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What would you have done differently?
j4ck5p4rr0w
Member Posts: 103 Arc User
If you had been the one in charge, what would you have done differently with STO? I'm talking about from the very beginning, and any aspect of the game. Go!
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begins with you as First officer (commander rank) on a ship in crisis
you learn the game
you save the ship
your Captain recomends you for your own command
this would include
ship board operations (a ground mission)
A borg attack (as now)
the ship being boarded
You Defeating the borg boarders
A small space battle (a rolling instance battle) with a SINGLE borg cube which you must hold off while the captain and the science team prepare the "virus"
A mission (ground map) to board the cube and DESTROY it with the virus ( a computer virus)
during this mission arch (which i see as taking at least an hour and being COOL ) you meet and interact with at least a dozen Boffs
when you transfer the captain lets you take ONE with you
After this point you would Never see the borg again until the 5th or sixth season of missions (say 26 missions per season)
your first ship (and rank as Captain ) then proceeds into mission driven play (hundreds and hundreds of missions the best foundry ones becoming official )
As you level up SKILLS (not levels) you become more talented in a wide variety of areas
There would be no "classes" you would choose a department on creation but could freely cross skill
At no point would you have a visible "level" just the rank Captain and a ship
Ships themselves would work as they do now
pretty much
but they would all be HARD CANON starfleet vessels or klingon vessels
They would come fitted with standard issue weapons (which would be preset at a power level Equal to the top ones now)
mission rewards of "experimental" weapons or shields would exist (non repeatable on any given character)
there would be no rarirty and no "trading" of items
Boff gear would be FREE
Factions at start would include
Klingon
Federation
Romulan (no JJ rubbish here)
Ferengi
Freetrader (civilian)
PVP would be on one of three settings
Simulation (a test the only one permitted within faction of the FEDS)
Engagement (losers ship respawns at space dock needing EXTREME repairs)
and
Death match (losing ship and captain DELETED )
All pvp would be consentual and limited by area and the option to "warp out" would always exist
A "leader board" for each faction (and accessible only to the ENEMIES of that faction would exist for pvp
Missions would be
Federation 40% non combat (diplomacy , exploration , medical aid ) 40% limited combat (exploration , espionage , being attacked by ambassadors) 10% Space combat 10% ground combat
Klingon/Romulan 20% non combat (diplomacy , exploration , medical aid ) 40% limited combat (exploration , espionage , being attacked by ambassadors) 20% Space combat 20% ground combat
Ferengi /Freetrader 70% non combat (diplomacy , exploration , medical aid Trade ) 10% limited combat (exploration , espionage , being attacked by ambassadors) 10% Space combat 10% ground combat
Skill points awarded for mission goals NOT kills
Hows that for a start
But, speculating and wishing won't change the reality of what it is, what's the point?
KBF CO
We are the Dead
join date Aug 2008
Space would be similar to Eve in terms of vastness which also works with the pvp channel. Other than that I would love to have seen three faction warfare, UFP, KDF, RSE 24/7 territorial control.
Start rank at Lt. Commander (like Data on the Sutherland) and advance to Commodore. 10 ranks at Lt. Commander, 20 ranks at Commander, 30 ranks at Captain, then Commodore.
If it's a 25th century setting then more emphasis on 25th century ships and problems. Flying a Connie, NX, and the like would be something you do in a flashback mission. Not in the game setting.
More emphasis on exploration and less on just shooting KDF, Romulans, and the like.
More emphasis on developing your companions and communicating with them. Star Trek was always about the people.
No war with the KDF but no real alliance. There should be some tension there, like there was in The Undiscovered Country.
Much bigger emphasis on end-game content. A handful of dailies and STFs aren't enough to keep people busy.
More iconic NPCs in the game. We want to interact with Riker, Janeway, and the rest. Just like Picard meeting Spock was iconic, us meeting them should be iconic.
