give them a chance to see the fixes.
But, even if they don't decide to fix the mistakes they made, I still want to say that as always, those of you in the art team that work on maps do an awesome job. (Ships can be another issue a lot of time) But this looks like more of the awesome work we have seen in the DR maps, and other maps throughout the game.
Please, keep up good work like this. This kind of awesome work is something that hopefully will stand out to the higher ups, and encourage them to put as much care into the game as you have.
Thank you.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
I like this. Only suggestion i would like to see implemented, is instead of turning off the motion of the planets orbits completely, is slow them down to a crawl.
So, say you been sitting in one spot for an hour talking to people, the planets would have moved say half an inch or something. That would be nice
I believe God created the universe, because he knew we wanted to explore. So, he made us a playground...
I would expect someone would leave if this game is dying. We aren't East Germany people!
Now, there are easy ways to get rid of lag. Get a better comp, delete running programs, etc. This shouldn't be a problem since you care so much about this game.
Again, he isn't talking about low fps. He's referring to network lag which isn't really fixed by getting a more powerful pc (unless you have a truly bronze-age pc, in which case how the heck do you run sto in the first place?).
Trying to zoom out in sector space whilst in my Mobius Temporal Destroyer it will only zoom out a tiny bit & it's still filling the screen. If you zoom in you go inside the shell of the ship. I switched to an Odyssey & you could zoom out more. Although I prefer to have it fully zoomed out like you can in the current sector space. Feels really restricted on the Odyssey even
There is no good solution. Cestus is supposed to be so far off the map it isn't even funny. So. . . where do we put it?
Well, closer to Klingon space would be my suggestion, since it was supposed to be at the border of the Federation and the Gorn Hegemony and according to lore the Gorn and Klingons were threatening to invade Cestus III in 2405.
And then the Borg invasion, they supposedly cut through the Gamma Orionis sector block to Ker'rat and Otha in the Eta Eridani block, right? Except now there's a big chunk of Romulan and Fed space between those sector blocks.
And in real astronomy, the constellation Orion sits between Eridanus and Canis Major, so it would make sense to have the whole Gamma Orionis sector block (including Cestus) in between (and maybe further relative "south") the Eta Eridani and Pi Canis sector blocks.
I understand that you guys had to make compromises to get it all to work and if it's a "no can do" situation I can accept that. I do appreciate the effort that you guys put into this. I just really wish "my world" had ended up in the right neighborhood of the galaxy.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
I think having less density of ships around us will be much better and much more immersive, especially considering that the scale of the systems and planets will look exceptionally better in this new sector space. The subtle feeling of being alone in space will much more realistic in comparison to the jungle we currently have.
As for feeling lonely, I don't think that will be an issue as long as there is the zone chat and all the other channels we use in game. I don't necessarily have to see a dozen or so ships around me in order to not feel lonely if I can communicate with dozens of people via the chat system as I'm traveling throughout the galaxy.
If people get used to a lower density of ships, perhaps ship interior travel could become viable and we could see work done on ship interiors with mission functionality.
Trying to zoom out in sector space whilst in my Mobius Temporal Destroyer it will only zoom out a tiny bit & it's still filling the screen. If you zoom in you go inside the shell of the ship. I switched to an Odyssey & you could zoom out more. Although I prefer to have it fully zoomed out like you can in the current sector space. Feels really restricted on the Odyssey even
Didn' they mess about with Field of View max mins a few months back on the current Sector Maps? Perhaps this needs a further tweak on the newly scaled map
Wait... you put the Sol system in the Beta quadrant??? Um... yeah, I know it technically is in both, but if you have to opt for one or the other wouldn't the Alpha Quadrant be the logical choice, since that's the location that has always been referenced throughout Star Trek history?
Well done! This looks so much better than before. I'm really looking forward to seeing this in the future. You deserve a pat on the back for taking the canon charts into consideration and reworking the map; A really ambitious undertaking.
If people get used to a lower density of ships, perhaps ship interior travel could become viable and we could see work done on ship interiors with mission functionality.
I would love to see ship interiors be adapted not only for miscellaneous missions that would occur in some random manner, but as a form of player housing as well. I realize it would be a huge undertaking and that we're far from this making "top of the list", but it has a lot of potential and I'd love to see it happen. Being able to walk around my ship's interiors is one of the main things I love about STO.
Wait... you put the Sol system in the Beta quadrant??? Um... yeah, I know it technically is in both, but if you have to opt for one or the other wouldn't the Alpha Quadrant be the logical choice, since that's the location that has always been referenced throughout Star Trek history?
