test content
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc

Massive Update Required

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I have only been playing Star Trek online for about three months and while it is very good there are also an extreme amount of flaws. This game has so much potential but is enormously lacking in so many areas. I think its a case of so much to do and not enough time to do it. I think I read somewhere that Cryptic claimed they would be adding the ability to walk around your starship but they did not see this as an overall necessity of the game. How naive is that? I would say the vast majority of gamers would have wanted this from the get go! Now that they have added this feature it is still highly inadequate. My proposals for game improvement are detailed below:-

Ship Collisions
The thing about flying your ship around a system is that it does not matter if you hit another ship or an asteroid, it does zero damage, I find this to be an extreme flaw in the game. Piloting a ship is a lot of fun, why take that away from us? You could make it that you lose xp points for crashing into things and its noted that some people might get annoyed with others deliberately crashing into them damaging their ship then guess what? The xp taken off will double if it happens within a short period of time and should anyone destroy an "Ally" ship in this way then they will be strip of all rank and have to start from the bottom. Or perhaps they may be seen as a hostile target. See the section on PVP.

Shields & Weapons
A fundamental part of Star Trek is raising your shields this too has been ripped from us and yes it is another extreme flaw of the game. Perhaps if our ships had a power level that slowly decreased if shields were left on that would cause players to switch them off when not in combat. Also one of your bridge crew could inform you if an enemy or other vessel was raising their shields and a time period can be used for charging weapons before gaining the ability to fire. This would give players the time they needed to raise their shields. Similarly you can adapt this action for missions as raising ones shields would be seen as an aggressive move.

Interaction
I was very disappointed with the overall interaction of devices and other clever little things they could have been adapted while aboard a space station. While I am a big fan of emotes I do think it would have been better to simply double click a chair and your character would have taken a seat or gone to bed. Other things like double clicking on bar staff would have provided you with a list of drinks with which you get get drunk on. (But not Romulan Ale as that is illegal) Buy yourself a meal and sitting down at a table would have been good. Yes its all small things like emotes but it adds content to the game and draws people into the Star Trek universe.

Transporter Rooms
Walking around your own ship is great! Its your ship and you want to see it from time to time. It would be great to use the transporter room to beam down to planets and beam up from them before moving off. I would also like to see this when docking with a space station and when beaming back to the ship. On reaching the bridge you would simply double click the captains chair, your character would sit down and bang your in usual tactical view. Again this is all about creating an atmosphere drawing players into the game. While I do recognise that for some players this might be tedious, with the journey from the bridge to the transporter room, a simple on/off switch maybe would suffice?

Docking
The whole thing on docking when you suddenly just magically appear on the station is just non-atmospheric. Again we are looking for an experience not a disjoined game. It would be nice to see your ship actually docking with the space station and perhaps a bit of piloting skill to do so. Space Stations only use their tractor beams when the ships are in trouble. And it would also be nice to pilot your ship out of dock. In some instances especially dry dock this would require skill so you did not collide with anything. The reason for dry dock (inside the station itself) is to repair damage to your ship. Again on/off switches for these features can be adopted.

Interior Ship Designs
Why do all ship interiors look the same? And why are they all the same size? And why are all the rooms in the same place? And why do my crew not where the same uniform? Why no interaction? Why Why Why? It would be nice when you got a new ship to go and explore it but not if it looks exactly the same as the old one? I do not know what Cryptic was thinking here? Its about atmosphere, I know I keep repeating myself but I somehow feel I must in order to put my point across. Smaller ships will be smaller and bigger ships will be? Yes you guessed right, BIGGER! The current layout is rubbish. I would like to walk anywhere on my ship and it must have all the rooms necessary for a ship to function such toilets, showers, galley, mess halls, Perhaps some use of imagination would be nice. These maps could also be used for missions, perhaps you have been boarded and you need to fight the enemy. It would also be nice if you had some interior design options again they would be linked to your ship type.

