Friends, Fashion, Fun. I never got much into PvP. Exploration missions were terrible already anyways, so meh. Broken FAW? Whatevs, when is some aspect of this game (or any other multiplayer game) NOT broken? There were other things on that list, but not gonna bother going back to nit pick them one by one. I do believe the severity of the situation is being blown out of proportion though.
******** is super boring. TOR is too. I'm a bit burnt on STO after the summer event, but that's fine. Variety is the spice of life. If I was in the mood, plenty to shoot and grind. Destiny was super cool. Can't wait for that. Lotta games gonna be crushed by that one, but plenty of people ain't interested in FPS.
Yeah, STO is doomed is a silly premise. If that's the attitude, one must take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
Because it's the sound that steel shod boots make on the deck plating of a real warship. As opposed [to] the cushy carpeting on the Federation luxury liners.
1) Exploration
2) PvP
3) Crafting
4) Challenge and difficulty
5) Balance
6) Diversity in builds
7) FAW (soon?)
Please list the reasons that still draw you into this game? Seriously, I am looking for anything positive that's left to do here ... except grinding for something. Please no trolls. I am looking to understand the thinking of other side which still supports this game.
I just like Star Trek. That's reason enough I suppose.
Exploration has been a joke since the start of this game. It was the same missions recycled over and over again. Honestly, I am glad they got rid of it.
Do you play the STFs regularly?
If so, have you noticed that unlike the exploration system, those are the EXACT SAME MISSIONS that you play repeatedly ... over and over and over and over and over again?
Here's what one of its developers had to say about it back when it was being designed. You may recognize him. He used to be the game's head honcho.
Hello, my name is Daniel Stahl and Im a producer on Star Trek Online.
Ask any Star Trek fan to quote the opening to the TV show and youll hear the words to boldly go where no one has gone before.
Its a defining characteristic and mission statement in Star Trek. Explore. Go out there and see what you find.
As a producer, it begs the question, How? How can you explore someplace new in an MMO where there are zones and maps and contacts and missions that everyone seems to have access to over the course of their characters career? Most game content is hand created by a staff of designers and artists who spend time placing things where they should be, making sure that there is a natural progression to what you do. It is a lot of work just to make a single planetary system.
In order to make a game universe where players can go somewhere no one else has gone before, wed have to make more maps than we physically have time for and we would have to keep making them until the end of time. So how can we deliver on this concept?
To answer this question we turned to the Star Trek movies for inspiration and found the Genesis Program.
In the movie cannon the Genesis program used technology to convert nothing into something. Life from Lifelessness. This was the Creation device that Khan threatened to destroy the Enterprise with and what eventually spawned the Genesis planet.
Star Trek Online has embraced the concept of Genesis as a method to generate planets and systems that no one has seen before. But as with any technology it requires a lot of brainstorming, engineering, and testing to make it work right.
The core concept of Genesis in Star Trek Online is to create places for you to go without requiring hours of art and development time for each location. In a lot of ways, when we think of Genesis we think of the Holodeck computer.
On the Next Generation TV show, when a character wanted to go someplace on the Holodeck, they would describe to the computer the locale.
Computer, load up a beach on the shores of Risa is all the character would have to say, and then a few seconds later, they are standing on the beaches of Risa.
But it often didnt end there. Sometimes the characters would further iterate descriptions to the computer to fine tune the Holodeck program.
Computer, add a cabana and a mariachi band. Oh and set the local time to sunset.
A few seconds later theres a holographic band playing music next to your cabana.
Describing what you want in real terms is the key to the Genesis System in Star Trek Online.
Give me an M class planet with a Federation complex set up in the mountains where some scientists are milling about ...
Now add a bunch of Klingons attacking the complex
... Oh, and make sure the Klingons brought some Targs!
Now make sure one of the Klingons is a badass Dahar master
And how about a really funny looking Ferengi running around screaming!
I can keep on going for days like this. But thats the point.
By building tools that automatically create what comes out of our designers brains in descriptive words, it allows us to use Genesis to generate locations that are in essence the direct results of our imaginations.
This is the technology that will allow us to generate the thousands of unexplored worlds that no one has ever been to yet without requiring a small nation of artists and designers to make.
It is a testimony to the spirit of Star Trek that the technology we are using to create these worlds is a direct inspiration from the show itself.
It only begs the question, I wonder what is out there
Seriously, stop saying that this wasn't exploration. It was designed to be exactly that. And it was no more repetitive and thin than this game's other content. Ask yourself which was more repetitive, doing the exact same mission 8 times for 8 different rewards. Or doing variations of the same mission that changed the details around each time?
