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A Dream for STO's Future: Echoes of Trek Past

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I love STO. Period. In spite of all that it is not. And probably for all that I want and hope it will be. What follows are some of those hopes.

My favorite Star Trek game of all time is Birth of the Federation (BOTF.) I still play it even now 10 years after its release. What keeps me coming back to BOTF is how you can choose to play Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian and Ferengi and lead one of those empires to galactic dominance, either alone or through an alliance with one of the other major powers. I also like how as you travel the galaxy you encounter many of the minor races from Trek and can pursuade them to join your empire by establishing Friendship Treaties. If they do end up petitioning you for membership, you get a unique boost to your empire when they join (Edo Guardian, anyone?) But even if you succeed in establishing Friendship and Membership Treaties with the minor races, there is no guarantee that they will stay. The other major powers are always working to undermine your efforts and persuade them to join their empire.

Then there are the random events like strikes that shutdown your economy for long periods of time, novas that destroy all planets in a star system, spontaneous orbital shifts that can make a planet either more or less suitable for life by raising or lowering the planet's population cap, meteors and asteroids that can crash into a planet and either greatly reduce or completely wipe out all life on said planet and/ or permanently change its climate, the Crystaline Entity that wanders from system to system feeding on but not wiping out all life, the Calamarain that jumps from system to system attacking anyone who gets to close, Gomtu who can be befriended (no buff,) and, of course, the Borg who will wipe out all life and leave barren all the worlds they touch.

BOTF is the truest Star Trek game I've played. It has true exploration where you literally seek out new worlds and new civilizations. You build colony ships to terraform and colonize planets. You build troop transoprts to build outposts and starbases and land ground troops on enemy worlds to liberate or subjugate them. You build science vessels to explore the galaxy and small, medium and large warships to fight for and defend your empire, and your friends, from enemies. It has diplomacy (even if it is only two-dimensional,) scientific research and espionage (again, 2 dimensional.)

I would love for and hope that Cryptic would attempt to adapt these aspects of BOTF into STO. I understand that none of these can be adapted to STO as is, and no, I'm not looking for BOTF: the MMO (although, now that I think about it, that's not a bad idea....)

I would like to see content in STO like some of the following:

Explorable Worlds - a PvE/ PvP zone (depending on if it is uninhabitaed or not) that is an entire planet to be explored, surveyed and colonized. It could be a minor race's world or one that your empire settles. Over the course of say, 4-6 months, players can engage in daily missions that either terraform and colonize the planet (if uninhabited) or run errands for the minor race in an effort to get them to petition your empire for membership. Each day the planet's leaderboard would be updated to show progress and how likely the world is to become a part of which empire. At the end of the 4-6 month period, the highest score wins and the world becomes part of the winning empire. The top 100 players of the winning empire get a free month of game play or something (emphasis on something.) There could be multiple PvP zones like this that last 4-6 months that also overlap in real time (Zone 1-Feb to August, Zone 2-March to September, Zone 3-April to October, etc..)

Playable Empires - allow players to play as Romulans, Ferengi, Cardassians, Breen, Dominion and other empires. Allow cross PvP with them. Maybe a large Fleet (guild) of Romulan players decide to launch a surprise attack on an unsuspecting group of Ferengi players on one of their worlds (yes, something along the lines of WoW's "For The Alliance!") Example: The Romulan players go in, take out the Grand Nagus NPC, loot his corpse or etch their name of his scepter then leave. The Grand Nagus NPC respawns a few minutes later.

Multiple Transwarp Conduits - Allow players to set their Transwarp Hub to another star sytem other than Sol and/ or establish Transwarp Conduits that link to other systems. Example: A conduit that links Sol, Memory Alpha, DS9 and K7 allowing you to zone from any one to any other.

PhP Missions - PhP (player helping player) missions would be optional missions that can be abandoned at anytime that allow one player to get into trouble and have another player help get them out. Example: Player 1 decides to go behind enemy lines for whatever reason and is captured by the enemy. They can then post that they need to be rescued and Player 2 can chose to accept the mission to go rescue them. Player 1 can either just sit and wait, try to escape, perform espionage or just abandon the mission. Player 2 can chose to go rescue them from the list of rescue missions available and go do it. Completion of a PhP mission should offer a small bonus reward, say 5 or 10 extra Badges of Exploration, 5th Order.

No Skill Point Cap - allow players to continue to accumulate and apply skill points to their toon after hitting whatever the level cap is. This should be a no brainer.

Genesis Torpedoes - Weapon or tool? "Hey! Who put that planet there? I could've sworn it wasn't there an hour ago." Perhaps a PvE/ PvP zone where players can set them off just for the sheer fun of it.

In Game Character Re-customization - Bored with your toon's appearance or just not happy with what you did the first time? Go to Starfleet Medical and make some changes. Anything you want. For a price. (Replace the name Starfleet Medical with whatever would fit the appropriate empire.)

Random Events - One thing I loved about Everquest was the Random Event. Every so often, without warning high level NPCs would invade low level areas for a short time (a few hours) and allow high level players to "come to the rescue" of low level players. The spontaneity of it was wonderful, in my opinion. I'm thinking of something right along the lines like the STO End of Beta Event where Sirius Sector and Earth spacedock were overrun by Klingon players and Borg NPCs. But not the same high level NPCs each time. One time it could be the Gorn. Another, Species 8472. Or the Calamarain. One week it could be on a Friday night from 6-10pm. Then 2 weeks later it could be Tuesday from 3-11pm and then nothing for a few weeks. Make it really random.

I could go on but I'm sure that only the die hard reader or someone who is really bored has probably read this far. I hope you get the ideas I'm suggesting. What's more, I sincerely hope that the developers working on STO read this and get some ideas for future content. I'm not going to hold my breath on any of the ideas I've mentioned. But I will dare to dream. And hope.

Thank you for your time.
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