I've thought about this, some and while I am neither particularly for or against here are a few things to consider.
1. If the star clusters were kept the devs would have to go into every single map and update the nodes. A lot of work for little gain.
2. In the end there are plenty of ways for people to get dilithium 1440 once per day from the Star Clusters in the end isn't a major problem. The biggest dililthium hurdle has always been the 8K refining limit. Sure there is the SFA Veteran and the Fleet mine DOFF assignments to refine additional but even that is limited.
3. Outside all of the rewards. Was the content fun? This is a question that everyone has to answer for themselves. For me, no.
4. A dry piece of bread is still a piece of bread but at some point you have to ask is it worth it to keep it? Even if we have nothing to immediately to replace it with?
5. What functionality are we maintaining into the new system? They are keeping the DOFF functionality the same or improving it, they are keeping crafting materials accessible but we are not keeping the Fly around in space instances or the mission instances of the Star clusters. What we are getting however is hooking up the star clusters into the foundry. Something that foundry authors have been asking for for some time. Is replacing foundry missions with the old star cluster worth it? That's for each person to decide but I'd say that initially not as there would be no, or extremely limited,foundry missions that use these doors but the worth would grow as foundry missions that use these doors grow.
6. Exploration. Star Trek is known for it's going boldly where no one has gone before. However, what exploration was there? Exploration is about dealing with the unknown. Reacting to it and learning from it. From strange finds, to civilisations to threats that may be encountered. What learning do we actually do? What is in these that is actually exploration?
So what does all this mean? Well, I'll leave you to answer that. This is everything that I can think of how the new system would affect how we play the game.
Congratulations Cryptic for removing the last hint of what Star Trek is about, exploration.
And BTW, i have another game mode that isn't up to Cryptics standards: PvP.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
Rather disappointed about the removal of exploration clusters from the game... It's nice that it will be opened for Foundry editors/players, however completely removing these cluster missions takes away:
- Diplomatic Investigations
- First Contact Missions
- Dilithium/expertise rewards from Non-Combat/Combat exploration encounters
- Exploring randomly generated maps (Which some I've are quite stunning and beautiful).
It will take away the small immersive experience that genuinely made it like Trek. Exploration is such huge aspect of the Star trek philosophy: "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." The decision to remove exploration missions is rather unnecessary, since keeping these missions can be used as a stepping stone for further development and revamping of exploration in the future.
If the devs plan on revamping exploration, they better make it a much more immersive and in-depth system! Look at all the other games out there! Look at the competition of other big games coming out that involves exploration. Maybe a thing or two can be learned from these, and help inspire and develop a much better experience for our fellow explorers.
Make exploration BIG!! :cool:
Take a look at No Man's Sky a science-fiction game about exploration and survival in an infinite procedurally generated universe.
or they could have spent their time improving the exploration content, tidying up the levels, adapting the stories to make more sense, adding depth with new missions that link together with you having to visit multiple planers, something I think most players would want rather than spending their time adding a new crafting system, no one wanted and no one was demanding and almost everyone hates already.
They could do that, but then that would be their task for the next 3 years or so, ifnot far more, if they hope to make a dent into the existing exploration missions.
In a new season, they can touch up what - 3-5 missions, plus create another 3-5 unique missions or zones.
Even if there are only 100 missions in the Exploration Sectors, that would mean the next 10 seasons or so they'd be busy retouching exploration missions. And doing nothing else. No featured episodes, no reputations, just retouching exploration missions.
It may be better to create a new system and start from scratch.
And I think Foundry missions are more than adequate replacement for the existing exploration missions. Sure, the Foundry doesn't give players all the options the developers have when making a new mission, but the exploration missions are even more constrained, since they all follow a set of basic templates.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
AFKers will get slapped with a penalty. That's okay. I think we're getting angry about nothing, as usual. This is just the calm before the storm - I bet there's something larger on the horizon.
DOOOOOOOOOOOM ....
Anyway, seriously, i have a feeling the Delta Quadrant is on the horizon... we'll say bye bye to Gorgans and welcome to Ocampa and Talaxians.
Something like " explore the strange new Delta Quadrant " , something on the line of the series centred on a certain ship who's said it'll be revamped perhaps and maybe ;-)
There's coffee on the upper right portion of the map.
They could do that, but then that would be their task for the next 3 years or so, ifnot far more, if they hope to make a dent into the existing exploration missions.
In a new season, they can touch up what - 3-5 missions, plus create another 3-5 unique missions or zones.
Even if there are only 100 missions in the Exploration Sectors, that would mean the next 10 seasons or so they'd be busy retouching exploration missions. And doing nothing else. No featured episodes, no reputations, just retouching exploration missions.
It may be better to create a new system and start from scratch.
And I think Foundry missions are more than adequate replacement for the existing exploration missions. Sure, the Foundry doesn't give players all the options the developers have when making a new mission, but the exploration missions are even more constrained, since they all follow a set of basic templates.
They could have gone the easier way, by releasing more and more mission variables (more things that could happen while a mission is running) and more basic missions to the old Exploration missions.
I think that would have been way better than just throw them into the garbage can.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
I confess to not having read through all 250 comments on this thread and I'm sure my remarks here will echo others who commented before me but perhaps repetition will help drive the point home.