Truth is, the genesis system was fine. It made content just as deep as Cryptic did.
Instal size does matter. Especially as the game continues to get larger with every expansion sometimes you gotta trim the fat a bit so to speak. Granted I think it was a bit, premature, but I acknowledge the reasoning is valid even if I don't entirely agree with it.
This is the best part! Since it's one we can actually see the real results of. Exploration is now gone. Poof. Out of there.
HAS YOUR PATCHING GOTTEN NOTICEABLY QUICKER? IS YOUR INSTALLING MORE EFFICIENT?
Maybe it's my game play, but it seems to me that with this latest round of changes that things have gotten a bit tougher. It was easier prior to 9.5. Maybe it's my imagination or my timing is off or something, but I'm having a harder time taking down the same bad guys in the usual places.
First off with exploration. That was a BABY step of exploration. Go find a new civilization. Oh hey it's under attack and you're into combat mode.
Don't even do first contact really, don't beam down and explore ruins, hell might find a planet nobody has been to before and guess what you might find ruins of an ancient civilization.
Honestly exploration should taken a page from the show "Enterprise" when they did the first season with exploration.
With PvP, no comment since I haven't tried it in years.
With FAW and BO I must ask WHAT ARE THE DEVS THINKING?! I mean really don't they realize that BO, is going to make the GAL-X phaser lance basically WORTHLESS? Anybody stop to think about that? I mean they are basically handing every damn ship a free phase lance shot that hit's even harder!
Sorry PWE on FAW(no power drain and or cool down?) are we really going to turn this into smash monkey button mode?
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
Oh, I am so sorry. Did you want me to post some 5 year old pre-Launch statements from Devs about how Klingons will be a full Faction as proof that the always were too?
The fans are smart enough to realize a pre-Launch advertising post is what it is: sales spin BS. Trying to use it as proof only makes you look incompetent.
The Genesis System was never exploration. It was a cheap piece of TRIBBLE that Cryptic only had time to implement because they were rushed to get the game Launched by the license date.
And I think most of the Content is a lot deeper then you give it credit for. I think you have just played it so many times that you do not even pay attention to it any more.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
If so, have you noticed that unlike the exploration system, those are the EXACT SAME MISSIONS that you play repeatedly ... over and over and over and over and over again?
Comparing STF's to EXPLORATION missions isn't exactly right. The STF's state exactly what it is about.
When I think Exploration, I want to discover new civilizations that require diplomacy to deal with, not shield generators, rations, or other commodities right off the bat. I also didn't believe that a space-faring race couldn't send out a general distress call when attacked (there's an idea if they bring back Exploration areas, an Any-Level Red Alert with random enemies each time, even unknown enemies that activates every 20 minutes to an hour per instance).
And the Accolades for the exploration missions weren't worth going for like they are with the STF's.
Star Trek Battles: For those who want to Play Star Trek Online as it WAS MEANT TO BE!!!
The Genesis System was never exploration. It was a cheap piece of TRIBBLE that Cryptic only had time to implement because they were rushed to get the game Launched by the license date.
Oh, I'm sorry to have used Daniel Stahl's own comments about the development of Procedurally Generated Content to create a sense of exploration in the game he evetually became the leader of.
Howbout, instead, I use a July 22 2014 article about the game No Man's Sky, which demonstrates the same style of content generation is being used to create a sandbox game based on ... get this ... EXPLORING AN ENTIRE UNIVERSE OF PROCEDURALLY GENERATED CONTENT.
Since the very beginning, video games have aimed for the stars. In 1971, Computer Space, the first publicly available coin-operated video game, hit pinball arcades, bars, and college campuses around America. Designed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney (both of whom would go on to found Atari), the game put players in control of a small rocket ship maneuvering in outer space and tasked with destroying hostile alien spacecraft. The graphics consisted of white lines and pinprick pixel stars on a black background, switching to black lines on a white background if the player outscored the aliens after one 90-second round. The game was housed in a freckle-sparkled fiberglass cabinet with rounded edges, like a bowling ball crossed with a prop out of the movie Barbarella. Computer Space featured a four-button control scheme — thrust, rotate right, rotate left, and fire missiles — that was apparently too complicated for our acid-tripping baby boomer forerunners, and so, just like Barbarella, Computer Space flopped.
