I don't miss old ESD at all. The new one looks way more Starfleet-like design, every NPCs fit a specific place: IMO, the big shipyard visual is just epic.
I don't miss old ESD at all. The new one looks way more Starfleet-like design, every NPCs fit a specific place: IMO, the big shipyard visual is just epic.
New ESD is awesome! Just add a few colors, and it will be perfect.
New ESD is awesome! Just add a few colors, and it will be perfect.
^
Yeah some colored plants would go nicely with the greens that are already there.
I'm picturing some added shrubbery, or fern like plants.. reds, purples, oranges would add to the atmosphere.
The human eye is still a work-in-progress, and may not reflect the final design. As always, the human body is subject to change as evolution continues.
I know this may not make much sense to you, but speaking in general about STO , I think your "current standards" are a part of your problems , and one of the three reasons as to why the quantity of content has been lacking for a while now .
Quite simply put, you are not the first Dev to use that exact expression to justify something in the game .
Other examples may not be relevant to you as they do not single out art , and I do not expect you to respond to issues other then art .
But just to give you two examples non the less , once that sentence was used to justify the quality over quantity of FE's (as in , now FE's take longer to produce because of our current standards), and the removal of the Exploration Clusters was explained away in the same manner .
Again , I do not expect you to represent these choices, but simply to understand that whenever that single sentence was used to explain something to us , the implications were always "you now have less because of our current standards" .
Now before I make my next point, I would just like to point out that I do not see everything as "wrong" with the way things are .
Some things are nice, some are amazing but some are -- to me, questionable .
One of those things are the number of missions in DR .
And before we get to the numbers, I'll just mention that the reasoning provided for some of the "thin" seasons prior to DR was that DR was being worked on in parallel to seasons 9 & 9.5 .
And now we get to the numbers :
DR = 12 missions and 6 patrols .
LoR = 40+ missions including tutorial missions and ROM & Kdf content .
That's 18 vs 40 something , and a lot more new ships too .
That is my answer to you , when you question my supposition about "our current standards" ... , because unless I am mistaken (and that's entirety possible) , the price that we the players are paying for this "new standard" may be a bit over the top .
A lot over the top ... , not that I'm singling you out as the cause ... .
However I can't help but to be reminded of a saying of Geko's : "we've gotten better at getting better" , in reference to the behind the scenes efforts in this "new standard" .
And with all due respect , I'm having trouble seeing that when I compare DR with LoR .
But who knows , maybe the fault is mine ... , either for not being able to tell apart expansions that were both visually pleasing for the most part or perhaps my fault lies with either expecting too much due to LoR,, or perhaps because I can count to 12 ... on a good day .
I entirely agree with that.
I don't blame Taco for what's been happening with the game in the last year or so. But the removal of many missions, exploration, ... has been explained by it not being 'up to quality standards'.
But quite frankly, a lot of it has been enjoyed by at least some players and most hasn't seen a replacement (queues like Terradome, DS9 defense, or the whole of exploration - taking with in the process a number of Doff assignements and some of their functionality) or give a diminished, albeit overall nicer, experience (remastered Borg/Undine missions, early Federation missions - there's less in the new missions then there used to be).
A very recent example, though not confirmed by a dev, afaik, is the new Sarr Theln look. I suppose it was redone as the old one 'wasn't up to standards'. But while the modeling may be better, I (and apparently I'm not alone) preferred the old Sarr Theln as it seemed to fit far better among other Breen designs and was also credible size-wise.
Simply put the strategy of only reducing the game to those few parts that are considered up to standards seems flawed to me.
For one, it reduces diversity (doesn't the concept of diversity have something to do with Star trek, I wonder... :P ).
For two, it pushes players (as right now, through various 'incentives') to only play the newest content. While that may give Devs nice numbers for the newest release, it only accelerates the fall into oblivion of other content and thus drives the spiral of having to produce fast something even better and again and again... (kinda like a power creep in new ships).
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
The human eye is still a work-in-progress, and may not reflect the final design. As always, the human body is subject to change as evolution continues.
So, sort of like game design. The environments continue to get updated, as better technology and the story becomes available.
The only thing I don't like about the new ESD is that sometimes when you turn the camera you can see the walls being drawn in. I run STO on a pretty high-end PC so I can't imagine how bad this must be on players with mid to low end PCs. This problem seems to be especially bad when you are in the exchange/bank area and you turn the camera to look out the doorway to the main area of ESD.