- Tutorial completely on Starfleet Academy
- early / first KDF Mission content would explain WHY the Klingons are at War with the FEDs (some retro lore missions, like: go to the lore singers and re-live in your eyes what happened in the Path to 2409, why are Gorn Letheans and Orions allies now... etc. etc.) <- because that is the number 1 Question i get from not-so-hardcore-Trekkers that dont care for the lore if it isn't done in-game...
- 3D Space, i really had enough of those 2D Space games... thats like racing games where you don't need to break before a corner
- Sector Space... probably would not exist in this form
- ... the iconic Ships would look a lot closer to the real thing
- maybe less *levels* ?er char to go through, but more factions from the beginning.
- Foundry would have been a day 1 design and be involved in everything from simple storytelling to PvP Map Editor...
- the AI would be a lot harder, less Ships but harder more epic 1 on 1 battles.
- the UI would be much more LCARS heavy
- less neon FX for abilities
- more Simulation, less Arcade
- more passive powers, less hotkey smashing.
- NO KITS forcing you into a specific role
- more professions per faction
- different Factions would have complete different skill / power sets / gameplay flavor
- no 5 Player limit... if 15 players in Constitution class ships would want to try some Elite STF with lvl10 chars, i would let them!
- oh and ground combat would totally have been Elite Force, or Mass Effect... or Call of Duty with Phasers...
Well here are mine (prefered)
Piccard no interest (same goes for anyone else assimilated )
Janeway Id like to ARREST her
Sisko (tricky it would need to involve the prophets) Discuss baseball
Archer or Kirk (time travel or holodeck) A game of Cards (not fizbin)
Data or other androids no interest
Beverly Crusher or Doctor Bashir would be very interesting to work with in a medical emergency
(but not if they are going to muck them up as badly as Bones)
So instead of one large faction with a ton of customization and one with a little, I would have made 6 factions (Feds, Klingons, Romulans, Breen, Dominion, Cardassian). Each faction would have very limited customization to begin with to compensate from going from 2 factions to 6, but the variety would come from the ability to fly a galor class or a D'deridex from day 1.
I would not concern myself with adding lots of different species to the factions either. The feds would have to have several but the KDF would just be the klingons, and no gorn, orions etc. Again this would be largely due to having to make 4 extra faction from the start. More customization could be added later.
Everyone would start and finish as a captain. Levels would be 1-50 like a traditional MMO. This would get rid of the whole ensigns commanding startships and admirals doing donky work.
Players could pick what ever ship they want from the start. So you could pick a galaxy class at lvl 1, but the ship would become more powerful as you levelled up with several different options to choose from to give the customization some freedom. Ships could be swapped out at a later time if you get bored and want to change, but this again just lets people fly what ever they want without having to concern themselves with restrictions, as they have total control of what they fly and how it works. More costumes and ship types would come later.
There would be one central storyline of missions but the enemy groups would be universal enemies such as the Borg, Iconians, Gorn, Orions, Hirogen, Remans, Ferengi etc.
Missions would be told more like random chance encounters and would be playable by any faction. There would be multiple choice sections to accommodate the different styles of play. Ie diplomacy vs combat, capturing priosners rather than killing them etc. Basically designed to feel like any faction could wonder into the situation and have to deal with it how they see fit. This would fix the current faction mission problem as every mission is playable by anyone and is designed to feel like it could fit into any factions story (I appreciate this option will never be perfect as you cant make one story fit all, but i think its miles better than having factions with no story at all).
PvP would be two teams of 5 but any faction ship can join any group (with the exception of level banding), so any faction ship can join any team. this would help small queues and everyone goes into the same games. the whole thing would be treated as wargames for story purposes.
You ships would never explode in PvP or PVE. It would only be damages to the point where you respawn.
The next publisher can decide how they want to handle their game - but since ST: IS couldn't find a publishing partner I doubt we'll be seeing any more Trek MMOs coming out any time soon.
Missions should always be failable. If the freighters you were supposed to save from the Klingons get destroyed your mission has failed. If not at least half of the escaping shuttles from DS9 get through. Mission failed. Start all over again. It's just that simple. Without a possibility to fail winning does not mean anything!
