But I definitely like the system they have set up right now. Fits in with canon very nicely. Free space and Neutral Zones would logically be the only place that skirmishes could occur without appearing absurd (or starting all out war).
Aye, and there have been games that successfully separate pve and pvp before.. DAoC is one of them, I have played 11 MMOs to date and this one has had the most fun pvp. It is a very good system. It is a pvp focused game for sure, so long as ya dont go onto a pve server, and pvp is restricted to a large frontier zone or smaller battleground zones as you level up.
I like the neural zone setup, perhaps even make a couple of the systems closest to the zone pvp aswell, and players still don't have to enter those systems unless they want to pvp. I think havin some klingons raid a federation station just inside its border, with fed players defending, would be quite fun.
Great idea, my initial thoughts are they should be personal and related to each bridge crew character (Commander's Log, Engineer's Log, Science Officer's Log, Medical Officer's Log, etc) with an option to upload them to your faction so that all ship commanders have access to a Log Library. People who deliberately falsify logs will quickly become known and ignored - their logs will agther dust on the shelves. This will provide a nice in-game way of sharing quest information, something that usually happens on the forums, and will benefit the majority of playuers who rareyl, if ever, visit MMORPG forums.
Ship scale:
Keep shuttles small. Considering the length of a Galaxy class (about 700 meters) and the length of a shuttle (about 8 meters), I don't see the problem - but then again I'm not a programmer :rolleyes: .
Space "size":
Cryptic have mentioned "infinit exploration" and initially I took that to mean they were using an "Elite" style galactic map that would be to all intents and purposes so vast one can never explore it all (using randomly generated systems and content). From this QA I am beginning to wonder if there is not a difference between "infinit exporation" and "vast space"...
Thanks for the update Kes, and I look forward to the next installment of the story arc (2380-81...?)
Log Entries would be really cool! Please keep the Ships scales in original size according to the canon of Star Trek. If I'll have a galaxy-class Ship, I'll have my sensorsystems to see little shuttleships.:D
Great work! Keep, going! Can't wait the next Q&A!;)
I was afraid PSI powers would be completely left out and that people would only be pretending to have these abilities. But now that they are including it I can see many other things making it in-game. I'm glad they are going that far in depth (Crossing fingers for Vulcan Neck pinch).
Ship sizes is going to be interesting. I don't want to see a Galaxy sized shuttle flying around, but I wouldn't mind if its slightly larger than normal, just enough to make it visible. I like the targeting brackets and zoom capabilities people have mentioned.
I'm actually excited about the log entries. Hopefully it will be accessible to everyone for viewing a ship/crews history and past experiences; maybe even tie the fleet logo into the background. Having it viewable offline I think is a really nice touch. Feels like Starfleet or Klingon High Command is keeping tabs on their captains.
I like how they are alluding to there's no "Bad guy" faction but how everyone has their own agendas. I'm hoping they continue this past launch instead of reverting to making one guy the villain.
Cut scenes/ Voice overs - We need a little more on this. I have always loved cut scenes (sucker for cinematics on single player games) but if they don't make it in game I won't be too disappointed. I'd like some sort of visual in the end, maybe an Admiral showing up on my ready room display giving me the next mission orders. It makes it feel more like a military briefing that way. Voice overs with text would be helpful.
Aye, and there have been games that successfully separate pve and pvp before.. DAoC is one of them, I have played 11 MMOs to date and this one has had the most fun pvp. It is a very good system. It is a pvp focused game for sure, so long as ya dont go onto a pve server, and pvp is restricted to a large frontier zone or smaller battleground zones as you level up.
I like the neural zone setup, perhaps even make a couple of the systems closest to the zone pvp aswell, and players still don't have to enter those systems unless they want to pvp. I think havin some klingons raid a federation station just inside its border, with fed players defending, would be quite fun.