I can appreciate and agree that the current exploration content is inadequate. However, to remove it entirely without a suitable replacement, is to gut this game of anything resembling what lies at the core of good Trek story telling: Giving the audience or in this case, your players, compelling drama wrapped in content they can't get anywhere else. Taking them to new worlds. Exploring new ideas. Being ABOUT SOMETHING.
There are plenty of games that deliver explosions. A great Star Trek game must be more than that.
With STO, there has been a huge amount of focus on combat since the beginning. By and large, it's well executed and fun. However, Star Trek is not exclusively a combat oriented story. I realize that conflict and as an extension of that, combat, is important to engage people in an online game. But people come to this game especially to be immersed in the Star Trek universe. That means it cant all be "Charge the phasers! Arm the photon torpedoes! KAAAAAAHHHN!".
STO NEEDS exploration and first contact missions to actually BE Star Trek. Otherwise, you're leaving players to grind through missions full of explosions. At that point, you might as well hand the conn over to Michael Bay. :P
Nobody wants to see that.
I have faith that you guys intend to bring higher quality exploration back to the game at some point in the future but please don't leave your players in a drought in the interim.
What TRIBBLE, Blah! Blah! Blah!...
I am a single player and happen to make quite a bit from "exploring new worlds".
Now you have taken that away too.
Diplomatic ties cut as well?
Those mission also involved the Clusters etc...
Ah! who cares...
My Auto SUB was ended! around the 750th day because of your "lack of successful support".
Actually that's what it felt like reading about this news...
a "useless explanation" & a "thank you for playing STO".
Actually, I'm glad of their removal because there was no actual reason to go there.
I did the exploration missions long ago and when I realized it was just infinite variations on 3 basic missions, I got bored and stopped.
Your line of thought makes no sense and is bad business.
You didn't do the missions. Others did. Leaving them there means the others that did them can continue to play that part of the game. And you can continue to play other parts.
Removing them doesn't affect your gameplay.
It affects others' though.
It's a negative. It doesn't improve the game. It takes content away.
Just like the State of Q mission, it's something that's gone. And not coming back.
They could do that, but then that would be their task for the next 3 years or so, ifnot far more, if they hope to make a dent into the existing exploration missions.
It can't be both ways. These missions can't be boring, monotonous redundant repeats ... AND take 3 years or more to tweak because there's just so many of them.
They're either too basic and shallow and only Kill X type missions. Which shouldn't take more than a day or two to actually go in and rework since they're soooooo so basic ...
Or they're huge, taking up tons of space and resources because of the sheer number and variety of them.
1. If the star clusters were kept the devs would have to go into every single map and update the nodes. A lot of work for little gain.
Oh no, that's easy to work around. So much much easier.
Just remove the ability to transfer old materials into new materials.
People already are complaining that the process takes too long on Tribble anyways. And this crafting is supposed to be a brand new start. So go total clean slate.
Get all those materials built up as much as you want from the exploration clusters. But they can't be used in the new Crafting at all. And can't be trasnferred. They already don't vendor for anything.
Boom.
Done.
3. Outside all of the rewards. Was the content fun? This is a question that everyone has to answer for themselves. For me, no.
It is just as fun as running ISE over and over and over and over again.
Which everyone on the forums seems to love and hold up as the paradigm of gameplay in STO.
4. A dry piece of bread is still a piece of bread but at some point you have to ask is it worth it to keep it? Even if we have nothing to immediately to replace it with?
Yes. It is. Everquest still has Lower Guk and Splitpaw and the Qeynos sewers. It's all still there after 16 years.
This game can't even leave its own missions live, like State of Q.
They could have gone the easier way, by releasing more and more mission variables (more things that could happen while a mission is running) and more basic missions to the old Exploration missions.
I think that would have been way better than just throw them into the garbage can.
This. I can't believe that there was *nothing* they could do to improv the experience in four years. Hell, at some point I even would be okay with "Exploration Expansion Packs" you have to buy, like a game add-on which adds more variables and unique encounters referring to the shows.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
As usual Crytpic has got it royally wrong. Star Trek is about exploration, but instead fixing a substandard system in the game they remove it. Season 9.5 should have been an exploration revamp not the substandard crafting revamp we will be getting in season 9.5. The only reason they revamped crafting was to monetize it as they are desperate for money and a vain attempt to keep players in the game with a mega grind system. :mad:
Yes the old current star cluster mission are substandard compared to the new missions, but consider how long it take Cryptic to do a single mission is just insane. Just because a mission is visually delightful doesn't mean it a good or popular mission. Look a the newest reputation PvE queued mission, The Breach, Viscous Cycleand Undine Infiltration there are constantly empty or take ages to fill, hell I've seen more players doing the daily missions in the star clusters.
Yes we might get some sort of exploration in Expansion 2 later this year related to the Delta Quadrant but judging by Cryptic record I'm no holding my breath. Also from what I've seen from the Battle zones, it will probably just a few similar missions just with better looking maps.
Tuffili Freighter warps to sector ok, but what about the crafting function, the main reason I bought it. What will we get in it's place? Nothing! Would have been nice if you could get an automatic bonus to the crafting missions if you crafted on the Freighter or say Memory Alpha, a real good reason to go there.
Cryptic you are making it much harder for me to want to stay in the game with these changes. It's getting less and less Star Trek with each change.
