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Multiple players fighting as crew on one ship discussion
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To waste away the next 7 minutes and 21 seconds, I thought I'd post this up for discussion:
A lot of people I've talked to about the game, have expressed a desire to have multiple players crewing the ship, manning different stations and whatnot. Obviously this isn't part of the game, but seems to be a well requested feature. Since Cryptic has said they'll be looking for feedback on how what direction to take the game, how about some discussion on how they might implement this to make it not only playable and fun for everyone, but how to make it most easily fit into the game as it is. (Thus, make it a lot more appealing for them to invest a little work into it, rather than a lot of work)
Currently, I think space combat works very well as is. Once you get higher levels, there's a lot of abilities to manage, but that's what makes it exciting. If you started breaking off abilities to other players to manage on your ship, I see it combat starting to get a little more boring and tedious for some of the crew. In a game like SWG where it's FPS style shooter in space, this works. Every gun can be individually aimed and it takes some skill to hit other ships. The way space combat works in STO, that's not so. The computer is a far better gunner than you are.
So, how could this be done? How can it be made fun and exciting for all? How will it integrate the roles and skills of each of the captains aboard? How will it be weird having all the consoles manned by Admirals? (Those of you with military experience know the ship would be doomed)
No, this is not a petition, nor is it a flame invitation. I'm curious to see if people can come up with a way it'd be worth adding into the game. I think it's fine as it is, but I'm not omniscient.
A lot of people I've talked to about the game, have expressed a desire to have multiple players crewing the ship, manning different stations and whatnot. Obviously this isn't part of the game, but seems to be a well requested feature. Since Cryptic has said they'll be looking for feedback on how what direction to take the game, how about some discussion on how they might implement this to make it not only playable and fun for everyone, but how to make it most easily fit into the game as it is. (Thus, make it a lot more appealing for them to invest a little work into it, rather than a lot of work)
Currently, I think space combat works very well as is. Once you get higher levels, there's a lot of abilities to manage, but that's what makes it exciting. If you started breaking off abilities to other players to manage on your ship, I see it combat starting to get a little more boring and tedious for some of the crew. In a game like SWG where it's FPS style shooter in space, this works. Every gun can be individually aimed and it takes some skill to hit other ships. The way space combat works in STO, that's not so. The computer is a far better gunner than you are.
So, how could this be done? How can it be made fun and exciting for all? How will it integrate the roles and skills of each of the captains aboard? How will it be weird having all the consoles manned by Admirals? (Those of you with military experience know the ship would be doomed)
No, this is not a petition, nor is it a flame invitation. I'm curious to see if people can come up with a way it'd be worth adding into the game. I think it's fine as it is, but I'm not omniscient.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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I'm sure that several dozen will come in here and give you ludicrous exaggerated reasons, as to why humans cannot ever cooperate. Despite the fact that society exists.
Even Craig stated that it just wouldn't be possible.
And I'm sorry, I personally wouldn't like to just be punching a button at the Engineering station to refresh the shield, or boost the engines.
Then you have to deal with the fact that people will lag, or get dc'ed. That happens during a pitched battle, that would really suck.
Then what happens when a member of the crew has to go to sleep, or work, etc....Nobody to man the station. Ship sits in drydock. Boring.
Science officer controls science skills. Tactical theirs and engineer theirs. Captain giving orders.
But player BO's would need to be proper lower rank.
That would be cool.
First off, control: There's one ship, and the captain gets to steer it. But everyone's camera follows the ship, just like if you were driving. The other players of course can look in any direction. This makes it "easy" to implement programming-wise.
To have plenty to do, every player can pick their own target and do stuff to it. Again, not trying to tie the other players to the captain's target actually makes programming easier. So, everyone can pick a different target (or assist on the same) and fire their phasers and torpedos and use their special abilities as they please.
Every player's gear would stack onto the one ship.
The shields on the ship have a max/regen equal to the max/regen of all the participants combined
Each player has use of their full complement of weapons. So, if you have 2 phasers and a torpedo flying solo, you control 2 phasers and a torpedo in the shared ship.
Every player has access to their full selection of abilities, both captain and BO. Yeah, I'm not gonna try to explain this "story" wise, but gameplay wise their's no reason it wouldn't work. A science person can still be jamming his target while the tactical person is torpedo-ing the TRIBBLE out of his. Note that buffs like rapid fire would only affect YOUR weapons, not the weapons of the entire ship. Shield and hull regen skills are generally capped at restoring a set amount of damage, so they aren't imbalanced by this either.
Since your abilities only affect your parts of the ship, there is no reason to try to link the cooldown timers...as in, if one shipmate uses a torpedo skill, you don't have to wait 20 seconds to use yours. This ups the fun factor (no sitting there waiting on refreshes) and eases programming yet again (not having to keep track of skill timers across several players).