Yeah, I'd be perfectly okay with a few raids over the border. Would be cool and more interesting if you could actually kind of affect the world by maybe taking a little bit of Federation or Klingon space, and not just compete over unclaimed territories.
And Dark Ages of Camelot was going to be one of the MMO's I was gonna hold up, so I definitely agree with you. That had one of the better PvP/PvE systems I've seen. I would not complain at all if they had something set up like that. Though I still think a hostile PvP server would solve people's problems nicely. Those determined to have PvP everywhere can have it, without forcing it on everyone who don't want it all the time.
As for ship scale, I think most people are unanimous. No one wants to be flying the Enterprise D and have a Danube fly by big as their warp nacelle. It kills the immersion factor, and like someone already said, who wouldn't love to be in a shuttle as a capital ship drops out of warp on top of them? It'd be one of those awe inspiring moments that makes you go "I seriously love this game".
Besides, it's almost physical impossible to find a ship in space by the naked eye. They'd literally have to be flying by your window port to spot anything. Space is simply too dark and too big for anything to show up past the background. I think Mass Effect even explained it. Plus, it brings in an element of tactics. If you don't want to be surprised, you actively ping an area with your sensors so nothing sneaks up on you (obviously giving away your position, but it's the whole active sonar vs. passive sonar deal of submarine games.). Or, conversely, lazy players should get snuck up on if they forget to check their sensors. Or maybe you just have someone who's passively scanning as to not alert the enemy of their presence. I don't know. I don't think it should be too hard to implement.
But there are a few exceptionally small ships, such as shuttlecrafts, that become problematic. At true scale, they become nearly unperceivable when you are flying a ship the size of a Galaxy class, and that's simply not fun.
Why on earth would they become nearly unperceivable? Won't we have sensors? Does the game camera lack a magnify option? Is it too cumbersome to use?
I don't mean to sound like an absolute stickler for detail, but I really don't like the sound of this. Please reconsider some alternative to keep scale and proportions authentic.
I dont think that small ships would be a problem, after all space is so very very vast, and that what sensors are for,
Plus a good pilto in a small ship (knowing the shield frequencies) would be able to slip inside a shield, beam some stuff away then run like hell!!
Also dont forget the Magnetic disturbances that can help hide a ship !
I think what alot of peeps are forgetting is that you won't be commanding from the bridge your be in a 3rd person view of the ship when in space so you'll see whats around you or trying to hind near your shuttle bay.
its a good thing that they wanted to stay as far away from the bridge commander viewpoint as possble in my view.
As far as the issue of scaling/ size. I was alarmed at the mention that adjustments would be made. I think it would insane if there were not tiny ships, big ships and massive ships. The only way adjustments would work is if the new ships were just that NEW ships not oversized Defiant class or "slightly enlarged" shuttles or what have you.
As far as the issue of scaling/ size. I was alarmed at the mention that adjustments would be made. I think it would insane if there were not tiny ships, big ships and massive ships. The only way adjustments would work is if the new ships were just that NEW ships not oversized Defiant class or "slightly enlarged" shuttles or what have you.
From what Ive seen in the game play trailer they seem to be working on a system where even the small ships will appear large when near the camera drone.
I don't know if this has been answered or not but i am intrested in if we will be able to buld our own ships with in class guidelines like with the old star tek game star ship creator.
I don't know if this has been answered or not but i am intrested in if we will be able to buld our own ships with in class guidelines like with the old star tek game star ship creator.
Yeah we will, thats implied by what was said during the main clip when in Vegas, a fleet will be able to build stations, shipyards etc all needing raw materials however
Oddly enough, I was just thinking about the problem with ship scaling in most MMOs today.
What MMO's? There are TWO with actual space ships. Star Wars Galaxies and Eve Online. Both have ship scaling nailed. Eve handles the very small to incredibly freaking gynormously huge ships just fine. Cryptic would be wise to follow how they handle scaling. I think it works great.
Hope shuttles arn't too big I'd really like to be able to fly a shuttle in and out of my ships bay without a cutscene.
