Bridge Commander... Bridge Commander is a better Star Trek Game by MILES... Then STO. If we had that style of combat, making the larger ships seem big and powerful, not firing as often and the smaller vessels weaker and flying in and out, it would be a better game.
it CAN be done because Activision did it twice, both Bridge commander AND Starfleet Command III
Cryptic are just too lazy to make this game exceptional, that is all.
The people at Cryptic are not lazy, in fact many of their staff are quite passionate about Star Trek in general and STO in particular. From the get-go, Cryptic was not permitted the time required to produce the game they wanted to make. Everyone knew that the game had to launch long before it was ready due to the licensing contract. This is why STO today is the game it is today.
Bridge Commander... Bridge Commander is a better Star Trek Game by MILES... Then STO. If we had that style of combat, making the larger ships seem big and powerful, not firing as often and the smaller vessels weaker and flying in and out, it would be a better game.
it CAN be done because Activision did it twice, both Bridge commander AND Starfleet Command III
Cryptic are just too lazy to make this game exceptional, that is all.
It's always great when someone feels that their opinion is THE ONLY OPINION...and anyone else who thinks otherwise is wrong.
Most of the EQ2 quests are the same template with randomized dialog, locations, and mobs. As with STO, the randomization occurs before they're placed into the game, not on the fly.
One of the last patch notes in Open Beta was when they added in 800+ more Exploration missions to flesh out that system. They're randomized, then a content person goes in and fixes the mess that creates to make something more playable. You think the problems with anomalies and mission objectives being under the ground and boffs falling through holes in the geometry are bad now? It'd be a thousand times worse without that developer pass.
The only thing you are accomplishing here is proving that you don't know anything about any other game.
You may also notice in that video a certain phenomenon: only the highlighted action-centered ships are shooting.
You have entire scenes with many large cruisers simply floating by and doing nothing with only the ships with focus on them doing the shooting.
This is done because had they all been continuously shooting as they would, as is expected during a battle, you WILL see nothing but a cloud of colourful weapon fire all around and that would obscure the action the director wished to center focus upon.
As such, this doesn't reinforce your point.
The real argument here is realism versus gameplay.
Duh... no it's not. You are simply expecting all fictional battles to look like the Star Wars Prequels, those weapons was what was shown on the show, thus that's what the ships were equipped with, and thus thats what's canon.
Star Trek has never been truly realistic, and never will, that's no fun so don't bring it up.
Your point about the director wanting to focus the action also proves my point as that's what the endgame battles lack that the early game battles have! Your weapons, loadouts, adversaries, and limitations are all very clearly laid on the table. You will never see people rainbow boating at T1-T2.
Seconded. Improving the AI would go a long way to make the game more engaging, especially if it could analyze and adapt to your tactics.
Adaptational AI may be a bit more than what we're capable of, but I would really like to see mobs that time torpedo salvos, use ramming speed, abandon ship, attempt to retreat, gang up on a specific target, make attack runs, that sort of thing.
Shuttle/fighter missions provide this type of gameplay, without disrupting the level scale of starships or inserting any strange workarounds mentioned above. Unfortunately, there's only 3 missions for shuttles, 2 of which are fairly tedious and the third of which (Vault Shuttle Event) is pointless to play when chasing bunnies in a meadow on New Romulus provides 20 times the reward. You can't even create foundry content for shuttles, afaik. But that's the obvious solution, if you're looking for a break from the rock fight that is space STFs. Sometimes I feel like I'm piloting a needlessly complicated disruptor turret.
The difference between STO combat and canon combat is that in the series there was almost no combat. Most of the show was conversation, discussion, with a few minutes of action (single torpedo shots, phaser blasts) - even the Dominion War in DS9 was really only a few short cutscene battles.
If you look at the longer canon battles (Movie 2, Movie 6, Movie 8-10, and a couple notes from DS9 and Voyager), it's obvious that in order to make STO more "canon" they would either need to substantially increase the amount of hull, or substantially decrease the power of all weapons. They'd also need to diminish the number of weapons ships have (no Defiants with Quad Phaser Cannons and three Double Phaser Cannons, for a total of 10 forward facing cannons).
For easy proof: how many torpedoes did the Enterprise-E take from Shinzon's warship? How many torpedoes did the Enterprise-A take from the bird of prey? Ignore Generations, that ish is ridiculous. Ships, when damaged, should feel that damage - list, weakened systems, etc.
But, of course, gamers wouldn't really like that. It makes it difficult to play. Diplomacy is boring and slow in a game like this, in which the environments - specifically ship interiors - are constantly jarring by being way, way too big. I think what we're left with is a very enjoyable game, but I think unless they retcon everyone back to Commander/Captain (or do something more logical, in which levels are a universal system and ranks are a Fleet-internal system once you get to Commander or Captain), the Endgame will always feel unrealistic. And unless weapon damage drops by a factor of 10, or hull increases proportionally, or bridge officers act on their own during space battles, the endgame battles will always feel like a click away from victory.