Fast-forward 40-plus years: our cell phones make the integrated circuitry of Computer Space look like the technological gap between a sharpened stick and a nuclear missile, next-gen video-game consoles are more powerful than the Apollo 11 Lunar Module’s guidance computer, and a small British game-development company is getting ready to launch us back into outer space.
Hello Games, based in Guildford, England, a town with a population of about 137,000 roughly midway between London and Portsmouth on the A3 highway, employs fewer than a dozen people and was founded by Sean Murray, Ryan Doyle, David Ream, and Grant Duncan, four friends as well as veterans, to differing degrees, of the video-game industry at companies like Criterion (the Need for Speed series) and Sumo Digital (Virtua Tennis 3). Gradually becoming frustrated with the way the larger, more corporate structure of their rapidly expanding workplaces ossified creative freedom, the four struck out on their own in 2008.
In June 2010, Hello Games released its first title, Joe Danger, a colorful side-scroller broadly reminiscent of Nintendo’s mid-’80s cartridge classic Excitebike, launched on PlayStation 3’s online store. Hello Games recouped its developmental costs in half a day. Two sequels and an expansion to Xbox and mobile platforms followed, all successes.
The financial stability afforded by the Joe Danger series allowed Hello Games to develop its next, as of yet unreleased game, the ambitious-beyond-all-reckoning No Man’s Sky, a title that just might revolutionize gaming. If, that is, the gameplay can at all live up to the company’s vision.
The conceptual leap from Joe Danger to No Man’s Sky is astounding. Joe Danger is a game in which the titular Joe rides his 360-cc dirt bike over and above various motocross obstacles, scoring points by collecting floating stars. No Man’s Sky seeks to launch the player into the stars, to explore a universe measured in light-years — actual light-years! — full of explorable planets, themselves inhabited by all manner of undiscovered alien flora and fauna.
I mean undiscovered in the truest sense. There are two ways a developer can choose to build a free-roaming video-game world. One is to have a team of design artists build every single object and environment in the game, as in Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto series or Bethesda Game Studio’s Skyrim. The other way is to hand over creative duties to the computer AI, a process called “procedural generation.” Hello Games refers to No Man’s Sky as “an infinitely procedural universe.”
It works like this: Hello’s design team writes code for, say, a horselike animal, and then the AI uses that code as a template to create a variety of similar-looking animals of varied size, shape, and color. Think of it as a computer approximating the way members of a given species look different on an individual level but are always recognizable as being the same kind of animal. Then they scale that process up to create whole species of plants and animals inhabiting entire procedurally generated landscapes on procedurally generated planets in a procedurally generated solar system nestled somewhere in a vast procedurally generated galaxy within an entire procedurally generated universe. Imagine that and you may begin to understand why people are so excited about what Hello Games just might be able to accomplish.
This method of world creation means the game contains things that no one — not even the game’s creators — has ever seen. “Recently we were demoing the game to some press … and one of the journalists secretly grabbed the controller and started to play,” Hello Games founder and No Man’s Sky programmer Sean Murray told me over email. “He kept turning to us saying things like, ‘If I follow this river, what’s down there?’ and we were like ‘I genuinely don’t know.’ You could feel this buzz as everyone watched, like literally we don’t know what’s out there and we’re just watching someone explore a whole planet that no one has ever visited before.
“It happens all the time. We create these systems, layers and layers of simple systems. Together they create something that is chaotic, it’s almost impossible to predict. I create the algorithms that generate our terrain for instance, and I’m always seeing rock formations, or rivers, waterfalls, caves that I just didn’t know could exist … like those floating islands that you see in our trailer. For creatures and life, it always surprises me where life will find a way to grow. You find these bacteria readings in the deepest caves of planets that you thought were totally sterile. It’s a little thing, but it blows my mind.”
Procedurally generated games have been around for 30-plus years. Rogue, released in 1980, used procedural generation to create a labyrinthine dungeon populated by monsters that the players had to fight through on their quest to retrieve the fantastically named MacGuffin “the Amulet of Yendor.” Rogue inspired an entire genre of similarly designed games called “Roguelikes.”
The most direct conceptual ancestor to No Man’s Sky is David Braben and Ian Bell’s influential mid-’80s game Elite. Elite was an open-ended space exploration game containing elements of trading and combat, and used procedural generation to create explorable galaxies while keeping the size of the game’s code small enough to run on Thatcher-era home computing technology. “For us specifically, everyone on the team played Elite when they first started playing games,” Murray told me. “And I think that set a lot of expectations for the games we always thought we’d be playing in the future. But they didn’t really happen. More Elite-like games came out, but they didn’t really expand on the core game.”