Logs are a nice touch but will they have only computer added information ie you go to this system and the log automatically reoords it, just information we personally enter, or both.
Also how many logs are there? In the show it seems the captain, the first officer, and the Chief medical officer all have there own logs, and I'm assuming all the other members of the command staff have offical logs to though I can't recall I time we hear them adding to them in the series. Also the ship has a log which I'm assuming is seperate from the captains since in the episode Pegasus when the admiral want to take the Enterprise D into the asteroid, Picard tells Data to note in the ships log he disagrees with this order.
I have reservations regarding the answer they gave about combat. They indicated that their favorite Trek was Deep Space Nine during the Dominion War, and the Wrath of Khan.
This is troubling to me because it makes me think that STO is going to have a more combat centric nature than a Trek MMO should have. Exploration should be first and foremost in a Trek MMO. Bottom Line. Especially if you are playing as the Federation. Combat should be one of those things that is only encountered when all other options have been exhausted, especially for the PVE portions of the game.
Think about "TOS: Balance of Terror" for just a moment. Think about how conflicted Kirk was when he had to make the choice to fire on the Romulans. He knew that the consequences could be severe, igniting a full scale war along the Neutral Zone.
This is how the gameplay should be in STO. But it seems to me Cryptic wants to capture the look and feel of the Dominion War, right from the beginning. I think that's a mistake. Conflict should be avoided at all costs, until all other measures have failed, and conflict should have a high price. I think overall, Trek fans, after DS9 have become too comfortable with the idea of the Federation being at war. This was not the original Roddenberry vision, and it's certainly not what made Trek great.
It seems to me that Cryptic feels that a war or a conflict is necessary to make an MMO successful. In most cases I would agree, but this (Trek) is the one IP in all the world where having an outright conflict, could end up dooming STO to failure, especially among those fans who want to get back to the true spirit of Trek.
"To Seek out new life, and new Civilizations, To Boldly go where no man has gone before."
I watched the tailer again and there are shuttle craft! Hello little shuttle craft. There are little red streaks behind each ship making them easy to see when moving. I think scaling is a non issue. Just make them the right size, use the UI to point them out. Keep the exhaust trail. Problem solved.
I have reservations regarding the answer they gave about combat. They indicated that their favorite Trek was Deep Space Nine during the Dominion War, and the Wrath of Khan.
This is troubling to me because it makes me think that STO is going to have a more combat centric nature than a Trek MMO should have. Exploration should be first and foremost in a Trek MMO. Bottom Line. Especially if you are playing as the Federation. Combat should be one of those things that is only encountered when all other options have been exhausted, especially for the PVE portions of the game.
Think about "TOS: Balance of Terror" for just a moment. Think about how conflicted Kirk was when he had to make the choice to fire on the Romulans. He knew that the consequences could be severe, igniting a full scale war along the Neutral Zone.
This is how the gameplay should be in STO. But it seems to me Cryptic wants to capture the look and feel of the Dominion War, right from the beginning. I think that's a mistake. Conflict should be avoided at all costs, until all other measures have failed, and conflict should have a high price. I think overall, Trek fans, after DS9 have become too comfortable with the idea of the Federation being at war. This was not the original Roddenberry vision, and it's certainly not what made Trek great.
It seems to me that Cryptic feels that a war or a conflict is necessary to make an MMO successful. In most cases I would agree, but this (Trek) is the one IP in all the world where having an outright conflict, could end up dooming STO to failure, especially among those fans who want to get back to the true spirit of Trek.
"To Seek out new life, and new Civilizations, To Boldly go where no man has gone before."
While I agree with what you are saying in theory, I have to disagree in practicality. They are going to have to make it so that all paths are relatively similar. How they choose to do this is what will define the success of the game.
You have to realize from their point of view that if they offer 2 alternatives, one that takes less time/effort/credits etc will always be chosen rendering any other options basically useless.
