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Territorial Warfare, Exploration, and Romulans
cavadus
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
One thing that is absolutely certain about this forum is that there are a lot of posters who advocate almost nothing but featured episodes.
While FEs are great (well, some more than others), FEs are not the answer to content in STO. In fact, FEs are a great way to do exactly the wrong thing which is single-consumption content.
No dev has ever kept up with single-consumption content. Not Trion Worlds, not Blizzard, not BioWare; no one. It is and will always be a losing proposition.
Replayable systems, the sand which makes the sandbox, are sustainable content alternatives. The Duty Officer system and, to a much lesser extent, fleet starbases are excellent examples of this.
So the point I'm trying to make here is that to create self-sustaining content we need three things:
1) Factions that aren't the Federation.
Specifically, finish the KDF for once and all and then get the Romulans in ASAP. Real factions that new players can create characters in starting at level 1.
2) Exploration
The Foundry is great, isn't it? And (cluster) exploration sucks, doesn't it? Take the best the Foundry has to offer and integrate those missions into cluster exploration. Obviously not all missions would work, and some would require some tweaking, but Foundry content is excellent Cryptic has an Army of content creators who work for free. Cluster exploration would be the best utilization of Foundry content, hands down. It would get non-Foundry players into Foundry missions while simultaneously making cluster exploration more than just the handful of awful mission templates we have now.
The Foundry is the future of exploration.
3) Territorial Warfare (PvP)
The game has no PvP to speak of right now. PvP has only gotten worse since launch. With a complete KDF and a shiny new RSE faction the way for territorial control PvP is paved. A three-way war with shifting borders, planets, systems, entire sectors (to a point) switching hands. A real war, the one we've always deserved and that the game used to talk about. This would be an excellent place to incorporate fleet starbases.
While FEs are great (well, some more than others), FEs are not the answer to content in STO. In fact, FEs are a great way to do exactly the wrong thing which is single-consumption content.
No dev has ever kept up with single-consumption content. Not Trion Worlds, not Blizzard, not BioWare; no one. It is and will always be a losing proposition.
Replayable systems, the sand which makes the sandbox, are sustainable content alternatives. The Duty Officer system and, to a much lesser extent, fleet starbases are excellent examples of this.
So the point I'm trying to make here is that to create self-sustaining content we need three things:
1) Factions that aren't the Federation.
Specifically, finish the KDF for once and all and then get the Romulans in ASAP. Real factions that new players can create characters in starting at level 1.
2) Exploration
The Foundry is great, isn't it? And (cluster) exploration sucks, doesn't it? Take the best the Foundry has to offer and integrate those missions into cluster exploration. Obviously not all missions would work, and some would require some tweaking, but Foundry content is excellent Cryptic has an Army of content creators who work for free. Cluster exploration would be the best utilization of Foundry content, hands down. It would get non-Foundry players into Foundry missions while simultaneously making cluster exploration more than just the handful of awful mission templates we have now.
The Foundry is the future of exploration.
3) Territorial Warfare (PvP)
The game has no PvP to speak of right now. PvP has only gotten worse since launch. With a complete KDF and a shiny new RSE faction the way for territorial control PvP is paved. A three-way war with shifting borders, planets, systems, entire sectors (to a point) switching hands. A real war, the one we've always deserved and that the game used to talk about. This would be an excellent place to incorporate fleet starbases.
Post edited by cavadus on
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Territorial warfare would need quite a bit of foundational work and would require a lot of logistical and technological problem solving to make work but would have a huge payoff. It would be the most substantial thing achieved yet in STO but would help it lead a long life. You could imagine Cryptic being curators of this and other replayable modes with much of the PvE content being shared by the community, making STO as much a Star Trek storytelling platform as an MMORPG.
Cryptic has done some great things with STO, but there's a lot of work to do with limited resources and they need to work smart, not necessarily hard.
Yes please.
It should be the focus of the next seasons
R.I.P
I'd like to see Military influence (active conflict or at least resources), Political influence, Economic influence, Cultural influence, Technological influence, and Espionage (spying, sabotage, etc.) affecting the other five.
I do like how one other game has missions you can undertake to buff your side or debuff your enemies in PVP. Seeing something similar would be interesting.
Another game lets players take on the role of normally PVE enemies to go after other players. A good player ought be more interesting than fighting the boring ol' AI.
Nice ideas!
My blog! Zen|Dilithium tracking on Thursdays
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As a lifetime member of STO, I officially became a financial liability as of April 2012 when compared to a subscriber.
Completely agree, in an ideal situation both avenues could be used simultaneously (FEs and sandbox elements).
I do have a concern though. The recent temporal doff assignments are tied to an item from a lockbox, is this the shape of things to come for the doff system? We already know just how monetized the starbases are.