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Thoughts for developers

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I realize I'm nothing more than a paying customer, but here's my thoughts so far on this fantastic refreshing start to a new MMO.

First off let me say that I really enjoy the game, but it does need some things to really make it stellar (forgive the pun, I couldn't resist).
The klingon side needs SOME PvE content. There are WONDERFUL story arcs for the Klingons and I for one would love to explore them a bit. perhaps even have a system in place where your character can choose which house to 'belong' to during a story arc. Maybe not, but there should at least be SOME missions.

While I'm on the subject of missions, and this is a MAJOR point I'd like to make: missions should be able to be failed... They are completely too easy. Escort/defend missions do not require you to actually protect the target, as they never die. Ground based missions should have respawns for the enemies if your team is killed off and you have to respawn. Space missions could perhaps do the same (reinforcements arrive) or have some sort of timer or something. Unfailable missions means I don't really have to try that hard.
Death in non-PvP scenarios should at least cost a few credits, afterall, they do have to replicate me a new ship ;)

I would like to see some further development, perhaps sector blocks where feds/klingons can fly into each other like the 'enemy signal contacts' and have a ship duel. Perhaps also some missions that could have a player searching for ships that patrol from sector to sector (like the cargo ships in the fed home sector block, but mission ships instead)
More of the "public quest" style missions (like the fleet action at starbase 24), but with timers at the later stages of the quest so that it too, could be failed if people TRIBBLE up too badly.
"race" public quests would be GREAT in war zones, where both factions are trying to accomplish a goal (collect X of such or destroy Y thingies), once on side accomplishes their goal, it triggers the 2nd stage based on their side (if the feds collect more widgets, one thing happens and there's a new goal for everyone, if klings collect them first, something else happens, etc.)

Capture and control missions for ground based PvP.
More Objective based PvP missions (and they should be worth more than the "deathmatch" ones becoase they DO take longer to participate in.

I would LOVE to see more 'boss fights' that require a large number of players working in co-ordination to bring down (similar to crystalline entity) Basically Raid bosses... things with unique powers that make a team think about how to bring it down and not just fly up to it and mash the spacebar until they blow up and fly back and repeat.
A bit more customize-ability to the klingon side's ships and uniforms (no armour?!)

Obviously things like new types of gear will come with time, but I would like to see a bit more variety, basically there's 4 guns out there, Dual cannon, Cannon, Dual Beam, and Beam array. (not counting torps, mines, turrets) that all have identical specs as far as angle of fire, rate of fire, 'reload'/cooldown timer, and dps. They simply have a few differences in procs and in 'upgrades' (CritH, CritD, Acc, etc, etc.) I'd like to see beam arrays with different angles of fire, maybe the narrower angle has a shorter cooldown, or whatever. Perhaps there's some cannons that have swivel mount to get a slightly wider angle of fire than 45 degrees, but they lose some accuracy because of it... the possibilities are nearly endless.

The ships seem pretty well balanced, but perhaps eventually we'll see a few more designs, or possibly have the ability to rip out one type of console for another type/etc.

I also assume there is a team somewhere working on all the typos and tool-tips. there should also be more defensive counters to some of the more powerful attacks (perhaps a few more ways for engineers to remove the 'expose' effect from himself) and some way to counter the viral bomb of ship shutdown doom! (I thought this was a science effect, but science team doesn't seem to clear it/protect you from it, even though the tooltip clearly says it removes science debuff effects...) Speaking of tooltips, you have to include more than just "a few examples of the powers this skill affects" we need a list somewhere, or at least put which skill effects the power in the tooltip of the power itself, it's hard to figure out what the difference in things like: deflector dish, deflector field, and deflectors are. Some things are obvious, but others are not.

and for the love of all that is holy, PLEASE add some camera options, I'd like to see a camera at a fixed point in space behind my ship, that turns as my ship does. And in ground based combat... wow, those controls need some work, when I lock on to a target, suddenly my turn left/turn right change into strafe buttons, if I wanted to strafe, I'd push the strafe buttons, I want to be able to turn. And if my character turns to face an enemy, suddenly my Forward/Back/Left/Right go from relative to my character to absolute directional, which gets VERY confusing when I push forward and my character sidesteps to the left for example.

Beyond that, I think this is a GREAT start to something that could really shake up the industry.

Just my 0.02 credits
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Ausar_513 wrote:
    Death in non-PvP scenarios should at least cost a few credits, afterall, they do have to replicate me a new ship ;)

    I disagree. Death in PVP should be the ONLY place a death penalty is in place - because you CHOOSE to fight with other human players, you don't get that choice with the randomly generated computer skirmishes.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    well yes, but you're supposed to use your skills to keep you alive versus the PvE content. whereas in PvP it is expected that you will die, probably multiple times. This concept is in virtually every other MMO on the market already, and it works for a reason.

    p.s. WOW these threads fly down the page, guess all the players are trolling the forums now that the server is down, whew.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    wow, nobody else has any thoughts on this?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    my thoughts for developers would be to not read the forums too much....
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    good point. And they probably dont... especially after the rant that just happened. sheesh.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    NO DEATH PENALTY!! This is the best game ever! :D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Ausar_513 wrote:
    good point. And they probably dont... especially after the rant that just happened. sheesh.

    linkies?
    My honest opinion to make the game better for you?
    Clost your web browser and play it. Forums will ruin it for you
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    nixboox wrote: »
    I disagree. Death in PVP should be the ONLY place a death penalty is in place - because you CHOOSE to fight with other human players, you don't get that choice with the randomly generated computer skirmishes.

