Why is my character always treated like a junior officer?

scifiesa

Most of the content in this game treats my toon, regardless of rank, like a junior officer. Captain so in so wants something done, I am ordered to do it. Commander whatchamacallit needs a grunt to do his dirty work, he calls me and tells me to do it. Lieutenant whozit needs an assignment completed, contact me and tell me to get it done. This is not the case in every mission, but most of them. In the most recent mission where Andoria is attacked, Captain whatshername is upset that her home is attacked and wants someone to get some answers and rather than doing it herself, I have to do it. I understand that my character is often central to a lot of these events, but treat me like my rank matters dagnabbit! If you want my help, request it. Stop talking to me like I am the junior officer. Next person who tries to order me about that doesn't our rank me is gonna find out what it's like to scrub the engineering room of a 21st century tugboat with some tweezers.

davefenestrator

On the TV shows before Discovery:
- why do captains go on away missions?
- why are 90% of episodes about the captain when he is just supposed to be managing the crew?
- what's the deal with airline peanuts?

Because it makes for better television and games.

If you want a more realistic view of a grand admiral poobah's duties, do some Admiralty Ship System.

Or just ignore your Level 65 rank which has nothing to do with the Trek universe and consider yourself still only a captain. Kirk never talked about his skill tree choices or specialization points. He also never applied tech upgrade points to a Phaser to have it reach Epic.

legendarylycan

yes we have; 6 prime universe starfleet admirals were fleet admirals, insignia and all, not just referred to as such via title while actually being vice admirals or whatever

alexander marcus in the KT was also a full fleet admiral

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Fleet_admiral​​

strathkin

reyan01 wrote: »

davefenestrator wrote: »

On the TV shows before Discovery:
- why do captains go on away missions?
- why are 90% of episodes about the captain when he is just supposed to be managing the crew?
- what's the deal with airline peanuts?

Because it makes for better television and games.

If you want a more realistic view of a grand admiral poobah's duties, do some Admiralty Ship System.

Or just ignore your Level 65 rank which has nothing to do with the Trek universe and consider yourself still only a captain. Kirk never talked about his skill tree choices or specialization points. He also never applied tech upgrade points to a Phaser to have it reach Epic.

Yeah, I agree.

I generally don't consider my characters to be Fleet Admirals. Whilst have no problem with anyone who does (each to their own) my personal view remains that Captain's command Starships, not Admirals.

Heck, we never actually even SAW a 'Fleet Admiral' in canon.

Well I think the original REQUEST is really just a 'slight' manner in how Lt. Commander's thru Captain's should really be speaking to us in the story line.

I agree that they should be requesting our help rather than issuing orders, now it's one thing if another Admiral on behalf of Starfleet request we go to a system to investigate. But upon arriving we should be treated more like the Flag Officer, where they consult with or offer an opinion, rather than order around like they are the senior officer.

I think this REQUEST seems perfectly reasonable--as most near end game players would likely be in Admiralty or Flag Officers. You'd think the STO writers of several campaign's since past the Delta Quadrant really should have several text or some voice additions to comply more.

But certainly more of the latest content should be reflective of this for sure.

thevampinator

I think it has to do with how they designed the game early on. I'm not sure maybe it was slower to level up and rank up back then compared to now. I mean you can do so little and basically level up very quicky so by the time you get done with one story arc if you run queues do patrols you could be an admiral with the game being how it is with exp at the moment. Still you got to take orders. Even though you might be high in rank on paper your still supposedly very young to be a fleet admiral. Your kinda like the Federation, Kdf, and Romulan Republic problem solver and thus they give you resources and rank to help you out with fixing what no one else cannot fix.

But you still got to have people boss you around the admiralty system gives you the ability to boss around your own fleet so to speak so you do get to act like a fleet admiral. Which is kinda cool. But even premature baby admirals still got to follow orders from the big daddy admirals or other counterparts in terms of leadership like Admiral Quinn, J'mpok, D'tan or whoever the lower rank storyline quest giver is. Because that is how it is with sto. They are not going to change it either. Nor we will ever see a demotion back to Captain like Kirk in star trek the voyage home. So yeah I'd just get use to being called a admiral and thus get hailed to follow the orders of this lesser officer is giving you. Because that is just how it is with the game and the coding I think its kinda complex enough they are just not going to change it.

