What's up with this? Fix the graphics engine or something.
thats true... it sure do need some kind of fixing... In large battles like PVP or PVE the game can bog down my PC resources making it work harder than needed.
1) From a previous 'Ask Cryptic' session you told us you were in the process of creating more melee weapons. When can we expect to see these weapons?
2) A lot of people seem to believe that ground combat is very lacking and quite a let down in terms of the game. Are there any plans for improvement in this area?
Are there any plans to implement non combat missions in Space? For Example, your ship gets stuck in a Certain nebula that shuts your engines down and threatens to shut all power down in the ship. Your job is to run around the ship performing sensor scans and analysis to "free" your ship. I think that this would be an excellent use of ship interiors.
I think this would be great as long as such 'tweakings' were done via an interesting minigame. If its just 'run and click' that would be a little boring after a while. As long as the brain gets a little puzzle-solving to do that'd make it interesting, even if we all eventually get accustomed to how the puzzles work. Just my two cents. I do think this is a great idea though.
Why do the Klingons not have the same selection of missions as Federation? All it seems available is endless series of PVP battles. Secondly, has it been considered to make a "neutral" playable faction such as Freighter crews? there are definitely enough different freighter types in all the series to support. Finally, why was the Excelsior class left out?
Thanks!
I agree with this notion. A non-aligned Freighter or Pirate faction (separate) would be really neat. They might not carry the same firepower as a Federation Cruiser or a Bird of Prey, but you could make some pretty interesting storylines around this. Ferengi Alliance -could- b esomething cool you could base this off of, but I kind of rather if it were a touch more generic than that. The Ferengi are interesting though, between them and the Orions they remind me a lot of another IP, namely Star Wars in the sense that those two combined are a lot like the Hutts. Nevertheless, One Freighter and one Pirate Group could make a great pair of rivals as well for a different feel to add to the game. Just an idea
1) From a previous 'Ask Cryptic' session you told us you were in the process of creating more melee weapons. When can we expect to see these weapons?
2) A lot of people seem to believe that ground combat is very lacking and quite a let down in terms of the game. Are there any plans for improvement in this area?
I agree. I would really love to see a bit more diversity here. Also, while I know that Tactical officers are the specialists of weapons use in ground combat, it would be nice if non-tactical officers had access to develop their skills in a specific group of weapon types. I'm honestly not sure how that would work, but lets take Spock for instance. Despite being a Science officer he was certainly no slouch in combat. (Not that Science Officers are now). I'm just thinking it would be neat if all characters had a means to specialize in a particular ground style.
Additionally, it really would be nice to see some human style hand to hand weapons (Saber, Katana, Staff, Tomahawk) or even give Klingons more of the diversity they should have (just like the npc's). I'd really love to see 'Targ Handler' as a skill available to Klingons, and Saur Handler For Gorn. Other interesting weapons are the HIrogen or Jem hadar weapons. Perhaps even give a couple unique hand to hand styles as well, that way we don't all have the same appearance for Kung fu, even if the end resuls are the same.
I would suggest that since the RA5 is the current max, I would like to still be able to up my skills as a captain and to be able to up my ship skills OR create more rank levels. I feel that for me, I have nothing more to shoot for; no more goals; nothing to strive for. My character is capped and I cannot add to his abilities. I like this game a lot! However, what is the purpose of playing if I cannot up skills to be a better captain and have a better ship? I feel that it is not right when others that just started can gain experience/skills and I cannot just because I played longer. I feel that this is penalizing me for being a supporter since the gamed opened as well and having a life subscription.
I don't know about a penalization but I do think there should be NO SKILL CAP. However, I think after we run into the 'hard cap' of skills set by the final level 50, what they should do is make it incrementally MUCH harder to learn each skill point. That way, theoretically we could max lets say all beam typse if we wanted to, but we'd really have to work for it. It'd be nice, that way if we wanted to outfit our ship for different purposes we had the ability to do so. I think most people would agree with this.
