As it was said before, exploration was the original sole of the TOS from which all other treks can trace their birth from! removing the exploration areas and missions just turns the game into a pathetic shooting game for mouth breathers.
Like vengefuldjinn was talking about, most of the fun in any game has nothing to do with linear missions or PvE content. It's having a sandbox to do stupid stuff with your friends. For example, exploring planetary cluster maps for things to try to climb on, or funny ways to consistently test new gear against cookie-cutter baddies where there is no need to perform well in a high pressure team-based context, as in a PvE mission. Now, we have a few persistent adventure zones, but that's no replacement for the feeling of randomized exploration.
Boy when they TRIBBLE us over they do it big time.
It also elemates some Diplo missions as well.
The ones where you supply a colony some needed material or parts {IE medical Supplies or Provision and maybe a few Shield Generators)
Wayn't drop the Deep Space encounters and The Borg Red Alters as well while they are at it.
It isn't like they really had any interest in space Exploration for this game to being with.
When the game was first realeased. You had to explore and patrol your sector block and sector.
I'm wondering when they are going to elemate those old patrol missions. {IE like the first Dilpo mission you were ever given. Where you had to talk to the colony workers to solve a possile workers strike.}
STO has become more about Space battles and new starships and their upgrades than anything.
Oh I forgot they Added the Romulan and gave both the KDF and Federation begining areas upgrades and the Iconia storyline.
Which like them adding the Borg Red Alerts will lead to nowhere.
Like vengefuldjinn was talking about, most of the fun in any game has nothing to do with linear missions or PvE content. It's having a sandbox to do stupid stuff with your friends. For example, exploring planetary cluster maps for things to try to climb on, or funny ways to consistently test new gear against cookie-cutter baddies where there is no need to perform well in a high pressure team-based context, as in a PvE mission. Now, we have a few persistent adventure zones, but that's no replacement for the feeling of randomized exploration.
I have characters on both the Fed and Klingon sides. It is the the Feds who are more dependent on exploration missions since the Klingons at least have those nebulas in their home sector in which to fight the various races for dilthium. By taking the exploration missions out, Cryptic may as well be telling me to go Klingon.
Very disheartening. No confirmed end-date yet? Currently my STO time is divided between Risa Pearl and exploration accolades just in case they accolade goalposts change like the Diplomatic ones did...
While I won't shed any tears over the removal of the current exploration system, I think it should have been held back until the new system was ready to go.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
^ Reasons 1-5 are terrible. Bugs? Fix them! Everything you described is minor. Like Risian4 said, if the rationale is to remove bugged content, STO would have to shut down.
if your really going to defend genesis, you shouldn't be so ignorant of how it works. also, i shudder at your baby attrition, post throwing out of bath water.
genesis missions aren't fixable like others hand crafted missions are, they are generated by scripts. if a mission is incompleatable, there's nothing they can do without overhauling all the code that generates the mission. might have been worth the effort YEARS ago, now of course not, because they are garbage on a fundamental level.
So, you're in favor of them removing broken and underused content WITHOUT first providing a replacement then?
I guess that means STO PvP is next; and could be 100% removed with your blessing then, right? And while we're at it, why not just remove that worthless Cruiser with the mega-thread detailing WHY many players consider it useless (aka the Galaxy Class cruiser) because again, why keep something that takes up hard drive storage space that nobody really uses.;)
For me the issues are:
- STO is and has been content light since it Launched.
- With Cryptic "On-Demand" patch system (enabled by default) - the "It reduces the amount of download required for a new user to play..." is honestly BS.
