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Cosmetic changes to improve immersion in STO

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
Firstly, I find myself playing this game a lot, even though its not what I imagined it to be pre-release. There are problems, and there are moments of sheer genius. Some of the missions felt like pure canonised trek, and others felt like a Korean grindfest mmo, but this game has real potential and I'm sticking with it for better or for worse.

I've come up with some ideas that would enhance the game and provide more immersion in the Star Trek universe for me personally. I'm going to post a few of these here to gauge community reaction. These imho are ones that would be relatively easy to implement without drastically having a mountain of recoding to do.

1. Get rid of the pop-ups from "Federation Traffic Control" when moving from sector to sector. If you have to have a pop-up, replace the traffic controller with one of your bridge officers asking "Ready to warp to YYY sector, captain". Give your BOs something more to do!

2. When promotions occur, you get a nice little optional ceremony in Sol Starbase (optional) from ensign -> admiral. When you are promoting your BOs, nothing. I would like the ability to promote my BOs in a nice little private ceremony on the bridge of my own ship with all my officers there, clapping and offering congratulations. (optional, of course). The game mechanics are all there already, from the bridge itself to the emotes for the officers.

3. One defining moment in every episode of Star Trek is when the command "Shields Up!" is given. I appreciate the missions where enemies decloak off your starboard bow and open fire, and any of the ambush scenarios. But I miss the urgency and ability to enable shields myself. Flying around with shields up all the time takes a large chunk of immersion out of the game. I would like to be fired upon, taking hull damage and then having to order "shields up" before moving into combat phase, in any of the ambush scenarios. I guess what I'm asking for here, is a hud button for enabling/disabling shields which can optionally be left on all the time (as it is now) or can be manually controlled. Going over to a freighter to offer assistance while your shields are raised, doesn't send the right diplomatic signals.

4. A mission to rescue one of your BOs who has been kidnapped / incapacitated in some way .... thus depriving you of their inate abilities and having to use a backup BO now and again. Trying to complete a mission without your BO's abilities to scramble sensors, viral matrix, etc. would make things a lot more interesting, at least until you successfully rescue them.

5. Finally, some sort of epic quest, (not a mission!), fed to you in small chunks, throughout your career. Aka Sid Meiers' Pirates quest to find your missing family. In STO, it could be to solve what happened regarding a missing ship etc. A mystery that has intrigued you since youth (like more than a few ST episodes through the ages). Clues dropped at random intervals, random contacts at space stations/freighter captains in sector space/NPCs .. anything.

That's it for now. Apologies if anyone has made these suggestions before. I browse the forums, but don't read everything.

Discuss, or flame away. Whatever makes you happy.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    leprech wrote: »
    Firstly, I find myself playing this game a lot, even though its not what I imagined it to be pre-release. There are problems, and there are moments of sheer genius. Some of the missions felt like pure canonised trek, and others felt like a Korean grindfest mmo, but this game has real potential and I'm sticking with it for better or for worse.

    I've come up with some ideas that would enhance the game and provide more immersion in the Star Trek universe for me personally. I'm going to post a few of these here to gauge community reaction. These imho are ones that would be relatively easy to implement without drastically having a mountain of recoding to do.

    1. Get rid of the pop-ups from "Federation Traffic Control" when moving from sector to sector. If you have to have a pop-up, replace the traffic controller with one of your bridge officers asking "Ready to warp to YYY sector, captain". Give your BOs something more to do!

    2. When promotions occur, you get a nice little optional ceremony in Sol Starbase (optional) from ensign -> admiral. When you are promoting your BOs, nothing. I would like the ability to promote my BOs in a nice little private ceremony on the bridge of my own ship with all my officers there, clapping and offering congratulations. (optional, of course). The game mechanics are all there already, from the bridge itself to the emotes for the officers.

    3. One defining moment in every episode of Star Trek is when the command "Shields Up!" is given. I appreciate the missions where enemies decloak off your starboard bow and open fire, and any of the ambush scenarios. But I miss the urgency and ability to enable shields myself. Flying around with shields up all the time takes a large chunk of immersion out of the game. I would like to be fired upon, taking hull damage and then having to order "shields up" before moving into combat phase, in any of the ambush scenarios. I guess what I'm asking for here, is a hud button for enabling/disabling shields which can optionally be left on all the time (as it is now) or can be manually controlled. Going over to a freighter to offer assistance while your shields are raised, doesn't send the right diplomatic signals.