But to make sense of it kinda have to go by the storyline here. Realistically I think you wouldn't even become vice admiral until reaching the point of the New Romulus gateway activation and after that would have to be within the delta quadrant after doing all those story quests to become an admiral and maybe after the iconian war maybe making the rank of fleet admiral. So I'd think of it of how well you progress in the story that allowed you to achieve that rank realistically. So by doing what you do you basically get early promotions. You save the universe they reward you with the highest rank they can give you so to speak.

foxrockssocks

Its an artifact of calling us admirals when we should not be called admirals. This was a fairly large argument at launch when I think Rear Admiral was the highest rank, but its obviously only increased and made things more ridiculous. I don't remember what side I was on then, but I'm now definitely a fan of a rank structure in this game that isn't half comprised of admiral ranks. They really should expand the lower ranks and shift the admiral ranks so none of us are actually fleet admirals at this point. Rear admiral is probably okay as a final rank as its the lowest one, but I wouldn't promote us beyond that.

Of course to the original point, some of it is also simply bad writing and some of it is an artifact of how the dialogue is presented to us. We don't get to speak a lot, so we can't be giving a lot of orders, and instead we have to read a lot of text so we know what is going on. However the writing can still be done better, not that its all bad. I remember doing my best in my Foundry missions to not order around the player with their own BOFFs, but instead they offer suggestions on what should be done, and the captain of the ship makes the decision (even if its there is no real choice) which is how it should be. I'm not sure the writers make the best effort to do that.

legendarylycan

you never said anything about specific series - you said we never saw a fleet admiral in canon at all, which isn't true​​

warpangel

Because this is a videogame. In videogames, NPCs exist to:
1. Shoot you
2. Give you orders and/or plot exposition
3. Get rescued by you
4. Die
5. Some combination of the above

redeyedraven

reyan01 wrote: »

The problem is, our character outranks basically everyone, except Admiral Quinn (who arguably slightly outranks us both in terms of length of service and being a member of Starfleet Command; furthermore it makes no sense for any officer to be able to promote to equal, or above, their own authority).

The actual culprit is that the level-progression was not well-thought out early on. Under Atari, Cryptic had to very quickly come up with something. So levelling up meant upping your rank down the road and the writing just didn't take that into account once passing the rank of Rear Admiral Lower (which is more like Fleet Captain or Commodore). The increased level-cap, drydocks and Admiralty-system emulate some of the admiral's duties to alleviate the Problem a bit, but since everybody is Admiral, there can't be any Immersion. That's a problem themepark-styled MMO's are prone to have in general though, and if STO would be immersive you couldn't collect and keep all your ships all the time. Even as Admiral you would have to send them on actual missions where they might get lost, and on a mission yourself you would have no respawn.

WoW had the same problem when garrisons were around from what I've heard. Everybody was now technically a general/warlord/chieftain whatever in a game for adventurers.

kiralyn

Same reason that most of the time, even though we bring along an away team of specialists (and have a full crew of doffs in orbit), we still have to personally push the buttons, throw the levers, heal the injuries, do the science, repair the conduit, etc.... it's a game, not a simulation.

legendarylycan

kiralyn wrote: »

Same reason that most of the time, even though we bring along an away team of specialists (and have a full crew of doffs in orbit), we still have to personally push the buttons, throw the levers, heal the injuries, do the science, repair the conduit, etc.... it's a game, not a simulation.

you know...the one time we DIDN'T have to do that and actually DELEGATED like real captains or admirals would, people praised the hell out of it...so naturally, cryptic never did it again​​

warpangel

shadowfang240 wrote: »

kiralyn wrote: »

Same reason that most of the time, even though we bring along an away team of specialists (and have a full crew of doffs in orbit), we still have to personally push the buttons, throw the levers, heal the injuries, do the science, repair the conduit, etc.... it's a game, not a simulation.

you know...the one time we DIDN'T have to do that and actually DELEGATED like real captains or admirals would, people praised the hell out of it...so naturally, cryptic never did it again​​

They've actually had the player order NPCs to do things for us at least two episodes that I remember. In Temporal Ambassador when releasing the Ent-C and in Uneasy Allies when repairing Sela's ship. I don't recall anyone ever praising them in any way, though.

As far as gameplay goes, doing things yourself or delegating works to the exact same effect. You click the button, the stuff gets done, and the only difference is which character model does the animation. To be meaningful gameplay, there would need to be consequences to the player's choices.

baddmoonrizin

It would be nice to see more ordering your BOFFs to take some action during story missions, though.

davefenestrator

warpangel wrote: »

shadowfang240 wrote: »

kiralyn wrote: »

Same reason that most of the time, even though we bring along an away team of specialists (and have a full crew of doffs in orbit), we still have to personally push the buttons, throw the levers, heal the injuries, do the science, repair the conduit, etc.... it's a game, not a simulation.

you know...the one time we DIDN'T have to do that and actually DELEGATED like real captains or admirals would, people praised the hell out of it...so naturally, cryptic never did it again​​

They've actually had the player order NPCs to do things for us at least two episodes that I remember. In Temporal Ambassador when releasing the Ent-C and in Uneasy Allies when repairing Sela's ship. I don't recall anyone ever praising them in any way, though.