Other than that I like the new ESD, I especially like the new club, though I feel that it was a wasted effort and nobody will use it. I was expecting Q to be in the new club for the winter event this year.
I hope that a redesign for DS9 is in the works because the locations of the ship selection room and bank/exchange room on the current map makes no sense.
This is what happens when you have bloated texture files living server side. The more people in an area, the more potential for lagging when drawing the scenes. Hence why a lot of games have the textures client side or keep them to a reasonable size. New Romulus is the same way, and LoR was when the massive drawing lags started. So what has changed in the method of texturing that is causing this? If the "new standard" is shiny and pretty but TRIBBLE performance, I'd rather see the old style files back in place.
So, sort of like game design. The environments continue to get updated, as better technology and the story becomes available.
Sort of. Human evolution does not care about anyone's development feedback, though. There is no QA department. The producers have limited creative input... and don't get me started on the grind...
Quite simply put, you are not the first Dev to use that exact expression to justify something in the game .
Other examples may not be relevant to you as they do not single out art , and I do not expect you to respond to issues other then art .
But just to give you two examples non the less , once that sentence was used to justify the quality over quantity of FE's (as in , now FE's take longer to produce because of our current standards), and the removal of the Exploration Clusters was explained away in the same manner .
Again , I do not expect you to represent these choices, but simply to understand that whenever that single sentence was used to explain something to us , the implications were always "you now have less because of our current standards" .
Now before I make my next point, I would just like to point out that I do not see everything as "wrong" with the way things are .
Some things are nice, some are amazing but some are -- to me, questionable .
One of those things are the number of missions in DR .
And before we get to the numbers, I'll just mention that the reasoning provided for some of the "thin" seasons prior to DR was that DR was being worked on in parallel to seasons 9 & 9.5 .
And now we get to the numbers :
DR = 12 missions and 6 patrols .
LoR = 40+ missions including tutorial missions and ROM & Kdf content .
That's 18 vs 40 something , and a lot more new ships too .
That is my answer to you , when you question my supposition about "our current standards" ... , because unless I am mistaken (and that's entirety possible) , the price that we the players are paying for this "new standard" may be a bit over the top .
A lot over the top ... , not that I'm singling you out as the cause ... .
However I can't help but to be reminded of a saying of Geko's : "we've gotten better at getting better" , in reference to the behind the scenes efforts in this "new standard" .
And with all due respect , I'm having trouble seeing that when I compare DR with LoR .
But who knows , maybe the fault is mine ... , either for not being able to tell apart expansions that were both visually pleasing for the most part or perhaps my fault lies with either expecting too much due to LoR,, or perhaps because I can count to 12 ... on a good day .
I suspect much of the difference in content amounts is tied into DR npatrols being randomized which means that they had to manually make each version, under the idea that people would rather play 500 subtle difference manually crafted missions than either 8000 exploration missions with some random wonkiness or another 22 fully crafted missions.
I think that decision was probably a miscalculation though.
The only thing I don't like about the new ESD is that sometimes when you turn the camera you can see the walls being drawn in. I run STO on a pretty high-end PC so I can't imagine how bad this must be on players with mid to low end PCs. This problem seems to be especially bad when you are in the exchange/bank area and you turn the camera to look out the doorway to the main area of ESD.
Other than that I like the new ESD, I especially like the new club, though I feel that it was a wasted effort and nobody will use it. I was expecting Q to be in the new club for the winter event this year.
I hope that a redesign for DS9 is in the works because the locations of the ship selection room and bank/exchange room on the current map makes no sense.
I notice this a lot with the newer areas, it started with New Romulus, where you could sometimes see sections of the area loading with a change of direction and now the new ESD is really bad for it.
As for my opinion of the the new ESD itself, the design looks great in itself. It is a considerable improvement over the previous design which had an unfinished look and just didn't seem to fit anywhere on the station least of all in the location where it was purported to have been located.
That said, there are still some bugs, the Commodity Traders label has the letter S cutoff, there are still LOD errors with changing textures that show up for the med bay walls and floor.
Then there are things worth criticizing, like that pond at the bottom of the stairs from the tailor with it's little tripping rail that makes no sense at all, the shuttle area that's inaccessible to players that seems like a pointless frill, when they already have the view of the main docking bay, and likely more scene loading lag as well, and the height of the big vaulted chamber which, unless they ever plan on letting players use jetpacks in there, seems like a huge and unlikely waste of deckspace on a space station.
