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Let us buy console and weapon slots
filmtrek
Member Posts: 26 Arc User
Hey, STO: consider simply selling console slots via Zen, Di, Fleet Credits, or whatever, before you go through completely with the new ship upgrade madness.
The upgrade option for older ships was a fine idea, but didn't go far enough and was too obviously an effort to milk the players. Zen is now selling for 200 di, so there's that.
OTOH, I wouldn't mind buying two or three engineering console slots, or maybe an extra forward weapon slot, or maybe three or four device slots for my favorite ship. Why restrict these things arbitrarily? Money on ship sales? Well, hey, why not make money selling console slots? Make money on volume?
Set up a tier system so you can increase the total max number of consoles you can have on a ship. Tie it to the new crafting system. Whatever.
TBH I'd rather be flying a TOS Enterprise for nostalgia sake, and just buy slots for the thing so it can be as good as a dreadnought.
And no, I don't want to hear about realism, how Ship X couldn't "handle" 10 device slots or whatever. It's a game, a fantasy, not a military simulation. If it was supposed to be realistic, ships would be able to do 360 degree rolls on the "y" axis. Instead they fly like WWII airplanes and stall out. We're playing to have fun in a star trek universe which has "heisenberg compensators."
And please, no "power creep" whiners. The "power creep" bugaboo meme is bogus. I'd rather be in a pve game with other players who have powerful ships to get the grind over with as soon as possible. And as for PVP players who want things to be "fair", find players w/ships that are evenly matched to you.
The point of long-term games like STO is to invest in your character and ship over time and build up abilities etc., not run around being handicapped.
The upgrade option for older ships was a fine idea, but didn't go far enough and was too obviously an effort to milk the players. Zen is now selling for 200 di, so there's that.
OTOH, I wouldn't mind buying two or three engineering console slots, or maybe an extra forward weapon slot, or maybe three or four device slots for my favorite ship. Why restrict these things arbitrarily? Money on ship sales? Well, hey, why not make money selling console slots? Make money on volume?
Set up a tier system so you can increase the total max number of consoles you can have on a ship. Tie it to the new crafting system. Whatever.
TBH I'd rather be flying a TOS Enterprise for nostalgia sake, and just buy slots for the thing so it can be as good as a dreadnought.
And no, I don't want to hear about realism, how Ship X couldn't "handle" 10 device slots or whatever. It's a game, a fantasy, not a military simulation. If it was supposed to be realistic, ships would be able to do 360 degree rolls on the "y" axis. Instead they fly like WWII airplanes and stall out. We're playing to have fun in a star trek universe which has "heisenberg compensators."
And please, no "power creep" whiners. The "power creep" bugaboo meme is bogus. I'd rather be in a pve game with other players who have powerful ships to get the grind over with as soon as possible. And as for PVP players who want things to be "fair", find players w/ships that are evenly matched to you.
The point of long-term games like STO is to invest in your character and ship over time and build up abilities etc., not run around being handicapped.
Post edited by filmtrek on
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Sure, why not? Maybe have the t levels indicate total number of slots, and you can upgrade the tiers through some system. Whatever.
I absolutely agree with this, and I see so many MMOS move to a "quick mon4ey grab" without realizing how important it is to keep old, committed users, both for their ongoing financial support and their commitment to making a meaningful, quality community.
Forcing us to feel like we must toss all that we worked so hard and invested in would not be a good idea, in my miniscule opinion.
Cryptic would do better in the long run to let us enhance our current ships and equipment to be completely equal in ability to the new stuff, even if and especially if we want to retain our old, favorite, important to us, tried and true ships and equipment...what we have become comfortable with and what we love. At the same time, if others want big change, go for it! Maybe some of us will want both.
My only concern is this has to be done in moderation, and not just become pure pay-to-win amd no-pay-you-lose (paying to improve but not terribly disadvantaging those who don't/can't.)
Another MMO I used to play began to become "Purchase blahblahblah button" every time you did anything, I don't want STO to become like that...so be sure its measured and...subtle...
