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section31agent
Member Posts: 665 Arc User
I submit a simple request replace Redshirt Server with a more appropiate title and function. Here is a very simple idea for all of the disgruntled PvP players to rejoice about.
Since the code is already there let the game go retro back to a time before PWE bought Cryptic. A time before lockbox ships back when it was the Empire -vs- The Federation. You could even use the original introduction by Leonard Nimoy about how J'mpok chose the tip of the sword.
This way we could go back and grind toons specifically for this campaign. Think of it as a giant "Kerrat" capable of holding say 200 people in a instance. This server would have different battlezones and could have NPC threats as well as other players. Nothing says love like a cloaked patrol of Romulan Warbirds waiting for the winners of a Fed-Klink skirmish.
The player would be matched by ship tier in the instance. So instance #1 would be for Tier 1 ships and instance #2 would be for Tier 2 and so on.... This way people would get to fly a ship that matches thier enemies capabilities. Put the level cap back at 50 and Mark X items and let the fun begin again. Not to mention it would be helpful in selling the C-store ships to people who never bought them.
While we are at it could we have a Borg Instance sort of like the Cyrystal Entity? Can we call it Wolf 359 where multiple teams of players have to band together to defeat a Elite Tactical cube? This would be nice so we can acquire purple drops for this server.
Making Redshirt into a PvP server helps save the game and gives people a option to relive the good old days. This server would also be interesting if you had to have a subscription or LTS to access "Premium Content".
One last thing can we get a balance? Can we focus on the design of what the ships were? For instance Cruisers kill Escorts, Sci ships kill Cruisers, Escorts kill Sci ships. Un nerfing the Bridge officer skills and putting them back to seaon 1.2 would greatly enhance the "Fun Factor".
This concept would give the players something to do while the Devs take extended time to do maintainence on the "Holodeck" server. Consider this it would need no code updates no maintenance unless it were to catch hackers using bots which violate the TOS anyway. Over all this could be a way to give the fanboys what they want and another stream of income for PWE to soak up off of a virtually dead server.
Since the code is already there let the game go retro back to a time before PWE bought Cryptic. A time before lockbox ships back when it was the Empire -vs- The Federation. You could even use the original introduction by Leonard Nimoy about how J'mpok chose the tip of the sword.
This way we could go back and grind toons specifically for this campaign. Think of it as a giant "Kerrat" capable of holding say 200 people in a instance. This server would have different battlezones and could have NPC threats as well as other players. Nothing says love like a cloaked patrol of Romulan Warbirds waiting for the winners of a Fed-Klink skirmish.
The player would be matched by ship tier in the instance. So instance #1 would be for Tier 1 ships and instance #2 would be for Tier 2 and so on.... This way people would get to fly a ship that matches thier enemies capabilities. Put the level cap back at 50 and Mark X items and let the fun begin again. Not to mention it would be helpful in selling the C-store ships to people who never bought them.
While we are at it could we have a Borg Instance sort of like the Cyrystal Entity? Can we call it Wolf 359 where multiple teams of players have to band together to defeat a Elite Tactical cube? This would be nice so we can acquire purple drops for this server.
Making Redshirt into a PvP server helps save the game and gives people a option to relive the good old days. This server would also be interesting if you had to have a subscription or LTS to access "Premium Content".
One last thing can we get a balance? Can we focus on the design of what the ships were? For instance Cruisers kill Escorts, Sci ships kill Cruisers, Escorts kill Sci ships. Un nerfing the Bridge officer skills and putting them back to seaon 1.2 would greatly enhance the "Fun Factor".
This concept would give the players something to do while the Devs take extended time to do maintainence on the "Holodeck" server. Consider this it would need no code updates no maintenance unless it were to catch hackers using bots which violate the TOS anyway. Over all this could be a way to give the fanboys what they want and another stream of income for PWE to soak up off of a virtually dead server.
Post edited by section31agent#8506 on
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It goes much deeper than that.. they are afraid of allowing us to have fun at the expense of their pocket books. The retro server would quickly become more populated than holodeck, thereby proving to them that the direction PWE has taken us has been an utter mistake and failure... maybe not from their revenue perspective, but definitely from a fun perspective.
But I do love the idea.. let the PvE'ers have their money server, and let the PvPers have their balanced PvP server.
After all, cryptic.. there aren't many PvPers anyway, and we aren't the money spenders and we are the minority.. how would it really hurt you!? Hell, I'd even buy another lifetime subscription if we were given a retro sever to PvP with.