I would like more research, multiple choice and explore missions. Some parts of the mission "Of Bajor" were quite good. Or the Friday 13th mission in which you had to solve a small puzzle game before you got killed by the gas.
Second I would have made the space environment having a greater effect on gameplay. If I fly against an asteroid, an enemy ship or against another structure my ship should take damage - at least during missions.
There should be missions where you have to hunt enemy ships inside a neblua which jams your sensors or drains your shields. Or missions in which you need to find cover inside a corona of a star that may damage your shields and hull. STO could learn a lot about such szenarios from Bridge Commander. I never understood why such a huge potential is almost entirely neglected.
Third I would have settled the game shortly after this Klingon-Federation war. It's just not credible as it is now. I mean today both factions are fighting against the Borg, tomorrow they are fighting each other and the day after tomorrow they merrily meet in Quarks bar on DS9 to have a drink before they go back to the Eta Eridani Sector block to shoot at each other again.
First, I like the 2409 timeline, but I'd have been more concrete about sticking to it. Maybe I'd have some of the latter-day TNG ships, but Miranda, Excelsior and Connie variants would have outlived their useful lifetimes. Anyone who complains would be told "We are serious about the integrity of our timeline."
Second, I would have had the player be a bridge officer for the majority of the game, rather than the captain. Starfleet/Klingon/insert other factions here academies be the tutorial and the first few levels. The player would pick a discipline, (Tactical, Science and Engineering work well enough) and as they went through the academies, they would decide on what bridge station they would man, say Ops or Engineering for Engineers, Astrometrics or Medical for Science, and Helm or Security for Tactical.
After graduation, the player gets assigned to a ship. This ship could be completely customizable, down to the interior, crew and captain, but the player would start out as an ensign at whatever station they chose. You could request a transfer at any time, but there would be a cost to it. You'd be able, and sometimes required, to go to different parts of your ship during missions. All these ships would be flying around in the game world, and might rendezvous or go on joint missions at the whim of the AI or player captains and admirals.
For grouping you would simply request "temporary assignment" on your buddy's ship, filling your usual station on his bridge, or he on yours. This would allow for grouping of up to seven or eight people, with any blank bridge stations filled in by AI.
So, you work your way up the ranks by excelling at your job, as well as participating in away missions. As you advance in rank you start having more freedom in which assignments to take, as the ship's captain starts to rely more on your judgement. Every so often you can get offers to be assigned to a new ship, which you can accept or refuse. At a certain level you can become a first officer, charged with leading away missions, overseeing the crew and filling in for the captain as needed. This gives you command training for... wait for it....
Promotion to Captain! This would essentially be where endgame starts. You can choose to captain your old ship, or be assigned to a new one. This time you make all the big decisions, where to go, what to do, what assignments to take, who to send on away missions. When you group, you issue orders to your friends at their bridge stations and they carry them out. If two captains are in a group, you can either take two ships, or one can accept a temporary reduction in rank to fill a bridge station (there can only be one captain, after all). There would be missions that would be built for multiple ships.
You could also be promoted to admiral, at which point the game becomes something of a hybrid RTS. Each admiral commands a fleet of A.I. ships (which grows based on seniority and mission successes), and each admiral could invite player captains to their fleet. The admiral issues orders and can either watch while they are carried out by AI or player captains, or they can designate a flagship and personally take command of the mission. Player captains wouldn't have to take the assignments, but if they don't, the admiral could decide to boot them out of the fleet.
One of the biggest things is you could refuse promotions. If you're happy manning the helm of your ship, you can stay there. Don't want to become an admiral? You don't have to.
That's how I envision a true ST MMO, giving you a true Starfleet/Klingon career.
All ships would be new 2409 ships, not centuries old hulls so no one will complain about their favorite series ships.
No Science captains or ships, if you want magic go to WoW.
Tractor beams are tools not weapons.
A "uniform" uniform system. That said I would enhance the Alien customizer.
No "Dead Alert" your ship should always respond to your controls.
No exploit tolerance, you exploit you are gone.
Noobship: Constitution. Basically a ship similar to the sailbarges of todays navies. Totally out of date but good for training. This way the original Enterprise would be the first ship for every fed captain. For Klingons that would be the D7 cruiser. Romulans get the TOS warbird.
