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XP points - not very Starfleet?
isthisscience
Member Posts: 863 Arc User
While working through some naval-gazing text for a foundry mission, I was thinking about the way STO as a whole is constructed to character advancement. Aside from completing entire missions, XP and drops are a reward for killing (or, to be exact, killing or stunning) sentient lifeforms. You don't get such rewards for completing dialogue, diplomatic discussions and such forth. Fine for Klingons, but for Starfleet the current set-up makes it more profitable to start a fight that to talk your way out of it. You get XP for every body that hits the floor plus a variety of loot. What do you get for helping a little old lady across the road?
Picard would certainly not approve.
But then again, maybe this is how it should be? After all, in the 24th century we work to better ourselves, and the rest of humanity. Not pursue personal wealth. Perhaps the fact that the right thing isn't rewarded is exactly what Starfleet is all about. You have to forget about the reward, the XP, the loot, the advantages to yourself because understanding Roddenberry's message is about living it. Once you say "no, I'd rather take the moral satisfaction that innocent lives were saved rather than have that tachyon beam array mk xii" then you are, regardless of rank, a true Starfleet captain.
</pseudo philosophical rant>
Picard would certainly not approve.
But then again, maybe this is how it should be? After all, in the 24th century we work to better ourselves, and the rest of humanity. Not pursue personal wealth. Perhaps the fact that the right thing isn't rewarded is exactly what Starfleet is all about. You have to forget about the reward, the XP, the loot, the advantages to yourself because understanding Roddenberry's message is about living it. Once you say "no, I'd rather take the moral satisfaction that innocent lives were saved rather than have that tachyon beam array mk xii" then you are, regardless of rank, a true Starfleet captain.
</pseudo philosophical rant>
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You are living in a culture where one of the best selling games of all time was about shooting cops and murdering prostitutes. Yes the society of game players we live in think this is a good time. So the idealistic future Gene Rodenberry imagined in a game for today simply would not sell.
It would be great to have missions culturally based around events of today that had solutions where not a shot had to be fired. (But where is the fun in that) War is a popular and easy way to engage your players to take side and nothing is easier to program than a fire button.
However there is one bright hope in this game that I have not seen in any other. It is the Foundry.
In there real Star Trek Fans, not the "lets make money off the Star Trek name" Developers can crate any mission they can dream up. Some I have played are very intelligent and much more along the lines of Rodenberry?s vision. Even engaging in moral choices where there is no good answer.
There is a YouTube channel that has really good suggestions for building games that are more about thinking and killing. Extra Creditz
I would suggest anyone that feels as the OP does to watch those videos then see what you can do with the Foundry.
As real Star Trek Fan we have a chance here to change the ideas of this game from the inside.
I see your Grand Theft Auto and raise you the fact that The Sims is the highest selling video game franchise of all time, and it not only doesn't glorify, but punishes, violence. It has outsold the GTA franchise by nearly 3:1.
Heck, even Gran Turismo has outsold GTA on the PS2.
Not to mention the golden days of adventure games - Myst, Journeyman Project, LucasArts series, etc. All *mostly* nonviolent.
Yes, but GTA is working on its 5th game while The Sims has 3 games, but there are a ton of expansions for each one that is the same price of the main game. More games released compared to GTA.
^this!^ Qft!
I see your Sims and raise you Mario and Pokemon. Mario and Pokemon are actually the two top selling franchise, Sims is third. Pokemon has fighting, but it is a competition, more like a sport, then actually fighting.
Fully agree with you here. I still spend more time in SL than anything else and still load up Portal 2 from time to time. However it's not what the (not gamers) people with the money see as something that will make them more money, thus you get 5 versions of GTA and 3 of the Sims... And don't me started on Call of Juarez: The Cartel.
I agree there are massive limitations with the Foundry. However it's the first game in a game where you can create content that's played by all other players of the game. This is a chance for real ST fans to create all kinds of game play.
I'm currently trying to figure out how to create a story game similar in construction to Myst (AKA puzzle solving) that ends with a hard non black and white choice. I've only had the chance to get through the training vids so it's pretty primitive but the more I'm learning the more ideas for a puzzle type game.
I will be offering suggestions through the forum's once I have a good idea how exactly they can improve the game making process. Currently I'm looking for a way to make the mission fail without blowing up your ship.
