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A new Idea of Storytelling.
bjornfried
Member Posts: 401 Arc User
How about some missions that play inside our ships?
With our selected interiours and a without those stupid speech windows, but a voiceover for our character and our crewmembers ?
And some more missions that play way back in the past, would be awesome. Since Star Trek is becoming 50 and we allready have time travel involved in this game...
I think hat would be a nice addition.
What do you guys
think?
With our selected interiours and a without those stupid speech windows, but a voiceover for our character and our crewmembers ?
And some more missions that play way back in the past, would be awesome. Since Star Trek is becoming 50 and we allready have time travel involved in this game...
I think hat would be a nice addition.
What do you guys
think?
0
Comments
1) Let's say 5 different players have 5 different ship interiors. With me so far?
2) Because the interiors look different and are laid out differently, there is no way to make a single mission that would work in all 5 interiors.
Now, it is important that you actually *understand* this point. If you do, great. If you don't, we're in trouble already. But the simplest way I can explain it is that missions require you to go to a *specific* spot on a map, and there is no way to make that same spot work on different interiors that are laid out differently.
3) That means Cryptic would have to make 5 *different* missions; one for *each* interior.
So, here is the choice the dev team faces:
A: they can spend their time making a "single" mission, but with 5 different versions(which really only results in a single mission experience for each of those 5 people). OR,
B: they can spend their time making 5 regular missions, which results in a 5 mission experience for each of those 5 people.
If you can actually understand the logic I just laid out, it's pretty obvious why they aren't going to make these kind of interior missions.
PS: also, this is most certainly *not* a "new" idea. It is a very, very old idea that hasn't happened for the logistical reasons mentioned above.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
"I'd be delighted to offer advice on women. When I have some I'll let you know..." - Cpt. Jean-Luc Picard
I agree. In fact, a long time ago, I posted a thread asking if people would be willing to accept a standardized interior if it meant having ship interior missions. As I recall, the response was not favorable. But honestly, they can't really do this after selling custom interiors. They would be faced with either telling people "you know that thing you spent money on? we're going to disregard that now", OR have the problem I mentioned above of having to create multiple versions of every mission for each of those custom interiors. Honestly, this was a bad design decision made a long time ago, and it's really too late to change it at this point. But this is something they need to keep in mind if they ever make a STO 2.0.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
6 years and a lack of the type of mission you describe suggests otherwise. Let's get real for a minute, ok? Ship interior episodes were a pretty big part of the various Trek series. Do you actually think the devs don't know that? If you do, your crazy. They are Trek fans too. If this idea did not have significant problems, of course they would do it, and they would have done it a long time ago. Like I said, this isn't a new idea.
Save your strawman nonsense for someone else. I did *NOT* say this "can't" be done. I said it *WON'T* be done, because it is not a good time vs reward investment for Cryptic, as a business. Those are 2 completely different points.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Exactly my point. They can't do that now that they have already sold custom interiors, because it would essentially be invalidating those people's purchase.
Again, this was a bad design decision made a long time ago. In retrospect, I would much have preferred situation A rather than situation B(which we have):
A: people asking why they can't have custom interiors, and being told that it would prevent them from doing the many ship interior missions that we have(hypothetically, in that alternate universe)
B: people asking why we can't have ship interior missions, and being told it conflicts with the many custom interiors they already allowed people to have. (our universe, unfortunately)
I will admit, hindsight is 20/20, but it seems like this should have been something they discussed enough to figure it out before launch. Then again, launch was very rushed. So, oh well.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Unfortunately it is a chicken and egg problem. Bridges/interiors don't sell well...because they aren't really important. But they can't really make them important...with missions anyway...because they sold different versions. If they ever make a new Trek MMO, I hope they will keep interiors standardized to prevent this problem(although it would theoretically be possible to allow color customization, as that would not affect the actual layout and location of the maps).
