Exploration is the new PvP... Abandoned!

dylantrinidy

C'mon people this game is going on six years old and Cryptic is still dangling the exploration carrot in front of us as they did with pvp for five years. "update in the works", "ideas are on paper", "we're having many discussions", "something we want to do in the future" all taken right out of book of "replies to pvp questions". If I had told you six years ago that there will still be no real meaningful exploration in a Star Trek game by 2016 would you have believed me? I doubt it, True more people want exploration then ever wanted a pvp revamp so why are we getting the same excuses over the YEARS? It's simple Cryptic don't know what to do and refuse to take a risk heaven forbid a part of the game that's not monetized, anyway it should be clear to anyone not living in the delusional Cryptic bubble that exploration is now the new pvp nothing will ever be done at the six year mark and still no firm commitment just the good 'ol "it's "on the white board" or "scheduling conflicts" yeah right six years of "scheduling conflicts" Ok guys defend it

chipg7

Play Sunrise. We found a new planet, and made first contact.

/Defence

gradii

chipg7 wrote: »

Play Sunrise. We found a new planet, and made first contact.

/Defence

Just so they can claim we shouldn't complain "No exploration system" it's not what they advertised or what we asked for.

ufpterrell

To be fair Cryptic never promised us a new exploration "system" with New Dawn. They merely stated that missions would have a new focus on exploration and discovery after the events of the Iconian War. We discovered a new civilisation and made first contact. That counts as exploration in my book, even if it is a scripted afair.

bobtheskull99

ufpterrell wrote: »

To be fair Cryptic never promised us a new exploration "system" with New Dawn. They merely stated that missions would have a new focus on exploration and discovery after the events of the Iconian War. We discovered a new civilisation and made first contact. That counts as exploration in my book, even if it is a scripted afair.

^this

gulberat

I also think the greater accessibility to the Foundry, with seeing the missions as you fly around in sector space, is far superior to the original (awful) procedurally generated explorations which IMO the devs were *right* about being a drag on the game.

angrytarg

gulberat wrote: »

I also think the greater accessibility to the Foundry, with seeing the missions as you fly around in sector space, is far superior to the original (awful) procedurally generated explorations which IMO the devs were *right* about being a drag on the game.

The two systems aren't remotely comparable. I wish people would stop the foundry-exploration nonsense. The foundry is fine I guess but it should not be a substitute for actual dev designed content. And the story episodes also have nothing to do with what the original exploration system tried to simulate. And in my opinion the removal of the clusters was one of the biggest mistakes they made over the years.​​

gulberat

To me, the storywriting quality of certain series far exceeds some of the official missions, and is far more *original,* often with real exploration, discovery, and moral dilemmas. It comes closest to the feel of the real series: not all pew-pew-pew (some minimal to none), and sometimes even with the kind of strong sci-fi basis the show gave at its best. Yes, not all Foundry missions are good, but when they are good, they're REALLY good. The clusters to me were nothing but an empty, repetitive grind with poor, boring map design, not even with as much thought as some of the pew-pew missions.

angrytarg

gulberat wrote: »

To me, the storywriting quality of certain series far exceeds some of the official missions, and is far more *original,* often with real exploration, discovery, and moral dilemmas. It comes closest to the feel of the real series: not all pew-pew-pew (some minimal to none), and sometimes even with the kind of strong sci-fi basis the show gave at its best. Yes, not all Foundry missions are good, but when they are good, they're REALLY good. The clusters to me were nothing but an empty, repetitive grind with poor, boring map design, not even with as much thought as some of the pew-pew missions.

"Quality" of the foundry missions is irrelevant. They are scripted story missions. They rival the episodes, not something resembling a open exploration system - apples and oranges, really.

Foundry missions are user created and cannot be judged as if they would belong together. Of course there are not only grinders and they aren't only show-grade writing episodes because everyone can make a mission and publish it.​​

goodscotch

Seems to me that this game is more of a story-telling system than anything else. The ability to have ship combat and ground combat seem secondary to the series of missions with each season that tell a story and advance a timeline. The focus is more on the story than on the mechanics. Is anyone really expecting something dynamic that falls outside of this scope?

The carrot that continually gets dangled to keep people interested are things like tier fleet upgrades, admiralty system, doff assignments, etc. But the jewel is the storyline.

On a side note...I really have to delve into the Foundry and learn how to make missions. I have played a few good Foundry missions that I enjoyed. But even this is more of a story telling system that as a side includes space and/or ground combat.

hanover2

Provide sourced example of someone in an official capacity making a specific, solid commitment to an "exploration" system, or retract the "dangling the carrot" falsehood.