Also, and this is totally unrelated, I'd like to see it possible to take up a 'secondary profession' if you will. Look at O'Brien, a kind of cross tactical/engineering kind of guy. Take a look at Kirk, who is some wierd amalgam of Engineering and Tactical Officer (admittedly the kung fu was very cheesy for his day, but all tv shows had cheesy kung fu back then). What I mean by this, is that it would be nice if we could pick up a handful of skills (on the ground) outside of our main profession. I do think this should be limited, but I see it as an interesting part of character development. That being said, with the skillpoints as they are I don't think something like this should be released till they implement a 'diminishing returns of xp' idea like I've laid out beforehand. I do think most players would love this as an option though.
I have played many online games and all have started without shared bank slots but eventually went that route. Why not just do this now because it does seem like most people do want this.
PVP is a favorite to alot of people why not add some way to keep track of wins and losses and add high end gear only available through pvp.
Also achievements you can actually get through pvp, awards for number of kill, victories, and even losses. When I say awards I mean like an order of the Bat'leth for a certain number of victories in a bat'leth only ground battle.
I am the de-facto leader of Sto'Vo'Kor, easily the largest and most successful PvP fleet currently in STO. My fleeties have brought up a whole host of concerns, rumors, requests, and so on. I'll lay it out for you in brief and try not to be too terribly condescending about it. (I'm told I always sound condescending no matter what I say, go figure.)
1.) Will we be seeing these constant overcorrections of balance every single patch, and if so just how ticked off do you want the entire PvP playerbase to be every week?
2.) Will you be correcting the recent "big patch" (1.1) so that tactical officers are no longer completely useless?
3.) Will you be correcting the recent "big patch" (1.1) so that engineers can be killed without 2-3 applications of SNB?
4.) Will you be correcting the recent "big patch" (1.1) so that SNB isn't the only skill that determines a win or loss?
5.) Will you be correcting the recent "big patch" (1.1) so that a quick match between two *decent* PvP teams can take less than 90 minutes, offer more of a reward than 20% of a "defeat signal contacts" mission which can be done 8-10 times in that same amount of time, and does not require EVERYONE to have the same 3 skills in order to even participate? (RSP, SNB, TSSS3)
6.) Will you be adding a REASON for PvP to matter any time soon? (controllable map locations that give a TEAM a sense of accomplishment for having fought to take them over, and fought to keep them once owned, or possibly a whole zone that resets when one side or the other wins that is somehow attached to an offical STO leaderboard that all can see and know that it was not photoshopped, or possibly one of the other suggestions already in this thread such as player bases that can be captured and locked for a period of time with some kind of interior that has unique items which cannot be made available to the market any other way and still have a significant cost of some sort outside of just capturing the base)
7.) Will you please hurry up and give us Romulans and Cardassians so the little kids who solo farm nebulas fed side for 6-10 hours a day will stop whining about Klingons being OP when they wander into a PvP match with no bridge crew and white gear and cry about not being able to solo 10 klingons?
8.) Will you be implimenting some kind of AI system that actually matters instead of just giving NPCs the ability to "cheat" and dump larger numbers of them on us to make missions "harder"? (This is getting pretty stupid, and reminds me and others of such games as 'digdug' and 'pacman' which, if that's the best you can come up with after 30 years of video game history, you just suck. All it does is make raids inaccessible to people with a graphics card more than 2 weeks old, and lag everyone who can stay connected to the server through all the bloom spam from such things as the borg resupply nodes which do nothing but sit there anyway, there is no dang reason those things should be causing enough lag to get people killed because you dropped their frame rates to 0.2/sec by spawning 3 nodes and 50 borg at once.)
9.) Will you be adding some CONTENT of ANY KIND to the Klingon faction before you nerf us due to fedwhine AGAIN? We already have 20% less hull and shields, fewer BO boxes, and less power to all subsystems than Feds, and we still win 75% of the time. We're not OP, most feds are just TRIBBLE.