This. I can't believe that there was *nothing* they could do to improv the experience in four years. Hell, at some point I even would be okay with "Exploration Expansion Packs" you have to buy, like a game add-on which adds more variables and unique encounters referring to the shows.
Yeah, they could have spend a whole season to Exploration...
Adding more basic missions, updating the old ones, adding more events that could randomly happen at each mission (like the Ent -F or a Borg Cube warping in, you get the point).
Personally i just don't buy their statement "there was nothing we could do". To me it seems just a lazy excuse so they can focus on their 1 mission per quarter policy.
I must say i am more frugal when it comes to missions, i don't need a full voice over and cut scenes (which i skip whenever possible TBH ).
Just give me something interesting to do and i'm happy.
I miss the sense of wonder and the randomness, like "what will happen around the next corner (star)". Something like that completely falls away with the newer missions IMO.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
The immortal works of Picard "Remember when we used to be explorers" With the removal of exploration means we are no seeking new life ane new civilization and boldy going nowhere. This game is no longer star trek and has become just a mediocre game. There is nothing in this game that actually makes me want to play the hpurs as I used to. And this will make this game even less playable for everyone who wants to play
NO TO ARC
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Removing anything does not improve quality unless it's replaced, updated or not working and these are working just fine.Some of us actually do like these cluster missions.
Removing of exploration clusters & put them as PVE rewards & foundry?
Wow, that's 1 less reason for me to keep playing the game!
I already do PVEs, why are you sweeping them into PVEs now? Everything is PVE, it's just boring! Why can't I have my changes of pace. If I want to be rail roaded & treated like a glorified idiot, I'll play the episode missions. If I want to blow things up & show off how awesome I am than other people, I play pugs. If I want to be accompanied by people who know what to do, I play teamed PVEs, If I want to show off without putting up with how incompetent most people are, I play battlezones, if I'm tired from all of that & just want to cruise around on my space ship, I go to clusters. Now where the heck am I supposed to go. How can I be sure if the foundry will stay up. Every time the game moves from Season to Season, the foundry will be down. If you move it to foundry, then that means I can't get as much anomalies as I want because it will be on drop cool down as well wouldn't it.
Maybe I'm not a Trek, but isn't exploring new worlds & meet alien species is a reason why Trekkies love Star Trek so much. Now all I see is shoot everything, I would've said I didn't know Star Trek is Call of Duty in space if I didn't play this game since the first day it went F2P. You said you're trying to improve missions, most of them is still shoot things, even story missions, they are simply more dragged on with pointless conversations which boils down to shoot things as always so why even trying.
The only thing to improve or remove off the clusters are ground missions there because I've end up doing exact same missions for multiple times. At 1 point, I did the "gather info. in the abandoned lab" 5 times in a row! Add new missions there would've helped a lot. But I guess that takes way too much effort.
After all, Trekkers would play anything with Star Trek slap on it.
Thank God I still have on my shelf old ST games - Armada 1 and 2, Elite Force 1 and 2, Klingon Academy and more
Killing spirit of voyages and explorations is just stupid.
Thank God I still have on my shelf old ST games - Armada 1 and 2, Elite Force 1 and 2, Klingon Academy and more
Killing spirit of voyages and explorations is just stupid.
+1 ... I might even start to play "Birth of the Federation" again, to get my Exploration Kick ... sure the game is horrible & buggy, but at least you never know what's the next Species you'll meet is going to be ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
That said, here is a suggestion I would leave with you. Why not Bring back endless exploration with allowing a sector for captains to flying, that plays random generator Foundry missions? These missions would be compiled by Cryptic, from submissions of players, who generator missions, content, and alien species that fits the Star Trek exploration of strange new worlds concept. As an incentive for players to spend quality and quantity of time make said missions, cryptic could give a reward to players, who's mission makes the cut into the repeatable random foundry mission list. Such a reward might be between 500-1000 Zen, or dilithium.
I still support the removal of these things. They were awful.
Then don't do them. This is one of those statements I've heard in all the years of gaming. Between devs taking things out and modders taking things out of the games or taken parts of the mod out because they didn't like it.
If you don't like an optional feature then DO NOT USE IT, there is no reason to take something out or support taking something out just because you personally do not like it.
Oh no, that's easy to work around. So much much easier.
Just remove the ability to transfer old materials into new materials.
People already are complaining that the process takes too long on Tribble anyways. And this crafting is supposed to be a brand new start. So go total clean slate.
Get all those materials built up as much as you want from the exploration clusters. But they can't be used in the new Crafting at all. And can't be transferred. They already don't vendor for anything.
Boom.
Done.
Sorry, but what has this to do with what I posted? The places on the map where you pick up the old crafting materials will have to be replaced. So the devs will have to go in and spend however long it takes for just one map to remove the old crafting material nodes so that the old materials no longer drop and replace them with nodes for the new crafting materials. Then you have to test and edit to make sure that all nodes are accessible.
The process doesn't seem long but doing that for every single map in every single mission when there are probably thousands of them does take up a tremendous amount of time, that frankly can be better spend.
It is just as fun as running ISE over and over and over and over again.
Which everyone on the forums seems to love and hold up as the paradigm of gameplay in STO.
Fair enough. Fun is objective not subjective whether it is this exploration star cluster missions, or PvE queued events, PvP, story missions or foundry missions. People simply have a different definition of fun. Something which I acknowledged in my post.