This is a good example of a choice with consequences that are missing from missions in STO. Programming this in the Foundry would be very hard at this time but I do think if asked for the programmers could find a way.
And XP isn't even being given to you as a reward. This is a game system used to quantify the improvement of a character's abilities as they hone their skills. This is you learning, not you getting paid by the headcount.
There was no advantage or upper hand on the Borg in 'QWho'. Those phaser blasts nicked the surface of the cube, they weren't massive blasts and none of the blasts penetrated into any vital systems. All they did was destroy a tractor beam emplacement. The borg didn't reengage the tractor beam from another emitter nor did they destroy the Enterprise for the same reason a cat likes to play with a mouse. Hell that's one of the things the away team learned from beaming over - when a borg drone walks past them unconcerned, Riker comments 'They either don't see us, or don't see us as a threat.' (emphasis mine) This is confirmed in dialogue in 'Best of Both Worlds part 1'. The borg cube is full of redundant power systems that kick in when the cube sustains damage. Over three quarters of the cube could be damaged before you would be able to mission-kill it, and an entire fleet of ships wasn't able to do that in 'Best of Both Worlds part 2'.
The borg outright tell Picard in 'QWho' that they've analysed his ship's defences as being unable to withstand them. In the same episode Picard throws photon torpedoes at them and they do no damage. Picard chose the opportunity to send an away team over to the cube to get intel on them rather than firing on them further. If he had instead decided to tell Worf to continue firing it would have been a futile gesture and at worst would have hastened the Borg to regenerate and deal with this troublesome ship in a more permanent fashion. At the very least, all that 'QWho' shows is that the cube was momentarily vulnerable to phasers, but at no point did the borg feel threatened or react against the Enterprise like they were a serious threat. Which suggests that the Enterprise couldn't have destroyed the cube even if Picard had wanted to.
EDIT And I forgot to mention, if running away from a superior threat was 'cowardly' then you have a weird definition of bravery. I'd rather my Captain was coward who ran away than a brave fool who would spend the lives of his crew on futile resistance. As it turned out, Picard made the right call to flee as the away team discovered the Borg weren't damaged but regenerating, and that they hadn't been neutralised at all but were still a threat. Hell, as soon as the Enterprise warped away the borg cube started pursuit, at faster than the Enterprise's top speed, whilst damaged! Picard made the right call, and by doing so he saved his ship and his crew and gave Starfleet the head's-up warning it needed on this massive new threat.
*snip*
This was back when the Borg were a force of nature. The unstoppable doomsday force. You had the same chance of stopping them as you do stopping an F5 tornado.
THAT is what people fail to understand -- in STO they are little more than annoying zombies that can be slaughtered by the truckload. Heck you routinely slaughter a cube with FIVE ships then take out fleets of spheres... then a TACTICAL CUBE. Did I say five ships? 39 ships couldn't do that in Picard's time.
People complain about oneshotting but that is the true power of the Borg, as seen in FC and the DS9 pilot. Footage from BoBW shows ships that were FRAGMENTED and burned to a crisp.
Frankly that is no fun to play against -- but that's how they were originally written. Over time they became weak, and exploitable, and finally a single scout-ship on a three hour tour was able to smack them around on their home turf.
Its a tradeoff. In order to work in a game they have to be destructable, and exploitable and easy to overcome. As written however they were anything but.
Commendation XP represent your character improving in non combat skill, diplomacy, trade... Diplomacy XP is also earned during some conversations and choices. They will increase your diplomacy rank, which will open new conversations during some episodes, and new missions.
In ST, it would be like Picard earning XP when fighting the borg, and earning commendation XP when succesfully communicating with Dathon in Darmok.
I guess if I need to be constructivist in my point, I'd say that we need to see a wider array of how points and loot is allocated both in mainstream games and in the foundry. You should have far more opportunities for gaining XP by avoiding a combat situation, or diffusing tensions, than for engaging in hostile action. That option should be available in the foundry also, to specify certain events as being equal in accomplishment reward to eliminating a hostile group.
it's unfortunate that TNG has become the primary focus of Star Trek in people's eyes...I get that they were trying to show a peaceful people but when someone is shooting at you it's ok to shoot back.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
This goes back to "a rose by any other name...". You can claim it to be experience gained in combat, or whatever other name you want to, but here is the simpest way to view it.