//*
This is a problem you have tried to correct by going the exact wrong direction in every possible way. You made PvE way too easy, first of all. I find myself explaining to fed Captain 5s that they have to commission bridge officers and use their skills in order to make their ship do things. This is depressing and mind-numbingly stupid. What did you do to fix it? You made PvE even easier, buffed the TRIBBLE out of fed ships, and created even more PvE content. All of these measures just serve to allow worse and worse players to achieve higher and higher levels more and more easily. You're making it WORSE, not better. Give those darned feds something to cry about, a reason to learn how to play, a challenge to which they must adapt in order to overcome, and an easier method of obtaining teammates. Currently, feds can solo everything they want all the way to RA5 without even commissioning a single bridge officer, they are not going to get any better at the game if you keep wiping their poopy little behinds for them. Klingons have to team up from day one if they want to level, or survive longer than 3 shots in a PvP match, or accomplish any missions that aren't "slaughter tribbles" in less than two hours. Klingons are so incredibly hard to play, only adults who like a challenge really stick with them after about LtC4. Everyone else either quits the game out of frustration that they couldn't beat the klingons as a fed and can't beat the feds as a klingon, or goes back to their fed to farm nebulas for crafting junk because they're too lazy/dumb to be bothered to engage another individual on a social level of any kind, or do something that requires even a miniscule amount of thought/effort.
//*
10.) Will you be working on the exchange system to make it less of a burden to search through the bridge officers for a specific skill/trait/faction so we don't have to stand there for 3-4 hours at a time digging through the "aliens" trying to find the specific thing we're looking for in a mountain (100+ pages) of officers that are on sale by accounts that never log in anymore anyway? Furthermore, will you be adding a "sold by" feature to the exchange so that fleets can attempt to keep track of vault ninja activity so it can be dealt with expediently and without the combined efforts of a 24/7 crew to monitor vault traffic every half hour so as to see entries before they scroll off the list due to incorrect add/remove spam from stackables and things being properly organized on occasion?
11.) Will you be adding some "end game content"? (I have heard a new definition of what that means from every person who asks for it, not even going to bother listing all the stuff people are dreaming about. Suffice to say it's a big enough deal that we've lost over 100 members in the last two weeks to boredom because they have reached level 45 on all their toons, bought new toon slots to keep levelling until they realized it now takes 10x longer to level, and started looking towards other games like Jumpgate:Evolution since it's advertising itself to be releasing with everything people wanted from STO but didn't get)
12.) Will you be COMPLETELY REDESIGNING ground combat so it doesn't suck worse than a 1988 side-scrolling original nintendo game? This complaint is universal, the ground game sucks. Even the people who prefer ground game to space game say it sucks. You guys better address this immediately or this game is dead as doornails before season 2.
13.) Will you PLEASE give us a crafting system that isn't stupid? You have a ton of people here who have played SWG before the CU, DaoC, Vanguard, WoW, and so on. The crafting system you guys came up with isn't just a joke, it's a downright insult. Star Trek fans are not 9yr olds who played WoW with daddy's credit card. They are 25-60 years old, most of them own their own business or at least some stock in the company they work for, and are quite adept at managing resources. The crafting system you gave us is an insult to our intelligence, and to your reputation as an MMO development company. Please make this your second priority after completely redesigning ground combat. Given even a small stake in the market, a lot of people who are otherwise completely bored of 50-90 minute PvP matches that don't accomplish anything... would be something to keep their brains engaged. I'm losing members like it's the Exodus, I can't even imagine how freaked out your marketting department is right now. The average number of people in the PvP Queues went from 100 at T5 at any given moment and more during primetimes about 9 days ago, to now maybe 17 at primetimes and none between. If that's representative of a trend in general subscription cancellations, you guys are probably getting the screws put to you about now eh? I guess that explains why you opened up the suggestions list instead of asking us to focus on some inane superficial thing for the art department to work on.
I think that pretty much addresses the majority of the complaints/fears/rumors from our 500+ fleet members, as best I can recall, based on the popularity of the complaints and questions in no particular order here on this list. I left out some stuff I thought was stupid to ask about, like PvE content for Klingons (who cares).
Thank you for your time, please hurry on the more serious changes because we don't want this game to die, but we're watching it happen before our very eyes right now and it's depressing. I mean, come on, PAKLED? Sheesh.
Although i am a fed...i also have Klingon chars,and i had to learn how to play this game,some people do make some stupid questions,but it's not their intire fault,specially because we get a manual that is a JOKE!!