Yup, this would make for one uber ship, but it still wouldn't quite equal out to several regular ships. For one, hull wouldn't stack, just shields. Also, you don't get the ability to flank your opponents as easily.
In return, you get one ship that is a good bit tougher than your average ship and can handle any situation...no having your weaker teammates picked off one at a time.
You could tweak aspects of this idea to find a good balance...ideally, 5 players in separate ships vs 5 players in one ship would be a fun, fair fight. If this is successful, then you don't have to bother rebalancing any pve content either. And it would not be boring, as each player would be nearly as active as they are now.
I do not recall Craig ever saying it was impossible. Not easy to do and not possible within their launch timeframe yes, but not technologically impossible. The biggest issue, I think, is making sure all the data is linked up properly and that maps within maps load up. It IS difficult, but not impossible.
Anyway....
The biggest gameplay issue is restricting player control. You can't just "jump ship" like you can in any other vehicle so once you head out, your character ceases to be in control of his/her location. To solve this issue, you have "holo-Players". Essentially players who are only holograms of themselves on another player's ship. While this doesn't have the same "danger" value, it does mean that you can leave the ship at any time and instantly be back at your ship.
Second issue is time. Spending an hour doing nothing useful is not fun. So I suggest using the Holodeck as sort of a WoW style arena in which you fight other player ships or PVE missions. This has the benefit of keeping the universe from having to deal with many player ships running around and unbalancing the combat. It also means that missions can be specially designed so they aren't boring for everyone. You can also do single ship vs ship combat and if a player wants to leave, they get a chance every 10 min. or so. (ie. that's how long a ship vs ship combat would take)
Third, what to do.
We have Tactical, Science, and Engineering BOs. Add to that the captain.
So...
Captain of the ship steers and tells everyone what to do. Simple enough.
The tactical officer also get's a 3rd person view and controls the weapons, shields, and special abilities of the tactical officer.
The Science officer controls the power management and the science power. However, the science power is a short mini-game in which you have to match a signal(for deflector powers) using two slider bars for amplitude and frequency. For sensor powers, you need to match the emissions from an enemy ship to yours in the correct order. Think Simon Says. For emitter powers, you have to do a "pipe" like mini-game in which you allow the correct energy to flow to the right emitter.
All 3 of these powers would be controlled from three different consoles on the bridge and you have to run to each one to use each type of power. Though if you only have one type of power, you have little to worry about.
The Medic does a "healing" mini-game in which patients are beamed into sickbay in various states of injury: Light, Moderate, and Critical. If not treated, they eventually become critical and die. Every crew that dies, your ship loses 1 crew. So you, as the medical officer, have to treat the patients in your sickbay. Light take the least time to treat and critical takes the longest. However, critical can die at any moment. For one person, it's not boring.
Engineering does the same thing. They also control the engineering powers by hitting consoles but while they do that they have to repair systems. In essence, areas of Engineering get damaged (light, moderate, critical). He/she has to repair them and use consoles when needed. The number of parts damaged and the severity of the damage is directly related to hull damage. More hull damage, the more critical damage you have. Destroyed takes the longest to fix. Items fixed heal you. Ex: light damage area = 2 HP. Repairing it means the ship get's +2 HP.
And thus we have a 10 man team. If someone drops, it goes back to default.
You'll note that each "specialty" is isolated. If Science were to go down, then all science controls revert back to the captain. Same with tactical and engineering. With medic, it just goes back to default of "auto heal".
Note that human engineers and human medics have the potential to repair/heal faster than the computer.
That is how you do it. It's also extremely time consuming to make this and I wouldn't expect Cryptic to make something like this in anything less than a year and a half.
I definitely understand the way they set up the game with everyone being their own captain and agree it had to be this way. Where I think they made the mistake is not creating the OPTION for things like you guys are saying. A lot of people are like, well it wouldn't be fun to do this or that, but if this was an in game option to do then you would not be forced to do it, only if you wanted to, and therefore the people who want to do it can. As to how exactly they could there are numeorous ways it could work. I would imagie the captain should actually have the littlest control over actual combat since they are supposed to be giving orders to the others to do whatever but I don't think all the "how" is so important over the fact it would be nice if they did it.