As far as gameplay goes, doing things yourself or delegating works to the exact same effect. You click the button, the stuff gets done, and the only difference is which character model does the animation. To be meaningful gameplay, there would need to be consequences to the player's choices.

Am I remembering right that for Uneasy Allies you couldn't finish unless all 3 careers were present between you and your boffs? I haven't played it in ... years?

captainmarvelush

Personally, I don't believe that we should ever have progressed beyond Captain. Plus, it should have taken a damn long time to get there. I understand that it's not realistic in terms of keeping players interested, just my two cents.

phoenixc

They could possibly have anticipated the level cap increases and gone with a different rank structure like:

lieutenant = lieutenant jg (yes, they use jg for the tutorial but the rank change between the tut and the game is a bit wasteful)
lt. Cmdr = full lieutenant
cmdr = lt. cmdr
captain = cmdr
rear admiral lh & uh = captain (no need for splitting at five levels instead of ten)
vice admiral and admiral = fleet captain (same reason as above)
fleet admiral = commodore

and avoided admiral ranks altogether, but hindsight is a lot clearer than foresight. And it is not like such a progression would be any more realistic either since junior officers would not be in regular command of capital ships anyway.

thunderfoot

I think of all my characters as having the permanent rank of Captain. I think of the various NPC's telling me what to do as members of some Admiral's staff.

That is whenever I think about stuff like this.

The OP does have a point though. Being peremptorily ordered about by some snot nosed Ensign piloting a desk back at HQ whom my character obviously outranks can be a bit annoying. Perhaps at some point Cryptic could go back and revamp the writing informing us what we're doing? Might help immersion a bit?

"Captain, Midshipman Nobody here. Your orders from the Admiral are: To explore the final frontier. To seek out new life and new civilizations. Then promptly blow said new life and new civilizations to the backside of Hell with your Mk XXV Epic Mega Oblivion Cannons. To boldly shoot what no one has shot before!"

pottsey5g

baddmoonrizin wrote: »

It would be nice to see more ordering your BOFFs to take some action during story missions, though.

That would be good and they could even evolve is so the end results changes a little based on the type of Boff you send as after all a tac boff wouldn't come to the same solution as a Engineer boff meaning you have to think a little bit about what type of away team group you take. Done correctly that could be fun.

There used to be a difference in old missions based on Eng, Sci, Tac but that seems to have got loss somewhere down the lines.

spiritborn

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

They could possibly have anticipated the level cap increases and gone with a different rank structure like:

lieutenant = lieutenant jg (yes, they use jg for the tutorial but the rank change between the tut and the game is a bit wasteful)
lt. Cmdr = full lieutenant
cmdr = lt. cmdr
captain = cmdr
rear admiral lh & uh = captain (no need for splitting at five levels instead of ten)
vice admiral and admiral = fleet captain (same reason as above)
fleet admiral = commodore

and avoided admiral ranks altogether, but hindsight is a lot clearer than foresight. And it is not like such a progression would be any more realistic either since junior officers would not be in regular command of capital ships anyway.

technically "commandore" is a flag rank being the same as rear admiral lower half, also from what I've gathered "fleet captain" is more of honorary position then and actual rank (as in it essentially has the same authority and duty as a regular captain but is considered more senior if in a group of captain ranked officers).

Honestly I would have divorsed the whole rank system from the levels and made it part of the story rather then indication of level.

That said personally I consider my character have temporary promotion to her current rank and that she would be reduced to more proper rank once the current crisis has passed. That said it would be lovely if they wrote the missions in such a way that people under the rank of captain would understand that you'll most likely outrank them and act accordingly.

warpangel

davefenestrator wrote: »

warpangel wrote: »

shadowfang240 wrote: »

kiralyn wrote: »

Same reason that most of the time, even though we bring along an away team of specialists (and have a full crew of doffs in orbit), we still have to personally push the buttons, throw the levers, heal the injuries, do the science, repair the conduit, etc.... it's a game, not a simulation.

you know...the one time we DIDN'T have to do that and actually DELEGATED like real captains or admirals would, people praised the hell out of it...so naturally, cryptic never did it again​​

They've actually had the player order NPCs to do things for us at least two episodes that I remember. In Temporal Ambassador when releasing the Ent-C and in Uneasy Allies when repairing Sela's ship. I don't recall anyone ever praising them in any way, though.

As far as gameplay goes, doing things yourself or delegating works to the exact same effect. You click the button, the stuff gets done, and the only difference is which character model does the animation. To be meaningful gameplay, there would need to be consequences to the player's choices.