Anyway,i just wanted to Second this post,its totally full of Win!!
will we be seeing "ship to ground" abilitys like in star trek[kirk].i would love to see that.[mabye for taticial class only]
will we be seeing bridge attachments?[examples:take lift down to engeering,attaching a ready room to the bridge,take lift down to ten foward,take lift down to holodeck[where u can "create"a battle with kligion,romulans,species 8472,gorn etc.. for exp:) ].]
will we be seeing a way to "monitor" you'r ability to use certain scientiest at memory
will we seeing "challedge" opitions for players to attack one another in 1 v 1 combat on both ground and space
will we be seeing "challedge fleet"the ability to allow one fleet to challedge another
Can we see some method in the future to make lower tier ships feasible at the higher levels? I certainly don't expect to see a lot of Mirandas, but the Akira is a great ship line, and even a galaxy would be great for T5, as an example.
Maybe have some sort of expandable slot for these classes when you promote to the next rank, where you can insert some sort of (loot/memory alpha/episode reward) item that can expand its capabilities in some way, such as adding another ship console, or upgrading a ship console to allow a higher ranking officer to be more similar like the tier above it that you just went into. Or even allowing a (weapon slot/hull hp/etc) to be included.
I just wanted to say that I think that the game is great. I think what alot of people fail to realize is that the game just started up just a couple of months ago and no video game starts out having everything available. You start out with a base and then you grow and evolve from there. Kudos to you..now on to my questions.
1. will you be making the liberated borg character and the liberated borg BO available in the C-Store at a later time? Some people didn't know about the game until it was released and would like the oportunity to play these characters. I think that if you do put this in the C-Store then people will pay the money for points.
2. I would definately like to see more PVE content for Klingons.
3.I would also liike to see an overhaul to the PVP. It takes so long to get in a match.
4. More uniform options for both Klingon and Fed characters. This is the one complaint that i see the most.
5. I would like to see more playable characters for klingon..such as hirogen and Jem hadar. I would even like to see the ships for these races available too. not just having klingon ships..just like the various federation ships.
thank you for listening to the fans...except for the whole pakled thing...LOL
I was just wondering if you plan on releasing the Admiral's Uniform like the one that Admiral Quinn and the other admirals wear in the game. Also the The Wrath of Khan Admiral's Uniform is actually the captains uniform is there any plan to fix this.
In the future will we be able to modify ships in our tier or make our own designs.
This could make for some very creative ships exterior wise.
As well will we be able to upgrade to more weapons slots etc. at RA5 we are only able to go so far and even with some new skins for our ships, it is boring after
I was curious to know if we will ever be able to assign one of our Bridge Officers as XO? Every ship should have a First Officer. Also if we get to assign a First Officer that character should gain the ability to use any of the Space Skills they have...not be limited to a "ranked station", like all the other officers.
Also will our Bridge Officers ever be of help on non-combat away missions? It would be cool if our Science Officers, or Engineers had to handle certain tasks on some missions.
I feel that the Exchange is woefully underpowered. It is nice that you allow us to sort now, but A LOT more is needed in this neglected area of the game. Players should be able to search it using an word in the item...to include multiple words that are not in order as they are on the item. For example, I should be able to search "phaser cannon" and find EVERY item out there that has "phaser" and "cannon" in it. Likewise I should be also able to search "phas can" and find everything from "phase cannons" to "transphasic meat canisters".
The Cryptic team should look to the benchmark MMOs for examples of outstanding exchange interfaces. EvE Online and WoW are great examples of what happens when an Auction/Market/Exchange is implemented correctly.
I would also recommend that Cryptic release an API or provide hooks for add-ons. The community can do a LOT more with the Exchange , just as it has with WoW and any number of other MMO's.
Thanks for hearing me out, LLAP...
RaQin
STO Lifer
I have a lower level character that I have been trying to level up recently. While using said character, I noticed these;
1, Frequently bugged NPCs that sell items such as Ensugn Gol on Earth Starbase 1 and Tolliver on memory alpha. They do not complete transactions. A work around being to restart the game - maybe several times.
2, Descrepancies in crafting on memory alpha including items bought from Tolliver not being accepted for R&D - again, a restart sorted this.
Those two seem to be related to item databases - but I could be wrong.
