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rossclansforce1
Member Posts: 400 Arc User
So what will be the next expansion? We have a lot to pick including finishing the current story line... maybe fluidic vortex takes you to fluidic space instead of just one mission? A rift opens up to a mirror universe with maps similar to current one but you are forced into a reverse roll? There are some really cool options out there. 
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I think it would make sense lore wise, Cardassia is now a democratic government, and those Vortas and Jem'Hadars could be just liberated individuals from the dominion wars who settled in cardassian territory.
The tutorial could have the player start off as a True Way operative (allowing for Vorta, Jem'Hadar, or even Breen characters) who eventually defects to "free" Cardassia over the course of the opening missions.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
Just one rookies wish.
BCW.
You... are incorrigable.
BCW.
I would like the Cardassian player to end up as a part of a reformed Obsidian Order headed by Garak.
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As in, they said that they had distilled the average Trek episode plots down to a low level that they had incorporated into the system, which could create content that was considered interesting and fun to play.
For me, an entire expansion based on exploration the way it was supposed to be (according to Cryptic) would be the best thing they could ever do.
Source: GameInformer's preview article (print version - the online versions are completely different)
A Cardassian faction would not have this problem, but they would end up as the faction with the fewest races available with only Cardassians, Liberated Borg Cardassians, and Aliens.
Why wouldn't they be able to do the 2800 episode? remember, the dominion fleet doesn't know they are displaced in time, and they refuse to listen to anyone, not even a founder, any Jem'hadar/vorta trying to reason with them will just be dismissed as a traitor so I see no problem with that particular set of missions.
Jem'Hadar and vorta character can be just true way defectors, or can be dominion liaisons, remember, the dominion signed a treaty with the alpha and beta quadrants, and Cardassia is now a reformed democratic government similar to the federation.
"After all, Starfleet could just make a call to the Founder in charge of the Dominion forces in the Alpha Quadrant to get The 2800 to surrender to them." There would be no need to take your shuttle to the Gamma Quadrant to contact the Dominion and no need to retrieve the Founder locked away in Facility 4028.
Personally, I don't care for the Jem'Hadar and Vorta being defectors since I rather see the interaction between Odo and Garak.
I can't see Cryptic creating procedurally generated content that would be much better than the Genesis system. It will always be scan this or kill that. It will be years before computers get to the point that procedurally generated content reaches the complexity for Star Trek exploration of meeting new civilizations. A supercomputer with a strong AI installed on it should be able to do it. Therefore, Exploration has to be a mixture of procedurally generated content, exploration-oriented Foundry missions, and exploration-oriented dev missions that is completely random.
All I'm saying is that they claimed that they had it working - and the interviewer agreed based on what he saw.
They had a whole side bar explaining how the Cryptic story team had done all this work that made it so they could randomly generate content that was virtually identical to watching an episode.
Yes, it's far fetched, and probably impossible - but if by some miracle they faked it that well, I'd like to see it.
(thread is dead, do NOT post in it)
-Cardassian
-Liberated Borg Cardassian
-Renegade Bajoran
-Valerian
-Klaestron
-Xepolite
-Lissepian
-Alien
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Cryptic could have showed a bunch of missions that made the Genesis system better than it was. It would be easy to make such a claim to an interviewer since they likely don't have a clue about the programming required to do it. A lousy move by Cryptic if it was true and something that would be difficult to prove. It is also possible that the Genesis system had to be toned down due to certain problems and the Genesis system we saw and the Genesis system that the interviewer saw are two different things.
Most likely in my mind, they had a system that mostly worked, and what we got was the barebones, but basically completely stable stripped down version in release.
I'd guess that they had plans to expand it significantly after release, but never really had the opportunity.
All I'm saying is that before I'd like to see another expansion that will probably be a hugely mixed bag, based on the rest of the Season updates and expansions, is too see some of what I (and many of my gamer/Trekkie friends) were hoping to see in the game originally.
Yeah, it's wishful thinking, and unrealistic, and wouldn't make a sexy press release, but that's honestly what I'd like to see as the next expansion.
"Incorrigible punster. Do not incorrige." (from a bumpersticker a friend saw and told me about)
Plot: Iconians are f*cking with the Dominion. Odo is not happy about this and the other Founders' fear of the Iconians. Odo creates your character with explicit orders to f*ck up the Iconians' plans whenever and wherever possible (essentially, license to be badass). Then you get your badass Jem'Hadar ship and fly off to serve the Founders, reclaim your life in battle, see how Odo's been making the Dominion less despotic, and tell the Iconians to stick it where the sun doesn't shine.
Sounds pretty cool to me. It can come with a rerelease of the Dominion and/or Cardie lockboxes.
A Cardassian faction should have their own RR-style storyline focusing on kicking the butts of the True Way.
Oop's.
BCW.
Also, the engine had only a very limited capacity to randomize missions. It really did come down to being primarily fill-in-the-blanks. remember the Third Borg Dynasty? Yeah, well if you get that mission script somewhere other than B'Tran, it can be either Orions, or Klingons or Romulans, etc... the mission is essentially the same, except that it has a different, but similar map, and a different race to fight. the actual mission text is the same.
so, I have no idea what the interviewers saw, but it wasn't what you think it was. Best case scenario: it was an alpha version that was more complex but not something that worked well enough to actually use.