1. Experience is necessary to rank/grade up, IE, to level.
2. Experience is NOT given for non-combat options.
3. Experience *IS* given for killing (I have yet to see a target stunned in an actual combat) an opponent.
What this means is that the only way to be rewarded with a promotion for hard work is to kill everything that isn't Federation in sight. That makes experience a reward for killing.
Regarding loot: Let's examine how we can acquire new, improved items.
1: Mission completion. Usually heavily based upon killing things.
2: Drop from combat. Requires that a player kill an enemy.
3: STF/Que reward. Requires that a player kill things.
4: Dilithium store. Requires dilithium, earned from missions revolving around killing things.
5: Exchange: Requires that someone else killed things to get the loot, and you killed things to get the EC to buy it.
So, if I want to refit my ship with improved weapons, say from photons to quantums, I must first go off and kill things, to make money, or dilithium, or to find them. Then I can install them.
Again... the entire reward system is based around killing. Offhand, I can't actually think of a single mission where there is no combat. Granted, in some the player or players are the defenders, rather than the aggressors, but the principle remains the same.
I would like to see some mechanics in place, and they wouldn't be hard for the devs to do, where a mission can have variable "mini-outcomes", based upon player standing, choices, etc, where you could, easily, if you choose, go through the entire mission without combat, and still be rewarded just as well as if you killed everything in sight.
Agree with the rest of this, but there are a few missions where there's "set phasers to stun" as part of the dialog. From where, we're supposed to believe that when they flop over they're just stunned.
Space: Sure, there should be more diplomatic chances, but a lot of the battles are against fanatics who aren't going to be talked down: Borg, Klingons, True Way. (Tal Shiar? Maybe, if they recognize it means their skins can be saved for another day.) Maybe a phase of an enemy being disabled (and not going to recover) where the weapons turn off automatically before the ships actually blow up would do it. But then the battle would be littered with these hulls floating about.
Ground: I found the ground mechanics far more disturbing than space. On the ground, my team's phasers should rarely be set to kill. Stun them, collect them up, and trade them back.
Borg granted, but all the others? What happened with the Romulan's in The Enemy? Cease fire almost lost, saved at last minute through diplomacy. In Ensigns of Command, did Picard stop the Sheliak from wiping out the colony through a lot of ground and space combat, or by finding an obscure paragraph of a treaty to create a 6 month delay?
On 'set phasers to sun', I always try to believe this but;
a) combat is still combat
b) when you blow up the enemy ship, were your phasers on stun then? Is that ship of several hundred lives going to wake up 5 minutes later in sickbay? No, and like Feds maybe there were families on board.
There are alternative ways to run game mechanics. Even games such as Dishonoured that is very violent still has an option to play through the entire game and develop your character without killing anyone. Sure you knock them out and stick them in a dumpster, but you don't have to orphan their children. Trek isn't about a string of combat scenarios, it's about peaceful, intelligent exploration, peacekeeping and characters. There needs ot be some better way to reward players who want the non-combat option and right now, that is just through the foundry but play a non-combat mission in the foundry and you miss out on a shed load of XP and loot.
As someone else said, why don't we take prisoners of war, and trade them back, perhaps as part of a prisoner exchange (possible mission here? Maybe I'll get to work in the foundry
For ship to ship combat, well, a completely "destroyed" ship doesnt need to explode, either, except for game mechanics :P It could be adrift with no power, life support, or possibility of repair, and players could have the option to save the enemy crew (again, this may or may not always be possible, feasible, or even a good idea, but hey, that's for a captain to decide, right?)
I guess my take is that while we may or may not agree that deadly force is always necessary, the player should have the option to decide, and to act accordingly.
One idea could be, and this would require mechanics changes, that the player could set a level, such as stun, kill, or maximum, and have things occur accordingly? Perhaps, with different mission progress points, as the outcome, storywise, is predetermined.
Frankly I could easily see my KDF officer killing on a whim. The Fed officer it is harder since the ship likely has civilians on-board, Starfleet morals and the peaceful nature of the Caitian race, but that's still a ship with a ton of people aboard that just blew up. Maybe some got to escape pods? Then I blow up, respawn and meh, doesn't matter.
