I would remove the Romulan Republic (sorry guys) and (re)release the Romulan and Reman as playable for FED/KDF factions. The Deridex and all other Republic ships would be placed into the C-Store for purchase by anyone who chooses to play as a Romulan or Reman (those at #60 already would get some free tokens).
Then I'd remove this Alliance. I'd rename the KDF to IDF (Imperial Defense Force) and add a couple more species to it. I would also release a 2nd Xindi Lock Box, multiple Xindi Bridge Officers (all fully customizable) and a Son'a Lock Box. I would also open up the tailor for all unique Bridge Officers.
I'd have a team work on the bugs; iron out as many as possible. I would rework the powers; each weapon type would have a distinctive advantage and disadvantage, no favouring Plasma or Antiproton anymore.
What else... I'd rename character titles; I don't think any of us should be Full Admirals, taking orders from Lieutenants or Ensigns. I'd remove level #60, double the exp needed for levels #1 - #50, and do away with T6 Ships.
Then I'd add a fully independent, fully equipped Dominion Faction.
The best way to fix this game is to balance the cash grab with the payout.
To do this, all Scambling Box items should be available on the C-Store.
You will still have plenty of people gambling to get something for "Free" and won't have to sink to unfair business practices like preying upon those susceptible to gambling.
Sure this won't make as much money for Cryptic, but that's pretty much been their problem forever: wanting ALL the money, not being satisfied with a fair share.
May have to wait until an "MMO Oversight Committee" is formed similar to the BBB.
Unfortunately Cryptic will most likely dump the game rather than play by fair business practices, but someone with higher moral values may pick up the mess and fix it.
1) Remove PvP comletely (it has no place in a Star Trek game)
2) Create a more exploration oriented model.
3) Remove all "magic" powers from all ships
4) Remove all carriers (see 1)
5) Make STO look and feel more like Star Trek
Limit the F2P to Commander level. After that they would need to pay for a gold membership or become a lifer.
Sorry Data, I'm gonna borrow this one from ya:
"Captain. I believe I speak for everyone here, sir, when I say...
[pause]
To hell with that."
And before you jump at my throat OP, I have spent a ton of money on this game. I would never support subscriptions simply because it FORCES me to play. And lifetime? Back when I should have gotten it, I didn't have the money and its too much of an expense all at once (some people actually need that for this thing called food and drinks!).
ACCEPT "FREE" VOLUNTEER HELP FROM THE TECHNICALLY QUALIFIED PLAYER BASE. After all you have volunteer Forum Moderators. While we are at it what would be quite useful would be to have volunteer zone chat moderators especially on ESD. Some people refuse to use common courtesy and need to be called down.
Limit the F2P to Commander level. After that they would need to pay for a gold membership or become a lifer.
This right here was the first unqualified element of your post.
Without the Silvers, there would be no game... Since they don't see money drained out of their accounts on a regular basis, they are manipulated into beliving that THEY control how much money they spend, and as such spend even more than they would in a sub.[/QUOTE]
FIX THE BUGS there would be no new anything until the bug list got completely and totally handled. Yes there are still bugs from 5 years ago.
Second unqualified element.
If you had any proper development experience, you would know that you can't just simply flip a switch and be done with the bugs.
They take time, and some, no matter how hard you try, can simply not be eliminated entirely.
Bring back Tribble testing and veteran rewards rather than rushing broken content on to the holodeck server.
Partial good points here: Tribble testing has been and still is around, and in the same form it always has been, and the feedback is being ignored just as much now as it was at launch.
The Veteran rewards... Well... Here is something I realized several years ago, and so should you: You are dead weight as a lifer... You are expenses and not income.
Make everything in the game craftable up to MKXIV "EPIC" Including DOFFS!
Na... It's good that certain things can only be obtained in a certain way... There is no harm in that. Also... Craft DuOffs? How does that even make remotely sense?
Create Romulan/Reman only content and give the Klingons more content [many of the missions would be easy to tweak to faction specific missions]
You DO of cause realize that the Romulan faction has the best - stand alone - storyline in the entire game right?
The klingons have the most spectacular one though.
Have the accolades actually count for something like say extra skill points.
Some of them give increased Damage and resistance... Others are a "badge of honor" for achieving hard to get parts of the game... Thats really good enough.
Offer T-6 upgrade to every lock box ship through a C-store module purchase.
Na... You knew when you got those ships that cryptic would eventually sc*ew you over... Though luck... Thats how business works.
Your ideas are for an ideal world... However, those of us who live in the real world, have to deal with the fact that it sucks and just make the best of what ever pile of s*it we step in.
