So I've resubscribed because I'm excited about the diplomatic core missions (and I'm still standing by my offer to buy a lifetime if someone can point me to announcements of what exactly UGC will be).
I'm a hardcore Trek fan, but a pretty casual gamer, and have only logged few hours in STO so far. Coming back to the game after quite a few months, I still find myself confused about the finer points of the game. For example, the finer points of space and ground combat strategy, or the ins and outs of choosing weapons, ship upgrades etc.
Now, I know there's various forum threads and wiki artilcles on this stuff, but what I feel like I need is a few more tutorial missions. Something to build up *my* skills, not just my character's. An emersive learning experience; something that doesn't break the fourth wall too much.
Of course, for accomplished players and people who just want to jump in, this would be tedious. So how about giving players a big choice to make after the basic tutorial:
Admiral Quinn could give you the choice of having your own command (as still currently happens, I presume), or serving under one of the federation's finest NPC captains for little bit (perhaps as head of some department, or first officer), to learn from the best. If you choose to just take your own command straight away, it would heighten the sense of your character being a talented Kirk-esque go getter. If you choose to serve under an NPC for a bit more, it would give you an opportunity to have your hand held just a little bit longer, plus, it would give you a little bit more of the experience of being a subordinate, which has always been an important element in Trek storylines. After a couple of missions like this, your NPC captain would insist you command your own ship... because you're just so damn talented.
Even for those who choose to just jump straight into command, being given a *choice* implies that there is something special about your character. It would be a defining moment.
Just an idea.
What do peeps think? If you think something like this might be useful, what kinds of scenarios do you think would make for good learning experiences?
So I've resubscribed because I'm excited about the diplomatic core missions (and I'm still standing by my offer to buy a lifetime if someone can point me to announcements of what exactly UGC will be).
You can get a feel for some of this concept on the Tribble Test Server. See DEV Post above for how to get on it.
On Tribble (on on Holodeck probably next week), there's an ambassador at Starbase One that intrduces you to the Federation Diplomatic Corps, or FDC. You can build up diplomatic points by doing non-combat missions (found on Vulcan, Memory Alpha, Bajor, Starbase Sierra, etc.). Doing these missions will earn you Diplomatic Points. You should be able to start these as soon as you're finished with the tutorial.
When you have enough points, the ambassador wil ask you to perform a First Contact mission (they're currently available on Tribble the first time you talk to him, but on Holodeck you'll have to earn some FDC points first), where you'll go to a star cluster and perform First Contact with a randomly generated race, who will tell you about their culture and ask you questions about Starfleet.
(and I'm still standing by my offer to buy a lifetime if someone can point me to announcements of what exactly UGC will be).
From an interview I transcribed (Subspace Radio with Zinc back in June).
(laughter) My question is about user-generated content. This is a great step in my opinion. I'm more PvP orientated but with the addition uf UGC, can expect to see User-Generated PvP Maps?
Wow! That's a really good idea. To be totally honest, we're in the infantile stages. We've got a lot of really cool tech, a lot of really cool things happening regarding how exactly we're going to plug that into Star Trek.
We have a couple of different paths that we're starting to play with.
To be honest, I haven't thought about PvP in terms of UGC but I feel kind of idiotic to not see it that way [Blizzard's] Starcraft and other games use UGC tools for PvP as huge aspect of that.
So, definitely. I'll definitely take that to the next meeting that we go to. Expect to hear A LOT more about the UGC in detail during the August time-frame. We're going to start making a push to get a lot more details out but PvP maps? That's actually a really cool idea!
I've played Starcraft, Warcraft 3 and that's a reason they've been around so long. So, Thank you for bringing UGC to Star Trek Online.
That's one of the great things about Star Trek is that the fans want to write and add to the universe and explore the threads that were left untied and to explore the soft canon. I think the ability to do that within the Star Trek Universe is such an opportunity, aside from just the general things that it brings just about any game. Star Trek is really special in terms of allowing the fans to write and create and explore and even [jokingly] argue points obviously.
Comments
You can get a feel for some of this concept on the Tribble Test Server. See DEV Post above for how to get on it.
Cool. Will do. Thanks.
How so?
Been on Tribble, have no idea what you're talking about.
When you have enough points, the ambassador wil ask you to perform a First Contact mission (they're currently available on Tribble the first time you talk to him, but on Holodeck you'll have to earn some FDC points first), where you'll go to a star cluster and perform First Contact with a randomly generated race, who will tell you about their culture and ask you questions about Starfleet.
Hope that helps
From an interview I transcribed (Subspace Radio with Zinc back in June).
Actually, if there's UGC, then we can just make our own tutorials, I suppose.