Therefore you are going to have plenty of combat missions to do to progress your character.
Where they can differentiate is how they mix in exploration and whether they can make that engaging and not mindlessly extended travel time for the sake of doing "something other than combat".
And you also have to think about the side distribution. If they make the federation a bunch of p****s 90% of the population will be klingon.
All of this is something we wont be able to feel the full picture on until the game is in late beta or after release.
I have reservations regarding the answer they gave about combat. They indicated that their favorite Trek was Deep Space Nine during the Dominion War, and the Wrath of Khan.
...
Think about "TOS: Balance of Terror" for just a moment. Think about how conflicted Kirk was when he had to make the choice to fire on the Romulans. He knew that the consequences could be severe, igniting a full scale war along the Neutral Zone.
I think we shouldn't be too, too worried about exploration vs. combat, for a couple of reasons.
In the first place, while I emphasize the fact that it is only a promise, and its value depends on Cryptic's commitment and delivery, the fact is that Cryptic has made extensive pledges about the role of exploration in Star Trek: Online. Those pledges are far, far more extensive than anything Perpetual laid down. We'll see if they deliver.
More concretely, we know that combat mechanics and speed will reflect the naval style of combat from earlier iterations of Trek, as compared to Deep Space Nine. Taking the two together, it seems Cryptic has decided to match the political storytelling of Deep Space Nine with the combat style of other iterations of Trek. I would argue that's a fine compromise (honestly, I think it's a vital and appropriate one) that works against making this a combat-centric game.
To the specific example, I'd offer that Balance of Terror is the wrong example. At the time, the Federation and the Romulans existed in a state similar to the Cold War where any shots fired could result in a disastrous war. I don't think that's descriptive of the state of affairs either in Star Trek, by and large, or as has been described to date for Star Trek Online. Not every decision to fire your weapons is as monumental a decision as that, and I don't think STO is the format that calls for making it such.
Without getting into a debate about whether or not exploration "must" be the center of the game, I'll say that you can accomplish both in an arrangement where each decision to fire your weapons is less than monumental. I think if you look at The Original Series or The Next Generation, and particularly Voyager, you'll see that dynamic at play - none of those captains were skittish about going weapons free.
On the log front i would be more than happy, to have a log format that can be filled out by the keyboard. Something akin to a pilots log but with a larger box for the did anything unushal happen I jest. The log feature would be cool if the technical details of the flight were filled in by ships computer such as Co-ordinates, speed planet types encountered etc. More information could be added automatically to the log if you utilise certain scans etc on a given planet, star, even ship etc. To this the player can add details of his adventures thoughts which can if the player decides be made public. Or kept personal. If the data is usefull to his faction he may also decide to send it to HQ, where other players can search it and update it or utilise it. This would be particularly cool for any PVP aspect of the game as oposing players ships can be indentified by scanning and parts of its configuration could be published to his enemy and filed under his ships name or designation. Also this could work for PVE with newly encoutered species etc.
that kind of a log facility would be very good imho
The Log Entry would be greatly appreciated.:cool:
So if anyone neglects to say anything let me be the first one to say it.. :rolleyes:
I could really help me remember what I doing last if some major important stuff comes up in RL.:eek:
Okay, here's my 2 credits, with some replies to others and a few questions of my own. This may end up a bit long, apologies ahead of time for that. This game just excites me so much, and I eally hope it's done right because I plan on quitting all my other MMORPG's once this goes live.
... Now the Federation is an idealistic society and I agree that they want peace in the quadrant, but even the Federation realizes that not everyone wants peace. Hence Starfleet, which is among several other things the military, otherwise why carry weapons at all. I understand that the game should not be All out warfare all the time, but even the most peaceful science vessel can come under attack by the Borg. As a captain you wouldnt say, Oh well guys this sucks, but resistance is futile. Even idealistic societies with the best intensions must defend themselves from those who disagree with those ideals and who would want to conquer them and impose their own values. As a captain of a Starfleet vessel it would be your duty to defend the Federation, your ship, your crew and even third parties such as a Ferengi trader being attacked by Orion pirates. The most ardent explorers dont seek conflict, but if it is forced on them should they not defend themselves and those with them?
