test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
A missed opportunity for T6, an opportunity for T7
leviathan99
Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
I think a big missed opportunity for T6 was to redraw the ship class boundaries. We've been moving away from Sci/Tac/Cruiser in a variety of ways since launch. I think the devs were attempting to bolster that when DR launched but, really, they get themselves into a corner where:
- people want to specialize in certain ship types with the current system with certain types of Captains and that puts an artificial cap on sales. The problem with people wanting more science vessels is, in part, that Cryptic chooses to call one major classification of ship a science vessel.
- there are a narrower range of cosmetic options people are interested in. Many people are now at the point where they'd sooner pay to fly the same ship than view a retrofit as a new ship.
- as a byproduct of this, the cost of "a new ship" is no longer effectively masked by game mechanics the way it was at launch where a costume + loadout + mechanically using a different ship slot made it feel like you were making an additional purchase.
Here's my T7 proposal because I'm sure it's about time for devs to be thinking about that seriously in order to maintain a lead on actual development.
- Use T7 to redraw class boundaries. No more science, escorts, or cruisers at T7. Focus more on niches.
- Focus more on novel gameplay like the pilot ships.
- Focus more on existing ship upgrades versus new ships. Among other things, the data storage of new ship slots while it is paid for on the player side with a one time transaction is an ongoing cost for Cryptic. Cryptic gets short term revenue that may make the game so expensive they have to shut it down at a certain point down the road. A worst case for this game's shutdown is that it ends up being forced to shutdown (we're talking well down the road, not soon hopefully) when it has plenty of players left who simply aren't buying enough stuff as opposed to when players are dwindling. Because if there are 20k players when the game shuts down due to overhead not being met by purchases, Cryptic would get a bigger black eye than if the game had 5k players who were actively spending but simply not enough of them. Ship slots leverage the longterm against the short term and actually have a subtle bet against player retention baked into the business model. I'm not sure if anybody has thought about that. I also think all the extra purchased costumes/ships have had cases where they impact game performance in social zones. My guess is that the 3D character/ship previews are part of why game performance spikes up when the UI is turned off.
My recommendation:
- Have T7 be effectively new ship classes with unique mechanics like pilot ships/raiders/etc. With new requirements/movement styles. I'm thinking you really want about 9-12 of these to start
- Change the ship loadouts to work more like kitframes: slotted in an existing frame and possessing of weapons and BO loadouts as one item.
- Each existing T5U/T6 ship/frame comes with its console loadout and a frame that is rated for 3 different loadouts to drop into it. For example, the Defiant might be rated for a choice of Pilot/Destroyer/Raider socketed station layouts, each with different movement/damage bonuses. The Intrepid may be rated for, say, Research (a kind of hyper science), Destroyer, and some kind of Agile Tank (Starcruiser?)
- When you buy a ship, you get a ship as a frame but you get a new hull usable on existing ships and you get a socketed BO station that can be transferred immediately. Starship mastery would be tied to the station socket ideally rather than the ship. Also, maybe the socket comes with one console slot unique to the socket rather than to the basic ship frame.
An example gem socket station station:
Has BO loadout.
Has a Mastery progression. (* This may be better served on the ship frame to sell both.)
Has power level bonuses.
Has movement/directional bonuses.
Has everything "north" of the consoles on a current loadout, including weapon sockets but also potentially options like different styles of warp/singularity core.]
Has one console slot specific to the socket such as engineering/tactical/science/universal. Maybe some would allow more slots but only for special activation consoles or specific consoles.
Comes bundled with new hull cosmetics and possibly some parts for existing ships. (Ie. purchase of one includes, say, new Sovereign nacelles.)
The basic ship frame has:
Basic ship stats.
Basic console slots.
The Mastery MIGHT go better here.
Ability consoles might go better being sold with the frame.
A station socket slot rated for three different types of stations.
I would retrofit existing T5U/T6 ships with these sockets and have them preloaded with their existing ones.
- While lockboxes might offer distinct ships, you might want to focus more on selling station sockets with cool hulls for a lower price than more ships at a higher price. I would buy a lot more alternate BO loadouts with a variant hull for my ships at 1200 ZEN a piece than I would buy full ships at 3k ZEN a piece. (And yes, the answer is that I would buy more than 3x as many. I'm skipping a lot of ships anymore.)
- people want to specialize in certain ship types with the current system with certain types of Captains and that puts an artificial cap on sales. The problem with people wanting more science vessels is, in part, that Cryptic chooses to call one major classification of ship a science vessel.
- there are a narrower range of cosmetic options people are interested in. Many people are now at the point where they'd sooner pay to fly the same ship than view a retrofit as a new ship.
- as a byproduct of this, the cost of "a new ship" is no longer effectively masked by game mechanics the way it was at launch where a costume + loadout + mechanically using a different ship slot made it feel like you were making an additional purchase.
Here's my T7 proposal because I'm sure it's about time for devs to be thinking about that seriously in order to maintain a lead on actual development.
- Use T7 to redraw class boundaries. No more science, escorts, or cruisers at T7. Focus more on niches.
- Focus more on novel gameplay like the pilot ships.
- Focus more on existing ship upgrades versus new ships. Among other things, the data storage of new ship slots while it is paid for on the player side with a one time transaction is an ongoing cost for Cryptic. Cryptic gets short term revenue that may make the game so expensive they have to shut it down at a certain point down the road. A worst case for this game's shutdown is that it ends up being forced to shutdown (we're talking well down the road, not soon hopefully) when it has plenty of players left who simply aren't buying enough stuff as opposed to when players are dwindling. Because if there are 20k players when the game shuts down due to overhead not being met by purchases, Cryptic would get a bigger black eye than if the game had 5k players who were actively spending but simply not enough of them. Ship slots leverage the longterm against the short term and actually have a subtle bet against player retention baked into the business model. I'm not sure if anybody has thought about that. I also think all the extra purchased costumes/ships have had cases where they impact game performance in social zones. My guess is that the 3D character/ship previews are part of why game performance spikes up when the UI is turned off.