Why do the devs engage the forums so infrequently? I wouldn't hang around either, if my every random offhand comment was taken as a promise etched in gold. People need to stop doing that, but they never learn.

gulberat

The only thing I ever saw from "exploration" was mindless and sleep-inducing grinding. If I am going to be making discoveries, I expect to ponder things and have my mind actively engaged, not "scan five things of unobtainium, rinse, lather, and repeat endlessly with only the thinnest veneer of story or science--oh and don't forget, there are only five stories at the most, just with the names changed." The only way to accomplish that is by quality storywriting in mass quantities, not by procedural content. The hard fact is that the devs cannot produce at the rate needed to satisfy the need for new places to go and things to do, or truly innovative storylines and concepts we've never seen before that are more engaging than repeatedly beating your head on a concrete wall. There simply is not a way, except with a WoW sized budget and staff, to accomplish that without crowdsourcing it...which brings us back to the Foundry.

goodscotch

gulberat wrote: »

The hard fact is that the devs cannot produce at the rate needed to satisfy the need for new places to go and things to do, or truly innovative storylines and concepts we've never seen before that are more engaging than repeatedly beating your head on a concrete wall. There simply is not a way, except with a WoW sized budget and staff, to accomplish that without crowdsourcing it...which brings us back to the Foundry.

I agree. I think this is the truth of it. They're dealing with constraints and players burn through new content overnight. Write your own story within their story. Use the Captain's Log. New stuff will come, but maybe not at the rate that most folks would like.

mustrumridcully0

I think giving enough time and brain matter, the devs could come up with a replacement for the old Genesis system that worked overall better. But I am afraid it would still boil down to standard mission templates that get some tiny variations. It's still scripted, just that now someone scripted the script writer, too. It might give nicer results than Genesis, maybe it will need less storage space, lower build process times, load faster, have neater texts and no Borg with their 3rd Dynasty, but it would still be a series of interacts with generic text interpersed by killing a bunch of randomly selected opponents.

Maybe it's enough for some people. But maybe these some people are not enough to chase after? If they could spend the same time to give us a new episode monthly... I think I'll take the episodes.

hanover2 wrote: »

Provide sourced example of someone in an official capacity making a specific, solid commitment to an "exploration" system, or retract the "dangling the carrot" falsehood.

Why do the devs engage the forums so infrequently? I wouldn't hang around either, if my every random offhand comment was taken as a promise etched in gold. People need to stop doing that, but they never learn.

Well, they might be new people every time, learning it for the first time.

Same reason I could never be an elementary school teacher, for example. You just taught a bunch of kids how to read and write and all that, and after the summer holidays, these idiots have to be taught to read and write again!

doubleohnine

I'll never understand why they didnt go ALL in on the Foundry. And that they made the Neverwinter Foundry better, and still shat on the STO foundry. We had a lot of good authors writing content for this game. But when Cryptic only wanted to pay them peanuts in the form of tiny dil contributions per play and nothing more, we likely ran off all the great foundry authors we had because the ridiculous amount of time involved in making sets and writing stories in their difficult system wasnt worth what Cryptic was willing to give back for it. They could be assigning employees who's sole job was to find the best content, better voting systems for the public to help those employees find the best TRUE content, and not just grinders, and monthly adding lots of great props for foundry authors to use, and PAYING them a NICE Zen stipend for a mission worthy of being featured. But no. And this is why I havnt got around to making a foundry mission either, the time and effort isnt worth the rewards, especially when its still really hard to do it JUST for recognition, when great missions may stay hidden and drowned among TRIBBLE for months after first publish.

hyperionx09

They could sort of combine Exploration and Foundry; let players write certain scenarios for a specific Exploration-based prompt, then have the system randomly generate the intro to one of the Foundry missions. So one playthrough might see you just go on a scanning spree then when ported to the next sector, find out that Tholians or Tal Shiar are trying to excavate the ruins you've been scanning up or trying to set a base there.

Or maybe you took some scans, and instead of triggering a conflict Foundry mini-mission, it triggered a completely pacifistic dialogue-heavy mini-mission with some random NPCs that aren't quite warp capable but are sentient enough to be of interest. Or something.