What cryptic thought was an April Fool's joke has turned into a very sincere request from the PvP community.
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
Problem: PvP is dead, nobody plays it anymore.
Answer: Let's make a PvP server and make it restricted for LTS!
Yeah dude 110% nailed it!
The question is what would the Chinese overlords be thinking about missed profits? Especially considering they already have the code to implement the game and turn a dead server into a monemaker. It just doesn't make any [cents].
Simply put, using a whole different game server for PvP and divide the community is a bad idea. No MMO, none does that. The closest example I can think of is Need for Speed World. Some years ago they added a whole new game server called Chicane, while the existing players were kept on the first one named Apex. The two do not, do NOT communicate with each other. Basically it's the same game, but you have two identical game servers. While it may sound a bad idea, it was actually good because on one side there were the longtime veterans, on the other one there were more fresh players that don't have to face those with 3+ years of experience in the game. Of course now there are veterans in Chicane as well, but in very fewer amount than in Apex. The fact that you'd have to rebuild another driver on the other game server discouraged the vets in Apex to stomp newcomers and kept racing in their own shard with their uber maxed cars, like I did.
Anyway, both servers are freely accessible and open.
In STO this could work but since there's no actual PvP community, it'd be senseless. Seriously, Need for Speed World is totally multiplayer, everything happens in multiplayer, every single race or pursuit. If someone does Single Player it's just for time trials, certainly not for rewards that are made to encourage multiplayer.
A usual carebear STO player in World would not go as far as level 5.
As far as being separate servers that's okay it is premium content and you would need to pay for it. I dare say this is the best idea yet to surface for fixing PvP. After all this is basically spare parts lying around and a chassis that isn't being used. Why not build something people would enjoy?
Besides like the OP said it would be a nice diversion while the maintenance is being done on HOLODECK
It's basically asking them to maintain two separate STO games. They're not going to fork "Rebirth" for real. I wouldn't want to go back to that old skill system anyway. Who wants to respec every time they switch ships?
Although... I suppose that's where they could make a profit. Selling respecs.
I think they'd make a lot of PvP'ers very happy if they could just work out a system for so-called "Vanilla" PvP. No lockbox ships, no fleet ships, no C-Store ships, and no universal consoles. Maybe sell "PvP-Only" ship slots that only accept PvP versions of classic ships (which you'd buy with Dilithium)? And PvP Queues that only allow classic ships to join them, where all DOFFs and Traits are deactivated? Throw in a leaderboard, and maybe they'd have something.
Don't need a special server for that, and it wouldn't necessarily fork the game.
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Gee a $5.00 a month or yearly $50.00 sub would keep things running. Since they would be using "Old Code" the only maintenance required would be to use security scans to keep people from botting. After all this server would not be adding new content like lockbox ships or T-6 TRIBBLE. It would in fact go back to version 1.2 a simpler time when you didn't have all these "MAGIC POWERS" on ships. It would be a simple Federation -vs- Klingon Empire. If you really wanted to monetize the game have it so that after the tenth time a ship is blown up it is drydocked. It would have to be repaired for a set amount of 250 zen. Once it has been drydocked after the fifth time the ship would be officially retired. Then you would have to purchase a new ship requisition form in the C-store for say like 500 zen.
Perhaps it is time STO copied someone else's PvP format.
The problem isn't the overabundance of skills, consoles, powers traits etc, but powercreep. SS3 was powercreeping, some starship traits are available just for a part of the players, disables, vapes. If they said "wait, stop. Let's rebalance everything for PvP", it'd go a long way. It's something you do once and then PvP content creates by itself, you don't need to "code" PvP like PvE queues. Carebearing isn't really good on the long shot.
Yup, and I could go back to my b'rel with a season 5 dedicated PvP server, which is what I like most compared to these new ships.
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
Since the code is already there let the game go retro back to a time before PWE bought Cryptic. A time before lockbox ships back when it was the Empire -vs- The Federation. You could even use the original introduction by Leonard Nimoy about how J'mpok chose the tip of the sword.
This way we could go back and grind toons specifically for this campaign. Think of it as a giant "Kerrat" capable of holding say 200 people in a instance. This server would have different battlezones and could have NPC threats as well as other players. Nothing says love like a cloaked patrol of Romulan Warbirds waiting for the winners of a Fed-Klink skirmish.