- While you (and I) didn't make mush use of it -- the ARE players who do; and again given my first point above, removing content WITHOUT providing replacement content doesn't make a lot of sense; UNLESS it's just being done in an attempt to bulk up usage numbers that the STO Upper Dev management see is also underused; BUT they want to continue to push the making of that PvE Queue mark grind content above ANYTHING else.
they need a replacement? how many under used battlezones and qued pve and story missions do you need!? seriously, there is now to much pve, a ton of stuff is unplayed and empty as it is. are you people from the past or something? is it 2010 were your all from?
are you all just mad because this was an easy way to grind dil? be honest if that's all this is.
if your really going to defend genesis, you shouldn't be so ignorant of how it works. also, i shudder at your baby attrition, post throwing out of bath water.
genesis missions aren't fixable like others hand crafted missions are, they are generated by scripts. if a mission is incompleatable, there's nothing they can do without overhauling all the code that generates the mission. might have been worth the effort YEARS ago, now of course not, because they are garbage on a fundamental level.
they need a replacement? how many under used battlezones and qued pve and story missions do you need!? seriously, there is now to much pve, a ton of stuff is unplayed and empty as it is. are you people from the past or something? is it 2010 were your all from?
are you all just mad because this was an easy way to grind dil? be honest if that's all this is.
This post is total nonsense, through and through. Where do I begin? A scripting error requires a complete overhaul? You obviously think you're talking to morons. Because battlezones are underutilized, the devs ought to remove other content that many enjoy to force them to play the new content? Sheer lunacy. We've all explained very clearly numerous times why we loved exploration zones, you hopeless robot. If you don't care about atmosphere and the co-op Star Trek experience, we couldn't care less. The only question that remains is why you are so furious that other people enjoyed this feature.
Well let's hope that this so called 'exploration' will be replaced by some real exploration in the near future. To be honest it's a crying shame that a modern Star Trek game never managed to implement THE central pillar of the ST universe. To explore new worlds.
It would have been so easy. Just ask players to create content for exploration missions. Take the 50 best ones, add a random generator and vol
I will be sad to see the Exploration Missions go. It's true, they were substandard and peculiar (Borg's 3rd Dynasty, anyone? LOL), but they weren't all bad.
When I was tired of the same ol' grindy-repeat-til-numb queue missions, I would run an Explore, or two. It was potpourri, to be sure. A box of chocolates from which you didn't know what you'd get. Sometimes it was tasty (an agreeable blow-up a half-dozen spawn-groups or aid the planet), most times it was mediocre (run around a map or down a too-long section of caves to scan objects), and rarely it was some nasty candy-coated antacid (a bugged mission).
Whatever it was, it was random. Unexpected. Even the "waste of time" bug missions could be RP'd as a "false exploration lead".
And unlike repeating leveling story missions/episodes, Exploration actually paid a much needed end-game currency (Dilithium). So it was constructive time spent.
There are all sorts of ways Cryptic could keep Exploration around without losing players: You could make it end game content only (ie not for noobs), long-time player content (vet rewards for Silvers and Golds), make it some kind of add-on mod downloadable only as needed, etc.
But really the way to keep the Clusters/Exploration: Use the Foundry Spotlight missions.
Instead of 1,000s of Genesis-created random substandard missions, you use the dozens of already-Cryptic-approved Foundry missions. Players click on an unknown system, like they have always done, and get loaded into a random Spotlight UGC. That pool is constantly growing. It seems an ideal, no-brainer, solution to me.
BTW, you keep the existing Foundry search interface and missions, for those that want to play specific UGC. The above's just a way to press Shuffle on the Foundry iPod.
:rolleyes:
Anyway... Thanks for working on a way to complete Explore Accolades without the clusters. I hope the comment about adding Dil to single-player content means you guys go back to the scores of replayable missions and add a Dilithium to each of them.
I really hope (but, sadly, doubt) that E2 will include an Exploration Revamp and the return of Trek to this Star game.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
This post is total nonsense, through and through. Where do I begin? A scripting error requires a complete overhaul? You obviously think you're talking to morons. Because battlezones are underutilized, the devs ought to remove other content that many enjoy to force them to play the new content? Sheer lunacy. We've all explained very clearly numerous times why we loved exploration zones, you hopeless robot. If you don't care about atmosphere and the co-op Star Trek experience, we couldn't care less. The only question that remains is why you are so furious that other people enjoyed this feature.
also... contrary to popular belief, the maps used for sector exploration are not generated on the fly. the Genesis engine was used to create them, but it's not actually a part of STO, it was a Dev tool.
As it was said before, exploration was the original sole of the TOS from which all other treks can trace their birth from! removing the exploration areas and missions just turns the game into a pathetic shooting game for mouth breathers.
