What happened to the Star Trek we saw on TV and in the Movies? Seems STO has strayed greatly from the Universe Gene Roddenberry created for us over 40 years ago.
Ground Battles: Spam Expose Abilities until Exploits and Vaporize the enemy in a quick kill.
Lets see some classic MMO class difference, not all them lumped up together doing the same fighting. After all, clerics were never on the front lines, they were in the back as support. Wizards favored magic over meleeing. STO should be the same.
Tactical Officers: They supposed to be the Ground Forces / Security. They are trained for fighting. Let them handle it.
Science Officers: They supposed to be the Healers, not fighters.
Engineers: Sure we saw Data, Geordi, and O'Brian fight, but they weren't the mainstay fighters. And they surely didn't spam a bunch of different constructions in combat either, either.
Space Battles: Spam Science Abilities to overwhelm your opponent, so they lose control of their ship for an easy kill.
This isn't Star Trek, even in the 25th Century. I for one would love to return to the simple Trek Battles of Phasers, Disruptors, Torpedoes, and Tractor Beams; Not the Abuse Trek that STO has become.
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Can you imagine Science officers just having to heal everyone? I can't see that going down well. Your argument that "clerics" stay back and provide support is outdated and most MMO games over the recent years feature healers who are more than capable of killing things, just the other damage orientated classes could do it better.
http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/1/15592/569802-star_trek_future_past_super.jpg
Somehow I don't think that is going to fly in a corporate meeting. And anyone who has actually played the game will probably agree that what you have just described is fun for maybe 10 minutes.
Sorry, I don't mean to flame, but its one of those ideas that sounds good in theory but fails in practice.
This is simply Star Trek Online. :rolleyes:
Fix the OP Science vessels before all else, and then add FvF or else balance stealth
I do not agree with this, this is not Fantasy, you are making a mistake with the analogy.
It would be more accurate to compare the team to a modern Field medic, and Field Engineer part of the Armed forces rather than Wizzards and Clerics of the Fantasy World (of which we assume they fight like that because they never existed to begin with).
In my opinion the roles in ground combat are well defined, if you watch some DS-9 during the dominion Wars you will see Bashir and O'brian as well as Dax in numerous battles on the ground.
All star Fleet personnel receive combat Training.
This one I actually agree with, shift it to more tactics invloving maneuvers (formations?), and power management and direct damage rather than stacking of Abilities and CC mechanics like a fantasy game.
But yet, STO's warfare isn't Trek, it's more about spamming abilities. What happened to Federation Ships trying to go for the weak aft shields of Klingon warships? What about Klingon warships front shields supposed to be stronger for frontal assaults?
And the Klingons arent their own faction, they are just a mirror image of the Federation. The only thing Unique about Klingons is their ship skin and their racial character abilities.
I remember countless episodes where someone got vaporized in a single shot. What show did you watch? In fact, I seem to remember that phasers had multiple settings...one of those being PWNURFACEVAPORIZEWTFNOOB. Realistic Star Trek combat would be very boring, imho.
Space combat: Did you see The Wrath of Khan? They dropped their shields WITHOUT firing! What about the magic torpedo in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. What about....let's just say that the science teams and engineering teams did a great deal of hacking and inventing crud to solve the shows problem. I suppose, if you wanted it to be like the show, we could shoot at each other for 40 minutes, then one of our BO's would pop up and say "Click here for really cool trick that will own the noobs!!"
But what fun would that be?
It is an MMO, and therefore there is a genre factor to be taken into consideration.
Don't you realize people are playing STO because it's Star Trek? How is STO reflecting this? How is the PVP reflecting this?
Even if you are resorting to the MMO Excuse, now many MMOs that allow 1 shot kills? How many MMOs allow spamming of abilities during combat? Where are our resist values? Where are the buffs that protect us from these abilities? Where is the uniqueness of character types?
SWG, WoW, DAoC, AoC, EvE have all allowed one-hit kills (actually it is more like 2 shot kills, since someone has to be exposed first then exploited)
As for the rest, I blame that on haphazard and shoddy game design and a complete lack of listing to the Beta tester's feedback for months.
Oh man, I don't mean to sound like I'm being rude, but it doesn't sound like you've played many MMOs, if you haven't run into these things many times before.
In space, you get the resists from abilities as well as engineering consoles. On the ground, you rely on your traits, armor, and shield. Furthermore, I've seen all kinds of uniqueness in character types -- everything from traits to skills to equipment types. Are there cookie-cutter builds? Yeah, but those are there even in CO, which allows for INSANE levels of customization.
Funny, I don't recall 1 shot kills in SWG or DaoC. Everquest had them, but eventually nerfed them, for player balancing.
But yes, Cryptic didn't listen to the Beta Testers.
EQ, EQ2, DaoC, SWG, and now STO.
The only Resists you got are your Shields and Armor, but what about protection against SNB, Jamming, or Viral Matrix? Omega and Teams aren't good enough, due to stacking.
The Sensor Jamming and VM can BOTH be remedied by using Science Team, though I hear that there may be a bug that keeps Science Team from preventing further debuffs during the time it is active. Currently Subnucleonic Beam has no effective defense other than a team that keeps you healed up while it is active.
Edit:
Also, maybe my memory is failing me, but I seem to remember getting 1-shot killed by certain spells in DAoC.