Don't look silly... Don't call it the "Z-Store/Zen Store"...
I'd probably police the forums a lot harder. Someone says they don't play the game, repeatedly, and comes to my servers to run it down publicly? Yeah, they wouldn't be around.
So it might be good that I don't own the game.
Outside of that? I'd likely have a team working on new mini-factions, like the Republic. There's a lot of groups in Trek I'd love to see go playable, and mini-factions are a great way to do that while not fragmenting the community more than a faction system inherently does.
Of course, since I'd love to play my KDF characters while working on my fleet, I'd also be considering just ending the faction separation entirely as far as grouping and fleet membership go...
Add more ground dynamics to the game. Something like The Romulans home world should be on each home world....Earth, Vulcan, Andoria....
Add an arch nemesis protocol to the game. When creating your character you get the option to create your arch nemesis. Throughout the game randomly they'll show up to complicate missions.
More sector events. The Borg attacking is a bit old. Change it up. Have the CE attack a sector or the whale probe from TMP or the galactic organism from TOS or some other big thing.
Wrath of Khan era missions. Every other show and movie has been represented but the TOS movies.
Ground traits...they work like ship traits but you get the trait by the combination of Boffs you bring with you....let's say you bring an all Andorian Boffs...then you get a trait called Coldblooded and like get +5 to damage or something like that....bring a boff crew of all primary races of the federation and you get bonuses to everything....I'll do the same with Roms and KDF
Just a few ideas
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
This game is too big and requires too many types of expertise to imagine one person calling all the shots as a sustainable improvement.
I have strong opinions AS A PLAYER and AS A CUSTOMER but I wouldn't or couldn't responsibly impose all those opinions if I ran the game.
I think I could probably have some positive contributions to make to business strategy/monetization, game systems design, or content development in creative ways that would benefit players, especially if I had internal data and understood internal goals better. But any one of these three would be a big task for me as an outsider.
I think in 3-5 years, I could probably be a great systems lead or producer over one of these areas. Or in 2-3 years, I could learn the ropes and become a solid manager. I think I could be a valuable consultant almost immediately if we're just talking consulting and IF I were signed to an NDA and had access to internal data. That's plenty ambitious.
But I don't think one person can effectively call the shots in the way that this thread suggests.
It's a fantasy.
If we're playing that game, I'd probably look at some bold design choices that go outside the standard MMO features you typically see, with a big focus on a combination ship interior/exploration/personality system. In terms of bug fixes, I'd probably look for the kinds of scripting and design that cause bugs and look at yanking those from the game with more or less replacement missions and behind the scenes character data clean-up rather than chasing bugs individually. A focus on what causes bugs rather than just what bugs exist.
I can also say I'd probably be a bit of a chess player with new feature design, plotting things out multiple steps ahead. Some of what I'd do wouldn't make immediate sense. My big example with that is always tying traits loadouts to costume slots. That's part of the long game I'd adopt for species respecs but there's a series of steps that would involve.
One of the big ideas I always had for an ongoing endgame was planets or even universes as a form of player housing. You start off with a timeline alteration or a necessary but unfortunate Prime Directive breach on a pre-industrial world and from there you have this alternate timeline or planet you're charged with babysitting, which reflects your choices, personality, and playstyle. In some sense more like a WoW garrison than typical player housing systems. A more restrained version of this might be having us command starbases (I've got an idea for how to make starbase-control combat engaging within the game engine) but I think the idea of a planet or timeline which maps to our choices would have more interesting appeal within the game system.
Incidentally, I think a key to making starship interiors interesting/exciting would be a kind of passenger system (kind of like the Inns with the WoW garrisons) which encourages travel around the galaxy, launches missions, and creates puzzle play aboard ship interiors. Particularly if there's a paper-rock-scissors design element to it where the combinations of passengers and temporary officers aboard your ship creates missions and activities.
What I would do is make it where every new season must be bought into with ZEN.
[Snip]
I would charge as follows:
14400 Zen for full season access (9 months)
9600 Zen for half season (6 month access)
6400 Zen for 4 month access
4800 Zen for 3 month access
3200 Zen for 2 month access
1600 Zen for 1 month access
Subscribers get access as long as they remain subscribed
[Snip]
That is how I would roll...
And another who would "roll" in such a way that they would end up killing the game because of a superiority complex they feel from being a subscriber.
Why are there so many people who want this game to go back to subscriber based?
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
If i owned the game, and was very wealthy, I would consider eating whatever financial losses would be involved in temporarily shifting the cstore development resources to my own opinionated ideas for improving the game. This, however, would be the decision of a fan, not an owner, and would not make any business sense.