Also, I'm not arguing that the exploration missions were good. I'm arguing that we need open space where players can feel like they are exploring and fighting in a quasi-RP sort of way, like how kids play with toys. They don't even need the repetitive missions. Just allow players to find planets in clusters, and beam down, explore, and fight random aliens for dil. Whatever. It's no reason to scrap randomly generated environments in clusters or in sector space star systems. It can easily be implemented either way. There are so few environments, the random planets were some of the most interesting visuals in-game.
Game design is the art of illusion, not perfect simulation. You don't cut out anything that doesn't work as well as you'd like, when it can serve an aesthetic purpose that cultivates just the feeling of openness and free exploration, as if the game world were as alive as Trek fans imagine their universe.
Instead, I see minds like the robot above who look at everything in terms of specific goals, tasks, and minimal simulation thereof. That's not an RPG. I don't like this mechanical mentality devoid of imagination.
A one month store & key boycot. To have them return exploration back to STO.
They say money talks. If so a month store & key boycot could get their attention
I have been boycotting keys and store stuff ever since the BS change to the Rep system. And I agree with you. If people stop throwing money at perfect world for one month, they will grow hair on their balls and start listening to the people who play the game.
As it was said before, exploration was the original sole of the TOS from which all other treks can trace their birth from! removing the exploration areas and missions just turns the game into a pathetic shooting game for mouth breathers.
Yeah, I remember that TOS episode , where nothing happened, and all they did was scan stuff, and nothing tried to kill them :rolleyes:
if your really going to defend genesis, you shouldn't be so ignorant of how it works. also, i shudder at your baby attrition, post throwing out of bath water.
genesis missions aren't fixable like others hand crafted missions are, they are generated by scripts. if a mission is incompleatable, there's nothing they can do without overhauling all the code that generates the mission. might have been worth the effort YEARS ago, now of course not, because they are garbage on a fundamental level.
they need a replacement? how many under used battlezones and qued pve and story missions do you need!? seriously, there is now to much pve, a ton of stuff is unplayed and empty as it is. are you people from the past or something? is it 2010 were your all from?
are you all just mad because this was an easy way to grind dil? be honest if that's all this is.
"Space... The final frontier...
These are the voyages of "Star Trek: Online".
Its continuing mission:
To grind repetitive reputation systems...
To seek out more dilithium; new rep marks...
To boldly go where every Ferengi has gone before!"
Comments
Boy when they TRIBBLE us over they do it big time.
It also elemates some Diplo missions as well.
The ones where you supply a colony some needed material or parts {IE medical Supplies or Provision and maybe a few Shield Generators)
Wayn't drop the Deep Space encounters and The Borg Red Alters as well while they are at it.
It isn't like they really had any interest in space Exploration for this game to being with.
When the game was first realeased. You had to explore and patrol your sector block and sector.
I'm wondering when they are going to elemate those old patrol missions. {IE like the first Dilpo mission you were ever given. Where you had to talk to the colony workers to solve a possile workers strike.}
STO has become more about Space battles and new starships and their upgrades than anything.
Oh I forgot they Added the Romulan and gave both the KDF and Federation begining areas upgrades and the Iconia storyline.
Which like them adding the Borg Red Alerts will lead to nowhere.
I have characters on both the Fed and Klingon sides. It is the the Feds who are more dependent on exploration missions since the Klingons at least have those nebulas in their home sector in which to fight the various races for dilthium. By taking the exploration missions out, Cryptic may as well be telling me to go Klingon.
STO has just become a nearly 2nd rate EVE clone.
I think those of use who like exploring should check out SWTOR and see what the drop in numbers in STO would do in bring back.
Both Ground and Space Exploration to STO where it belongs
Eve probably has more exploration in it than STO has.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
if your really going to defend genesis, you shouldn't be so ignorant of how it works. also, i shudder at your baby attrition, post throwing out of bath water.
genesis missions aren't fixable like others hand crafted missions are, they are generated by scripts. if a mission is incompleatable, there's nothing they can do without overhauling all the code that generates the mission. might have been worth the effort YEARS ago, now of course not, because they are garbage on a fundamental level.
they need a replacement? how many under used battlezones and qued pve and story missions do you need!? seriously, there is now to much pve, a ton of stuff is unplayed and empty as it is. are you people from the past or something? is it 2010 were your all from?
are you all just mad because this was an easy way to grind dil? be honest if that's all this is.
foundry missions are HAND CRAFTED. not script generated trash. they have potential, genesis never will
A one month store & key boycot. To have them return exploration back to STO.