But that's just an opinion.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
But "Plato is dear to me, but truth is dearer still" ...
The designer of New ESD should be fired from Starfleet Corps of Engineers and put on a blacklist to keep this person away from any space objects construction.
It is basically a dual-purpose station - both civilian and military. Its previous version according to the game lore got attacked and destroyed. So its possible participation in military actions cannot be ruled out. And what do we have in its design ?
1. The station Operation centre is located right at the outer hull. One well-placed torpedo barrage or suicide attack or whatever - and Quinn and his staff are either going straight to Valhalla or - if the shields fail - go learning to breathe vacuum.
2. Then we've got this huge main hall. It's designed so that it cannot be possibly divided by bulkheads. So in case of depressurization - it has to rely on internal shields. And if they fail - more then hundred people constantly present at the location are dead meat. And we should keep in mind that it contains another important control centre of the station - the Shipyard.
3. As if to make this huge hall even more vulnerable, it is connected directly to the shuttle bay. The corridor leading to the hangar is short and seemingly has no protection (again internal shields only ?). And we remember about the depressurization part. Besides, it makes the possible enemy boarding parties work much easier - they can get to all the main station control centres in a single blow.
4. Moreover, an infirmary, where injured in this hypothetical attack will transferred is also connected directly to this hall with only a thin transparent wall to protect it.
5. The station is designed so that the main hall is a central hub for all the departments on its perimeter. So in case of emergency in the hull all this rooms will be cut off.
"Excellent" thinking. Basically, puts all the eggs in one basket.
I think Starfleet security should investigate whether those responsible for the station design were Undine impostors.
Basically, the design of the old ESD was more thought-out, more space-like.
1. Main control rooms and some important station departments like sickbay were located inside, at the central axis - the most protected part of the station.
2. The stations compartments in case of depressurization could easily be divided from one another. And not just by shields, which rely on the stability of their energy source, but also by good old solid metal bulkheads, which once closed don't require any energy at all - so that this saved energy can be routed to more urgent tasks.
But "Plato is dear to me, but truth is dearer still" ...
The designer of New ESD should be fired from Starfleet Corps of Engineers and put on a blacklist to keep this person away from any space objects construction.
It is basically a dual-purpose station - both civilian and military. Its previous version according to the game lore got attacked and destroyed. So its possible participation in military actions cannot be ruled out. And what do we have in its design ?
1. The station Operation centre is located right at the outer hull. One well-placed torpedo barrage or suicide attack or whatever - and Quinn and his staff are either going straight to Valhalla or - if the shields fail - go learning to breathe vacuum.
2. Then we've got this huge main hall. It's designed so that it cannot be possibly divided by bulkheads. So in case of depressurization - it has to rely on internal shields. And if they fail - more then hundred people constantly present at the location are dead meat. And we should keep in mind that it contains another important control centre of the station - the Shipyard.
3. As if to make this huge hall even more vulnerable, it is connected directly to the shuttle bay. The corridor leading to the hangar is short and seemingly has no protection (again internal shields only ?). And we remember about the depressurization part. Besides, it makes the possible enemy boarding parties work much easier - they can get to all the main station control centres in a single blow.
4. Moreover, an infirmary, where injured in this hypothetical attack will transferred is also connected directly to this hall with only a thin transparent wall to protect it.
5. The station is designed so that the main hall is a central hub for all the departments on its perimeter. So in case of emergency in the hull all this rooms will be cut off.
"Excellent" thinking. Basically, puts all the eggs in one basket.
I think Starfleet security should investigate whether those responsible for the station design were Undine impostors.
This is the government that puts children on warships, uses force fields for biohazard and prisoner containment, and has never heard of the deadman switch principle, seatbelts, or circuit breakers, ya know.
Starfleet has historically been remarkably clueless regarding safe space engineering practices.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Believe me, I know. The location for the interior on the station was dictated from above. People wanted to be able to see both into the docking bay, and out into space. There is only one area of the station where that's physically possible.
Basically, the design of the old ESD was more thought-out, more space-like.
1. Main control rooms and some important station departments like sickbay were located inside, at the central axis - the most protected part of the station.