Combat and PvsP
This is another extremely important part of the Star Trek universe the ability to lose your ship. This whole notion of respawning is just stupid. You can play a mission and it actually does not matter if you die because you can just keep going until you win! erm... two words "Game" and "Play" spring to mind. While it might devastating to lose a powerful top grade ship that took you ages to customize it is still a necessity of game play that you could lose it. So how do you save the ship? You send a distress call to any U.S.S starships in the area hoping that they come to your aid.

How does this work? You hit a button on your keyboard that sends the distress signal and then all energy onboard your ship is diverted to your shields giving you maximum full shields for a total of say 3 minutes. During that time your ship is dead in the water so to speak. You can do nothing but hope an pray that a player or players are coming to your aid. After the three minutes are up your shields start to fall away as normal and all you can do is move the energy from one shield facing to the other but they do not recharge. If a player or players have come to your rescue and defeated the enemy then one of them can transfer power to your ship giving you control of it again. If no-one turns up then its bye bye ship and you need to purchase another ship or use one of your older models. If it turns out that you have no ships to use then you lose one rank to get another ship. For example a Lt Commander would be reduced to Lieutenant. This would make a great game play environment and would allow player interaction to be more gratifying. Similarly players answering distress calls from other players would receive a reward from starfleet as well as xp.

Example of combat
The USS Goodboy has just been attacked by an enemy player (who may be klingon or a pirate) they are about to be destroyed so they enter their distress call mode, they now have three minutes hoping other players of their faction will come to rescue them, in this case the federation. The enemy can leave or hope that no one turns up so he can completely destroy the USS Goodboy gaining more xp. But luckily three federation ships turn up and take out the enemy ship saving the USS Goodboy. But similary now the enemy player has decided to enter into distress call mode hoping some of his faction will turn up to save him. The federation ships can decide to warp out or fight it out.

It is easy to see that given the number of players online that this can continue to get out of hand and really put the server under a lot of strain. So there obviously needs to be a cap on how many ships can enter the distress call area.

It is also worth noting that the federation in this senario has the advantage. Mainly because as they disable the enemy and have now repaired the USS Goodboy which is now ready for action. They have four Federation ships in the combat area and lets asume that four ships is the maximum. That then means that only three more enemy players can jump in to save the disabled enemy ship, it is now a four vs three standoff.

Whithout going on and on, you can see that this type of combat with a little tweaking can become workable and given that the aggressor can put him or herself at a disadvantage it clearly needs a lot of thought before picking on someone and destroying their ship completely.

It is true that more details regarding this type of combat needs to be worked out but its better than the stupid combat queues and the stupid respawn look at me I can't die! (Can I cook or can't I?)

Freedom of Play

The freedom of play aspect of this game is simply dull and boring. Am I in control of my ship or aren't I? The ability to switch off your ships safety protocols and target any ship you like would be great. But again their will be consequences, for example:-

Lets take the federation as an example the USS Baddog has just fired on the USS Goodboy shooting and destroying another federation ship would cause the USS baddog to become a Pirate with the captain no longer part of the federation. Thus a new faction is created. This can also be adopted for the Klingon side.

It would also be nice for any faction to defect to the other but alas not for pirates they can not be trusted.

Universe

The universe in Star Trek Online is tiny in comparison to that of eve online and eve online space environment is far superior to that of star trek. Even Eve's Player vs Player aspect is much better given that it is in the universe and not part of some PVP queue. Where Eve does fail is when you lose an extremely expensive ship that took an extremely long time to acquire. Thus my distress call feature as previously mentioned above can be adopted.

And where in Eve they use jump gates to get from one system to another in Star Trek Online they would simply engage warp drive. Space is HUGE except in Star Trek Online where its tiny.

Its time for Star Trek Online to make big changes to both their gameplay and environment content. Star Trek has a huge fan base but it will not take long for fans to become bored and despondent about the game unless radical changes are made.

Thaks for listening...
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    While i can understand your pursuit for perfection please consider the following.....

    -The game isn't even a year out of the box...there will be issues to fix.

    -There cannot possibly be as much absolute detail your looking for due to the afore mentioned mainly, but also keep in mind enstating most of what your talking about would take away from the percieved fun factor and would require a very long time for the Dev team to create. it's not that they haven't thought of this type of stuff before. just that most or the community doesn't want that type of in depth monatonous game play.