They say money talks. If so a month store & key boycot could get their attention
lol
Probably?
Heck, Super Mario Bros. has more exploration than STO since as it stands - STO has none.
Yes, because we all know that Star Trek is only about pew-pew and nothing else. :rolleyes:
FAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
....
I'm, sorry, I tired! I really did.
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
This post is total nonsense, through and through. Where do I begin? A scripting error requires a complete overhaul? You obviously think you're talking to morons. Because battlezones are underutilized, the devs ought to remove other content that many enjoy to force them to play the new content? Sheer lunacy. We've all explained very clearly numerous times why we loved exploration zones, you hopeless robot. If you don't care about atmosphere and the co-op Star Trek experience, we couldn't care less. The only question that remains is why you are so furious that other people enjoyed this feature.
It would have been so easy. Just ask players to create content for exploration missions. Take the 50 best ones, add a random generator and vol
My character Tsin'xing
When I was tired of the same ol' grindy-repeat-til-numb queue missions, I would run an Explore, or two. It was potpourri, to be sure. A box of chocolates from which you didn't know what you'd get. Sometimes it was tasty (an agreeable blow-up a half-dozen spawn-groups or aid the planet), most times it was mediocre (run around a map or down a too-long section of caves to scan objects), and rarely it was some nasty candy-coated antacid (a bugged mission).
Whatever it was, it was random. Unexpected. Even the "waste of time" bug missions could be RP'd as a "false exploration lead".
And unlike repeating leveling story missions/episodes, Exploration actually paid a much needed end-game currency (Dilithium). So it was constructive time spent.
There are all sorts of ways Cryptic could keep Exploration around without losing players: You could make it end game content only (ie not for noobs), long-time player content (vet rewards for Silvers and Golds), make it some kind of add-on mod downloadable only as needed, etc.
But really the way to keep the Clusters/Exploration: Use the Foundry Spotlight missions.
Instead of 1,000s of Genesis-created random substandard missions, you use the dozens of already-Cryptic-approved Foundry missions. Players click on an unknown system, like they have always done, and get loaded into a random Spotlight UGC. That pool is constantly growing. It seems an ideal, no-brainer, solution to me.
BTW, you keep the existing Foundry search interface and missions, for those that want to play specific UGC. The above's just a way to press Shuffle on the Foundry iPod.
:rolleyes:
Anyway... Thanks for working on a way to complete Explore Accolades without the clusters. I hope the comment about adding Dil to single-player content means you guys go back to the scores of replayable missions and add a Dilithium to each of them.
I really hope (but, sadly, doubt) that E2 will include an Exploration Revamp and the return of Trek to this Star game.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
My character Tsin'xing
So....Star Trek Voyager meets JJ Abrams?
Game design is the art of illusion, not perfect simulation. You don't cut out anything that doesn't work as well as you'd like, when it can serve an aesthetic purpose that cultivates just the feeling of openness and free exploration, as if the game world were as alive as Trek fans imagine their universe.
Instead, I see minds like the robot above who look at everything in terms of specific goals, tasks, and minimal simulation thereof. That's not an RPG. I don't like this mechanical mentality devoid of imagination.
I have been boycotting keys and store stuff ever since the BS change to the Rep system. And I agree with you. If people stop throwing money at perfect world for one month, they will grow hair on their balls and start listening to the people who play the game.
They took out PvP?
Yeah, I remember that TOS episode , where nothing happened, and all they did was scan stuff, and nothing tried to kill them :rolleyes:
Why so mad?
These are the voyages of "Star Trek: Online".
Its continuing mission:
To grind repetitive reputation systems...
To seek out more dilithium; new rep marks...
To boldly go where every Ferengi has gone before!"
Just a joke.
No Man's Sky might finally replace NOCTIS.