    4. A mission to rescue one of your BOs who has been kidnapped / incapacitated in some way .... thus depriving you of their inate abilities and having to use a backup BO now and again. Trying to complete a mission without your BO's abilities to scramble sensors, viral matrix, etc. would make things a lot more interesting, at least until you successfully rescue them.

    5. Finally, some sort of epic quest, (not a mission!), fed to you in small chunks, throughout your career. Aka Sid Meiers' Pirates quest to find your missing family. In STO, it could be to solve what happened regarding a missing ship etc. A mystery that has intrigued you since youth (like more than a few ST episodes through the ages). Clues dropped at random intervals, random contacts at space stations/freighter captains in sector space/NPCs .. anything.

    That's it for now. Apologies if anyone has made these suggestions before. I browse the forums, but don't read everything.

    Discuss, or flame away. Whatever makes you happy.

    1 - i agree :) would be nice to have Boff's talking to you like that, they already do in missions, so it wouldnt be that hard to put in.

    2 - a nice touch, not quite so essential, i'm sure they've got stuff in the works to improve RP and immersion however, so this would be a welcome addition to that once they get the larger problems out of the way.

    3 - optional, yes.. though i think it should be instantly raised if enemy targets are sighted, some ships have massively hard alpha strikes (BoP's and Jem'Hadar to name two) and you could be dead long before you realise and raise shields.

    4 - right now, i have enough Boffs to replace any that are kidnapped and still be just as viable, so not sure that'd work so well.. would be interesting to be kidnapped with a Boff (like on missions where you can beam down with only one of them) and you have to escape, but loosing a Boff for a mission or two really wouldnt inconvenience some people that much at all.

    5 - its already there :) there's things afoot behind the Undine invasion and the war with the klingons and the strife with the romulans.. a lot of little hints and bits of information given out in the story missions give you this..
    ***HIGHLIGHT FOR SPOILERS***
    the mission thats a follow up to finding out the Remans were responsible for the destruction of Romulos for example, where you go to a planet with an Iconian gateway on it, first there's an unidentified ship that shoots at you then vanishes, then on the planet there's talk of "dread masters" and as you enter the gateway room, someone is berating the preator before escaping through the gateway.

    then there's the missions around DS9, like "war games" with a whole ship taken over by Undine, the undine captain tells you they're going to destroy us all and its what we deserve for violating their space, now i thought janeway had smoothed all that over with them, so why would they now be attacking the alpha/beta quadrants and saying WE violated their space again?

    personally i think the Iconains have returned and are the ones who violated fluidic space, and they're using the undine's reactions to that to undermine and destroy the alpha quadrant powers so they're easier for a take over by the Iconians...

    ***SPOILERS END***

    but a direct quest line would be kinda cool :) maybe a few of them, based upon choices made early on to give you another unique set of missions that crop up from time to time.

    nice post, thank you :D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Thanks for the response, but what I meant by number 5 is not sub-plots .... I meant a large quest that is fed to you in drips as you progress through the game, providing clues as to systems/ncps you need to visit/talk to .. in order to progress further. Sid Meier's did this wonderfully in Pirates, providing clues, map pieces etc, to help you find your missing family, and it was all seperate from the main game and plot. It simply made use of the world the game was built in to provide you with a secondary goal that needed to be solved (or not) over a long period of time, compared to the immediate missions and levelling.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Very good ideas! Devs? You say you are listening! Please take note of these! (especially number one! Federation Traffic Control??? LAME)

    I would like to add a few:

    -Have the ability to hail a starship. Keep them neutral "grey" until you talk to them. When they show up as "reds", you KNOW they are just going to attack you. Give them a chance to explain them selves or set you up for a trap! Or even give them a chance to run.

    -Piggybacking off that idea, have the ability to disable a ship. Allow it to run away or disengage from combat. Currently it is kill or be killed.

    -Allow us to promote one of our BO's to become First Officer. Make it a drop down title box. If a BO becomes a FO, perhaps they gain a special skill/ability?

    -And this is one for down the road: Allow us to travel planetside via shuttlecraft on a few missions.

    -Give us a Ships Doctor! That is one of the classic MAIN characters. Sure, our Science Officer doubles as a Doc, but they really shouldn't...

    -Allow us to choose Yellow Alert, or Red Alert. Sure, once we start firing, we go to red alert, but I still like the chance to tell my ship (as Captain, one of the few jobs a Captain does!) to go to Red Alert/raise sheilds!

    -Let us use scanners/tricorders to actually help us figure out a targets strengths/weaknesses.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Good suggestions.
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