One way I think would be interesting is if they add in a join feature like in other online (not mmo) games. When you set to play your game you can set your bridge officers to three settings, "closed" (regular gameplay) "private" (friends only) or "open" - where someone who wants to play for a session on a crew can select it and will randomly filtered onto crews of players who have an "open" slot for a bridge member. This I believe would foster and encourage cooperative play as an mmo is supposed to do. If you feel like playing with others on your crew you select your crew to "open", and anyone searching can join and your crew is now other people, great way to meet new players and adventure with them without having to link up in a fleet. (For the joining player you'd have an option to play as your character or to join another ship, in which you'd join either a friend you know, or a random open crew) Now there would have to be some advantage to doing this I suppose to make it worth it logically, maybe you get some experience for a character of yours when you play on another's crew etc so you're not doing it for nothing. I believe that that might actually be the biggest flaw in them implimenting something like this, wherein these games are so heavily based on level gain, how is this helping your character?
I understand Cryptic had a lot to consider in making this game, but I was hoping they'd do everything possible to capture the essence of star trek, and one of the core aspects is one crew working together to solve a mystery or go on whatever adventure they're on. I think that without at least allowing players this option of being on the same crew you are creating what might be a lonely experience in a game that's supposed to be designed for players to play with one another.
Again I understand them doing it the way they did, I think it needed to be this way because they couldn't force us to be on one another's crew since then our individual experiences and enjoyment would depend on the crew/captain and those variables were too much for cryptic to risk, but I would like at least the option for it. Those in support keep talking about it to at least keep the conversation going and who knows what might happen.
This is a new and interesting topic of conversation that has never been brought up before. I'm certain that it will be a very productive discussion.
/sarcasm meter explodes
If you want to bring about change sometimes you have to restate and keep talking about something so that it isn't just forgotten. The more something is talked about the more likely it is that someone important will pay attention to it. For people who want something like this to happen, there's no more we can do than continue to discuss it.
I would like to see:
1. Optional Player crews utilizing fun minigames. (Please do not say that would be boring because the definition of fun is something that isn't boring)
2. Those who think minigames are inherently not fun obviously have no understanding of reality as ALL games that have ever existed in the universe ARE a series of connected minigames designed to create the illusion of making a difference in the gameworld through a visual representation of your actions and a reward from success
3. If anyone goes linkdead, lags out, or goes afk to eat fried chicken, the npc crew members will be ready to cover for that person until they get back.
4. Anyone can do any job, though someone skilled in that field would recieve bonuses (to remove the need for waiting for viable groups)
5. People who want more from their mmo experience than an endless succession of mobs to kill could enjoy science and diplomatic missions using the minigames. A player crew working together to gather scientific data on planets or trying to defeat a spacial anomaly
6. A reason to travel at slower warp speeds through space (a. It gains faction with the races that live there as high warp damages space (a star trek lore fact). The crew can also do "preparation minigames" to recieve bonuses to stats. (studying the races and regions, modifying weapons, innoculating crew to diseases and bacteria). Aswell as just wander around their ship roleplaying
If you are still reading then here are my suggestions for bridge crew functions:
Player 1: The captain (my original post suggested he just control the power flow of the ship - sacrificing one strength to boost another. Though perhaps the captain would need to control the ship aswell an do away with the need for a player at the helm
Player 2: The engineer would be down in engineering doing the FUN engineering minigames to keep the ship supplying power
Player 3: The phaser guy, aiming and firing phasers and deciding the strength of the beam (based on the power designated to him by the Captain
Player 4: Torpedo guy, aiming and firing torpedoes
Player 5: The medic who heals people damaged in explosions inside the ship from exploding consoles
Player 6: Another engineer, who repairs the damaged terminals
The main problem is the mainstream target audience. In making any game the designers have to ask themselves what is our main audience going to want to do? And the sad truth to that is simply in this day in age - Shoot and kill. It's why action packed counsil games rule in this day over pc adventure/puzzle games, and it's why STO (in addition to other mmos) is 90% combat when Star Trek is supposed to be about mystery and exploration first then combat. In the end they are going with the philosophy of "our players want to kill things, and they want action, and they don't want to be bored." It's part of the attempt to draw in non trekies, to appear cool and unboring. Unfortunately in doing this, in my opinion, they really lose a lot in essense of what star trek is. And if you're taking control of different stations and doing scans and fixing engineering problems that isn't seen as potentially exciting enough to keep the mainstream audience interested. They look at that and say "They're going to be bored doing that." and sadly...they're right with a lot of the players out there. So it is as is, you get the controls, you get to press the shoot button, you get to win the battle, the end.
Sorry for getting off topic a bit, but really it isn't because it roots into why in the end they didn't have you able to be on one another's crew, and why it's such an instanced heavy combat game.
Edit - just to be clear in mainstream target audience I'm not talking about like trek audience, I'm talking about video game players in general because that is who they have to go after first, then trekies. If they want the game to be successful they knew they had to get a lot more than just the trekies involved.
This would be absolutely workable and feasible, and I think far more people would enjoy than they realize.