Minecraft, released in 2011 and now available on every gaming platform from PCs to mobile phones, puts the player in the middle of a gigantic procedurally generated landscape that can be mined for resources that the player can use to craft literally anything, from swords, chairs, a shot-for-shot remake of Star Wars: Episode IV, and King’s Landing from Game of Thrones. Almost three years ago, a man who calls himself Kurt J. Mac reached peak nerdom by quitting his job to document his virtual trek across the world of Minecraft to the fabled “Far Lands,” the place at the edge of the game map where the bugs in the algorithms undergirding the landscape show up in the game’s graphics. It will take him an estimated 22 years to complete the journey, at which point I imagine he’ll have to take stock of just what went wrong in his life.
The differences between the thrust of previous open-world games, even one as improvisationally free-form and vast as Minecraft, and the creative ambitions behind No Man’s Sky is simply a question of scale. If Hello Games succeeds in creating what it envisions, No Man’s Sky will embody themes from gaming’s past and present while blasting the form into the far-flung infinite future.
For instance, the game includes some form of a multiplayer element, with players sharing the same unexplored universe, a fairly quotidian feature in modern gaming. But that doesn’t mean the players should expect the standard World of ********–type of massively multiplayer gaming experience, with gamers meeting up in-game up and performing quests. Again, think of the scale. Talking about the size of the game at the recent E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo, Murray said, “What we’re dealing with is planet-size planets. So, even just one planet, if a million of us played, we would still be really far apart. So, scale that up to a universe — it’s actually really unlikely that you and I are going to meet.” No Man’s Sky is a game that you could conceivably never finish playing, full of planets you will never fully explore.
“I think my generation has grown up with films and games that exclusively show the dystopian future, the post-apocalyptic,” Murray told me about Hello Games’ influences in our email conversation. “Before that though was something far more hopeful, that golden age of science fiction, actual fiction, where we imagined a world that was more wonderful than our own. That’s the kind of universe of impossible worlds we want to set players loose in.”
Murray has been cagey about the nuts-and-bolts details of No Man’s Sky’s gameplay. How does combat work? How does the economic component work? How does the player level up his or her ship? How are missions structured? Are there even missions as gamers understand them? These questions are unanswered. But, honestly, I don’t care. I’m just ready to go to space. That’s the thing about aiming for the stars. Even if you get only part of the way there, you’ve still gone farther than you ever imagined.
Apparently the only thing that's TRIBBLE is your idea that these tools needed to be abandoned.
Comparing STF's to EXPLORATION missions isn't exactly right.
When the complaint is that the content was too repetitive, then yes, it is exactly right. Because the content you do the most in the game you play is even MORE repetitive.
Oh, I'm sorry to have used Daniel Stahl's own comments about the development of Procedurally Generated Content to create a sense of exploration in the game he evetually became the leader of.
Keeping in mind that DStahl was not the Line Developer back then, just a grunt doing what he was told. Zinc was the man in charge pre-Launch.
Apparently the only thing that's TRIBBLE is your idea that these tools needed to be abandoned.
No. I am quite certain I can find many threads from over the years on this forum about how crappy the exploration zones were in this game.
Just because you liked them does not mean you were in the majority.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Why do people keep asking the same question over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again?
Seriously. Everyone should have a pretty good idea of what keeps people playing by now. It's simple. If you do not enjoy the game there is no point in playing.
Improve, don't remove. Then again, I realize who exactly is developing this game. Cryptic isn't the shop to do it.
Unfortunately this is the basics of cryptic. They cant improve anything, so they remove it or they just make a complete useless and unnecessary revamp. This is the way for the past 1,5 years.
Exploration zones?? actually, i cant remember someone who liked em. The same crappy and terrible-made mission over and over again everytime?? i dont think a reasonable person will like that. And this was the premise of the exploration zones. Just 4 or 5 elements to take in consideration, and to find missions based on those 5 elements. After that , the same over and over.
So, this should been improved, not just removed. But since cryptic knew it was going to be A LOT of work and they will not be able to invest that time and efforts in things that will make profits, they just decided to get rid of em. Fast and easy. Of course, as always, they never took in consideration the opinion of the players or the reports in tribble.
But at least, we are already used to these methods (probably what cryptic wanted since time ago) and this is what we had left from the star trek universe.
Why do people keep asking the same question over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again?
Seriously. Everyone should have a pretty good idea of what keeps people playing by now. It's simple. If you do not enjoy the game there is no point in playing.
