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Ten Forward weekly 11/15/22
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Member Posts: 3,169 Arc User
From: https://reddit.com/r/sto/comments/yx8pux/ten_forward_weekly_111522/
Credit to: https://reddit.com/user/TheSajuukKhar/
Credit to: https://reddit.com/user/TheSajuukKhar/
- Some of the objectives of the Bug Hunt revamp included:
- Making sure optional objectives are better called out
- Making sure the number of marks you get matches the time put into it, so its competitive with other TFOs
- Cleaning up areas where players might get stuck
- Alarm bugs where changed from spawning in the middle of fights to being before fights, and running off so they better seem to fit the purpose of alarm bugs.
- Each successive alarm bug moves faster, and reaches the end of its patch faster, meaning you have to kill it quicker
- Added indicators to the various pit drop down sections because its rare that you just drop down into a pit in STO, in order to prevent confusion from some players, and worries of fall damage. Normally if you have to go up or down there are stairs/ramp, indicators were added to inform players this is where you're supposed to go
- Jesse fixed an exploit where people would just run through one of the rooms, fall down the pit, and fight the bugs in the next area, ignoring the ones in the previous one. Now the bugs from the previous room will follow you so you have to fight them also.
- Various polish updates include Lt VanDerveer actually plants an explosive device instead of just playing an animation as he did previously
- Fixed collision in certain rooms, and along the collapsed pillar bridge, to prevent people from getting stuck/falling into the chasm
- Spawn mother was given more HP so the fight isn't over instantly
- Base marks on Bug Hunt were increased from 15 to 45 because Jesse felt like, even if you failed all the optionals/fumbled the TFO, that you still at least got something worth your time
- Praetor ship blog was late because the reference material given to Cryptic by CBS turned out to not be the most accurate one to what appeared in the TV shows, so the art/model had to be remade in several areas
- Kael doesn't see Cryptic ever putting playable skins of famous Trek characters for sale since that isn't the point of STO. The point of STO is playing your character. And, as Jesse mentions, not all actors licensed their likenesses to CBS/Paramount, so they would have to do a bunch of deals with individual people to allow that
- Praetor ship will have both the screen accurate skin, and the one Cryptic originally made, available
- Things like hairs for major NPCs like Janeway are built as one piece into the rest of the head sculpt so they can't just be made player available since they aren't separate objects. Kael will ask the character art team if there is anything that can be made available
- Jesse, and one other person who is currently learning how to, on the systems team are the only two people on the systems team who have not made a ship
- Cryptic is aware, and working on, the bug on console that kicks people when they report players
- Players were locked in place during the briefing period since that is standard for TFOs now, but waiting period was reduced from 1 min to 45 seconds
- Briefing period exists to let people with slow computers/connections load in before the TFO starts
- Jesse very briefly considered making the explosions in Bug Hunt do damage to players, but decided against it since they don't do friendly fire
- Old ground maps, like those on the Cure/Khitomer/Infected ground TFOs used an terrain modeling system, different from the one they use now. Redoing those maps requires redoing all of the terrain, and that is at least a 6 week job for an environment artist.