Still not perfect, but it would combine both some randomly generated segments with foundry-made segments created specifically for that area, based on whatever story prompt the Devs put up to create content for.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

storules

dylantrinidy wrote: »

C'mon people this game is going on six years old and Cryptic is still dangling the exploration carrot in front of us as they did with pvp for five years. "update in the works", "ideas are on paper", "we're having many discussions", "something we want to do in the future" all taken right out of book of "replies to pvp questions". If I had told you six years ago that there will still be no real meaningful exploration in a Star Trek game by 2016 would you have believed me? I doubt it, True more people want exploration then ever wanted a pvp revamp so why are we getting the same excuses over the YEARS? It's simple Cryptic don't know what to do and refuse to take a risk heaven forbid a part of the game that's not monetized, anyway it should be clear to anyone not living in the delusional Cryptic bubble that exploration is now the new pvp nothing will ever be done at the six year mark and still no firm commitment just the good 'ol "it's "on the white board" or "scheduling conflicts" yeah right six years of "scheduling conflicts" Ok guys defend it

Sorry...but I could care less about explorations. Actually, I care more about PvPs than explorations if you are comparing that way

shrimphead2015

valoreah wrote: »

hyperionx09 wrote: »

They could sort of combine Exploration and Foundry; let players write certain scenarios for a specific Exploration-based prompt, then have the system randomly generate the intro to one of the Foundry missions. So one playthrough might see you just go on a scanning spree then when ported to the next sector, find out that Tholians or Tal Shiar are trying to excavate the ruins you've been scanning up or trying to set a base there.

Or maybe you took some scans, and instead of triggering a conflict Foundry mini-mission, it triggered a completely pacifistic dialogue-heavy mini-mission with some random NPCs that aren't quite warp capable but are sentient enough to be of interest. Or something.

Still not perfect, but it would combine both some randomly generated segments with foundry-made segments created specifically for that area, based on whatever story prompt the Devs put up to create content for.

In order to do exploration any justice in STO, it would have to be a combination of scripted Dev created FEs, player created Foundry content and procedural generated content.

I believe so as well. I understand Angrytarg's position though that it should be dev generated content ( I am guessing here just for the sake of canon). But what about this? If a foundry mission is looked on by the devs as very usable, wouldn't that mission be "canon" as well?​​

kodachikuno

So, to the OP, I will ask you the exact same question that Taco asked us last time this came up. "How would you develop an exploration system that is fun to play day after day, and not repetitive and boring?" Its nigh on impossible frankly.

If they were to give the old genesis system a total overhaul and update and like 20 templates to work from instead of 3 it would at least be playable imo. Procedural generation has come a long way.

tempus64

dylantrinidy wrote: »

Ok guys defend it

If I was running the company I wouldn't touch "exploration" with a ten foot pole. There is simply no way to make something that would be compelling. Just go read some of the suggestions out there. One group or another would find them lame/boring etc. It would fall short of any expectation and would end up with just a mountain of complaints and a whole lot of content few end up playing. I mean really. How many feds have done all the Sulu "patrol" type missions do you think? How many people "explore" via the foundry? Given what most people talk about in the game, I doubt there's a large number of either of those. So why spend the huge amount of man power and money to even bother trying. The majority of players in this game just want to blow stuff up, become "rich" via the exchange, be at the top of the DPS ladders etc. "Exploration" would not provide an efficient means to achieve what they want in the game.

gulberat

valoreah wrote: »

gulberat wrote: »

I also think the greater accessibility to the Foundry, with seeing the missions as you fly around in sector space, is far superior to the original (awful) procedurally generated explorations which IMO the devs were *right* about being a drag on the game.

To be fair, a very good many of those Foundry missions you see flying around sector space aren't of the highest quality either...​​

Darned near anything beats infinite repeats of "scan five items." Usually I have a fairly good "nose" for the good ones though, based on reading the descriptions.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

hyperionx09

100000 exploration missions of the same general thing?

100000 variations on things to scan, places to travel, and sometimes NPCs to talk to, even if the order is reversed? And hoping that all that time spent rewards more than maybe 100 XP and credits total?

And to top it off, the fact that it has to be concluded at the end, unless you want to turn your own Foundry mission into an episode chain and hope it somehow is unlocked or available after completing the initial exploration mission?

It works for Elite Dangerous only because it takes forever to get anywhere, and you run the risk of running out of fuel/ammo/etc. And it also helps that that's one of the main features of the game they're capitalizing on. At some point though, those worlds will all be explored, and claimed by the players or their factions. And even then, you're not actually going down to the surface and setting up shop.

Not saying Exploration is bad, but it IS boring, and indeed impossible to do right, given that for one, this game is restricted in a number of ways. You simply cannot create a hostile original race that wishes to cannibalize your crew (much less anything more grotesque or violent due to the age rating) or a mission where you run the risk of some infection and then spend the next couple missions figuring out a cure before you and your ship succumb to it. At least, not without ruining the immersion from a mission complete and beaming back up to begin the next mission, and the fact that NPC actions are ever so stiff; even if they're panicking in dialogue, they're almost always looking calm and collected.

lillihenny

kodachikuno wrote: »

So, to the OP, I will ask you the exact same question that Taco asked us last time this came up. "How would you develop an exploration system that is fun to play day after day, and not repetitive and boring?" Its nigh on impossible frankly.

