The BioWare staff kicked off the presentation with a review of the recently revealed crew skills system, which lets you use your computer-controlled companion characters to more or less do your dirty work. This includes all the "go run around and do this for a while" activities you'd normally handle yourself in an online game, such as crafting (in this case, using the artifice or biochem skills), gathering crafting materials (in this case, bioanalysis and slicing--the game's term for computer hacking), and lower-level mission tasks (in the case of The Old Republic, this will mean diplomacy missions and treasure hunts). The idea is that your character is a true hero, and like any good hero, you have people who do that stuff for you. Since all characters in The Old Republic can have their own starship, which acts as a base of operations, your companions will hang out on your ship until you deploy them or put them to work on board at a crafting station.
wow SW stealing my idea for STO. Making your starship a base of operations. For STO that would mean putting a chief medical officer in sick bay to heal your injuries and replicate injury stuff.
A chief engineer to work on your damaged ship. Maybe a finite amount of resources could be introduced which are needed for them to replicate the healing kits, and a finite amount of resources needed to repair the ship. That way you would still need to gather/buy/dock to get stuff you could have a cap for how much resources you can have on your ship.
The more you get injured/damaged, the more you have to use your medical and and engineering resources with the respective officers to make new medicine/parts. That means you have to resupply at some point. But gives your ship some way to be 'helpful' to you and more of an incentive to play on advanced/elite. Currently I have WAY more fun playing on higher difficulty, I have to fly better not just circle and shoot.
It can also be made so that your engineer/doctor can only produce a certain amount over a period of time.
well whatever, just make the starship feel more useful.
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However, the short-sightedness of the anti-death penalty crowd killed any hope of using those areas outside of a mission-specific way.
Not really. Still plenty they can be used for, and the fact that they're there means the people who DO use the death penalty actually could get use out of the basic services that could be implemented.
I was apart of the anti-death penalty crowd and it wasnt short sightedness it was making sure something wasnt put on everyone just because those for it wanted it. but theres nothing stopping the devs from turning sickbay and main engineering into a place to repair/heal. infact it would probably pull alot of those on the fence about the difficulty slider over as they wont worry about running back to the starbase to get fixed or carrying a ton of components and regenerators when the ship itself will be stocked with all of that.
Yes, it can easily be done. Of course what it also does is make the social areas in the MMO feel much less useful.
they'll come buy and leave.
and this way it would go with the more star trek theme cryptic says they want.
And yes, as the Devs have said, for now interiors or simply fluff. Who knows what they'll be 6 months from now. 6 months ago they weren't even fluff.
This is True and also I think people need to remember that Bioware has been working on SW:TOR for 5 all most 6 years.
Forcing people to go to social areas to restock doesn't really help, for - as you already pointed out - they'll just buy their stuff and leave again. Social areas should focus on simply being places to meet. They do not need to fulfill any other function.
That said, social areas could use some more minigames and activities to do with other players. Stuff that can be implemented on your ship's messhall as well, but being more useful in social areas for you're more likely to, y'know, meet people to play with there.
Like ... having a poker table on your ship as well as in DS9. So you can play with your friends on your own ship. And if your friends aren't online, well, time to head to DS9 and see if you'll find people to play poker with there!
A very true statement unfortunately (for most developers anyway), for reasons we discussed last night (the trend for releasing games in a half-finished state).
Granted, being able to heal injuries with our Chief medical officer and repairing the hull with a Chief engineer would be amazing and Trek but it's one of those things where now it only applies to a small portion of the playerbase (and has less likelihood of being implemented now - outside of a story context, which might justify the necessary minigames if cleverly planned).
Even when I played on elite I didn't die much and always had plenty repair kits from drops.
I like the ideas expressed in the OP. I also prefer some form of damage/injury for which those ideas could be utilized.
But hey.... If, Cryptic can be successful catering to an audience that prefers style over substance, good for them. New costumes, emotes, and dances seem to make people happy.
Be careful: we'll be getting Flock of Seagulls hair at this point.