    -Some of what you present is a good idea, still it seems what your looking for is a more realistic fashion to the game itself........it's a game, it wasn't meant to be a NASA Flight Trainer.

    In short I'm not sure what to tell ya as this obviously isn't meeting your expectation. i can say with time this game will fill out and possibly present some of the options you mention....just not at the moment.

    What can i say? Its a new game....wait it out and see what happens. I'm sure even with this staunch list of high standard even you will find yourself surprised at what Cryptic comes up with.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    Thank you for your reply I found your comments fascinating. Oh where to start!

    1. You Said:-"The game isn't even a year out of the box...there will be issues to fix."

    Well "issues" I would consider that to be somewhat of an understatement there are clearly so many issues with this game its a wonder it even got out of the box. I mean given that Vice Admiral is the top rank and you have virtually nothing left to do - you would think that STF missions would be a top priority over everything else. I mean surely you want to keep the subscribers your have? One wonders at the stupidity of not dealing with that.

    2. You Said:-"There cannot possibly be as much absolute detail your looking for due to the afore mentioned mainly"

    Thee afore mentioned, that the game is not even a year out of the box? Then perhaps you should have delayed its release and blown us all away with the sheer amount of content in the game. Nope, you decided to release it early and risk losing those early players forever. Can you imagine the reviews the game would have got if only you held off until it was ready. I consider this release to still be in BETA

    3. You Said:-"but also keep in mind enstating most of what your talking about would take away from the percieved fun factor and would require a very long time for the Dev team to create"

    Take away from the fun factor? It might help me if you stated what points I made would take away from the fun factor. More over the afore mentioned feed back that I gave was simply ideas that could be used to enhance the currently dull game. I am fully aware that some of the content might need to be tweaked changed or dropped all together as some ideas - as I'm sure you are also aware simply don't work when put into practice. For example-: respawning being a constant requirement in order to complete a mission. And as for it being a long time for the Dev team to create - oh the trials and tribulations of online gaming but even I would not expect to go online a month from now and it all be changed and updated. But it would be great to tell the online community what you were working towards and in what direction Star Trek Online was going to be taken.

    4. You Said:-"just that most or the community doesn't want that type of in depth monatonous game play."

    LOL - oh my gawd! erm... Terradome and Kilometer Accord spring to mind! Now how monotonous is that? I have had countless people shouting about those STFs.
    Oh yeah and "Respawning" would be another of Star Treks monotonous special features. Who wants to keep respawning over and over and over and over and over and over and over until your get the job done. Monotonous?

    5. You Said:-" Some of what you present is a good idea, still it seems what your looking for is a more realistic fashion to the game itself"

    erm.... yes please and plenty of it! I think that most people in Star Trek Online would love it if it had a more realistic feel to the game. But hey, don't take my word for it, try conducting a poll and see how it comes out.

    6. You Said:-"it's a game, it wasn't meant to be a NASA Flight Trainer."

    Meeewow! Please retract your claws! I know its not meant to be a NASA Flight Trainer but it would be good if it was even a little bit more entertaining than the current setup which and yes I've said it before... its dull. Try to show a little bit of imagination.

    7. You Said:-"In short I'm not sure what to tell ya as this obviously isn't meeting your expectation. i can say with time this game will fill out and possibly present some of the options you mention....just not at the moment."

    No its currently not meeting my expectations which is a shame because I had such high hopes for it, only to be dashed. I would hope that in the future the game does fill out as I think that platform does have potential and if it did include some of my IDEAS then that would be good for everyone.

    8. You Said:-"What can i say? Its a new game....wait it out and see what happens. I'm sure even with this staunch list of high standard even you will find yourself surprised at what Cryptic comes up with."

    I wait with bated breath.

    PS - If you don't like feedback then I would consider removing the forum for it. {;-)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    This game is not meant to be a detailed game to play with many of the aspects of ST that we have come to love.


    It is meant to be a watered down and fast action paced game that, in its arcede counterparts, is a "insert quarter to continue" kind of game.


    I have been here since beta and my impression is that they made this game "light" on details on purpose.