If i owned the game, and was very wealthy, I would consider eating whatever financial losses would be involved in temporarily shifting the cstore development resources to my own opinionated ideas for improving the game. This, however, would be the decision of a fan, not an owner, and would not make any business sense.
+1,000
Excellent synopsis of what so many posts in this thread look like.
The Sundown Rule. If there is a problem, it gets fixed before anyone goes home for the day. Even if it takes until after sundown.
While this has the sound and appearance of being a responsible thing to do, the reality is that there comes a point where a person's mental processes and ability to troubleshoot technical issues start suffering, whether from lack of sleep or stress/burnout, and it is becoming more and more widely recognized in the industry that this is an idiotic and self-defeating thing to do to software developers if you want them to produce competent code that doesn't introduce more bugs than it fixes.
If you're in a real-world combat zone and lives are on the line if you don't keep pushing through it, that's one thing, and I absolutely get why you would have that approach. But let's have some perspective here: this is a video game. The Klingons are not going to invade and destroy the Federation if someone goes home before an issue is fixed. It is far better for everyone that the developers get their rest, see their families more than once a week, and minimize the number of 60+ hour weeks they have to work.
Fleet Admiral L'Yern - Screenshot and doffing addict
Eclipse Class Intel Cruiser U.S.S. Dioscuria NX-91121-A - Interactive Crew Roster
While this has the sound and appearance of being a responsible thing to do, the reality is that there comes a point where a person's mental processes and ability to troubleshoot technical issues start suffering, whether from lack of sleep or stress/burnout, and it is becoming more and more widely recognized in the industry that this is an idiotic and self-defeating thing to do to software developers if you want them to produce competent code that doesn't introduce more bugs than it fixes.
If you're in a real-world combat zone and lives are on the line if you don't keep pushing through it, that's one thing, and I absolutely get why you would have that approach. But let's have some perspective here: this is a video game. The Klingons are not going to invade and destroy the Federation if someone goes home before an issue is fixed. It is far better for everyone that the developers get their rest, see their families more than once a week, and minimize the number of 60+ hour weeks they have to work.
Also, the problem might take days to fix so staying up for 48 hours to fix a problem because of the Sundown rule will have a lot of employees find other employment.
Why are there so many people who want this game to go back to subscriber based?
I think the feeling is this:
Where the money comes from, there the development focus will be.
1) If a game charges a subscription fee, the focus is on making each month engaging and the game will live or die based on the success of each month being engaging. (And this is, honestly, the best option for making sure devs care about "equal opportunity for all playstyles" PvP balance.) The downside is that $15 doesn't buy what it did ten years ago for developers and players have resisted price increases. It also makes sampling content difficult, tends to lose people when subs expire, and separates guilds/friends based on willingness to pay at any moment.
2) If a game instead charges for content, the focus is on making each content release engaging and the game will live or die based on how enjoyable people find the content to be. (And this is, honestly, the best option for making sure quality writing in content is the end-all, be-all focus.) Here you don't lose people entirely when they take a hiatus from buying but you start having people get picky about content and either wind up requiring content to be bought in sequence (ie. you need the old stuff for the new stuff) or you have weird rifts in the community based on who paid for what.
3) If a game is free to play, the focus is on either wealthy patrons supporting everyone or converting free players into buyers and the game will live or die based on the success of sales conversions, direct or indirect. (And this is, honestly, the best option for ensuring everyone can play with the largest number of people possible.)
I don't think any of the three of necessarily perfect (or all that good) on their own. I think a TRUE hybrid system is ideal, one where the game is free but where buffet subs are available the game uses F2P tactics like lockboxes to drive sub sales. (Ie. For $20 a month, you'd get an all-you-can-eat lockbox buffet and grind removal.)
Few games are purely one of these because $15 a month is too low a subscription fee for a developer to charge nowadays, due to inflation and escalating player expectations. WoW for instance is really sub and pay for content since expansions must be bought in sequence and they can "raise prices" by releasing expansions more rapidly (and is adopting some of the latter category by allowing sales of game time for ingame currency). EvE is sub/F2P hybrid in the sense that they have a sub but selling gametime is common.
A fourth option that is kind of in its infancy is some kind of model where the game is free, mostly, for everyone but there's basically a big progress meter for how much money people are throwing at it in order to keep it free. I don't think any game REALLY does this but the crowdfunded games seem to lean this direction, hybridized with the other 3. In this model if they did it fairly purely, Cryptic might have a big "sales target meter" (without numbers) on the website and when they hit a target for collective spending, maybe they shower all players (regardless of whether they spent) with lockbox keys, gear, new content, etc. Or maybe something bordering on a system like Humble Bundle where players get the basic game for free but if they spend a set number that is the average spending level, they get showered in grind reduction and rewards.