2. The stations compartments in case of depressurization could easily be divided from one another. And not just by shields, which rely on the stability of their energy source, but also by good old solid metal bulkheads, which once closed don't require any energy at all - so that this saved energy can be routed to more urgent tasks.
It may make more sense from a tactical standpoint, but it makes less sense from a different, realisim/actual space of the station standpoint. (see my earlier link). Why is the admiral's office just a closet off of the main run? Why is there a club that is the same way?
The infirmary is not the primary medbay for the whole station, it's just the infirmary for this section. All of the sub areas can be blocked off through bulkheads (Requisitions, Exchange, Ops, Infirmary, Shuttlebay). This includes the exterior Ops window, which has blast shutters that can close. Have you read the signs? There are emergency transporter instructions there.
Again . . . it's a game. We do our best to make things make sense, but at the end of the day, we have to make things functional and cool from a gameplay standpoint.
Only YOU can prevent forum fires!
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,674Community Moderator
edited December 2014
Taco! Nice touch on the "In case of decompression" signs too.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
...This includes the exterior Ops window, which has blast shutters that can close. Have you read the signs? There are emergency transporter instructions there.
Indeed, I went all over new ESD the first day reading all the signs. Some of them are quite amusing!
Again . . . it's a game. We do our best to make things make sense, but at the end of the day, we have to make things functional and cool from a gameplay standpoint.
You and the other devs ultimately did a fantastic job on the ESD revamp.
Comments
New ESD is awesome! Just add a few colors, and it will be perfect.
Yeah some colored plants would go nicely with the greens that are already there.
I'm picturing some added shrubbery, or fern like plants.. reds, purples, oranges would add to the atmosphere.
There are plenty of colors in ESD. They're just attuned to the ultraviolet spectrum of colors, so we can't see them.
But some of the aliens who can see the ultraviolet spectrum are loving it.
The ultraviolet colors are so bright, I have to wear shades.
Those colors are in no way indicative of what's really out there. It's just a reporting error, is all.
but they're so shiny and pretty!! lol
...So shiny and pretty they'd fry Geordi's visor.
Geordi's visor is soooo last year. He'd be jealous of my shades. They're super stylish and go with any outfit!!
The human eye is still a work-in-progress, and may not reflect the final design. As always, the human body is subject to change as evolution continues.
I entirely agree with that.
I don't blame Taco for what's been happening with the game in the last year or so. But the removal of many missions, exploration, ... has been explained by it not being 'up to quality standards'.
But quite frankly, a lot of it has been enjoyed by at least some players and most hasn't seen a replacement (queues like Terradome, DS9 defense, or the whole of exploration - taking with in the process a number of Doff assignements and some of their functionality) or give a diminished, albeit overall nicer, experience (remastered Borg/Undine missions, early Federation missions - there's less in the new missions then there used to be).
A very recent example, though not confirmed by a dev, afaik, is the new Sarr Theln look. I suppose it was redone as the old one 'wasn't up to standards'. But while the modeling may be better, I (and apparently I'm not alone) preferred the old Sarr Theln as it seemed to fit far better among other Breen designs and was also credible size-wise.
Simply put the strategy of only reducing the game to those few parts that are considered up to standards seems flawed to me.
For one, it reduces diversity (doesn't the concept of diversity have something to do with Star trek, I wonder... :P ).
For two, it pushes players (as right now, through various 'incentives') to only play the newest content. While that may give Devs nice numbers for the newest release, it only accelerates the fall into oblivion of other content and thus drives the spiral of having to produce fast something even better and again and again... (kinda like a power creep in new ships).
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
So, sort of like game design. The environments continue to get updated, as better technology and the story becomes available.
This is what happens when you have bloated texture files living server side. The more people in an area, the more potential for lagging when drawing the scenes. Hence why a lot of games have the textures client side or keep them to a reasonable size. New Romulus is the same way, and LoR was when the massive drawing lags started. So what has changed in the method of texturing that is causing this? If the "new standard" is shiny and pretty but TRIBBLE performance, I'd rather see the old style files back in place.
Sort of. Human evolution does not care about anyone's development feedback, though. There is no QA department. The producers have limited creative input... and don't get me started on the grind...
except the colors, i love this new esd; good job
I actually like the new colors. They are more in keeping with a military style. Very clean and crisp lines and colors.
Sounds like there's tribble at Cryptic.