Edit: TL;DR: People wouldn't really want to play a realistic Star Trek Online. Diplomacy is hella slow. Compared to canon, ships are too weak and weapons are too strong as a whole. The existence of Bridge Skills adds a specifically gamey element to combat, and so it'll never really feel like watching Star Trek.
I will have to admit that the "early game" is much more relaxing and immersive than endgame content.
In endgame, once you have the equipment, things become quite easy (boring?) - but it's neither relaxing nor immersive: It's frantic button mashing - at least in space - ground is fine in that regard.
In endgame, once you have the equipment, things become quite easy (boring?) - but it's neither relaxing nor immersive: It's frantic button mashing - at least in space - ground is fine in that regard.
I agree, though with ground you have a bunch of really flashy abilities that completely obscure the screen. :rolleyes:
someone actually complaining that you gain new abilities as you level up, i've seen it all
But do you need them? Do you really need 5 ways to increase your damage? Do you really need 4 ways to increase your turn rate? 6 ways to heal yourself? 4 ways to heal others? 5 to make yourself go faster? 50 different guns?
Every combat mission given enough time just devolves into mindless twitchy button mashing. I'm okay with gaining new abilities, but theres a certain point where the power saturation just becomes too much, and there's no room to experiment or improvise.
Comments
The people at Cryptic are not lazy, in fact many of their staff are quite passionate about Star Trek in general and STO in particular. From the get-go, Cryptic was not permitted the time required to produce the game they wanted to make. Everyone knew that the game had to launch long before it was ready due to the licensing contract. This is why STO today is the game it is today.
It's always great when someone feels that their opinion is THE ONLY OPINION...and anyone else who thinks otherwise is wrong.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The only thing you are accomplishing here is proving that you don't know anything about any other game.
Duh... no it's not. You are simply expecting all fictional battles to look like the Star Wars Prequels, those weapons was what was shown on the show, thus that's what the ships were equipped with, and thus thats what's canon.
Star Trek has never been truly realistic, and never will, that's no fun so don't bring it up.
Your point about the director wanting to focus the action also proves my point as that's what the endgame battles lack that the early game battles have! Your weapons, loadouts, adversaries, and limitations are all very clearly laid on the table. You will never see people rainbow boating at T1-T2.
Adaptational AI may be a bit more than what we're capable of, but I would really like to see mobs that time torpedo salvos, use ramming speed, abandon ship, attempt to retreat, gang up on a specific target, make attack runs, that sort of thing.
If you look at the longer canon battles (Movie 2, Movie 6, Movie 8-10, and a couple notes from DS9 and Voyager), it's obvious that in order to make STO more "canon" they would either need to substantially increase the amount of hull, or substantially decrease the power of all weapons. They'd also need to diminish the number of weapons ships have (no Defiants with Quad Phaser Cannons and three Double Phaser Cannons, for a total of 10 forward facing cannons).
For easy proof: how many torpedoes did the Enterprise-E take from Shinzon's warship? How many torpedoes did the Enterprise-A take from the bird of prey? Ignore Generations, that ish is ridiculous. Ships, when damaged, should feel that damage - list, weakened systems, etc.
But, of course, gamers wouldn't really like that. It makes it difficult to play. Diplomacy is boring and slow in a game like this, in which the environments - specifically ship interiors - are constantly jarring by being way, way too big. I think what we're left with is a very enjoyable game, but I think unless they retcon everyone back to Commander/Captain (or do something more logical, in which levels are a universal system and ranks are a Fleet-internal system once you get to Commander or Captain), the Endgame will always feel unrealistic. And unless weapon damage drops by a factor of 10, or hull increases proportionally, or bridge officers act on their own during space battles, the endgame battles will always feel like a click away from victory.
Edit: TL;DR: People wouldn't really want to play a realistic Star Trek Online. Diplomacy is hella slow. Compared to canon, ships are too weak and weapons are too strong as a whole. The existence of Bridge Skills adds a specifically gamey element to combat, and so it'll never really feel like watching Star Trek.
In endgame, once you have the equipment, things become quite easy (boring?) - but it's neither relaxing nor immersive: It's frantic button mashing - at least in space - ground is fine in that regard.
He's dead, Jim.
I agree, though with ground you have a bunch of really flashy abilities that completely obscure the screen. :rolleyes:
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But do you need them? Do you really need 5 ways to increase your damage? Do you really need 4 ways to increase your turn rate? 6 ways to heal yourself? 4 ways to heal others? 5 to make yourself go faster? 50 different guns?
Every combat mission given enough time just devolves into mindless twitchy button mashing. I'm okay with gaining new abilities, but theres a certain point where the power saturation just becomes too much, and there's no room to experiment or improvise.