The player would be matched by ship tier in the instance. So instance #1 would be for Tier 1 ships and instance #2 would be for Tier 2 and so on.... This way people would get to fly a ship that matches thier enemies capabilities. Put the level cap back at 50 and Mark X items and let the fun begin again. Not to mention it would be helpful in selling the C-store ships to people who never bought them.
While we are at it could we have a Borg Instance sort of like the Cyrystal Entity? Can we call it Wolf 359 where multiple teams of players have to band together to defeat a Elite Tactical cube? This would be nice so we can acquire purple drops for this server.
Making Redshirt into a PvP server helps save the game and gives people a option to relive the good old days. This server would also be interesting if you had to have a subscription or LTS to access "Premium Content".
One last thing can we get a balance? Can we focus on the design of what the ships were? For instance Cruisers kill Escorts, Sci ships kill Cruisers, Escorts kill Sci ships. Un nerfing the Bridge officer skills and putting them back to seaon 1.2 would greatly enhance the "Fun Factor".
This concept would give the players something to do while the Devs take extended time to do maintainence on the "Holodeck" server. Consider this it would need no code updates no maintenance unless it were to catch hackers using bots which violate the TOS anyway. Over all this could be a way to give the fanboys what they want and another stream of income for PWE to soak up off of a virtually dead server.
I hate to say this... but making a PvP server now is like shutting the barn door after all the animals have run out, the hobos have moved it, realized this isn't cool and left, and only the flies flying around on what the animals and hobos left laying around.
And lets be honest Retro PvP had some SERIOUS issues as well that simply needed to be fixed... and we saw how Cryptic fixed it.
So here's the thing... Retro open world PvP isn't going to save Star Trek Online. What needs to happen is that the devs need to fix the game they currently have instead of making two seperate games so that they can TRIBBLE up both.
All they need to do is fix their game... but that would require them to take time away from insta-money grabs.
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
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How about it doesn't make money? Who cares about letting a few people play Pvp on redshirt? They need to offer more. Where is the money?
Oh and "Chinese Overlords"? F***ing dumbest thing I've ever heard. If you are old enough to have a job, you work for something that runs that way. If you own your own business, grats you're a "overlord".
I don't think you fully grasp what was done for the April Fool's day event. What was put up on Red Shirt was a single build, from 5 years ago. Think of it like a read-only zip file. It has all of the stuff from back then, but we can't modify any of it. It is one, complete package.
So. . . if we put it up on redshirt, we don't get to make the whole game PVP, there is no new maps, no new content, no new bug fixes. It is static. It would never change. It would never bee updated. Period.
So, assuming that (as often cited), we ONLY care about money, what "missed profits"? The build from 5 years ago is from before we were free to play, so there are no micro-transactions. So, unless we made this subscription only, I'm not sure where you see the money coming from? And I'd wager there would not be a large enough number of NEW subscribers/lifers to warrant the investment into such a shard. Do you honestly think there were would be enough people to even break even on the server/development costs for something like this?
You keep using that word. . .
You are comparing Apples to Mufflers, my friend.
The main problem in MMO PvP is the differences between the haves and have nots.. a bunch of players running about in ships with 30,000 DPS is not exactly competitive.. not when you can melt a target ship in all of about 3 seconds with that sort of numbers.. (going by raw numbers.. I got about 60k hull on my very best ship, and what ever the shields are at the moment.
1 second to blow through the shields , 2 second to blow through the hull. everything is on key binds and macros from external devices (I don't think half of you realize just how much an advantage a well set up macro on a programmable device is..)
PvP must be balanced, and fair to all.
Those 30k DPS ships are a balance of consoles, boff TRAITS and skills choices, captain TRAITS, and apparently mostly a beam boat thing.
The issue is the ships, traits, and console effects.. To have an aprochable PvP that anyone can play is almost an entirely different game. I can easliy myself suggest rules for the PvP specific ships, and can even think of some things that could be done with them to make ship "classes" matter.
RULES:
Common quality weapons, systems, consoles ONLY
C-store consoles would be unusable)
PvP ships are fixed designs and may NOT be customized in any way including visuals.
DOFF powers are also fixed.. No racial trait effects, no captains traits effects.
(NO SPECIAL ADVANTAGES!!!)
(( Add weapons to some of the larger ships, to reflect the greater power of these ships, and add broadside weapon mounts. PvP ships DO NOT have a great deal of customization. I'd in fact go for no customizing at all. Real world navy Captains do not get to send their ships to the yards for a custom refit.))