Cruiser progression would be: Excelsior -> Ambassador ->Galaxy -> Sovereign
Escorts would have two lines. light and heavy (destroyer) escorts.
light escorts: Miranda -> Centaur -> Defiant -> Steamrunner
heavy escorts: Constellation -> Cheyenne > Akira -> Prometheus
Science vessels: Oberth -> Olympic -> Nebula -> Intrepid
I would have put ground combat on the backburner and instead released STO with a fleshed out KDF and Romulan Star Empire.
And I would have started with a single, large map. This sector TRIBBLE is annoying and there are so many iportant homeworlds missing. Trill, Betazed, Benzar...
Expeditions into the delta quadrant through the wormhole + transwarp to gamma orionis.
So, one big map and the exploration nebulas just as the nebulas for KDF empire defense.
Fed ships would be eng/sci oriented, klingon tac/eng and romulan tac/sci.
The neutral zones would be pvp areas.
Individual storyline arcs for the KDF spacefaring minor races. (Orions, Nausicaans, Gorn).
Polaron Beams are blue !!!!!!
Longer maximum engagement ranges. 20-30 km.
Borg get their very own graviton weapons, to avoid the "lol plasma weapons" issue.
Oh yeah, and I definately wouldn't have introduced ships that will roast your standart KDF/ Fed crews. :P
Fixed Exploration before adding in "starbases"
Given KDF 1-25 content
Gone straight for the one galaxy to rule them all idea. (excessive loading screens is what drove a lot of my friends away)
I really like your ideas, but I have a question for you: How does manning a station on the bridge pan out in terms of gameplay? As in, how do you do it?
Remove the current "tutorial". Makes zero sense to be fighting the Borg so early in the game. Replace with Starfleet Academy Training tutorial. Involving Klingons, as that's the first race/faction you are dealing with right out of the tutorial.
Remove ship command except for captain rank or above(I understand you can "command" a ship earlier in rank, but even they are called "captain" when in command). All early missions are given by a command rank NPC aboard a starship to which your character has been assigned(choose one of three captains to serve under at academy graduation, command, engineering, medical).
Once you reach captain rank, you get your first command(makes having a ship all that much more impressive). Before that the only way to get around the galaxy is to charter a transport. After captain rank, all your missions come from Starfleet Command. Follows a general storyline progression to show the change of the galaxy as you complete missions. Allow for mission failure. Wouldn't have much impact, but would appear on your "record" that others may or may not have access to. Could be dependant on rank on if others have access to this record.
Actual warp travel. No sector map. Choose your warp speed, then warp out. And actually be at warp for a time based upon warp speed set. Make very rare warp encounters. While at warp you have a rare chance of being intercepted, attacked, or contacted. The longer at warp, the higher the chance. So you can zip about at warp 9 to get there faster, but you may miss some of the special encounters. Attack encounters have a chance to bring you out of warp to continue the fight. While at warp, phasers are disabled(described on-screen as not working at warp).
Random encounter boarding action by faction of who's space you are in or closest to. Rare, don't need to be fending off the Breen every two minutes.
Keep the Foundry, but restrict it to characters of Admiral rank(any admiral rank). Call it, admirals giving out missions to other players. All ranks can access foundry missions, but only admirals can create them.
Do away with this Klingon war rubbish. You want a war make the opposing faction one that makes sense. The Cardassians for one, they are always stirring up trouble even when they are talking peace. The Romulans for another(if you "really" want an opposing race with a cloak). They too are stirring up trouble behind everyone's backs, sometimes even their own. If you REALLY want a pure PvP playable faction, the Borg. They don't need a story, only way to level up, through PvP. Makes perfect sense as they are the only race at odds with everyone.
PVP
Restrict cross faction PvP to only max level. Would really make little impact to the game now as that's where most if not all of the cross faction PvP happens any way.