Sol has been in the Beta Quadrant since launch. Mainly because the Klingons and Romulans are the earliest enemies in the story.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
This little wall-smashing project was almost certainly well into development before Ricossa took the big chair. Just like I've said with every major EP switch since I've been playing, you have to remember there's a period of perhaps up to six months wherein what we see roll out was almost certainly initiated under the previous EP. If we're going to shower praise on the upper tier for this decision, we should be showering it on D'Angelo. Which makes a lot of sense since he was touted as the engineering guy when he took the big chair - it's only natural a big technical hurdle like sector walls coming down was tackled under his rule.
We won't start seeing Ricossa's mark really being made in-game for a little while yet.
EDIT: Also is it just me or does the inclusion of the Delta Quadrant gif come off more as sarcastic than informative? Literally just the block walls vanish and TA-DAA. I lol'd.
This is not entirely related to the sector space changes, but this problem has been bothering me for a while now. There is a weird blur that makes words near the edges of the map hard to read. The blur only appears near the edges of the map: words in the center are clear. Is there any chance we can get this fixed in Season 10?
Comments
First of all, we were talking about the "home sectors" that are currently off limits to anyone that doesn't have DI or RP anyway. I'm talking about Sirius and Omega Leonis for ex. There is no mission of any oposing faction that takes you through those "home" sectors.
Seconldy, that's easily solvable - they can just make your First Officer pop-up on the side as our Boffs already do in game and warn you that you're approaching restricted space, so nobody will just happen to cross because they're lost.
So don't. I would never fight a bear. But if I walk into a bear's cave and start throwing acorns at the bear, it probably means I want to fight the bear. That's the entire point - if one wants to be "the man" and hang over Qo'noS without DI, one should expect angry Klingons.
You're completely missing the concept here - I'm talking about entering a hostile or restricted area, another faction's "home base". It's as voluntary as entering Ker'rat - when you walk in there, you walked into PvP by your own choice. This is the same. If a KDF is headed towards Earth/Vulcan/Andoria without immunity - he/she volunteers to PvP.
shaka when the walls fell!
Well, technically Sol is directly on the divide between Alpha and Beta. But we can't put half of it in one and half in the other. We made a choice.
However, knowing ya'll are going to be following the Star Charts book fairly closely, I do want to ask/comment about the distinct possibility of Nimbus getting repositioned for this (based on the little dots being shifted around in the dev blog) for commanderander and/or tacofangs.
According to Star Charts, Nimbus is way up in the Northern part of space, basically across Romulan space from where Klingon space resides. Now I know Star Charts likely has its reasons for it, but I always felt it was more logical to be positioned where it is currently in the game, being that it's almost in between all three of the major factions.
The more recent Federation: The First 150 Years also decided to "place" it where all three faction boundaries meet, in text at least, stating that it was the most logical place for all three to meet together and settle. I always thought First 150 Years was one of the more compatible non-canon sources when paired up with STO (I always felt the novels went off the deep end after the prime universe films/shows ended) and especially appreciated the idea of Nimbus III being within reach of all three powers.
So my question is: Does Nimbus have to get repositioned so far North? Could it instead remain positioned as a more logically-placed former meeting place for all three factions to get together before its utter failure as a world of galactic peace?
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Requesting details on the sector space changes
Some of the questions in my list have been addressed in the blog post. My major concerns are about how well the changes were tested. I realized that the revamp requires moving every transwarp and every entry point to every system, mission, and queue. There are hundreds of systems. Did anyone have time to test them all?
What about load testing? Do you have plans to bring back Tribble weekend in order to test whether the new maps can handle all the players?
Great blog, by the way.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
Most likely will depend on how the current lockbox goes. They usually gauge releases based on when most everyone who was going to go after stuff on lockboxes has everything they want then usually shortly after that you will see a new release so most likely anywhere from april to november.
There is no good solution. Cestus is supposed to be so far off the map it isn't even funny. So. . . where do we put it?
I would expect someone would leave if this game is dying. We aren't East Germany people!
Now, there are easy ways to get rid of lag. Get a better comp, delete running programs, etc. This shouldn't be a problem since you care so much about this game.
Actually, pretty much all content from the point where the storylines merge and KDF start running missions on DS9 could potentially take you through there. Right now, getting to DS9 means using the transwarp and paying credits, or going the long way around through through the weird connections between Deferi space and the top edge of the DS9 sector. With the new setup, the most efficient way would be to just fly there in a straight line, which means basically every KDF captain who for any reason decides to fly from Qu'nos to their current mission door would potentially be crossing a PVP flag area.