I have to agree here myself. Yes PvP stinks sometimes, but sometimes it's necessary. For instance, I play World of Warcraft on a RpPvP server. I don't play there because I like PvP, I play there because to me it's a more realistic roleplaying experience. Yes, it stinks that the Horde just killed me, but to have that Horde member merely be able to stand there and make rude gestures at me because I haven't enabled PvP would make the experience seem less real.
I think what alot of peeps are forgetting is that you won't be commanding from the bridge your be in a 3rd person view of the ship when in space so you'll see whats around you or trying to hind near your shuttle bay.
its a good thing that they wanted to stay as far away from the bridge commander viewpoint as possble in my view.
I would actually hope that we have the freedom to choose which we prefer. I myself would prefer to be on the Bridge of my ship, using my sensors and info from the computer to help guide me. Then if I wanted to see outside and operate from another perspective, I could choose External Sensors and be able to have the 3rd person view from outside the ship and be able to pilot from that view as well.
Now having said those things, I have a few questions of my own and some ideas. I haven't been able to see if these have been asked or mentioned yet or not.
1. Will the game interface be LCARS based or perhaps a future version of the operating system?
2. Will this be made to be playable on a decent dial-up connection or will it be broadband only? I myself live in the outskirts of a large city, but broadband access still hasn't made it here quite yet. I can play WoW quite decently, with a bit of lag which is to be expected. I'm not asking to be able to keep up perfectly with everyone else that has broadband, but to at least have a decent playing experience with my little dialup connection.
3. Will the larger starships have interior areas that can be accessed for recreation, such as Ten-Forward and personal quarters and such. If I earned my way up to one of the galaxy class ships, I would really love the option to explore it.
4. For the people that would like to be able to learn the history and information on Starfleet, the iconic characters of the past and the galaxy at large, perhaps it could be searchable through the LCARS database in-game. That way the players who want to know could have a wealth of information available to them, and the ones that don't care to know just don't have to look it up and it won't be force fed to them if they don't desire it.
5. The Captain's Log. One way to implement this would be to have an automatically generated log that's generated as you complete missions and explore new areas, with the option to go back to those entries and add your own notes (Captain's Supplemental, perhaps) that can include how you solved a particular problem or some other tidbit of info that you might want to recall later. I realize that millions of log entries being generated by hundreds of thousands of players could take up server space, so why not have those log files be written to a logfile on each individuals computer and accessible offline as well. Players should also be given the option of deleting old logs if they so choose to save space on their hard drives. Maybe even perhaps an ability to alter their Captain's logs offline with info that will show up in the in-game Log.
I'll quit now before this wall of text crits for over 9000.
Comments
Aye, and there have been games that successfully separate pve and pvp before.. DAoC is one of them, I have played 11 MMOs to date and this one has had the most fun pvp. It is a very good system. It is a pvp focused game for sure, so long as ya dont go onto a pve server, and pvp is restricted to a large frontier zone or smaller battleground zones as you level up.
I like the neural zone setup, perhaps even make a couple of the systems closest to the zone pvp aswell, and players still don't have to enter those systems unless they want to pvp. I think havin some klingons raid a federation station just inside its border, with fed players defending, would be quite fun.
Great idea, my initial thoughts are they should be personal and related to each bridge crew character (Commander's Log, Engineer's Log, Science Officer's Log, Medical Officer's Log, etc) with an option to upload them to your faction so that all ship commanders have access to a Log Library. People who deliberately falsify logs will quickly become known and ignored - their logs will agther dust on the shelves. This will provide a nice in-game way of sharing quest information, something that usually happens on the forums, and will benefit the majority of playuers who rareyl, if ever, visit MMORPG forums.