A Humble Bundle system might be interesting for a F2P/Item Shop/sub angle, actually, since it would be a conversion driver. It might start at around a $1.25 a month per player to get the perk but as more people spend, the rate goes up.
I dunno. One of the big risks is always being "too clever" with a system. There is no magic bullet. In the end, you need to satisfy players somehow and you need to bring in money somehow.
Well, even though "Preparation H" feels good on the whole, I would activate the "Alan Parsons Project" and build a giant "laser" on the Moon. Then I would use this "Death Star" to destroy this MMO. That is, unless all the players payed me.....................................................................................................................ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't care what the header says, I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be, an "ARC user".
The first thing I would do would be get additional QA and customer service support and I would shore up the Tribble test process in a major way. I would make sure increased/better load balance testing took place and that enough staff and dev hours were in place to increase the rigor of QA. I would also require that testing occur on the EXACT full build that is going live--a complete working copy of Holodeck as opposed to some different branch that is not going to show the flaws.
And I would institute an absolute requirement that Tribble be taken seriously and I would actually reward players who catch a bug that gets repaired prior to release (though of course that implies with it ACTUALLY paying attention to player feedback and actually fixing bugs instead of releasing things knowing they are there). My goal would be to make players fall all over themselves to report problems and for them to be rewarded both by a personal incentive and by the satisfaction of actually seeing the build changed for the better before release to production. This is especially critical if the funding just does not exist for additional QA staff. To crowd source QA means I had better be prepared to make it worth the players' while, hence the "finder's fee" awarded to successful bug spotters...maybe some Lobi to use on the live server. I would also end the emphasis on deadline
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I would create a story line were he feds secretly became 50/50 partners of the Iconians. They would then use the new found power to control the Borg and finally get rid of the Klingons, Roms, and Cardies.
Well excuse me for having enormous flaws that I don't work on.
ACCEPT "FREE" VOLUNTEER HELP FROM THE TECHNICALLY QUALIFIED PLAYER BASE. After all you have volunteer Forum Moderators. While we are at it what would be quite useful would be to have volunteer zone chat moderators especially on ESD. Some people refuse to use common courtesy and need to be called down.
I did not bother reading the rest of the post. However, this is absolutely the worst idea I have read in a long time. It breaks so many protocols in project management. The most important is probably the submission of high quality individual or team completed assignments that are required to go through a vetting process before it can go into production. These people generally work on a specific aspect of a project and anything that gets rejected due to low quality or is not submitted on can jeopardize / delay the entire project.
Sometimes people need to put in long hours to meet certain strict submission deadlines for whatever they are working on. That can mean 10 - 12 hour workdays. Project managers cannot afford to wait for a volunteer to submit whatever they are working if they have the time to do it. That is not how things work because it can lead to total disaster.
Volunteer Forum Moderators are in no way comparable to member of a project team so trying to compare the two is just stupid. They do not have deadlines or responsibilities that affects a project's timetable. A bad / lazy moderator will not affect the release of game content. A bad / lazy "technical employee / volunteer" that is working on some aspect of the game will affect game content.
If I owned this MMO, then I would leave the technical work to be done by the professionals that I have hired. They have an incentive to adhere to company policy regarding timely submissions and work quality; among other expectations. Failure to meet these expectation would lead to the employee(s) to be fired.
To be clear, the difference between what the OP proposed and what I suggested for QA is that it would still be the technical staff actually doing builds, patches, and fixes. Players would not have any form of access to the code. But as I understand it, QA thrives on information. So my idea is if you successfully supply QA with the information they need to fix the problem, then incentivize that.
You could even have a Cryptic's Ten Most Wanted program (or other appropriate number) where particularly nasty or difficult bugs are selected for an extra incentive for information leading to the arrest and conviction of...I mean identification and resolution...of the bug.
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If you or I owned this MMO, we had to face the harsh realities of the market and the finances of the game, and couldn't just dream up what sounds cool, but actually have to verify that we can do it, that we can afford it, and that people will pay us enough for it to keep doing it.
Since we don't, we can induldge in our fantasies and create wonderful what-if scenarios.
If I was doing this game, I'd add a "weapon bank" points that energy weapons feed from and that recharges based on weapon power. Weapon power would not increase damage, it would affect how long you can maintain firing. Boosting firing speed or damage output might raise your weapon bank consumption.