Consider World of Warcraft. Now, I know many of you loathe that game, and that's fine, but you have to admit, it does certain things right, to the tune of millions of players. One of the main things that many people enjoy are raids and heroic dungeons. Now, hear me out, please.
For those who don't know, these are instanced content that can take 5-25 people from an hour to many hours, depending on the exact nature of the instance. Let's take heroics. Five players enter, typically, 1 tank, 1 healer, 3 Damage. Many heroics take under an hour, so they do not require players to remain logged on for long periods. While in these instances, most WoW players will tell you that they spend a great deal of time pressing 4-5 buttons, tops. Don't think that is fun? I will be the first to admit, it can be very enjoyable, and millions agree. STO has similar class types: heals, debuffs/buffs, and damage.
The challenge is having powers and abilities at your disposal, and having to determine when and where to use them, even if the majority of the time is just 4-5 routine buttons. If done correctly, the content can be varied, engaging, and keep you coming back for more. Remember, one of the big challenges that can make this routine compelling is the challenge of working efficiently with others. If you haven't tried it, don't knock it can be very rewarding!
As for STO interface, I love the minigame idea mentioned by poster above, and I also think this would be a great to have actual LCARS type panels that you can interact with on players' bridges! Don't make it mandatory, and don't change the fundamentals of the game, which are great, BTW, but allow this as end-game raiding, or even just heroic style instances!
Please put me down as an enthusiastic yes yes yes for this idea and praying Cryptic reads this!
This would be something of an expansion pack, and to make it work they would have to make the entire expansion pack unaccessable to players that dont have it, then they would probably have to introduce a new 'ship' class that uses the code to allow its consoles to be used and can only work with players on it....
It would get very, very messy.
Agreed bigtime on Loxius, they can't force anything but make options.
And also agreed, as I stated earlier realistically they could never do any of this at all until they release an expansion pack, it's too big a change to just patch... and even then they'd have to be convinced in making the expansion patch that this would be successful and a lot of people would do it, which = not easy.
I think this is something that COULD be worked on later, in a year or so, when the game is more established. Its more of a endgame and roleplay bonus.
Theoretically they could make a 'player crewed' version, one of each ship, and add in a new set of player skills/classes for that section, entitled 'Captain' and 'Officer' 'Crewmember' etc, which give bonus's to ground hugely and stations...
but..yeah..it would be a lot of work, its like its own game.
As a "meet us half way", how about some kind of fleet action where some players are inside the ship and some are outside, and events from one instance affect the status of the other?
But yeah Kitsunami I couldn't have said it better myself it would be so much for them to do. I guess it would depend in the end how much honest demand there was for it. They'd do it if they believed it would work, I wish I felt like that will happen, but I don't.
Say, you have a disabled ship which anyone that beams onto it is the repair teams, and have to fight invaders and repair systems etc, while those outside defend the ship. AI would have to target the ship, and anytime the ships health goes down, systems inside the ship could blow up, hurting players who are trying to repair them...etc etc
Not bad at all. Stuff like that could be pretty fun. They could also do a Return of the Jedi type deal, where one crew on a planet is trying to do something that will affect the space battle.
I don't think you are reading some of the posts beyond the first one. There are many examples of exactly this sort of thing working in multiple games. Another example from World of Warcraft would be Siege Engines. Your ride as a passenger in a vehicle and you and other players have a series of special abilities you can use.
Not everyone wants to drive, and there are enough roles to make this work. Think about it, what is the difference between an instance in WoW and what we are asking for here? Same roles (heals, buffs, damage), same interaction (4-5 powers or buttons), and more. The setting and themes are different but a raid is essentially a raid!
Stop saying no just because you cannot imagine it. 11+ million people can imagine it and play it every day in one other MMO alone! Its quite possible.
Would it be a lot of work? Certainly, I don't dispute that, but I hope Cryptic sees the payoff as more than worth it!
Your comparisons to roles on a ship and player roles in battles in other mmo's is interesting. I dig it.
I have played MMO's for over a decade now, and truth be told, its all really the same when you boil it down.
You have someone who needs to take damage, someone who needs to deal damage, someone who needs to heal damage and maybe someone who can mitigate or increase damage!
I think Cryptic is well aware of these archetypes, as well, as City of Heroes was no different. What does change from game to game is obvious stuff like setting, story, etc, but in my opinion, when you get to the meat of it, the mechanics are all the same!
Which is encouraging, because for our topic here, that means the biggest hurdle should be interface, as the fundamentals are already in place.
LOL This game is not Star Trek, go buy a Star Trek game if you want that kind of gameplay,....oh wait......
The fact that you actually believe the fantasy that 11 million play WoW invalidates everything you've posted here.