If they were to give the old genesis system a total overhaul and update and like 20 templates to work from instead of 3 it would at least be playable imo. Procedural generation has come a long way.

If you haven't played the Elite STF queue The Battle of Korfez you should give it a shot, as the mechanics on display in that STF could be considered a predecessor to a revamped exploration system. In The Battle of Korfez you and your teammates face a series of conflicts only the first and last of which are predictable. The other encounters you face are drawn randomly from a small pool of pre-set encounters, and the randomisation of these is what keeps the queue from being a rote affair every time you play it, unlike other queues.

It's the random draw from the deck that gives something you've done before that extra kick of "I wonder what's going to happen next?" which is the ingredient that made the old exploration system fun to those who miss it. Adapting this random draw system from Korfez one could imagine writing a number of missions that branch out like a Choose Tour Own Adventure. Sometimes you wind up going to this encounter, sometimes a different plot unfolds. These exploration missions needn't be as polished (ie. work intensive) or as galaxy-shaking as feature episodes.

A simple "for example":
You beam down to scan some anomalous readings. You find something intriguing or you don't. The mission progresses or ends anti-climactically - just another routine day in Starfleet. If it progresses you trace the reading to its source and have an interesting encounter that leads you to investigate a number of possibilities, or you merely find something intriguing for the logs and the mission ends anti-climactically. The possibilities are where the engine has drawn a card from the deck and the uncertain outcome is what keeps the player engaged. Will this result in a friendly encounter that takes the mission down a diplomatic path, an ambush that has you pursuing Nausicaan raiders to their base of operations, do you find something out of place requiring further scientific study of a nearby star? Replaying what at first appears to be the same scenario will constantly surprise you, and if the rewards are as unpredictable as the outcome such a system would make for some engaging exploration.

That's the bare bones of it.

If Cryptic really wanted to go to town they could roll other systems into it like Doffing and Admiralty turning up rare Exploration mission start points, completion rewards giving Reputation marks and Starbase provisions, progression requiring a certain Episode or STF be played to unlock the next step. The best possible outcome would add a new range of Exploration ships and non-combat-centric consoles to the game for us to collect that assist us in our Exploration endeavors - there's only so many ways you can package pretty lights that damage enemies IMO. A whole new exploration system could add a fresh level of diversity to what players currently spend their in-game time doing and, with the integration of new exploration mechanics, might draw a lot of new/old players back - on top of opening up a huge new stream of revenue. All it takes is a little imagination and the will to be more Trek.

chiyoumiku

This game is going on six years and OP's like you are still rehashing the same old stuff.

rosetyler51

I covered this before I think. There is two halves of exploration that makes up good Trek I think. While I do agree that both halves have their place, I think Cryptic's efforts could be better used on the exploration of humanity rather than the stars.

About the old exploration system. The fact that you would in time see all that it could be and will did not make it a pretty poor form of exploration.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

gradii

angrytarg wrote: »

gulberat wrote: »

I also think the greater accessibility to the Foundry, with seeing the missions as you fly around in sector space, is far superior to the original (awful) procedurally generated explorations which IMO the devs were *right* about being a drag on the game.

The two systems aren't remotely comparable. I wish people would stop the foundry-exploration nonsense. The foundry is fine I guess but it should not be a substitute for actual dev designed content. And the story episodes also have nothing to do with what the original exploration system tried to simulate. And in my opinion the removal of the clusters was one of the biggest mistakes they made over the years.​​

Agreed. the players who didn't like them were never required to play them. They could have simply updated the system (which was pretty much never touched) instead of remove it and with it any sense of real exploration in STO.

gradii

goodscotch wrote: »

gulberat wrote: »

The hard fact is that the devs cannot produce at the rate needed to satisfy the need for new places to go and things to do, or truly innovative storylines and concepts we've never seen before that are more engaging than repeatedly beating your head on a concrete wall. There simply is not a way, except with a WoW sized budget and staff, to accomplish that without crowdsourcing it...which brings us back to the Foundry.

I agree. I think this is the truth of it. They're dealing with constraints and players burn through new content overnight. Write your own story within their story. Use the Captain's Log. New stuff will come, but maybe not at the rate that most folks would like.

Whether everyone was satisfied with the old system is irrelevant. they removed it for all of us with no replacement ready. That is a bad thing no matter how you try and spin it. No one was ever required to play these missions.