3, I forget the name, but the (FED) first mission from DS(K?)7 where you have to fight the borg and decrypt modules and can fight klingon players is still heavily bugged with borg being trapped 'on' nodes being able to fire at players yet not being abled to be fired at and more! There is no quick or easy 'player workaround' for this.
4, Elite and advanced modes being more difficult as expected, but seemingly not dropping any better loot - or even dropping less loot.
5, The Klingon faction is little more than a joke! Content seems low and leveling very slow - especially if you try to level through PVP. It seems that the PVP queues are often dismally empty, wether through a bug or disinterest or time of day (massive disadvantage due to time of day / one server to non US players it seems !)
I have read on the forums about all these and other issues for lower level characters and had some direct observation of them with my own lower level character(s).
My questions relates to those specific problems and others that would seemingly throw a bad light on the game in the lower levels of play. Bearing in mind we now have a demo and refferal system to encourage more players to join the ranks, what is Cryptic doing to bring stability to the game and hold that stability - especially to give a good impressions to new(er) or lower level players and retain them as happy players?
With my previous question in mind, I have recommended the game to many friends and family up to now. I have recently had to eat 'humble pie' as it were when those I recommended the game to have seen just how instable and bug ridden the game appears to be and is reported to be online (including in these forums) - especially at the lower levels. I was even called an idiot for buying a life time subscription - the game is that lowly esteemed!
It is great that Cryptic is listening to players and apparently working hard to fix issues. The thing is, you guys need to at least make the lower level content stable before adding anything more fancy. This will save face for both yourself (Cryptic) and those players (such as me) that sing your praises and it will be better for gaining and retention of new players.
My next question relates to the previous one, though it affects all players!
Cryptic has had some really bad press due to seemingly bad PR / marketing issues such as the 'Advisory Council', '90 days free play' and such. I realise that these PR / marketing issues are not entirely down to Cryptic though.
Have Cryptic made steps to ensure that such 'cheap' PR / marketing issues that cause very much negative publicity, player descension and adversity to gaining new players do not occur again?
It may seem to some that this is a negative or petty post or even irrelevant. I do not look at it that way. Fixing these issues would go a long way to ensure the survivabilty of this game; a game that many of us have not only contributed to through subscritpion, feedback or direct bug reporting (including on the PTR), but have also come to hold in great esteem - bugs and all.
I am not an extremist 'Fanboi' or 'Hater', I am a customer and player though who would like to encourage more people to take up the game and I ask the questions with respect. I do realise that the standard answer to my questions runs out something like 'STO is a MMO and as such is a consatantly growing, evolving and changing .... yadda, yadda!'. I also realise that the standard answer can seem somewhat excusist or pathetic. So I hope not to get that standard answer and hope that Cryptic and my fellow players realise that the issues I raise are not simply trivial in relation to the continuing succes of the game.
Would an optional character rank "lock down" be possible ?
For example: A player could "lock down" a character at Captain rank, and while the character would continue to gain experience.... he would not be able to advance skills or advance in rank beyond the point where he was locked, until the lock is turned off.
This would give players the choice of always having a certain rank available for teaming or pvp encounters on the same scale with the same limitations as everyone else in that given range.
This is just a quick n dirty version for Cryptic to get the general idea across, and again this would just be an option people could choose or not according to their preference and needs.
What will the interior of the ships look like? Will we be able to customize our interior (like Star wars galaxies you can customize the interior so it looks different then other people's interior)
1. Big question will the Interior look more real or closer to the schematics you can get any where online or in a star trek book.?
I don't like the interiors now they are huge and if the interior is that big then the exterior should be way bigger then.
2. Will you instance the ship interior to death?
You are killing your game with so many instances.
1) Any chance of getting some "pure" ship options... Purhaps the Oberth is tier 2 and has an extra science station, but no tactical as an example.
2) When will we see the things that appear in the polls? Are new ships and factions just over the horizon or just things you guys are "kinda maybe sorta thinking about getting to at some point"?
3) I very much appreciate the Engineering Reports. Any chance we get them on a more regular basis?
Thanks, Cryptic, for all the hard work that goes into a universe we all love to play in. Well, everyone but the haters. 8-)
It seems to me, that if you want to encourage team play, there should be something like a Group Buff, or Buffs that different Career Types offer.