Ship scale:
Keep shuttles small. Considering the length of a Galaxy class (about 700 meters) and the length of a shuttle (about 8 meters), I don't see the problem - but then again I'm not a programmer :rolleyes: .
Space "size":
Cryptic have mentioned "infinit exploration" and initially I took that to mean they were using an "Elite" style galactic map that would be to all intents and purposes so vast one can never explore it all (using randomly generated systems and content). From this QA I am beginning to wonder if there is not a difference between "infinit exporation" and "vast space"...
Thanks for the update Kes, and I look forward to the next installment of the story arc (2380-81...?)
Log Entries would be really cool! Please keep the Ships scales in original size according to the canon of Star Trek. If I'll have a galaxy-class Ship, I'll have my sensorsystems to see little shuttleships.:D
Great work! Keep, going! Can't wait the next Q&A!;)
As for ship sizes, the diddy little things in the trailer are quite cute!
Ship sizes is going to be interesting. I don't want to see a Galaxy sized shuttle flying around, but I wouldn't mind if its slightly larger than normal, just enough to make it visible. I like the targeting brackets and zoom capabilities people have mentioned.
I'm actually excited about the log entries. Hopefully it will be accessible to everyone for viewing a ship/crews history and past experiences; maybe even tie the fleet logo into the background. Having it viewable offline I think is a really nice touch. Feels like Starfleet or Klingon High Command is keeping tabs on their captains.
I like how they are alluding to there's no "Bad guy" faction but how everyone has their own agendas. I'm hoping they continue this past launch instead of reverting to making one guy the villain.
Cut scenes/ Voice overs - We need a little more on this. I have always loved cut scenes (sucker for cinematics on single player games) but if they don't make it in game I won't be too disappointed. I'd like some sort of visual in the end, maybe an Admiral showing up on my ready room display giving me the next mission orders. It makes it feel more like a military briefing that way. Voice overs with text would be helpful.
Again, answered some questions yet opened others up. I can't wait for more
Yeah, I'd be perfectly okay with a few raids over the border. Would be cool and more interesting if you could actually kind of affect the world by maybe taking a little bit of Federation or Klingon space, and not just compete over unclaimed territories.
And Dark Ages of Camelot was going to be one of the MMO's I was gonna hold up, so I definitely agree with you. That had one of the better PvP/PvE systems I've seen. I would not complain at all if they had something set up like that. Though I still think a hostile PvP server would solve people's problems nicely. Those determined to have PvP everywhere can have it, without forcing it on everyone who don't want it all the time.
As for ship scale, I think most people are unanimous. No one wants to be flying the Enterprise D and have a Danube fly by big as their warp nacelle. It kills the immersion factor, and like someone already said, who wouldn't love to be in a shuttle as a capital ship drops out of warp on top of them? It'd be one of those awe inspiring moments that makes you go "I seriously love this game".
Besides, it's almost physical impossible to find a ship in space by the naked eye. They'd literally have to be flying by your window port to spot anything. Space is simply too dark and too big for anything to show up past the background. I think Mass Effect even explained it. Plus, it brings in an element of tactics. If you don't want to be surprised, you actively ping an area with your sensors so nothing sneaks up on you (obviously giving away your position, but it's the whole active sonar vs. passive sonar deal of submarine games.). Or, conversely, lazy players should get snuck up on if they forget to check their sensors. Or maybe you just have someone who's passively scanning as to not alert the enemy of their presence. I don't know. I don't think it should be too hard to implement.
Why on earth would they become nearly unperceivable? Won't we have sensors? Does the game camera lack a magnify option? Is it too cumbersome to use?
I don't mean to sound like an absolute stickler for detail, but I really don't like the sound of this. Please reconsider some alternative to keep scale and proportions authentic.
Plus a good pilto in a small ship (knowing the shield frequencies) would be able to slip inside a shield, beam some stuff away then run like hell!!
