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Suggestion: Raising the level cap and Moving beyond 2409
foundrelic
Member Posts: 1,380 Arc User
So I had this idea that would allow the game to raise the level cap AND begin a time progression.
Feature episode starts up with your ship being called back to your factions homeworld, your ship is being assigned to investigate a dark matter nebula which has been exhibiting odd spikes of chroniton radiation.
As your ship enters the nebula you encounter a fleet of Tholian vessels. (Clear them and episode one is done, you report via subspace to your Commander and claim your reward).
Episode two has you delving deeper into the nebula to find a THolian station, ground and space combat with optionals and the whole nine yards. Ep 2 ends with the same as ep 1, report in, claim your reward.
Ep 3 you're ordered to investigate the strange planet found in the information pulled from the THolian base.
You approach to find the planet surrounded by ships of all factions all seemingly engaged in combat but frozen in place or "looping" by warping in/out exploding over and over again etc.
Your science officer, being one of the best of course they're YOUR science officer, finds a narrow passage through the temporal anomalies and allows you to reach the planet.
BEam down accomplish tasks (Locate the source of the chroniton radiation spikes and stop the temporal flux anomalies) and beam out.
Only YOU (Your captain) don't make it.
YOu're alone on a strange planet, new tasks pop up (Similar to the Arena mission, find food/water/shelter etc.)
After a brief cutscene showing you'd been marooned for about three days you receive a garbled transmission from your ship, FINALLY you get to leave.
You beam out and find your First officer has been promoted to Captain rank (Opening the ability to promote your BOFF's to captain) and that it's been Anything from a year to ten years since you were lost on the planet. The (Insert faction here) has worked with the other factions to secure the nebula from the THolians but at a high cost.
Mission completes and you get your reward, and called to start your first mission on the climb to the new level cap, you've got some catching up to do.
It needs polish but I think it could work.
Feature episode starts up with your ship being called back to your factions homeworld, your ship is being assigned to investigate a dark matter nebula which has been exhibiting odd spikes of chroniton radiation.
As your ship enters the nebula you encounter a fleet of Tholian vessels. (Clear them and episode one is done, you report via subspace to your Commander and claim your reward).
Episode two has you delving deeper into the nebula to find a THolian station, ground and space combat with optionals and the whole nine yards. Ep 2 ends with the same as ep 1, report in, claim your reward.
Ep 3 you're ordered to investigate the strange planet found in the information pulled from the THolian base.
You approach to find the planet surrounded by ships of all factions all seemingly engaged in combat but frozen in place or "looping" by warping in/out exploding over and over again etc.
Your science officer, being one of the best of course they're YOUR science officer, finds a narrow passage through the temporal anomalies and allows you to reach the planet.
BEam down accomplish tasks (Locate the source of the chroniton radiation spikes and stop the temporal flux anomalies) and beam out.
Only YOU (Your captain) don't make it.
YOu're alone on a strange planet, new tasks pop up (Similar to the Arena mission, find food/water/shelter etc.)
After a brief cutscene showing you'd been marooned for about three days you receive a garbled transmission from your ship, FINALLY you get to leave.
You beam out and find your First officer has been promoted to Captain rank (Opening the ability to promote your BOFF's to captain) and that it's been Anything from a year to ten years since you were lost on the planet. The (Insert faction here) has worked with the other factions to secure the nebula from the THolians but at a high cost.
Mission completes and you get your reward, and called to start your first mission on the climb to the new level cap, you've got some catching up to do.
It needs polish but I think it could work.
Post edited by foundrelic on
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Comments
There have been so many threads on 'raise the level cap!' but I've never heard a GOOD reason for actually doing so.
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
Frankly, I think we should be Captain all the way till 50. Then bring in the Flag ranks once we can control a 'fleet'.
And get rid of Admiral and General altogether, go with something less ostentatious:
Feds get Fleet Captain
Klinks get Brigadier
Roms get Star Commander
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/07/29/captains-log-interview-with-star-trek-onlines-daniel-stahl-p/
Come join the 44th Fleet.
startrek.44thfleet.com[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"End game only works when there's a lot to do..."
GRinding endlessly is not "A lot to do".
Level cap increase would include new story content which provide (However short thanks to the ridiculous ease of levelling) something to do beyond grinding marks/dilithium.
Hell I and I'm sure many others happen to be sitting on so much unrefined dilithium that with the 8k per day cap I can log in, refine and log out in a matter of minutes once a day FOR MONTHS and still have some left over.
I'm sick of running the same "Exciting endgame" content over and over again, PVP is terrible (My opinion).
