One thing that all of these MMOs have in common is that they follow the contemporary model of a live service.
I'mone of those old-schoolers who came to MMOs when Ultima Online came out. We had a world. We had a character we were free to advance as we saw fit. Everything we did had meaning because it persisted. Players built towns together. They had real shared experiences that were not scripted.
Of course, that structure for MMOs was dead long before STO. Expecting that from 'modern' MMOs seems unrealistic.
My first MMO was WoW. Normal, structured, quest-n-reward. Follow the story as given. Etc. You say MMO, that's what I expect from the genre (and heck, that was 17 years ago. That's likely what 99.9% expect.)
Either way, I certainly wouldn't compare the genre with a tabletop-D&D-simulator (or "multiplayer Baldur's Gate") like Neverwinter Nights. They're entirely different structures & styles.
(heck, I only ever played NWN as a single player game with all sorts of downloadable modules. It always takes me a minute to re-align my thinking when I run across people talking about it as an online game.)
Not sure I'd blame Perfect World for forcing Cryptic into a typical-MMO mold, either. City of Heroes was a pretty normal MMO, and came before PWE.
It sounds to me like you prefer a sandbox style MMO where you make your own story. There are a couple still out there, biggest two I can think of are Elite Dangerous (which can be played in an MMO environment or you can be phased so that you don't run into other players but can still interact with the economy) and EVE Online. Both of which allow you to basically choose what you wanna do and run with it. For the most part people will think of the story driven MMOs like WoW, FF14, and yes even STO when people bring up MMOs. Some will remember the sandbox of SWG, but for the most part... its going to be the ones with the story. And yes WoW did have an impact on the MMO industry. It wasn't the King of MMOs for years for nothing. But that day has passed and WoW's being dethroned... finally.
I would also like to point out that the original decisions with making STO came before Cryptic was picked up by PWE. Not only that, I'd like to point out that we had two very different takes on STO because the game wasn't originally given to Cryptic. Perpetual was originally making it before either dropping it or going under, and Cryptic picked it up and had to mash out a game under a tight deadline. Then we had the issues with Atari that eventually lead to STO going F2P and Cryptic picked up by PWE as the distributor. I think a lot of people forget that Cryptic wasn't always associated with PWE.
STO is a story driven game. You really can't get around that without making a brand new game. Now... we do have a bit more freedom in how OUR story plays out, especially after the first time we run though the story since we can basically do any arc in any order. But the fact remains that STO has a story that we follow.
The problem is I don't think STO can support that without basically building a new game from the ground up. Don't forget this game is over 10 years old now and built on an engine that really didn't support space combat.
Sorry but I don't see them trying to basically rebuild STO to be a sandbox in any way other than what we already have, which is freedom to pick arcs out of order. Its entirely possible that due to the age of the game, what you're asking for is mutually exclusive.
STO follows the carreer of one particular officer, the player character. We run into other Captains as we go, ranging from La Forge to Paris and even General Martok himself. In a lot of cases its those other characters enabling us to take part in these events.
When we go to rescue Martok, Rodek requests us to take part.
When Quark goes on that crazy mission to recover the Sword of Kahless from T'ket, Nog requests us to get them there.
We work alongside Captain La Forge when dealing with the entity near the Nexus.
Seven of Nine requests our assistance before the Excalbians sweep us away for a morality test.
Honestly the whole story of our character can be summed up by the phrase "right place at the right time". Its not really that we're the heroes. STO just follows the common trope of "we're the closest ship in range" pretty much.
Also, businesses go where they think the money is. If businesses thought they would make more money with SWG style MMOs than with WoW style MMOs, there would be dozens of new ones coming out instead of a couple of survivors.
There's an audience for SWG 2.0, it's just no one seems to think it's large enough to justify building it. I suppose Star Citizen might sort of fit if it ever releases, but it seems to also be trying to do everything else at once too including working drink mixers on your ships.
Honestly at this point, as much as I respect Chris Roberts for Wing Commander... I'm afraid I've taken the position that Star Citizen is a pipe dream in perma development hell (the kind where its still being worked on... and worked on... and worked on... and...). Yes there's progress... but its been "in progress" for how many years now? It feels like the goalposts are ALWAYS moving.
> @rattler2 said: > Honestly at this point, as much as I respect Chris Roberts for Wing Commander... I'm afraid I've taken the position that Star Citizen is a pipe dream in perma development hell (the kind where its still being worked on... and worked on... and worked on... and...). Yes there's progress... but its been "in progress" for how many years now? It feels like the goalposts are ALWAYS moving.
Well that's often the case when developers don't have publisher telling them get game out, they keep adding stuff and tinkering on thing until the money runs out without there ever being a completed game, Star Citizen isn't first game to fall to this nor will it be the last.