Also dont forget the Magnetic disturbances that can help hide a ship !
I think what alot of peeps are forgetting is that you won't be commanding from the bridge your be in a 3rd person view of the ship when in space so you'll see whats around you or trying to hind near your shuttle bay.
its a good thing that they wanted to stay as far away from the bridge commander viewpoint as possble in my view.
As far as the issue of scaling/ size. I was alarmed at the mention that adjustments would be made. I think it would insane if there were not tiny ships, big ships and massive ships. The only way adjustments would work is if the new ships were just that NEW ships not oversized Defiant class or "slightly enlarged" shuttles or what have you.
From what Ive seen in the game play trailer they seem to be working on a system where even the small ships will appear large when near the camera drone.
Yeah we will, thats implied by what was said during the main clip when in Vegas, a fleet will be able to build stations, shipyards etc all needing raw materials however
What MMO's? There are TWO with actual space ships. Star Wars Galaxies and Eve Online. Both have ship scaling nailed. Eve handles the very small to incredibly freaking gynormously huge ships just fine. Cryptic would be wise to follow how they handle scaling. I think it works great.
What do you mean by this, exactly?
Logs are a nice touch but will they have only computer added information ie you go to this system and the log automatically reoords it, just information we personally enter, or both.
Also how many logs are there? In the show it seems the captain, the first officer, and the Chief medical officer all have there own logs, and I'm assuming all the other members of the command staff have offical logs to though I can't recall I time we hear them adding to them in the series. Also the ship has a log which I'm assuming is seperate from the captains since in the episode Pegasus when the admiral want to take the Enterprise D into the asteroid, Picard tells Data to note in the ships log he disagrees with this order.
This is troubling to me because it makes me think that STO is going to have a more combat centric nature than a Trek MMO should have. Exploration should be first and foremost in a Trek MMO. Bottom Line. Especially if you are playing as the Federation. Combat should be one of those things that is only encountered when all other options have been exhausted, especially for the PVE portions of the game.
Think about "TOS: Balance of Terror" for just a moment. Think about how conflicted Kirk was when he had to make the choice to fire on the Romulans. He knew that the consequences could be severe, igniting a full scale war along the Neutral Zone.
This is how the gameplay should be in STO. But it seems to me Cryptic wants to capture the look and feel of the Dominion War, right from the beginning. I think that's a mistake. Conflict should be avoided at all costs, until all other measures have failed, and conflict should have a high price. I think overall, Trek fans, after DS9 have become too comfortable with the idea of the Federation being at war. This was not the original Roddenberry vision, and it's certainly not what made Trek great.
It seems to me that Cryptic feels that a war or a conflict is necessary to make an MMO successful. In most cases I would agree, but this (Trek) is the one IP in all the world where having an outright conflict, could end up dooming STO to failure, especially among those fans who want to get back to the true spirit of Trek.
"To Seek out new life, and new Civilizations, To Boldly go where no man has gone before."
While I agree with what you are saying in theory, I have to disagree in practicality. They are going to have to make it so that all paths are relatively similar. How they choose to do this is what will define the success of the game.
You have to realize from their point of view that if they offer 2 alternatives, one that takes less time/effort/credits etc will always be chosen rendering any other options basically useless.
Therefore you are going to have plenty of combat missions to do to progress your character.
Where they can differentiate is how they mix in exploration and whether they can make that engaging and not mindlessly extended travel time for the sake of doing "something other than combat".
And you also have to think about the side distribution. If they make the federation a bunch of p****s 90% of the population will be klingon.
All of this is something we wont be able to feel the full picture on until the game is in late beta or after release.
I think we shouldn't be too, too worried about exploration vs. combat, for a couple of reasons.
In the first place, while I emphasize the fact that it is only a promise, and its value depends on Cryptic's commitment and delivery, the fact is that Cryptic has made extensive pledges about the role of exploration in Star Trek: Online. Those pledges are far, far more extensive than anything Perpetual laid down. We'll see if they deliver.