Yes. It is. Everquest still has Lower Guk and Splitpaw and the Qeynos sewers. It's all still there after 16 years.
This game can't even leave its own missions live, like State of Q.
I have to agree with you regarding State of Q, I don't think that should have been removed. It should have been kept in game.
However I think with a system change as drastic as the Crafting System has undergone. Then you also have to think about the costs involved in changing missions to this new system.
The Star cluster missions are lousy with Anomalies, there are thousands upon thousands of maps and all of these maps would have to be updated to the new system. Which as I said is a lot of work.
This is just me, personally, but I'd rather these missions be removed and time allocated to a new exploration system than spending the copious amounts of time required to manually edit each and every single map to update it to the new system.
Sorry, but what has this to do with what I posted? The places on the map where you pick up the old crafting materials will have to be replaced. So the devs will have to go in and spend however long it takes for just one map to remove the old crafting material nodes so that the old materials no longer drop and replace them with nodes for the new crafting materials. Then you have to test and edit to make sure that all nodes are accessible.
The process doesn't seem long but doing that for every single map in every single mission when there are probably thousands of them does take up a tremendous amount of time, that frankly can be better spend.
If the missions were procedurally generated then I'm sure they could write a script that simply removed them from the missions themselves, and made the crafting mats drop from mission rewards rather than being in the maps themselves.
It would also be easy enough to remove the scan nodes from the clusters themselves, removing a farming opportunity, which seems to be what cryptic really wants from this removal *cough*content massacre.
I have to agree with you regarding State of Q, I don't think that should have been removed. It should have been kept in game.
However I think with a system change as drastic as the Crafting System has undergone. Then you also have to think about the costs involved in changing missions to this new system.
The Star cluster missions are lousy with Anomalies, there are thousands upon thousands of maps and all of these maps would have to be updated to the new system. Which as I said is a lot of work.
Again, if it was procedurally generated then logic holds that it should be possible to write a script that simply removes the anomaly nodes from the missions. The crafting mats could then drop from the mission rewards. Simple enough in theory.
This is just me, personally, but I'd rather these missions be removed and time allocated to a new exploration system than spending the copious amounts of time required to manually edit each and every single map to update it to the new system.
So making all new stuff will take less time than adapting old stuff to a hypothetical new system. Is it just me, or does that not make sense? The only changes that would really be needed to make them usable right now, would be to just remove the crafting material anomalies and make those materials drop as mission rewards. Imo, that would be much simpler than going through each and every map by hand and making the change over to the new anomaly.
Whatever happens, I think that those in charge are out of their minds for just nuking several thousand missions from a game that is already starved of end game content. Granted, the missions are of varying quality, but given that they were made by a *machine* they're not bad at all. What makes that really galling, is that most of them are actually better than a lot of what is in the foundry!
Here's an idea. Why not link the foundry with the exploration missions? Give foundry authors the ability to set an "exploration" flag on their mission so that it can be added to the rotation of missions available in the exploration clusters. That way, cryptic would be able to merge the foundry and exploration wrapper missions into one. That would give them the dil nerf they really want, as well as adding a bit more variety to the exploration.
I had not done many Cluster missions, but when I did them I found they refreshed my feeling of "this is Star Trek". They were also on my horizon as something to do more and more of as I eventually grew tired of the grind, which point I knew was coming soon (when I start iterating different ship and equipment combinations I know the end is eventually arriving, because what I am really doing is keeping things fresh by having another tactical riddle to solve). The clusters were a way to avoid realizing that STO was the same thing from the first episode on, repeated forever.
So I think a mistake is being made here. I am at the point on PvE where I only really want to play two of them, maybe three games--Cure, Khitomer, Vault--because each relies on intercepting something in a dynamic manner, with each team being different.
I also was planning on the Clusters for Diluthium. Putting it elsewhere is fine, but there are only so many times I can run "Azure Nebula" before developing an intense hate for it. That point was actually reached last week, so sticking it in canned PvEs that never ever deviate is simply unacceptable (I used to rate technical systems on whether they were acceptable for the end user of not), because the word "grind" means "grind" for a reason. Clusters had variety.
To me, this is a Windows 8 move--"we know how you should enjoy yourself, and will force you to". I am forced to try and figure out the financial ROI-enhancement reason behind this, and when I start getting on that track of cynicism, a certain rot builds into the relationship.
As a final note, I had planned to write in on a few things, so I might as well do them here: a.) t one thing I really really enjoyed and wanted more of was when, as a Klingon, I intercepted in Sector Space the Fed convoy as part of "Pi Canis" daily mission. There is a lot of potential in Sector Space that was missed for the Klingon War. b.) intercepting that convoy reiterated a problem about STO that Cryptic probably knows--at some point in time, you level out, and you are doing the same thing--and nothing you do matters. Meaning it is a pure tactical level game. You can defeat a thousand Klingon fleets at Starbase 24 with no blue losses--the victory means nothing, which is not how the real world operates. Front lines would change. I don't play in a fleet, am not sure I care to without knowing folks first, but STO needs a strategic component. The wins have to matter. Right now, they don't. c.) I don't play in a fleet. That may be the major source of grinding inspiration for a lot, but I need to be able to establish social connections before wasting time on something like that. Right now, it is too hard. d.) I'm readying my ships for an eventual "fleet" option--five ships under my command. You already have the AI, and the concept is done in ground games.
