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Well, as official as anything can be coming from me... 
I'd really like to make sure that we have access to (in addition to all of the prefabs currently ingame) some basic building materials. Different size walls, windows, beams, lights, bricks... in different species "flavors" maybe?
This way we can build for whatever and add a ton of variety without reusing the same old stale buildings that we've seen since launch.
Also, just a quick idea that could use some fleshing out, but it's been mentioned that creating the thousands of systems necessary to build a true open exploration experience would be very time consuming... and it would be, for a Dev Team. But if we, in our thousands, were to have the ability to create new systems and place them in an exploration sector.... the possibilities are literally endless.
Picture exploration space as a huge, mostly empty map, but each star visible represents an actual hand-designed, hand placed star system... and I'm talking huge, something that would take an hour of real time, or more, to fly across in sector space. But every star you see can be explored...
It could work like this:
Say the huge exploration map is made up of a grid, where a player could "buy" a grid square to design. In that grid square are smaller squares, each of which could contain a star - which represents a system that can be explored. ("Buy" could represent ingame currency, of C Store credits, or Honor points, whatever - the point is, it would cost the player something to work on it, limiting the number of claimed, but unused/undesigned squares) - Anyway, as the Foundry designer finishes a system, he publishes it and it becomes visible in sector space. A player could design his grid to include a small war between two systems in his "grid", or resource/trading coalitions among the aliens that he created to live there...
Again, the possibilities are endless. So is it a big request, yep... but using a lot of what already exists, it could solve one of the largest problems plaguing this game. I love STO, and Cryptic for making it... this could help me help them make the greatest game ever.
I'd really like to make sure that we have access to (in addition to all of the prefabs currently ingame) some basic building materials. Different size walls, windows, beams, lights, bricks... in different species "flavors" maybe?
This way we can build for whatever and add a ton of variety without reusing the same old stale buildings that we've seen since launch.
Also, just a quick idea that could use some fleshing out, but it's been mentioned that creating the thousands of systems necessary to build a true open exploration experience would be very time consuming... and it would be, for a Dev Team. But if we, in our thousands, were to have the ability to create new systems and place them in an exploration sector.... the possibilities are literally endless.
Picture exploration space as a huge, mostly empty map, but each star visible represents an actual hand-designed, hand placed star system... and I'm talking huge, something that would take an hour of real time, or more, to fly across in sector space. But every star you see can be explored...
It could work like this:
Say the huge exploration map is made up of a grid, where a player could "buy" a grid square to design. In that grid square are smaller squares, each of which could contain a star - which represents a system that can be explored. ("Buy" could represent ingame currency, of C Store credits, or Honor points, whatever - the point is, it would cost the player something to work on it, limiting the number of claimed, but unused/undesigned squares) - Anyway, as the Foundry designer finishes a system, he publishes it and it becomes visible in sector space. A player could design his grid to include a small war between two systems in his "grid", or resource/trading coalitions among the aliens that he created to live there...
Again, the possibilities are endless. So is it a big request, yep... but using a lot of what already exists, it could solve one of the largest problems plaguing this game. I love STO, and Cryptic for making it... this could help me help them make the greatest game ever.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Suppose players could buy grids in chunks, so you could personally design and place a small corner of space... not just one grid of say 6 systems, maybe you could lay claim to specific grid squares in some kind of overhead map... so they'd need to be numbered and a plot map would need to be created.
Or the worst game ever. I don't think that user generated exploration maps are necessarily the way to go. That's a lot of content and, frankly, I prefer Genesis to user generated content in that respect.
I think that as foundry develops we will ultimately be able to craft systems and locations from scratch, but I'm okay with waiting. I'd like to get some experience with the program and the engine before I start building things.
Also, please visit this thread for some info about environment building
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=187843
And this one about someone else's idea for exploration content
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=187866
Maybe... but I don't see how Genesis created empty worlds with cookie cutter mobs could possibly be better than hand created content. I think a lot of us are selling ourselves short. As evidence, look at all of the user created fanfic, user created mods, images, models... for any genre really. Sure, there's some average, or downright bad stuff, but pretty much any of it beats a randomly generated cookie-cutter experience.
Really, compare Genesis content to user created FarCry2 maps. Of course there are some terrible maps, but the *worst* of them easily beat a randomly generated one as far as playability goes, and they're a heck of a lot more interesting, even if you just want to walk around and explore the map. Genesis *can't* do that for us.
And multiply that by thousands... of course every world or system wouldn't be great, but just the possibility of seeing something different excites me... not to mention the idea that a person could create entire protagonist and antagonist races, with planets, trade routes, rivalries, bases... As opposed to the same 100m x 100m world with a path, 5 clickies and some generic plants and buildings, and let's not forget the flowing-lava-rocks.
Anyway, I think ultimately too many of us are far too limiting in what we think the devs, or ourselves can do, or would do, given the chance.