I'd do the same with auxiliary power, and have Aux powers consume from the Auxiliary Reserve.
Also, every player would get a Space Pony. Grind-Free.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
To be clear, the difference between what the OP proposed and what I suggested for QA is that it would still be the technical staff actually doing builds, patches, and fixes. Players would not have any form of access to the code. But as I understand it, QA thrives on information. So my idea is if you successfully supply QA with the information they need to fix the problem, then incentivize that.
You could even have a Cryptic's Ten Most Wanted program (or other appropriate number) where particularly nasty or difficult bugs are selected for an extra incentive for information leading to the arrest and conviction of...I mean identification and resolution...of the bug.
QA thrives on information? They're getting more reports than they can process right now, last I heard. What they need is quality information.
I don't think lack of information is necessarily the issue. They run private tests with focus groups but that isn't enough information and when they do get enough, quality is an issue. A central problem is that when people report issues, they think it happens to every player, every time. But QA can't replicate it. Now, maybe some of this comes down to bad descriptions from players or poor info gathering tools on Cryptic's end but...
I don't know the innards of the beast fully but I think a surprising amount of how this game works boils down to your system and also your character data. A lot of stuff that other engines might handle server-side are handled through the character database and the user's system here. This is my inkling anyway and one that seemed to be confirmed by conversations I've had with people who know more than I do.
As such, I don't know if reporting or response to reporting can be improved by a reasonable amount. It's a game of wackamole.
I think prevention may be the best care. Identifying what elements of the engine are likely to produce bugs and submitting those to the core programming team at Cryptic while also avoiding certain types of content design choices that tend to produce bugs.
I also think we probably need some form of character database clean-up as I SUSPECT that a lot of bugs are tied to buggy character data. That, for example, Sela not showing up may be tied not to a mission bug but a character or account bug where corrupted seed data or unaccounted for seed data from the character is causing issues with how the game generates the mission. This is a pretty wild supposition on my part but I suspect some bugs would miraculously clean themselves up with a big database transfer/conversion where they basically re-create our characters from scratch, purging extraneous data that may be cluttering up the database.
Wild supposition and I may have the terminology off for how they'd use it.
I have a sneaking hunch that some bugs certain players continuously have on their mains won't be there for alts and they may notice a cleaner play experience on their Delta Recruit.
I strongly suspect that minor scripting errors or various systems updates have left clutter on our character data and that clutter is mucking up mission generation, loadouts, etc.
Comments
Then I'd remove this Alliance. I'd rename the KDF to IDF (Imperial Defense Force) and add a couple more species to it. I would also release a 2nd Xindi Lock Box, multiple Xindi Bridge Officers (all fully customizable) and a Son'a Lock Box. I would also open up the tailor for all unique Bridge Officers.
I'd have a team work on the bugs; iron out as many as possible. I would rework the powers; each weapon type would have a distinctive advantage and disadvantage, no favouring Plasma or Antiproton anymore.
What else... I'd rename character titles; I don't think any of us should be Full Admirals, taking orders from Lieutenants or Ensigns. I'd remove level #60, double the exp needed for levels #1 - #50, and do away with T6 Ships.
Then I'd add a fully independent, fully equipped Dominion Faction.
To do this, all Scambling Box items should be available on the C-Store.
You will still have plenty of people gambling to get something for "Free" and won't have to sink to unfair business practices like preying upon those susceptible to gambling.
Sure this won't make as much money for Cryptic, but that's pretty much been their problem forever: wanting ALL the money, not being satisfied with a fair share.
May have to wait until an "MMO Oversight Committee" is formed similar to the BBB.
Unfortunately Cryptic will most likely dump the game rather than play by fair business practices, but someone with higher moral values may pick up the mess and fix it.
2. I would change the UI on the "help" button in the DOFF window so the "(.)" after "Close" is gone. Why is this there, exactly?
3. I would try and find out how to sell officially licensed Odyssey, Mogh, and Vastam Class model kits. Because those are awesome looking ships.
4. I would ban ketchup from the breakroom.
1) Remove PvP comletely (it has no place in a Star Trek game)
2) Create a more exploration oriented model.
3) Remove all "magic" powers from all ships
4) Remove all carriers (see 1)
5) Make STO look and feel more like Star Trek
Sorry Data, I'm gonna borrow this one from ya:
"Captain. I believe I speak for everyone here, sir, when I say...
[pause]
To hell with that."