Do you plan to add a sustained group buff that affects everyone in your group?
For example,
Science Vessels give all vessels a bonus to Shield Regeneration
Engineering Vessels could give a boost in hull Resistance or repair rate.
Tactical could boot DPS of group.
These are just a few idea. I know we have abilities we can active and through on a chip, but they are way too temporary. There should be strengths in cooperative play.
Comments
I agree with this...
even CCP's EVE's graphics are richer in color and higher grade and less demanding on my CPU & GPU. STO is demanding on my system.
thats true... it sure do need some kind of fixing... In large battles like PVP or PVE the game can bog down my PC resources making it work harder than needed.
2) A lot of people seem to believe that ground combat is very lacking and quite a let down in terms of the game. Are there any plans for improvement in this area?
I think this would be great as long as such 'tweakings' were done via an interesting minigame. If its just 'run and click' that would be a little boring after a while. As long as the brain gets a little puzzle-solving to do that'd make it interesting, even if we all eventually get accustomed to how the puzzles work. Just my two cents. I do think this is a great idea though.
I agree with this notion. A non-aligned Freighter or Pirate faction (separate) would be really neat. They might not carry the same firepower as a Federation Cruiser or a Bird of Prey, but you could make some pretty interesting storylines around this. Ferengi Alliance -could- b esomething cool you could base this off of, but I kind of rather if it were a touch more generic than that. The Ferengi are interesting though, between them and the Orions they remind me a lot of another IP, namely Star Wars in the sense that those two combined are a lot like the Hutts. Nevertheless, One Freighter and one Pirate Group could make a great pair of rivals as well for a different feel to add to the game. Just an idea
I agree. I would really love to see a bit more diversity here. Also, while I know that Tactical officers are the specialists of weapons use in ground combat, it would be nice if non-tactical officers had access to develop their skills in a specific group of weapon types. I'm honestly not sure how that would work, but lets take Spock for instance. Despite being a Science officer he was certainly no slouch in combat. (Not that Science Officers are now). I'm just thinking it would be neat if all characters had a means to specialize in a particular ground style.
Additionally, it really would be nice to see some human style hand to hand weapons (Saber, Katana, Staff, Tomahawk) or even give Klingons more of the diversity they should have (just like the npc's). I'd really love to see 'Targ Handler' as a skill available to Klingons, and Saur Handler For Gorn. Other interesting weapons are the HIrogen or Jem hadar weapons. Perhaps even give a couple unique hand to hand styles as well, that way we don't all have the same appearance for Kung fu, even if the end resuls are the same.
I don't know about a penalization but I do think there should be NO SKILL CAP. However, I think after we run into the 'hard cap' of skills set by the final level 50, what they should do is make it incrementally MUCH harder to learn each skill point. That way, theoretically we could max lets say all beam typse if we wanted to, but we'd really have to work for it. It'd be nice, that way if we wanted to outfit our ship for different purposes we had the ability to do so. I think most people would agree with this.
Also, and this is totally unrelated, I'd like to see it possible to take up a 'secondary profession' if you will. Look at O'Brien, a kind of cross tactical/engineering kind of guy. Take a look at Kirk, who is some wierd amalgam of Engineering and Tactical Officer (admittedly the kung fu was very cheesy for his day, but all tv shows had cheesy kung fu back then). What I mean by this, is that it would be nice if we could pick up a handful of skills (on the ground) outside of our main profession. I do think this should be limited, but I see it as an interesting part of character development. That being said, with the skillpoints as they are I don't think something like this should be released till they implement a 'diminishing returns of xp' idea like I've laid out beforehand. I do think most players would love this as an option though.
PVP is a favorite to alot of people why not add some way to keep track of wins and losses and add high end gear only available through pvp.
Also achievements you can actually get through pvp, awards for number of kill, victories, and even losses. When I say awards I mean like an order of the Bat'leth for a certain number of victories in a bat'leth only ground battle.
just some thoughts I had
Open up the galaxy, no more sector limits but free and unlimited exploration would be better than this.
Although i am a fed...i also have Klingon chars,and i had to learn how to play this game,some people do make some stupid questions,but it's not their intire fault,specially because we get a manual that is a JOKE!!