My recommendation:
- Have T7 be effectively new ship classes with unique mechanics like pilot ships/raiders/etc. With new requirements/movement styles. I'm thinking you really want about 9-12 of these to start
- Change the ship loadouts to work more like kitframes: slotted in an existing frame and possessing of weapons and BO loadouts as one item.
- Each existing T5U/T6 ship/frame comes with its console loadout and a frame that is rated for 3 different loadouts to drop into it. For example, the Defiant might be rated for a choice of Pilot/Destroyer/Raider socketed station layouts, each with different movement/damage bonuses. The Intrepid may be rated for, say, Research (a kind of hyper science), Destroyer, and some kind of Agile Tank (Starcruiser?)
- When you buy a ship, you get a ship as a frame but you get a new hull usable on existing ships and you get a socketed BO station that can be transferred immediately. Starship mastery would be tied to the station socket ideally rather than the ship. Also, maybe the socket comes with one console slot unique to the socket rather than to the basic ship frame.
An example gem socket station station:
Has BO loadout.
Has a Mastery progression. (* This may be better served on the ship frame to sell both.)
Has power level bonuses.
Has movement/directional bonuses.
Has everything "north" of the consoles on a current loadout, including weapon sockets but also potentially options like different styles of warp/singularity core.]
Has one console slot specific to the socket such as engineering/tactical/science/universal. Maybe some would allow more slots but only for special activation consoles or specific consoles.
Comes bundled with new hull cosmetics and possibly some parts for existing ships. (Ie. purchase of one includes, say, new Sovereign nacelles.)
The basic ship frame has:
Basic ship stats.
Basic console slots.
The Mastery MIGHT go better here.
Ability consoles might go better being sold with the frame.
A station socket slot rated for three different types of stations.
I would retrofit existing T5U/T6 ships with these sockets and have them preloaded with their existing ones.
- While lockboxes might offer distinct ships, you might want to focus more on selling station sockets with cool hulls for a lower price than more ships at a higher price. I would buy a lot more alternate BO loadouts with a variant hull for my ships at 1200 ZEN a piece than I would buy full ships at 3k ZEN a piece. (And yes, the answer is that I would buy more than 3x as many. I'm skipping a lot of ships anymore.)
0
Comments
At the design levels, they're probably looking 18 months out with some of the whiteboard concepts. If you think about what goes in next month at that level of design, I'd imagine you're behind.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
I keep pushing for the Connie as a carrier for shuttle content. I think that's the best option all around since shuttles scale. It would push a different side of the game that players might otherwise neglect.
And I'd have the "shuttle carrier" mechanic be spitting out armies of people in EV suits with rifles and jetpacks so we could remake the climax of Moonraker! Naturally, the Connie would shoot out people in TMP or TOS era EV suits.
(And I'd refer to it as a troop transport rather than a carrier. But it'd fill the carrier role for shuttle content.)
Granted, you could go the other direction with that as well and have a ship designed to look very much "with child" that could have a Defiant or Connie as a hangar pet. That would get around some of the concerns about power level and it would be really amusing if we can't have it as a personal ship, that it could be treated as a kind of "super-hangar" pet with a new ship designed as its larger partner.
You compare your idea to kit frames, but space ships are already largely like complex kit frames. Frames that have 13 and more (thanks to universal clickies) powers to slot. You're basically taking kit frames and add kit frames to them.
Aside from that. My guess is that Tier 7 is still at least 2 years away. Tier 5 lasted STO 5 years, after all, the next cycle is likely to be shorter, but not that fast.
Tier 6 (and Tier 5U) deliberately enforced the classes further. The ship Masteries lock you even more into your ship's role than before. Sure, specializations kinda let you go a bit wild, but not that wild - and they also specialize the ship, as the name says, so the differences between ships are even growing.
Tier 6 was a move to focus or specialize ships even more, so that they have more ship design options to create new ones with meaningful mechanical differences.
At Tier 5, you could use the Patrol Escort BO layout exactly once. Now you can use it once per specialization, and you could feasibly make more variations if you allowed spec combos. Even if you stay within narrow confines on how you apply specialization slots (like either a Lt. or a Lt.Cmdr slot becomes a hybrid slot) and try to avoid builds that are too close, you have basically potential for 3 different layouts for every existing Tier 5 layout.
Could not agree more. The last tier nearly forced to quit the game. I can't handle another.
There will always be Tac/Sci/Eng ships but they are already beginning to stray fro their usually designs, Tac ships are no longer always small fast escorts, Eng ships are no longer the bigger slower cruisers, and so on.
I fly a Tac scimi and it is still one of the best Tac ships out there (unless you like faster ships)
The only way I'd buy a t7 ship IF you can use any ship customisation parts and you can choose what bridge officer seats you have.
Agreed completely.
I understand they need to generate money, they need to pay the bills... I accept that. Keep releasing T6 're-hash' ships.. they're quick and easy and generate money.
Take that revenue and invest in correcting server stability and performance, fixing bugs, revamping old missions/story arcs, and eventually.. new story content.
I'm hoping that even it STO lasts another 5 years, that we never see another ship tier. 6 is enough.. it's actually one more then enough.