Am I remembering right that for Uneasy Allies you couldn't finish unless all 3 careers were present between you and your boffs? I haven't played it in ... years?

No. The only effect the boff careers ever had was an accolade.

crusty8mac

captainmarvelush wrote: »

Personally, I don't believe that we should ever have progressed beyond Captain...

I've always thought this. And for some reason it pisses me off to be ordered around by underlings. It shouldn't - it's just a game, after all - but it does.

Don't get me started about having to listen to Tovan, either.

legendarylycan

crusty8mac wrote: »

captainmarvelush wrote: »

Personally, I don't believe that we should ever have progressed beyond Captain...

I've always thought this. And for some reason it pisses me off to be ordered around by underlings. It shouldn't - it's just a game, after all - but it does.

Don't get me started about having to listen to Tovan, either.

"TOVAN HERE! Have you heard anything regarding my sister, Rhinna?"​​

warpangel

Tovan is written as the player character's friend, not an "underling."

baddmoonrizin

Boy, we're just bringing all the FCT topics up in here today, aren't we? LOL

I'll agree that the handling of dialogue between lower ranked NPCs and the player character could be done better. I am, however, reminded of the TNG episode "Coming of Age" where Picard and crew are ordered to comply with the investigation being conducted by LCDR Remmick, who was given broad authority to do so. So, I suppose, it wouldn't be unheard of for a lower ranked officer to give orders based on a similar granting of authority, but that takes making some assumptions not expressed in-game and a certain level of mental gymnastics to rationalize. But yeah, it'd just be easier to handle the dialogue better.

warpangel

baddmoonrizin wrote: »

I'll agree that the handling of dialogue between lower ranked NPCs and the player character could be done better. I am, however, reminded of the TNG episode "Coming of Age" where Picard and crew are ordered to comply with the investigation being conducted by LCDR Remmick, who was given broad authority to do so. So, I suppose, it wouldn't be unheard of for a lower ranked officer to give orders based on a similar granting of authority, but that takes making some assumptions not expressed in-game and a certain level of mental gymnastics to rationalize. But yeah, it'd just be easier to handle the dialogue better.

The thing is, with the level unlock requirements gone, there is no guarantee what rank the player is when playing any given episode. They would have to record multiple VOs for different ranked players to acknowledge the players' ranks, which would be clearly overkill compared to the issue.

baddmoonrizin

Well, as it stands, there is no voice recording beyond the level up that acknowledges the player's rank. I was mainly referring to the manner in which the player character is talked to with regards to them outranking many of the NPCs they interact with.

ltminns

> @baddmoonrizin said:
> It would be nice to see more ordering your BOFFs to take some action during story missions, though.

We do order them with hand gestures in 'Temporal Front' in the cut scene where we are in the firefight aboard the NV Destiny. Not much else.

baddmoonrizin

ltminns wrote: »

> @baddmoonrizin said:
> It would be nice to see more ordering your BOFFs to take some action during story missions, though.

We do order them with hand gestures in 'Temporal Front' in the cut scene where we are in the firefight aboard the NV Destiny. Not much else.

Well, yeah, cut scenes show us doing that, but I was referring to things like in the previously mentioned missions "Uneasy Allies" and "Temporal Ambassador" where we order BOFFs/NPCs to complete certain tasks while we do something else. Heck, even "Mine Enemy," "Cold Case," and "The Price of Neutrality" require us to position our BOFFs in certain places to progress the mission.

spiritborn

My problem isn't that our character is given orders by a junior service member, it's how those orders are given.

During my (compulsory) military service I was personally in position that I had to give certain orders to people senior to me in the military hierarchy up and including the president had she desided to visit the garrison I was posted in (during the time of my service, the president of Finland was a woman), granted I don't recall that there was anyone higher then a lt. commander who visited while I was in duty but the orders didn't exclude anyone, oh in case you're wondering during my service I was about as low as you can get in the military hierarchy based on my rank.

However something that was drilled into us was that when you give orders to someone who outranks you, be respectful. That's the issue with a lot of the crypic NPCs they don't respect the rank and position (of our characters). Something as simple as an order phrased as firm request would do wonders in making the NPCs seem more respectful.

warpangel

baddmoonrizin wrote: »

Well, as it stands, there is no voice recording beyond the level up that acknowledges the player's rank. I was mainly referring to the manner in which the player character is talked to with regards to them outranking many of the NPCs they interact with.

So was I. The player doesn't necessarily outrank them, since the quests are no longer level-locked. So if the NPCs were to act differently because of the player's rank, they would need to have a separate script depending on what level the player is when playing the mission.

crusty8mac

warpangel wrote: »

Tovan is written as the player character's friend, not an "underling."

Tovan is no friend of mine.