You can enjoy a game and still, be able to analyze it and find A LOT of things you dont like. Specially in STO.
A lot of people plays STO because it is a sci fic mmorpg game, because it is a STar Trek ip, because you can fly your ship and use fancy effects that makes the ship look great.. :P (some effects are ridiculous, but meh..), because other people likes the boff system and to dress their boffs and make strange things with em.., etc. but even if im enjoying the game, that doesnt mean a lot of things. That doesnt mean the game im enjoying is good, or that doesnt mean i am ok with all the bad things this game carries, or that doesnt mean i am really dissapointed about a lot of "revamps" or things that are not necessary, and a huge etc.
In other games, negative feedback is always great and useful because it helps to improve the game, not the opposite. In STO, negative feedback is just, useless, pain and simple. Because it doesnt matter what opinion the player base have, or what the customers want, cryptic will do always what they want. They are the ones who created the game, so they can improve it, or destroy it. Its their choice. Unfortunately we are in the second case.
But you right that, we already know what we have, its silyl to keep doing the same questions, to keep proposing dumb ideas (the forums are filled with these lol) and it is useless to keep wasting time writting dumb posts on the forums. I agree. But this will never change. Because people will never learn lol. :P
Then, when he delivers a reply to each of your points, you respond thusly:
if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck...
If it's so obviously indefensible, then you weren't actually looking to understand the thinking of the other side. You were looking for validation of your opinions.
Cryptic, as a company, will pursue whatever strategy it feels will improve the bottom line. That's their job. Satisfying the few forum posters that are unhappy is not a requirement for that.
At the end of the day, you, me, and all the other posters here are unimportant, as long as Cryptic's data tells them that they are in the black.
If I become unhappy with the direction a game takes, I'll leave. That's the only metric any company cares about. No players = no money.
Simple.
This person sums up the OP's plan perfectly. The OP doesn't want to understand, the OP only wants to bait people and then call them "trolls" because they defend Cryptic and its decisions.
Just my 2 Quatloos here... I personally believe a very well done sandbox exploration system (similar to "No Man's Sky") would keep people playing as it's something new every time. Unfortunately, PWE/Cryptic are in it for the fast buck.
yeah you keep mentioning that game.... you also keep leaving out the main difference between it and STO.... namely that that's pretty much all there is to NMS....
Just my 2 Quatloos here... I personally believe a very well done sandbox exploration system (similar to "No Man's Sky") would keep people playing as it's something new every time. Unfortunately, PWE/Cryptic are in it for the fast buck.
As I said before, Exploration in Star Trek is far more complex than exploration in other games like No Man's Sky. I expect that it will takes years for Procedurally Generated Content to become complex enough for Star Trek exploration. After all, it is far more than scanning 5 objects or kill 5 groups of enemy in the TV episodes. First contact with alien civilizations, active ancient ruins, and dealing with pathogens are a part of Star Trek exploration. For exploration to work in Star Trek, it would require random missions that involve dev missions, Foundry missions, and Procedurally Generated Content since not all star systems have anything interesting in them.
yeah you keep mentioning that game.... you also keep leaving out the main difference between it and STO.... namely that that's pretty much all there is to NMS....
Agreed, seeing that apple constantly compared to oranges is pretty annoying. A few things.
1) The entire NMS development team is devoted entirely to developing NMS. To think Cryptic could break off a development-team-size chunk of people to work on an ASPECT of Star Trek Online is unrealistic at best. The word 'childish' wouldn't be totally out of place.
2) The NMS development team does not have to worry about constantly putting out content at the same time as they are developing NMS. If STO were to keep running, it would have to keep releasing 'seasons' even as it was doing this other massive thing. No Man's Sky was first announced in 2013 and it is supposed to see release in 2015. If STO were to deliver a comparable exploration system they'd need a team of people the size of the NMS development team working on only that for two or more years.
3) This massive undertaking would involve a questionable to nonexistant profit margin. We live in a real world that runs on currency. Nobody is going to spend two years for your gaming enjoyment pro bono.
Now, it's a shame that exploration has been essentially put on the back burner for all time. I think that's a crappy decision. Could STO, conceivably, incorporate some kind of exploration mechanic if Cryptic saw fit? Sure, and that would be nice. Could it involve procedurally generated worlds? Sure, and that would be nice. Is it remotely likely that such a system could ever compare favorably to a game like No Man's Sky? No. That is not likely at all.
yeah you keep mentioning that game.... you also keep leaving out the main difference between it and STO.... namely that that's pretty much all there is to NMS....
