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The Return of Exploration?
the1tigglet
Member Posts: 1,421 Arc User
Any chance we could expect a return of exploration missions anytime soon?
I've seen an ingenious method other scifi games have used, in that you talk to an exploration science non-player character and set the parameters of your exploration which can sometimes have waves of enemies but isn't always the case. Once you setup what you want to do you are loaded into the instance in your ship.
I've seen an ingenious method other scifi games have used, in that you talk to an exploration science non-player character and set the parameters of your exploration which can sometimes have waves of enemies but isn't always the case. Once you setup what you want to do you are loaded into the instance in your ship.
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Not sure we will ever get it though.
arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1203368/pve-content-a-list-of-gamewide-polishing-pass-suggestions
CM
Not only that... there was little to no variety in what we do in them. It was always "kill five groups" or "Scan five objects".
And then there is the ever popular Third Borg Dynasty.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
I used to enjoy those old Exploration missions...because they were simple.
I am looking at the Foundry stuff, now. Because they seem to be a suitable replacement for me. I do the story the first, though....because I am compelled to know what happens. LOL!
I can rerun it any time and get to the same place!! Which never happened in Exploration clusters. Then, just wander around the ground maps and fly around the space ones...which is what I used to enjoy on the old Exploration missions.
Hope this helps.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
On the other hand, sometimes you'd get a really great environment, something to rival the cover of a '50s or '60s SF magazine or paperback cover, and it would just feel Star Trek as hell until you went back to scanning the five things or killing the five mobs. I do miss some of those skies and rock formations, y'all.
well it was more compareable to removing an appendix...nobody really needs it, but it can cause trouble along the way
it also got presumably "replaced" by the Foundry
I liked the moderny asteroid base the best with those long halls. Also the planets with the weird tall colorful treeplants.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Iota Pi 180, no combat, just run around and tinker with a few weird artifacts. It was neat though, because the colony is built on a mountain top with a nice view.
Rho Horologii 044-Xi was a geological survey mission, IE: beam down, scan 5 rocks, leave. The scenery was pretty nice though.
I forget the name and the map was not particularly exciting, but the story was that I was there to stop the forces of the Terran Empire from building a colony. This was a red-side mission so "stop" meant "massacre".
Same or similar plot, different and much cooler map.
761-MD8 is a weird one. Notice how I have only one BOff? Yeah, this is why:
The spawn point was glitched to be a pitifully small platform. And no, I did NOT change graphics settings between this and the previous ones. This map has air that looks like mud.
My character Tsin'xing
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
What's exploration without a bit of risk.
Pretty much. I don't see the/an exploration system being added back to the game unless there is a pricetag attached to it to justify the development cost.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
It was always either:
1. Shoot some random aliens/alien ships that were doing nothing in the middle of nowhere, just because you're told
2. Scan some random inanimate objects in the middle of nowhere, just because you're told
3. Both of the above combined
None of that was what I associate with the word "exploration." There was no investigation, no problem-solving, no sense of discovery. Just "go where you're told to go and shoot/click what you're told to shoot/click." Nothing unusual ever happened, no redshirts ever died and you never found anything you weren't told of in advance.
There should be exploration in STO...but nothing in the "exploration" system was actually exploration. Glitching through the walls of new!ESD to check out the shuttlebay was more exploration than anything in the star clusters.
People keep saying this and fail to realize there are multiple ways to "justify the development costs". If your base assumption were true, we would never get seasons or expansions in this game, because since they are free, their is no "justification for development costs".
Money can come from multiple sources, every time someone subscribes they are paying for the game.
That said, Exploration cluster were terrible. And will probably never give the playerbase what they want. In order to have some "random" encounter. you basically have to have a limited set of pre-established scenarios, the game can cycle through.
Which is exactly what we had, and everyone agreed was generally terrible. Yes, you can make minor improvements, but the underlying system is still the same.
There is no way to make a truly random encounter in a video game. It can't happen because EVERYTHING in a game has to be coded. So no matter what, you have to create a linear scenario that the game can go through.
To create something that actually feels random, you would have to create so much content that it is functionally impossible for the same scenario to pop up again. That is well beyond any company to produce and most likely a waste of resources to even attempt.
I know people want more exploration in the game, but I don't think it is logically possible in a video game, at least not in an quality that the playerbase would except.
Fair enough. But that doesn't mean the exploration itself wouldn't be free. Which was my original point. There are multiple ways for Cryptic to "make money" on something. So not EVERYTHING has be to thrown in the C-store/Lockboxes to justify development costs.
> Because that's ultimately what we must do to survive. If one thing is clear from these past few years is that we cannot engage in navel-gazing while threats rise in the galaxy and at home (the Lukari have experience with that, too).
>
> Exploration should be in STO. Granted, an improved version over the old Genesis engine. But it should be there. As actual core gameplay, not as some paperwork minigame.
I was making a bad joke, man. My point was that in Star Trek TV shows, literal space exploration itself was never the PLOT of the episode, it was a plot HOOK to get the cast TO the plot. Which is what "Sunrise" did (I just think the plot that it led to was poorly written nonsensical crud).
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/