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Bring back exploration clusters!

jkwrangler2010jkwrangler2010 Member Posts: 263 Arc User
It's getting boring just grinding away for reputation marks and specialization points. At least the exploration clusters allowed you to blast away enemies and was a good testing ground for new ship loadouts and ground weapons.
Post edited by jkwrangler2010 on
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  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    As Exploration clusters worked, they just don't fit Star Trek. Scan 5 objects or kill 5 groups of enemies will never be Star Trek. It is fine for games like Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky, and Star Citizen, but not Star Trek since Star Trek exploration always has a social component like encountering a new alien civilization. Therefore for exploration to work in STO, it needs to be a completely random selection of procedurally generated content, Foundry missions, and dev-created missions. These dev-created missions would be smaller than regular missions so they might be able to create 5 or 10 of these missions in the time it takes to create a regular one.
  • orangeitisorangeitis Member Posts: 5,222 Arc User
    edited December 2014
  • iconiansiconians Member Posts: 6,987 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    At least the exploration clusters allowed you to blast away enemies and was a good testing ground for new ship loadouts and ground weapons.

    Yeah, nothing else exists in the game to allow you to do this.
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  • hyperionx09hyperionx09 Member Posts: 1,709 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    It won't be any more exciting than exploration is in Elite Dangerous, though it would be faster.

    Warp to random system, couple of space scans, maybe deal with an occasional raider force, and in STO's case, beam down to the planet and take scans; pretty much like the New Romulus homeworld mission.

    The most they could do to vary it up a bit is probably tie in a bit of the ancient Vulcan civilization sideplot to some of the exploration clusters, as well as relics of a few other ancient space-capable races (like that one race that reverted back to a tribal lifestyle in one of the Fed missions).

    Such as every few dull clusters triggers access to an ancient civilization "discovery", mainly to break the monotony, before going back to the usual boring exploration until the RNG deems you worthy of accessing anther ancient civilization "discovery". And say there's 3 available ancient race side-plots you can explore on your own time. Each with maybe 5 dialogue-heavy missions, with a chance of accessing one being at 5% or so, up to 20% with maxed out Exploration.

    But it'll still be boring, and eventually repetitive due to the lack of focus they would get compared to usual updates.
  • baudlbaudl Member Posts: 4,060 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    oh plz no. I'm so greatful that they took that dreadful, unimaginative, repetitive black hole out of the game. After all it only existed to fill the void of content for leveling, which is filled by now anyway with actual story missions.
    Kill, scan, repair, ... 5 something was pretty much as engaging and exiting as watching Big Brother reruns.
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  • captaingalaxy1captaingalaxy1 Member Posts: 202 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Yes please bring them back, I miss them so much.
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  • cecil08cecil08 Member Posts: 163 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    baudl wrote: »
    oh plz no. I'm so greatful that they took that dreadful, unimaginative, repetitive black hole out of the game. After all it only existed to fill the void of content for leveling, which is filled by now anyway with actual story missions.
    Kill, scan, repair, ... 5 something was pretty much as engaging and exiting as watching Big Brother reruns.

    No, now we just get really boring kill 5 waves of 5 hp sponges with Delta Patrols.
  • neoakiraiineoakiraii Member Posts: 7,468 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Yes!! I agreep!! !00% bring them back so I can ignore them again, I hate ignoring nothing. :D
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  • coupaholiccoupaholic Member Posts: 2,188 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Just close your eyes and play the space and ground battlezones. Imagine them are the clusters only with less loading screens. They tend to involve shooting lots of stuff anyway.
  • senatorvreenaksenatorvreenak Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    starkaos wrote: »
    As Exploration clusters worked, they just don't fit Star Trek. Scan 5 objects or kill 5 groups of enemies will never be Star Trek. It is fine for games like Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky, and Star Citizen, but not Star Trek since Star Trek exploration always has a social component like encountering a new alien civilization. Therefore for exploration to work in STO, it needs to be a completely random selection of procedurally generated content, Foundry missions, and dev-created missions. These dev-created missions would be smaller than regular missions so they might be able to create 5 or 10 of these missions in the time it takes to create a regular one.

    Yeah, because they are never encountering hostile species, cataloguing gaseous anomalies, conducting planetary surveys, studying nebulas or stars or exploring the ruins of ancient civilizations. :rolleyes:
  • js26568js26568 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    They got rid of the exploration clusters because they were boring.