e.) Which brings up the next--fresh tactical problem can keep people coming back, as they figure it out. A fleet action needs to be more than a furball. You have escorts. In this game, are they actually escorting anything? Same thing with support ships. Are they actually supporting? Or all ships just actually doing the same thing to varying levels of success. In real world fleets, dreadnaughts outranged small ships. In real world aircraft missions, electronic warfare jamming aircraft do that jamming from a considerable distance behind the strike package. I understand a lot of players want to get in there and mix it up, but to me the max firing range of bigger ships (presumably with more power from bigger "warp cores" should be larger than smaller), and science ships, presumably with greater antenna arrays, should be able to both ID ships and use things like gravity well from at least 15 km. And the support one gives should be factored into success/first ratings. And for fleet actions, ideally you need escorts because otherwise your big ship(s) gets smothered--but the big ship properly supported does the blasting. Not sure how to work that concept into STO, but that that is how it is in the real world.
Well, I have to say it - I am seriously disappointed.
It wouldn't have given anything away if the announcement had said something along the lines of "we remain committed to exploration and diplomacy being a part of the game." It would have reassured me that something was going on, somewhere in the background of game development - that someone was working on, or at least thinking about, those aspects.
But there is nothing in the statement that gives me any confidence in that.
It reads, to me, as though the devs' attitude might be summarized thus:-
"STAR TREK ONLINE IS A GAME ABOUT GOING TO GRIND ZONES AND BLOWING AWAY ALIEN SCUM. IF YOU WANT EXPLORATION AND DIPLOMACY YOU WILL HAVE TO MAKE IT YOURSELVES. NYAH NYAH NYAH SUCKS BOO TO THE SPIRIT OF THE FRANCHISE."
Like I said, I am seriously disappointed, here. This is a lousy move, and so long as it is permitted me, I will say it's a lousy move.
The immortal works of Picard "Remember when we used to be explorers" With the removal of exploration means we are no seeking new life ane new civilization and boldy going nowhere. This game is no longer star trek and has become just a mediocre game. There is nothing in this game that actually makes me want to play the hpurs as I used to. And this will make this game even less playable for everyone who wants to play
I absolutely agree! This game just became Battlestar Galactica, Dyson Dinosaur edition. (And I never play Dyson.) Exploration is the core of true Star Trek! To jettison the fun exploration and keep the never-ending grinds, why bother to play? Especially when Foundry missions also get deleted, once we get interested. By the way, where the hell is the Foundry access port, now that they redesigned ESD? It used to be outside of the transporter room. Can't play it if I can't find the door! I'm a doctor, not a bloodhound!
Sorry, but what has this to do with what I posted?
Everything. All those anomalies? Leave them as they are. Just don't make the items you get be able to transformed into the new items needed for the new crafting.
That way people need to start all over. Brand new. From scratch. Which is the idea behind the new crafting anyways.
So you can get all the radiation samples you want. But they're not good for anything. Can't be vendored. Can't be used in the new crafting.
Now there's no need to change anything about the exploration cluster maps. At all.
This is just me, personally, but I'd rather these missions be removed and time allocated to a new exploration system than spending the copious amounts of time required to manually edit each and every single map to update it to the new system.
Just to reiterate ... They're not doing that. They're instead making the assets from some of this stuff available through the foundry and foundry nodes available. They're not allocating any time or resources to exploration. They're just removing it.
Comments
1. If the star clusters were kept the devs would have to go into every single map and update the nodes. A lot of work for little gain.
2. In the end there are plenty of ways for people to get dilithium 1440 once per day from the Star Clusters in the end isn't a major problem. The biggest dililthium hurdle has always been the 8K refining limit. Sure there is the SFA Veteran and the Fleet mine DOFF assignments to refine additional but even that is limited.
3. Outside all of the rewards. Was the content fun? This is a question that everyone has to answer for themselves. For me, no.
4. A dry piece of bread is still a piece of bread but at some point you have to ask is it worth it to keep it? Even if we have nothing to immediately to replace it with?
5. What functionality are we maintaining into the new system? They are keeping the DOFF functionality the same or improving it, they are keeping crafting materials accessible but we are not keeping the Fly around in space instances or the mission instances of the Star clusters. What we are getting however is hooking up the star clusters into the foundry. Something that foundry authors have been asking for for some time. Is replacing foundry missions with the old star cluster worth it? That's for each person to decide but I'd say that initially not as there would be no, or extremely limited,foundry missions that use these doors but the worth would grow as foundry missions that use these doors grow.
6. Exploration. Star Trek is known for it's going boldly where no one has gone before. However, what exploration was there? Exploration is about dealing with the unknown. Reacting to it and learning from it. From strange finds, to civilisations to threats that may be encountered. What learning do we actually do? What is in these that is actually exploration?
So what does all this mean? Well, I'll leave you to answer that. This is everything that I can think of how the new system would affect how we play the game.
And BTW, i have another game mode that isn't up to Cryptics standards: PvP.
- Diplomatic Investigations
- First Contact Missions
- Dilithium/expertise rewards from Non-Combat/Combat exploration encounters
- Exploring randomly generated maps (Which some I've are quite stunning and beautiful).
