I am a lifer, and have followed this game since the beginning. This thread is not a hate thread and I know there are many similar ones. Regardless numbers are beginning to dwindle or at least many people who love the games faith is. Once you reach RA5, all there is to do is fleet actions which seem to be mainly overlooked by cryptic atm, PvP, that has no meaning to it; no neutral zone, no leaderboards, no duelling and STF's which varey in difficulty and fun value but don't offer much in terms of reward when compared to the dailies which is the last thing you can do. Is there crafting? simply no, this is a reskin and after the time that cryptic has had to improve it the changes they made are kind of rediculous. I simply dont understand why you cnat just put in a system where we can bolster what we have with various traits!
Anyways the reason I am voicing my disent is that many of my fellow fleet memebers have left the game because it has become stale and only the ones leading divisions etc seem to remain. So I am sort of making a desperate plee to you Cryptic as a player who has had faith with you as developers for a long peroid now.
PLEASE get Season 2 right! PLEASE!
If this doesnt hit the ball out the park then i think many people will be all but done. I just want some reasurance that your idea of 'Non-Combat' isnt add in 5 missions where u talk to people by pressing'F; until u reach the end of the arc. Please tell me that instead when you press 'F' you have to actually do something, like this for example,
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=124944 It would just break up the whole pointlessness of non-combat immensly. The other KEY aspect is interior's, if there is nothing to do in interior's then it is a waste of time. You need to be able to invite people to come and play poker, You need to have random problem sovlving puzzles that involve random Crew on your ship. You need to be able to craft and heal and various other things in your ship. You need to be able to spend a large portion of MEANINGFUL time in your ship, just like the show. Otherwise what is the point? How will you keep players interested in the game if all it is, is a bunch of corridors that u can move around but after less than an hour of tinkering is pointless and wont be revisited.
I realise I have written alot and made spelling errors but I think this is a very serious issue and if you dont nail it Cryptic it is going to cost this game big time.
Any reassurance that Non-combat and interior's is going to be meaningful would be really helpful and apprieciated right now.
Thank you,
Alec:
Comments
Either way, I'm sticking around for awhile (12month doesn't expire until April of 2011, I'll have to see after that)
Funny, I genuinely care about this game and don't want to lose anymore people over things that can still be made right. Tell me what about the game still interests you?
Betting the farm on an update is not a good idea.
Sure it's a big update, but it's just an update.
Although I would love to see many of the changes you suggest, I predict that you are simply asking too much of a small company that can't develop this type of content in a short period of time.
I will be too but I fear most of my friends on hear wont and I've seen Cryptics Idea of adding new content before and 50% its... more press 'F' after killing X Romulans. The other half of the time its good and I'm just praying that they get it right cos I really really want to love this game.
i understand money constraints but when the same effort can be put into better developmental paths it just frustrates me.
Well thats my point they need to make it more than that otherwise why bother at all.
Hey now, let's not forget Klingon Episodes here
EDIT: And the skillpoint cap increase, opening up atleast one new sector with new episodes etc.
Which will be -Fly in, [Insert text], Fight space battle, fight ground battle for a long time, Press 'F', Fight one more time in space. Which is what well over 75% of the federation episodes are. :S Even if they made pressing 'F' more interesting it would help.
So everything in Season 2 wont be there when Season 2 0.0 goes live.
Have to agree here.
What about the federation's diplomacy system?
We have a diplomacy system?
*EDIT*: In fact the only thing they have announced that has filled me with some hope is the weekly episodes, which if they maintain could be great. Provided it isnt cut and paste each week.
From dstahl's latest engineering report here
A large portion is cosmetic, which is good at first. Nothing about that says that interiors will have a point and it says nothing about Non-combat. Its just gonna be more cut and paste missions i just have a gut feeling.
I guess the 'F' button doesn't fire any weopons
If you read the engineering reports there's a lot about non combat. My favorite missions he mentioned were first contact and anthropology.
Anthropology works by infiltrating a pre-warp civilization and learning as much as you can about them without blowing your cover. Blow your cover you fail, don't blow it and you get a reward based on how much you learned.
The reward will be given as diplomatic points in which you spend in a whole new skill tree full of diplomatic skills.
It's intuition, discovery, puzzle breaking, problem solving, diplomacy, investigating and researching + more.
If you can do all this by just pressing the F button(Or whatever it's assigned to -_-) then it doesnt matter how well you coat it, it will stil be an easy, quick and boring experience that is utterly pointless. If they add in missions that just DONT involve fighting then that isnt enough. It needs to be as tough and as engaging otherwise it just wont work.
Well I doubt a mission that you can outright fail as a result of saying the wrong thing and revealing that your aliens will just be "Press F to say the right thing, pull out phaser rifle to fail". Not to mention there's a room on your ship, on the observation deck I believe, that's a reception room for first contact meetings and enemy parlay.
Not to mention mini games to remove death penalties, poker, dabbo, and promises that many more minigames will be involved. See here for examples of what that might entail.
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=124944
The devs really like that thread too, and it has pictures. CLICK IT!
As much as I hate to say it... this is an MMO, and that's essentially what is to be expected with an MMO. I'm not saying the mold is unbreakable, but you can't really expect the same experience as a single player game in this regard.
And yes, as mentioned in the last post, the potential minigames that the devs are obviously very fond of are promising.
But also, no I would not expect every single mission to make me go "Oh my god, that is such a nuanced and interesting idea. That totally changes the way I look at the world."
I posted that thread in my original post lol
The only minigame mentioned by the dev's is dabo. If they bought in the others that would be great but they havnt stated it. The rest does sound promising, iim just preying they pull it off right.
EDIT: I realise it is an mmo and there are alot of copy and paste missions. but just by replacing the F button with those mini games u add an extra noncombat element that would be great. I just hope they are thinking of including it cos all they have said so far is they like it.
Judging by their mutual excitement upon discovering these ideas, I'm sure we'll be seeing some minigames very similar in the not too distant future.
Well the minigames to remove death penalty are currently confirmed. Again I'm not expecting every diplomacy system to blow my mind or be super difficult, like making me read through 50 pages of ancient script to find out who commited murder. I do expect cool things though like "When you max out intimidate skill, you gain the 'fire a warning shot' power", and that using that power at a wrong time would lead to failure.
Words of wisdom. I know better than to fully expect all these features to even make it in the 2.0 patch. That's just how it works unfortunately... but they will come in time, along with many more features in the future
I may have to remove it from the pad lol.
I understand it probably wont be ground breaking its just got to be engaging and reach all areas throughout the game. If they can achieve that it'll work out well. Also any word on a neutral zone (Persistant PvP)?
Look at the patch right now, it is taking what a month to put in to the system, but all of these together have made it better, enough for me to come back.
Oh and more content because i'm getting bored.
I'm not sure about that but some dev mentioned that once fleet starbases are in they want to do fleet vs fleet battles in/around those starbases.