A particular match is a "X" amount of points per side match.. players on the team may select ships up to the point, but once it caps thats it, it caps. Either no more players, or no more ships..
The ability to do pre-made teams up and "squadron" (ie: team) builds as far as ship selection .... just as a time saver..
.... You could have "miss match" battles this way.. say a galaxy all good things dreadnaught v say 3-5 Birds of Prey. Galaxy way tough, lots of firepower... BOP's small, fragile, but fast and hyper manuverable and between them out gun the dreadnaught.
........................................................................
These are all thoughts on what could be done... Whats obvious to me right now, is the stock STO game as it sits right here, right now is utter fail for PvP.. To much work for the players just to get their ships set up for it.. and they absolutly must understand the nuts and bolts of the games combat system if they are to even have a small prayer of success. There's not much wild, wolly and fun about it right now.
If you go into a PvP match and you die 3 or 4 times with out causing any kills, you might as well leave the match because your most likely just wasting your time.
A new player who's got their toon to around level 30 should be able to go into a balanced pvp match and have fun and not be constantly dying.
I came to STO from years of playing SFC-II where I was was an ACE Klingon player. And I flew pretty much exclusivly Klingon D-5 drone boats. Folks said drone ships were OP.. they were wrong...I never lost a fight against another drone ship, and there was no guarentee that you would get a equal fight. I usually ended up fighting ships far more powerfull then my own when it came to PvP.. Nothing like being out numbered and out gunned to get your heart pumping. I won time and time again because I managed my ship. Drones were a consumable.. you only had so many per fight.. and once they were gone if was phaser dueling at knife fighting range with victory going to the ship that made best use of what it had left.
The main thing that was players had to use what they had. what happened over a player match running say half an hour represented 5 min of "real Time" Weapons recharged slower then here.. they had to be powered (including torpedos, but not including drones) you had to power up Ecm, ECCM, and any special systems you might have... some weapons even took a significant amount of time to ready, but made up for it by causing significantly more damage.
We need to take a few pages from what this very successfull for the time Trek based game did with PvP combat and bring it to STO.. SFC's advantage is the game started as a table top PvP game (all table top games are pretty much PvP in case anyone hasn't noticed) so balance was a requirement from the start. STO wasn't really aimed at the PvP crowd.. which is why here now today putting in any sort of fair and balanced PvP is going to be a real bear to do.
Honestly the only real solution I see that can be implemented in any sort of reasonable time frame is to make it a subset of the game with it own ships..
((Oh, and yes, sure.. if you want to take your specialized PvP ship under the above proposed and go PvE with it... GO FOR IT... with my admiration of your abilities especially if you can make it to end game will be great!.. the PvP ship just isn't going to be as capable as the PvE ships.))
I wish I could find it but Virusdancer did some pretty rough math. Short version. Even between the same ships in the same gear the more skilled captain will be a very good deal stronger then an unskilled player.
Most PvP "fixes" I hear is not about balance as much as it is about the grind.
The grind for spec points, zen, ec, dil, fleet credits, and the like.
That is true, but it's also true to a point .
For example back in the day, I couldn't understand why I was pretty good at lower level PVP, but just average at Lvl 50 .
Then I looked around for a bit, I listened for a bit (someone taught me about this magical thing called Tactical Team, others advised me to forgoe my rainbow build) and pretty soon I was once again not only holding my own, but came to recognize when I was in over my head (due to tag-teams or whole pre-made teams) -- thus I could differentiate between loosing because I got owned by a team and between me or my team just playing badly .
That is a part of it, but just a part .
Cryptic continuously introduces new powers and mechanics that continuously wrench havoc with builds on PVP .
And with DR, we've finally passed over the point where the PVP-ers said "yeah, I'll buy that and then I'll still remain competitive" .
If PVP and PVE would have different ships & skill trees, then one change to one would not mean a change to althe other .
But so long as the two are connected , each will impact the other in a negative way .
This.
Nothing says "Star Trek" like blowing random ships out of the sky. :P
It may not cover the development costs right away, but then again neither do your constant revamps of the existing game .
Right now Cryptic spends what ... something like 10-20% of the year polishing / removing old content .
So what will happen after you get done with the Cardassian arc ?
What then?
Will someone invent yet another pet project ?
No ... , let me guess ... -- another expansion .
... it's almost OK though ... , almost OK ...