I suspect much of the difference in content amounts is tied into DR npatrols being randomized which means that they had to manually make each version, under the idea that people would rather play 500 subtle difference manually crafted missions than either 8000 exploration missions with some random wonkiness or another 22 fully crafted missions.
I think that decision was probably a miscalculation though.
As for my opinion of the the new ESD itself, the design looks great in itself. It is a considerable improvement over the previous design which had an unfinished look and just didn't seem to fit anywhere on the station least of all in the location where it was purported to have been located.
That said, there are still some bugs, the Commodity Traders label has the letter S cutoff, there are still LOD errors with changing textures that show up for the med bay walls and floor.
Then there are things worth criticizing, like that pond at the bottom of the stairs from the tailor with it's little tripping rail that makes no sense at all, the shuttle area that's inaccessible to players that seems like a pointless frill, when they already have the view of the main docking bay, and likely more scene loading lag as well, and the height of the big vaulted chamber which, unless they ever plan on letting players use jetpacks in there, seems like a huge and unlikely waste of deckspace on a space station.
But that's just an opinion.
But "Plato is dear to me, but truth is dearer still" ...
The designer of New ESD should be fired from Starfleet Corps of Engineers and put on a blacklist to keep this person away from any space objects construction.
It is basically a dual-purpose station - both civilian and military. Its previous version according to the game lore got attacked and destroyed. So its possible participation in military actions cannot be ruled out. And what do we have in its design ?
1. The station Operation centre is located right at the outer hull. One well-placed torpedo barrage or suicide attack or whatever - and Quinn and his staff are either going straight to Valhalla or - if the shields fail - go learning to breathe vacuum.
2. Then we've got this huge main hall. It's designed so that it cannot be possibly divided by bulkheads. So in case of depressurization - it has to rely on internal shields. And if they fail - more then hundred people constantly present at the location are dead meat. And we should keep in mind that it contains another important control centre of the station - the Shipyard.
3. As if to make this huge hall even more vulnerable, it is connected directly to the shuttle bay. The corridor leading to the hangar is short and seemingly has no protection (again internal shields only ?). And we remember about the depressurization part. Besides, it makes the possible enemy boarding parties work much easier - they can get to all the main station control centres in a single blow.
4. Moreover, an infirmary, where injured in this hypothetical attack will transferred is also connected directly to this hall with only a thin transparent wall to protect it.
5. The station is designed so that the main hall is a central hub for all the departments on its perimeter. So in case of emergency in the hull all this rooms will be cut off.
"Excellent" thinking. Basically, puts all the eggs in one basket.
I think Starfleet security should investigate whether those responsible for the station design were Undine impostors.
1. Main control rooms and some important station departments like sickbay were located inside, at the central axis - the most protected part of the station.
2. The stations compartments in case of depressurization could easily be divided from one another. And not just by shields, which rely on the stability of their energy source, but also by good old solid metal bulkheads, which once closed don't require any energy at all - so that this saved energy can be routed to more urgent tasks.
Don't know if this is covered in here already, but in re-running the Federation's Klingon/Doomsday arc, it uses Quinn's Pre-S9 office.
This is the government that puts children on warships, uses force fields for biohazard and prisoner containment, and has never heard of the deadman switch principle, seatbelts, or circuit breakers, ya know.
Starfleet has historically been remarkably clueless regarding safe space engineering practices.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Believe me, I know. The location for the interior on the station was dictated from above. People wanted to be able to see both into the docking bay, and out into space. There is only one area of the station where that's physically possible.
Welcome to the world of video games.
It may make more sense from a tactical standpoint, but it makes less sense from a different, realisim/actual space of the station standpoint. (see my earlier link). Why is the admiral's office just a closet off of the main run? Why is there a club that is the same way?
The infirmary is not the primary medbay for the whole station, it's just the infirmary for this section. All of the sub areas can be blocked off through bulkheads (Requisitions, Exchange, Ops, Infirmary, Shuttlebay). This includes the exterior Ops window, which has blast shutters that can close. Have you read the signs? There are emergency transporter instructions there.
Again . . . it's a game. We do our best to make things make sense, but at the end of the day, we have to make things functional and cool from a gameplay standpoint.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
I forget who suggested it originally, but those signs should really end with "No pressure!"
...
That's just terrible.
And made me laugh for give minutes, thanks
You and the other devs ultimately did a fantastic job on the ESD revamp.
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Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)