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
I actually think a standardized interior would get more complaints than people realize, if it were made more important. After all, there would be plenty of people annoyed that their 1000m long flagship has the same effective interior space as a 150m escort, and think about the people who would wonder why their engine room always looked the same, no matter what kind of warp-core they included. Even then, unless the mission you are proposing is pure fed only, you'd have to think about a Romulan interior and a Klingon interior (to say nothing of interiors for all the different "ship of the week" ships we could be flying from lock-boxes or events. Realistically, the only way to really handle ship interior missions well is via some sort of dynamic mission function, which recognized certain location "tags" like "these floor tiles are "engineering" and this console is "EPS flow" for missions" and then brought up the map location triggers/interact cues as appropriate for the mission. Obviously, that ship has long since sailed for THIS game, but it could work in a potential sequel.
The alternative would be to ignore the ship interiors players have (and quitepossibly spend money on), and make it in standardized interiors. Even then, they would still have the problem that they'd need at least 3 map variations, one for each faction, or face severe immersion problems.
I am afraid they ran into that trap early on. Quite possibly earlier than just deciding to make alternative bridges - when they decided to make multiple factions (and the game wasn't that brilliantly successful that it could actually maintain faction-specific content expansions).
The closest we'll get is things like the Voyager episode in the Delta Quadrants, where we visit the interior of one specific ship and have a bit of an adventure there. But that will never feel the same as being aboard your own interior.
Interiors will never be accurate to scale. And I have no doubt some people would complain about a standardized interior, just like there are some people that complain about any given issue. The question is which would make the *most* people happy: custom interiors with no importance, or ship interior missions? Because you can't have both. And keep in mind, this question should be considered under the hypothetical circumstances that you are designing a game and people haven't *already* purchased custom interiors.
IMO, ship interior missions > custom interiors with no importance. I obviously can't state this for a fact, but I have a feeling the vast *majority* of players do not even go to their ship interior on a regular basis. If that is true, then they are essentially wasted.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Here is my "evidence" that *most* people don't use their ship interiors on a regular basis: Cryptic does not make many new interiors. And why doesn't Cryptic make many new interiors? Because they don't sell well enough to justify making more(on a regular basis). So, IMO, the fact that they aren't selling well enough to justify many being made is relative proof that they aren't something most people use very often. Of course, the key word is "most", and there are obviously people who do use them such as yourself.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
The best advice that I can give you is to use the foundry to create missions that take place on "one of your ships." That is to say it won't necessarily take place on the ship that you're flying at that moment, but it can take place on one of the ships in your harem.
my sci officer has been at 3 different stations including my first officer seat on multiple occasions ive visited my bridge.
"It appears we have lost our sex appeal, captain."- Tuvok
nice answer. +1.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
The problem is that making missions that work in all the available interiors is simply too expensive. For the price of such a mission, Cryptic could probably make half a dozen faction-agnostic story line missions. What might be worse is - most of the effort will probably be spend on the people responsible for doing mission maps - the story team will be twiddling their thumbs in the mean time. Sure, they could use that time to produce ideas for the next story arcs, but it's kinda of no use, since map team would never really get to all what they produce. The only way to balance that would be to hire a lot of mission designers - but they would only be useful for interior-heavy missions.
Even if interiors would sell as well as ships, this seems not feasible.
Cryptic has said time and again that they CANNOT do this. The only time missions take place on ships is with-in episodes that they have to specifically use one bridge interior. They would have to specifically program the mission for every variation that was currently in use, and then do another program for every new bridge they brought in. You are talking not just a few, but over 100 different iterations of the same mission, which would have to be stored locally on your machine.
Because the game doesn't actually even try to put your science officer or your first officer or whoever in their seats, it just picks up the first boffs it can get its hands on and plops them down in the order they came in, whatever that may be.
K'ymara, Orion Engineer. Caedera of Borg, Liberated Borg Tactical, Elyza Vix, Joined Trill Scientist. Christina Bellona, Augmented Human Tactical.
T'Lana, Vulcan Scientist. Arbol, Martian Tactical. Ayzer Bryn, Joined Trill Engineer. Hawke, Betazoid Scientist. Karna Valkras, Klingon Engineer. Beth Parker, Human Tactical
Sarel, Romulan Engineer (Federation). Yazuri, Reman Scientist (KDF)
it will never happen. cryptic needs to make money to survive, they cant do that when their server is down.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Or not. I know the Dyson mission made me despise that ship.