Honestly at this point, as much as I respect Chris Roberts for Wing Commander... I'm afraid I've taken the position that Star Citizen is a pipe dream in perma development hell (the kind where its still being worked on... and worked on... and worked on... and...). Yes there's progress... but its been "in progress" for how many years now? It feels like the goalposts are ALWAYS moving.
And somehow they've conned people out of $400m with their promises of Amazing Everything.
They could begin making a gradual move in this direction even now by experimenting with a mere handful of meta-events with thresholds set to relatively lowtrigger values to ensure that they fire off potentially quickly. Ideally these would be seeded into maps that don't get a lot of regular traffic because content has long-since moved on fro there. Other good places to seed these meta-events would be on maps that there's no real reason to visit like our ship interiors. or the Vulcan ground map... Or Andoria.
The more typically unvisted a meta-event's location isthe more of a purpose it can seem to have. For example, have it where if a map gets less than X visits three days running, a hostile encounter gets triggered there withv a mission to go deal with it potentially becoming available. This will result in players being drawn to places they typically don't visit and thus keeping potentially every zone in the game relevant.
Imagine if every zone were to have a listener object placed in it that does nothing but count how many times the zone is visited by players. The Vulcan ground map would have a global variable called VulcanGrounVisit. At the end of a 30-day period, the visit counts for all zones would be finalized and the one with the least visits gets flagged for where Cryptic ought to put the next meta-event. If multiple zones tie for the least visited value, then it lets them know that they all need a meta-event.
What sort of meta-event would depend on what the purpose of the zone in question is, and Cryptic would put an event in that goes along with the zone's role in the gameworld lore. And initially, these events could just be stuff that gets live-dropped in.
They pretty much do that already (though probably manually, not automated) with the Endeavors, they put the least popular places in the rotation which is why things like Gon'cra come up so often.
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Of course, that structure for MMOs was dead long before STO. Expecting that from 'modern' MMOs seems unrealistic.
My first MMO was WoW. Normal, structured, quest-n-reward. Follow the story as given. Etc. You say MMO, that's what I expect from the genre (and heck, that was 17 years ago. That's likely what 99.9% expect.)
Either way, I certainly wouldn't compare the genre with a tabletop-D&D-simulator (or "multiplayer Baldur's Gate") like Neverwinter Nights. They're entirely different structures & styles.
(heck, I only ever played NWN as a single player game with all sorts of downloadable modules. It always takes me a minute to re-align my thinking when I run across people talking about it as an online game.)
Not sure I'd blame Perfect World for forcing Cryptic into a typical-MMO mold, either. City of Heroes was a pretty normal MMO, and came before PWE.
I would also like to point out that the original decisions with making STO came before Cryptic was picked up by PWE. Not only that, I'd like to point out that we had two very different takes on STO because the game wasn't originally given to Cryptic. Perpetual was originally making it before either dropping it or going under, and Cryptic picked it up and had to mash out a game under a tight deadline. Then we had the issues with Atari that eventually lead to STO going F2P and Cryptic picked up by PWE as the distributor. I think a lot of people forget that Cryptic wasn't always associated with PWE.
STO is a story driven game. You really can't get around that without making a brand new game. Now... we do have a bit more freedom in how OUR story plays out, especially after the first time we run though the story since we can basically do any arc in any order. But the fact remains that STO has a story that we follow.
Sorry but I don't see them trying to basically rebuild STO to be a sandbox in any way other than what we already have, which is freedom to pick arcs out of order. Its entirely possible that due to the age of the game, what you're asking for is mutually exclusive.
STO follows the carreer of one particular officer, the player character. We run into other Captains as we go, ranging from La Forge to Paris and even General Martok himself. In a lot of cases its those other characters enabling us to take part in these events.
Honestly the whole story of our character can be summed up by the phrase "right place at the right time". Its not really that we're the heroes. STO just follows the common trope of "we're the closest ship in range" pretty much.
There's an audience for SWG 2.0, it's just no one seems to think it's large enough to justify building it. I suppose Star Citizen might sort of fit if it ever releases, but it seems to also be trying to do everything else at once too including working drink mixers on your ships.
> Honestly at this point, as much as I respect Chris Roberts for Wing Commander... I'm afraid I've taken the position that Star Citizen is a pipe dream in perma development hell (the kind where its still being worked on... and worked on... and worked on... and...). Yes there's progress... but its been "in progress" for how many years now? It feels like the goalposts are ALWAYS moving.
Well that's often the case when developers don't have publisher telling them get game out, they keep adding stuff and tinkering on thing until the money runs out without there ever being a completed game, Star Citizen isn't first game to fall to this nor will it be the last.
And somehow they've conned people out of $400m with their promises of Amazing Everything.
They pretty much do that already (though probably manually, not automated) with the Endeavors, they put the least popular places in the rotation which is why things like Gon'cra come up so often.