Anyway,i just wanted to Second this post,its totally full of Win!!
will we be seeing bridge attachments?[examples:take lift down to engeering,attaching a ready room to the bridge,take lift down to ten foward,take lift down to holodeck[where u can "create"a battle with kligion,romulans,species 8472,gorn etc.. for exp:) ].]
will we be seeing a way to "monitor" you'r ability to use certain scientiest at memory
will we seeing "challedge" opitions for players to attack one another in 1 v 1 combat on both ground and space
will we be seeing "challedge fleet"the ability to allow one fleet to challedge another
Maybe have some sort of expandable slot for these classes when you promote to the next rank, where you can insert some sort of (loot/memory alpha/episode reward) item that can expand its capabilities in some way, such as adding another ship console, or upgrading a ship console to allow a higher ranking officer to be more similar like the tier above it that you just went into. Or even allowing a (weapon slot/hull hp/etc) to be included.
I just wanted to say that I think that the game is great. I think what alot of people fail to realize is that the game just started up just a couple of months ago and no video game starts out having everything available. You start out with a base and then you grow and evolve from there. Kudos to you..now on to my questions.
1. will you be making the liberated borg character and the liberated borg BO available in the C-Store at a later time? Some people didn't know about the game until it was released and would like the oportunity to play these characters. I think that if you do put this in the C-Store then people will pay the money for points.
2. I would definately like to see more PVE content for Klingons.
3.I would also liike to see an overhaul to the PVP. It takes so long to get in a match.
4. More uniform options for both Klingon and Fed characters. This is the one complaint that i see the most.
5. I would like to see more playable characters for klingon..such as hirogen and Jem hadar. I would even like to see the ships for these races available too. not just having klingon ships..just like the various federation ships.
thank you for listening to the fans...except for the whole pakled thing...LOL
This could make for some very creative ships exterior wise.
As well will we be able to upgrade to more weapons slots etc. at RA5 we are only able to go so far and even with some new skins for our ships, it is boring after
Also will our Bridge Officers ever be of help on non-combat away missions? It would be cool if our Science Officers, or Engineers had to handle certain tasks on some missions.
I feel that the Exchange is woefully underpowered. It is nice that you allow us to sort now, but A LOT more is needed in this neglected area of the game. Players should be able to search it using an word in the item...to include multiple words that are not in order as they are on the item. For example, I should be able to search "phaser cannon" and find EVERY item out there that has "phaser" and "cannon" in it. Likewise I should be also able to search "phas can" and find everything from "phase cannons" to "transphasic meat canisters".
The Cryptic team should look to the benchmark MMOs for examples of outstanding exchange interfaces. EvE Online and WoW are great examples of what happens when an Auction/Market/Exchange is implemented correctly.
I would also recommend that Cryptic release an API or provide hooks for add-ons. The community can do a LOT more with the Exchange , just as it has with WoW and any number of other MMO's.
Thanks for hearing me out, LLAP...
RaQin
STO Lifer
1, Frequently bugged NPCs that sell items such as Ensugn Gol on Earth Starbase 1 and Tolliver on memory alpha. They do not complete transactions. A work around being to restart the game - maybe several times.
2, Descrepancies in crafting on memory alpha including items bought from Tolliver not being accepted for R&D - again, a restart sorted this.
Those two seem to be related to item databases - but I could be wrong.
3, I forget the name, but the (FED) first mission from DS(K?)7 where you have to fight the borg and decrypt modules and can fight klingon players is still heavily bugged with borg being trapped 'on' nodes being able to fire at players yet not being abled to be fired at and more! There is no quick or easy 'player workaround' for this.
4, Elite and advanced modes being more difficult as expected, but seemingly not dropping any better loot - or even dropping less loot.
5, The Klingon faction is little more than a joke! Content seems low and leveling very slow - especially if you try to level through PVP. It seems that the PVP queues are often dismally empty, wether through a bug or disinterest or time of day (massive disadvantage due to time of day / one server to non US players it seems !)
I have read on the forums about all these and other issues for lower level characters and had some direct observation of them with my own lower level character(s).