I have another one. One is a single player game and the other is an MMO.
Good luck trying to replicate such content generation in an MMO. Especially considering the system we had was deemed too big so got taken out.
No Man's Sky may not be 100%, but IMO it's a very good start. Go to the planet and explore. The software is creating an entire planet, not a small instanced box to run around in and scan/shoot 5 things. From the looks of it, the software is creating everything - environment, flora/fauna, atmospheric conditions etc.
If it's creating lifeforms and the like, surely it can create pre-warp or post-warp civilizations to study... materials to be collected, scientific studies to be done and such. Leave the more story driven content to FE's and the Foundry. No Man's Sky is giving you an infinite universe to roam around in that's always making something new.
The old STO system was far more basic, and was removed because it was hogging too much space.
The system you describe above would be fine for a single player game on a single machine. Can you imagine the processing power needed if thousands of players in an MMO were simultaneously discovering thousands of planets, each with their own ecosystems and wildlife?
So while the server is burning a hole in the floor of Cryptic HQ player machines would have to worry about the punishing lag because of all the new assets they'd need to keep downloading. That is of course if their machines can handle it, chances are they'd just lose connection all the time.
As for gameplay. MMO's have simple gameplay for a reason - to cater to a mass audience. How many would have the patience to fully explore a new planet, record data and so on. All that in a game where 5 mins in ISE is too long for some? Then of course the sandbox element of such exploration, and how it would require thinking.
See?
On a side note No Man's Sky does look pretty cool. I was keeping an eye on Limit Theory but may have to spare another eye for this too.
The old STO system was far more basic, and was removed because it was hogging too much space.
The system you describe above would be fine for a single player game on a single machine. Can you imagine the processing power needed if thousands of players in an MMO were simultaneously discovering thousands of planets, each with their own ecosystems and wildlife?
So while the server is burning a hole in the floor of Cryptic HQ player machines would have to worry about the punishing lag because of all the new assets they'd need to keep downloading. That is of course if their machines can handle it, chances are they'd just lose connection all the time.
As for gameplay. MMO's have simple gameplay for a reason - to cater to a mass audience. How many would have the patience to fully explore a new planet, record data and so on. All that in a game where 5 mins in ISE is too long for some? Then of course the sandbox element of such exploration, and how it would require thinking.
See?
On a side note No Man's Sky does look pretty cool. I was keeping an eye on Limit Theory but may have to spare another eye for this too.
Actually, there is a way around this. Not sure where or how to code it, but it what if NMS was specific to a players machine? It would still require that you be online with STO, thereby giving other players a chance to explore worlds others have explored, but the main program of creating new worlds for the player to explore would be located on the players machine.
Now, I know that this will probably eliminate a portion of the playerbase due to system requirements, but I think it would be possible.
Star Trek Battles: For those who want to Play Star Trek Online as it WAS MEANT TO BE!!!
I have another one. One is a single player game and the other is an MMO.
Ah, you didn't read the article. No worries. I'll quote the relevant part:
For instance, the game includes some form of a multiplayer element, with players sharing the same unexplored universe, a fairly quotidian feature in modern gaming. But that doesnt mean the players should expect the standard World of ********type of massively multiplayer gaming experience, with gamers meeting up in-game up and performing quests. Again, think of the scale. Talking about the size of the game at the recent E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo, Murray said, What were dealing with is planet-size planets. So, even just one planet, if a million of us played, we would still be really far apart. So, scale that up to a universe its actually really unlikely that you and I are going to meet. No Mans Sky is a game that you could conceivably never finish playing, full of planets you will never fully explore.
It is a massively multiplayer online game. It's just not an RPG.
It's also being built to scale so it'll be lonely.
Comments
******** is super boring. TOR is too. I'm a bit burnt on STO after the summer event, but that's fine. Variety is the spice of life. If I was in the mood, plenty to shoot and grind. Destiny was super cool. Can't wait for that. Lotta games gonna be crushed by that one, but plenty of people ain't interested in FPS.
Yeah, STO is doomed is a silly premise. If that's the attitude, one must take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
I just like Star Trek. That's reason enough I suppose.
Do you play the STFs regularly?
If so, have you noticed that unlike the exploration system, those are the EXACT SAME MISSIONS that you play repeatedly ... over and over and over and over and over again?
Yes it was.
Here's what one of its developers had to say about it back when it was being designed. You may recognize him. He used to be the game's head honcho.