Still, the combat is more intricate than EVE. EVE didn't have shield facings at all and didn't really even have combat powers or free flying ships in the sense that STO does.
But it could have been so much more. We could have intricate power management systems, system damage (not just weapons being disabled but like torpedo tube #3 has been damaged and you've basically got the engineering team in there banging on it with hammers trying to get it firing again).
Of course, I have no idea if that would be more or less popular than the arcade shoot-em-up we have now.
Ground combat would probably be better as an FPS but that's a whole new can of worms for an MMORPG to handle.
And if it were patterned after Voyager, you couldn't do anything unless your character was named "Janeway."
I don't know how well that level of "twitch" combat would work in an MMO. I guess there's that "Massive Action Game," or whatever, that's doing something similar -- anyone know how that's working out?
aside from a few special abilities like tractor beam, emergency power to shields/weapons/auxilliary/structure, maximum yield torpedo, beam overload/rapid fire, attack patterns, mine dispersal, directed modulation etc. etc.
the rest could be turned into passive defensive or offensive abilities that either augment a certain part of your ship, like shields and armor-resistances, sensor-strength (range not least of all), weapons (range, power, cooldown, duration of beams etc.).
Sure, you could say that we have ship consoles for that now to a certain degree.
but this would be another level of customization. activated abilities would give more, but they're short burst abilities. while passive abilities would be 'on' all the time.
as for ground combat... it's difficult to turn what you see in the movies and series into a game...
one-shot-kill works on the big and small screen, but if you're on the receiving end of it ... it's another matter.
but, cryptic could do with playing some of the old Star Trek games to see how they solved it.
The problem with Wow's success is developers now think they can't really innovate anything because "the wheel" has already been invented. MMO players reinforce this small-think by constantly demanding mechanics that are the same as what they are familiar with.
I mean come on people you cant even boost your forward shields in this game.
In the music industry we call this the "Britney Spears effect". Something does well then everything ends up sounding like it. Regardless if its TRIBBLE or not.
I agree. It would be nice if you had specialists that had the innate ability to counter computer hacking (like VM). And to be honest, I wish Tactor Beams were available to all ships, because all ships came with them.
And I wouldn't mind expose / expoit kills if it was really, really rare occurances than common usage that it is.
In fact, I sort of like the SWG model where you have to give them the final blow in order to kill them. So Federation players could give the illusion they stunned Klingons, while Klingons can kill at will.
Yes, Sensor Jamming and VM can be fixed with Science Team. To be honest, I'm happy Sensor Jamming is included. But VM with SNB, Science Team pops, but you try clicking, it doesn't work. Some people actually abuse this with delay by spamming jamming and then you use Science Team, and then become vulnerable.
As for DaoC, I doubt you go 1 shotted, but had the perception you was. MMOs are funny that way.
That would be a fun thing if Cryptic could implement it. The Star Trek 5 Game, Bridge Commander, the Academy games, and some others had component repairs that really added to the emersion of tactical combat. Like do you focus on the warp core or do you take out the weapons first.
In a funny way, this goes with item decay. And would give more of a Trek Feeling. Beats the temporary loss of systems.
As for Ground PvP, things would be completely different if it was Open Zone PvP than Arena PvP. That's where survival skills really come into play and really show what skills are overpowered or not.
The Ground Combat I find fine in STO.
The Space combat I agree with OP could be made more Offense, Defense centric rather than Special Ability centric.
You dont remember who ever hit their one shot cc first in DAoC for all intents and purposes had a one shot kill? You dont remember that all rvr came down to who got cc off first won? No matter the character types, builds, equipment or numbers?
SWG:
TIE Oppressor with dual RE10 guns on WO4 with EWeapons = dead single player ship
Advanced XWing/Krayt/Rikhxyrk with 3 Borstels on WO4 = dead single player ship 90% of the time
Any Freelance ship using EPulse 3 could instapop *all* ships within 5 km before they nerfed it
TIE Oppressor/Decimator/Nova with 3 IR2, PT3 or PT4 (or better) missiles can oneshot any single player ship
Any ship with Spacebomb II can oneshot any other single player ship
The spamming hold and exploits in Ground is getting really silly to the point I dislike it even more. Not being able to do anything over and over and over is not fun. You would think that the smart BG that I am, I would not fall victim to the same attack again and again and again.
Yes and in RL a sidewinder from a jet Fighter can one shot any other jet Fighter...this has nothing to do with Starship Combat however.
A WWII battleship cannot one shot another WWII battleship.
Lots of redshirts got vaproized in TOS and Kirk disentergrated a klingon in Search for Spock. You have the option of playing STO your way, even to the point of arming your team the way you wish. Your away team can be all stun phasers and no personal shields, if you wish.
As for arguements on Rodenberry's vision, it varied. Checkov had a Beetles haircut cause it was hoped it would sell younger viewers. Kirk's shirt ripped a lot to the same effect. The Gorn, Romulans and Klingon's were factions in a cold war that went hot from time to time.
I respect your veiwpoint. I don't agree with it and I don't thinl it would make a very good MMORPG though.
I LOVED that game.
I like this game.
So to take make it more like star trek we have to make it more like things that aren't Star Trek. We should look at clerics and wizards as our inspiration? Not sure I get this.