More concretely, we know that combat mechanics and speed will reflect the naval style of combat from earlier iterations of Trek, as compared to Deep Space Nine. Taking the two together, it seems Cryptic has decided to match the political storytelling of Deep Space Nine with the combat style of other iterations of Trek. I would argue that's a fine compromise (honestly, I think it's a vital and appropriate one) that works against making this a combat-centric game.
To the specific example, I'd offer that Balance of Terror is the wrong example. At the time, the Federation and the Romulans existed in a state similar to the Cold War where any shots fired could result in a disastrous war. I don't think that's descriptive of the state of affairs either in Star Trek, by and large, or as has been described to date for Star Trek Online. Not every decision to fire your weapons is as monumental a decision as that, and I don't think STO is the format that calls for making it such.
Without getting into a debate about whether or not exploration "must" be the center of the game, I'll say that you can accomplish both in an arrangement where each decision to fire your weapons is less than monumental. I think if you look at The Original Series or The Next Generation, and particularly Voyager, you'll see that dynamic at play - none of those captains were skittish about going weapons free.
On the log front i would be more than happy, to have a log format that can be filled out by the keyboard. Something akin to a pilots log but with a larger box for the did anything unushal happen
that kind of a log facility would be very good imho
keep them comming
So if anyone neglects to say anything let me be the first one to say it.. :rolleyes:
I could really help me remember what I doing last if some major important stuff comes up in RL.:eek:
I have to agree here myself. Yes PvP stinks sometimes, but sometimes it's necessary. For instance, I play World of Warcraft on a RpPvP server. I don't play there because I like PvP, I play there because to me it's a more realistic roleplaying experience. Yes, it stinks that the Horde just killed me, but to have that Horde member merely be able to stand there and make rude gestures at me because I haven't enabled PvP would make the experience seem less real.
I would actually hope that we have the freedom to choose which we prefer. I myself would prefer to be on the Bridge of my ship, using my sensors and info from the computer to help guide me. Then if I wanted to see outside and operate from another perspective, I could choose External Sensors and be able to have the 3rd person view from outside the ship and be able to pilot from that view as well.
Now having said those things, I have a few questions of my own and some ideas. I haven't been able to see if these have been asked or mentioned yet or not.
1. Will the game interface be LCARS based or perhaps a future version of the operating system?
2. Will this be made to be playable on a decent dial-up connection or will it be broadband only? I myself live in the outskirts of a large city, but broadband access still hasn't made it here quite yet. I can play WoW quite decently, with a bit of lag which is to be expected. I'm not asking to be able to keep up perfectly with everyone else that has broadband, but to at least have a decent playing experience with my little dialup connection.
3. Will the larger starships have interior areas that can be accessed for recreation, such as Ten-Forward and personal quarters and such. If I earned my way up to one of the galaxy class ships, I would really love the option to explore it.
4. For the people that would like to be able to learn the history and information on Starfleet, the iconic characters of the past and the galaxy at large, perhaps it could be searchable through the LCARS database in-game. That way the players who want to know could have a wealth of information available to them, and the ones that don't care to know just don't have to look it up and it won't be force fed to them if they don't desire it.
5. The Captain's Log. One way to implement this would be to have an automatically generated log that's generated as you complete missions and explore new areas, with the option to go back to those entries and add your own notes (Captain's Supplemental, perhaps) that can include how you solved a particular problem or some other tidbit of info that you might want to recall later. I realize that millions of log entries being generated by hundreds of thousands of players could take up server space, so why not have those log files be written to a logfile on each individuals computer and accessible offline as well. Players should also be given the option of deleting old logs if they so choose to save space on their hard drives. Maybe even perhaps an ability to alter their Captain's logs offline with info that will show up in the in-game Log.
I'll quit now before this wall of text crits for over 9000.
~Saaxton