    IMO they are trying to appeal to the very casual player who does not, once again IMO, want to be overloaded with details. So what that your ship can fire unlimited torpedos......you crew can repair yopur entire hull of the shipp from near destruction to "pristine" in a minute......they just want you to experience the feeling of ST combat w/o the need fr all the micro management. I , for one, would like the micromanagement but i am a minority imo. We get back to ESD far too often......ESD should be a lot further away. They even tweaked the part of OUR universe so that you can fly across it in a matter of 2-3 minutes.



    I am highly doubtful they will ever change the current style and adapt to a more detailed and rigorous MMO because they believe, IMO ,it is the way to go.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    Gornoth wrote:
    Thank you for your reply I found your comments fascinating. Oh where to start!

    1. You Said:-"The game isn't even a year out of the box...there will be issues to fix."

    Well "issues" I would consider that to be somewhat of an understatement there are clearly so many issues with this game its a wonder it even got out of the box. I mean given that Vice Admiral is the top rank and you have virtually nothing left to do - you would think that STF missions would be a top priority over everything else. I mean surely you want to keep the subscribers your have? One wonders at the stupidity of not dealing with that.

    2. You Said:-"There cannot possibly be as much absolute detail your looking for due to the afore mentioned mainly"

    Thee afore mentioned, that the game is not even a year out of the box? Then perhaps you should have delayed its release and blown us all away with the sheer amount of content in the game. Nope, you decided to release it early and risk losing those early players forever. Can you imagine the reviews the game would have got if only you held off until it was ready. I consider this release to still be in BETA

    3. You Said:-"but also keep in mind enstating most of what your talking about would take away from the percieved fun factor and would require a very long time for the Dev team to create"

    Take away from the fun factor? It might help me if you stated what points I made would take away from the fun factor. More over the afore mentioned feed back that I gave was simply ideas that could be used to enhance the currently dull game. I am fully aware that some of the content might need to be tweaked changed or dropped all together as some ideas - as I'm sure you are also aware simply don't work when put into practice. For example-: respawning being a constant requirement in order to complete a mission. And as for it being a long time for the Dev team to create - oh the trials and tribulations of online gaming but even I would not expect to go online a month from now and it all be changed and updated. But it would be great to tell the online community what you were working towards and in what direction Star Trek Online was going to be taken.

    4. You Said:-"just that most or the community doesn't want that type of in depth monatonous game play."

    LOL - oh my gawd! erm... Terradome and Kilometer Accord spring to mind! Now how monotonous is that? I have had countless people shouting about those STFs.
    Oh yeah and "Respawning" would be another of Star Treks monotonous special features. Who wants to keep respawning over and over and over and over and over and over and over until your get the job done. Monotonous?

    5. You Said:-" Some of what you present is a good idea, still it seems what your looking for is a more realistic fashion to the game itself"

    erm.... yes please and plenty of it! I think that most people in Star Trek Online would love it if it had a more realistic feel to the game. But hey, don't take my word for it, try conducting a poll and see how it comes out.

    6. You Said:-"it's a game, it wasn't meant to be a NASA Flight Trainer."

    Meeewow! Please retract your claws! I know its not meant to be a NASA Flight Trainer but it would be good if it was even a little bit more entertaining than the current setup which and yes I've said it before... its dull. Try to show a little bit of imagination.

    7. You Said:-"In short I'm not sure what to tell ya as this obviously isn't meeting your expectation. i can say with time this game will fill out and possibly present some of the options you mention....just not at the moment."

    No its currently not meeting my expectations which is a shame because I had such high hopes for it, only to be dashed. I would hope that in the future the game does fill out as I think that platform does have potential and if it did include some of my IDEAS then that would be good for everyone.

    8. You Said:-"What can i say? Its a new game....wait it out and see what happens. I'm sure even with this staunch list of high standard even you will find yourself surprised at what Cryptic comes up with."

    I wait with bated breath.

    PS - If you don't like feedback then I would consider removing the forum for it. {;-)

    Whoa co-cheese, I dont represent or work for cryptic...nor do I really care about your little diatribe. I like you am just offering an opinion. Besides, its just a game, play the game for what it is.....or don't. Either way i don't care. i see it one way, you see it the other, you obviously were looking for another point of view or you wouldn't have created the thread. Not everyone will agree with you if thats what your looking for.