And to be clear, I hate the idea of PVP flagging areas in general. PVP should be something you *always* have to specifically and deliberately opt into - by setting a manual character flag, or logging into a PVP server. Zones where you get automatically flagged by the game are stupid, because sooner or later some Dev who thinks PVP is funny will put a PVE encounter in there. (It happens constantly in SWTOR - there's two Open PVP areas in the *entire game,* and yet the devs keep shoving objectives for stuff like unlocking a PVE-only companion into them. Most of the limited time events also stick bosses in there, so that if you want to unlock the "I did everything" accolade, you MUST PVP, because reasons.)
The zone locking honestly appears to be a relic of design decisions that are no longer relevant - when the game launched, KDF were barely more than PVP monster play. They had no mission content outside their home block (and barely any inside it) and there was no game mechanic for challenging people to PVP. And during beta, in the few instances where KDF ships did get out, it didn't take long for people to start breaking stuff. KDF players being considered allied to the Deep Space Encounter NPCs, but also untargetable because it wasn't a proper PVP map, or getting loose on ESD and killing all the NPCs, for example. So the simple solution was to lock the KDF into the one area set up to handle them, and lock everyone else out to prevent game breaking problems.
In any case, I have 28 characters, and have been playing fairly constantly since the game was in beta. I believe three of those characters have Diplomacy at a level where they have access to Diplomatic Immunity, and those three were from before it changed to the current system. NONE of the rest of my characters are anywhere close, even though I focus on Diplomatic / Marauding missions as often as I can find them. Tying those to PVP would be game ending for me. There's enough other things that are (in my opinion) wrong with the game that adding "You can be attacked in PVP" on top of it would be the final straw.
Hopefully, by the time this goes live on Holodeck, the higher ups would have fixed a lot of game quality problems that the higher ups made with DR. If so, this will be a big draw for many, and will give them a chance to see the fixes.
But, even if they don't decide to fix the mistakes they made, I still want to say that as always, those of you in the art team that work on maps do an awesome job. (Ships can be another issue a lot of time) But this looks like more of the awesome work we have seen in the DR maps, and other maps throughout the game.
Please, keep up good work like this. This kind of awesome work is something that hopefully will stand out to the higher ups, and encourage them to put as much care into the game as you have.
Thank you.
So, say you been sitting in one spot for an hour talking to people, the planets would have moved say half an inch or something. That would be nice
Everywhere!!!!
Again, he isn't talking about low fps. He's referring to network lag which isn't really fixed by getting a more powerful pc (unless you have a truly bronze-age pc, in which case how the heck do you run sto in the first place?).
Well, closer to Klingon space would be my suggestion, since it was supposed to be at the border of the Federation and the Gorn Hegemony and according to lore the Gorn and Klingons were threatening to invade Cestus III in 2405.
And then the Borg invasion, they supposedly cut through the Gamma Orionis sector block to Ker'rat and Otha in the Eta Eridani block, right? Except now there's a big chunk of Romulan and Fed space between those sector blocks.
And in real astronomy, the constellation Orion sits between Eridanus and Canis Major, so it would make sense to have the whole Gamma Orionis sector block (including Cestus) in between (and maybe further relative "south") the Eta Eridani and Pi Canis sector blocks.
I understand that you guys had to make compromises to get it all to work and if it's a "no can do" situation I can accept that. I do appreciate the effort that you guys put into this. I just really wish "my world" had ended up in the right neighborhood of the galaxy.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
If people get used to a lower density of ships, perhaps ship interior travel could become viable and we could see work done on ship interiors with mission functionality.
Didn' they mess about with Field of View max mins a few months back on the current Sector Maps? Perhaps this needs a further tweak on the newly scaled map
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I would love to see ship interiors be adapted not only for miscellaneous missions that would occur in some random manner, but as a form of player housing as well. I realize it would be a huge undertaking and that we're far from this making "top of the list", but it has a lot of potential and I'd love to see it happen. Being able to walk around my ship's interiors is one of the main things I love about STO.
Sol has been in the Beta Quadrant since launch. Mainly because the Klingons and Romulans are the earliest enemies in the story.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
I just want to say this.
This little wall-smashing project was almost certainly well into development before Ricossa took the big chair. Just like I've said with every major EP switch since I've been playing, you have to remember there's a period of perhaps up to six months wherein what we see roll out was almost certainly initiated under the previous EP. If we're going to shower praise on the upper tier for this decision, we should be showering it on D'Angelo. Which makes a lot of sense since he was touted as the engineering guy when he took the big chair - it's only natural a big technical hurdle like sector walls coming down was tackled under his rule.
We won't start seeing Ricossa's mark really being made in-game for a little while yet.
EDIT: Also is it just me or does the inclusion of the Delta Quadrant gif come off more as sarcastic than informative? Literally just the block walls vanish and TA-DAA. I lol'd.
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