Better maps and play modes. Like boarding party. The attackers are trying to take over a ship, the defenders are trying to stop them. Timed map, the defenders must hold the ship for.. Ten minutes? Can be extended to included space maps(an invasion of sorts?) and planet based ground maps. Would break canon slightly as the Federation doesn't "invade" persay, but only being defenders would get boring after a while so give them a chance to be the attackers. Deathmatch(last person standing wins). Team deathmatch, capture the flag, you know, the standards. But expand the map selection.
GENERAL
Larger maps, much larger. Give the player "real" exploration instead of cramming everyone into a 25 foot by 25 foot box. Don't give me that the technology can't handle it, Star Wars Galaxies did it and handled it just fine. And speaking of Star Wars Galaxies...
The player can create a homestead on their home planet. Have the option of crafting or buying a house, find an open plot of land and set up a homestead. That's assuming that you don't plan to make your ship your home. On your ship, you have quarters that you can decorate. And not a predefined, cookie cutter, place your seven most valued trophies here. Actually be able to place items, even in the middle of your floor if you like. Number of items dependent on room size, which in turn is dependent on rank. A captain will have a larger room than an ensign, and an admiral would have diplomatic sized quarters. As for the houses and land, as the player base expands, would open other worlds for player colonization. May even create special worlds where members of opposing factions can set up camp together. Like the Demilitarized Zone with Federation and Cardassian colonists.
Federation starships would not have cloaking devices. Federation ground troops would not have cloaking devices. Ships designed in alternate timelines would not exist(sorry, no Galaxy-X with phaser lance of doom and cloaking device).
Starships would adopt a "kit" system. You would have a core which would be the stats and whatnot and you could unlock pieces of other ships through gameplay. Allowing you to create kitbashes. Can ONLY be changed/upgraded at a designated shipyard. Same with weapons and other ship based equipment.
And for the love of god, stop trying to push the technology envelope. Focus less on "pretty" and more on "entertaining".
That's all I can think of for now. I'm sure many of you will disagree with much of what I would have done.
It would require some out of the box thinking to make each station be fun to play on. But I think it could be done. For sure it would not be easy from a development standpoint.
I sort of envision it like when you sit down at the station, you go into a first person view, where you see all the controls laid out in front of you, and you can look up at the viewscreen, or at another officer to converse with them. The captain gives orders, and when they concern your station, you carry them out. Beyond just the station, if your an engineer you might be asked to go to engineering or some part of the ship to fix things. You might coordinate or lead damage control teams. If your a security officer, you're might repel boarding parties or secure prisoners. If you're a helm officer you might be asked to pilot a shuttle, etc.
These two contradict each other. Tutorial would have to be at the starting planet/zone or the player wouldn't know how to get to SFA.
Centurion maximus92
12th Legion, Romulan Republic
12th Fleet
=\/= ================================ =\/=
I would have kept in the concept of replacing lost crew while making it a bit harder to actually kill off the crew units. I would then have allowed players to buy Engineering, Tactical, and Science crew units and they would provide scaling bonuses depending on the percentage of crew assigned. So if you put in all Tactical crew you would receive 100% tactical bonuses but none of the engineering or science bonuses.
I would then have made the damage system integrated into the game as part of standard combat instead of as a death penalty.
Master using it and you can have this!
Be black on the right side. Add properly colored Cheron to the game today!
- First, disassociate "ranks" from "levels"
- Second, remove Sector Space
Raptr profile
People forget that PvP is the one feature / segment of gameplay within STO that has had less updates than the entire KDF Faction & Foundry combined and we've only gotten two updates to PvP about two years ago..
Yea it's been two years pretty much. Not long after launch they added the Shanty Town ground map, and then later the private challenge system which allowed for same faction pvp, cross faction grouping for pvp, and setting up your own pvp matches. Other than that, there have been no pvp updates in over two years. We did "almost" get a semi-open PvP zone with the KDF raids and it was even on Tribble for a short while but it had a lot of issues with spawn points and balance, it was removed and never touched on again.