    Again, sorry this doesn't meet your desired expectation. have fun anyway...smooches!

    PS-As I stated before, I do agree there needs to be change, and I like some of your ideas. Please though pull the emotion out of the context and take the words for what they are as I mean no ill will. This just how I speak.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    Ship Collisions
    Mainly was left out(even though some have wanted it) due to the grief that such a game mechanic would cause for those casual players that would not be proficient in 3D piloting and avoiding obstacles.
    Shields & Weapons
    Same reason as above. Having the player constantly having to "raiseShields" everytime an ecounter happened in a actionbased game would have led to it being changed out of player complaining. Not to mention the B'rel would now be a viable vessel in pvp.
    Interaction
    I was very disappointed with the overall interaction of devices and other clever little things they could have been adapted while aboard a space station. While I am a big fan of emotes I do think it would have been better to simply double click a chair and your character would have taken a seat or gone to bed. Other things like double clicking on bar staff would have provided you with a list of drinks with which you get get drunk on. (But not Romulan Ale as that is illegal) Buy yourself a meal and sitting down at a table would have been good. Yes its all small things like emotes but it adds content to the game and draws people into the Star Trek universe.
    I can agree with this viewpoint.
    Transporter Rooms
    Walking around your own ship is great! Its your ship and you want to see it from time to time. It would be great to use the transporter room to beam down to planets and beam up from them before moving off. I would also like to see this when docking with a space station and when beaming back to the ship. On reaching the bridge you would simply double click the captains chair, your character would sit down and bang your in usual tactical view. Again this is all about creating an atmosphere drawing players into the game. While I do recognise that for some players this might be tedious, with the journey from the bridge to the transporter room, a simple on/off switch maybe would suffice?
    As a form of gameplay that those who don't use it could turn off why not?
    Docking
    Why have docking as anything more than a cutscene that can be turned off in needed?
    Heck, why have doors even since I have a transporter?
    Interior Ship Designs
    Level of code needed to make STO an MMO and single player simulator to give that " replace reality" experience your looking for would have STO still in the beta stages until sometime 2041.
    Combat and PvsP
    This is another extremely important part of the Star Trek universe the ability to lose your ship. This whole notion of respawning is just stupid. You can play a mission and it actually does not matter if you die because you can just keep going until you win! erm... two words "Game" and "Play" spring to mind. While it might devastating to lose a powerful top grade ship that took you ages to customize it is still a necessity of game play that you could lose it. So how do you save the ship? You send a distress call to any U.S.S starships in the area hoping that they come to your aid.
    Casual players and those whom don't like EvE's perma death.
    How does this work? You hit a button on your keyboard that sends the distress signal and then all energy onboard your ship is diverted to your shields giving you maximum full shields for a total of say 3 minutes. During that time your ship is dead in the water so to speak. You can do nothing but hope an pray that a player or players are coming to your aid. After the three minutes are up your shields start to fall away as normal and all you can do is move the energy from one shield facing to the other but they do not recharge. If a player or players have come to your rescue and defeated the enemy then one of them can transfer power to your ship giving you control of it again. If no-one turns up then its bye bye ship and you need to purchase another ship or use one of your older models. If it turns out that you have no ships to use then you lose one rank to get another ship. For example a Lt Commander would be reduced to Lieutenant. This would make a great game play environment and would allow player interaction to be more gratifying. Similarly players answering distress calls from other players would receive a reward from starfleet as well as xp.
    Not saying its not a neat concept but the casual player will not like it.
    Example of combat
    The USS Goodboy has just been attacked by an enemy player (who may be klingon or a pirate) they are about to be destroyed so they enter their distress call mode, they now have three minutes hoping other players of their faction will come to rescue them, in this case the federation. The enemy can leave or hope that no one turns up so he can completely destroy the USS Goodboy gaining more xp. But luckily three federation ships turn up and take out the enemy ship saving the USS Goodboy. But similary now the enemy player has decided to enter into distress call mode hoping some of his faction will turn up to save him. The federation ships can decide to warp out or fight it out.
    Can-flip baiting on a higher level.
    Freedom of Play
    STO suffers from the same restrictions of both technology and manpower that most (if not all ) MMO's have at release. Give it a few years and a WoWish level of players and STO too can be larger than life.