My character Tsin'xing
I don't see why a more refined version of the fill-in-the-blanks system wouldn't work.
Imagine this: when a new exploration mission is generated, the system chooses between a few different scenarios: encountering a lone ship/planet/station, encountering a spatial anomaly or something, etc. If it's the former, the mission then chooses from a series of different "cultures": miltant, warrior, pacifistic, etc. This would affect the tone and direction they use as they talk to the player. Similar strings could be used to create the history and social behavior of the species on the fly, allowing the player to ask questions and learn stuff. If the diplomacy goes badly, the species may choose to end the contact and either depart or fire on the player (again, depending on the culture). I imagine this kind of thing would work fairly well in satisfying a dynamic exploration system, and adding scenarios where the aliens visit the player's reception hall, or the player visits their ship/planet/etc, would make it even better.
I don't see why something like that wouldn't be possible. Just a question of whether it would be worth the time needed to code it.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
1. More system patrols, but we will call them "episodes", the reward will be vendor trash. Metrics show players love vendor trash they choose need on them 80% of the time so we assume they will like this.
2. another 100 levels added on. 1 mill skill points per level increase, while at the same time a 75% reduction in skill points earned available in the game.
3. NPCs will have 10x more hull than currently have, and fire one hit kill invisible torps.
4. All stfs will be eliminated cause the metics show players don't use them for some reason.
5. A new race playable pakled, boffs for this will only be availble from lobi store, Boffs will have Crimson force field power, that protects ships from invisible one hit kill torps. Boffs will cost 2000 lobi.
6. MK 15-16 gear will be available through a new upgrade system that takes zen instead of dillithium.
7. More bugs will be added, including a wonderful new tray bug for ground combat.
They wanted the 50-60 leveling process to take longer than 1-50, they got it. Unfortunately, they didn't give DR enough content to get from 50-60.
I look at Legacy of Romulus and all the new missions it gave us (well, Romulans) and how far you can progress with those missions and I find it strange that going into the new expansion they didn't give us the same amount of content. Yes, they created 2 completely new sectors and added a ton of VO work from established characters and it *IS* very good.
There just simply isn't enough to get to level 60. If they'd kept the XP curve we have leveling from level 1-50, then the new content likely would be enough. But the post-50 XP curve is nowhere near what the pre-50 curve is.
I can, and have, played Romulans from 1-50 before DR and I don't think a single one of them made it out of the Romulan content before hitting lvl 50. And once I get through all the Romulan only content, there are the rest of the story arcs that 'blend' Romulans into the rest of the galaxy.
Shoot, my very first Klingon character somehow got reset on mission progress with the release of LoR. Granted, it was likely due to Klingons getting real level 1-20 content, but basically she was level 50 with no missions 'completed'. So I decided to see how far I could get running 50-60 with the old stuff. Some of the missions I had done post 50, like the Nimbus III stuff, so I didn't replay those. Otherwise, it was all 'new' to her. I'm now 2 missions into the Breen arc and I'm level 59. I've run heaven knows how many DOff missions and queue events as well as spending some time in the Undine space BZ leveling up some of my T5U ships.
Level 59 while running "first run" mission content and getting a tad over 4k XP for mission complete. 40+ missions plus all the "outside" grinding I've done and only 9 levels. There's not that many missions in DR, even if you add in the Kobali storyline missions. I suppose I could have jumped right to the DQ at 50 and used the regular content to continue leveling when the DQ stuff has gaps in it. But that doesn't change the fact that there are HUGE gaps and spending time away from the DQ makes me lose interest in it.
I'm hopeful that the Devs will see this eventually and add more post 50 Delta Quadrant content, to actually finish off the expansion. I like the content of DR, there just isn't enough of it.
Now, as for actually adding to the topic at hand. I will throw my support behind what most others here are suggesting with a Cardassian/Gamma Quadrant expansion. Seems to be the most reasonable way to go. And I'd enjoy having Garak giving me some missions. Especially if Andrew J. Robinson provided some VO work.
And while I would like to see more content on the Mirror Universe, I don't think it has the same potential for an expansion. Maybe a new story arc with it but doing an entire expansion on the MU may be a bit out of reach.
I think the whole Undine/Iconian thing will be expanded on in the future, so it could be expansion worthy, but only if there is enough content to back it up. I see it as more of an arc (or 2) as well, but who knows at this point.
Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.
Iconians are a threat to the entire galaxy, dominion and cardassians included, and those are the 2 missing superpowers in the new galactic alliance, we already have alpha and delta quadrants united in a single alliance, only beta and gamma quadrants are missing.
So, it will make sense to make a cardassian and gamma quadrant expansion before fighting the iconians.
I forget who it was but someone explained that it always used single maps because they never managed to make a viable version of it that could randomize objectives. the way it worked when we last saw it was a simulation of randomized objectives by pulling a random mission out of the pool. however, each set of objectives was manually preprogrammed as part of one of the mission templates used by the genesis engine. the way I understand it they did missions in batches and would make several using a certain template, then sift through them to figure out which were usable(some were not) then patch those up to be playable. Then do it again with another template.
The way I understand it, most of the mission text was part of the template, and only had a few random variables. I seem to remember someone mentioning that they tinkered with making the tempaltes more complex, but that when they did it tended to come out as something nonsensical.
My character Tsin'xing