I do like Trek stories, which is why I've enjoyed the FE's and story missions but as an mmorpg player as well as a die hard Trekkie, my heart lies within PvP, it's always been the true "end game" content since as players we can consume story missions, FE's and STFs far quicker than they can be made, and with Trek there's so many possibilities for PvP. It didn't even have to be real "fighting" it could have be holodeck simulations, or maybe some Trek "sports" like hoverball or parsies squares. (think Huttball from SWTOR, even people who disliked SWTOR often say Huttball was a lot of fun).
I would have supported PvP from day one. Especially after the Foundry came out, it'd be so easy to create PvP maps if we could just hook into game mechanics such as scoring and item placement. Especially since KDF was touted as the "PvP Faction" this would have greatly supplemented their content to level up rather than the same four or five PvP maps we've all played a million times already.
redshirtarmy.com - RedShirtArmy Podcast
STO / Cryptic member since 2009 (mavgeek)
Klingon would of been the year anniversary $20 expansion. All of that prelaunch developing time would of been used for the feds and game mechanics. We would of had that improved space, ship interiors, featured episode, basically almost everything we had at the 1 year mark at launch. Since we would not have to worry about the half made Klingon content. Make the fed "the stuff the shows, movies, and books centered around first."
Then at one year introduce a paid $20 or $25 Klingon expansion. A completed good quality expansion that the paying people still have to pay eXtra for. Don?t give away a half donkey one!! Your a business!! We are already paying tons of money for your stuff! Don?t you think we would of paid you for a good expansion?? Of course we would! Come on im a 12 year small bussiness and I know to sale sale sale.
Cryptic MMO Dress Shops is
Buy this dress, and get this half made Klingon hat for free. For free?? They ask. Yes just take it its not the best hat but we may sew some stuff on it later! Again for free. But don?t bother coming back to the store.. We are not selling anything else
J.T. Marsh MMO dress shop
Sale you a federation dress! Then sale the Klingon hat a year later, Year after sale the Romulan faction purse. Year 3?? That Gamma quad faction shoes. I want you to come back into the shop!
Gosh guys!! I love ya I really do!! Your my first mmo I ever bought!! I was 33 and retired from gaming when this came out and you got me to game again! Man I wish you were hiring a consulting markerting postion that I could just do over the phone a few hours a week! I would do it for pizza lol.
Add 360 to space combat I.e. barrel rolls, loops, etc.
Make ground combat less sucky. Halo or cod style is fine.
Eve style progreesion I.e. no ranks, power and equiptment is defined by money ( in starfleet, rank tokens or rsf loyalty tokens)
Eve feel- higher ups have rts ability (if they choose) and can send the lower level people on missions.
Add good rewards to pvp.
Make pvp less like nascar.
Fix the exchange.
Make the ai smarter, while removing all the lame op weps and replacing them with real equiptment.
Make all sets 4 or more pieces.
Wouldn't have let heretic leave (give him a raise
Would have actually listened to the player base.
Would not have sold my heart to the commy's.
Would not have put in lockboxes.
Would have ended fed/klink war.
would buff instead of nerf.
Did I miss anything?
This sig dedicated to the many random objects the Mythbusters crew has blow to smitherines
To Cryptic's credit, when they picked up the license to make STO in 2008 from CBS, they basically were given a two year time frame to make it, and ship it, otherwise CBS would pull the license from them. In which case we don't know if CBS would have shopped around for another developer, or just shelved the project again. Which would have been the second time because CBS had been interested in a Trek mmorpg since Everquest 1 became popular back in the day, and after Perpetual Entertainment's sham they were kind of wearily to jump into bed with another developer which is why there was basically a four year gap between Perpetual's license in 04' and Cryptic's in 08'
I'm not saying give them an entire free pass on letting the KDF lapse into this quasi mini-faction but building and putting out an mmorpg in two years time, even with an established engine, that's a good game which many of us still play years later? I'd say that's a Scotty-like miracle there. STO has it's flaws and problems, mainly on the business side of things but I don't it against them for trying to make magic out of nothing in two years, you have to admit they came pretty damn close with the time they had.
redshirtarmy.com - RedShirtArmy Podcast
STO / Cryptic member since 2009 (mavgeek)