I also strongly suspect the ship system isn't really prepared to handle dynamic ship slot changes. (But that may be a minor issue. Definitely is minor compared to the balance problems.)
Oh puhlease. Instead of handicapping and tossing out the work people invest in characters and shiips, add in new content / pvp queues / challenges with increasing difficulties. Make the adding of a console a challenge, something to work hard for.
Far different than "god mode."
"Game balance?" This is just as bogus a bugaboo as "power creep." Balance with what? And for whom?
Look, if my ship is too powerful for, say, Azure Nebula Rescue PVP, I'll get bored with it and find something tougher to do. Make an ultra-elite queue. Game balance is meaningless.
You're probably right that the ship system programming can't handle it, but I'd bet it's a major issue, not a minor one, and that's why they're doing all this weirdness with new ships and "upgraded ships" (which are probably, programming-wise, in reality just new ships you swap out for old).
And what happens when someone puts 6 tac consoles on a Scimitar...or how about 6 forward slots...then just do it again and again and it's easier and eaiser.
So? Then they get bored with the queue they're playing and find something else challenging. They find players with similar powered ships to fight in PVP. People self-game-balance.
There are some PVE queues I never play because even with a lousy ship the game is too easy. So what?
I worry about what kind of impacts it might have that negatively affect gameplay, but I'm interested.
Perhaps limit it to ships T3 and higher, and limit it to be only possible at rank 60?
I don't know, really, but I'd love to make some of my older ships still take on the latest content.
Except that isn't how PvP works...and people love to pound inferior ships into dust...which your idea only makes it easier.
So there are things at you don't play because even in lousy ships it's easy? And your answer to that is lets make ships even stronger and completely OP? Good one! :rolleyes:
Didn't one of the Devs recently state that doing the T5-U stuff was very time consuming and took a significant amount of work? Just to add one console and hull HP? Being able to add multiple consoles strikes me as difficult.
Furthermore, don't most ships have set "weapon hardpoints", so only certain places on the hull have weapons fire coming from them? Adding more weapon slots would just look really bad; or require additional animation and significant restructuring of ships.
So I don't think they're restricted arbitrarily; they're restricted for 1) Game Balance and to support additional ship sales and 2) technical/animation reasons.
Who cares? This means people will spend their time building up their ships to be competitive. That's the whole point of having a long-term role-playing game like STO. Hell, even back in the D&D days you wouldn't expect a newbie with a new character to beat someone with a super-advanced character.
Your point is weak.
Again, this happens naturally in any game, work with it naturally as opposed to all these artificial restrictions based on weak points such as yours, that tick off people who spend time on their characters and ships.
1) is a bad reason based on memes that I thoroughly reject. 2) is a good reason, but they should consider a programming revamp to alleviate this problem. Shouldn't be that difficult at all using proper OOP techniques.
There are still things we don't know however. We know what will be possible to upgrade, but we still don't know the cost or what specifically gets added.
So my <Galor/Excelsior/GalaxyX/whatever> gets an additional console slot. Great, but it's a cruiser, so I'm probably going to get stuck with an Eng slot, that'll be filled with a universal console. The same idea would apply for Science and Tac ships respectively.
The only way around that would be the advent and implementation of a specific universal console slot, each upgraded ship getting one, and having the ability to slot any console in the game (unless restricted by ship type).
The player likely will not get a choice, so it becomes all the more important which ship you plan to upgrade. But we still don't really know.
Yes I suspect there's some major flaw in original code system for ships - i.e., the console slots are hard-coded in or something, and can't be changed once deployed. The next upgrade "smells" like all it is a set of new pre-programmed ships that you swap out (as opposed to technically upgrading).
"Memes you thoroughly reject?" What are you talking about? It's a game, balance usually exists in games. Furthermore, selling new ships is what Cryptic's all about. Hence why we got two shiny new expansions paid for by Lockbox Ships sales. The selling points for a lot of those ships are an optimal BOFF/console/weapons layout. This is why I don't think Cryptic would consider that particular sales scenario.