    Then they released Delta Rising - which includes four missions that each involve four boring exploration cluster type patrols.

    Makes sense to me.
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  • erei1erei1 Member Posts: 4,081 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    starkaos wrote: »
    As Exploration clusters worked, they just don't fit Star Trek. Scan 5 objects or kill 5 groups of enemies will never be Star Trek. It is fine for games like Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky, and Star Citizen, but not Star Trek since Star Trek exploration always has a social component like encountering a new alien civilization. Therefore for exploration to work in STO, it needs to be a completely random selection of procedurally generated content, Foundry missions, and dev-created missions. These dev-created missions would be smaller than regular missions so they might be able to create 5 or 10 of these missions in the time it takes to create a regular one.
    Because shooting scientists (divide et empera), committing a first strike against the main (defensive) fleet without being at war (Romulan story arc), or shooting Malons when they try to talk to you and explain their situation (DR patrol), all of that as a fed, is so more Trek perhaps ?
    Or fighting T-rex with lazerz on their heads, having entire fleets of "fed/KDF" aliens vessels around Earth/Qo'nos (including Scimitar with Thalaron weapons that could potentially nuke the entire planet in mere seconds), is more trek.
    Or grinding marks/dil/R&D resources/reputation to upgrade your ship/component. Like you know, Picard. Perhaps you remember this episode where he complain he can't upgrade his phaser banks to MK XIV because he doesn't have enough dil, and how he want to kill the crystalline entity again for it.


    Yeah, right. We encounter a lot of civilizations in STO. Most of them ends up dead after the meeting.

    Exploration clusters were not that great, but they were as trek as pretty much everything else in the game. Perhaps even more.
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  • nileight1nileight1 Member Posts: 249 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    I liked them.
    I know not everyone liked them, but it was content.
    Content should NEVER be taken out unless there is something BETTER to replace it.
  • hyplhypl Member Posts: 3,719 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Yes! Bring back the Third Borg Dynasty! :D
  • rosetyler51rosetyler51 Member Posts: 1,631 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    hypl wrote: »
    yes! Bring Back The Third Borg Dynasty! :d

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  • nikephorusnikephorus Member Posts: 2,744 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    As much as exploration sounds fun those clusters were pretty bad.
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  • js26568js26568 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    nikephorus wrote: »
    As much as exploration sounds fun those clusters were pretty bad.

    They were almost as boring as Argala.
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  • farmallmfarmallm Member Posts: 4,630 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    I liked and hated them.

    Liked: It was something different each system you did. From doing supplies drop off, to scanning, to combat.

    Hated: Not enough different missions, so many became a repeat. Bugs galore! Many times I couldn't finish the darn mission due to the problems. Either the enemy target was getting stuck, vanish, or map itself. To where even my own character and Boffs was getting plagued with issues. This is why I stopped doing them and ignored them.

    IF they bring it back, revamp the entire thing.
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  • senatorvreenaksenatorvreenak Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    They may have been bad but they were still "content"

    And removing content is "never" a good thing.
  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Yeah, because they are never encountering hostile species, cataloguing gaseous anomalies, conducting planetary surveys, studying nebulas or stars or exploring the ruins of ancient civilizations. :rolleyes:

    Star Trek always had some other story going on with those episodes. It is why they are there, but plays only a minor part to the story.
  • sennahcheribsennahcherib Member Posts: 2,823 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    i don't want the old exploration missions, i want new exploration missions. more smart, more interesting
  • zero2362zero2362 Member Posts: 436 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    baudl wrote: »
    oh plz no. I'm so greatful that they took that dreadful, unimaginative, repetitive black hole out of the game. After all it only existed to fill the void of content for leveling, which is filled by now anyway with actual story missions.
    Kill, scan, repair, ... 5 something was pretty much as engaging and exiting as watching Big Brother reruns.

    Yeah I hope they remove the klingon faction soon as well. I mean its not like they do anything with them anymore. Dont you just love it when content is removed from the game. Who cares if some people liked it and it wasn't really hurting anything having it there. Less options and verity FTW
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  • knuhteb5knuhteb5 Member Posts: 1,831 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    nileight1 wrote: »
    I liked them.
    I know not everyone liked them, but it was content.
    Content should NEVER be taken out unless there is something BETTER to replace it.