Seriously, stop saying that this wasn't exploration. It was designed to be exactly that. And it was no more repetitive and thin than this game's other content. Ask yourself which was more repetitive, doing the exact same mission 8 times for 8 different rewards. Or doing variations of the same mission that changed the details around each time?
Truth is, the genesis system was fine. It made content just as deep as Cryptic did.
This is the best part! Since it's one we can actually see the real results of. Exploration is now gone. Poof. Out of there.
HAS YOUR PATCHING GOTTEN NOTICEABLY QUICKER? IS YOUR INSTALLING MORE EFFICIENT?
Right now. Has this had an impact?
Maybe it's my game play, but it seems to me that with this latest round of changes that things have gotten a bit tougher. It was easier prior to 9.5. Maybe it's my imagination or my timing is off or something, but I'm having a harder time taking down the same bad guys in the usual places.
Anyone else experiencing a tougher time n PvE?
First off with exploration. That was a BABY step of exploration. Go find a new civilization. Oh hey it's under attack and you're into combat mode.
Don't even do first contact really, don't beam down and explore ruins, hell might find a planet nobody has been to before and guess what you might find ruins of an ancient civilization.
Honestly exploration should taken a page from the show "Enterprise" when they did the first season with exploration.
With PvP, no comment since I haven't tried it in years.
With FAW and BO I must ask WHAT ARE THE DEVS THINKING?! I mean really don't they realize that BO, is going to make the GAL-X phaser lance basically WORTHLESS? Anybody stop to think about that? I mean they are basically handing every damn ship a free phase lance shot that hit's even harder!
Sorry PWE on FAW(no power drain and or cool down?) are we really going to turn this into smash monkey button mode?
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
The fans are smart enough to realize a pre-Launch advertising post is what it is: sales spin BS. Trying to use it as proof only makes you look incompetent.
The Genesis System was never exploration. It was a cheap piece of TRIBBLE that Cryptic only had time to implement because they were rushed to get the game Launched by the license date.
And I think most of the Content is a lot deeper then you give it credit for. I think you have just played it so many times that you do not even pay attention to it any more.
Comparing STF's to EXPLORATION missions isn't exactly right. The STF's state exactly what it is about.
When I think Exploration, I want to discover new civilizations that require diplomacy to deal with, not shield generators, rations, or other commodities right off the bat. I also didn't believe that a space-faring race couldn't send out a general distress call when attacked (there's an idea if they bring back Exploration areas, an Any-Level Red Alert with random enemies each time, even unknown enemies that activates every 20 minutes to an hour per instance).
And the Accolades for the exploration missions weren't worth going for like they are with the STF's.
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Oh, I'm sorry to have used Daniel Stahl's own comments about the development of Procedurally Generated Content to create a sense of exploration in the game he evetually became the leader of.
Howbout, instead, I use a July 22 2014 article about the game No Man's Sky, which demonstrates the same style of content generation is being used to create a sandbox game based on ... get this ... EXPLORING AN ENTIRE UNIVERSE OF PROCEDURALLY GENERATED CONTENT.
Apparently the only thing that's TRIBBLE is your idea that these tools needed to be abandoned.
When the complaint is that the content was too repetitive, then yes, it is exactly right. Because the content you do the most in the game you play is even MORE repetitive.
No. I am quite certain I can find many threads from over the years on this forum about how crappy the exploration zones were in this game.
Just because you liked them does not mean you were in the majority.
Why do people keep asking the same question over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again?
Seriously. Everyone should have a pretty good idea of what keeps people playing by now. It's simple. If you do not enjoy the game there is no point in playing.
Unfortunately this is the basics of cryptic. They cant improve anything, so they remove it or they just make a complete useless and unnecessary revamp. This is the way for the past 1,5 years.
Exploration zones?? actually, i cant remember someone who liked em. The same crappy and terrible-made mission over and over again everytime?? i dont think a reasonable person will like that. And this was the premise of the exploration zones. Just 4 or 5 elements to take in consideration, and to find missions based on those 5 elements. After that , the same over and over.
So, this should been improved, not just removed. But since cryptic knew it was going to be A LOT of work and they will not be able to invest that time and efforts in things that will make profits, they just decided to get rid of em. Fast and easy. Of course, as always, they never took in consideration the opinion of the players or the reports in tribble.
But at least, we are already used to these methods (probably what cryptic wanted since time ago) and this is what we had left from the star trek universe.
You can enjoy a game and still, be able to analyze it and find A LOT of things you dont like. Specially in STO.