    Universe

    What can I say, EvE does do this very well.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    Gornoth wrote:
    Ship Collisions
    The thing about flying your ship around a system is that it does not matter if you hit another ship or an asteroid, it does zero damage, I find this to be an extreme flaw in the game. Piloting a ship is a lot of fun, why take that away from us? You could make it that you lose xp points for crashing into things and its noted that some people might get annoyed with others deliberately crashing into them damaging their ship then guess what? The xp taken off will double if it happens within a short period of time and should anyone destroy an "Ally" ship in this way then they will be strip of all rank and have to start from the bottom. Or perhaps they may be seen as a hostile target. See the section on PVP.

    Yes this sounds like a lot of fun, having to worry about crashing into asteroids that are only there to give us a sense of speed. Or having to worry about being stripped of my rank in combat because I had the camera focused on the enemy and bumped into a friendly. I would set my options to no teaming forever if this was put into play, and I doubt I'm alone.
    Gornoth wrote:
    Shields & Weapons
    A fundamental part of Star Trek is raising your shields this too has been ripped from us and yes it is another extreme flaw of the game. Perhaps if our ships had a power level that slowly decreased if shields were left on that would cause players to switch them off when not in combat. Also one of your bridge crew could inform you if an enemy or other vessel was raising their shields and a time period can be used for charging weapons before gaining the ability to fire. This would give players the time they needed to raise their shields. Similarly you can adapt this action for missions as raising ones shields would be seen as an aggressive move.

    This is an "extreme flaw"? And to think this game has been live for ten months and I've never heard anyone else complain about this pressing matter that is extreme and destroying the game. Let's make a button to rotate watch officers as well while we are adding things no one wants to be bothered with.

    Gornoth wrote:
    Transporter Rooms
    Walking around your own ship is great! Its your ship and you want to see it from time to time. It would be great to use the transporter room to beam down to planets and beam up from them before moving off. I would also like to see this when docking with a space station and when beaming back to the ship. On reaching the bridge you would simply double click the captains chair, your character would sit down and bang your in usual tactical view. Again this is all about creating an atmosphere drawing players into the game. While I do recognise that for some players this might be tedious, with the journey from the bridge to the transporter room, a simple on/off switch maybe would suffice?

    The main problem with this is that "Bang you're in usual tactial view" wouldn't be bang, it would be sit and wait for yet another loading screen. We've already seen how that works out and it's one of the reasons none of the lifers use the captain's table because it add load screens and most people would rather not have to spend time watching the status bar hoping it doesn't lock up. If this was added as an option to turn off, i would leave it off.
    Gornoth wrote:
    Docking
    The whole thing on docking when you suddenly just magically appear on the station is just non-atmospheric. Again we are looking for an experience not a disjoined game. It would be nice to see your ship actually docking with the space station and perhaps a bit of piloting skill to do so. Space Stations only use their tractor beams when the ships are in trouble. And it would also be nice to pilot your ship out of dock. In some instances especially dry dock this would require skill so you did not collide with anything. The reason for dry dock (inside the station itself) is to repair damage to your ship. Again on/off switches for these features can be adopted.

    This is a nice idea, the question would be is it worth the development time for an option people are only going to use once and then not bother with anymore.
    Gornoth wrote:
    Interior Ship Designs
    Why do all ship interiors look the same? And why are they all the same size? And why are all the rooms in the same place? And why do my crew not where the same uniform? Why no interaction? Why Why Why?

    There are options in the editor to change size and layout. As for the crew not being in a uniform I can choose beats me, this should have been added as soon as interiors where. They need a true over haul for interiors the scale is off way off all our bridges are cargo bays, we are starting to see some work on this front with season 3, but I think before making any more steps with interiors the scale must be fixed first.