And before you jump at my throat OP, I have spent a ton of money on this game. I would never support subscriptions simply because it FORCES me to play. And lifetime? Back when I should have gotten it, I didn't have the money and its too much of an expense all at once (some people actually need that for this thing called food and drinks!).
"Let them eat static!"
Ok then... Let's break it down:
This part made sense to me.
This right here was the first unqualified element of your post.
Without the Silvers, there would be no game... Since they don't see money drained out of their accounts on a regular basis, they are manipulated into beliving that THEY control how much money they spend, and as such spend even more than they would in a sub.[/QUOTE]
Second unqualified element.
If you had any proper development experience, you would know that you can't just simply flip a switch and be done with the bugs.
They take time, and some, no matter how hard you try, can simply not be eliminated entirely.
Partial good points here: Tribble testing has been and still is around, and in the same form it always has been, and the feedback is being ignored just as much now as it was at launch.
The Veteran rewards... Well... Here is something I realized several years ago, and so should you: You are dead weight as a lifer... You are expenses and not income.
No discussion here... The foundry is laughable as a UGC tool compared to other games.
I am neutral in regards to if this would be a positive or negative... I WOULD like more story content though.
And just how would you facilitate this?
No... This was a compensation for being s*rewed over when spending time in the game in the content drought and then losing out on a s*itload of dil.
Na... It's good that certain things can only be obtained in a certain way... There is no harm in that. Also... Craft DuOffs? How does that even make remotely sense?
You DO of cause realize that the Romulan faction has the best - stand alone - storyline in the entire game right?
The klingons have the most spectacular one though.
The exchange... Big consoles... You can't miss them.
This kinda makes sense.
Some of them give increased Damage and resistance... Others are a "badge of honor" for achieving hard to get parts of the game... Thats really good enough.
Na... You knew when you got those ships that cryptic would eventually sc*ew you over... Though luck... Thats how business works.
Your ideas are for an ideal world... However, those of us who live in the real world, have to deal with the fact that it sucks and just make the best of what ever pile of s*it we step in.
So it might be good that I don't own the game.
Outside of that? I'd likely have a team working on new mini-factions, like the Republic. There's a lot of groups in Trek I'd love to see go playable, and mini-factions are a great way to do that while not fragmenting the community more than a faction system inherently does.
Of course, since I'd love to play my KDF characters while working on my fleet, I'd also be considering just ending the faction separation entirely as far as grouping and fleet membership go...
Add an arch nemesis protocol to the game. When creating your character you get the option to create your arch nemesis. Throughout the game randomly they'll show up to complicate missions.
More sector events. The Borg attacking is a bit old. Change it up. Have the CE attack a sector or the whale probe from TMP or the galactic organism from TOS or some other big thing.
Wrath of Khan era missions. Every other show and movie has been represented but the TOS movies.
Ground traits...they work like ship traits but you get the trait by the combination of Boffs you bring with you....let's say you bring an all Andorian Boffs...then you get a trait called Coldblooded and like get +5 to damage or something like that....bring a boff crew of all primary races of the federation and you get bonuses to everything....I'll do the same with Roms and KDF
Just a few ideas
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
I have strong opinions AS A PLAYER and AS A CUSTOMER but I wouldn't or couldn't responsibly impose all those opinions if I ran the game.
I think I could probably have some positive contributions to make to business strategy/monetization, game systems design, or content development in creative ways that would benefit players, especially if I had internal data and understood internal goals better. But any one of these three would be a big task for me as an outsider.
I think in 3-5 years, I could probably be a great systems lead or producer over one of these areas. Or in 2-3 years, I could learn the ropes and become a solid manager. I think I could be a valuable consultant almost immediately if we're just talking consulting and IF I were signed to an NDA and had access to internal data. That's plenty ambitious.
But I don't think one person can effectively call the shots in the way that this thread suggests.
It's a fantasy.
If we're playing that game, I'd probably look at some bold design choices that go outside the standard MMO features you typically see, with a big focus on a combination ship interior/exploration/personality system. In terms of bug fixes, I'd probably look for the kinds of scripting and design that cause bugs and look at yanking those from the game with more or less replacement missions and behind the scenes character data clean-up rather than chasing bugs individually. A focus on what causes bugs rather than just what bugs exist.
I can also say I'd probably be a bit of a chess player with new feature design, plotting things out multiple steps ahead. Some of what I'd do wouldn't make immediate sense. My big example with that is always tying traits loadouts to costume slots. That's part of the long game I'd adopt for species respecs but there's a series of steps that would involve.