- Before redoing those TFOs they would need a "battle plan" for that they're going to do for making a whole new map for those TFOs, since it isn't going to be the same map, it isn't going to be the same objectives, and it isn't going to be something designed to take 30-45 minutes to complete like they were originally set up to be. Effectively like making a new TFO from scratch
- Redoing the Assault on Terok Nor TFO into Forged in Fire still took environment time since the new DS9 map, while already built, was made for story missions and needed to be adjusted for 5 players/larger battles
- If Cryptic did revamp Infected/Cure/Khitomer ground it would likely be part of a new Borg arc, if they ever get to doing a new Borg arc, like how Assault on Terok Nor was revamped since they were doing this Terran arc
- Cryptic has been working on reducing some of the effects in the game, and more is coming on that
- Jesse doesn't drink, but "porting the old Foundry to console would involve him going getting a bottle of something very stiff, pouring several fingers of that, and starting from there"
- Cryptic frequently has internal direction discussions about things like once X story is over what is the next thing they do. Is it another big story, a series of isolated stories, do they take the time to go back and redo a bunch of older content etc. The direction is chooses partially by what the team is excited about, and what CBS/Paramount are doing. If CBS/Paramount thread a giant narrative across all the various Trek projects Cryptic would want to jump on that, but if theres going to be a lul in new content for awhile Cryptic will go do their own things/revamp older content
- STO doesn't have ads like Star Trek Fleet Command because the company behind Fleet Command has like literally billions of dollars they can use for advertisement, STO does not
- Kael believes Cryptic has decided what the next story arc will be, but hes not sure how many of the details are locked down about that
- Jesse was asked if, when he started on STO, did he see is being as strong as it is running into year 13? Short answer reply is he thought it could last 13 years, but didn't think it would be a successful as it is today since there was no evidence of Trek coming back on TV to bring in more people
- Cryptic has been talking internally on if STO's timeline will be a fork from the prime timeline. There's storylines and stuff Cryptic wants to do, and gotten a way into planning, only for CBS/Paramount to say no. Cryptic recently hired an actor for the next storyline(I think he actually meant release here), and they wanted to use the prime version, but CBS/Paramount said they couldn't use the Prime version of that character, but the contract for that actor was already signed, so they had to pivot to using the mirror version of that character. Because of stuff like that they have considered saying they are an alternate timeline. The problem is they're learning that wont necessarily fix the issue. Even if they are official an alternate timeline they could, hypothetically, try to use Patrick Stewart for something only to get told no we're using him for X by CBS/Paramount, and they(Cryptic still couldn't use him. So it may not be worth it to make it an alternate timeline.
- Yes, Jesse has a multitude of characters of he does play them every day
- Jesse says item sets pose an issue with game design where, if you give people exactly the stats/powers that they want, they have no reason to change it/break their set bonus for a new item. So its a game design challenge to make sets that are interesting, and competitive, and that give useful abilities, but don't make it to where its "go get this set and you don't need anything else" This doesn't mean they aren't going to do more item sets, but the amount of work needed to make a set, and for players to earn a set, playing an often hour+ mission 3-4 times to get all the items, isn't always the best way to go. Which is part of the reason they stopped doing mission set rewards.
- The events they've been running these past few years have been getting more engagement then featured missions did in the past. People like playing events with multiple choices more then replaying the same mission over and over. Another reason why they stopped doing mission set rewards.
- Kael knows of only one time a story was cancelled/changed due to something other than CBS/Paramount, and that was the original post ViL story which was changed to be a DSC story.(based on past TFW the original story arc was some Terran story like the current one, minus the DSC characters obviously)
- The developer who originally made Bug Hunt is now working on WoW
- There is a discussion in the systems team about a loot overhaul. How you pick up loot, how need/greed works. Its in a very preliminary stage.
- Jesse made Defense of Starbase One in 3 days due to a hitch in the schedule where they needed something quick that went with the new DSC stuff they were making.
- There was an internal bug in DOSO that was fixed before the TFO originally came out. A senior programmer made some under the hood changes to faction/allegiance stuff, but this affected the invisible NPC in the TFO map that controls things like ship spawns, certain effects, etc, so the game thought there was still a hostile NPC on the map and wouldn't progress to the next stage. People were pulling their hair out trying to figure out what the issue was. Jette found it by using a tool that tracked every NPC the map considered active, and then killing everything visible with a command power. When this one NPC was left neither she nor Jesse knew what it was, but someone on one of the other teams did and fixed it.
- Jesse also talks about a bug that happened when he worked on developing Fallout 1 where the game's combat system were treating walls as NPCs, and if the walls got hit by stray bullets it would give them stats from various junk data and caused wall sections to start moving around the map as NPCs in combat.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Comments
LOL. Bugs can do things you'd never expect.
Moriaty was/is the best bug ever!
It would be nice if all of the main energy types have at least one or two mission sets that are accessible to lower-level characters, but right now phaser, disrupter, and Polaron are ok, and antiproton has one, but plasma and tetryon have nothing.