It will take away the small immersive experience that genuinely made it like Trek. Exploration is such huge aspect of the Star trek philosophy: "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." The decision to remove exploration missions is rather unnecessary, since keeping these missions can be used as a stepping stone for further development and revamping of exploration in the future.
If the devs plan on revamping exploration, they better make it a much more immersive and in-depth system! Look at all the other games out there! Look at the competition of other big games coming out that involves exploration. Maybe a thing or two can be learned from these, and help inspire and develop a much better experience for our fellow explorers.
Make exploration BIG!! :cool:
Take a look at No Man's Sky a science-fiction game about exploration and survival in an infinite procedurally generated universe.
Or even Planet Explorers!
Or even EVE Online's beautifully vast cosmic space! They even have wormholes!
Just even look at the Star Trek universe! It's HUGE!! Make it so, PWE!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
At this point I'd settle for "Birth of the Federation" - Exploration ...
In a new season, they can touch up what - 3-5 missions, plus create another 3-5 unique missions or zones.
Even if there are only 100 missions in the Exploration Sectors, that would mean the next 10 seasons or so they'd be busy retouching exploration missions. And doing nothing else. No featured episodes, no reputations, just retouching exploration missions.
It may be better to create a new system and start from scratch.
And I think Foundry missions are more than adequate replacement for the existing exploration missions. Sure, the Foundry doesn't give players all the options the developers have when making a new mission, but the exploration missions are even more constrained, since they all follow a set of basic templates.
DOOOOOOOOOOOM ....
Anyway, seriously, i have a feeling the Delta Quadrant is on the horizon... we'll say bye bye to Gorgans and welcome to Ocampa and Talaxians.
Something like " explore the strange new Delta Quadrant " , something on the line of the series centred on a certain ship who's said it'll be revamped perhaps and maybe ;-)
There's coffee on the upper right portion of the map.
Precisely my thought. Nothing is never better than something, even if limited. Unless one is an obnoxious eugenics enthusiast.
I think that would have been way better than just throw them into the garbage can.
I can appreciate and agree that the current exploration content is inadequate. However, to remove it entirely without a suitable replacement, is to gut this game of anything resembling what lies at the core of good Trek story telling: Giving the audience or in this case, your players, compelling drama wrapped in content they can't get anywhere else. Taking them to new worlds. Exploring new ideas. Being ABOUT SOMETHING.
There are plenty of games that deliver explosions. A great Star Trek game must be more than that.
With STO, there has been a huge amount of focus on combat since the beginning. By and large, it's well executed and fun. However, Star Trek is not exclusively a combat oriented story. I realize that conflict and as an extension of that, combat, is important to engage people in an online game. But people come to this game especially to be immersed in the Star Trek universe. That means it cant all be "Charge the phasers! Arm the photon torpedoes! KAAAAAAHHHN!".
STO NEEDS exploration and first contact missions to actually BE Star Trek. Otherwise, you're leaving players to grind through missions full of explosions. At that point, you might as well hand the conn over to Michael Bay. :P
Nobody wants to see that.
I have faith that you guys intend to bring higher quality exploration back to the game at some point in the future but please don't leave your players in a drought in the interim.
I am a single player and happen to make quite a bit from "exploring new worlds".
Now you have taken that away too.
Diplomatic ties cut as well?
Those mission also involved the Clusters etc...
Ah! who cares...
My Auto SUB was ended! around the 750th day because of your "lack of successful support".
Actually that's what it felt like reading about this news...
a "useless explanation" & a "thank you for playing STO".
Your line of thought makes no sense and is bad business.
You didn't do the missions. Others did. Leaving them there means the others that did them can continue to play that part of the game. And you can continue to play other parts.
Removing them doesn't affect your gameplay.
It affects others' though.
It's a negative. It doesn't improve the game. It takes content away.
Just like the State of Q mission, it's something that's gone. And not coming back.
It can't be both ways. These missions can't be boring, monotonous redundant repeats ... AND take 3 years or more to tweak because there's just so many of them.
They're either too basic and shallow and only Kill X type missions. Which shouldn't take more than a day or two to actually go in and rework since they're soooooo so basic ...
Or they're huge, taking up tons of space and resources because of the sheer number and variety of them.
It's either or. Not both.
Oh no, that's easy to work around. So much much easier.
Just remove the ability to transfer old materials into new materials.
People already are complaining that the process takes too long on Tribble anyways. And this crafting is supposed to be a brand new start. So go total clean slate.
Get all those materials built up as much as you want from the exploration clusters. But they can't be used in the new Crafting at all. And can't be trasnferred. They already don't vendor for anything.
Boom.
Done.
It is just as fun as running ISE over and over and over and over again.
Which everyone on the forums seems to love and hold up as the paradigm of gameplay in STO.
Yes. It is. Everquest still has Lower Guk and Splitpaw and the Qeynos sewers. It's all still there after 16 years.
This game can't even leave its own missions live, like State of Q.
This. I can't believe that there was *nothing* they could do to improv the experience in four years. Hell, at some point I even would be okay with "Exploration Expansion Packs" you have to buy, like a game add-on which adds more variables and unique encounters referring to the shows.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Yes the old current star cluster mission are substandard compared to the new missions, but consider how long it take Cryptic to do a single mission is just insane. Just because a mission is visually delightful doesn't mean it a good or popular mission. Look a the newest reputation PvE queued mission, The Breach, Viscous Cycleand Undine Infiltration there are constantly empty or take ages to fill, hell I've seen more players doing the daily missions in the star clusters.