One of the big ideas I always had for an ongoing endgame was planets or even universes as a form of player housing. You start off with a timeline alteration or a necessary but unfortunate Prime Directive breach on a pre-industrial world and from there you have this alternate timeline or planet you're charged with babysitting, which reflects your choices, personality, and playstyle. In some sense more like a WoW garrison than typical player housing systems. A more restrained version of this might be having us command starbases (I've got an idea for how to make starbase-control combat engaging within the game engine) but I think the idea of a planet or timeline which maps to our choices would have more interesting appeal within the game system.
Incidentally, I think a key to making starship interiors interesting/exciting would be a kind of passenger system (kind of like the Inns with the WoW garrisons) which encourages travel around the galaxy, launches missions, and creates puzzle play aboard ship interiors. Particularly if there's a paper-rock-scissors design element to it where the combinations of passengers and temporary officers aboard your ship creates missions and activities.
And another who would "roll" in such a way that they would end up killing the game because of a superiority complex they feel from being a subscriber.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
+1,000
Excellent synopsis of what so many posts in this thread look like.
While this has the sound and appearance of being a responsible thing to do, the reality is that there comes a point where a person's mental processes and ability to troubleshoot technical issues start suffering, whether from lack of sleep or stress/burnout, and it is becoming more and more widely recognized in the industry that this is an idiotic and self-defeating thing to do to software developers if you want them to produce competent code that doesn't introduce more bugs than it fixes.
If you're in a real-world combat zone and lives are on the line if you don't keep pushing through it, that's one thing, and I absolutely get why you would have that approach. But let's have some perspective here: this is a video game. The Klingons are not going to invade and destroy the Federation if someone goes home before an issue is fixed. It is far better for everyone that the developers get their rest, see their families more than once a week, and minimize the number of 60+ hour weeks they have to work.
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Also, the problem might take days to fix so staying up for 48 hours to fix a problem because of the Sundown rule will have a lot of employees find other employment.
I think the feeling is this:
Where the money comes from, there the development focus will be.
1) If a game charges a subscription fee, the focus is on making each month engaging and the game will live or die based on the success of each month being engaging. (And this is, honestly, the best option for making sure devs care about "equal opportunity for all playstyles" PvP balance.) The downside is that $15 doesn't buy what it did ten years ago for developers and players have resisted price increases. It also makes sampling content difficult, tends to lose people when subs expire, and separates guilds/friends based on willingness to pay at any moment.
2) If a game instead charges for content, the focus is on making each content release engaging and the game will live or die based on how enjoyable people find the content to be. (And this is, honestly, the best option for making sure quality writing in content is the end-all, be-all focus.) Here you don't lose people entirely when they take a hiatus from buying but you start having people get picky about content and either wind up requiring content to be bought in sequence (ie. you need the old stuff for the new stuff) or you have weird rifts in the community based on who paid for what.
3) If a game is free to play, the focus is on either wealthy patrons supporting everyone or converting free players into buyers and the game will live or die based on the success of sales conversions, direct or indirect. (And this is, honestly, the best option for ensuring everyone can play with the largest number of people possible.)
I don't think any of the three of necessarily perfect (or all that good) on their own. I think a TRUE hybrid system is ideal, one where the game is free but where buffet subs are available the game uses F2P tactics like lockboxes to drive sub sales. (Ie. For $20 a month, you'd get an all-you-can-eat lockbox buffet and grind removal.)
Few games are purely one of these because $15 a month is too low a subscription fee for a developer to charge nowadays, due to inflation and escalating player expectations. WoW for instance is really sub and pay for content since expansions must be bought in sequence and they can "raise prices" by releasing expansions more rapidly (and is adopting some of the latter category by allowing sales of game time for ingame currency). EvE is sub/F2P hybrid in the sense that they have a sub but selling gametime is common.
A fourth option that is kind of in its infancy is some kind of model where the game is free, mostly, for everyone but there's basically a big progress meter for how much money people are throwing at it in order to keep it free. I don't think any game REALLY does this but the crowdfunded games seem to lean this direction, hybridized with the other 3. In this model if they did it fairly purely, Cryptic might have a big "sales target meter" (without numbers) on the website and when they hit a target for collective spending, maybe they shower all players (regardless of whether they spent) with lockbox keys, gear, new content, etc. Or maybe something bordering on a system like Humble Bundle where players get the basic game for free but if they spend a set number that is the average spending level, they get showered in grind reduction and rewards.
A Humble Bundle system might be interesting for a F2P/Item Shop/sub angle, actually, since it would be a conversion driver. It might start at around a $1.25 a month per player to get the perk but as more people spend, the rate goes up.