    Gornoth wrote:
    Combat and PvsP
    This is another extremely important part of the Star Trek universe the ability to lose your ship. This whole notion of respawning is just stupid. You can play a mission and it actually does not matter if you die because you can just keep going until you win! erm... two words "Game" and "Play" spring to mind. While it might devastating to lose a powerful top grade ship that took you ages to customize it is still a necessity of game play that you could lose it. So how do you save the ship? You send a distress call to any U.S.S starships in the area hoping that they come to your aid.

    Ok if you don't like just respawning turn the difficulty up see if that's enough of a pain for you when you have to repair your ship or injured crew and you don't have the supplies to do so.

    Gornoth wrote:
    How does this work? You hit a button on your keyboard that sends the distress signal and then all energy onboard your ship is diverted to your shields giving you maximum full shields for a total of say 3 minutes. During that time your ship is dead in the water so to speak. You can do nothing but hope an pray that a player or players are coming to your aid. After the three minutes are up your shields start to fall away as normal and all you can do is move the energy from one shield facing to the other but they do not recharge. If a player or players have come to your rescue and defeated the enemy then one of them can transfer power to your ship giving you control of it again. If no-one turns up then its bye bye ship and you need to purchase another ship or use one of your older models. If it turns out that you have no ships to use then you lose one rank to get another ship. For example a Lt Commander would be reduced to Lieutenant. This would make a great game play environment and would allow player interaction to be more gratifying. Similarly players answering distress calls from other players would receive a reward from starfleet as well as xp.

    Example of combat
    The USS Goodboy has just been attacked by an enemy player (who may be klingon or a pirate) they are about to be destroyed so they enter their distress call mode, they now have three minutes hoping other players of their faction will come to rescue them, in this case the federation. The enemy can leave or hope that no one turns up so he can completely destroy the USS Goodboy gaining more xp. But luckily three federation ships turn up and take out the enemy ship saving the USS Goodboy. But similary now the enemy player has decided to enter into distress call mode hoping some of his faction will turn up to save him. The federation ships can decide to warp out or fight it out.

    It is easy to see that given the number of players online that this can continue to get out of hand and really put the server under a lot of strain. So there obviously needs to be a cap on how many ships can enter the distress call area.

    This is the worst combat system I have ever heard of in any game ever, at every step you are taking something fun, (a key part of game play) and turning it to something dull. Wow I can't wait to log on to STO and sit and wait for random people who may or may not respond, and why would they if they could lose their ship for doing so?

    I would say if this is such a big issue for you, next time you die, log out and never return because that is more realistic.

    Gornoth wrote:
    Freedom of Play
    The freedom of play aspect of this game is simply dull and boring. Am I in control of my ship or aren't I? The ability to switch off your ships safety protocols and target any ship you like would be great. But again their will be consequences, for example:-

    Why would your crew follow that order? What keeps you from being removed from command by your XO?

    Gornoth wrote:
    Lets take the federation as an example the USS Baddog has just fired on the USS Goodboy shooting and destroying another federation ship would cause the USS baddog to become a Pirate with the captain no longer part of the federation. Thus a new faction is created. This can also be adopted for the Klingon side.

    It would also be nice for any faction to defect to the other but alas not for pirates they can not be trusted.

    Would you then kill your own men who don't want to defect? Also what would keep the klingons from just taking your ship from you once you were stupid enough to be escorted to there home world during your defection?

    Gornoth wrote:
    Universe
    The universe in Star Trek Online is tiny in comparison to that of eve online and eve online space environment is far superior to that of star trek. Even Eve's Player vs Player aspect is much better given that it is in the universe and not part of some PVP queue. Where Eve does fail is when you lose an extremely expensive ship that took an extremely long time to acquire. Thus my distress call feature as previously mentioned above can be adopted.

    And where in Eve they use jump gates to get from one system to another in Star Trek Online they would simply engage warp drive. Space is HUGE except in Star Trek Online where its tiny.

    Its time for Star Trek Online to make big changes to both their gameplay and environment content. Star Trek has a huge fan base but it will not take long for fans to become bored and despondent about the game unless radical changes are made.