Yes we might get some sort of exploration in Expansion 2 later this year related to the Delta Quadrant but judging by Cryptic record I'm no holding my breath. Also from what I've seen from the Battle zones, it will probably just a few similar missions just with better looking maps.
Tuffili Freighter warps to sector ok, but what about the crafting function, the main reason I bought it. What will we get in it's place? Nothing! Would have been nice if you could get an automatic bonus to the crafting missions if you crafted on the Freighter or say Memory Alpha, a real good reason to go there.
Cryptic you are making it much harder for me to want to stay in the game with these changes. It's getting less and less Star Trek with each change.
Yeah, they could have spend a whole season to Exploration...
Adding more basic missions, updating the old ones, adding more events that could randomly happen at each mission (like the Ent -F or a Borg Cube warping in, you get the point).
Personally i just don't buy their statement "there was nothing we could do". To me it seems just a lazy excuse so they can focus on their 1 mission per quarter policy.
I must say i am more frugal when it comes to missions, i don't need a full voice over and cut scenes (which i skip whenever possible TBH
Just give me something interesting to do and i'm happy.
I miss the sense of wonder and the randomness, like "what will happen around the next corner (star)". Something like that completely falls away with the newer missions IMO.
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Wow, that's 1 less reason for me to keep playing the game!
I already do PVEs, why are you sweeping them into PVEs now? Everything is PVE, it's just boring! Why can't I have my changes of pace. If I want to be rail roaded & treated like a glorified idiot, I'll play the episode missions. If I want to blow things up & show off how awesome I am than other people, I play pugs. If I want to be accompanied by people who know what to do, I play teamed PVEs, If I want to show off without putting up with how incompetent most people are, I play battlezones, if I'm tired from all of that & just want to cruise around on my space ship, I go to clusters. Now where the heck am I supposed to go. How can I be sure if the foundry will stay up. Every time the game moves from Season to Season, the foundry will be down. If you move it to foundry, then that means I can't get as much anomalies as I want because it will be on drop cool down as well wouldn't it.
Maybe I'm not a Trek, but isn't exploring new worlds & meet alien species is a reason why Trekkies love Star Trek so much. Now all I see is shoot everything, I would've said I didn't know Star Trek is Call of Duty in space if I didn't play this game since the first day it went F2P. You said you're trying to improve missions, most of them is still shoot things, even story missions, they are simply more dragged on with pointless conversations which boils down to shoot things as always so why even trying.
The only thing to improve or remove off the clusters are ground missions there because I've end up doing exact same missions for multiple times. At 1 point, I did the "gather info. in the abandoned lab" 5 times in a row! Add new missions there would've helped a lot. But I guess that takes way too much effort.
After all, Trekkers would play anything with Star Trek slap on it.
Killing spirit of voyages and explorations is just stupid.
+1 ... I might even start to play "Birth of the Federation" again, to get my Exploration Kick ... sure the game is horrible & buggy, but at least you never know what's the next Species you'll meet is going to be ...
Thats actually a really good idea
Then don't do them. This is one of those statements I've heard in all the years of gaming. Between devs taking things out and modders taking things out of the games or taken parts of the mod out because they didn't like it.
If you don't like an optional feature then DO NOT USE IT, there is no reason to take something out or support taking something out just because you personally do not like it.
Sorry, but what has this to do with what I posted? The places on the map where you pick up the old crafting materials will have to be replaced. So the devs will have to go in and spend however long it takes for just one map to remove the old crafting material nodes so that the old materials no longer drop and replace them with nodes for the new crafting materials. Then you have to test and edit to make sure that all nodes are accessible.
The process doesn't seem long but doing that for every single map in every single mission when there are probably thousands of them does take up a tremendous amount of time, that frankly can be better spend.
Fair enough. Fun is objective not subjective whether it is this exploration star cluster missions, or PvE queued events, PvP, story missions or foundry missions. People simply have a different definition of fun. Something which I acknowledged in my post.
I have to agree with you regarding State of Q, I don't think that should have been removed. It should have been kept in game.
However I think with a system change as drastic as the Crafting System has undergone. Then you also have to think about the costs involved in changing missions to this new system.
The Star cluster missions are lousy with Anomalies, there are thousands upon thousands of maps and all of these maps would have to be updated to the new system. Which as I said is a lot of work.
This is just me, personally, but I'd rather these missions be removed and time allocated to a new exploration system than spending the copious amounts of time required to manually edit each and every single map to update it to the new system.
It would also be easy enough to remove the scan nodes from the clusters themselves, removing a farming opportunity, which seems to be what cryptic really wants from this removal *cough*content massacre.
Again, if it was procedurally generated then logic holds that it should be possible to write a script that simply removes the anomaly nodes from the missions. The crafting mats could then drop from the mission rewards. Simple enough in theory.
So making all new stuff will take less time than adapting old stuff to a hypothetical new system. Is it just me, or does that not make sense? The only changes that would really be needed to make them usable right now, would be to just remove the crafting material anomalies and make those materials drop as mission rewards. Imo, that would be much simpler than going through each and every map by hand and making the change over to the new anomaly.
