What I do is treat the game as a "Create your own Star Trek" game. It's about my crew and my ship. Don't worry about what others are flying, they don't exist. If a story mission doesn't make sense just pretend it never happened in your story. Like Divide et Impera, that never happened as far as I'm concerned. (Okay yeah, I know I harp on that mission a whole lot, but I'll continue to do so until that mission is changed or scrapped. I hate it that much.)
*cough*Anyways when it comes to story inaccuracies or explanations that I find lacking, I just make something else up more to my liking. Immersion means different things to different people, so if you're looking to Cryptic to enhance your vision of immersion, you will be disappointed. Take it into your own hands and go nuts with whatever RP you can imagine. And by RP I don't mean sitting around on Drozana with Orion strippers. I typically don't RP with anyone at all. I keep my stories and adventures all to myself. I can tell you that both my own vision of immersion as well as my enjoyment of the game has significantly increased since I started doing this. I recommend it to anyone else wanting more immersion.
After playing STO for some time now, I'm beginning to feel that the game no longer has the authentic "Star Trek" feel to it. The end-game character progression is rather unfocussed; it feels like being the saviour of the galaxy is the new ordinary. This wouldn't be a problem if it was a single-player game - but when everyone is the same hero, it feels a bit artificial.
My captain is an elite special forces commando, yet also a Vice Admiral of Starfleet (commanding... only his own ship, huh?). Every man and his dog is flying with the latest-and-greatest starship straight out of research & development - looking like it's been half assimilated by the Borg - or even inexplicably "captured" ships belonging to the Federation's long-standing enemies. It doesn't feel like battles are won through cunning strategy or bravery - just by whoever has the shiniest gear.
TL;DR: I'm looking for suggestions for ways to make the game immersive again. Is it in Foundry missions? I've tried a couple; some were ok, some weren't so thrilling. The thought of using inferior ships/equipment is rather conflicting, between the desire to make progress efficiently and the desire to make things feel (relatively) more believable. At least the Fleet Retrofits are a step in the right direction there.
Edit: The whole travel/exploration mechanic is pretty mundane as well. It doesn't feel like the great unknown, and the star cluster missions are horrendously boring and very clearly using recycled props.
Alas, that is typical in terms of "end game" for many MMO. You have your story while you "grind" to max level (I put grind in quote since there are people like me who actually READ each story and enjoy it)
MMO usually put each player as part of the "central figure" of sort, so they feel "special" you don't want to be "grunt 2034" or something like that.
It would be interesting on "adaptive story". You got a mission but later got "Oh nevermind, Player Z just finish it for us so sorry!'
Originally Posted by lan451
What I do is treat the game as a "Create your own Star Trek" game. It's about my crew and my ship. Don't worry about what others are flying, they don't exist. If a story mission doesn't make sense just pretend it never happened in your story. Like Divide et Impera, that never happened as far as I'm concerned. (Okay yeah, I know I harp on that mission a whole lot, but I'll continue to do so until that mission is changed or scrapped. I hate it that much.)
*cough*Anyways when it comes to story inaccuracies or explanations that I find lacking, I just make something else up more to my liking. Immersion means different things to different people, so if you're looking to Cryptic to enhance your vision of immersion, you will be disappointed. Take it into your own hands and go nuts with whatever RP you can imagine. And by RP I don't mean sitting around on Drozana with Orion strippers. I typically don't RP with anyone at all. I keep my stories and adventures all to myself. I can tell you that both my own vision of immersion as well as my enjoyment of the game has significantly increased since I started doing this. I recommend it to anyone else wanting more immersion.
I've followed this thread for a while and the player above has made the effort to create his own framework within the sandbox to have a more "Star Trek experience". I wrote a quick post somewhere in the back about expanding the experience with likeminded players. How could you do that using the existing content?
I think that the Starbase model is a good starting point. You have managed to locate a group of players who have similar interests and want to share a roleplaying experience in the Star Trek universe. Congratulations, but where do you go from there?
Consider Challenger Station (or any other name you come up with that's better than the off the top of my head name I pulled). Your starbase sits in a reasonable location to indicate it borders Klingon space. Imagine a DS9 style "hub"/frontier outpost as the central location constant in your rpg.
If you have multiple players with multiple characters it might be nice to chose one character among them as a principle. This is your pet character considered integral to the stories you participate in. He/She is a Sisko/Janeway/down to a Worf or Geordi who is unlikely to die. Television is pretty wonderful for producing implausible reasons for survival and sci fi even more so. The remainder of your characters (alts) could be supporting cast. A small group of players with 4 characters share a "cast" of 4 principals and 12 supporting roles. These characters futures could be more uncertain. By mutual agreement they could be subject to permanent death. Ideally these deaths would be used to advance stories the players mutually enjoy. Nobody likes it when characters on their fave shows die without purpose. With the charcter unlock function it is possible to have a stable of character actors in reserve. Rather than deleting the permanently dead take them to the tailor and give them a rename; If the stations Chief Engineer bought it a new one will have to posted in as a replacement.
It would probably be necessary to have a guiding hand developing major story arcs and plots. If you already formed your roleplaying fleet have a look around at the members. Someone in that group has to like storytelling as much or more as they do "acting" . The GM (yeah, I guess it is a gamemaster) could have their own character slots as a closet of NPCs.