    This a million times over. Don't take something out of the game unless you have a better replacement for it. It was a kneejerk reaction that made little sense even if they were super boring because it's the only exploration we really have in the game.
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  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,231 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    farmallm wrote: »
    I liked and hated them.

    Liked: It was something different each system you did. From doing supplies drop off, to scanning, to combat.

    Hated: Not enough different missions, so many became a repeat. Bugs galore! Many times I couldn't finish the darn mission due to the problems. Either the enemy target was getting stuck, vanish, or map itself. To where even my own character and Boffs was getting plagued with issues. This is why I stopped doing them and ignored them.

    IF they bring it back, revamp the entire thing.
    Yeah, there were several things you could do, but.... not a lot. The missions weren't unique. You could go to 5 different planets each of which had it's own unique cool map, but do the same thing. That was one aspect which needed to be improved. Also, while there was a variety of objectives, some were very similar.
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  • thutmosis85thutmosis85 Member Posts: 2,358 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    js26568 wrote: »
    They got rid of the exploration clusters because they were boring.

    Then they released Delta Rising - which includes four missions that each involve four boring exploration cluster type patrols.

    Makes sense to me.

    Sums it up quite nicely ...

    At least there was some Variety in Clusters ... Ground Missions, Scan 5x Missions, Deliver Commodities ... DQ - Patrols on the other hand are all "Kill Kill Kill 5x Waves of Enemy XY in Space" (ok to be fair there is one Shuttle Race)

    It's the backwards Definition of Insanity ... doing different stuff (at least in theory, according to the "Story"), but always gettin the same result ...

    => So yes please, bring them back please, we all know there's no mystical Revamp on the Horizon (except hooking up Clusters with Foundry Doors, which barely anyone uses) -> is it gonna happen, though ? -> doubt it ...

    PS : Remember all these "Don't worry they're gonna bring back Exploration in DR, it's the perfect opportunity, what else would you do in an Delta Quadrant - Expansion" - people ? ... funny funny stuff, in retrospect ...
    But it'll still be boring, and eventually repetitive due to the lack of focus they would get compared to usual updates.

    Because they're different ... how ?
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  • theanothernametheanothername Member Posts: 1,503 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    A overhauled and constantly (even if just small stuff per month) maintained/expanded exploration system is IMO very much required. Either that or handcraft the size of games like EvE. My next to no current playtime is not because of the demonized post50/60 level curve (I actually like it) or the item-upgrade prices (mk13 is fine too but I don't pvp); its a "universe" that has the small shoebox feeling where 5 player in scimitars can block out the sun & deep space is a forbidden zone that is reached in the time you qickly went to the kitchen to grab a new beer from the fridge.

    Give the players enough "fresh" stuff to do (that means stuff that does not involve the "Repeat" button) and they won't have time to complain on a XP / char maxed playcurve designed for a universe so far bigger than STO is right now BUT actually should be by now.
  • angrytargangrytarg Member Posts: 11,001 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    A lot of people didn't get what "exploration" was about in the first place. Including cryptic themselves. The only way a game like sto can reach any longevity is through randomly generated content, not hand crafted missions without replayability. The game's selling point back then was the Genesis engine for a reason. Scrapping that was a big mistake and cheated players that bought in for that feature.
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  • baudlbaudl Member Posts: 4,060 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    cecil08 wrote: »
    No, now we just get really boring kill 5 waves of 5 hp sponges with Delta Patrols.
    Originally Posted by js26568
    They got rid of the exploration clusters because they were boring.

    Then they released Delta Rising - which includes four missions that each involve four boring exploration cluster type patrols.

    Makes sense to me.

    yep, and threads like this one are pretty much the reason for that...if people cry about bringing stupidly repetitive and boring content back to the game, cryptic will do it. Delta rising patrol missions are proof of that.
    If people champion so enthusiastic for ****ty content, they will get ****ty content. pretty simple logic.
    Delta Rising patrol missions are pretty much as repetitive and boring and predictable, but they are atleast fashioned around the story and they are not as bug ridden as explo cluster garbage was.
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  • j0hn41j0hn41 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    I'd like to have them back to get my missing doff chain missions, if nothing else. I'm still waiting for some kind of fix for those chains.

    The clusters themselves certainly were not the best content, but I still found myself doing the daily every now and again to change things up a bit.
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