The Romulan storyline was fantastic and if that kind of over arcing story could be applied to however many levels and missions are involved in the 51-?? It would be SOMETHING enjoyable.
Enough with the stagnation at end game. The grind can't be ignored anymore.
Grinding levels isn't something to do and to be honest isn't that great an idea since it's so easy to level in this game anyway. We don't need an arbitrary extra ten levels for more story content, change of the rank structure or anything else.
There is no point in making me grind an extra 10-20-30 levels to have me continue to grind STFs or what have you.
That it might but it should be in the game FIRST and should be more than a short story chain. It should be a lot of content that would justify a leap in both rank and level.
Get a gold subscription and it'll do it for you automatically, no need to log in. Yes there are many like that a friend of mine has several million Dilithium but it all goes on our fleet base.
Aren't we all, but I don't want to have to grind another ten levels or so for more story content that should have been put into the game anyway. Yes the Romulan Storyline was good, but any completion to that story could be done at current end game with no need for additional grinding for levels as well as marks and dilithium.
A level cap increase would be a band aid for the lack of available content and Cryptic know it, that's why they aren't doing anything about it yet. Really what you want is more end game content.
For those that say "we are admirals, we should act like admirals" Admirals fly desks in HQ buildings. I don't particularly want that in this game thanks. We should never have been made Admirals to begin with, more emphasis should have been placed upon lower officer ranks.
I agree with that. Beside, vice-admiral is actually the max rank in my country army, admiral is title given to some but is not a rank per se. And you address a vice-admiral as "admiral". So really, no more title. Rank must mean something. A rear-admiral can command a fleet, no problem if he is the officer with more senioriyt, actually that goes back to captain.
I don't like either the idea of a new level. True, I am against level. Though I like reputation system I do think that new "rank" should not improved directly your combat ability (ie no skill point or combat related pasive skill) but improve think like ability co command several ship, ability to form bigger team. The only skill I could accept is the ability to have cross skill (ie learn the skill of the other proffession, we are captain not the chef or the tactical officer), ability to force ennemy player into pvp, ability to move as a fleet on sector map, ability to retire and begin a civilian activity, bonus to Doff (like being a wine specialist will give bonus to the bartender activity). I try to think to non combat skill but hard to come by. We should brainstorm more on the subject.
Skanvak Drakken
http://lamaisondesdrakkens.clan-box.com/index.php
i think we need to start dealing with the iconians were already dealing with the tholians but its the iconians weve yet to deal with.
so i think the game needs to progress to a new year and begin dealing with the iconiansa whats the point of weaving a story about them when we never really face them and attempt to put a stop to them.
The Star Trek movies would like to have a word with you. The first 4 movies had Admiral Kirk command the Enterprise. There are other Admirals that took over a ship temporarily so Admirals are not about flying desks in HQ buildings. There is also a problem with having a bunch of high ranking officers in the same location. It is easier to plan the destruction of a building full of high ranking officers than it is to destroy a bunch of ships in different parts of the galaxy. It wouldn't surprise me if there is some clause in Starfleet that allows Admirals to command ships for extended periods of time because Kirk was probably a good Admiral and a great Captain. Good captains that become Admirals should only be stuck behind a desk when they are no longer able to command a ship.
Second the First few movies don't represent a real Navy. I say this because it's important, you want the "realism of commanding fleets of ships like a real admiral." Now real Admirals if/when they deploy to sea aren't actually in command of the vessel they are on. The captain is. They just coordinate from that ships Operations centre. But it is actually rare that this happens outside of major naval battles or operations and is usually left to a senior captain or junior flag officer.
The "clause" you are referring to, is called creative licence as they wanted to promote Kirk but didn't really realise what would happen, and he got upset because he lost command of a ship and got a desk job.
Officer promotion in the military, particularly in the US is about ensuring that people don't remain in the same rank and position for a long time and prevent others from getting there and getting the requisite experience. So quite often it's a case of take the promotion or retire and I would imagine that this would carry forward on into starfleet and is probably what happened to Kirk.
I suppose what I'm trying to say here is that Admiral Kirk's experiences in the first four TOS films may not be necessarily reflective of what Admirals do in Starfleet. They were all special circumstances.
Uh yeah, this is an American military thing or more broadly a modern day military thing - none of that may apply to Starfleet. There have been many comments by writers for the various shows that they had an age of sail conception for Starfleet, not a modern day military one. Riker remained XO of the Enterprise for over a decade, which would be unheard of today. But his career didn't really suffer for it and he eventually did become Captain of USS Titan. The way starships operate in ST lends itself well to the age of sail motif - years spent out in the frontier fringes of known space, pushing the envelope and proceeding ever outward, only occasionally returning to starbase for refit purposes. Most of the time the Enterprise (any of the alphabet variety) was out there, all alone, for years at a time in some cases, and expected to do so without having to come back to a starbase every few months. Voyager was gone almost a decade. Only the Defiant didn't really venture far from its homeport. With that kind of context, not getting promoted every few years might be more understandable.