My questions relates to those specific problems and others that would seemingly throw a bad light on the game in the lower levels of play.
Bearing in mind we now have a demo and refferal system to encourage more players to join the ranks, what is Cryptic doing to bring stability to the game and hold that stability - especially to give a good impressions to new(er) or lower level players and retain them as happy players?
With my previous question in mind, I have recommended the game to many friends and family up to now. I have recently had to eat 'humble pie' as it were when those I recommended the game to have seen just how instable and bug ridden the game appears to be and is reported to be online (including in these forums) - especially at the lower levels. I was even called an idiot for buying a life time subscription - the game is that lowly esteemed!
It is great that Cryptic is listening to players and apparently working hard to fix issues. The thing is, you guys need to at least make the lower level content stable before adding anything more fancy. This will save face for both yourself (Cryptic) and those players (such as me) that sing your praises and it will be better for gaining and retention of new players.
My next question relates to the previous one, though it affects all players!
Cryptic has had some really bad press due to seemingly bad PR / marketing issues such as the 'Advisory Council', '90 days free play' and such. I realise that these PR / marketing issues are not entirely down to Cryptic though.
Have Cryptic made steps to ensure that such 'cheap' PR / marketing issues that cause very much negative publicity, player descension and adversity to gaining new players do not occur again?
It may seem to some that this is a negative or petty post or even irrelevant. I do not look at it that way. Fixing these issues would go a long way to ensure the survivabilty of this game; a game that many of us have not only contributed to through subscritpion, feedback or direct bug reporting (including on the PTR), but have also come to hold in great esteem - bugs and all.
I am not an extremist 'Fanboi' or 'Hater', I am a customer and player though who would like to encourage more people to take up the game and I ask the questions with respect. I do realise that the standard answer to my questions runs out something like 'STO is a MMO and as such is a consatantly growing, evolving and changing .... yadda, yadda!'. I also realise that the standard answer can seem somewhat excusist or pathetic. So I hope not to get that standard answer and hope that Cryptic and my fellow players realise that the issues I raise are not simply trivial in relation to the continuing succes of the game.
For example: A player could "lock down" a character at Captain rank, and while the character would continue to gain experience.... he would not be able to advance skills or advance in rank beyond the point where he was locked, until the lock is turned off.
This would give players the choice of always having a certain rank available for teaming or pvp encounters on the same scale with the same limitations as everyone else in that given range.
This is just a quick n dirty version for Cryptic to get the general idea across, and again this would just be an option people could choose or not according to their preference and needs.
1. Big question will the Interior look more real or closer to the schematics you can get any where online or in a star trek book.?
I don't like the interiors now they are huge and if the interior is that big then the exterior should be way bigger then.
2. Will you instance the ship interior to death?
You are killing your game with so many instances.
1) Any chance of getting some "pure" ship options... Purhaps the Oberth is tier 2 and has an extra science station, but no tactical as an example.
2) When will we see the things that appear in the polls? Are new ships and factions just over the horizon or just things you guys are "kinda maybe sorta thinking about getting to at some point"?
3) I very much appreciate the Engineering Reports. Any chance we get them on a more regular basis?
Thanks, Cryptic, for all the hard work that goes into a universe we all love to play in. Well, everyone but the haters. 8-)
Do you plan to add a sustained group buff that affects everyone in your group?
For example,
Science Vessels give all vessels a bonus to Shield Regeneration
Engineering Vessels could give a boost in hull Resistance or repair rate.
Tactical could boot DPS of group.
These are just a few idea. I know we have abilities we can active and through on a chip, but they are way too temporary. There should be strengths in cooperative play.
Thanks
-Pilotable Shuttlecraft
-Tricroders that actually scan and give you detailed info, not a glorified compass
-same for ships sensors
-Classic TOS hand phasers (and TWOK/TSFS etc movie weapons)
-The ability to choose where you beam down to
-Being able to negotiate your way out of a battle instead of ALWAYS attacking?
-life forms on planets! (some background, some violent)
-missions that take place on your ship!
-more new races to encounter
-Some old races to encounter (Tholians anyone?)
I'm closing this thread down now, to avoid confusion. Expect the next Ask Cryptic coming soon!