I mean, yeah, I would love it if I could have my Temporal Destroyers with 5 tac consoles and 6 forward weapon slots. But it would trivialize most content in the game (1), and Cryptic wants us to have a challenge fighting mooks, and I don't blame them.
As for your second point: I don't see how a programming revamp would work to make your proposal possible, given that one of the issues preventing this from becoming possible is the actual animation model. That would require the devs to go back and physically change every model, instead of building shiny new ships for the Klingon Defense Force (2). This is why we don't (currently) have broadside cruisers.
I think that's true. It's possible to do it, as if memory serves the T'varo and Dhelan Fleet Retrofits got their consoles swapped during early testing of Legacy of Romulus. But Cryptic doesn't like to do it.
-Cath
(1) Well, not really, because I'd probably hit all sorts of power consumption issues that not even my lovely doffs can get me out of.
(2) Leave me to my fantasies! They've come true with the Mogh and they're gonna come true with the new Tier 6 Raptor!
Games like STO are self-balancing, like nearly any complex system out there involving humans.
In other words, if your PVP experience is rotten because your ship is awful, then you go off and work at it and come back later with a better ship, better consoles, etc.
If the queue your playing is too easy and boring, you go and find a queue that's more difficult and challenging.
The challenge for the game makers is to make more queues and games to challenge, not to find ways to handicap the entire game like it's the special olympics.
The notion that "game balance" is a delicate flower that must be preserved is bogus, IMO. It's self-balancing already.
Eh, I can imagine several programming scenarios to make this easier to deal with. They've got different animation models for different space sets already (borg space sets, etc.), so I don't think that's an issue. I think we're talking about ancient code.
On topic: Yeah don't see it happening.
Except even with a total of 7 weapon slots, forward and aft, on my ship, most content in this game is absurdly easy.
How can Cryptic create challenging content if the amount of weapons people are placing on their ships keeps going up? Then the game becomes literally pay to win. A hard cap means that there is an upper limit to what can be spent before it comes down to skill.
Why not? In the OP's wacky system you can! Why stop there? Why not 20/20 weapons! Why not a tac console slot for every weapon you have as well?!? So many weapons a volley will drain you to 0 weapon power! Is possible with the OP's idea!
Reductio ab absurdum is not an argument, it just demonstrates that you're a jerk.
For instance, I could reduce your argument to:
Obviously, the system I'm imagining would have to have limits, and would require challenges to add new slots. Just like in current rep systems, you drop in EC, or skill points, etc. in order to unlock new slots, and so forth. Limit to 20 slots total, something like that. Part of the challenge would be deciding what slots go where.
And yes, available power would also be a limiting factor. Why is this limitation a bad thing in your example when clearly you value limitation over freedom to choose how your ship is configured?
Thank you for the laugh, I needed it.
Um, how about NO!
"There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
Placing any kind of limitations on the system would mean that it's adhering to the very game balance you claim doesn't exist. That's why they're going for such outlandish setups. Unless the system is completely open ended with no limitations, it will be adhering to game balance. It will just shift the balance farther on up the line.
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I would imagine such an idea would require restrictions to a maximum number of additions in any particular area and/or with a particular ship. It would take time to make sure all is balanced but it could be a cool idea and allow for more customization in ship performance. I know in this scenario id likely forego the extra weapons slot on a scimitar for an extra engineering console, but that's just one example of how someone might customize for movement and enhanced gameplay over raw damage.
Obviously ship classes should be different between them in their abilities (eg: cruisers tougher, raiders faster with flanking, dreads and carriers being slow as hell etc).
But more customization in ones build provided it was correctly managed may well (to my mind, and done in limited scope), really add something to the game.
As for the graphical ship weapons hard-points issue, I agree this is a difficult issue to overcome given limited dev time,, however it is something that has been in the game for some time already with various ships/weapons setups the examples which I forget (but have seen in threads here before). It could therefor be something that I could live with in some cases.
"If this will be our end, then I will have them make SUCH an end as to be worthy of rememberance! Out of torpedos you say?! Find me the ferengi!".
Well as lan said...if you put limitations on it you're still limited by the system and can only go so far...though I think it's kinda obvious the OP wants unlimited.