And we even have strange things like Captain Sisko commanding a fleet during the Dominion War (when we already had an Admiral who could have done that). So I dunno, maybe Starfleet has some wonky organisational issues
I see that, particularly in TOS era Trek where everything was more Age of Sail esque and the same with Voyager. It certainly didn't really seem the case in DS9 where they seemed to be using the more modern military type structure. But I take your point. My main point was two fold. One that TMP et al. weren't relective of Starfleet proper as there were "special circumstances" which basically meant creative licencing at play and second that Admirals aren't just people that can't command ships anymore.
Yeah another thing about creative licensing. Arguably though, he was attached to Admiral Ross and therefore handpicked for Commodore or Fleet Captain, which would fit in with the more contemporary naval structure. Which he eventually moved away from as it wasn't something he wanted to do as it took him away from DS9 and the Defiant.
Maybe, just maybe, the LvL cap would be raised to 60.
"This is Admiral BumBleBush!..Captain of the U.S.S. Prometheus!..I order you to lower your shields and weapons or ill be forced to fire upon you!!!"
"This is Fleet Commander BumBle!..
Vice Admiral of the U.S.S. Prometheus!..
I order you to lower your shields and weapons or ill be forced to fire upon you!!!"
Here's a good reason. Because its a subscription based MMO. If you don't keep adding new stuff then you start losing players. How can you convince people to play over and over the same stuff with the same abilities for years on end? The answer, you can't.
It's more F2P based
DS9 still had the age of sail ideas in place in at least a couple of episodes. Ron Moore noted this for the episode 'Valiant' that he based the naval procedures for field promotions on the naval traditions of the 18th and 19th centuries. In a modern-day navy Nog would have automatically outranked a ship full of cadets. But because Watters got a field promotion, Moore's notion was that he could only be removed from command by a flag officer, which is apparently an 18th and 19th C navy thing.
This is one of the areas I wish the writers had more of a clue of what they were writing about. Often General Martok would be in some of the fleet actions, like in 'Tears of the Prophets' he commanded the Klingon ships, and he arrived just in the nick of time in 'Sacrifice of Angels', so I'm kinda happy to assume Martok took over directing fleet responsibilities off-stage. But Captain Sisko leading the Federation fleet from the get-go just seems out of place. They should have had Admiral Ross on the bridge of a Galaxy class ship or something. Hell Ross was in 'Tears of the Prophets' so it's not a matter of 'gee, we can't get that actor'. Or you can even have it as an act of dialogue.
And I would even be happy if Sisko were a Fleet Captain or Commodore or something like that, but they should have named him so in the episode or episodes leading up to the big battles.
I disagree, I think they FUBARd that one because they didn't really understand how it would have worked in a real military environment so they RetConed it a bit with the Cop out of it being more like ye olden days of sail; which happened to fit in with the theme of the episode they were trying to write.
There was a whole different expectation placed on RN Midshipman (Officer Cadets) in the 19th Century, mainly because they were (usually) aristocracy and so were expected to be able to lead people even if they didn't know what they were doing. Times have hopefully changed since then and moved on so that the most qualified person did the job. I don't think this excuse would have worked if Sisko had been there instead of Nog for that reason. Which other than that little detail was an OK episode.
Yeah but they have this thing is ST about having Captains as "Flag Officers" lord knows why. The Enterprise was considered the "flagship" of the fleet but seldom actually had a flag officer on board.
I think with regard the Sisko thing, you can infer that he is a senior captain, "acting up" for possible promotion to commodore hence why Ross has taken an interest in him. Even though it's not explicitly stated in the show. (I'm not sure about the script, but DS9 did show a better understanding of the way the military works than any of the other shows, even if it was lacking in parts.)
Even so, an Admiral in a battle is responsible for the coordinating the attacks. So it doesn't really make any sense that Sisko is directing the fleet, (especially from the Defiant and not the Flagship) except to demonstrate that Sisko is badass which I think it was the whole point of it. A similar thing happens in First Contact after the Admiral's ship is conveniently destroyed.
Back on topic. Level caps are not a substitute for content. Content first, then raise the cap.
I agree with this.. never liked the rank of Admiral.
Alright, let's kill this nonsense right now.