Whatever happens, I think that those in charge are out of their minds for just nuking several thousand missions from a game that is already starved of end game content. Granted, the missions are of varying quality, but given that they were made by a *machine* they're not bad at all. What makes that really galling, is that most of them are actually better than a lot of what is in the foundry!
Here's an idea. Why not link the foundry with the exploration missions? Give foundry authors the ability to set an "exploration" flag on their mission so that it can be added to the rotation of missions available in the exploration clusters. That way, cryptic would be able to merge the foundry and exploration wrapper missions into one. That would give them the dil nerf they really want, as well as adding a bit more variety to the exploration.
So I think a mistake is being made here. I am at the point on PvE where I only really want to play two of them, maybe three games--Cure, Khitomer, Vault--because each relies on intercepting something in a dynamic manner, with each team being different.
I also was planning on the Clusters for Diluthium. Putting it elsewhere is fine, but there are only so many times I can run "Azure Nebula" before developing an intense hate for it. That point was actually reached last week, so sticking it in canned PvEs that never ever deviate is simply unacceptable (I used to rate technical systems on whether they were acceptable for the end user of not), because the word "grind" means "grind" for a reason. Clusters had variety.
To me, this is a Windows 8 move--"we know how you should enjoy yourself, and will force you to". I am forced to try and figure out the financial ROI-enhancement reason behind this, and when I start getting on that track of cynicism, a certain rot builds into the relationship.
As a final note, I had planned to write in on a few things, so I might as well do them here: a.) t one thing I really really enjoyed and wanted more of was when, as a Klingon, I intercepted in Sector Space the Fed convoy as part of "Pi Canis" daily mission. There is a lot of potential in Sector Space that was missed for the Klingon War. b.) intercepting that convoy reiterated a problem about STO that Cryptic probably knows--at some point in time, you level out, and you are doing the same thing--and nothing you do matters. Meaning it is a pure tactical level game. You can defeat a thousand Klingon fleets at Starbase 24 with no blue losses--the victory means nothing, which is not how the real world operates. Front lines would change. I don't play in a fleet, am not sure I care to without knowing folks first, but STO needs a strategic component. The wins have to matter. Right now, they don't. c.) I don't play in a fleet. That may be the major source of grinding inspiration for a lot, but I need to be able to establish social connections before wasting time on something like that. Right now, it is too hard. d.) I'm readying my ships for an eventual "fleet" option--five ships under my command. You already have the AI, and the concept is done in ground games.
e.) Which brings up the next--fresh tactical problem can keep people coming back, as they figure it out. A fleet action needs to be more than a furball. You have escorts. In this game, are they actually escorting anything? Same thing with support ships. Are they actually supporting? Or all ships just actually doing the same thing to varying levels of success. In real world fleets, dreadnaughts outranged small ships. In real world aircraft missions, electronic warfare jamming aircraft do that jamming from a considerable distance behind the strike package. I understand a lot of players want to get in there and mix it up, but to me the max firing range of bigger ships (presumably with more power from bigger "warp cores" should be larger than smaller), and science ships, presumably with greater antenna arrays, should be able to both ID ships and use things like gravity well from at least 15 km. And the support one gives should be factored into success/first ratings. And for fleet actions, ideally you need escorts because otherwise your big ship(s) gets smothered--but the big ship properly supported does the blasting. Not sure how to work that concept into STO, but that that is how it is in the real world.
Just some random thoughts.
It wouldn't have given anything away if the announcement had said something along the lines of "we remain committed to exploration and diplomacy being a part of the game." It would have reassured me that something was going on, somewhere in the background of game development - that someone was working on, or at least thinking about, those aspects.
But there is nothing in the statement that gives me any confidence in that.
It reads, to me, as though the devs' attitude might be summarized thus:-
"STAR TREK ONLINE IS A GAME ABOUT GOING TO GRIND ZONES AND BLOWING AWAY ALIEN SCUM. IF YOU WANT EXPLORATION AND DIPLOMACY YOU WILL HAVE TO MAKE IT YOURSELVES. NYAH NYAH NYAH SUCKS BOO TO THE SPIRIT OF THE FRANCHISE."
Like I said, I am seriously disappointed, here. This is a lousy move, and so long as it is permitted me, I will say it's a lousy move.
I absolutely agree! This game just became Battlestar Galactica, Dyson Dinosaur edition. (And I never play Dyson.) Exploration is the core of true Star Trek! To jettison the fun exploration and keep the never-ending grinds, why bother to play? Especially when Foundry missions also get deleted, once we get interested. By the way, where the hell is the Foundry access port, now that they redesigned ESD? It used to be outside of the transporter room. Can't play it if I can't find the door! I'm a doctor, not a bloodhound!
Everything. All those anomalies? Leave them as they are. Just don't make the items you get be able to transformed into the new items needed for the new crafting.
That way people need to start all over. Brand new. From scratch. Which is the idea behind the new crafting anyways.
So you can get all the radiation samples you want. But they're not good for anything. Can't be vendored. Can't be used in the new crafting.
Now there's no need to change anything about the exploration cluster maps. At all.
Just to reiterate ... They're not doing that. They're instead making the assets from some of this stuff available through the foundry and foundry nodes available. They're not allocating any time or resources to exploration. They're just removing it.