There are ways to progress in the game without killing. Commendation ranks are very easy to obtain, with very little killing. (You'll have to complete a story mission or two before you get to lv7 and get your doffs.) Once you have your doffs, you can then focus solely on commendation ranks, and ignore combat all-together. Talk to the diplomacy corps guy in the admiral's office, and go on exploratory missions. Come across a planet/engagement that requires combat? Get out of red alert, warp out of system, and go look for another encounter that isn't hostile.
The fact is, you CAN avoid combat. Is it faster to just kill someone else and take their stuff? Duh, that's obvious. Will you feel more fulfilled for reaching Vice Admiral by scanning anomalies and meeting new races? That's determined on an individual basis.
The game does provide for both methods of play. You cant really complain that the developers aren't forcing the players to choose which path to take, because that wouldn't be much of a game.
You don't just spend on combat. Impulse engines, deflectors, uniforms etc. are all useful for non-combat actions.
Small bits, but if you want to get through the storyline you have no option but to defeat enemy group A & B before talking to the contact. There is no option to even try diplomacy are rarely to sneak around them. And who wants to play only doff missions?
Again, all those things are small side areas that provide no real rewards. Just take once glance at how other games do it and how it is possible to do it a different way. Yes for many it is not seen as important because they like blowing things up, but I think as something that calls itself Trek to have that option.
I think someone earlier mentioned this was an emphasis on TNG and Kirk would punch them. Think to the plot of the Corbomite Maneuver. That was a great episode where, as traditionally as always, Kirk bluffed his way out without needing to fire a shot and then made peace. He did not defeat 5 groups of increasingly powerful First Federation ships. Likewise, the Ultimate Computer, The Squire of Gothos, Devil in the Dark, Tholians Web, The Enterprise Incident, The Changeling, Spectre of the Gun all involved threatening aliens capable of destroying them and not a single one was defeated by firing phasers at them (though granted Squire of Gothos involved shooting a mirror). They were defeated through intelligence, compassion, cunning and bluffing.
Should their be missions where you never fire a weapon? Probably. However I'd think those missions would be boring as hell.
The Corbomite Maneuver is a cool episode but as an episode in an MMO it would involve the player clicking dialogue decisions. That doesn't sound like fun to me.
Which would sound like a better episode in the game:
An Episode based on Star Trek The Motion Picture or
An Episode based on Undiscovered Country???
Now I am not saying the story lines aren't due for an upgrade. Hell this game could add a few things to give it more of a Trek feel.
1) Have a mission take place on our ships? Nothing is more personal than someone trying to take over our ships
2) Make use of some of these planets. Wouldn't it be cool if I create a Vulcan captain and every time I set foot on Vulcan a specialized mission occurs?
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
I have to disagree, I don't shoot anyone by answering a lore question, or aiding a planet, or scanning consoles or some strange plant, nor does my Doffs do any killing and all that gives XP/expertise and I can make EC or dilitium off them all.
There are loads of story-centric, character driven foundry episodes with no shooting and I find them far more interesting than missions built around defeating the same tired bad guys over and over, including many Cryptic missions which can get very dull and 2D. I'm sure someone in CBS was moaning how the Corbomite Manouver would be a lot cooler if they actually had a fight scene.
I wasn't saying the actual episode was boring...it's not...just that as a game mission it would be.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
That being said it is a fair point that in sto you can also play as a Klingon and avoid the moral problem altogether.
It would be rather easy to fix this problem in sto. Instead of blowing up, non borg ships could be 'disabled' and fade form view much as stunned/killed enemies do on the ground.
Borg ships need to be killed because if they are not, their ship will be up and running in a couple minutes and back to shooting at you and assimilating people.
For my part, it's a game and "XP" should be awarded for various accomplishments. What doesn't make sense is to be awarded XP for DOffing. On the one hand, I (my Captain) makes the choice to send them on assignment; on the other hand *they* are doing the work. To me, the latter means the Captain should not get XP or SP for that matter. Since Doffing is an additional game within the main game (therefore a choice on the player to participate), then I think XP/SP rewards could be removed.
The XP awarded elsewhere by other means would become more relevant. Character progression would slow, but not by too much, I think. And players would only be able to gain levels through actual game-play versus proxy by DOffing.
More related to the discussion, MMOs are, by design, based on conflict. STO is centered on a galactic war. "Killing" is inevitable in that setting. The Federation would have to relax it's core principles because of war-time.