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Future TOS content : Perhaps something for the Klingons, Romulans or Starfleer
shatterdrone
Member Posts: 6 Arc User
Hey, guys.and gals.keep up the good.work. STO is awsome! Hey in the future could you perhaps.do.more TOS content. Like a temporal mission , that also could be played as a TOS mission...kinda like what you did with Discovery. I'd love to see that stuff. Imagine fighting along side of the Enterprise with Captain Pike or Captain Robert April?
Oooo.... Or the Kelvin universe Captain Kirk..🤔
Oooo.... Or the Kelvin universe Captain Kirk..🤔
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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They won't do that because in the 10 years of them opening F2P for this game, not once have they EVER required us to pay just for story content. Other studios do it because it's their business model to do, but STO has been about giving story content for free (even when it was subscription based) without any extra charge for it. Sure, in theory it would make them money, but if there's no increase in the people to make the missions, what would be the point in them suddenly charging for it if it would take a long time to make stuff that can be consumed so quick?
The ship making people are not the same people that make the scenarios, they take different skillsets. And the scenario people are going flat out as it is, adding a few more will not make much of a difference when it takes something like a month or more to make an hour's worth of mission using the old dev tools they have.
If Gearbox or Embracer would supply the people and resources to make modern, more automated scenario making tools for the Cryptic engine that may change somewhat, but either way shifting to a paid-DLC business model won't do squat because it is not a matter of incentive, it is a matter of logistics.
There were two sets of missions involving time travel to the TOS era - one was the B'Vat story involving the Guardian of Forever, the other was the Devidian story involving K7.
"There's No Way Like Poway!"
Real Join Date: October 2010
The Guardian of Forever thing was the one "pulled for revamp" and never put back. The K7 one is still in the missions tab, it is part of the New Frontiers arc and has nothing to do with Devidians.
The Devidian one is the Spectres arc which is now relegated to the mostly dysfunctional "available" tab, and while it is still a level thirty mission reward-wise it is locked behind the endgame wall now so few people bother with it anymore unless they want some TOS space barbie stuff that they can just buy better versions of at K-7. It is a shame because it is a classic, in fact probably the best of the older arcs ever produced for STO.
It would be really great if they put Spectres back into the missions tab since with the skip actually working the last year or so no one would be "forced" to play it if they don't want to, and it is better than a lot of what is still in that tab (not to mention one of the very few TOS missions, one that is even referenced in the AoY tutorial).
I think they do plan on adding the B'vat Guardian of Forever storyline back in sooner rather than later. Our best hope for more TOS Era based content will either be from Strange New Worlds. or some sort of one off Time Travel missions such as the Specter's or The Romulan Mission from Yesterday's War.
My biggest hope is instead of setting a missionor story in the TOS era, they call back to it. Maybe revist a few wacky TOS worlds like the planet full of Chicago Gangsters from a Piece of the Action.
The thing is though, I don't think the ship packs they've released in the last 3 months (not counting the Mudd's pack since those are a special case) have really seen an increase in price, compared to what you get with them.
- Ships of the Line Steamrunner bundle: We have had 3 prior bundles which varied in price like this: Akira bundle, Prometheus bundle & Nebula bundle. The steamrunner bundle came out at 5000 zen, which is the same price the Prometheus bundle, but has added stuff that make it worthwhile to get.
- Agile classics bundle: These two ships, the Da vinci class & the Equinox class, were two long awaited T6 updates to ships that didn't have an endgame version. They of course come bundled together with a few extras, but it's at least stuff that allows you to get both fleet ships for a character AND unlock an extra trait slot for them across all your characters.
- Mirror Guardian Cruiser: This ship, previously only available from a charity giveaway, finally comes to the C-store as a standard C-store ship, which isn't a first for the C-store since we have the Mirror Dreadnought Cruiser, but it's a first as it's a ship that's sitting at a normal c-store price of 3000 zen.
The infinity lockbox and Promotional box ships I mostly ignore because they have all been 32nd century ships & those are ships that should be limited anyway due to the fact that they shouldn't even be in the 25th century due to Discovery Season 3's reveal about time travel.
There's only nine missions total that they have removed from the game that they actually had intent to revamp. The earliest, State of Q, they said they may or may not return to the game. In the past, they said they wanted to return it with dialog from Avery Brooks, either live or dialog from the show. However, I won't miss this one if they choose not to return it.
The other missions, all Federation Klingon war missions, may have the last two, "City on the Edge of Never" & "Past Imperfect" combined into one single mission because of the fact that they're essentially continuations of each other, and make sense to do it. There's also dialog from Leonard Nimoy that they cannot afford to lose since there's no way to re-record it.
And yes i know the sell dill for zen sell keys for ec and buy from xchange drill.
I think it got kicked back up to the top of the heap when the guardian of forever showed up in Disco last year.
Their priority isn't actually churning out ships either, contrary to how it feels like they're churning out new ships. A priority on cranking out ships would mean that they'd be bringing out new ships every week of the month. We have had 5 C-store ships (non-legendary), 5 event ships (4 regular event & 1 recruitment), 6 Legendary ships, & 11 lockbox & promotional ships. This gives us a total of 27 ships. They also added 4 fleet ships for a total of 31 ships.
It takes considerable less time and number of people to make the ships than to make missions. I believe you need the Environmental artists to make the maps, the content designers to craft up the dialog, the character artists to design whatever new characters that they plan on utilizing for the game. Sometimes ship designs come up too. The biggest obstacle I feel for them bringing out missions is that they depend on Star Trek actors being available so they have to change things around if they don't get person they were hoping for, so scripts for the missions have to be rewritten. Kael once mentioned on Reddit that they often are working on the missions up until the day of release, which is why they can't do more than like 1 or 2 usually per update cycle.
I know solutions to expanding how many missions they do per cycle can be stuff like reusing previous assets (meaning less time devoted to having to make new maps) & less reliance the big Star Trek actors & more reliance on Cryptic original characters, but would these really be things that people would be willing to accept?
I for one like it when they bring in star trek actors, as gives them a chance to give an update on the character (if they are to STO) or catch up with characters to find out what's been happening since we last saw them in game. Look at how often J.G. Hertzler was utilized for not only the Hur'q stuff, but also the Klingon Civil War arc. He's right now the most involved actor with the game.
Similarly, I like it when they bring out new assets, especially if it means the old ones eventually get replaced. Reusing assets may be good & all, but not if it calls for specific circumstances, like making a new location that is unlike anything before.
The way the graphical part of the scenarios is made is extremely oldschool, embarrassingly manual, and relies extremely hevily upon the artist remembering the names of the files they want in a huge, disorganized file system of resources. There was a livestream where the lead environmental artist explained and demonstrated it, but it was bookmarked on my old system before the SSD it was on fried and I don't have the time to search for it at the moment, but it was clear enough that just throwing new people at that workflow would be more of a disaster than a help.
They need updated tools, and if the new umbrella corporation they are in decides to make it possible for them to do that it will still be a while (as in several years most likely) before those improved tools would be ready for everyday use.
> I think it got kicked back up to the top of the heap when the guardian of forever showed up in Disco last year.
Doubtful
“No ETA on when the Guardian of Forever will come back.” —Kael, last livestream
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1265166/ten-forward-weekly-12th-jan-2022
Why should they expect STO to have a different experience?