In ST:TMP Kirk was not in command, Spock was. But he deferred to Kirk because they had a history together and because fans demand Captain Kirk.
ST:TWoK Kirk was not in command until Spock relinquished command to him.
ST:TSS Kirk stole the Enterprise and was thus not legally in command.
ST:TVH What Enterprise?
Let's all think about this very carefully for a moment. What do you think would happen if we got the level 60 level cap? Well, let's take a look...
-Render all ships in the game effectively obsolete. Suddenly, things like the Brotasqu, Scimitar, Atrox, Odyssey, and MANY other C-Store ships are no longer the end game ships. THis means that we shelled out either 25 or 50 bucks for ships that are now out of date. Why should people even buy them in the future? Sales will drop like an anvil. No thanks.
-Render all Rear Admiral - Lower Half ships (level 40) even MORE out of date. On my main Fed, I still run the standard Sovereign. A level cap increase of 60 puts me 20 levels out of date. No thanks.
-Render all gear obsolete. Increasing to level 60 makes all Mk XII gear obsolete. If Mk XIII and XIV come along, then all tat time I invested into getting Mk XII stuff is all gone, and I have to start the process over again. No thank you.
-Allow for more "do everything builds". Adding another 10 levels will essentially allow more players to specialize in more things. Unacceptable. This will be the final nail in PVP and make everyone carbon copies.
No more levels. Leave it at reps. Add more reps, which add more to our base stats, and that is as far as it should go. There is still so much potential in reps, so many that have been untouched. Cardassian Rep, Undine Rep, etc.
Any of you people who argue that increasing the level cap adds "end game WHATEVER"...then I say you are wrong. Adding more levels and turning top tier equipment into the next batch of vendor junk is not adding end game. Add more missions, add more PVE scenarios, expand foundry, allow for greater character customizations, give more reason to get accolades (better bonuses), more reputations, more combat zones like Nimbus (like...WAY MORE...dozens more), a new faction, something beynd Elite STFs, more more Elite variants on current PVE scenarios (Elite Azure or Vault anyone?), expand fleets, revamp fleets, add more holdings, more fleet PVEs...anything but more levels. I have 6 toons (which may not be a whole lot) but that turns into 60 more levels I have to gain. No thanks.
You don't need Tier 6 ships or Mk XIV gear to do any of that. Many games add levels without increasing equipment ranks.
Still he was in command of the various ships and could have taken command at the beginning if he wanted to. Command is more about having the loyalty of the crew than the authorization from the Military. If I walk onto the bridge of some naval ship and had the proper authorization, but no actual experience, then I would not be in command of the ship. A Captain is useless if they don't have the loyalty of the ship. A Navy Captain could resort to piracy and if they have the support of the crew, then they are still in Command of the ship.
There is absolutely nothing that is preventing Admirals from commanding ships. It is just common practice that they stay behind a desk. In STO, we are at war with numerous personnel so it is better to have the best people on site than having them command from Earth.
- new tier of skills
- a new system where you can promote your existing boffs to captains and they can join you with their own ship, so you could own a "mini-fleet".
The new skills could focus to the "mini-fleet" instead of further enhancement to your ship. Maybe for the sake of balance you are not allowed to spend more skill points to the previous skills - the new skill points could be spend only to the new skills.
I don't think a new lvl cap should make existing ships / equipment obsolete. I think if the devs will create new equipment it will be linked to a new faction or a new tier of existing reputation. Of course they will make new ships for Zen store but these will be balanced to the existing ships.
Storywise I'd like to see the end of the klingon war. The existing situation is confusing for me. In story missions we learned that the whole war started because of some shapeshifter conspiracy - both factions are aware of this fact. We are still in 2409 when klingons and fed are joining against the borg. We are still in 2409 when the Romulan Republic emerges... and hey, we are both supporting them like a big, happy family. We are still in 2409 when we meet the tholians again - and hey, all three factions (or 2,5 factions) fighting them.
Still when my Vice Admiral goes back to ESD I can see some klingon battlegroups in Vulcan sector and I should fight against them.
I think the existing storyline and ranks should be reinvented a little. My field promoted ensign made his jump to vice admiral level within one year which is nonsense. Poor Harry Kim was the only one who wasn't promoted for 7 years and my Vice Admiral is laughing on him sooo hard.
Storyline - the existing stories should receive a stardate.
2409 - Fed tutorial and Klingon War episodes
2410 - Breen invasion
2411 - Nimbus storyline
2412 - Romulan Republic emerges
So existing content would be dispensed for a few years lorewise instead of a very-very busy 2409. And after that every new "season" would be a year or halfyear advancement in story.