I dunno. One of the big risks is always being "too clever" with a system. There is no magic bullet. In the end, you need to satisfy players somehow and you need to bring in money somehow.
Well, even though "Preparation H" feels good on the whole, I would activate the "Alan Parsons Project" and build a giant "laser" on the Moon. Then I would use this "Death Star" to destroy this MMO. That is, unless all the players payed me.....................................................................................................................ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And I would institute an absolute requirement that Tribble be taken seriously and I would actually reward players who catch a bug that gets repaired prior to release (though of course that implies with it ACTUALLY paying attention to player feedback and actually fixing bugs instead of releasing things knowing they are there). My goal would be to make players fall all over themselves to report problems and for them to be rewarded both by a personal incentive and by the satisfaction of actually seeing the build changed for the better before release to production. This is especially critical if the funding just does not exist for additional QA staff. To crowd source QA means I had better be prepared to make it worth the players' while, hence the "finder's fee" awarded to successful bug spotters...maybe some Lobi to use on the live server. I would also end the emphasis on deadline
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I did not bother reading the rest of the post. However, this is absolutely the worst idea I have read in a long time. It breaks so many protocols in project management. The most important is probably the submission of high quality individual or team completed assignments that are required to go through a vetting process before it can go into production. These people generally work on a specific aspect of a project and anything that gets rejected due to low quality or is not submitted on can jeopardize / delay the entire project.
Sometimes people need to put in long hours to meet certain strict submission deadlines for whatever they are working on. That can mean 10 - 12 hour workdays. Project managers cannot afford to wait for a volunteer to submit whatever they are working if they have the time to do it. That is not how things work because it can lead to total disaster.
Volunteer Forum Moderators are in no way comparable to member of a project team so trying to compare the two is just stupid. They do not have deadlines or responsibilities that affects a project's timetable. A bad / lazy moderator will not affect the release of game content. A bad / lazy "technical employee / volunteer" that is working on some aspect of the game will affect game content.
If I owned this MMO, then I would leave the technical work to be done by the professionals that I have hired. They have an incentive to adhere to company policy regarding timely submissions and work quality; among other expectations. Failure to meet these expectation would lead to the employee(s) to be fired.
You could even have a Cryptic's Ten Most Wanted program (or other appropriate number) where particularly nasty or difficult bugs are selected for an extra incentive for information leading to the arrest and conviction of...I mean identification and resolution...of the bug.
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Since we don't, we can induldge in our fantasies and create wonderful what-if scenarios.
If I was doing this game, I'd add a "weapon bank" points that energy weapons feed from and that recharges based on weapon power. Weapon power would not increase damage, it would affect how long you can maintain firing. Boosting firing speed or damage output might raise your weapon bank consumption.
I'd do the same with auxiliary power, and have Aux powers consume from the Auxiliary Reserve.
Also, every player would get a Space Pony. Grind-Free.
QA thrives on information? They're getting more reports than they can process right now, last I heard. What they need is quality information.
I don't think lack of information is necessarily the issue. They run private tests with focus groups but that isn't enough information and when they do get enough, quality is an issue. A central problem is that when people report issues, they think it happens to every player, every time. But QA can't replicate it. Now, maybe some of this comes down to bad descriptions from players or poor info gathering tools on Cryptic's end but...
I don't know the innards of the beast fully but I think a surprising amount of how this game works boils down to your system and also your character data. A lot of stuff that other engines might handle server-side are handled through the character database and the user's system here. This is my inkling anyway and one that seemed to be confirmed by conversations I've had with people who know more than I do.
As such, I don't know if reporting or response to reporting can be improved by a reasonable amount. It's a game of wackamole.
I think prevention may be the best care. Identifying what elements of the engine are likely to produce bugs and submitting those to the core programming team at Cryptic while also avoiding certain types of content design choices that tend to produce bugs.
I also think we probably need some form of character database clean-up as I SUSPECT that a lot of bugs are tied to buggy character data. That, for example, Sela not showing up may be tied not to a mission bug but a character or account bug where corrupted seed data or unaccounted for seed data from the character is causing issues with how the game generates the mission. This is a pretty wild supposition on my part but I suspect some bugs would miraculously clean themselves up with a big database transfer/conversion where they basically re-create our characters from scratch, purging extraneous data that may be cluttering up the database.
Wild supposition and I may have the terminology off for how they'd use it.
I have a sneaking hunch that some bugs certain players continuously have on their mains won't be there for alts and they may notice a cleaner play experience on their Delta Recruit.
I strongly suspect that minor scripting errors or various systems updates have left clutter on our character data and that clutter is mucking up mission generation, loadouts, etc.