A lot of people plays STO because it is a sci fic mmorpg game, because it is a STar Trek ip, because you can fly your ship and use fancy effects that makes the ship look great.. :P (some effects are ridiculous, but meh..), because other people likes the boff system and to dress their boffs and make strange things with em.., etc. but even if im enjoying the game, that doesnt mean a lot of things. That doesnt mean the game im enjoying is good, or that doesnt mean i am ok with all the bad things this game carries, or that doesnt mean i am really dissapointed about a lot of "revamps" or things that are not necessary, and a huge etc.
In other games, negative feedback is always great and useful because it helps to improve the game, not the opposite. In STO, negative feedback is just, useless, pain and simple. Because it doesnt matter what opinion the player base have, or what the customers want, cryptic will do always what they want. They are the ones who created the game, so they can improve it, or destroy it. Its their choice. Unfortunately we are in the second case.
But you right that, we already know what we have, its silyl to keep doing the same questions, to keep proposing dumb ideas (the forums are filled with these lol) and it is useless to keep wasting time writting dumb posts on the forums. I agree. But this will never change. Because people will never learn lol. :P
My character Tsin'xing
As I said before, Exploration in Star Trek is far more complex than exploration in other games like No Man's Sky. I expect that it will takes years for Procedurally Generated Content to become complex enough for Star Trek exploration. After all, it is far more than scanning 5 objects or kill 5 groups of enemy in the TV episodes. First contact with alien civilizations, active ancient ruins, and dealing with pathogens are a part of Star Trek exploration. For exploration to work in Star Trek, it would require random missions that involve dev missions, Foundry missions, and Procedurally Generated Content since not all star systems have anything interesting in them.
Agreed, seeing that apple constantly compared to oranges is pretty annoying. A few things.
1) The entire NMS development team is devoted entirely to developing NMS. To think Cryptic could break off a development-team-size chunk of people to work on an ASPECT of Star Trek Online is unrealistic at best. The word 'childish' wouldn't be totally out of place.
2) The NMS development team does not have to worry about constantly putting out content at the same time as they are developing NMS. If STO were to keep running, it would have to keep releasing 'seasons' even as it was doing this other massive thing. No Man's Sky was first announced in 2013 and it is supposed to see release in 2015. If STO were to deliver a comparable exploration system they'd need a team of people the size of the NMS development team working on only that for two or more years.
3) This massive undertaking would involve a questionable to nonexistant profit margin. We live in a real world that runs on currency. Nobody is going to spend two years for your gaming enjoyment pro bono.
Now, it's a shame that exploration has been essentially put on the back burner for all time. I think that's a crappy decision. Could STO, conceivably, incorporate some kind of exploration mechanic if Cryptic saw fit? Sure, and that would be nice. Could it involve procedurally generated worlds? Sure, and that would be nice. Is it remotely likely that such a system could ever compare favorably to a game like No Man's Sky? No. That is not likely at all.
I have another one. One is a single player game and the other is an MMO.
Good luck trying to replicate such content generation in an MMO. Especially considering the system we had was deemed too big so got taken out.
OK, you got me. It was a reasonable assumption. But my point is still valid, look at your earlier post.
The old STO system was far more basic, and was removed because it was hogging too much space.
The system you describe above would be fine for a single player game on a single machine. Can you imagine the processing power needed if thousands of players in an MMO were simultaneously discovering thousands of planets, each with their own ecosystems and wildlife?
So while the server is burning a hole in the floor of Cryptic HQ player machines would have to worry about the punishing lag because of all the new assets they'd need to keep downloading. That is of course if their machines can handle it, chances are they'd just lose connection all the time.
As for gameplay. MMO's have simple gameplay for a reason - to cater to a mass audience. How many would have the patience to fully explore a new planet, record data and so on. All that in a game where 5 mins in ISE is too long for some? Then of course the sandbox element of such exploration, and how it would require thinking.
See?
On a side note No Man's Sky does look pretty cool. I was keeping an eye on Limit Theory but may have to spare another eye for this too.
Actually, there is a way around this. Not sure where or how to code it, but it what if NMS was specific to a players machine? It would still require that you be online with STO, thereby giving other players a chance to explore worlds others have explored, but the main program of creating new worlds for the player to explore would be located on the players machine.
Now, I know that this will probably eliminate a portion of the playerbase due to system requirements, but I think it would be possible.
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Ah, you didn't read the article. No worries. I'll quote the relevant part:
It is a massively multiplayer online game. It's just not an RPG.
It's also being built to scale so it'll be lonely.