Some people like war with the KDF, some do not. If you ever wanted space combat to feel more personal have an associate kdf fleet so you can engage them in PvP. If you wanted both sides to command vintage or period ships you could. Your time period in fleet could be dictated by the members. If you were good with 2409 you could use vintage engagements as flashbacks or temporal incidents.
To reiterate there is an immersive experience waiting to be had but you will have to work for it.
What I do is treat the game as a "Create your own Star Trek" game. It's about my crew and my ship. Don't worry about what others are flying, they don't exist. If a story mission doesn't make sense just pretend it never happened in your story. Like Divide et Impera, that never happened as far as I'm concerned. (Okay yeah, I know I harp on that mission a whole lot, but I'll continue to do so until that mission is changed or scrapped. I hate it that much.)
Good advice. I often am scolded for doing so. "Too much time on exchange", "You haven't done all the story missions!?", "What do you think about the new ____? [I don't care.] '-_-' reply.", etc...
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] If your post is anything like, "I have a sandwich so you can't be starving" it's time to rethink posting. ~thlaylierah
So realistically, you only need to have the exact number of doffs that you need. ~leadme2kirk
I think the main issue with this game is that Cryptic have always tried to treat it like any other MMO. In my opinion you cannot always treat a game like Star Trek Online, just like any other MMO. I remember in a recent interview Stahl even said that games like Bridge Commander & Starfleet Command influenced this game and when I sit back and look at this game as a whole, I can't see any influence at all.
If that was the case, when targeting an enemy we would have a list of the status of all their subsystems over their ship picture and any ship regardless of class would be able to target different ship systems. The AI in combat wouldn't have hundreds of ship with insane amounts of hull, but would include less enemy ships with smarter AI which were able to use all their abilities like we do.
There are many things I could list, but at the end of the day if Stahl is honestly going to sit there and tell me that Starfleet Command / Bridge Commander has influenced this game, then I'd like to start seeing some results that show it.
Comments
this is exactly what i do
Alas, that is typical in terms of "end game" for many MMO. You have your story while you "grind" to max level (I put grind in quote since there are people like me who actually READ each story and enjoy it)
MMO usually put each player as part of the "central figure" of sort, so they feel "special" you don't want to be "grunt 2034" or something like that.
It would be interesting on "adaptive story". You got a mission but later got "Oh nevermind, Player Z just finish it for us so sorry!'
Please review my campaign and I'll return the favor.
I've followed this thread for a while and the player above has made the effort to create his own framework within the sandbox to have a more "Star Trek experience". I wrote a quick post somewhere in the back about expanding the experience with likeminded players. How could you do that using the existing content?
I think that the Starbase model is a good starting point. You have managed to locate a group of players who have similar interests and want to share a roleplaying experience in the Star Trek universe. Congratulations, but where do you go from there?
Consider Challenger Station (or any other name you come up with that's better than the off the top of my head name I pulled). Your starbase sits in a reasonable location to indicate it borders Klingon space. Imagine a DS9 style "hub"/frontier outpost as the central location constant in your rpg.
If you have multiple players with multiple characters it might be nice to chose one character among them as a principle. This is your pet character considered integral to the stories you participate in. He/She is a Sisko/Janeway/down to a Worf or Geordi who is unlikely to die. Television is pretty wonderful for producing implausible reasons for survival and sci fi even more so. The remainder of your characters (alts) could be supporting cast. A small group of players with 4 characters share a "cast" of 4 principals and 12 supporting roles. These characters futures could be more uncertain. By mutual agreement they could be subject to permanent death. Ideally these deaths would be used to advance stories the players mutually enjoy. Nobody likes it when characters on their fave shows die without purpose. With the charcter unlock function it is possible to have a stable of character actors in reserve. Rather than deleting the permanently dead take them to the tailor and give them a rename; If the stations Chief Engineer bought it a new one will have to posted in as a replacement.
It would probably be necessary to have a guiding hand developing major story arcs and plots. If you already formed your roleplaying fleet have a look around at the members. Someone in that group has to like storytelling as much or more as they do "acting" . The GM (yeah, I guess it is a gamemaster) could have their own character slots as a closet of NPCs.
Some people like war with the KDF, some do not. If you ever wanted space combat to feel more personal have an associate kdf fleet so you can engage them in PvP. If you wanted both sides to command vintage or period ships you could. Your time period in fleet could be dictated by the members. If you were good with 2409 you could use vintage engagements as flashbacks or temporal incidents.
To reiterate there is an immersive experience waiting to be had but you will have to work for it.
My sentiments exactly. If you don't mind, I'm going to regularly use that quote from now on.
If your post is anything like, "I have a sandwich so you can't be starving" it's time to rethink posting. ~thlaylierah
Good advice. I often am scolded for doing so. "Too much time on exchange", "You haven't done all the story missions!?", "What do you think about the new ____? [I don't care.] '-_-' reply.", etc...
If your post is anything like, "I have a sandwich so you can't be starving" it's time to rethink posting. ~thlaylierah
If that was the case, when targeting an enemy we would have a list of the status of all their subsystems over their ship picture and any ship regardless of class would be able to target different ship systems. The AI in combat wouldn't have hundreds of ship with insane amounts of hull, but would include less enemy ships with smarter AI which were able to use all their abilities like we do.
There are many things I could list, but at the end of the day if Stahl is honestly going to sit there and tell me that Starfleet Command / Bridge Commander has influenced this game, then I'd like to start seeing some results that show it.