    I have to disagree. PvP penalties just discourge PvP, and thats never a good thing. What MMOs have you played that you think that is an acceptable game mechanic?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Ausar_513 wrote:
    I would LOVE to see more 'boss fights' that require a large number of players working in co-ordination to bring down (similar to crystalline entity) Basically Raid bosses... things with unique powers that make a team think about how to bring it down and not just fly up to it and mash the spacebar until they blow up and fly back and repeat.

    The CE itself demonstrates why this is a bad idea to a degree. You can form a fleet of 5 people up (5 per group seems to be the way and the light) and zone in to the CE, only to find another 10 - 15 people in the same instance, none of whom are plugged in to your team chat or ventrillo/TS system. You can't co-ordinate with them other than though Zone chat (which is a wall of noise) due to no body listening to local (which as an EVE player feels like herasey but whatever). If you form a 20 man raid fleet of little wolf packs there is no garantee they'll zone in together, so you have to spend time and effort finding which instance everyone is in (along side which has room for the fleet to all be in together).


    Whilst I'd like to see similar things until there is a way to tell the game "We're 20+ people, we want our own instance do NOT split us up." It'd just be a massive amount of pain for not a lot of pay off. Once this mechanic is fixed yeah, super dreadnaughts, more CE style raids, I'm all for it.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    I have to disagree. PvP penalties just discourge PvP, and thats never a good thing. What MMOs have you played that you think that is an acceptable game mechanic?

    EVE.

    Your ship explodes and it's gone. True some of the fittings might of survived the explosion and you can theoretically get to the wreck and salvage it. But... not all of it and if it was killed in an ongoing fleet fight someone is bound to be scooping it up right about now. The upside of this is, you fight like you mean it. It also means that those that can a) understand EVE's crafting system (it's very complete and complex) and b) are remotley good at it are in constant demand.

    Your pod explodes and it's a quick trip back to the medical facility. Where you buy a new clone. If you die and your clone can not hold all of the SP, the skill with the most SP in it (and thus time) looses points. This is a mistake you only make once. It's also why as your ship starts going down you are spamming the warp command to GTFO.... as you need to cycle scramblers in preperation for the pod kill sometimes you get lucky and the burning wreck of your ship lives to fight another day.

    Due to all the other MMO's with negligable death penalties, CCP have had to rejig the tutorial as so many new players were comming in and getting quite scared of death. In short, they made the tutorial slaughter you, if you live you fail the mission. Curiously, it's working more people are looking for fights (apparently).

    However and it's a big however! STO makes death difficult to avoid. It's the nature of the game, you can't align and escape if things start going badly. If I'm in a fight here I can't hold an align to the nearest celestial object jam out or pop the tackler and mash warp, I can exit the arena (maybe) but that precludes a mad scrabble of rep cycles because you just known when you exit warp your 'friend' will be hot on your tail.

    So a harsh death penalty here, whilst wishful thinking, is not appropriate.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Vaneshi wrote:
    EVE.

    Your ship explodes and it's gone. True some of the fittings might of survived the explosion and you can theoretically get to the wreck and salvage it. But... not all of it and if it was killed in an ongoing fleet fight someone is bound to be scooping it up right about now. The upside of this is, you fight like you mean it. It also means that those that can a) understand EVE's crafting system (it's very complete and complex) and b) are remotley good at it are in constant demand.

    Your pod explodes and it's a quick trip back to the medical facility. Where you buy a new clone. If you die and your clone can not hold all of the SP, the skill with the most SP in it (and thus time) looses points. This is a mistake you only make once. It's also why as your ship starts going down you are spamming the warp command to GTFO.... as you need to cycle scramblers in preperation for the pod kill sometimes you get lucky and the burning wreck of your ship lives to fight another day.

    Due to all the other MMO's with negligable death penalties, CCP have had to rejig the tutorial as so many new players were comming in and getting quite scared of death. In short, they made the tutorial slaughter you, if you live you fail the mission.

    However! STO makes death difficult to avoid. It's the nature of the game, you can't align and escape if things start going badly. So a harsh death penalty here, whilst wishful thinking, is not appropriate.

    You make some good points, especially about how eve has added escape mechanism to go with hard death pentalty.

    In PVP it can be tough, since it would make people engage less. Here is a story, some real fighter aces from WW2 played an online game as a squad. You know how they flew? Very cautious, then when they saw an opening, bam they were on the enemy, then back to smart safe flying.

    The ideas of the no Death Pentaly create many types of play that take away from realism. So for that reason some mild pentalty makes sense to me.


    What I was thinking was to make the ship like other games have housing. Then when you lose a ship, different add on sections get damaged. And the last compartment to get hit is the engineering room, and once it is shot up you lose some power on power settings. So it would both give a reason for ship quarters, a reward for having them, and a risk in combat, also hanging beems wires and rooms venting to space would be cool,, and be easy to see when you need to get repairs done.

    Or even bridge as last section where some pentalty to weapons speed or something happens, but only after some amount of lost ships.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    I disagree with you on the lowly paying customer part.

    We are their buisness and we should be treated as such. To grovel and say we are the lowly paying customer does nothing to help the player base. What it does do is makes us look like a bunch of rubes ready to be tackled for more cash.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Ausar_513 wrote:

    I would LOVE to see more 'boss fights' that require a large number of players working in co-ordination to bring down (similar to crystalline entity) Basically Raid bosses...

    The fleet actions are like this. You can't finish them without other players working together. I did the ice mining mission today. That was awesome! And I did a space mission in the neutral zone. There's no way one player could do that alone. I haven't done the Crystalline entity yet, but looking forward to it. :D
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