    Season 3 made a huge leap with sector space, and I would much rather they work on getting rid of loading screens between sector blocks rather then making me sit and stare at my ship at warp for an hour because you think space should be bigger. It's a game I want to play it, I don't want to sit and look at a ship in warp all day.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    Transporter Rooms
    Walking around your own ship is great! Its your ship and you want to see it from time to time. It would be great to use the transporter room to beam down to planets and beam up from them before moving off. I would also like to see this when docking with a space station and when beaming back to the ship. On reaching the bridge you would simply double click the captains chair, your character would sit down and bang your in usual tactical view. Again this is all about creating an atmosphere drawing players into the game. While I do recognise that for some players this might be tedious, with the journey from the bridge to the transporter room, a simple on/off switch maybe would suffice?

    Docking
    The whole thing on docking when you suddenly just magically appear on the station is just non-atmospheric. Again we are looking for an experience not a disjoined game. It would be nice to see your ship actually docking with the space station and perhaps a bit of piloting skill to do so. Space Stations only use their tractor beams when the ships are in trouble. And it would also be nice to pilot your ship out of dock. In some instances especially dry dock this would require skill so you did not collide with anything. The reason for dry dock (inside the station itself) is to repair damage to your ship. Again on/off switches for these features can be adopted.

    While I can certainly appreciate being imeresed in the game and the dev's attention to detail, this I can do without. I don't want to sit through a cut scene every single time I dock or beam down to a planet. Unless the cutscene is the loading screen. I for one am gald the devs decided to leave those particular details out. I would agree though that I wouldn't mind being able to raise and lowere my own shields but I don't think there should be a penalty associated with keeping them up.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    Gornoth wrote:
    Ship Collisions
    The thing about flying your ship around a system is that it does not matter if you hit another ship or an asteroid, it does zero damage, I find this to be an extreme flaw in the game. Piloting a ship is a lot of fun, why take that away from us? You could make it that you lose xp points for crashing into things and its noted that some people might get annoyed with others deliberately crashing into them damaging their ship then guess what? The xp taken off will double if it happens within a short period of time and should anyone destroy an "Ally" ship in this way then they will be strip of all rank and have to start from the bottom. Or perhaps they may be seen as a hostile target. See the section on PVP.


    They actually had ship collisions during closed beta, but turned it off because of all the griefing possibilities and many of the testers got frustrated of hitting small rocks in space during intense PvE (PvE was allot harder than it is today) in asteroid fields.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    One person's immersion is another's aggravation.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    Taking each of your points in turn

    1) Not opposed but not supportive either. If it adds to gameplay (and that's still a matter up for debate) that's fine but if it's just for fluff and/or imposes performance issues then I'll happily do without.

    2) Seems somewhat pointless and dull to me. If you want to do it, RP it...

    3) Nice but trivial fluff to me, wouldn't use it personally.

    4) My switch would be auto set to off...

    5) There is a reaosn one of the first purchases anyone ever made in Elite was the auto-docking computer...

    6) I suggest you look at Ship Customisation in the shipyard and revise your suggestion accordingly. As for crew, only time I ever go to my bridge is to head for mission replay makes no odds to me and would support it IF it didn;t detract from tangible gameplay improvements being made.

    7) Um no thanks. Eve Online sounds like it would suit you down to the ground; which is a reason I stopped playing EVE.

    8) Hmm, both immersion breaking and non-consentual PvP in a PvE focussed game. Eve sounds like it's more your sort of thing.

    9) Eve is just a series of interconnected instances and apart from the sheer number of random star system in eve (which I admit STO can improve on) I prefer STO's model. Properly scaled star systems is something the devs have planned.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    (In response to the original poster as I'm not going to quote the post ...)

    No. Just no. That is not STO nor does it sound the least bit entertaining. I can't quit as I'm a lifer, but anything resembling your suggestions would make sure I don't sign into the game every again.

    This is a solo-focused ultra-casual MMO. You can be a Vice Admiral in less than a week. You can be wearing crafted Mk XI purples over the weekend; not to mention whatever dropped Mk XII purples you want to buy off the Exchange.

    Enjoy it for what it is. Simple, relatively clean fun.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    Mk XII Purples Exist?
Sign In or Register to comment.